People in Glass Houses by Shirley Hazzard

Author:Shirley Hazzard [Hazzard, Shirley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-16T16:00:00+00:00

There followed some weeks of what Pylos was later to think of as the Phony War. As he made his first steps across the Organizational scene, Miss Graine was ever at his side and, although he could not relish the proximity, Pylos admitted to himself that she was worth her weight in gold. He now told himself that he would retain her merely for these weeks of settling-in. Disturbingly, he felt that Miss Graine herself sensed this callous intention—but perhaps this was imagination. Considering how much he had to cope with at this time, it was odd the way Sadie Graine preyed on his mind.

Pylos's first official act was to name his new department. The interim titles that had been used—'Economic Relief of Under-Privileged Territories' and 'Mission for Under-Developed Lands'—were well enough in their way, but they combined a note of condescension with initials which, when contracted, proved somewhat unfortunate. Pylos consulted with senior members of the Designation and Terminology Branch, seeking some descriptive but trenchant phrase, some phrase that would neither patronize nor minimize. No agreement was reached until Miss Graine, clearing his tray one afternoon, offered her suggestion. So it was that DALTO came into being—the Department of Aid to the Less Technically Oriented.

Nevertheless, Pylos intended to rid himself of Miss Sadie Graine. It was the case of Ashmole-Brown that brought matters to a head.

In creating the staff of this new department, heads of existing departments had been asked to nominate those staff members in their ranks most fitted to initiate a programme of aid to the world's less-privileged. Many departments having naturally recommended those they could no longer tolerate themselves, a strangely assorted (and not wholly unsympathetic) crew was gradually assembled on a hitherto-unused floor of the building, and as DALTO reached its full complement of personnel, the remainder of the Organization's staff were able to close their expurgated ranks with a sigh of relief.

It was from this background that there advanced upon Achilles Pylos, a few weeks after his arrival at the Organization, the case of Ashmole-Brown.

Until he was assigned to the new department, Ashmole-Brown had been working away at his cluttered desk in the Department of Social and Anthropological Questions. Within a matter not of weeks but of days after the formation of DALTO, the contents of that small office, including Ash- mole-Brown, had been completely transferred to the freshly partitioned premises three floors below. His papers were rushed through by hand, an unusual circumstance which in itself would have denoted emergency. To Ashmole-Brown it made not the slightest difference whether he was on the thirty-first or the twenty-eighth floor: his work was everything to him, and he pushed on with it, oblivious of change, his head bent to his swelling manuscript, his hand moving evenly from line to line. He was to be seen on his way to the Organization library, a closely written list in his hand; or returning, his head already lowered as if in anticipation of the next page, each arm bowed with a load of the heavy books so soon to be exchanged for others.

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