by Ben Elton
On his way to the dining room, preparing himself to genuflect before the great man, Digby encountered Sam Turk. Digby saw his opportunity to establish his puppy-like loyalty to the road lobby beyond doubt.
'Uhm . . . Mr Turk,' said Digby nervously.
'Yes, Minister,' replied Turk, expecting a resumption of the ticking-off he had received the previous night.
'I just wanted to say . . . Sam, that you're the boss, OK? I know that Ministers for Transport may come and Ministers for Transport may go, but car builders, well, they stay for ever . . . I know that now, it was stupid of me to forget it, and well . . . I'm sorry.'
Sam was mystified at Digby's change of attitude, but he was a man who took his good fortune where he found it.
'Yes, well, what you say is very true, Minister. And I guess if we have to liberate the odd patent for the good of Britain, what the hell, eh? It's only ethics for Christ's sake.'
'Exactly, Sam, exactly. It is, as you so very rightly say, only ethics,' replied Digby. 'And if I come across any myself, rest assured I'll slip them in my pocket for you . . . Patents that is, ha ha, not ethics, good Lord, you wouldn't be needing them . . . I mean . . . Well anyway, ha ha thnn thnn . . . Oh and by the way, that working paper the Road Federation presented, the one about turning all of London parks into car parks, I've been thinking about that one hard, do memo me.'
'I will, Minister, I will and good luck with your speech,' said Sam Turk.
'Well that's very kind, Sam . . . and, I can forget about uhm . . . last night's little Scottish visitation can I?' said Digby.
'Why sure, Minister, you can forget about whatever you please.' Sam had not the faintest idea what Digby was talking about and only the very slightest interest.
Digby, believing he had set matters straight with Sam, went into the dining room for his breakfast with Ingmar Bresslaw.
'Good morning, Ingmar,' he said. Ingmar Bresslaw did not even look up from his bacon, which he was viewing with utter contempt.
'They only ever do it on one side!' he growled in fury.
'What was that, Ingmar?' enquired Digby.
'Without doubt the three most misleading words in the English language are "Great British Breakfast". It is a global bloody con and it should be exposed! Us boasting about our breakfasts? It's like the Russians boasting about their cars! We do worse breakfasts than any other nation in the world! The bloody Australians do better breakfasts than us and do you know why, Minister?'
Ingmar did Digby the courtesy of addressing him as Minister, but only in the manner that an all-powerful, regimental sergeant major might call a nineteen-year-old subaltern 'sir'.
'Uhm not really, no, Ingmar, no I don't,' a nervous Digby replied, desperately wondering what the answer was that Ingmar wanted to hear, and conscious that Ingmar could swat ministers like flies.
'Because we only grill the bacon on one bloody side!!!' Ingmar said in a voice taut with emotion. 'From a transport cafe to a four-star hotel it is considered enough that the bacon looks done. If it looks done the work-shy bastard in the kitchen reckons it is done and he's off the hook. Is a car finished without the engine? It looks finished. Is a man dressed without his underpants? He looks dressed. So why is it considered acceptable to grill the bacon only on one bloody side!!! I like my bacon crispy, damn their bloody eyes!'
'Uhm . . . perhaps you should send it back.' Digby was taking a big risk offering an opinion, but he was at a loss as to what to say.
'Don't be an arse, Minister! Send it back and have some pimply school-leaver in a big white hat phlegm up on it out of spite?' Ingmar pushed his breakfast away and called a waitress. 'Bring me a large, single malt whisky, any bloody brand, and four soluble aspirin. Right then,' he continued after the girl had gone, 'what do you want?'
'I'm sorry?' said Digby, somewhat taken aback by this abrupt enquiry.
'Come on, come on, come on, Minister, I'm a busy man, what do you want?'
Of course Digby did not like being addressed in this fashion by a civil servant, but he was as likely to object as to slam his tackle in the waffle iron which had just been placed at his elbow. Ingmar Bresslaw's power was awesome and he wielded it with the scruples of a bed bug. He was the Prime Minister's hit man, the toughest thug in Whitehall, and Ingmar's dark shadow in your door spelt terror to any member of the Government. What's more, the higher you got, the more terrifying he became, because it was his job to make sure that no-one ever got close enough to challenge his boss.
