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.”
16
Obviously the answer is Stringfellows. But the essence of really good comedy is never to say the obvious; instead rely on the reader sharing the same cultural references. There's an art to this kind of thing. So I'm not going to mention the name.