The Horror of Work 

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried working. I have and I don’t recommend it. I never did develop a natural enthusiasm for it the way some people do. I’m quite good at watching other people work. But my natural inclination is just to avoid work altogether.

Avoiding work is, of course, a learned skill. I wasn’t always as accomplished as I am now.

I was eighteen when I moved into a tiny room in North London. I was in pursuit of a life of sophisticated leisure. I thought perhaps becoming a romantic artist might suit me well. A year previously I had a parting-of-the-ways with my parents. It seemed they wanted me to get a so-called job. It was a cruel quirk of fate that I had not been born into an aristocratic family. I was sure that I had the sensibilities of the idle rich: the leisure class. I was convinced there must have been a mix up at the maternity wing where I was born. My parents were shopkeepers.

I came to realize that just living required effort, and I needed time to consider all this. I had made progress on the domestic front. I could now cook simple dishes. I was particularly gifted at Two Can Mash. Recipe: Open two cans, mash them together, heat and serve. I was no longer setting kitchens on fire or even filling my room with smoke from various burnt offerings.

After a year of living on my own, I hadn’t solved the problem of the relationship between work and money. It really helps to be in the leisure class, because I’ve heard that inheriting money is quite the best way to come by it. Much as it was against my better judgment, I had indulged in what were alleged to be “casual jobs.” I say alleged, because my employers had entirely unrealistic expectations. Our confusion seemed to hinge on the word casual. My employers and I had different interpretations of the word. They seemed to feel it their right to terminate our relationship.

The thing about work is that it takes up your time. Time is so vital in order to think deep thoughts, especially if you are going to become a romantic artist. One of these profound insights was the tragic realization that in order to keep eating, and paying my rent, I was going to have to earn money by finding a yet another job. This depressing thought came to me as I was attempting to thaw my almost frozen feet in bowl of warm water. My one pair of thin-soled canvas tennis shoes was starting to come apart. They were less than adequate for the cold and wet London winter of 1969.

It was a friend who had told me about Madame Tussauds. The job was part-time and it started at 5 a.m. If work I had to do, then, at least, let it be part-time. Ken, that’s the name of my friend. Ken had landed himself a job as wardrobe assistant at the famous waxwork museum. He said he could get me a job there too, but he doubted my chances with my present footwear. The sad fact was I had to get another pair of shoes. I was just going to have to cut back on buying food for a while. After all, romantic artists were known for starving in their garrets now and then.

The word was out that Anello and Davide were selling used custom ballet shoes, and selling them cheaply. In the crowded back room you could find the boots of a Valkyrie, or the shoes of the Sugar Plum Fairy. I procured some boots that might have been made for a production at the Covent Garden Opera or the Royal Ballet. While not exactly waterproof, they were a big improvement over the then current footwear.

My feet weren’t even on display when I applied for the position. The formalities were brief. The job application was pushed under a counter window. Through a blue fog of cigarette smoke a voice croaked at me to fill it out and wait. A few minutes later the voice announced that I should be at the side door at 5 a.m. sharp on Monday morning.

Our job as wardrobe assistants was to maintain the clothes of the waxwork mannequins. We were to be finished by the time the museum opened at ten. In other words, we were early-morning cleaners. But, at least in spirit, Ken and I saw ourselves as aristocratic early-morning cleaners.

We were a crew of five. Molly and Vera, though no relation to each other, seemed like twins. They were both diminutive in size and of indeterminate age. Their cockney accents were identical; they wore the same style of headscarf, often concealing curlers, and their wraparound aprons were standard issue. Molly and Vera were charwomen.

If you’ve had the experience of working, you’ll know that to do it properly, you must be careful to get enough rest. I could often get a fifteen-minute nap lying next to the bomb aimer in the nose of a World War II German Heinkle. The bomber was an ideal place to maintain a low profile. There was the drawback of a sudden awakening. An hour before opening time the lights would dim and the sound effects would be turned on. If I slept too long, I would wake up in the middle of a nighttime air battle.

I would be more often roused by one of the ladies calling out that Raquel Welch’s buttons were all undone again, or not to forget that a visitor had walked off with one of the Beatles wigs.

Molly and Vera would enthusiastically offer their own brand of motherly and technical advice to Ken and me. They gave us rather too much of it. Our stratagem was to avoid them. Should one of them come looking for us we would stand very still. This is a masterful tactic. It works very well as long as you are in an empty waxwork museum. But if one of them saw me first, I would be in for a lecture.

