The Fandom of the Operator

12

I suppose I must have dozed off.

Although not on the job.

I never once dozed off on the job.

It would have been more than my job was worth to ever doze off on the job. An unmanned bulb is an accident waiting to happen, as Mr Holland used to say. And he knew what he was talking about. That man knew his business when it came to bulbs.

But perhaps I had dozed off at some time or other. Because the next time I was truly, fully aware, I was drinking again with Count Otto, and he was asking me how things were going at the telephone exchange.

“How are things going at the telephone exchange?” he asked.

“So, so,” I said. “I had fourteen flash-ups today. I have my reaction time down to point-three of a second. Point-two-two is my fastest ever, but that was in the first summer when there was a double flash. That’s quite a rarity, two flash-ups in less than an hour. I kind of sensed it that time: I knew the second one was coming. A good bulbsman has a sixth sense. You develop it. Only last week I—”

“Excuse me,” said Count Otto. “I need to go and count some tiles in the men’s room.” And then he departed and was gone.

“He’s a weirdo,” I said to Sandra, because she had come out with me for a drink. For some specific reason that quite escaped me at the time. “He’s always going off to the bog when I’m having a chat.”

“Perhaps it’s because you’re so boring nowadays,” said Sandra.

“Yeah, right,” I replied.

“I am,” said Sandra. “Your job is all you ever talk about. That exciting double flash in the summer of ’seventy-one. How you’ve installed your own bulb tester and how through yoga you can hold your bladder for a twelve-hour stretch without even a dribble coming out of your winkie.”

“Don’t be crude,” I said to Sandra.

“You’ve lost your edge,” said my spouse. “You’re no fun any more.”

“I’m no fun? How dare you! If you took a little more interest in my work …”

“Ha,” went Sandra. “Ha ha ha. Switching a fugging bulb off all day long! How interesting can that be?”

“See what I mean?” I said to her. “That’s all you know about the job. I don’t switch it off all day long. Only at the specific moment when it flashes. Not before and not afterwards. Well, obviously afterwards, but you can hardly tell, my timing is so precise.”

“Just listen to yourself.” Sandra was drinking a Cuba Library, which was the popular drink of the day. It was a cocktail – something to do with cigars and library books. Or it might have been gazelles and bicycle pumps, for all I cared. Sandra supped at it and went right on talking at me. “When you came home after that first day at the exchange you were dripping with piss and ranting like a loon. Then you went off for a drink and came back pissed and ranting like a drunken loon, saying how you were going to strike a blow for the workers and change everything. Do you remember that?”

“Of course I remember that,” I said, for I vaguely remembered that.

“Now it’s five years later,” Sandra emptied her drink down her throat and handed me the glass, “and have you struck a blow for the workers?”

“Well,” I said.

“No,” said Sandra. “You haven’t. The second day in, you took sandwiches and a bucket and another book to read.”

“God,” I said. “Don’t tell me about it.”

“Why?” asked Sandra.

“It’s so embarrassing,” I said. “How could I have been so irresponsible? Taking a book into the bulb booth? I could have been so engrossed in the book that I mightn’t have noticed the bulb go on. Imagine that! It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

“It certainly doesn’t,” said Sandra, pointing pointedly towards her empty glass. “So I shan’t think about it at all.”

“Good,” I told her. “Don’t.”

“Drink,” said Sandra.

So I drank.

“No,” said Sandra. “I meant drink for me.”

“To you, then,” I said, raising my glass and drinking again.

“No!” said Sandra. “Not drink to me. Buy me another fugging drink, you stupid twonk!”

“Language!” I told her. “Language, please.”

“Five years,” said Sandra, spitting somewhat as she spoke. “Five fugging years. What happened to you? Where did your spirit go?”

“I would have thought you’d have been pleased that I was now in full-time regular employment. A job for life. You wanted security, didn’t you? Wasn’t that why your brother so diligently made sure that I got there in the first place?”

“Oh yes,” said Sandra. “I wanted security. There’s nothing wrong with security. But I’d also like a holiday once in a while. You know, a week away at a caravan park in Camber Sands. That’s not much to ask, is it?”

