Fic: The Man From The Government
I know I've not written anything for ages, I do apologise but Real Life got in the way. I was minding my own business the other day, when all of a sudden I have this idle thought about widows living in houses by themselves. The next thing I know, it's four hours later and I've written an entire fic from it. I'm not entirely sure about the title, so if anyone has any better suggestions, I'm happy to hear them.
This is completely original fic, no sign of fandom anywhere in it, I promise you, so please read it. I'd really like to get some feedback on it.
Title: The Man From The Government
Fandom: None
Ship: N/A
Genre: Futuristic Drama
Rating: G
Prompt: None
Word Count: 2539
Author's Notes: Thanks to my betas for letting me know it wasn't complete rubbish ;)
Summary: Set in a future world where in order to reduce housing problems, the Government has brought in a law whereby properties are allocated to families of 2 or more people. Mrs Smith is now a widow of 12 months when she receives a visit from a Man from the Government.
He looked like a typical Civil Servant. Nondescript dark suit and tie, plain white shirt that had been ironed and starched, smart black shoes polished to a gleaming shine and tied neatly. One hand gripped his Government-issue black briefcase and the other held a rolled up umbrella, also black and possible also Government-issue. Even his face was nondescript, pale with dark circles under his brown eyes from too many late nights spent working under fluorescent lighting. His moustache was neatly trimmed, revealing thin lips, and what was visible of his hair under his bowler hat was also short and tidy. He was the very model of Government and she idly wondered if he were to be sliced in half, would it say 'On His Majesty's Service' all the way through like a stick of rock.
"Ah, Mrs Smith, is it?" he greeted her when she opened the door, leaving it on the chain and peering through the gap. His smile had no warmth in it, it was just a routine gesture like shaking hands. Mrs Smith took him in all the way up from his shiny black shoes to his domed headgear and narrowed her eyes at it. She was old enough to remember when men were proud to wear a bowler, not like these days when the Prime Minister decreed all Government staff should wear them as a reminder of when Britain truly was Great, as if a hat alone could bring back those glorious golden years. The man misunderstood her gaze and made the merest motion of raising his hat to her.
"It is Mrs Smith, isn't it?" he queried again.
"Yes, it is," she replied carefully. She'd heard of identity thieves and wasn't prepared to divulge any more than was absolutely necessary.
"My name is Maxwell Jones, I'm from the Department of Housing Allocation. I sent you a letter to say I'd be calling on you today."
"Oh yes." She remembered it now. "Can I see your identification?"
"Of course, of course," he assured her and held up his index finger. Mrs Smith frowned a little in bemusement until she remembered the new InstaRead™ that sat on the small table next to the door. 'Confirm a caller's identity in seconds!' it proclaimed in large friendly letters. “Newfangled rubbish,” Mrs Smith had proclaimed when the BBC announced the system was to be brought into national use a few weeks ago. She picked up the cumbersome reader and awkwardly passed it through the gap in the doorway. Mr Jones pressed his finger against the pad on the top until the machine gave a slight beep. Mrs Smith brought the box up to her eyes and peered through her glasses at the display on the side of the unit. 'Jones, Maxwell Q - Dept. of Housing Alloc.' it said. Mrs Smith glanced over at Mr Jones and closed the door without a word. There were sounds of scraping and unlocking and then the door opened again.
"I suppose you'd better come in." Mrs Smith stepped aside to let him enter and led him into the sitting room at the front of the house. "Would you like a cup of tea?" she offered politely. When he hesitated, she added, "It's proper tea, none of that instant muck."
"In that case then, yes please, I would love a cup."
She nodded at him. "Sit down then, I won't be a minute." She padded out of the room towards the kitchen to make the tea. Left alone, Mr Jones looked around for a seat. There were two armchairs, one at either side of the room and a 3 seater settee between them. One of the chairs had a small table next to it with a book and cup, indicating that was Mrs Smith's usual spot. The Government Handbook to Conducting Face-to-face Interviews in a Private Residence version 12.4, Chapter 1, section 3a clearly stated that, 'Agents must take a seat indicative of their status, not so close as to broach personal barriers, yet not so far as to cause discomfort.' For the Agent, naturally. The Government was not so bothered about the comfort of the public. Mr Jones had heard a rumour that the part about the seat being 'indicative of their status' had been brought about after Mr Pyke had taken a seat in an inflatable chair which proceeded to burst, leading to numerous complaints from the owner of the chair and demands for recompense as well as a lengthy period of office-based work for the Agent. Obviously, the right seat was of the utmost importance. The rattle of a trolley heralded the return of Mrs Smith with the tea.
