Lee
"Budgie" Barnett is a writer of comedy and of comic books. He first
broke into the business with three stories in Imperium Comics' TRAILER PARK
OF TERROR, before getting his first big break with Marvel in X-MEN UNLIMITED
#4, which hit the shelves in August 2004. Well known in the UK Comics industry
for the annual Hypotheticals panel
he devised and presents with Dave Gibbons at the UK Comics Festival, he's been
described as being to accountancy what Indiana Jones is to archaeology. He currently
writes GOING CHEEP at the Pulse.
The Guardian, 28th February 2003 A country diary, p16, Feb 17, was headed Heald Green, Cheshire. Heald Green is in Greater Manchester. The error was caused by nostalgia.
The soft natural light had left the sky, giving way to glaring neon as the signs that advertised a thousand products sent their messages out to the masses. Well, primarily to those walking through Piccadilly Circus. Under normal circumstances, Jez Docherty enjoyed looking at the signs.
To him they represented all that was normal about the world. He was convinced, various attempts to persuade him otherwise having failed, that the best way of judging the state of the world was by advertising, and the amount of it. If ever the amount spent on advertising fell, then he knew that he had a rough time coming. Conversely, when the quantity of advertising grew intensely, then he knew that his masters would be getting nervous. There was no earthly reason why he should believe this, but then he’d discovered over the years that everyone had their superstitions and why should anyone say his were any stranger than those that others held to?
And when he saw the stark neon the same as it was the previous day, he was always comforted.
But not this night. This night, Jez Docherty was worried. He walked past the signs advertising camera films, soft drinks and fast food without even pausing.
His meetings with Toster (Docherty was convinced that the family name was something else, maybe an additional ‘s’ instead of a ‘t’) and Grable had been inconclusive. About the only thing he was sure of was that one of them was lying. And if he had to, he’d have bet his salary on it being the former. But he wasn’t quite that sure yet.
Crossing the street at a fast, yet natural, pace, he came to his offices and stopped by the newspaper kiosk. He picked up a copy of the final edition of the newspaper he’d shown Grable earlier and briefly read the story on the front page. This wasn’t good, not at all. With more details coming out the whole time, how long would it be before…?
His thoughts were intruded upon by the man in the newspaper kiosk. “We’re not a bleeding library, mate,” the older man said, with a grimace, and Docherty dug in his pocket for some change. He handed it over with a muttered apology and headed for the front door of his office. The newspaper seller regarded him with jaundiced, knowing eyes, then turned away to another customer.
Docherty flashed his ID at the scanner by the door and was buzzed in.
“One of these days,” he said to the armed security guard on duty as he flashed his ID again.
“What? Old Langbridge?” laughed the security guard. “He’s like that with all you new boys.”
“New boys?” Docherty asked, raising an eyebrow. He’d been with the department a little under ten years. Although, he thought, as he took the stairs to the second floor where his office was located, Langbridge had retired before Docherty had joined. No doubt he regarded the Permanent Secretary, who’d been with the department coming up to twenty years, as a new boy as well.
He entered his office and threw his jacket at the coat stand. It landed on top of the stand and hung in a manner that suggested it was about to fall at any moment. From long experience, Docherty knew that wasn’t the case and he sat at his desk, meaning to check his email before writing his report. The yellow envelope put paid to any ideas of that nature and also, he suspected, any plans he had for that evening. A yellow envelope meant “most urgent” and “most secret”, not necessarily in that order. Docherty opened the envelope gingerly and pulled out the single sheet of paper. It was printed on pale yellow paper, which meant that it was from Head of Section.
He sighed as he read it. He had been hoping that it was going to be something minor, but the fact that it was in a ‘yellow’ should have warned him that it was a forlorn hope. He read the memo from Head of Section again, suddenly curious. It was stark and devastatingly brief: Any and all operatives with information relating to the explosion near the National Provident Bank of this date are requested and required to file a PX473 in these offices upon receipt of this memorandum.
He put the paper down and leaned back, flicking on the powerful fan behind him. A blast of cold air circulated around the room. Although smoking wasn’t banned in the office, it was frowned upon to the extent that fans were required if a cigarette was wanted. And he most certainly wanted one now.
A PX743? But why?
