I began to sway back and forwards and the world began to go dark at the edges.

“Easy,” said Barry. “Are you all right? Do you want to sit down?”

“Yes, please.” And he guided me onto the chair.

“Do you want a glass of water? I can get you one from the refectory.”

“No!” I said. “No. You can’t leave the booth.”

“I’ll take the bulb – no problem.”

“Oh my God!” And I buried my head in my hands.

“You’ve got it bad, man,” said Barry, patting my shoulder to comfort me. “You’ve let the bustards grind you down. I signed the Official Secrets Act, so the bustards have me by the bollards too. But just because they have my bollards, it doesn’t mean that I have to let them squeeze them. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.”

“You take the bulb out.” I whispered the words. “You actually take the bulb out.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never done it?”

“Never,” I said, frantically shaking my head.

“Well, you should. It gives you a sense of power. Try it now. Go on, take it out. See what it feels like.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head even more frantically. “I’d never do such a dreadful thing.”

I looked up at Barry and he grinned down at me. His hand reached out towards the bulb.

“Don’t,” I told him. “Don’t.”

“OK,” said Barry. “I won’t if it upsets you so much and clearly it does. But I’ll tell you something about this bulb that I’ll bet you don’t know.”

“That shouldn’t be hard,” I said. “As I don’t know anything at all about it, except that it has to be switched off.”

“And you’ve sat in this booth for five years and you’ve never wondered?”

“Of course I’ve wondered. And I’ve asked, but no one will tell me.”

“And you’ve never thought of finding out for yourself?”

I sighed. “Of course I have. But how could I?”

“You could follow the wire and see where it goes.”

“Don’t be funny,” I said. “It goes down into the floor. It could go anywhere from there.”

“Oh, it does,” said Barry. “And yes, I understand, really, I suppose: you do the day shift, so you couldn’t up the floorboards and take a look, then trace the wire up the corridor and into the lift shaft and—”

“What?” I said. “What?”

“It’s taken me months,” said Barry. “But I’ve traced it, a yard at a time. I know where the wire goes.”

Now I have to confess that I was shaking all over by now, not just my head. I really was. Whether it was anticipation, I don’t know. Perhaps it was something more than that. Remember I mentioned in a previous chapter what it might be like for a believer in Christianity if he or she was offered absolute proof that there was no afterlife? Well, it was something like that. I did want to know where the wire went, but also I didn’t! Life can be such a complicated business at times. Can’t it?

“It goes up …”

“No!” I said to Barry. “I don’t want to know.”

“You do, you know, although you don’t know it yet.”

“I don’t think that makes sense, but I really don’t want to know.”

“Well,” said Barry, “I can understand that too. If the bulb was simply connected to some random number indicator computer thing and the whole job really is a complete waste of time simply to keep employment figures stable, you’ve wasted five years of your life. Haven’t you?”

I didn’t want to nod, so I didn’t.

“Well, it isn’t that,” said Barry. “The wire goes to a definite place.”

I wiped my hands across my brow, which had a fine sweat on. And slowly, very slowly, I said, “All right, then, where does it go?”

“Upstairs,” said Barry. “It goes upstairs. Upstairs to the seventeenth floor.”

“The seventeenth floor?” I said that slowly too.

“The seventeenth floor,” said Barry. “To Developmental Services.”

14

The evening after I’d had that conversation with Barry, I was wide awake and ready for action. And I was wearing a pretty nifty disguise.

Lazlo Woodbine was a master of disguise. He possessed, amongst other things, a tweed jacket, which when worn without his trademark fedora and trenchcoat literally transformed him into the very personification of a newspaper reporter. I did not think that particular disguise would be suitable for what I had to do, which was to infiltrate Developmental Services, so I chose another, which was.

I wore a white coat.

I confess that the white coat idea wasn’t mine. The idea came originally from a friend whom I’d known in my teenage years. A chap called Mick Strange. Mick came up with this brilliant scam for getting into anywhere. By getting in, I mean getting into events, or into virtually anywhere that you would otherwise have to queue up and pay to get into.

The scam was simplicity itself and although nowadays it is attempted (with minimal results) by many, he thought of it first. In order to get in, to virtually anywhere and everything, all you had to do was put on a white coat and carry a large light bulb.

I saw him do it at Battersea funfair and also at Olympia when Pink Floyd played there. He simply walked in, wearing his white coat and carrying his big light bulb. He looked official. He looked like an electrician. He got in. QED. End of story.

I arrived back at the telephone exchange at nine of that evening and clocked on for my overtime. I went into the bulb booth, woke up Barry, who was already having a kip, told him to remain alert, changed into my white coat, which I had brought in stuffed down my trouser leg, and took up my light bulb, which I had secreted in my underpants, and which had got me several admiring glances from young women on the bus. Barry didn’t ask me what I was doing. Barry didn’t care. I asked him to wish me luck, though, and, very kindly, he did.

“Good luck,” said Barry.

“Thank you,” I said. “Very kind.”

And then I went off down the corridor and got into the lift.

Now, OK, I confess, I had a sweat on. I had to keep wiping my forehead. And I was upset by this. As a child I had been brave. A very brave boy indeed. But it seemed that over the years, as Sandra had said, I’d lost it. Lost myself. But I was now determined to get myself back. And definitely do it this time. Not like when I’d made that drunken promise to change the world and liberate the slaves of the system.

And I’ll tell you this, when that little bell rang and the light flashed in the number 17 button and the lift doors opened, I was almost brave again.

Almost.

Nearly almost.

I straightened the lapels on my white coat and I held my light bulb high and I marched along the corridor, noting that this was a somewhat swisher and better-appointed corridor than the one seventeen floors beneath that led to my bulb booth. But I walked tall and true and I marched, I fairly marched, towards room 23.

And when I got to it, I didn’t knock. I opened the door and I walked right in. And I didn’t half get a surprise.

Room 23 was a very big room. And when I say big I mean big. It wasn’t so much a room as an entire operations centre. It was vast. And it was high, too. I figured that they must have knocked out the ceilings and floors of the eighteenth and nineteenth floors too to accommodate all this equipment and all these walkways and gantries and stairways that all these men in white coats who were carrying light bulbs were walking along and up and down and all around and about.

I fairly smiled.

And then I joined them.

And then a man with a white coat who didn’t carry a light bulb but instead carried a clipboard (which singled him out as a “technician”) stopped me.

“And where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

“I’m not quite sure,” I said.

“I thought so,” said the technician. “Let’s have a look at that bulb.”