However, Digby could not help but feel rather put out and honour bound to stand up for himself.
'Uhm I'm awfully sorry, Ingmar. I mean really, sorry, but it was you who summoned me surely?' he said meekly taking a piece of toast.
'Was it? Oh yes. Don't bother buttering that toast, I haven't much to say,' replied Ingmar.
Digby had just stuck his knife into a curl of butter. His arm was stretched across the table, holding the knife. He did not know what to do for the best. Withdraw the knife, in which case the curl of butter might come away with it and Ingmar might imagine that he was being disobeyed, or else lay down the knife in the butter where it was, which would be slovenly table manners and Ingmar might feel that insufficient respect was being shown. In the end, Digby remained frozen, conducting his short interview with Ingmar Bresslaw arm outstretched across the table with his knife into the butter. Bresslaw did not notice as he did not bother to look at Digby.
'Right, Minister,' he growled, his great wet boozy eyes still staring glumly down at the bacon. 'Your speech to conference, all prepared?'
'Oh yes, Ingmar, I'm very pleased with it,' replied Digby.
'I didn't ask how you felt about it, I asked if it was bloody well prepared,' snapped Ingmar Bresslaw. 'You haven't messed about with it? Changed anything since we wrote it for you?'
'Well . . . I did add a joke,' confessed Digby.
'Ye gods, saints preserve us, a joke! What bloody joke?'
'Well . . . it's about a donkey . . .' said Digby, his arm beginning to quiver with the strain.
'Well if it's the one I've heard about the donkey, your resignation will be requested mid-speech,' said Ingmar. 'Not that I care. The point is, just make sure you don't get carried away and add anything of substance that hasn't been agreed, all right? Above all, don't mention the road plans, they're political dynamite, all right? The BritTrak stuff is quite a hot enough potato for one conference. That damn anti-road rally yesterday shows people suspect a pretty radical plan, but, as you well know, they don't know the half of it. So it's damned important how we present ourselves on this one. A silly move now would kick up a stink we couldn't handle and ruin the most important bit of legislation since we sold the NHS to American Express.' Despite the pain in his arm, Digby swelled with pride. He knew his road projects were big stuff but to have the mighty Ingmar Bresslaw speak so seriously about them was a high commendation indeed.
'So have you got that?' said Ingmar. 'Talk rail. Keep off your bloody roads. All right. Goodbye, Minister.'
'Goodbye, Ingmar,' said Digby, and he got up and left. To avoid further embarrassment he took the butter knife plus the bit of butter with him.
A WARNING IGNORED
Outside the hotel the rail lobby finally got their moment with Digby, they converged on him one step ahead of the press. They were pathetic, like beggars, they knew the Minister would give them nothing and they harried him in a defeated, dispirited fashion. Except Sandy, Sandy lobbied with cool, confident simplicity. Wearing a neat suit and dark glasses he pushed his way through the throng and confronted Digby head on.
'Minister,' he said firmly. 'I am going to say this only once so you had better listen. In your speech today, don't announce the formation of BritTrak.'
'Another bloody Scot,' thought Digby to himself, ignoring Sandy and getting into the limo. 'They're all train mad, it comes from living so bloody far from anywhere decent, that's what it is.'
CROSSED LINES
Despite the fact that he had been u
p late telling Deborah his story (and making rather a meal of it, it might be added), Geoffrey was up bright and early on Monday morning. And just as Digby was dealing with the train lobby in Brighton, Geoffrey was getting ready to phone the Office of Patents in order to get back the designs of his brilliant invention.
As has been said, the telephone was one of the great banes of Geoffrey's life. Communication is rendered infinitely more difficult when you cannot see the person to whom you are speaking and Geoffrey had to be on particularly good form to make himself understood. On this morning, what with the excitement, the loss of sleep and everything else, he wasn't.
'Urgh, urgh,' he said into the receiver on hearing that he was connected.
'Aaaargh! We've got a sicko!' screamed Dolores.
The Whitehall department Geoffrey was phoning, despite being the repository for the very latest inventions, was itself last fully refitted just after the war and it still boasted a nice old-fashioned exchange staffed by nice old-fashioned girls.