"Are you not stopping?" she asked uncertainly, seeing Mr Jones still standing in the middle of the room.
"No, I am!" he assured her and quickly sat down, finding himself in the middle of the settee. It was a rather old and saggy settee, as he discovered when the base sank slightly underneath him, lifting his feet a couple of inches off the floor. He didn't think this was quite what the Handbook had in mind. He positioned his briefcase on his knees, trying to regain his air of quiet authority and became aware of Mrs Smith giving him a hard stare.
"Is there a problem, Mrs Smith?"
"Your hat," she said sharply.
"Oh!" He rapidly removed the offending article, placing it on top of his briefcase. "I really am most terribly sorry." The Handbook, Chapter 15, section 8, 'Do not forget that you are in the private residence of a voter and conduct yourself accordingly.'
Mrs Smith smiled at him. "Milk and sugar was it, dear?" He replied in the affirmative and she busied herself with the teapot. Gazing at the tea trolley, Mr Jones noticed that it contained two patterned china cups with saucers and a plate of biscuits. Home-made biscuits if he wasn't mistaken. He quickly ran though the Handbook in his head. Nothing in there about having biscuits.
"There you go, dear." Mr Jones took the proffered cup. "Biscuit?"
"I'm not sure I should - "
"Oh, go on with you, it's just a biscuit, won't hurt anything." Mrs Smith took her own tea back to her chair and got herself settled. "Now, what was it you wanted?"
Mr Jones looked up at her with his tea in one hand and two biscuits in the other - how had that happened? - and was momentarily stymied. He looked around for somewhere to put them and spied the trolley in front of the settee but moving made him sink a little further down. He glanced at his briefcase on his lap which contained all his forms and information and felt himself panic a little. Mrs Smith watched him over the rim of her teacup and for a moment, she caught a glimpse of the man behind the Government-issue façade.
"Well, erm, it's about your husband, Mr... er... Smith," he began, racking his brain for the man's name as well as the correct procedure for the interview. "I believe he passed away a year ago."
"Yes, he did, God rest his soul." Mrs Smith heaved a little sigh. "Don't forget your biscuit, dear."
"Ah, right." Mr Jones took a small bite of one of the biscuits he held. Immediately the flavours of orange and ginger burst on his tongue, dazzling and sweet, intense and rich, while the biscuit melted away in a heavenly butteriness. "Oh my," he managed to say and ate the rest in two bites.
Mrs Smith watched him in amusement. "So you were saying about my husband?"
Mr Jones was distracted in the act of licking his fingers clean. "Oh. Yes. Well. The thing is that now your husband has passed away, that means you're the sole occupant and therefore we have found you a place at Sunnydale and just need to arrange the transfer." Mr Jones was all authoritative business again.
"But I don't want to go to Sunnydale. This is my home."
"I understand that, Mrs Smith, however rules are rules and the law says that any property which is occupied by a single person is to be re-assigned to a new family and the previous tenant moved to a more suitable accommodation." He took a large gulp of his tea, revelling slightly in the taste of proper tea from leaves and bags, rather than the insipid plasticy brew that now passed for the nations favourite drink in homes and offices up and down the country. Since the Prime Minister had introduced a law requiring all food and drink to be wholly produced in Britain, in order to made the country self-reliant and therefore Great once more, real tea was hard to come by. National Tea™ was now chemically produced by some factory just outside Swindon. It was cheap, it was disgusting, and it tasted nothing like tea but at least it was British.
Mr Jones drank the last dregs of his tea and, taking his clean white handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his moustache.
"I don't want to move out of my home," Mrs Smith said, looking distressed.
"I'm sorry but it's the law. You can't live here on your own, it's needed for a new family. I believe Sunnydale is very pleasant."
