When 6 o’clock rolled by, K was still deeply engrossed in Caruskin’s Concordance of Codicil Legislature, and a number of other hefty tomes lay open all around him. Since he wasn’t allowed back to his usual place in the office, he’d had to make himself comfortable in the storage cupboard, using an empty shelf for a desk. He found it rather cosy, and his colleagues had even allowed him to prop open the door for light and ventilation. Still, after an entire afternoon in there he was feeling pretty stiff and sore about the joints; more than ready for a break. He crept out of the cupboard shakily, with a rush of blood to the head, and, after an exaggerated series of winks and nods to his colleagues (he wasn’t permitted to talk with them during his suspension), took his leave.
He’d just managed to wolf down some dinner before he was buttonholed by Tollswhip himself, and whisked along to a nearby lift. Ordinarily, a person of K’s level wouldn’t be given clearance for such a mode of travel, but it was Tollswhip’s privilege to escort whomever he liked, when his business required it. No reference was made to K’s absence (or indeed to anything at all) in that confined space, and try as he might, K couldn’t stand far enough away from his boss for his comfort during their slow ascent. He would have liked to hum a tune just to cover the silence. When the lift finally arrived at their destination, he gasped lungfuls of the clear air, somewhat lighter up here, and almost fragrant. Still keeping mum, Tollswhip led the way to a small conference room for their pre-meeting.
K fished around in his bag for a pen and a notebook, steadying himself. His first proper bit of legal work! He could hardly believe it had come. Through a door in the corridor they went and – suddenly, Tollswhip stopped short, so that K almost walked into him. They were looking at a roomful of people – all strangers – being led by a man in some heavy, fur-lined garb of office, waving a sceptre of sorts in his wrinkled hands. The audience all stared now at Tollswhip and K, who stood as if stuck fast to the floor. The old man turned around slowly, to see what the interruption was about, and squinted at Tollswhip for a few seconds before he could make him out.
‘Ah! Mr. Tollswhip, sir, delighted to receive you; can I be of service? Would you like to sit in on our meeting?’
Tollswhip remained frozen, as if he’d been turned to stone, and K thought he could see the cogs whirring in his brain. He gave no answer, until the meeting’s clerk – the same young woman who’d been filling in for K – leaned forward, blushing crimson, and said:
‘Sir, I think… Her Ladyship… she’s expecting you. A mistake about the timings...’
‘MISTAKE!’ bellowed Tollswhip, breaking his silence at last, so that the whole room jumped. The next moment, however, he had contained his anger.
‘Clearly, a clerical error. I must have been misled. Excuse me ladies, gentlemen.’ And he just about wrenched K from the room with his vice-like grip, breathing heavily. K tried to control the muscles in his face, to prevent himself from smiling as he was frogmarched along to the receiving room where they were both expected. The prospect of arriving unprepared did not frighten him anymore – not half as much as that blunder had shaken up Tollswhip. The estate manager was beside himself, hardly walking straight, and almost missing the right door. K’s mirth vanished to see him so, as the man smoothed his hair and straightened his collar with shaking hands. For an instant, he saw him as he really was: a mere child, dressed up in the livery of his office – his suit of armour against infantile fears. Then the mask returned to its place, reassuring all concerned, and they ascended the steps to meet Her Ladyship.
‘Good evening, Mr. Tollswhip.’ K heard her voice saying, coolly, before he too entered her presence.
‘Ah, and Mr. K. Thank you for attending, gentlemen.’
She had a big, swishy white dress on – almost a wedding dress – with a lot of lace and a kind of bustle from which hung many folds in a short train. This she now swept along the floor as she ascended onto the upper level of the room and sat down on a chaise longue – perching like a bird on the very edge of it. Everything else in the room was much the same to K’s eyes, save that the sundial had been removed, and some chairs were laid out on the lower level.
‘Please, be seated.’ The Lady continued, once she had taken her place, and K joined a few others there besides Tollswhip – some kind of notary with thick glasses, and a wizened old wet-nurse, dressed in a deep purple dress. Tollswhip made a move for the chair closest to Her Ladyship, but to his (and K’s) horror, she stopped him with a word:
‘Pardon me, Ananias, but I thought you might sit there, and that our lawyer might take that seat.’
