“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.”