Mr Block Takes His Chance

Nobody has ever come out and asked me, sarcastically, if I’m proud of myself. But I know they’re thinking it, and not because I can read minds. I can’t. I believe there are those who can and don’t know if I envy or pity them.

     But it stands to reason. And the answer is no, I’m not proud of myself. But I prefer to have enough to eat and prefer not to risk being imprisoned or worse. I was about to say that I’m just as much a victim as anyone else, but no, I’m not sorry I took those pills. Perhaps those of us who survive by spinning fantasies (or half fantasies) have a moral obligation to be truthful in other matters.

     Things weren’t going well. That’s the kind of understatement that sometimes amuses The Captain and sometimes irritates him, and it’s important to gauge his mood correctly. He decided to call himself the Captain to distinguish himself from all the run of the mill and prosaic and weak-willed Presidents and Prime Ministers and Chancellors. And just “Leader” has such unfortunate undertones. All of them entirely justified, of course. But that’s the kind of thing I’d only say alone in my own little room. In my writing room.

     Anyway, I was a clerk on Information Island. This was built on reclaimed land in the Thames estuary before The Captain came to power, but he likes to make out it was his idea and it’s wisest not to contradict him. I was pretty far down the food chain, and certainly not prey to any great plans or secrets. But I was even losing my touch with slogans. I couldn’t concentrate and began to suffer from headaches and nausea. We were supposed to be covered by Health Insurance, but for someone in so lowly a position all it amounted to was a two minute chat with the doctor to be advised to take aspirin. But I got lucky! Dr Mallen, who normally ministered to lesser mortals was off sick himself (at least that was the official line; there were suspicions he had blotted his copybook) and I was granted an appointment with Dr Bennett, who was considerably higher up in the pecking order, though she wasn’t ever likely to join that fortunate (or unfortunate) group who ministered to The Captain and his cronies. Unlike Dr Mallen, who rarely seemed to be listening for even the brief time allowed, she seemed attentive, and I noticed she shared my own habit of cupping her chin in her hands when she was thinking. “From what you’re telling me, Miss Ross,” she said, “It sounds very much like migraine. You used to hear about that a lot more than you do now. But it seems you have quite a severe form of it, and you say it’s interfering with your work….”

     “Yes, doctor,” I said. We both knew the implications of that. There is no safety net for those who can’t work. They have to rely on family (but my parents both died young and I’m an only child) or charity (and from what I’ve gathered, all too often this makes the meaning of the phrase as cold as charity abundantly clear).

     “Perhaps I can help,” she said. “I could write you a prescription for a medication that has shown a good deal of success. It isn’t – entirely without side effects,” I suspected that, too, could be an understatement, but I was prepared to try anything. “And as it’s still at an experimental stage, there’ll be no charge.”

     That rung a vague alarm bell, too, but like I said, I was getting desperate. She wrote out the prescription there and then, and said I would be able to collect it from the pharmacy that afternoon. As I thanked her before leaving the surgery, she said, “No problem. Good luck, Theodora.” 

     The pharmacist back on the banks gave me a strange look as he handed over the package of capsules. It was plain he was quite surprised that a mere clerk was getting the pills, but he obviously decided it was not his place to comment. We have nearly all learnt when it is best not to comment, which is more or less all the time.

     The pharmacist’s instructions, repeated on both the waxy lilac coloured packet and the leaflet within, were to take one pill every morning, to build up immunity, and two if a flare-up of the condition occurred, repeated every three hours as necessary.

     Oh, was I grateful to have the pills that night! I saw those flashing lights and felt that vertigo that let me know that I was in for it. I decided this might count as both prevention and cure so I took three of them, then wondered when it was too late if that could be dangerous. There was something odd and indefinable about the taste of those pills, that were also vaguely lilac. They did not taste of nothing at all the way some medications do, nor were they bitter, dissolving unpleasantly in the throat, nor were they sugar-coated. It was a sensation more akin to touch than taste, a tingle and slight pressure on my tongue, then an awareness of them “going down”, but not in that unnerving way that comes when you’ve swallowed something too hot, or too big a piece.

