Scene 4 — Made Good

The Fedora Handbook, Rule #15

“The fastest way to end a conversation is to win it.”


INT. PLANT SERVICES — TUESDAY 14 APRIL, 6:10 A.M.

One mug. Hollis has been in since five because the sheet says one day a week and Hollis has never in his ` been in for part of a day.

Owen

I want to take the tray out.

Hollis does not look up.

HOLLIS

That's a fitting on a works order.

Owen

I know.

HOLLIS

Then you know it isn't yours to take out and it

isn't mine either, and I've been here since before

your mother and it still isn't mine.

Owen

The water's going into the fill.

HOLLIS

I know where the water's going.

He drinks.

HOLLIS

How long have you known?

Owen

April.

HOLLIS

Right. I've known since February and I put a note

in and the note went where the notes go, and I

have been sat here since about the middle of March

deciding whether I was going to say anything else

about it to anybody, and I hadn't decided.

He gets up. It takes a moment.

HOLLIS

Now I have.

Cut to:

INT. PLANT SERVICES — 6:25 A.M.

He does two things and does them in this order.

First he takes the defect book off the shelf, which is a carbon book with a soft cover, and writes a defect notice, in full, in the hand he has used for forty-one years, with the fitting described and the works order quoted and the reason set out in four lines.

He tears out the top copy and puts it in the tray by the door, which is emptied on Thursdays, and which he has been putting notes in since before the tray by the door was that tray.

He knows exactly what will happen to it.

Then he goes to the bench and gets a spanner and puts it in Owen's hand.

HOLLIS

Nineteen. It'll be a nineteen and it'll be seized,

and you'll want the long one and you'll want a bar

on the end of the long one, and the bar's under

the bench in a bit of pipe.

Owen

You're not coming?

HOLLIS

I'm signing you in. That's the part I've got.

Cut to:

ROGUE.CLJS · two doors · one of thempress Run
rogue_settings.cljscljs

Press Run.

Your score is kept. Nothing else is.

PLANT SERVICES · DEFECT NOTICE · 14 April · 06:31 · H. HOLLIS

FITTING: collection tray, Meridian basement, under stair pipe. Installed under works order 9-1140, February, described therein as permanent solution.

DEFECT: the tray discharges by short pipe into the slab and not to the drain in the corner of the same room, which is nine feet away and is the drain the room was built with.

The ground under that slab is fill. It is not soil and it has never been soil and there are men in this department who could have told anybody that.

This fitting has discharged into that fill since February. Prior to February the water was removed by hand from this building daily and had been for as long as there has been a department.

REQUESTED: removal of the fitting and reinstatement of collection by hand.

This is the fourth notice I have raised on this room. The others are in the book above this one.

Defect notices are not a component of review. Defect notices are recorded.

It goes in the tray by the door and the tray is emptied on Thursdays and nothing happens to it, and Hollis wrote it anyway, in full, at half past six in the morning, and that is the only reason there is a record of any of this anywhere on this campus.

INT. MERIDIAN HALL — BASEMENT — 6:50 A.M.

The tray. Four bolts. A short pipe out of the corner into the floor.

The concrete round the pipe is the colour concrete goes and gives under a thumb.

Owen puts the light on, which is a thing he has never done down here, because there is a light and it works and he has used a torch since October out of a habit nobody gave him.

The room is smaller with the light on.

He puts the spanner on the first bolt.

Cut to:

INT. THE BASEMENT — 7:20 A.M.

The first bolt takes eleven minutes and comes out with a noise.

The second takes four and comes out clean and he is briefly, stupidly pleased about it.

The third shears.

The head comes off in the spanner and the shank stays in the floor and there is nothing to grip and nothing to do about it.

He sits on the wet floor with the spanner across his knees for a while.

Then he takes the fourth one out, which takes twenty minutes and a bar and both hands and one foot on the wall, and then he stands on the corner of the tray by the sheared bolt and rocks it until the slab lets it go.