“A bulbsman is always on the job,” I said to Sandra. “A bulbsman has no time for holidays.”

“Unbelievable,” said Sandra, shaking her head in what looked for all the world to be dismay. “You are unbelievable.”

“Thank you very much,” I said and I made my way to the bar.

There wasn’t any pushing and shoving to get served in this bar. But then, this wasn’t the Shrunken Head. Eric had sold the Shrunken Head to an entrepreneur called Sandy and had moved himself away to a quieter bar.

This quieter bar. The Golden Dawn, on the corner of Abbadon Street. It was mostly a fogeys’ hangout. Old boys who played in the bowls league. Regular, dependable fellows, many of whom had worked in the telephone exchange. And put in years of sterling service. Although none of them appeared to be ex-bulbsmen.

I liked the Golden Dawn. It was a good place to come and relax after a stressful day in the booth. Like the one I’d had the Thursday before last when there were twenty-two flashes. Four within a single hour, which was almost an all-time record. The record being six, back in the autumn of ’seventy-four, on the tenth of September, a Tuesday. Three-fifteen to four-fifteen. I keep a record, you see. Study it in the evenings, actually, just to check the patterns. They crop up at occasional intervals. You can be right on the alert then. Not that I could really be much more on the alert than I am now. That would be impossible.

“Well, well, well, well, well,” said Eric Blaine a.k.a. Kimberlin Malkuth, Lord of a Thousand Suns. “If it isn’t my old comrade the Honourable Valdec Firesword of Alpha Centuri.”

“Yes,” I said to him. “As it was ten minutes ago, when I came up for the last round.”

“Exactly,” said Eric. “Which means that this time it’s Count Otto’s round. But he’s hiding out in the toilets again, isn’t he?”

“He’s counting tiles,” I said. “That’s what counts do, I suppose: count things.”

The landlord rolled his eyes. Which I found most unappealing. And then he shook his head from side to side. “I see the Lady Fairflower of the Rainbow Mountains is looking particularly radiant tonight,” he observed, casting one of his rolling eyes in his shaking head towards my Sandra.

“Nifty eye-work,” I said, for I appreciate talent. “But, frankly, the Lady Fairflower has been getting right up my nose of late. I labour away at my place of employment, drag my weary body home and what do I get?”

“A blowjob?” asked the landlord.

“No,” I said. “Not even a blow-dry. Not that I have long hair any more. I keep mine well trimmed behind the ears and especially across the forehead. A flopping fringe is a bulbsman’s enemy. I tried keeping it long and wearing a cap, but I felt that it detracted from the dignity of the job. Hey, by the way, what do you think of these?” I raised my arms to the landlord.

The landlord stared hard and then he said. “You appear to have tiny roller skates strapped onto your elbows.”

“Yes,” I said. “But they’re not tiny roller skates, they’re elbow trolleys. I designed them myself.”

“Very nice,” said the landlord, in a tone that I felt lacked for sincerity. “What exactly do they do?”

“Give me added speed, of course.” I placed my elbows on the bar counter. “Take that empty cocktail glass.”

“This one?” said the landlord.

“That one. Hold it up.”

The landlord held it up.

“Now drop it.”

“No,” said the landlord. “It will break on the counter.”

“No, it won’t. Go on, do it. Whenever you want. Don’t give me any warning.”

“You pay if it breaks, then.”

“No problem. I—”

But the sneaky barman dropped it as I spoke.

And Snatch!

“Impressed?” I asked.

And the landlord clearly was. “You snatched it right out of the air almost before it had left my hand,” he said.

“I’m a bulbsman,” I said. “Speed is my middle name.”

The landlord pulled me a pint of Large and knocked up another cocktail for Sandra.

“What is this one called?” I asked.

“In your posh bars up west, this would be called a ‘Horse’s Neck’,” said the landlord. “But as this is a poor neighbourhood, I call it a half of lager-top.”

“Wow,” I said. “Very exotic”

“And expensive too. That will be four pounds, seventeen and six.”

I parted with a five-pound note.

The landlord parted with the change.

“I’m sixpence short,” I said to him.

