The Blue Doors

The machine hall of a research laboratory in Teddington at noon under an overcast spring sky, white light from high windows, on a raised floor of grey panels a cabinet one metre seventy high and one metre and a quarter wide, an aluminium frame and wine-red side walls, its two upper doors pale blue and swung open, inside four drawers of brown circuit cards in two columns, a top strip with small red buttons, the two lower doors closed in strong blue above a ventilation grille, every surface plain and unmarked, one brown card pulled halfway out of a drawer, a trolley of paper tape rolls.