The Office of Unclaimed Things

The thing arrived on a sack trolley, although it was no larger than a loaf of bread.

“Found on the steps,” said the porter.

“Which steps?” Nora asked.

“Ours.”

She looked at the form. There was a box for railway carriage, a box for public highway and a box for other premises. Nothing had been provided for an object which had already reached the correct department.

She ticked public highway.

The porter began to unfasten the straps. Under the brown paper was a grey block with a shallow dent along one edge. No handle, writing or obvious purpose. He could not lift it from the trolley. Nora helped. They got it as far as the lip and lowered it again.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Not mine,” he said.

The trolley's front wheel sank through a floor tile.

They left it there.

At ten, Mr Vale came down from Administration. He was carrying a new mug with his name printed in gold. Nora had ordered it for his birthday from the office collection, which she also administered.

“We can't have that in the public area.”

“We can't move it.”

He bent down to inspect the broken tile.

“Those were only laid in March.”

“I know.”

“I had no involvement in selecting the contractor.”

The second wheel went through.

Mr Vale stood up.

“Put a chair in front of it.”

By lunchtime Nora had entered it in the register as BLOCK, GREY. She considered adding HEAVY, but the field was marked Distinguishing Features, and everything in the heavy cupboard was heavy. She left the field blank.

That afternoon a woman came for a red glove. While Nora searched the tray, the woman took a call.

“Well, she never actually asked me to visit.”

There was a dry crack beneath the chair.

The woman looked down, ended the call and left with a brown glove before Nora could stop her.

Nora put a ruler across the crack. By closing time it had reached the counter.

She rang Buildings.

“Was it damaged when delivered?” they asked.

“The floor or the object?”

“Whichever you want us to come out for.”

She said the floor. A job number was issued.

On Wednesday a surveyor stood in the doorway and told her the building was old.

“I know,” Nora said.

“These things happen.”

Behind the counter, a drawer slid open.

The surveyor measured the doorway instead.

Word reached the upper floors. A succession of people came down to look at the block, usually on their way to something else. They asked where it had been found and whether there was a name on it. Then they mentioned matters which Nora had not raised.

The head of Parking explained that the appeal had arrived after the deadline. A man from Housing said the room had met the standard in force at the time. Mr Vale returned to clarify that he had sat on the procurement panel in an advisory capacity.

Nora stopped keeping the pens in a cup. They rolled off the counter unless she put them in a drawer.

On Friday she found Mr Vale's mug in the staff-room sink. Its handle lay beside it.

“That was me,” she said to the empty room.

She had knocked it against the tap that morning. She'd meant to tell him, then he'd come down about the smell from the toilets and she hadn't.

From the public office came a small metallic click.

One of the trolley's straps had slackened.

Nora stood very still. Then she went out and put both hands under the block. She could lift one end.

She told Mr Vale on Monday. About the block first, then the mug.

“It was already chipped,” he said.

“I broke the handle.”

He accepted this with the grave courtesy of a man being given back something he had not particularly liked.

They went downstairs. He shut the public door and turned the notice to CLOSED. Nora appreciated that; the experiment would be easier without an audience.

He took off his jacket.

“I may have expressed a preference for the cheaper tender.”

Nothing moved.

“It was within the agreed budget.”

The counter shifted towards them.

Nora put her foot against a drawer.

Mr Vale picked up his jacket.

“This isn't a suitable place to discuss procurement.”

That was the last experiment he authorised.

Instead they displayed a notice in the window: ITEM FOUND. OWNER TO IDENTIFY.

Several people came to see it. One recognised the dent. Another said she used to have something very like it, but hers had been smaller. A man offered to take it if there was money attached. When Nora said there was not, he asked whether they could lend him the trolley.

No one made a claim.

After thirty days, Nora sent the file upstairs. It came back with a yellow slip asking whether the item was dangerous.

She wrote that it appeared to be affecting the floor.

The file returned asking whether this had been established by a qualified person.

She attached the surveyor's report. It said the building was old.

At sixty days, Buildings fitted a steel plate beneath the trolley. The workmen had been told to bring lifting equipment. They came back the next day with larger equipment, then the following week with a supervisor who asked Nora to close the office while they worked.

She waited outside with the public. A man beside her held a photograph of a violin case.

“How long?” he asked.

“I don't know.”

He turned the photograph over. His telephone number was written on the back. After a while, he put it away and left.

The plate held. For the first time in weeks, Nora could leave her tea on the counter.

At ninety days, the block became eligible for disposal.

Mr Vale came down with the form already completed. The block would remain in place. There would be a low timber enclosure, a level surface above it and a rack for leaflets. Buildings had agreed to call it a permanent fixture. As a fixture, it would cease to be lost property.

“And if the floor gets worse?” Nora asked.

“It's on their register now.”

She read the description: UNCLAIMED ITEM. NO OWNER IDENTIFIED.

“We know quite a lot about it,” she said.

“Put anything you think relevant in the notes.”

He left her the form.

Nora had worked in the office for nineteen years. Her request for a second clerk had been refused twice. Last winter, when she'd been ill for six days, they'd shut the office and taped a notice to the door. When she returned, the queue stretched past the lifts. She still had the notice in a drawer.

She began a note about Mr Vale and the tender. Then she thought of the woman with the glove, the visitors from Housing and Parking, the people who had come to look at the dent. She would need dates. Exact words. There would be questions about her own entries in the register.

The mug was different. She had seen herself break it.

She crossed out what she had written and put: No further information.

The block made no sound. It had settled by then.

The enclosure was pale oak. Nora chose it from three samples, and the carpenter rounded the corners because children sometimes came into the office. Once the leaflets were in place, nobody coming through the door would have known there was anything underneath.

On the first morning, the porter paused beside it with his broom.

“All sorted?”

Nora straightened a leaflet. The rack contained advice on making a claim, printed in blue on white.

“Yes,” she said.

He swept a little fresh plaster from the gap between the oak and the floor. Nora went to turn the notice to OPEN.