"But I'm not on my own."
Mr Jones stopped in bemusement. "You're not?" He tried to recall Mrs Smith's details. Husband - deceased, daughter living off in some European hippy commune as a way of rebelling against the new regime, and son out fighting for King and New Empire against the Australian uprising. "Who else lives here?"
Mrs Smith bestowed a warm smile on him. "My family." For a moment, Mr Jones wondered if perhaps she might be better suited to a local branch of the Royal Home for the Mentally Unstable when she gave him a sharp look. "Do you have a family of your own, Mr Jones?"
He was momentarily flustered and answered without thinking. "No, no, I don't as yet. I've not been very fortunate in that area. My career has come first."
"Mm," Mrs Smith gazed at him over the tops of her glasses and then suddenly hauled herself out of her chair. "Come on then, I'll show you my family." He racked his brain for anything in the Handbook that might inform him on how to deal with this situation but there was nothing. He would have to improvise. The very idea filled him with dread. He was a do-it-by-the-book kind of man, not a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-trousers one. That was why he was a Civil Servant, and a very good one at that. Mrs Smith took the teacup and saucer from him and he managed with some difficulty to extricate himself from the settee. Then she lead him towards the back of the house, through the kitchen and out into the large garden behind.
"All of these flowers out here, Bob and I planted together and that apple tree over there we planted the first year after we moved in. And you see that shed? Bob built that with his own hands 40 years ago. He spent every Saturday in there banging away on bits of wood right up until he died. If you look on the kitchen windowsill, you can still see the mark from the mug of tea that I put there for him." Without waiting for a response, she turned and led him back into the kitchen. "These shelves Bob put up after we had Rebecca and needed more storage space." In the dining room she pointed out the silver candelabra they'd got for their 25th wedding anniversary, which sat on an old wooden sideboard that had previously belonged to her parents. And the place on the highly polished dining table where Stephen had put down a cup of hot Vimto without using a mat. Mrs Smith glanced up at Mr Jones as he ran a finger round the inside of his shirt collar and lead him off upstairs.
She pointed out the dents in the skirting board on the landing caused by toy cars, the marks on two of the doorframes where she had dutifully recorded the increasing height of her children, the framed photo of her husband which stood on the table next to his side of the bed they had shared. The black bedroom that her daughter had hand-painted in a fit of angst during her teenage years and the places where the pink underneath still showed through. The holes in the walls of the other bedroom where her son had put brackets for his stereo speakers, television and gaming consoles. Mr Jones found his chest grow tight and had to loosen his tie. He cleared his throat several times but couldn't find anything to say.
Back in the sitting room, Mrs Smith took him through the framed photos that graced the sideboard, the mantelpiece and the walls. Her wedding photo. Her parents. Bob's parents. Her son in uniform. Her daughter and partner. The four grandchildren she had never met.
"So to answer your question, Mr Jones, that's who lives here with me. And I intend to live here for as long as I possibly can. At that point, and not before, I give you permission to re-home me, preferably back with Bob. But until that time, I will stay here with my family."
Mr Jones somehow found himself back out on the front step, briefcase in one hand, brolly and hat in the other. "Bye bye, dear," Mrs Smith said to him. "Do call again, it's not often I get visitors and I really enjoyed our chat."
"Yes, thank you, Mrs Smith," he replied in a bit of a daze. He heard the door close behind him and for lack of something else to do, put on his bowler hat and headed back to the office.
"Ah, Jones!" his manager greeted him sometime later. "Did you get the forms sorted for the Smith house?"
"Oh, yes, sir!" Mr Jones replied, trying to remember what had happened to them. He rummaged around on his immaculate desk before hefting his briefcase on top of it. When he opened it, he saw a small unfamiliar Tupperware box inside and there was a slight scent of orange and ginger but it was gone so quickly, he thought he had imagined it. He closed the lid again quickly and looked up to see his manager frowning at him.
"What's wrong, Jones?"
"Oh, sir, it er - it appears we made a mistake, sir."
"A mistake?" His manager was thunderstruck. Such a thing had never happened in the entire history of the Department for Housing Allocation.
