Week 2

Four Key Concepts Diagram

Vic Meets Robyn (text from Nice Work)

4 Concepts Questions (Powerpoint transparencies)

Vic Meets Robyn (text from Nice Work). Extracts from pp106-116

Vic Wilcox was dictating letters to Shirley when Brian Everthorpe knocked and put his head round the door, grinning, for some reason, from sideburn to sideburn.

‘Visitor for you, Vic.’

‘Oh?’

‘Your shadow.’

‘He’s late.’

‘Well, not surprising, is it, in this weather?’ Brian Everthorpe came uninvited into the room. ‘The motorway was a shambles.’

‘You should move further in, Brian.’

‘Yes, well, you know what Beryl is like about the country This shadow caper: what happens exactly?’

‘You know what happens. He follows me about all day.’

‘What, everywhere?’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘What, even to the Gents?’ Brian Everthorpe exploded with laughter as he uttered this question.

Vic looked wonderingly at him and then at Shirley, who arched her eyebrows and shrugged incomprehension. ‘You feeling all right, Brian?’ he inquired.

‘Quite all right, thanks, Vic, quite all right.’ Everthorpe coughed and wheezed and wiped his eyes with a silk handkerchief which he wore, affectedly, in his breast pocket. ‘You’re a lucky man, Vic.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Your shadow. But what will your wife say?’

‘What’s it got to do with Marjorie?’

‘Wait till you see her.’

‘Marjorie?’

‘No, your shadow. Your shadow’s a bird, Vic!’

Shirley gave a little squeak of surprise and excitement. Vic stared speechlessly as Brian Everthorpe elaborated.

‘A very dishy redhead. I prefer bigger boobs, myself, but you can’t have everything.’ He winked at Shirley.

‘Robin!’ said Shirley. ‘It can be a girl’s name, can’t it? Though they spell it different. With a "y" sort of thing.’

‘In the letter it was "Robin" with an "i",’ said Vic.

‘An easy mistake,’ said Brian Everthorpe.

‘Stuart Baxter said nothing about a woman,’ said Vic.

‘I’ll bring her in. Seeing’s believing.’

‘Let me find that letter first,’ said Vic, riffling blindly through the papers in his Pending-tray, playing for time. He felt anger surging through his veins and arteries. A lecturer in English Literature was bad enough, but a woman lecturer in English Literature! It was a ludicrous mistake, or else a calculated insult, he wasn’t sure which, to send such a person to shadow him. He wanted to rage and swear, to shout down the telephone and fire off angry memoranda. But something in Brian Everthorpe’s demeanour restrained him.

..................................

‘How old is she sort of thing?’ Shirley asked Brian Everthorpe.

‘I dunno. Young. In her thirties, I’d say. Shall I bring her in?’

‘Go and find that letter, first,’ Vic said to Shirley. She went into her office, followed, to his relief, by Brian Everthorpe. Everthorpe was getting a lot of mileage out of the mix-up; trying to make him look foolish. Vic could imagine him spreading the story all round the works. ‘You should have seen his face when I told him! I couldn’t help laughing. Then he went spare. Shirley had to cover her ears . . .‘ No, better to limit the damage, control his anger, make nothing of it, pretend he didn’t mind.

He rose from his desk and went through the anteroom into Shirley’s office. High up on one wall were some glazed panels. They were painted over, but someone had scraped away a small area of paint, exposing the clear glass. Shirley was peering through this spyhole, balanced precariously on top of a filing cabinet, steadied by the hand of Brian Everthorpe on her haunch. ‘Hmmm, not a bad-looking wench,’ she was saying. ‘If you like that type.’

‘You’re just jealous, Shirley,’ said Brian Everthorpe.

‘Me, jealous? don’t be daft. I like her boots, mind.’

‘What in God’s name are you doing up there?’ Vic said. Brian Everthorpe and Shirley turned and looked at him. ‘A little dodge of your predecessor,’ said Brian Ever-

thorpe. ‘He liked to look over his visitors before a meeting. Reckoned it gave him a psychological advantage.’ He removed his hand from Shirley’s rump, and assisted her to the ground.

‘I couldn’t find that letter,’ she said.

‘You mean you can see into reception from there?’ said Vic.

‘Have a dekko,’ said Brian Everthorpe.

Vic hesitated, then sprang on to the filing cabinet. He applied his eye to the hole in the paint and gazed, as if through a telescope already fixed and focused, at the young woman seated on the far side of the lobby. She had copper-coloured hair, cut short as a boy’s at the back, with a mop of curls tilted jauntily forward at the front. She sat at her ease on the sofa, with her long, booted and pantalooned legs crossed at the ankles, but the expression on her face was bored and haughty.

........................

Jesus wept! Not just a lecturer in English Literature, not just a woman lecturer in English Literature, but a trendy lefty feminist lecturer in English Literature! A tall trendy leftist feminist lecturer in English Literature! Vic Wilcox scuttled into the Directors’ Lavatory as if into a place of sanctuary. It was a large, dank, chilly room, empty at this moment, which had been lavishly appointed, in more prosperous times, with marble washbasins and brass taps, but was now badly in need of redecoration. He stood at the urinal and peed fiercely at the white ceramic wall, streaked with rusty tear-stains from the corroding pipes. What the hell was he going to do with this woman every Wednesday for the next two months? Stuart Baxter must be off his trolley, sending someone like that. Or was it a plot?

 

 

4 Concepts Questions ( 4 transparencies)

Slide 2

Slide 3

How might the exercise of power be resisted?

Slide 4

Four Key Concepts Diagram

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