Tollswhip turned a beetroot colour at this inexcusable faux pas (as he deemed it), but if possible K felt even worse than him, though he was not without a kind of stunned appreciation at his own, apparent, value.
Thus seated, they waited for a beginning to proceedings, no one really sure who should lead. Her Ladyship’s expression was impassive as a sphinx, keeping them guessing, while a wail from somewhere to his right told K that His Lordship was also present, tucked into an unobtrusive little cot. These cries delayed matters another minute, and everyone present began to direct shrewd, side-long glances at the aged wet-nurse who, it appeared, had fallen into a doze.
Suddenly, the Lady cleared her throat and began to lead as chair, throwing caution to the wind.
‘Commencing proceedings on the third official reading of our late Lord Postlethwaite II’s revised will, for the chief benefit of our estate lawyer Mr. Joseph K.’ Here she looked at K and gave an encouraging smile,
‘Would our present notary, Mr. Niggle, please introduce the document in question and begin to read it aloud, if no questions should arise beforehand?’
No one stirred but Niggle, who began talking very quickly and discursively about the will. He spoke so vaguely, yet with such a fussy attention to certain details of procedure, that K found his attention drifting within minutes. As the chap went on with his introduction, which seemed to grow and grow in scope as each minute went by, the Lady alone seemed to listen and regard him with interest – though possibly it was merely a habit she had formed through years of receiving insufferable bores and diplomats of various stripes. Everyone else felt his eyes glazing over, but no one had the temerity to interrupt or to ask him to get to the point. Finally, when Niggle paused to take a sip of water, the Lady cut in to thank him for the ‘stimulating summary’, and asked him to read the will itself, ‘if there were no questions’. A silence followed this remark of a profundity that not even little Lord Postlethwaite’s cries, nor the snoring of the wet-nurse, could cover.
At last, K thought, they were onto the real substance of their meeting, now that Niggle began to read. He pulled out a pocket book and flattened it against his knee, ready to take down any really pertinent points. Alas for his optimism! It took about half an hour to get through the title page alone.
Things were no better when they got to the actual meat of the business, for the will-writer had used such an obscure style, with interminable, run-on sentences, that the points raised always managed to evade the reader’s understanding – there being a kind of army of sub-clauses running interference between the Lord’s original intentions (which were surely not so obscure) and the hearers of the will. In summary, it was precisely the kind of legal twaddle that ought not to be read aloud, but studied at length under a bright lamp with a proverbial fine-tooth comb, and to have huge chunks of it excised with crossings out (or better still, a good pair of scissors), long before anyone was subjected to hearing it.
All the while everyone was straining to make out the meaning of what was being read, with more or less success in appearing to have understood. Her Ladyship sat erect, with her hands folded on her lap, her head inclined dreamily – as if she were listening to a complex and much-beloved symphony, her eyes lighting up at her favourite passages. Tollswhip was as inscrutable as ever, only occasionally giving a loud sniff when the notary made a slip in his pronunciation or misread a word. K just wished he’d been given a more comfortable chair, and spent most of his time attempting to adjust his position without making a visible fuss.
In what felt like hours later, the notary came to an abrupt stop – surprising just about everyone, except the wet-nurse and the little Lord Postlethwaite III. The latter had long since fallen asleep, and the nurse was now wide awake and in the process of rocking his little cradle, singing in a soft voice, cracked and warbly with age. All except the notary had taken far more notice of this than the fact that some closing remarks were being given, and the sudden silence came like a wakening from some vague and distant dream. Her Ladyship was the first to recover, remembering her role as chair.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
‘Ah, thank you Mr. Niggle for your reading, exquisite as always. Do you have any more observations to make to the panel?’
Niggle shook his head with an immense effort, looking as if it would take him several centuries to get his breath back.
‘No? In which case I will open this up to questions from the panel.’
She looked at Tollswhip and K eagerly. The lawyer seized his chance:
‘Your Ladyship, Mr. Niggle, would it be possible for me, as legal advisor to Your Ladyship and legal representative of the estate,’ his chest swelled with a certain pride at these words, strange as they sounded coming from his own lips, ‘to receive some kind of copy of the will, for closer examination?’
