“Well, I’m going to the bog, whether you like it or not.”
“You’d risk five years for a pee. Good God!” Mr Holland threw up his hands.
“Five years for a pee? What are you talking about?” I crossed my legs. I was getting desperate.
“You signed the Official Secrets Act, didn’t you?”
“With a flourish,” said I. “Why do you ask?”
“Because it states quite clearly in the ‘Terms of Employment’ section that, should you leave the bulb booth unattended during your duty period, you will have committed a crime against the state. The punishment is a minimum of five years’ imprisonment. Although upon all previous occasions the court has dealt out far sterner sentences than that. Mr Trubshaw got forty years in solitary. That was during the war, of course. I think he served as a good example, which is probably why Mr Hurst had the bag fitted.”
“What?” I said. “What?”
“Hold it in, boy, if you value your freedom.”
“No,” I said. “Hang about, this can’t be right.”
“Who’s to say what’s right? I’m not a philosopher, I’m a technical manager.”
“No,” I said. “This is ridiculous. Absurd. And what about when I need a replacement bulb? I’d have to leave the booth then.”
“You’d call out to me. I would then initiate a temporary override procedure.”
“Well, initiate one now, while I go and have a pee.”
“Good God,” cried Mr Holland. “You’d take me down with you. Have you no morals at all? Are you a total degenerate?”
“In a word, yes. I quit this stupid job.”
“You can’t quit.”
“Then, fire me.”
“You can’t be fired. You signed the Official Secrets Act. And you can’t take any days off sick, either. You’ve taken the job for life.”
“I’ve what? I’ve what?”
“Don’t shout,” shouted Mr Holland. “I have very sensitive hearing. Had my aural cavities surgically enhanced so that I could hear a request for replacement bulbs being made through the partition wall. You only have to whisper, really.”
“I’m not whispering. And I’m going to wet myself in a minute.”
“I’m very sorry about that. I’m sure it will be very uncomfortable for you. But there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Bring me a bucket, or something.”
“Sorry,” said Mr Holland. “A bucket is out of the question. There is no procedure for buckets. You can’t get a docket for a bucket. It’s unheard of.”
“So I have to wet my pants and go without lunch and if I leave this booth for even a couple of minutes or dare to take the day off, I can be dragged away to prison? Is that what you’re saying?”
“In a word. And to save us all a lot of time and heartbreak, yes.”
“Aaaaaaaaagh!” I went.
And not without good cause.
And then I wet myself.
11
There was something in the way that Sandra laughed that really got on my nerves. It had taken me nearly an hour to walk home, ducking in and out of alleyways to avoid being seen. What with the big wet patch down my trouser front and everything. And I was ravenously hungry and she said that it was my turn to make dinner.
And everything.
“Stop laughing!” I shouted. “This isn’t funny. This is dire. Terrible. Catastrophic. I’m in big trouble here.”
“It will teach you to read documents before you sign them in future.”
“I don’t have a future!” I stormed up and down the sitting room.
“You’re dripping on the carpet.” Sandra laughed some more.
“I’ll write to my MP,” I said. “This is inhuman. It’s nothing short of slavery. This is the nineteen seventies. Is this what all our student protests have brought us to?”
“What student protests? You never were a student and you never protested against anything.”
“I marched for Gay Rights,” I told her, as I plucked at my damp trouser legs.
“You just went along hoping to get shagged.”
“Yeah, well, all right. That’s why most of us went. But that’s not the point. I can’t be treated like this.”
“So what do you propose to do?”
“Have a bath,” I said. “And have something to eat. And go down the pub and think about what to do.”
“Still, look on the bright side,” said Sandra: “at least you’ll be on a regular wage now. Do you get paid holidays? We could go somewhere nice.”
“Holidays? I never asked about holidays. Perhaps I don’t even get any holidays.”
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” Sandra said. She gave me an encouraging smile. “You have a job for life and it’s not exactly taxing, is it? You can read your silly detective books, do an Open University course, learn a second language. Your days are pretty much your own to do with as you please. As long as you don’t leave your bulb booth, of course.” And then Sandra sniggered a bit and then she laughed a lot more.
“I’m going for a bath,” I told her.
“You do that,” said Sandra. “And, darling …”
“Yes?”
“It’s a bit dark in the bathroom. You can switch the bulb on, if you like. A change is as good as a rest, eh?”
And then she laughed a lot more.
I bathed and I dried and I dressed in clean clothes and I stuffed my face with food. And then I went to the pub alone in a very bad mood indeed.
I went to the Shrunken Head. They have music there on a Monday, and every other night too. The Graham Bond Organization were playing that evening. Jeff Beck was on lead guitar.[15]
Harry was on the door, wearing a smart tuxedo.
“You dirty rotten swine!” I greeted him. “You got me into this mess.”
“No, I didn’t,” said Harry. “And what mess are you talking about?”
“Forget it,” I said, making my way inside.
The Shrunken Head was a horrible dump. But then, all music pubs are. It’s a tradition, or an old charter, or something. The furnishings are always rubbish, the beer is always rubbish and overpriced. And there’s always trouble and people shooting up in the toilets and an overall sordidness of a type that you just don’t get anywhere else.
I loved the place.
I elbowed my way through the crowd of youths and edged towards the bar. These were the days before black T-shirts had become an acceptable form of gig wear. These were still the days of the cheesecloth shirt. You don’t see cheesecloth shirts any more – which is a shame, because I really liked them. No shirt fits like a cheesecloth shirt. Really tight across the shoulders and under the armpits, where they soon get a big stain going. And the way they pulled at the buttons, leaving those vertical eye-shaped slits so your chest and belly showed through. And those huge floppy collars.
And everything.
I’ll say this for the seventies. People really knew how to dress back then. I’d looked hot as a mod. And later as a hippie, but I looked my best as a seventies groover. My platform soles were three layers high. And would have made me the tallest bloke in the pub if everyone else hadn’t been wearing platforms too.
The landlord in those days was Kimberlin Malkuth the Fourth, Lord of a Thousand Suns. His given name was Eric Blaine, but Eric Blaine possessed a certain gift. It was a gift that was his own. The gift of the True Name Knower.
According to Eric, the names we are given at birth – the surnames we inherit from our parents and the Christian names they choose for us – are not our real names. Our true names. The names that we should be called.
It didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time, but it did to Eric, or, rather, to Kimberlin Malkuth, Lord of a Thousand Suns, as he was known, having changed his name by deed poll. Because Eric had had a revelation (possibly involving the use of hallucinogenic drugs back in the sixties) whereby he became aware of his true name and the fact that he had the ability to recognize the true names of others, just by looking at them. It could be argued that, as the landlord of a pub, this might have put him in a certain peril with more truculent patrons, who might well have taken exception to him renaming them. But it didn’t.
15
It was a reunion gig. Jeff had paid his dues by now, earned the nation's love with 'Hi Ho Silver Lining' and done a couple of solo albums that no one remembers now.