Short story-QWERTYUIOP

SHORT STORY

QWERTYUIOP by Vivien Alcock 

Jobs don’t grow on trees, the principal of the Belmont Secretarial College was fond of saying.

“Be positive,” Mrs Price told her departing students, as she shook them by the hand in turn. “Go out into the world and win! I have every confidence in you.”

When she came to the last student, however, her confidence suddenly evaporated. She looked at Lucy Beck, and sighed.

“Good luck, my dear,” she said kindly, but rather in the tone of voice of someone wishing a snowman a happy summer.

Lucy Beck was young and small and mouse-coloured, easily overlooked. She had a lonely ’O’ level and a typing speed that would make a tortoise laugh.

“Whoever will want to employ me?” she had asked Mrs Price once, and Mrs Price had been at a loss to answer.

Lucy wanted a job. More than anyone, more than anything, she wanted a job. She was tired of being poor. She was fed up with macaroni cheese and baked beans. She was sick of second-hand clothes.

“We are jumble sailors on the rough sea of life,” her mother would say.

Lucy loved her mother, but could not help wishing she would sometimes lose her temper. Shout. Scream. Throw saucepans at the spinning, grinning head of Uncle Bert.

If I get a job, I’m getting out. He’s not drinking up my pay packet, that’s for sure. If I get a job . . . Trouble was that there were hundreds after every vacancy, brighter than Lucy, better qualified than Lucy, wearing strings of ‘O’ levels round their necks like pearls.

Who in their right minds will choose me? Lucy wondered, setting off for her first interview.

So she was astonished to be greeted by Mr Ross of Ross and Bannister’s, with enormous enthusiasm. She was smiled at, shaken by the hand, given tea and biscuits, and told that her single ‘O’ level was the very one they had been looking for. Then she was offered the job.

“I hope you will be happy here,” Mr Ross said, showing her out. There was a sudden doubt in his voice,a hint of anxiety behind his smile, but she was too excited to notice.

“I’ve got the job! I’ve got the job!” she cried, running into the kitchen at home. “I’m to start on Monday. I’m to be paid on Friday.”

Her mother turned to share at her.”You never! Fancy that now! Who’d have thought it!” she said in astonishment.

Lucy was not offended by her mother’s surprise. She shared it. They never trusted luck, but looked at it suspiciously as if at a stranger coming late to their door.

***

Ross and Bannister’s was a small firm, with a factory just outside the town, making cushions and duvets; and an office in the High Street. On Monday morning, at ten to nine, the door to this office was shut and locked.

She was early. She smoothed down her windy hair, and waited.

At five past nine, an elderly man, with small dark eyes like currants and a thick icing of white hair, came hobbling up the stairs. He was jingling a bunch of keys.

“Ah,” he said, noticing Lucy. “Punctuality is the courtesy of kings, – but a hard necessity for new brooms, eh? You are the new broom, I suppose? Not an impatient customer waiting to see our new range of Sunburst cushions, by any chance?”

“I’m Lucy Beck,” she said, adding proudly, “the new secretary.”

“Let’s hope you stay longer than the other ones,” the man said, and unlocked the door. “Come in, come in, Miss Beck. Come into the parlour, said the spider to the fly. I’m Harry Darke, thirty years with Ross and Bannister’s, retired with a silver watch, and now come back to haunt the place. Can’t keep away, you see.” Then he added oddly, half under his breath, “Like someone else I could mention, but won’t.”

He looked at Lucy, standing shy and awkward, clutching her bag and uncertain what to do. “Poor Miss Beck, you musn’t mind old Harry. Part-time messenger, office boy, tea-maker, mender of fuses. Anything you want, just ask old Harry. Mr Ross is down at the factory in the morning, but he’s left you plenty of work to be getting on with.” He pointed to a pile of tapes on the desk. “Letters to be typed, those are. He got behindhand, with the last girl leaving so quick. Left the same day she came. Shot off like a scalded cat!”

“Why?” Lucy asked curiously.

“Hang your coat in the cupboard here,” he said, ignoring her question. “Washroom along the passage to the right. Kitchenette to the left. We share it with Lurke and Dare, House Agents, and Mark Tower, Solicitor. No gossiping over the teapots, mind. Most of the young things go to Tom’s Cafe for lunch. Put this sign on the door when you leave.” He handed her a cardboard notice on a looped string on which was printed: Gone For Lunch. Back At Two. “Now is there anything else you want to know before I slope off?”

“You’re going?” Lucy asked, surprised.

“Yes, my girl. I’ve errands to do. Not frightened of holding the fort on your own, are you?”

“No, but…”

“You can take a telephone message without getting the names muddled, can’t you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Nothing else to it, is there? No need to look like a frightened mouse.”

