Read Corporate Bodies for Free Online Page A

office.
    Not wishing to draw attention to himself, Charles moved silently out of the warehouse, in search of the staff canteen.
    Outside, he met Trevor who, with his habitual surliness, directed Charles Paris towards the delights of Rissoles and Spotted Dick.

Chapter Four
    IN THE EVENT, he went for the Steak Pie and Jam Roly-Poly, impassively served from behind heated counters by hard-faced women in pale blue housecoats. The vegetables suffered from that sogginess endemic to British institutional food (and rather too much British restaurant food), but otherwise the meal tasted all right. And the prices were amazingly low. Delmoleen subsidised its employees’ eating generously.
    Any sneaking hope he had had that the canteen might be licensed was quickly dispelled, and, to his amazement, Charles found himself ordering a cup of tea with his lunch. It must have been the influence of the environment, and perhaps his costume, as his actor’s instinct slotted him instantly into the role he was playing. Cup of tea, dollop of gelatinous custard . . . it made him feel as if he was back in one of those early sixties plays of social realism, something like Wesker’s
Chips with Everything
(‘The effeteness of Charles Paris’s performance left me suspecting that the RAF would have turned him down on medical grounds’ –
The Huddersfield Examiner
).
    Still, he thought piously, good thing not to be drinking at lunchtime – although the righteous sensation of having satisfactorily finished his day’s work deserved the reward of a quick one.
    But no, it was good. Too few lunchtimes passed these days unassisted by drink. To have abstinence forced on him like this gave Charles the reassuring feeling that he wasn’t an alcoholic. He could take it or leave it . . .
    He would rather
take
it, obviously, but at least he wasn’t chemically dependant . . .
    Or probably wasn’t.
    He tried to put from his mind the image of Will Parton and Griff Merricks downing glasses of wine in the Executive dining room, and comforted himself with the promise of a large Bell’s when he got back to his bedsitter in Hereford Road.
    The canteen offered him the same measure of conviviality as it did of alcohol. Since he didn’t know anyone there, he had hardly expected a hearty welcome and cheery hands waving him over to join tables, but he was surprised by the positive antipathy that exuded from the Delmoleen employees.
    He was recognised as an outsider – probably the unfamiliar overalls didn’t help – and as such he was suspect. While he looked around for a seat, he was first briefly scrutinised by the other diners and then pointedly ignored. Finally finding an empty table piled high with the detritus of earlier lunches, he sat down and ate his meal as quickly as possible.
    He had finished inside ten minutes and it still wasn’t one o’clock. He wandered outside the canteen. Knots of Delmoleen workers stood around smoking and chatting. Over on a bit of open ground an improvised game of football was under way. The only acknowledgement Charles’s presence received was the odd deterrent stare.
    He wondered at first if they could recognise him as an actor and were showing the traditional reaction to ‘bleeding fairies’. But there was no way anyone could know his profession. Maybe they suspected him of being a management spy, a time and motion consultant. But that too was nonsense. No, he finally decided that he was incurring resentment simply because he was unfamiliar.
    It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, though. Charles felt tempted just to leave, catch a train, go home. Griff Merricks had said he only needed the few extra shots for editing and those were done.
    On the other hand, in the pre-lunch confusion, Charles hadn’t actually been granted an official release. And directors were notorious for changing their minds after a couple of drinks. Charles had been booked for the