Reconciliation

 AUGUST 26, 2022

 

There was a fellow in our office who used to drive me mad.  We started there together, just out of school and hoping to learn enough to call ourselves bookkeepers.  I had never intended to work with account books; my maths was alright but I was congenitally messy and my handwriting was appalling.  The account books we used had tiny squares and I found it really difficult to keep my numerals within the designated limits.

 

Day after day, the other junior clerk and I took the returns from the various station offices and transferred them into the impressive ledgers which recorded for posterity the success, or otherwise, of the New South Wales General Railways.  Oh, did I forget to mention that we were employed by the New South Wales General Railways, based in the wonderful complex of Sydney Central Station? Even though Toby and I  were friendly enough with each other, we were rivals for the coveted job of working in the Reconciliation Office.  

 

I’d heard the word ‘reconciliation’ in respect of unhappily-married couples getting back together after a fight but I couldn’t work out what that had to do with Sydney Trains. It must be important, though, because everyone in the office seemed in awe of that department.

 

Toby and I had been to different schools but had somehow ended up as junior clerks together, charged with the responsibility of keeping track of the thousands of pennies, sixpences and shillings which rattled into the various tills on the railway network.  We didn’t see the money, of course, that was all banked in the local branch of the Commonwealth Bank, but we were sent copies of the daily returns.

 

I was amazed at the amount of money which was collected by the Railways every day but all I cared about was the 10 pounds, 4 shillings and 6 pence which rattled into my pocket every Friday morning.  I’ve got off the track; I was starting to tell you about Toby who used to drive me mad.

 

Toby thought himself better than anyone else in the office.  He had gone to a famous school, dressed better than me, often wearing a cravat if the weather was a little cooler.  The thing that irritated me most was that he had a watch band which was leather with a cover for the watch face so, whenever he wanted to check the time, he flipped open the cover, looked at the dial, and closed it again, drawing attention to the fact that his watch was somewhat bigger than anyone else’s.  He claimed to have an old rugby injury so carried a cane, which he flourished like Maurice Chevalier.

 

The rest of us in the office didn’t dislike him; we simply couldn’t come to terms with the odd way he lived his life and I suspected he was my number one rival for the job in the Reconciliation Office.

 

I don’t know why the idea of working in the Reconciliation Office was so attractive, because none of us had any real idea what happened there.  The door to that department was always kept closed but we assumed that the furniture was arranged much the same as the area where we worked.  The people who worked there didn’t look any different to the colleagues we saw every day.  Maybe it was because it had an unusual name.  Where we worked, ‘Accounts’, was pretty cut and dried but ‘Reconciliation’ had something of an air of mystery about it.

 

The day of the interviews for the position came around and I was called in first.  It didn’t go well.  First of all, the interviewer assumed I had read through an information pack which I didn’t even know existed.  Then, he asked me to outline how I would go about the new job, how would I cope with new procedures and new responsibilities and was I comfortable with the new regulations surrounding Reconciliation Procedures for Public Transport Organisations?

 

I must have looked as puzzled as I felt because the interview was hastily brought to an end and Toby was invited in for his turn.

 

I hate to say that he must have done well.  He came out from the interview room in due course, smiling broadly, and shook hands with the interviewer who looked as if he were his best friend.  I could have punched Toby when he flipped open his watch to check the time, straightened his cravat with a smirk on his face, swung his cane in a circle, and sauntered over to join us.

 

Bugger!