Molly would point to her head; “You gotta use your loaf in this job you know.”

Using your loaf was an indication that brainpower was required. She would then offer advice on the correct way to brush a jacket, or comb a wig. Vera would always approach me later with her opening remarks,

“Don’t take no notice of Molly, she don’t know nothin’.”

Vera would then detail the errors in Molly’s instruction.

Albert, a master idler and our fifth crewmember, was a man of few words. I never did understand what Albert did. This naturally was a testament to his brilliance. I’m not even sure if he was an employee. He was just there, drinking tea, (a sure sign of a master idler) in our tiny break room tucked away at the end of a little used corridor.

If Albert was the silent type, the ladies were not. They would hold firm opinions on matters of importance. There was constant debate on whether P.G. Tips was better than Typhoo tea; were chocolate biscuits worth the money, or whose turn it was to do the washing up. Each woman laid claim to absolute truth. Molly and Vera were locked into an ideological battle.

The ladies did agree on one thing. They were both afraid of rodents. There had been a mouse sighting the week before. Now, there was much conjecture as to the likelihood of a reappearance.

During a tea break, a mouse darted under our table. One moment Albert was sipping his tea in the corner. The next he was standing on the table holding his trousers half way up his shins and bleating like a lamb. Molly and Vera, jumped onto the table screaming, their skirts held high.

This event gave me pause for thought. It was rumored that if you try to spend a night in the Chamber of Horrors, by morning you’d be insane. There was much speculation about the truth of this claim.

The Chamber of Horrors was part of my territory. I’d brush down the clothing of a sad looking Dr. Crippen who’d chopped his wife up and buried her in order to be with his lover. His wife had hen-pecked him. I’d straighten the tie of John Reginald Halliday Christie. To do so, I’d stand in the bathtub in which he’d dissolved his victims in acid. Bathtubs were popular in the Chamber of Horrors. George Joseph Smith was known as the “Brides in the Bath” murderer. He drowned them for the insurance money. I was never clear on whether his wives had hen-pecked him.

The contents of the Horrors have changed over the years, but I can see why those of a “nervous disposition” should be advised against entry. The Chamber of Horrors is beneath London’s Baker Street. I had a shock the first time I was confronted with the hung mutilated body of Guy Fawkes. He was caught about to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1606. The State took a dim view of this sort of thing and showed itself barbaric in its punishment of Mr. Fawkes.

The guillotine made me uneasy. Dr Guillotin, a physician, invented the “humane,” if not bloody, way of killing people. I had to work on the victim’s clothes. The guillotine is reputed to have put and end to over 40,000 people at the height of the French Revolution. No wonder they called it “The Terror” - the French Revolution that is, not the guillotine.

I had plans for the rats in the Newgate Prison exhibit. Newgate was the site of many popular executions. Built in the twelfth century; it was finally pulled down in 1902. Some said that rat-infested Newgate Prison was the worst place on earth.

If either of the ladies knew I was in the Chamber of Horrors they wouldn’t hesitate to come and deliver a monologue on the faults of the other. It’s a moral weakness to rush. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I found myself hurrying. I wanted to be out of there before one of them would detain me. It was impossible to dissuade them from their auditory assaults, because, at the time, I was afflicted by a strong and debilitating sense of British politeness. Years later I would have to go and live in New York to get over it.

I needed a more pleasant and comfortable part of the museum in which to find some repose. I had once found Ken, resplendent in a Cavalier uniform, asleep on one of the beds in the Tableaux Room. I admired his creativity. I don’t want to give the impression that we were lazy. We just needed to put our feet up for a while in order to really think about our job more clearly. The constant babble of the ladies wasn’t conducive to adequate rumination during our tea breaks.

The rats seemed quite realistic even in the light, but in the shadows of the dimly lit underground room, they looked alive.

I placed them, all of them, underneath the scaffold. It was dark there.

The next day, as soon as I saw Vera, I jumped off the gallows and ran towards the exit stairs. “Rats,” I shouted.

She looked startled. “Where?” she shrieked.

“Under the scaffold.” I said, pointing back to a barely visible collection of eyes and fur.

Vera was still shrieking when she overtook me on the stairs. I wasn’t interrupted again.

If you’re thinking of giving work a try, think carefully before rushing into it. I advise you to put your feet up, have a cup of tea, and do some rumination first. You don’t want to waste your time doing unnecessary work. Remember, time is a non-renewable resource. Protect it well.

Copyright 2006 Christopher Richards