Immediately a shadow came over the Lady’s face, and Tollswhip whipped his head round sharply. It was Niggle who answered him, however; his voice having returned sufficiently to wheeze a response.
‘I am afraid… Mr. K… such practices… are not followed by us… here on the estate… There are… matters of… confidentiality, you see.’
‘I understand, thank you sir.’ K put in quickly, anxious to stay in the Lady’s good books. She now extended an olive branch, looking benign and magnanimous again:
‘If Mr. K would find it helpful, perhaps, Mr. Niggle, you could meet with him on occasion to go over some of the key passages. I think that would suffice.’
‘Thank you, Your Ladyship.’ K bowed, trying to feel grateful.
Since there was nothing more to be said – everyone but K had heard the thing read at least once before – the Lady called the meeting to a close. They all rose creakily to their feet and began to take their leave (with the all the formalities required) when she cut in to address K personally.
‘Mr. K, please would you remain here a moment.’
He avoided the eyes of the other gentlemen as they shuffled out, scarcely able to imagine what Tollswhip would be making of this. It was no confidential matter, however, and she explained herself while they were still in earshot, to make matters worse.
‘I wonder if you might be able to advise me on a certain legal matter, Mr. K.’
‘Certainly, Your Ladyship.’ He replied, with another bow for good measure.
‘Excellent, come to my tea room at 4 o’clock tomorrow. We’ll discuss it then. That will be all.’
She gave a glacial smile, and as they locked eyes for an instant, K was sure he glimpsed something bright and intense behind her expression. Yet immediately that something clicked shut like the shutter on a camera, before he had the chance to register it. He little knew how plainly she read his own open, guileless face – both pitying and envying him for it.
He wandered away with mixed feelings about the evening, and the day to come. He’d been struck by a shift in the Lady’s tone. It had appeared, at least momentarily, that layers of condescension had been stripped away, and that he was being catapulted onto something approaching equal terms, if only as a professional. He dared not acknowledge this change, lest it prove to be a mirage. Still, it gave him a certain thrill, flattering his vanity.
To his surprise, K found his room vacant as it had been when he had awoken that morning – the jumble of desks and papers remained, but either the clerks had gone for good, or they were on another break. He slept fitfully, his mind on the next day and what new duties it would bring. He dreamt – a reoccurrence of his last, strange dream, but it made no more sense to him the second time round. Yet when he awoke it left him with a warm feeling, deep in his heart, the centre of his being, and he looked happily on his upcoming meeting with Lady Avonhurst.
Until then, he had plenty of time to kill, and fancied he would do some more exploring of the grounds and other wings of the estate – perhaps venturing into the interior grounds for once. It was a very pleasing prospect. The only thing to disturb his equanimity that morning was when he caught sight of Travis on his way to breakfast. The footman caught his eye for a second, then looked away as if he hadn’t seen him. He could perhaps have defused things with an apologetic smile, but to K’s mind this avoidance was only a further proof of his treachery. Hadn’t he informed on him to Tollswhip, of all people?
‘Hey!’ K called, indignantly. ‘What’s this I hear from Tollswhip. You’ve been spying on me, have you? What’s in it for you?’
Travis didn’t rise to the taunt, but gave the slightest shake of his head.
‘Not now, I’m on duty.’ He hissed through his teeth. ‘Explain later!’
‘We’ll see. I’m not sure I can rely on that...’ K said bitterly, more out of embarrassment than any genuine grievance. He left Travis with the benefit of the doubt, though he still felt uneasy about the whole thing. There was so much he didn’t know about the estate and its internal politics, and what little he did know put him off wanting to learn more.
It was in a somewhat less chirpy mood that he passed the rest of the morning. Indeed, by lunch he felt almost gloomy – for it seemed to him (quite accurately it must be said) that as each day went by new avenues opened up with fresh problems and ever more perplexing questions. The mystery was waning in his eyes, giving way to mundane worries and petty suspicions. Each step he took seemed to bring him deeper into the embrace of the estate – for even in his absence it had cast a shadow upon his mind and recalled him to itself. He wondered whether he was on the brink of some deeper immersion into the life of the estate, but what that would mean he couldn’t say. It would, perhaps, mean a leap of faith. Possibly, an initiation.
