My first morning at Griffith Miles Sully & Co. was spent peering over a pristine desk, robbed of its usual mess of working papers and the obelisk of files piled this way or that — the epitome of a public accountant. No one came to supervise or run through any work with me. Lunch hour came and went. Soon after, Richard Norman, one of two partners in the firm, walked in.
“Here’s an audit file for you. You’ll have to work in London at the client’s office. Review it today. Arrange to meet them tomorrow. You should be done in a week. All the information is in there.” He dumped the tome on my desk. “Ask Pam, our secretary, for luncheon vouchers. We’ll reimburse your train fares when you’re done. We’ll pay you overtime for your travel.” With that, he withdrew.
Wow! My first day and I was travelling to London. Then horror struck me — I’d never performed an audit in my life. For three years in my previous job, all I had learnt was basic bookkeeping. There was no help, nor anyone willing to advise me.
The Methodist Centre, a renowned charity, was based in a large, marbled mausoleum of a building on Marylebone Road. It had been established a century ago. I took the lift to the third floor. I felt like a pack animal. My one hand carried an eight-inch-wide case full of past files. These would be the templates for the current audit. I prayed there would be nothing beyond the normal to deal with. My other hand carried a slim, two-inch briefcase. It contained my lunch. There was no reception Janice, the head accountant came to greet me. She seemed to have stepped out of an Alfred Hitchcock film —an elderly, white-haired lady with not a strand out of place. Neatly dressed in a beige blouse and cardigan, she was the very picture of naïve helpfulness. Yet something about her obliging manner made you speculate whether she’d end up being the murder victim or the murderer in the end.
“We send missionaries to places like Papua New Guinea and Borneo. Once, they were eaten alive — their heads shrunken by local tribesmen.” Was she joking?
Janice led me to a standard, spotlessly white, sterile office with a large window overlooking the main road clogged with traffic below. Earl Grey tea and fingers of homemade shortbread were offered — and downed — before I could start.
“You are so hospitable. Aren’t you scared of the audit?”
“Why should I be scared? This is my twentieth. Not one mistake found. Your audit gives us a clean bill of health to raise money and obtain government grants.
You are very useful.”
She was right. The records were meticulously handwritten and kept within an enormous black, hide-bound ledger, seemingly dating back to the time of David Livingstone. My work was no more daunting than the bookkeeping I had mastered at my previous job. It was easier. Here, all I had to do was tick and bob other people’s work and get paid for it. Did I enjoy the work any better? Not really. Checking transactions to bank statements and individual donations to a register was a chore. But interaction with clients redeemed the monotony. For the first time, I could wander around, puff my chest out, command instant attention.
Meeting and dealing with people — eccentrics of all kinds — was a boon.
Unbeknown to me at the time, they would provide me with fodder for my next life as a writer.