He pulled out his cigarettes and lit one, inhaling slowly, trying to work it out, to put the connections together. A PX743 was, at first glance, a standard document. It acknowledged that the signatory was aware of the confidential nature of the contents of the file referred to therein, and that breach of that confidentiality could lead to criminal prosecution. However, despite the ostensibly harmless nature, Docherty had only ever been aware of one department wide signing previously. And that was as a favour to the Americans.
Wait a moment…!
What was it that Grable woman had said, if only in jest? That the material had come from America? What if she’d actually been right? And it had been lost? Holy hell.
Whatever plans Docherty had for looking for the person eyewitnesses had confirmed had been soaked by the cloud suddenly took on a more urgent look. He flicked on his computer and opened up various applications, including the email. He dumped the memo and envelope in his in-tray, intending to file the paperwork later. It didn’t quite work out that way. He had seventeen emails waiting for him, but the one with the title in capitals garnered his attention. Headed MOST URGENT/TOP PRIORITY, it contained the same message as the memo, and was marked with a ‘receipt when read’ instruction. So, a couple of seconds after he’d read the damned thing, a nice message saying that he’d read it had whizzed through the internal security systems to be logged on a file. Docherty gave up the one-sided battle and left his office, heading for Head of Section’s rooms to sign the form, hoping that the stranger that had been at the scene of the abortive robbery, whoever he was, was still alive. “Urgh, I feel like death,” said Davies, as he rolled over.
“Well, you’re not quite there yet, laddie,” said a kind voice, and Davies opened his eyes to find a woman in a nurse’s uniform looking at him.
“Where…?” he managed to get out and the nurse smiled at him.
“You’re in Central London Hospital,” the nurse said, leaning to her side and lifting a telephone receiver. “Aye,” she said into the receiver, “could you page Dr Jordan? Yes, Mr Davies is awake.”
Davies looked down and saw that he was in a bed, and from what was visible over the covers, was dressed in a cotton robe. Across the room, the open door of a cupboard showed him his clothes, pressed and hanging up. He glanced around the room and saw that it was almost like a hotel room. He guessed that it was a private hospital and a quick glance at the menu card by his bed pretty much confirmed it for him. His wallet and keys were on a small table by the side of the bed, and he realised that she must have known his name from the plethora of identification he had in the wallet, everything from business cards, to credit cards, from his underground pass, to a library card. Which reminded him that he had a couple of books that were overdue for return.
I’m mad, he thought, here I am in hospital and I’m worried about bloody library cards? He shook his head to clear it and immediately regretted doing so, as his shoulder ached. He reached back towards it and the nurse stopped him.
“Not just yet, eh, Mr Davies? Just wait for the doctor.” His memory was returning and he recalled the events immediately prior to his loss of consciousness. Had he really been shot? Shot?
“Doctor Jordan will be here in a minute,” the nurse said, and as she said it, the large door opened and the woman he’d seen earlier walked in. She looked different for a moment, and then he realised that, of course, she was wearing a white coat. That and, he presumed, she’d taken the pearls off.
He was wrong though, and he saw so as she approached him and smiled at him, the pearls around her neck catching the light. He could see she was wearing the same evening clothes she’d been wearing earlier and the natural assumption was that she’d brought him to the hospital and then stayed around.
“Good evening, Mr Davies, I’m Doctor Jordan. How are you feeling?” Beth Jordan asked. “And don’t say ‘fine’.”
There must have been quizzical look on his face, as she carried on. “Well, the last time you said that was immediately after you’d flown down an alley, disarmed a mugger and been shot in the shoulder. So I can only presume you define the word ‘fine’ somewhat differently than the rest of us.” She smiled again, to take any sting out of her words and Davies knew a pang of regret, for he guessed that the man had been her husband, and the boy her child.
“How…?” he realised that his two questions so far had been single words, but he was finding it difficult to talk. He rubbed his neck and was surprised at the tenderness there.
“Erm, yes, sorry about that,” the doctor looked sheepish for a moment and Davies had no idea why. She handed him a glass of water and, after she had cautioned him about drinking too much in one swallow, he sipped at the water. It was cold, very cold and it felt wonderful going down.
“When you came in,” Jordan said, “we couldn’t detect a heartbeat, nor a pulse, but it was obvious that you were breathing. We had to stick a tube inside you to check.”
“And…?” Davies asked.
“And what?” responded the doctor.
“And what did you find?” asked Davies, delighted to finally put a sentence together. He had been wondering if he’d ever get a chance to.