'I dunno,' she explained to her anxious colleagues' enquiries, 'he just sort of went urgh, urgh.'
'Dirty bastard,' chimed Maureen, 'probably gets his filthy kicks going urgh urgh. You shouldn't have screamed, Dolores, that's what they like. It makes 'em all excited to hear a girl scream.'
'I couldn't help it,' claimed Dolores. 'He went urgh.'
'Yes, well, you have to be strong, Dolores,' asserted Maureen. 'You owe it to other women.'
The phone rang again. Maureen answered it. 'Hello, Whitehall Office of Patents.'
'Urgh, urgh, urgh.'
'Aaaargh!' screamed Maureen, slamming the phone down. 'It's that urgh-er.'
'I thought you said don't scream,' complained Dolores. 'That wasn't very strong. Coo, I'll bet he's excited now. I'll bet he's as excited as anything. I'll bet he's rolling round on the floor rubbing himself with a washing-up glove and going urgh. You've gratified him, Maureen, that's what you've done, you've given him gratification.'
'Oh shut up, Dolores,' said Maureen.
Geoffrey summoned up all his concentration and dialled again. But this time the girls were ready for him. Maureen possessed a rape alarm and they had sworn that the very next time anyone went urgh at them, they would let him have it.
'Urgh,' said Geoffrey and an ear-shattering shriek shot out of the phone, into his ear, through his brain, out of the other ear and ricocheted against a couple of walls before finally dying down in the goldfish bowl, giving Deborah's goldfish, Jaws, a nasty turn.
Geoffrey decided he would have to wake Deborah and ask for her help. Being a student, Deborah was able, to a certain extent, to make her own timetable. Her timetable this morning had been to try and get some extra sleep, since she had got so little in the night, what with visions of imaginary burping axe murderers, followed by Geoffrey's tale of the real thing.
Deborah snapped into a bleary consciousness.
'What! Where! Don't sit on the kiwi fruit!' she said, with one of those curious lapses of logic that sleeping or half-awake people specialize in when attempting conversation. Her eyes focused on Geoffrey who had brought her a cuppa, and was endeavouring to keep it steady.
'Geoffrey! It ain't five minutes since I finally prised you off the end of my bed, now you're back. What is it, a charity thing? You get sponsored for how much you can annoy me?'
'Sorry,' he replied. 'I brought you a cup of tea.'
'What's going on? Are Murder Incorporated here? Is it curtains for us, Bugsy?'
Geoffrey explained that there was no immediate danger, and Deborah enquired, far from soothingly, why then he had woken her up after only a couple of hours' sleep, further adding that perhaps Geoffrey would like to take a hike and not return unless either the assassins or Elvis turned up.
'You have to ring the Patents Office,' said Geoffrey, proffering her the extension phone. 'I've tried but they think I'm a raving sex beast.'
'Hmm,' said Deborah, 'they may have a point. Get your eyes off my front, meathead.'
OH WHAT A NIGHT
'Get your eyes off my front, meathead' was, as might be imagined, the phrase which Deborah used when she caught Geoffrey ogling, which was often. Deborah was as pretty as a picture, and what's more, a picture of something very pretty, and Geoffrey was so hot for her you could have boiled an egg in his Y-fronts. Of course Geoffrey was hot for a lot of girls and Deborah often had to admonish him on behalf of a stranger they happened to pass. 'It's all very well taking a discreet glance,' she would say, 'but allowing your eyes to extend three feet on little springs and steam to shoot out of your ear-holes was a bit obvious.' Thoughts of sex play an enormous part in the make-up of any individual, and for young men it is close to an obsession. Geoffrey was a young man and, being, as he was, at a disadvantage when it came to asking out girls, his obsession was a nightmare. Geoffrey quite simply spent his entire life absolutely gasping for a fuck.
Obviously having a disability, even a severe one, is in no way necessarily an obstacle to leading a fulfilling sex life, but Geoffrey had never been lucky that way. In fact he had only ever had-it-off once, and that had been the result of a triumph of organization and bucking the system. It was when he was seventeen and living for a while at a special needs boarding school. There had been seven boys living in Geoffrey's dorm, all in their teens, and, as might be expected, all hornier than the brass section of the London Philharmonic.