"Yes, sir. I checked it all very thoroughly but it appears that Mrs Smith doesn't live alone after all, sir."
"Then who does she live with?"
"Her family, sir."
*****
© The Pendragon
This is completely original fic, no sign of fandom anywhere in it, I promise you, so please read it. I'd really like to get some feedback on it.
Title: The Man From The Government
Fandom: None
Ship: N/A
Genre: Futuristic Drama
Rating: G
Prompt: None
Word Count: 2539
Author's Notes: Thanks to my betas for letting me know it wasn't complete rubbish ;)
Summary: Set in a future world where in order to reduce housing problems, the Government has brought in a law whereby properties are allocated to families of 2 or more people. Mrs Smith is now a widow of 12 months when she receives a visit from a Man from the Government.
He looked like a typical Civil Servant. Nondescript dark suit and tie, plain white shirt that had been ironed and starched, smart black shoes polished to a gleaming shine and tied neatly. One hand gripped his Government-issue black briefcase and the other held a rolled up umbrella, also black and possible also Government-issue. Even his face was nondescript, pale with dark circles under his brown eyes from too many late nights spent working under fluorescent lighting. His moustache was neatly trimmed, revealing thin lips, and what was visible of his hair under his bowler hat was also short and tidy. He was the very model of Government and she idly wondered if he were to be sliced in half, would it say 'On His Majesty's Service' all the way through like a stick of rock.
"Ah, Mrs Smith, is it?" he greeted her when she opened the door, leaving it on the chain and peering through the gap. His smile had no warmth in it, it was just a routine gesture like shaking hands. Mrs Smith took him in all the way up from his shiny black shoes to his domed headgear and narrowed her eyes at it. She was old enough to remember when men were proud to wear a bowler, not like these days when the Prime Minister decreed all Government staff should wear them as a reminder of when Britain truly was Great, as if a hat alone could bring back those glorious golden years. The man misunderstood her gaze and made the merest motion of raising his hat to her.
"It is Mrs Smith, isn't it?" he queried again.
"Yes, it is," she replied carefully. She'd heard of identity thieves and wasn't prepared to divulge any more than was absolutely necessary.
"My name is Maxwell Jones, I'm from the Department of Housing Allocation. I sent you a letter to say I'd be calling on you today."
"Oh yes." She remembered it now. "Can I see your identification?"
"Of course, of course," he assured her and held up his index finger. Mrs Smith frowned a little in bemusement until she remembered the new InstaRead™ that sat on the small table next to the door. 'Confirm a caller's identity in seconds!' it proclaimed in large friendly letters. “Newfangled rubbish,” Mrs Smith had proclaimed when the BBC announced the system was to be brought into national use a few weeks ago. She picked up the cumbersome reader and awkwardly passed it through the gap in the doorway. Mr Jones pressed his finger against the pad on the top until the machine gave a slight beep. Mrs Smith brought the box up to her eyes and peered through her glasses at the display on the side of the unit. 'Jones, Maxwell Q - Dept. of Housing Alloc.' it said. Mrs Smith glanced over at Mr Jones and closed the door without a word. There were sounds of scraping and unlocking and then the door opened again.
"I suppose you'd better come in." Mrs Smith stepped aside to let him enter and led him into the sitting room at the front of the house. "Would you like a cup of tea?" she offered politely. When he hesitated, she added, "It's proper tea, none of that instant muck."
"In that case then, yes please, I would love a cup."
She nodded at him. "Sit down then, I won't be a minute." She padded out of the room towards the kitchen to make the tea. Left alone, Mr Jones looked around for a seat. There were two armchairs, one at either side of the room and a 3 seater settee between them. One of the chairs had a small table next to it with a book and cup, indicating that was Mrs Smith's usual spot. The Government Handbook to Conducting Face-to-face Interviews in a Private Residence version 12.4, Chapter 1, section 3a clearly stated that, 'Agents must take a seat indicative of their status, not so close as to broach personal barriers, yet not so far as to cause discomfort.' For the Agent, naturally. The Government was not so bothered about the comfort of the public. Mr Jones had heard a rumour that the part about the seat being 'indicative of their status' had been brought about after Mr Pyke had taken a seat in an inflatable chair which proceeded to burst, leading to numerous complaints from the owner of the chair and demands for recompense as well as a lengthy period of office-based work for the Agent. Obviously, the right seat was of the utmost importance. The rattle of a trolley heralded the return of Mrs Smith with the tea.