“That’s the thing. We didn’t find anything. Any images we were hoping to get from your insides wouldn’t transmit through fibre optics. Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. But then we saw your shoulder and somehow things didn’t seem quite so impossible any more.” Jordan scratched her head, in a manner that Davies found curiously endearing.
Curiously fatalistic about the answer, Davies asked “what do you mean?”
“Mr Davies,” said Jordan, “before I go on, I’ve been incredibly and unforgivably rude.” Her professional demeanour wavered, as if it was making its mind up whether or not to depart and then it said to hell with it and booked a trip to Tahiti. Tears sprung to her eyes and she grasped Davies’ hand firmly. “Thank you. Thank you so much…”
Davies felt uncomfortable and wanted to take his hand back, but wasn’t sure it was appropriate. He needed to be sure what he was being thanked for. “Erm, for…?” he got as far as asking before the woman in front of him interrupted with “well, for stopping that mugging!”
His memory was still a little vague but as she told of her wonder at what he’d done, it began to creep back into his mind exactly what had happened. But one thing was bothering him. Both originally and when she repeated the tale, she’d said that he’d flown. He presumed that she was describing his running, but then she stopped him short with, “OK, let’s have a look at that back of yours. Though, mind you, it wouldn’t surprise me if you had wings!”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Doctor?”
And that was when Jordan explained to Davies that when she referred to him flying down the alley, she wasn’t using a descriptive vanity, he had actually left the ground.
And that was when he fainted again. As he fell unconscious he heard the words that were going to cause him so much trouble in the next few months:
“You know,” Doctor Jordan said, looking at her nurse, a gently mocking though exasperated tone to her voice, “you wouldn’t think a real life super-hero would faint so much, would you?” It’s been said that those who the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. It could be added that those who the gods wish to make mad, they first enjoy taking the piss out of.
At the lab, Dr Betty Grable had finally sorted out her office. A place for everything and everything in its place.
She sat back in her chair, very pleased with herself and not a little smug. She’d finally found the paper she’d been looking for. It had become stuck to the back of another sheet of paper in a 600 page report in such a way that it would have been impossible to find it unless the report had been examined page by page. And that’s what she’d done. Page by page. Sixteen such reports. And she’d looked through every one.
Still the job had been worth it. Everything was filed, and she knew where everything was.
And then the phone rang.
She looked on the desk for it, but it wasn’t there.
A place for everything? Not a problem. Everything in its place? Somewhere the gods were peeing themselves laughing.
The telephone continued its ringing while Grable started panicking about not being able to find it. She finally discovered it by tracing the telephone wire from the socket in the wall, under the carpet through to her desk. She pulled open the bottom drawer and there it was. Success! She lifted it onto the desk and pondered it for a moment, enjoying the success of the hunt. And then she picked up the receiver… at the very moment the caller decided that she’d obviously left for home and disconnected.
She uttered a very unladylike swear word and replaced the telephone in her desk, automatically thinking of that as its new home. She closed the drawer just as the phone started to ring again and this time she pulled open the drawer (having learned from last set of similar events) and snatched at the receiver. “Hello?”
“Dr Grable? Docherty here,” she heard down the line. “Wasn’t sure if you’d left yet.”
She glanced at the wall clock and was surprised at the time. “Not quite, no. But I’m just about to leave, Mr Docherty – can it wait until the morning?
“It could,” said the voice, “but I’d rather it didn’t. Have you eaten yet?”
As if prompted, her stomach rumbled loudly. She hadn’t realised quite how loudly until Docherty chimed in with “I’ll take that as a no. OK, meet me at The Ivy in an hour. I’ll book a table.”
Grable laughed. “Not that I don’t like the confidence, Mr Docherty, but you can’t just phone The Ivy and immediately get a table.”
“Doctor,” came an ominously quiet reply, “you’d be astonished what I can do with one phone call.” Then the tone lightened and he asked “An hour then, ok?”
He rung off without waiting for a reply. Grable looked at the telephone, irritated beyond belief. “And just for that,” she said, blaming the telephone, “you can stay on the desk.”
The telephone, politely, declined to respond.
Grable grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair, flicked off the light and left the building, looking forward to the meal more than she wanted to admit.
This week's artist: Jamie McKelvie Jamie McKelvie was born in London, and lives in the Arse End of Nowhere, UK. He has various projects in the pipeline, including drawing Amber Benson's story in the upcoming Four Letter Worlds anthology from Image, and Long Hot Summer with Eric Stephenson.