They did not have the outlets that other young lads had, something as simple as masturbation was difficult for most of them. This problem consumed Geoffrey. His soul burned with a righteous fury over the injustice of it all. For teenage boys to be denied the chance to have a quick one off-the-wrist seemed too cruel even for one who had faced many deprivations in his short life. Something would have to be done.
Geoffrey Spasmo conceived a wicked, wicked plan. Under his direction, the entire dorm scrimped and saved for months and months and one dark and naughty night Geoffrey dug out his prized possession, a tatty copy of Penthouse, and skipping all his usual favourite pages, Cheryl, Janine, Wanda, he chose a number from the classified ads at the back.
The whole thing was a triumph. A very nice young woman arrived in a taxi, which Geoffrey met at the end of the school drive. At first she was reluctant but it would have taken a harder heart than hers to deny the longing in Geoffrey's eyes. They sneaked up to the dorm, which was now so highly charged that if the window hadn't been open the entire room would have short-circuited itself, and the girl, who according to the back of Penthouse was called Suki, got straight down to it. Providing six professional hand jobs in succession, the whole thing took about a minute and a quarter.
'I have to tell you, boys,' whispered Suki, 'that this is very easy money for me. I mean I only have to touch them and they go off.'
Finally it was Geoffrey's turn, and Suki was in a magnanimous mood. These young clients were considerably less demanding than blokes in airport hotels who wanted to do it in the wardrobe, then talk about their wives.
'All right, Geoffrey,' she said. 'How about unloading your cherry? Reckon you're up to it?'
Geoffrey wasn't sure but it would have taken a tactical nuclear strike to stop him trying. Fortunately for him, Suki was a natural born therapist.
A THEFT DISCOVERED
But that had been long ago, and there had been many years of frustration since then. Whilst at university he had thought about paying for it a second time, but it really wasn't what he wanted. That first time had been a personal triumph, a great adventure. As an adult it would just rub in his inability to take a woman to bed without paying her.
Which was why, even though he was being sought by an anonymous murderer, Geoffrey could not resist a glance at Deborah's bosom as she took the phone from him, and her nightie afforded him a tantalizing glimpse. However, having been suitably admonished, Geoffrey averted his gaze and gave Deborah the number.
'Why so urgent?' said Deborah wearily. 'I mean OK, so somebody's stolen your invention from the lab. But I mean, hey,
come on, they're not exactly going to have got it out of the Patents Office, are they?'
But Deborah and Geoffrey were in for a shock.
'I'm sorry, but I have no record of any patent submission from any Geoffrey Peason. In fact, I have no record of that name at all,' the voice said and the voice was not lying, for the cover-up had happened way above the voice's head.
On the Saturday morning, when Deirdre Whelk, the Civil Servant responsible, had discovered exactly which patent application had been stolen, she had stormed straight over to see the Minister in a fury. 'Doing a Deirdre', as her minions called it, and her minions knew to keep well out of the way. Something Digby Parkhurst was not in a position to do, since Deirdre was standing four square before his desk, fixing him with an eye that could have cut diamonds, and what's more, diamonds that were still buried half a mile deep in the granite of the Kimberley.
'Now look here, Minister,' she snapped. 'I understand that your transport people need to keep up with design developments, which is why I have been prepared in the past to allow you a look at certain items of interest which my department finds itself in possession of. But my God, they're for your eyes only!'
'Of course, Deirdre, of course they are, and only I ever see them,' Digby lied.
'Minister, the bloody thing has been stolen. Did you steal it?' Deirdre asked.
'Don't be absurd, Deirdre,' replied Digby, trying to sound statesmanlike, but actually sounding git-manlike. 'Her Majesty's Ministers do not indulge in felonies, we—'
'Oh no?' interrupted Deirdre. 'How would you describe handing on government secrets?'
'Deirdre, you're being pompous,' said Digby, being massively pompous. 'Government secrets? A paltry patent?'
'The Office of Patents is a branch of government,' snapped Deirdre. 'Its secrets are a branch of government, I have broken the law, you have broken the law and whatever sordid oil baron you snitched to has broken into my department! Now for my own sake, and for my own sake only, I am going to screw the lid down on this, Minister. But you, Minister, are a very stupid man.'