And then he parted with the missing sixpence.

“We live in strange days, Gary,” the landlord said to me.

“Gary?” I said. “Why are you calling me that?”

“I think I might be losing my powers.”

“What, your powers of True-Naming? Never, surely.”

“I don’t know. But once or twice, lately, a new customer has come in and I haven’t been able to perceive their true name.”

“More exceptions to the rule, perhaps? Like Count Otto.”

“No, Count Otto is a one-off. But it has been odd and I don’t understand it.”

“Perhaps they don’t have any true names.”

“Everyone has a true name. It’s just that most people aren’t aware of theirs.”

I shrugged. “I’ve never truly understood the concept,” I said. “In fact, I think you’ll find that you are possibly the only man on Earth who really understands the concept.”

“Hardly,” said the landlord. And he laughed. Not in the way that Sandra laughed. He laughed in a lower key. “There was a travelling man in here last week. A tinker looking for old chairs to mend. And I hailed him as Galaxion Zimmer of the Emerald Light. And he said, ‘Well met, Kimberlin Malkuth, Lord of a Thousand Suns.’”

“He knew your True Name?”

“He’d had a revelation, like me, back in the sixties.”

“There was a lot of it about,” I said. “Although I didn’t take any of it. Sold a bit, but didn’t use. If you know what I mean and I’m sure that you do.”

“Well, he knew and I knew that he knew. He identified all my regulars correctly. But, as I say, there’s been one or two. In fact there’s one over there.”

“Over where?” I asked.

“Over there. Fat bloke. I can’t perceive his True Name.”

I followed the direction of the landlord’s pointing. “That’s Neil,” I said. “That’s Neil Collins. He’s in Developmental Services.”

“What the fugg is Developmental Services?”

“At the exchange. Seventeenth floor, office twenty-three. Developmental Services.”

“And how would you know that, penned up in your little booth all day?”

I tapped my nose in the manner known as “conspiratorial”.

“Sinus problems?” asked the landlord.

“No,” I said. “Interdepartmental memorandums, files, technical specifications.”

“What about them?” asked the landlord.

“They all go through me,” I said.

“You eat them?”

“They go through my office. They’re not meant to, but they do. After I’d been at the exchange for about six months, this new bob poked his head round the door of my booth.”

“New bob?” asked the landlord.

“Stop asking all these questions,” I said. “New bob, new boy … He said he was lost and he had confidential files for Mr Holland and where was his office. And I don’t know what got into me – high spirits I suppose – but I said, ‘All confidential files come through me.’ And they have ever since.”

“And you read this stuff in the firm’s time?”

I looked aghast at the landlord. “Certainly not!” I said. “I would never be that irresponsible.”

“Oh,” said the landlord. “Sorry.”

“I take them home and read them,” I said. “Then I pop them into Mr Holland’s in-tray next morning, before he gets in. I’m always early. A good bulbsman is always ready and eager and in his booth on time.”

“Unbelievable,” said the landlord.

“Thank you very much,” I said.

“So this Neil Collins is in Developmental Services. And what do they do, then?”

I shook my head towards the landlord. “You’re expecting me to divulge confidential material to a Humburg?”

“I never wear a Homburg,” said the landlord, feeling at his hatless head.

“Not Homburg: Humburg. It’s a term we use for plebs, non-company people, folk who don’t work in the exchange.”

“Twonk!” said the landlord.

“No, Humburg!” I corrected him. “So I’m not likely to divulge that kind of information to a Humburg, am I?”

The landlord grinned at me. Well, he didn’t so much grin as leer. “You signed the Official Secrets Act, didn’t you?” he said.

“Yes, I did, and I’m proud of it.” And I was. Now.

“Yet you’ve already given me classified information by identifying Neil Collins as being in Developmental Services. If I grassed you up, you’d go to prison.”

A terrible sweat broke out on my brow. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”

“No,” said the landlord. “Of course I wouldn’t.”

“Phew,” I said. And I meant it.

“Not as long as you tell me all about Developmental Services.”

“But that’s more than my job’s worth.”