It comes up with about four inches of the short pipe still in the hole.

He is wet through to the shoulder and his hands are shaking and there is nothing dramatic about any of it.

Then he goes and gets a galvanised bucket off the stack by the door in Plant Services, and carries it down, and puts it under the pipe.

It is the least interesting thing that happens in this book.

Cut to:

INT. THE BASEMENT — 8:05 A.M.

A man comes down the stair in a clean high-vis with a clipboard and a phone in a case on his belt, and stops at the bottom of it, and looks at the tray on the floor and the bucket under the pipe and a first year sitting against the wall.

It is the contractor. He has been coming since February.

THE CONTRACTOR

You Plant?

Owen

I'm with Plant.

THE CONTRACTOR

Right. Because I've got that as a completion and

I've had it as a completion since February and

it's been sat on my list.

Owen

It's out.

THE CONTRACTOR

I can see it's out. I'm asking whose it is now,

because if it's out and it's mine I've got to come

back, and if it's out and it's yours I've got to

close it.

That is the whole of the conversation and it is not a conversation about a building.

HOLLIS comes down the stair behind him. He has come down a stair to be here, which he has not done for this room in two years, and he is not quick about it.

HOLLIS

It's ours.

THE CONTRACTOR

You Hollis?

HOLLIS

I am.

THE CONTRACTOR

I've been trying to hand this over since the

middle of February. I've had four dates and

nobody's ever here.

HOLLIS

I'm here one day a week and it isn't the day

you've been coming.

Both of them take that in and neither of them says the obvious thing about it, because both of them have worked for somebody for a long time.

THE CONTRACTOR

So do you want it closed or do you want me back?

HOLLIS

Closed.

He turns the clipboard round and holds a pen out.

THE CONTRACTOR

Condition, and then sign it, and put the date on

it, and I'm off your list.

Hollis reads the line. There is a box on it that says CONDITION ON HANDOVER and it is about an inch and a half long.

He writes two words in it.

MADE GOOD.

He signs it and dates it and gives the pen back, and the contractor tears off a copy and hands it over and goes up the stair, and says cheers on the way, and means it.

Cut to:

INT. THE BASEMENT — 8:20 A.M.

The two of them and a bucket.

Owen

It'll be full by tonight.

HOLLIS

It'll be full by four.

Owen

And then it's every day.

HOLLIS

It's every day. It was every day for forty-one

years and it was every day before that, and the

only thing that ever changed about it is that

somebody stopped.

He looks at the tray on the floor with its four inches of pipe and its one sheared bolt.

HOLLIS

Term's out in five weeks. I'm out at the end of

it.

Owen

I know.

HOLLIS

Right.

That is as close as either of them gets to it and neither of them goes any closer.

Blackout.

MERIDIAN HALL · BASEMENT · WORKS ORDER 9-1140 · CLOSED

Fitting: collection tray, under stair pipe.

Installed: February. Described as permanent solution.

CONDITION ON HANDOVER: MADE GOOD.

Signed, H. HOLLIS, 14 April.

Handover accepted. Contractor released from this order.

This order is closed and will not be reopened without a further order.

Made good. Two words in a box an inch and a half long, in a hand that has been writing in boxes on this campus for forty-one years.

There is a book in the Collegium that says MADE GOOD, NORTH WALL eleven times in one hand over ninety years, and nobody in this story ever gets to find out whether the two facts are related, and neither does anybody in the next one.

FEDORA SOCIETY#general

VictorPRESIDENT15 Apr, 11:40 PM

Attendance three of five.

Miles15 Apr, 11:41 PM

victor

VictorPRESIDENT15 Apr, 11:42 PM

Three of five. It is in the minutes and it is going in the letter.

Derek15 Apr, 11:58 PM

is simon alright

Miles16 Apr, 12:14 AM

hes on the docket thursday. hes on it every week

Derek16 Apr, 12:15 AM

thats not what i asked

Miles16 Apr, 12:31 AM

i know