TEATIME

The tea trolley bumped along the corridor and the huge woman pushing it winced as her ‘complaint’ hit her in the side for the fiftieth time that day. She would just have to live with it. She had no money left for visiting doctors.
It seemed to the woman that the corridors grew longer every day, just to spite her. Although some of the young men and women who worked in the Pentagon were kind there were many, many more who did not even have the time to talk to her. They would grunt unintelligible words as they thrust pies, bananas, cakes, chocolate bars in front of her and pointed a loaded finger to indicate whether they wanted tea or coffee from the clearly-marked urns. She once thought of taking off the silly labels and forcing them to speak, if only for them to avoid being given the wrong drink.
This morning was no different. She considered it a good day if ten out of a hundred people spared a quick kind word. Surely they could see she was in pain. Norah Grant never let it pass through her mind how wealthy were these serious souls in this forbidding building. As she passed their Porsches, Mercedes, BMWs, Lamborghini Diablos and even the occasional Rolls Royce on her way to the bus stop she would think of a bird she had heard singing on her way into work and wonder what kind of day it had enjoyed.
‘Too much dwelling on your own misfortunes is a recipe for the evil one to dunk another sodden biscuit of hate in your cup of tea, just out of spite,’ she was constantly telling friends of hers who seemed to do nothing but moan.
In fact, it was probably true to say that on this morning just like all the others, but particularly on this morning, Norah Grant with all her ailments, her restless family and her mean chances of a happy carefree life, was the most optimistic soul in the whole of the Pentagon complex.
All Norah had to worry about was being ill, poor and the wrong colour. All Gerald Kenworthy had to worry about was exposure in The National Enquirer, rapidly followed up by The Washington Post, The New York Daily News, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Herald and every other important newspaper in the land, let alone the television stations. He would be ruined. All because of a stupid childhood friendship which had gone wrong.
As National Security Advisor Gerald had an office in the Pentagon as well as one in the White House. As a forty five year old he was doing well with a home on either coast and a holiday cottage in the Florida Keys. Unlike so many others of his age group he also had a flourishing although not ecstatically happy marriage and two beautiful and intelligent children. There was little more Gerald could ask for. And it reminded him of the day eighteen years earlier when he had none of those things and had been a struggling bond salesman wondering where the next deal was coming from. As he had been worrying that his life was over before it had even really started in had walked Robert Harding the Third, brandishing the slight nick on his left cheek and calling it a scar from a bullet fired in anger in Vietnam. It was the only blemish on an otherwise perfect face and although Gerald had been told about it by mutual friends it had still aroused feelings of intense anger when he saw it for real.
Robert was everything Gerald was not. It hurt that Robert was telling the truth about his one war injury. It was exactly what you might expect from the man. The one injury everyone always asked about which caused no physical blemish nor pain but allowed the owner to recount again and again how brave he was. Right now Gerald wished he had been the soldier with the rifle aimed at Robert. He most certainly would not have missed.
At the time he had also been healthily impressed when Robert had walked through the door. The feelings of jealousy he now recalled were more like boyhood worship of a particularly brave senior boy. Gerald had taken Robert out to lunch and they had rapped over old times as though they had been the best of friends they never had been. It was only later Gerald discovered the real reason why Robert had come searching for him as though he was a long lost buddy.
Robert was floating a company and needed to raise a million dollars in capital. The company was a real one, a small engineering operation he had taken over from a dead uncle, with an annual turnover of eighty thousand dollars and about ten thousand dollars profit. Not quite in the big league. So Robert had printed some brochures, created some lies, hired a devious press officer and started a tale of total bullshit which had taken in every single person he had talked to. Now he needed a driver to take his cartload of bullshit into the heart of Wall Street and Gerald was promised enough money to keep him off work for a quarter of a century.
Gerald, who was an incompetent man, had worked unusually hard and they had floated the company at an enormous profit. Not surprisingly it had died eighteen months later and they had managed to blame everyone but themselves. Fortunately no one had discovered that the house they had built had foundations of sand, quicksand at that. At least, no one had discovered the fact until right now when Gerald was occupying the most important office of his political career.
The caller had been far too well informed for Gerald to brush him off, although he had done that with a faint hope nothing more would be heard. It seemed to Gerald that the facts had been provided by someone who had sat on them until the time had been right.
Robert, of course, was nowhere to be found. Gerald left a whole string of messages on a nationwide set up of answering machines and secretaries. He still had no reply and the caller had promised to ring again that evening. Gerald could not concentrate on anything at all. He wished Robert would call back and tell him what to do. Gerald was like a floundering schoolboy who has been pushed into the deep end of a swimming pool the moment his friends heard him tell them he could not swim. Right now Gerald wondered whether he was going to be left to drown.