“It’s exactly what your job’s worth. You bought into the company ethic, Gary. I don’t know why. Because you didn’t really have the stuff in you to rebel against it, would be my bet. But you’re a company man now, and if I grassed you up you’d lose your job and be off to prison.”

“No,” I said. “Don’t do it. If I lost my job, anyone could get it. The first man in the queue. Harry maybe.”

“I don’t think Harry would fall for that. And, anyway, Harry runs a world-famous night club now.”

“Really?” I said. “I didn’t know that. Perhaps he told Sandra, but she didn’t mention it. He got his motorbike and he got the job. Incredible.”

“He had to lie about his name, though.”

“Why?”

“They only wanted applicants called Peter. So he said his name was Peter. So he got the job and now he runs the world-famous night club.”

“What’s it called?” I asked.

“————”[16] said the landlord.

“Never heard of it,” I said. “But listen, don’t turn me in. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

“Fine,” said the landlord. “So, Developmental Services, what do they do?”

“They develop services,” I said.

“I’m reaching for the phone,” said the landlord.

“No, that’s what they do. They work on new projects to improve facilities.”

“So what are they working on now? What is this Neil Collins, who has no True Name, working on?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know for sure,” I said. “It’s something called FLATLINE.”

“In capital letters,” said the landlord. “It must be something important, then.”

“I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s something pretty big.”

“So how much do you know about it?”

I scratched at my head, which, like the landlord’s, was also hatless. I’ve never taken to a hat myself- you get hat-hair, which is frankly embarrassing. Hats are for fogeys, in my opinion. Most of the patrons of the Golden Dawn were hat-wearers. You only really wear a hat if you’re a fogey. Or, of course, if you have a problem about your baldness. Of course Lazlo Woodbine wasn’t bald, and he never had hat-hair. He wore a fedora, probably with a raised crown, although that was never mentioned in any of the novels. So, where was I?

“It’s something pretty big,” I said once more, to get my bearings.

“So how much do you know about it?”

I shook my hatless head. “I know it’s called FLATLINE,” I said.

“Twonk!” said the landlord. “But I’ll say this to you. I’m suspicious, me, and when things don’t smell right I don’t like the smell of them. You find out about this FLATLINE and you tell me about it, or I will grass you up, understand?”

I nodded now with my hatless head. “I understand,” I said.

“Right,” said the landlord. “Now take your drinks and go back to your woman. You’re supposed to be celebrating your wedding anniversary.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “That’s what I came out with Sandra for.”

I took the drinks back to the table.

“Didn’t you get one for Otto?” asked Sandra.

“No. Stuff him,” I said.

“Strong words,” said Sandra, laughing.

“Shut up,” I told her, “and drink your cocktail.”

Sandra took a sip. “What is this one called?” she asked.

“It’s Ruby Tuesday.”

“Very nice too. Very fruity.”

I sighed and rolled my own eyes a bit. “I get tired,” I said. “You know that? I get tired.”

“It’s all that finger-work.” Sandra mimed switch-flicking. And mimed it very badly too. There’s an art to switch-flicking: you don’t just flick a switch and you certainly don’t do it the way Sandra did it, with thumb and forefinger making an O and the hand going up and down in a sort of stabbing motion. “You’ve got Repetitive Strain Injury!” And she laughed again. “An injury that if caused in the workplace, can enable you to sue the company and get lots of money.”

“Ridiculous,” I said. “Industrial injuries go with the job. If you can’t stand the heat don’t go so near the hairdryer.”

“You can sneer,” said Sandra, “but in my new job—”

“New job?” I said. “New job? What new job?”

“My new job. Count Otto got it for me. He’s a solicitor now. And I’m a barrister.”

“I never knew that. You never told me.”

“We don’t talk any more,” said Sandra.

“We do. We talk all the time.”

“No,” said Sandra. “You talk. I am expected to listen.”

“That’s how heterosexual relationships work,” I explained. “Men talk, women listen. When it’s the other way round it ends in divorce.”

“And that’s your take on marriage, is it?”

I shrugged. “Our marriage doesn’t work very well, does it?” I said.

“No,” said Sandra. “It doesn’t.”

“And that’s because you don’t listen when I talk. You should try harder. It would work far better then.”