“I’m not!”

He looked at her for a long moment, with a strange expression on his face, almost as if he were sorry for her.

“You’re very young,” he said at last. “I’m seventeen.” “Don’t look it. Look as if you should be still at school. This your first job?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head slowly, still regarding her with that odd pity.

“It’s a shame,” he said; then, seeing her puzzled face, added briskly, “Well, I’ll be off then. Mr. Ross will be in this afternoon.”

Yet still he stood there, looking at her. Embarrassed, Lucy turned away and took the cover off the typewriter.”

Just one last thing,” the old man said, “that’s an electric typewriter.” “I’m used to electric typewriters,”

Lucy said coldly. She was beginning to be annoyed.

“Not this one. This one’s . . . different. You mustn’t worry,” he said gently, “if it goes a little wrong now and again. Just ignore it. Don’t bother to re-type the letters. Splash on the old correcting fluid. Look, I got you a big bottle. Liquid Paper, the things they invent! And if that runs out, cross out the mistakes with a black pen – see, I’ve put one in your tray. Nice and thick it is. That should keep her quiet.”

“I don’t make mistakes,” Lucy said; then honesty compelled her to add, “well, not very many. I’ve been trained. I’ve got a diploma.”

“Yes. Yes, my dear, so they all had,” he said sadly,and left.

***

After the first moments of strangeness, Lucy was glad to be alone. No one breathing down her neck. She looked round the office with pleasure. Hers.

Sunlight streamed through the window. The curtains shifted a little in the spring breeze. There was a small blue and green rug on the floor.

I’ll have daffodils in a blue vase, Lucy thought. I can afford flowers now. Or I will be able to, on Friday.

Better get on with the work. She sat down, switched on the typewriter, inserted paper and carbons, and started the first tape.

“Take a letter to Messrs. Black and Hawkins, 28,Market Street, Cardington. Dear Sirs…” Mr Ross’s voice came clearly and slowly out of the tape deck. Lucy began to type.

She was a touch-typist. She did not need to look at the keys. Her fingers kept up their slow, steady rhythm, while her eyes dreamed round the office, out of the window, down into the sunny street.

“. . . our new line of Sunburst cushions in yellow, orange and pink,” came Mr Ross’s voice.

There was something odd! A sudden wrongness felt by her fingers, a tingling, an icy pricking…

She snatched her fingers away and stared at the typewriter. It hummed back at her innocently. What was wrong? There was something. . . Her glance fell on the uncompleted letter.

Dear Sirs,

I am pleased to inform you that QWERTYUIOP and Bannister’s have introduced a new QWERTYUIOP of Sunburst cushions in QWERTYUIOP, orange and QWERTYUIOP…

She stared at it in horrified bewilderment. What had happened? What had she done? Not even on her first day at the Belmont Secretarial College had she made such ridiculous mistakes. Such strange mistakes – QWERTYUIOP, the top line of letters on a typewriter, repeated over and over again! Thank God there had been no one to notice. They’d think she had gone mad.

She must be more careful. Keep her mind on the job, not allow it to wander out of the window into the sunny shopping street below. Putting fresh paper into the typewriter, she began again.

She was tempted to look at the keyboard. . . “Don’t look at the keys! Keep your eyes away!” Mrs Price was always saying. “No peeping. You’ll never make a good typist if you can’t do it by touch. Rhythm, it’s all rhythm. Play it to music in your head.”

So Lucy obediently looked away, and typed to a slow tune in her head, dum diddle dum dee, dum diddledum dee. . . Why did her fingers feel funny? Why were goosepimples shivering her flesh? Was the typewriter really humming in tune?

She sat back, clasping her hands together, and stared at the letter in the machine. It read:

Dear Sirs, 

YOU ARE SITTING IN MY CHAIR to inform you that GO AWAY a new line of WE DO NOT WANT YOU HERE cushions in yellow, SILLY CHIT rind pink. QWERTYUIOP.

She could not believe her eyes. She stared at the extraordinary words and trembled.

“Let’s hope you stay longer than the other ones,” the old man had said.

Tears came into Lucy’s eyes. She tore the sheets out of the typewriter and threw them into the wastepaper basket. Then she put in fresh paper and began again. Grimly, in defiance of Mrs Price’s teaching, she kept her eyes fixed on the keyboard.

Dear Sirs,

We are pleased to inform you that Ross and Bannister’s have introduced a new line of Sunburst cushions…

With a rattle the typewriter took over. She felt the keys hitting her fingers from below, leaping up and down like mad children at playtime. She took her hand away and watched.

