Next Step

Chapter 3-1

THREE

The bureau’s rear entrance, accessible to staff only, opened into a small paved courtyard that, in turn, abutted a narrow street. On the wall of the adjacent building, a vertical garden alleviated the drabness of grey concrete rising into an often grimy sky. Beneath hanging greenery, four chairs and a table, made from recycled plastic, offered the chance of respite from bland offices and monotonous tasks. Some staff took advantage of the space to enjoy a stall-bought coffee before work, the beverages supplied at morning break resembling and tasting like dirty water. Others used the courtyard at the end of the working day to chat with colleagues, before making their way home to suburbs on opposite sides of the sprawling megacity.

When Emma entered the courtyard on day three of her initial PCB week, she spotted Harie sitting with her back to the garden, foliage providing a verdant backdrop to the black mask shielding her face from morning pollution. ‘Hi, Harie,’ Emma called, eager to restart a relationship that the previous day, had ended almost before it began.

Harie returned the greeting and leapt from the bench, hurrying across the courtyard with outstretched arms. ‘I thought you’d been dismissed,’ she blurted out, pulling off her mask before flinging her arms around Emma’s waist. ‘Or exiled to some God-forsaken place for a minor misdemeanour.’

Emma removed her own mask. ‘Nothing like that. I just had to sign a form in front of the CAO.’

Harie relaxed her grip. ‘A contract?’

‘You could call it that. More of a job description with a confidentiality clause.’

‘Anything to worry about?’

Unaccustomed to concealing the truth, Emma shook her head, grateful for short stature and the close proximity that prevented Harie from looking into her eyes. ‘I worked for the education department before, so I’m familiar with government jargon. Pages and pages of convoluted content that could have been said in a few paragraphs.’

‘Did the CAO say where you’re going to be based post-training?’

‘Here, I believe. The position’s Administrative Officer Grade 3.’

Harie released her and stepped back. ‘Sounds boring.’

‘It probably is, but it’s a job, so I’m not complaining.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to ** soon. If only I could tend gardens like this, instead of doing administrative work.’

‘Why don’t you offer to do that as well? You never know, it might lead to other outdoor work. There could be plenty of vertical gardens like this one around the CBD needing attention.’

Harie smiled. ‘Great idea. The trouble is, I find Sarah a bit intimidating.’

‘She’s just doing her job. It can’t be easy dealing with trainees from a range of previous occupations. I’m an easy undertaking with my background in journalism.’

‘Which explains why you’ve been allocated a workplace so soon.’

Emma nodded. ‘We’d better go in or else Sarah will be on our backs.’

‘For sure. But before we do, I….’ Harie looked down at her sandals. ‘I want to apologise for sounding off yesterday. I was totally out of order.’

‘Not really, I did give the impression of wanting to curry favour with Sarah, but that was because I dreaded making a mistake on my first day.’ Emma sighed. ‘It’s not easy beginning again at seventy.’

Harie raised her head to scrutinise Emma with wide, brown eyes. ‘Geez, I thought you were closer to my age.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Fifty-eight next month.’

Emma gave a small bow. ‘Thanks for the compliment. I’ll remember it next time I look in the mirror.’

‘I dread the mirror inside my wardrobe ’cos it shows my entire body. Since I stopped work as a gardener, I’ve lost so much muscle tone.’

Emma raised both hands. ‘Enough bemoaning the aging process.’ She grinned before saying in a tone reminiscent of Sarah directing morning exercises, ‘Shoulders back, swing those arms, bend those knees, it’s off to work we go!’

Side by side, the two women headed for the rear door, opened via a code forwarded to staff wrist-bands during their first day of duty. When they reached the chipped concrete doorstep, Harie gestured for Emma to enter first.

‘Age before beauty, I guess,’ Emma quipped, lifting her arm level with the aperture set into thick steel. A flash of light and the door swung inwards, revealing a narrow corridor. ‘Step up, Harie, you might as well come in with me.’

Harie shook her head. ‘We can’t do that. Staff must enter one at a time. Didn’t you read the instructions?’

‘I must have missed that bit.’ The door began to close, but not before Emma had seen Harie lift her arm for a purpose other than entering the building. ‘Yes, Lola,’ she heard her colleague say, so she assumed Harie’s daughter had called.

Sarah appeared in good spirits, greeting every trainee by name and engaging in a short conversation with Harie, who arrived looking flustered, even though five minutes remained before the official starting hour.

‘Something wrong?’ Emma whispered, as Harie slipped into her seat.

‘Teenage issue,’ Harie answered, keeping her eyes focused on the screen.

Emma nodded and turned back to her own screen. No wonder Harie looked rattled; it would be difficult managing an adolescent daughter, as well as a new job in a field outside her experience. High school posed enormous challenges for some children, every lesson being career-oriented, and students couldn’t afford to lag behind or exhibit rebellious behaviour. Gone were the days of school counsellors and educators providing extra tuition for children with special needs. Not that there were many in that category, advances in genetic engineering having eliminated most potential problems in utero.

As module 3 loaded, Emma recalled the plethora of tests she’d had to undergo 20 years earlier, during the first four months of pregnancy. Despite her age, there hadn’t been any problems, but she’d often wondered what would have ensued had an abnormality been discovered. Forced termination, or would she and Aarav have remained in ignorance, the loss of their foetus explained away as spontaneous abortion?