It was with such daunting thoughts as these that he toyed with his lunch in the breakfast hall, heedless of the going on around him. A tap on his shoulder roused him; Horace was standing there.
‘Joseph!’ he growled amicably. ‘How are you doing, lad? Did you get my invitation?’ K sat up straight, taken aback.
‘Oh, well, thanks. Yes, I did.’ He remembered, with a jolt, the letter he’d pocketed without reading the day before.
‘So can you make it? It would be our honour to have you.’
‘Of course.’ K bleated, looking into that warm, earnest face, and hoping very much that he wasn’t going to be double-booked.
‘Excellent, see you at 4 o’clock, then.’ Horace strode off for his afternoon shift, and K was left trying very hard not to curse his own foolishness. He reassured himself that such things were easily smoothed over, and had just about put the matter aside when someone else appeared at his elbow; Tollswhip.
‘Mr. K, might I speak to you for a brief moment in my office. Just give a knock on the door in the next half-hour. I’m sure you can spare the time.’
K barely had time to register this before the manager had taken his leave. First Her Ladyship, now Tollswhip… it was clearly no accident that his rise in the esteem of one had carried him up in the other’s. But Tollswhip? His voice, usually so brittle as to set one’s teeth on edge, had sounded positively human! Even that last remark had been delivered with no sting of sarcasm, but a kind of professional indifference. Much as it gratified his vanity, the sudden transformation was concerning. Still, he finished eating his lunch and made his way up to the manager’s office, reserving his judgment until he’d heard what he was about. He half expected to see Travis waiting for him there, but the area was mostly deserted, and no one else approached the steps to that sullen chamber.
K gave a knock, and the door opened instantly; Tollswhip was there, his face unreadable. He invited K to sit down in the usual seat, but he himself remained standing. He even began to pace a little, as the space in the room allowed.
‘Mr Joseph K.’ He began, not looking at the young lawyer, but examining the rows of pigeonholes that lined the walls. ‘If you have anything to tell me concerning your meeting with Her Ladyship later today, I suggest you do so.’
K could think of nothing to say to this, so kept silent.
‘Evidently, I underestimated you, Mr. K.’ He went on. ‘When you first arrived, you struck me as something of a boor – half-schooled, undisciplined, but pliable enough to serve our needs on the estate. Recent events have forced me to reconsider this assessment.’
He had been expecting a rebuke, but this was something else. Where is he going with this? K wondered.
‘It is not just anyone that Her Ladyship requests for a private meeting. There are procedures, you see, and clear precedents which form the basis of all order and security in the estate. Why, I myself have been working here for over 40 years, and never-’ Here he checked himself, for his speech had been growing ever more impassioned, and more like to his usual volatility.
‘Blundering through is not the way of the estate; that much is crystal clear to me,’ he continued in a more subdued voice, as if talking to himself now, not K.
‘Obviously, you have your secrets – you keep your cards closer to your chest than I first surmised – but you are still a newcomer here, however well you have manoeuvred yourself. Indeed, whoever you are, you are at serious risk of getting out of your depth, do you understand me?’ He shot K a piercing glance, still pacing back and forth. At last he stopped, and leaned on the desk to look at the lawyer face to face.
‘If you were to let me into your confidence Mr. K, I would be a valuable ally. There are dangers here...’ but K could bear it no longer.
‘Mr. Tollswhip, I have no idea what you’re talking about, honestly. Please would you let me go? I have nothing to say for myself.’ He pleaded, desperate to put away the man’s fears. Yet this he could not do. Tollswhip glared at him for a few moments, scrutinising his expression for any hint of deception or guile, then slammed his fist on the desk.
‘Go on then! Get out of here! You may think you can fool me, sir, but Ananias Tollswhip is not easily mocked! I will be watching, Mr. K!’ The old fire was back, unrestrained, and K just about managed to leave without having something hurled down at him in rage. He heard the door slam behind him as he rushed down the steps to get away.