     I waited, anxiously, but the throbbing headache did not materialise, and nor did the draining nausea. I was restless and twitchy, and yet had a need for sleep that was stronger than physical tiredness. I didn’t fight it. I slept there and then, on my shabby couch. Now, I imagine many people have had the experience of thinking they have written or imagined a wonderful story in their dreams and either it soon fades or you realise it was basically balderdash. But I was still in a state that at one and the same time was both trance-like and more wide awake than I had ever been. I grabbed a notebook (I didn’t have my own laptop then) and wrote and wrote. 

     By the way, this is time for me to dispel the myths that my notebooks, and later on, my computer screen, miraculously filled themselves with words and tales and characters. They did not. I had to write them down. They bubbled from my own mind. But, I wondered, did they bubble from my own imagination. I certainly didn’t get writer’s cramp, and my generally messy handwriting was clear and neat.

     And it was good. I knew it was. Though I was generally, whilst not especially shy, not an extrovert person or natural performer, suddenly, at break in our crowded office on Information Island, I started reading my story. Or at any rate, I had the notebook in front of me, but I was telling the story. All of my colleagues sat listening, utterly enthralled. It must have been an hour before my story finally came to an end, and there was rapturous applause, and I realised that our supervisor, Mr Bancroft, was in the room. Oh Lord, I thought, now I’m for it. Not much point to curing my migraine if it gets me sacked for time-wasting and encouraging others to do the same. Mr Bancroft wasn’t a bad sort, but he could be stern and, not unreasonably, valued his own job. But there was an expression on his face I’d never seen before – a softening of the features, a light in his eyes. “Is that – a story of your own making, Miss Ross?” he asked.

     “Yes, sir. I’m sorry. Please don’t blame the others.”

     But that gentle expression, that sparkle in his eyes, did not fade. “My dear, it was enchanting. Your talent is amazing!” There was a ripple of agreement. On leaving the office, he gave me a pat on the back that was almost fatherly. My colleagues clamoured for another story. But I insisted we couldn’t push our luck. Anyway, I didn’t have one to tell. Not yet. 

     I began to think perhaps it had all been too good to be true when the next day, Mr Bancroft came into the office and said that Mr Stephenson wanted to see me. Mr Stephenson was the often unseen presence at the head of Information Island, and had the ear of The Captain. I tried to tell myself that if I were to be sacked, someone far lowlier would do the sacking.

     I had never even been on his corridor before, never set foot on the thick carpet that I seemed to sink into. An almost obsequious secretary asked me as if I were Somebody if I would mind just waiting for a moment and Mr Stephenson would see me. The door to his office opened and an employee I recognised as Caleb Block departed. Our paths had barely crossed in the massive building, so I wondered why he was giving me such a malevolent stare. Still, I didn’t dwell on it, when Mr Stephenson, and I swear he gave the hint of a little bow, asked me into his private office. Office? It was like a palace in miniature! “News can travel quickly, my dear,” he said, “The Captain loves a good story. But frankly, Miss Ross, just between you and me, he had begun to get very tired of Mr Block’s tales. He wants someone to entertain him after hours of high office and onerous responsibility. Mr Bancroft tells me you are a gifted storyteller. Let me take you to The Captain’s residence.”

     Well, I was in a state of panic! But the solution came to me. I had to take some of the pills. Trying to sound as practical as possible and make little of it, I asked if I may just take some medication I had been prescribed first. “Of course, my dear of course!” He poured me a glass of water from a crystal drinking fountain in the palatial office, and I took three more of the pills. After only a couple of seconds a story started to form in my head. I realised in that instant that though I liked to write them down, I didn’t have to. 

     The Captain’s residence is shaped like a ship, floating on immaculately tended lawns. It’s a strange hybrid of a luxury liner and a battleship. I had quite enjoyed the trip in Mr Stephenson’s posh car (and it’s true, the engine of a car like that really does purr like a contented cat) but was impatient and nervous, though not as nervous as I would have imagined – if I’d ever imagined anything like that! Mr Stephenson counselled me to be polite, but just to talk normally and naturally.

     Slightly to my surprise and disappointment, the nautical theme didn’t carry on much inside, though there was a ship’s bell hanging on a hook in the long hall. Mr Stephenson handed me over to the charge of The Captain’s housekeeper, Mrs Munroe, who looked quizzical, but was pleasant enough. There had been gleaming floorboards in the hallway, but in The Captain’s cabin, there was a carpet that made the one on the posh corridor seem like threadbare rag rugs in comparison. He was sitting on a chair that wasn’t quite a throne, but reminded me a little of the ones that Tele-Evangelists sit on while one of their colleagues holds forth. I had heard the rumours that he was a rather short man, but it was impossible to tell. He did not indulge in any greetings or pleasantries beyond a little nod, and an indication I should sit on a normal-sized armchair slightly at an angle to his own seat, and said, “Tell me a story, Miss Ross.”