. . . YOU CANT KEEP ME OUT THAT WAY, the typewriter printed. YOU LL NEVER BE HID OF ME. NEVER. WHY DONT YOU GO. NO ONE WANTS YOU HERE. NO ONE LIKES YOU. GO A WAY BEFORE

Then it stopped, its threat uncompleted.

Lucy leaped up overturning her chair and ran to the door.

“Left the same day she came,” the old man had said. “Shot off like a scalded cat!”

“No!” Lucy shouted.

She left the door and went over to the window, looking down at the bright shops. She thought of  jumble sales and baked beans. She thought of pretty new clothes and rump steaks. She might be young and shy and a little slow, but she was not, no, she was not a coward!

She went back and sat down in front of the typewriter and glared at it. There it crouched, like a squat, ugly monster, staring at her with its alphabetical eyes.

Lucy typed quickly:

Are you from outer space?

The typewriter rocked, as if with laughter, its keys clicking like badly fitting false teeth.

IDIOT, it wrote.

Who are you? Lucy typed.

MISS BROOME, it answered.

Lucy hesitated. She did not know quite how to reply to this. In the end she typed:

How do you do? I am Miss Beck.

GO AWAY, MISS BECK

Why should I?

I AM SECRETARY HERE, it stated, this time in red letters.

No, you’re not! I am! Lucy typed angrily.

The machine went mad.

QUERTYUIOP!”/@QUERTYUIOP£~&0*QWERTYUIOP+I, it screamed, shaking and snapping its keys like castanets.

Lucy switched it off. She sat for a long time, staring in front of her, her face stubborn. Then she took the cap off the bottle of correcting fluid.

For an hour, she battled with the machine. As fast as QWERTYUIOPs and unwanted capitals appeared, she attacked with a loaded brush. The white fluid ran down the typing paper like melting ice-cream, and dripped thickly into the depths of the typewriter.

YOU’RE DROWNING ME, it complained pathetically, and she swiped at the words with her brush.

HELP!

Another swipe.

PLEASE!

But Lucy showed no mercy. The large bottle was half-empty when she reached the end of the letter in triumph.

Yours faithfully,

George Ross,

she typed, and sat back with a sigh of relief.

The machine began to rattle. Too late, Lucy snatched the completed letter out of the typewriter. Across the bottom of the otherwise faultless page, it now said in large, red capitals:

I HATE YOU!

Furiously she painted the words out.

***

Mr Ross came to the office at four o’clock. His eyes went to the corner of the desk where Lucy had put the completed letters. If he was surprised to find so modest a number after a day’s work, he did not say so, but picked them up.

“Any telephone messages?” he asked.

“On your desk, sir,” Lucy said and went to make him tea.

When she brought it in on a flowered metal tray, she found Mr Ross signing the last letter, his pen skidding awkwardly over the thick shiny layer of plastic paper. All the letters were heavily damasked with the dried fluid, like starched table napkins. He glanced up at her a little unhappily.

“Did you have trouble with the machine, Miss Beck?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.” (She was afraid to say what trouble in case he thought she was mad.)

“It’s only just come back from being serviced,” he said wearily.

“I’m sorry, sir. It keeps… going wrong.”

There was a long silence. Then he said with a sigh, “I see. Well, do what you can. If it’s no better at the end of the week…”

He let the sentence hang in the air, so that she was not certain whether it would be the typewriter or Lucy Beck who would get the chop.

The next morning, Harry Darke raised his eyebrows when he saw Lucy.

“Still here?” he exclaimed. “Well done, my dear. I never thought I’d be seeing you again. You’re braver than you look. Fighting back, eh?”

“Yes,” said Lucy briefly. She walked past him and went up to the desk. Her desk. Then she took out of her carrier bag a small bunch of daffodils and a blue vase.

“Staking your claim, I see,” the old man said, regarding her with admiration. “D’you want me to fill that for you?”

“Thanks.”

He came back, carrying a tray.

“Thought I might as well make us tea while I was about it,” he said. “Here’s your vase.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll be here till one o’clock today,” he said, as she arranged her flowers. “Anything you want to know?Any snags come up I can help you with? Light bulbs changed. Fuses mended. New bottles of correcting fluid handed out…”

“Mr Darke,” Lucy said, looking straight into his small, bright eyes, “Who is Miss Broome?”

“Wrong question, Miss Beck.”

Lucy thought for a moment, then said, “Who was Miss Broome?”

He beamed at her approvingly: “You catch on quick, I’ll say that for you. In fact, you’re not the timid mouse you look, Miss Beck. You’re a right little lion. Need to be, if you’re going to take on Miss Broome. Tough old devil, she was.”

“Tell me about her,” Lucy said, as they sat over their tea.

