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By Root 560 0

and Millie, Mrs. Bogue’s Australian assistant, brassy from the sun and cropped – and, as they have confessed at various times over coffee grounds and the gnawed crusts of toasted Danishes, all virgins – Millie from a solid girl-guide practicality (“I think in the long run it’s better to wait until you’re married, don’t you? Less bother.”), Lucy from social quailing (“What would people say?”), which seems to be rooted in a conviction that all bedrooms are wired for sound, with society gathered at the other end tuning its earphones; and Emmy, who is the office hypochondriac, from the belief that it would make her sick, which it probably would. They are all interested in travelling: Millie has lived in England, Lucy has been twice to New York, and Emmy wants to go to Florida. After they have travelled enough they would like to get married and settle down.

“Did you hear the laxative survey in Quebec has been cancelled?” Millie said when we were seated at our usual table at the wretched, but closest, restaurant across the street. “Great big job it was going to be, too – a product test in their own home and thirty-two pages of questions.” Millie always gets the news first.

“Well I must say that’s a good thing,” Emmy sniffed. “I don’t see how they could ask anybody thirty-two pages about that.” She went back to peeling the nail polish off her thumbnail. Emmy always looks as though she is coming unravelled. Stray threads trail from her hems, her lipstick sloughs off in dry scales, she sheds wispy blonde hairs and flakes of scalp on her shoulders and back; everywhere she goes she leaves a trail of assorted shreds.

I saw Ainsley come in and waved to her. She squeezed into the booth, saying “Hi” all round, then pinned up a strand of hair that had come down. The office virgins responded, but without marked enthusiasm.

“They’ve done it before,” Millie said. She’s been at the company longer than any of us. “And it works. They figure anybody you could take past page three would be a sort of laxative addict, if you see what I mean, and they’d go right on through.”

“Done what before?” said Ainsley.

“What do you want to bet she doesn’t wipe the table?” Lucy said, loudly enough so the waitress would overhear. She carries on a running battle with the waitress, who wears Woolworth earrings and a sullen scowl and is blatantly not an office virgin.

“The laxative study in Quebec,” I said privately to Ainsley.

The waitress arrived, wiped the table savagely, and took our orders. Lucy made an issue of the toasted Danish – she definitely wanted one without raisins this time. “Last time she brought me one with raisins,” she informed us, “and I told her I just couldn’t stand them. I’ve never been able to stand raisins. Ugh.”

“Why only Quebec?” Ainsley said, breathing smoke out through her nostrils. “Is there some psychological reason?” Ainsley majored in psychology at college.

“Gosh, I don’t know,” said Millie, “I guess people are just more constipated there. Don’t they eat a lot of potatoes?”

“Would potatoes make you that constipated?” asked Emmy, leaning forward across the table. She pushed several straws of hair back from her forehead and a cloud of tiny motes detached themselves from her and settled gently down through the air.

“It can’t be only the potatoes,” Ainsley pronounced. “It must be their collective guilt complex. Or maybe the strain of the language problem; they must be horribly repressed.”

The others looked at her with hostility: I could tell they thought she was showing off. “It’s awfully hot out today,” said Millie, “the office is like a furnace.”

“Anything happening at your office?” I asked Ainsley, to break the tension.

Ainsley ground out her cigarette. “Oh yes, we’ve had quite a bit of excitement,” she said. “Some woman tried to bump off her husband by short-circuiting his electric toothbrush, and one of our boys has to be at the trial as a witness; testify that the thing couldn’t possibly short-circuit under normal circumstances. He wants me to go along as a sort of special assistant, but he’s such a bore. I can tell