     I obliged. It was ready. I was ready. I knew that The Captain had a love of the circus, and my words made the most wonderful circus come to life, even though it wasn’t a thing that had ever appealed to me much. He gasped at the daring of the tightrope walkers, chuckled at the antics of the clowns, seemed in awe of the ringmaster, and almost seemed, sitting in his oversized chair, to be dancing along with the dancing horses.

     And from that day on I was the Captain’s Storyteller. I was leading a double life – I retained my job on Information Island, though I was given a substantial pay rise (and it was tacitly implied I was not to mention that – I didn’t feel easy in my mind about that but didn’t protest). But at least once a day (and by the way, the headaches and the nausea had vanished completely) I took the violet-tinted capsules – a supply of them now arrived regularly, without my even needing to ask – and told The Captain tales. I wrote them down, too, at home, in the nice new flat he had given me (I told my colleagues I had inherited it and I was pretty sure at least some of them didn’t believe it), still sometimes in a notebook, sometimes on my high-end little laptop. It was all so easy. It was like having a superpower. I swear that if The Captain had said, “Theodora, I want something like War and Peace, only set in a colony of dragons who make spaceships,” then I could have obliged without any trouble or effort. In a way I got used to it, but it never stopped being a heady feeling. Sometimes I bumped into Mr Block in the building, and on the surface he was meanly courteous but I knew he resented me. I didn’t blame him. We both knew that we couldn’t talk about it. We had nothing to say to each other – and yet there were things we could have said to nobody else. It was an awkward time when he was temporarily assigned to our office because of a staff shortage. But we kept up the façade. His expression seemed to have subtly changed and yet I couldn’t quite say why. Only half self-jesting I wondered if I should take a pill just to give me the right words. There was a ritual that was understood. Mr Stephenson would give me a phone-call and say simply, “You’re needed, when it’s convenient for you, Miss Ross.” If I were briefly out of the room he might very casually say to a colleague that he’d like a word with me when it was convenient. That was what happened that day – it was a Thursday in September, and one of those days when September forgets it’s supposed to be a glorious and golden month. Not, apparently, attaching much importance to it, when I returned from a comfort break, my colleague Barbara said, “Oh, Mr Stephenson says can you see him when it’s convenient?” I thanked her, took my pills, and didn’t go to his office but straight down to the car park. I told The Captain a story about a time-traveller, knowing that was a superpower he wished he had. He was enthralled and clapped his hands like a little boy. “Do you think it really is possible, Theodora?” he asked.

     “I think it may be, Captain,” I said. Perhaps there was a magic pill for that, too!

     When I next encountered Mr Block, his expression definitely had changed. A gloating grin seemed to take up his whole face. “Well, and who’s to be YOUR successor?” he asked.

     “I’m sorry?” 

     “You really shouldn’t have been so careless, you know, leaving those pills in an open drawer. It was almost as if you were asking me to do something about it. Oh, it was a bit awkward, dyeing the ibuprofen capsules – the kind you can get over the counter for 50p! – the right shade, or more or less. Oh, you didn’t really think I didn’t know? You underestimate me. I’m surprised to still see you here today, to be honest, though I suppose they kept me on after my tales stopped amusing him. Except I only had the prototypes. They didn’t work properly, not after a while.” 

     Then I realised what had happened. I hadn’t taken the “magic story pills” at all. In a fit of jealousy in a busy and understaffed office, Mr Block had managed to swop them for humble ibuprofen pills.

     But it hadn’t mattered! It hadn’t mattered in the least! I had triumphed over Mr Block because I didn’t need the pills at all. I could weave my stories, could tell and write them easily and fluently entirely of my own volition.

     To this day I’ve not wholly figured it out. I sometimes think that there must have been something, at least in the original batch, because neither Dr Bennett nor I had uttered a single word about storytelling, only about headaches and nausea. Maybe they just relaxed me and set something free that was tied up in a knot and swiping at imaginary fences.

     But this I do know – I have the power of storytelling, and Mr Block can do nothing about it!