"Are you not stopping?" she asked uncertainly, seeing Mr Jones still standing in the middle of the room.
"No, I am!" he assured her and quickly sat down, finding himself in the middle of the settee. It was a rather old and saggy settee, as he discovered when the base sank slightly underneath him, lifting his feet a couple of inches off the floor. He didn't think this was quite what the Handbook had in mind. He positioned his briefcase on his knees, trying to regain his air of quiet authority and became aware of Mrs Smith giving him a hard stare.
"Is there a problem, Mrs Smith?"
"Your hat," she said sharply.
"Oh!" He rapidly removed the offending article, placing it on top of his briefcase. "I really am most terribly sorry." The Handbook, Chapter 15, section 8, 'Do not forget that you are in the private residence of a voter and conduct yourself accordingly.'
Mrs Smith smiled at him. "Milk and sugar was it, dear?" He replied in the affirmative and she busied herself with the teapot. Gazing at the tea trolley, Mr Jones noticed that it contained two patterned china cups with saucers and a plate of biscuits. Home-made biscuits if he wasn't mistaken. He quickly ran though the Handbook in his head. Nothing in there about having biscuits.
"There you go, dear." Mr Jones took the proffered cup. "Biscuit?"
"I'm not sure I should - "
"Oh, go on with you, it's just a biscuit, won't hurt anything." Mrs Smith took her own tea back to her chair and got herself settled. "Now, what was it you wanted?"
Mr Jones looked up at her with his tea in one hand and two biscuits in the other - how had that happened? - and was momentarily stymied. He looked around for somewhere to put them and spied the trolley in front of the settee but moving made him sink a little further down. He glanced at his briefcase on his lap which contained all his forms and information and felt himself panic a little. Mrs Smith watched him over the rim of her teacup and for a moment, she caught a glimpse of the man behind the Government-issue façade.
"Well, erm, it's about your husband, Mr... er... Smith," he began, racking his brain for the man's name as well as the correct procedure for the interview. "I believe he passed away a year ago."
"Yes, he did, God rest his soul." Mrs Smith heaved a little sigh. "Don't forget your biscuit, dear."
"Ah, right." Mr Jones took a small bite of one of the biscuits he held. Immediately the flavours of orange and ginger burst on his tongue, dazzling and sweet, intense and rich, while the biscuit melted away in a heavenly butteriness. "Oh my," he managed to say and ate the rest in two bites.
Mrs Smith watched him in amusement. "So you were saying about my husband?"
Mr Jones was distracted in the act of licking his fingers clean. "Oh. Yes. Well. The thing is that now your husband has passed away, that means you're the sole occupant and therefore we have found you a place at Sunnydale and just need to arrange the transfer." Mr Jones was all authoritative business again.
"But I don't want to go to Sunnydale. This is my home."
"I understand that, Mrs Smith, however rules are rules and the law says that any property which is occupied by a single person is to be re-assigned to a new family and the previous tenant moved to a more suitable accommodation." He took a large gulp of his tea, revelling slightly in the taste of proper tea from leaves and bags, rather than the insipid plasticy brew that now passed for the nations favourite drink in homes and offices up and down the country. Since the Prime Minister had introduced a law requiring all food and drink to be wholly produced in Britain, in order to made the country self-reliant and therefore Great once more, real tea was hard to come by. National Tea™ was now chemically produced by some factory just outside Swindon. It was cheap, it was disgusting, and it tasted nothing like tea but at least it was British.
Mr Jones drank the last dregs of his tea and, taking his clean white handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his moustache.
"I don't want to move out of my home," Mrs Smith said, looking distressed.
"I'm sorry but it's the law. You can't live here on your own, it's needed for a new family. I believe Sunnydale is very pleasant."
"But I'm not on my own."