“She was old Mr Bannister’s secretary. Been here forty-three years, girl, woman and old misery. Sitting there where you’re sitting now, her back straight as a ruler, and a chop-your-head-off ruler, too! Her stiff old fingers tapping out the letters one by one, with her nose nearly on the keyboard, so short-sighted she’d become by then. None of your touch-typing for her! Every letter she stared in the face like it was a criminal and she the judge. You can’t wonder she hates you young girls, with your fingers flying over the keys like white butterflies, and your eyes gazing out into the sunshine. They gave her the push, you know.”

“After forty-three years?” Lucy said, shocked into sympathy.

“Well, she was past it, wasn’t she? Of course they wrapped it up in tissue paper. Gave her a brass clock and shook her hand and waved her goodbye. She didn’t want to go. Didn’t have anywhere worth going to – a bedsit, a gas ring. . . The old bag didn’t have any family who’d own her. This place was her home, this job was all she lived for.”

Lucy was silent. Her mother had turned Uncle Bert out once, after a row, shouting that she’d had enough of him. Six weeks later, she had asked him to come back. “He looked so lonely, so lost,” she had told Lucy. “All by himself in that horrid little room, with the worn lino and the curtains all shrunk.”

“Sorry for her, are you?” Harry Darke asked, watching her face.

Lucy hardened her heart.

“It’s my job now,” she said. “I need it. She can’t have it for ever, it’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s my turn now.”

“So it’s a fight to the finish, is it, Miss Beck?” he asked, smiling.

“Yes,” she said, and unscrewed the cap from the bottle of correcting fluid.

Her mother was working late that night. Lucy, going into the kitchen to get her own supper, was surprised to find the table neatly laid out with ham and salad, apple pie and a jug of tinned milk. Uncle Bert was sitting waiting for her, beaming proudly.

“Thought I’d have your supper ready,” he explained, “now you’re a working girl.”

“Thanks,” she said, but couldn’t resist adding nastily, “I don’t get paid till Friday, you know. No good trying to touch me for a fiver.”

He flushed. “You don’t think much of me, do you? Who are you to set yourself up as judge and jury? You don’t know what it’s like . . . not being wanted. A little kindness would help!”

Lucy noticed his hands were shaking. His collapsing face seemed held together in a scarlet net of broken veins. His eyes were miserable.

“Uncle Bert…” she began.

“What?” He looked at her warily.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Uncle Bert.”

“I’m sorry too, Lucy,” he said. “I know it’s a nuisance, having me here.”

“No! No, it isn’t! We want you,” she said.

They smiled at each other timidly over the kitchen table, each remembering the little girl and the handsome uncle, who had once flown kites together in Waterlow Park.

* * *

Wednesday was Harry Darke’s day off. Alone in the office, Lucy put a sheet of paper in the typewriter, and typed quickly:

QWERTYUIOPQWERTYUIOPQWERTYUIOP.

The typewriter gave a jerk, as if surprised, and hummed. Lucy typed:

Dear Miss Broome,

Mr Darke told me you used to the secretary to Mr Bannister…

I AM, interrupted the typewriter.

Lucy went on,

I am sorry to nave to tell you that Mr Bannister [she hesitated, wondering how to put it]. . . passed on three years ago, at the age of eighty-six…

LIAR! I DON’T BELIEVE YOU!

It is true, Miss Broome. I have seen his grave in the cemetery. It is not far from yours. I went along last night and left you flowers…

!!!!!!

I did. Mr Darke is worried about Mr Bannister. He does not know how he will manage without you…

HE CAN MANAGE WITHOUT ME ALL RIGHT! said the typewriter bitterly, HE TOLD ME TO GO. BRASS CLOCK, WHAT DID I WANT WITH BRASS CLOCK! I WANTED MY JOB. 

They only asked you to go because they were worried about your health. [Lucy typed quickly] Mr Darke told me Mr Bannister was always saying how much he missed you… Truly. He said Mr Bannister complained none of the new girls were any good. There was no one like you, he said…

The typewriter was silent. Sunlight glittered on its keys, so that they looked wet.

… He must miss you: He’s probably in an awful muddle up there, mislaying his wings. Losing his harp. He needs someone to look after him… 

The machine was silent. Lucy waited, but it said nothing more.

So she typed:

Goodbye, Miss Broome. Best of luck in your new job, 

Yours sincerely,

Lucy Beck, Secretary.

She folded the finished letter into a paper dart and sent it sailing out of the window. The wind caught it and carried it away.

* * *

Mr Ross is delighted now with his new secretary. Harry Darke says she’s champion and gives her chocolate biscuits with her tea.

“However did you do it?” he asked.