“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.”