Mr Jones stopped in bemusement. "You're not?" He tried to recall Mrs Smith's details. Husband - deceased, daughter living off in some European hippy commune as a way of rebelling against the new regime, and son out fighting for King and New Empire against the Australian uprising. "Who else lives here?"
Mrs Smith bestowed a warm smile on him. "My family." For a moment, Mr Jones wondered if perhaps she might be better suited to a local branch of the Royal Home for the Mentally Unstable when she gave him a sharp look. "Do you have a family of your own, Mr Jones?"
He was momentarily flustered and answered without thinking. "No, no, I don't as yet. I've not been very fortunate in that area. My career has come first."
"Mm," Mrs Smith gazed at him over the tops of her glasses and then suddenly hauled herself out of her chair. "Come on then, I'll show you my family." He racked his brain for anything in the Handbook that might inform him on how to deal with this situation but there was nothing. He would have to improvise. The very idea filled him with dread. He was a do-it-by-the-book kind of man, not a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-trousers one. That was why he was a Civil Servant, and a very good one at that. Mrs Smith took the teacup and saucer from him and he managed with some difficulty to extricate himself from the settee. Then she lead him towards the back of the house, through the kitchen and out into the large garden behind.
"All of these flowers out here, Bob and I planted together and that apple tree over there we planted the first year after we moved in. And you see that shed? Bob built that with his own hands 40 years ago. He spent every Saturday in there banging away on bits of wood right up until he died. If you look on the kitchen windowsill, you can still see the mark from the mug of tea that I put there for him." Without waiting for a response, she turned and led him back into the kitchen. "These shelves Bob put up after we had Rebecca and needed more storage space." In the dining room she pointed out the silver candelabra they'd got for their 25th wedding anniversary, which sat on an old wooden sideboard that had previously belonged to her parents. And the place on the highly polished dining table where Stephen had put down a cup of hot Vimto without using a mat. Mrs Smith glanced up at Mr Jones as he ran a finger round the inside of his shirt collar and lead him off upstairs.
She pointed out the dents in the skirting board on the landing caused by toy cars, the marks on two of the doorframes where she had dutifully recorded the increasing height of her children, the framed photo of her husband which stood on the table next to his side of the bed they had shared. The black bedroom that her daughter had hand-painted in a fit of angst during her teenage years and the places where the pink underneath still showed through. The holes in the walls of the other bedroom where her son had put brackets for his stereo speakers, television and gaming consoles. Mr Jones found his chest grow tight and had to loosen his tie. He cleared his throat several times but couldn't find anything to say.
Back in the sitting room, Mrs Smith took him through the framed photos that graced the sideboard, the mantelpiece and the walls. Her wedding photo. Her parents. Bob's parents. Her son in uniform. Her daughter and partner. The four grandchildren she had never met.
"So to answer your question, Mr Jones, that's who lives here with me. And I intend to live here for as long as I possibly can. At that point, and not before, I give you permission to re-home me, preferably back with Bob. But until that time, I will stay here with my family."
Mr Jones somehow found himself back out on the front step, briefcase in one hand, brolly and hat in the other. "Bye bye, dear," Mrs Smith said to him. "Do call again, it's not often I get visitors and I really enjoyed our chat."
"Yes, thank you, Mrs Smith," he replied in a bit of a daze. He heard the door close behind him and for lack of something else to do, put on his bowler hat and headed back to the office.
"Ah, Jones!" his manager greeted him sometime later. "Did you get the forms sorted for the Smith house?"
"Oh, yes, sir!" Mr Jones replied, trying to remember what had happened to them. He rummaged around on his immaculate desk before hefting his briefcase on top of it. When he opened it, he saw a small unfamiliar Tupperware box inside and there was a slight scent of orange and ginger but it was gone so quickly, he thought he had imagined it. He closed the lid again quickly and looked up to see his manager frowning at him.
"What's wrong, Jones?"
"Oh, sir, it er - it appears we made a mistake, sir."
"A mistake?" His manager was thunderstruck. Such a thing had never happened in the entire history of the Department for Housing Allocation.
"Yes, sir. I checked it all very thoroughly but it appears that Mrs Smith doesn't live alone after all, sir."
"Then who does she live with?"
"Her family, sir."
*****
© The Pendragon