“I’m going on holiday with Otto next week,” said Sandra.

“What?” I said. “What?”

“To Camber Sands. We’ve booked a caravan.”

“But that’s outrageous. You can’t do that!”

“And why not?”

“Because who’s going to make my sandwiches?”

“I’ll leave you a week’s supply in the freezer.”

“Well, that’s all right, then. Will you send me a postcard?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Sandra.

“Thank God for that,” I said.

“What?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have time to read it. This is my golden opportunity to put in some overtime. I’m certain that Barry who does the seven p.m. to seven a.m. shift isn’t as quick on the switch as he might be. I can sit with him and give him some pointers.”

“Yes,” said Sandra. “Why don’t you do that?”

“I will,” I said, “I will.”

Count Otto returned from the toilet.

“Finished counting?” I asked. “How many were there this time?”

“Same as last time,” said Otto. “Which is comforting, when you think about it.”

“That is so true,” I said. “So very, very true.”

Otto took up what was left of his pint and supped upon it.

“I was just telling Gary that you and I are going off on holiday next week,” said Sandra.

Otto choked upon his pint.

“Easy,” I said, patting him on the back. “Are you all right? Did it go down the wrong way?”

“Just a bit,” said the count.

“I was saying to Sandra,” said I, “not to send me a postcard. I wouldn’t have time to read it.”

“Oh,” said Count Otto, glancing over at Sandra, who seemed, if I wasn’t mistaken, to be winking in his direction. “Well, OK, then. I’ll keep her entertained. Try and find her something to fill the moments when she would otherwise have been writing you postcards.” And the count squeezed at his groin region.

“Thanks a lot,” I said to the count. “Would you care for another pint? Seeing as how you’re being so kind as to take Sandra on holiday while I’ll be busy at work.”

“Yes, please,” said Count Otto. “A whisky chaser would be nice too.”

“Done,” said I. “No problem.”

I returned to the bar. “Same again,” said I. “Although different for Sandra and one for the count.”

“Phew,” said the landlord. “You do have money to splash about. I’ve got fillings from the drip trays here that will pass for a Tequila Sunrise and set you back nearly three quid.”

“In for a penny,” said I.

“Quite so,” said the landlord, emptying the drip tray into a used glass. “Oh and, Gary …”

“Yes,” I said.

“I need to know. It matters to me.”

“Need to know what?” I asked. For I didn’t know what he wanted to know.

“About FLATLINE in the capital letters. I need to know what it’s all about.”

“Well,” I said, as I accepted the drinks I was given and paid the price that I had to pay for them, “I’ll do what I can. But I do have a lot on my mind at present. I’m going to be doing some overtime. I’ll be busy.”

“I need to know,” said the landlord. “I’m not wrong about the True Names. Even though I thought I was wrong, that travelling man proved to me that I wasn’t. This is important, if only to me. Whatever you find out will be between the two of us. You know the old saying, ‘you scratch my back, I don’t stab yours’. OK?” And the landlord made a very vicious face.

“OK,” I said. “It’s a done deal. I’ll find out, I promise. But I do have a lot on my mind.”

I did.

And as I took the drinks back to the table I did a lot of thinking. And I do mean a lot. I thought about myself. And what I’d become. And who was the real me who was me now. And I thought about Barry who did the night shift and whether I should make him a pair of elbow trolleys.

And I thought about the landlord and his True Names and how he couldn’t divine the True Name of Neil Collins and I thought about FLATLINE and whatever FLATLINE might actually be, it being in capital letters and everything.

And I thought about the landlord grassing me up and me being dragged away to prison.

And I thought about Sandra and regretted that I hadn’t been able to take her on holiday because holidays weren’t written into the Official Secrets Act.

And I thought about Count Otto. And what a good friend to Sandra and me he had been for years.

And I thought about what a shame it was that I would be forced to swoop upon him one night as he lay asleep in his bed. Bind him, gag him and slowly torture him to death.

Because, after all, he was sexing my wife!

And company man and sell-out boy and wimp and twonk that Sandra might have thought I was.

I certainly wasn’t having that!