Text flickered, alerting Emma to the need for concentration. Nothing would be gained by reflecting on the past, or worrying about a colleague’s parenting problems. She must apply herself to ever-more-complex tasks, some requiring detailed responses on how she would deal with a particular NPC. Acronyms were employed throughout the modules, with an explanatory file provided as a separate document, to aid the trainee until they had memorised the list. Non-productive citizen was the classification applied to the long-term unemployed, irrespective of whether or not they had completed their one-year government-allocated unemployment period.

Prior to beginning module 1, Emma had assumed that reporting to the PCB was mandatory only for those citizens like her, who had reached the end of their GAUP, but she’d learned otherwise the day before. It seemed that some jobless citizens – Emma refused to think of them as acronyms – approached the bureau of their own accord, either due to their inability to manage on meagre benefits, or because boredom was threatening their mental wellbeing. A third motivation had occurred to Emma, but she knew better than to suggest it to Sarah. Apart from having no personal experience of marital conflict arising over long-term unemployment, she wished to cultivate an industrious, eager-to-please façade. Reverting to her former employee persona – head down, get on with the job, no questions asked – required minimal effort, her recent rebirth as a proponent of social justice and political reform being easy to discard during working hours.

A split personality came naturally; at home she was never afraid to speak her mind and had often engaged in vigorous debate with her late partner, Aarav. His upbringing as the son of Indian migrants, struggling to adjust to a new country possessing a multitude of unfathomable regulations, had been so different from her own comfortable, middle-class existence that disagreement was inevitable. Sometimes, they had agreed to differ, but whatever the outcome, they never carried dissent into the bedroom, a good night’s sleep being essential to retain secure employment. Tired, irritable employees attracted unwelcome attention that, if repeated on a regular basis, could lead to an adverse performance appraisal and, eventually, dismissal.

During the sleepless nights following Aarav’s death, Emma had been grateful for the liberty of unemployment; it had given her the opportunity to grieve for her treasured partner of 20 years. An indulgence, some would have said, but with her son, Jack, at uni and her friends out at work, Emma had valued those initial weeks alone in the apartment for most of the day. At first, even visits to the market had proven difficult, every stall-keeper aware of her bereavement and keen to express condolences or ask how she was coping. After a short period, she had learned to answer their questions calmly and then shift the conversation to the weather or whatever she intended to purchase.

Despite good intentions, Emma let her mind wander from module 3, exercise 1e, to domestic matters, in particular whether Jack would need to purchase anything at the market for their evening meal. The previous evening, Cal had brought carrots and broccoli along with peaches and cream, but this morning, she’d forgotten to check on her potato and onion stocks. She made a mental note to call Jack during lunch and endeavoured to concentrate.

When Sarah announced the lunch break, Harie sighed loudly before getting to her feet.

‘Problem?’ Emma asked. ‘Or are you, like me, desperate to stretch your limbs?’

Harie leaned towards her. ‘I’m more than desperate. At this stage I feel like running out of the building and not stopping until I’ve left the city and suburbs behind. I loathe sitting still all day, staring at a screen.’

‘Let’s go to that park we went to yesterday and exercise after we’ve eaten our sandwiches. I’m not up to running like Sarah, especially in the heat, but a short walk would do us good. Stretch our legs and clear our heads.’

Harie nodded and reached for her bag.

‘Enjoy your break, girls,’ Sarah called, as they neared her work-station.

‘No running today?’ Harie asked.

‘In a few minutes. I need to finish a task first.’

‘We’re going to New CBD Park,’ Emma remarked, remembering the name of the tiny green space positioned between tall office blocks.

Sarah smiled before looking down at her screen.

The narrow, dimly lit corridor leading to the rear exit triggered a spurt of energy from Harie, who skipped like a child newly released from the classroom. Lagging behind, Emma pondered her colleague’s dilemma and whether she could help. Complaints about lack of activity and an overwhelming need to flee suggested more than surface dissatisfaction. Accustomed to physical work and unfamiliar with government jargon, Harie might be finding the modules difficult to comprehend, especially the exercises at the end of each segment. In three weeks, Harie had completed only two modules, whereas Emma had finished the same number in less than two days. Some pertinent questions over lunch, and the offer to assist where possible, might reveal the real reason for Harie’s desperation.

As the rear door opened for a second time, Emma spotted Harie standing by the vertical garden. She appeared to be examining a plant at head height, her fingers caressing its leaves, her face so close to the wall that green stems hung like braids from her woolly hair. ‘So sad,’ she murmured, turning around as Emma approached. ‘They’ll die soon without water.’

‘After work, why don’t we fill our water bottles from the hand basins and give them a drink on our way out?’

‘Good idea, but I can’t reach the top plants.’

‘Better some than none.’

‘Sure. Standing on the table isn’t an option. It doesn’t look strong enough to hold my weight.’ Harie stepped away from the wall, her movements stirring the stifling heat of a boxed-in courtyard.

Morning pollution had cleared to reveal a summer sky shimmering with an intensity of colour rarely seen, but the afternoon sea breeze had yet to infiltrate the CBD, so they hurried to the park, keeping to the shady side of the street. One of the four benches remained vacant, most likely because a strip of sunlight seared a third of its length. Harie claimed the bench before anyone else arrived.

‘I have to call my son first,’ Emma said, dumping her bag on the seat. She lifted her right arm. ‘Call Jack.’