The Doorkeepers

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There was a Door to which I found no key:

There was a Veil past which I could not see.

                        Edward Fitzgerald

The Ruba’yát of Omar Khayyam

Six doors they stand in London Town

Six doors they stand in London, too

Yet who’s to know which way they face?

And who’s to know which face is true?

Traditional nursery rhyme

One

Julia typed Yours in anticipation, F.G. Mordant, and tugged the letter out of her typewriter. She slipped the letter into Mr Mordant’s red signing folder and dropped the pink and yellow copies into the box file next to her. She returned the carbon paper to her second drawer down.

It was five thirty-two p.m. and the office was bright with the last marmalade-colored light of the day. Julia put the lid on her typewriter, not knowing that this was the very last time she would do it, and that once the sun had sunk below the rooftops of the factories opposite, she would never see it come up again.

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