The Puffin Book of Horror Stories

    'Some job. Two hours a day. Four times in two hours a bloody bell rings and I check a load of dials and write the numbers in a book that nobody needs and nobody reads. Call that a job for a trained electrician?'

    'You have a reason to get up in the morning -mates at work.'

    'Mates? I see the fore-shift when I clock on, and the back-shift when I clock off. My nearest mate is ten minutes' walk away. Where you going?'

    'Out. On my bike.'

    'You think you're so bloody clever wi' that bike. And your bloody wanderings. Why can't you stay where you were born, like everybody else?'

    'Cos I'm not like everybody else. And they're not going to make me.'

    'You want to button your lip, talking like that. Or they'll hear you.'

    'Or you'll tell them.' Then Martin saw the look on his father's face and was sorry. The old man would never do a thing like that. Not like some fathers…

    He was still staring at the card offering the vacancy when a blond kid came out and spat on the pavement with a lot of feeling.

    'Been havin' a go?' asked Martin mildly.

    'It's a con,' said the kid. 'They set you an intelligence test that would sink the Prime Minister.' He was no slouch or lout, either. Still held himself upright; switched-on blue eyes. Another lost sixth-former. 'Waste of time!'

    'I don't know…' said Martin. In school, he'd been rather sharp on intelligence tests.

    'Suit yourself,' said the blond kid, and walked away.

    Martin still hesitated. Then it started to rain, spattering his thin jeans. That settled it. The grey afternoon looked so pointless that even failing an intelligence test sounded a big thrill. Sometimes they gave you coffee…

    He walked in; the woman sitting knitting looked up, bored, plump and ginger. Pale blue eyes swam behind her spectacles like timid tropical fish.

    'What's the vacancy?'

    'Oh…just a general vacancy. Want to apply?'

    He shrugged. 'Why not?' She passed him a ballpoint and a many-paged green intelligence test.

    'Ready?' She clicked a stopwatch into action, and put it on the desk in front of her, as if she'd done it a million times before. 'Forty minutes.' He sighed with satisfaction as his ballpoint sliced into the test. It was like biting a ham sandwich, like coming home.

    An hour later, she was pushing back agitated wisps of ginger hair and speaking into the office intercom, her voice a squeak of excitement, a near-mad glint in her blue tropical-fish eyes.

    'Mr Boston - I've just tested a young man - a very high score - a very high score indeed. Highest score in months.'

    'Contain yourself, Miss Feather. What is the score?' It was a deliberately dull voice that not only killed her excitement dead as a falling pigeon, but made her pull down her plaid skirt, already well below her knees.

    'Four hundred and ninety-eight, Mr Boston.' 'Might be worth giving him a PA 52. Yes, try him with a PA 52. We've nothing better to do this afternoon.'

    PA 52 was twice as thick as the other one. As Martin took it, a little warm shiver trickled down his spine. Gratitude? To them? For what? Not rejecting him outright, like the blond kid? He smashed down the gratitude with a heavy metal fist; they'd only fail him further on. They were just playing with him. They had no job; there were no jobs. Still, he might as well get something out of his moment of triumph. 'Could I have a cup of coffee? Before I start?' 'Oh, I think we could manage a cup of coffee. You start, and I'll put it by your elbow when it's ready.' She clucked around him like she was an old mother hen, and he the only egg she'd ever laid. Smoothly, with a sense of ascending power, he began to cut through PA 52.

    'Sit down,' said Mr Boston, steepling long nicotined fingers. He consulted PA 52 slyly, slantingly. 'Erm… Martin, isn't it?'

    'Mmmm,' said Martin. He thought that Boston, with his near-religious air of relaxed guilt and pinstripe brown suit (shiny at cuff and elbow, and no doubt backside, if backside had been visible) was more like a careers officer than any employer. Employers were much better dressed, ran frantic fingers through their hair, and expected to answer the phone any minute. Still, he'd only met two employers in his life; they'd turned him down before he left school.

    'I see you're interested in working with people?'

    'Oh, yes, very,' said Martin, outwardly eager, inwardly mocking. You were taught in first-year always to say you were terribly keen on people. Jobs with machinery no longer existed; only computers talked to computers now.

    'I see leadership potential here.' Boston peered into PA 52 like it was a crystal ball. 'A lot of leadership. Do you find it easy to persuade others… your friends… to do what you want?'

    'Oh yes.' Martin thought of the copies of his underground newspaper, rolled up and pushed down the hollow tubes of his bike, ready for distribution to the various districts. Getting the newspaper team together had taken a lot of persuasion. Persuading pretty little girls to be the news-gatherers, which meant sleeping with grubby elderly civil servants for the sake of their pillowtalk. Getting the printers, with their old hand-operated cyclostyling machine, set up in a makeshift hut in the middle of Rubbishtip 379, after the spy-cameras, sprayed daily with salt water, had rusted solid and stood helpless as stuffed birds. 'Yes, I find it easy to persuade others to do what I want.'

    'Good,' said Mr Boston. He leaned forward to his intercom. 'Miss Feather - bring our friend Martin here another cup of coffee - the continental blend this time, I think.' Somewhere in the small terraced building a large electrical machine began to hum, slightly but not unpleasantly vibrating the old walls. Some percolator, Martin thought, with a slight smile. He was already starting to feel proprietorial, patronizing about this old dump.

    Boston re-steepled his fingers, and slantingly consulted PA 52 again. 'And bags of initiative… you're a good long way from home, here. Five whole districts. Have you walked? You must be fit.'

    'I've got an old bicycle…'

    'A bike? Bless my soul.' So great was Boston's surprise that he took off his spectacles, folded their arms neatly across each other, and popped them into the breast-pocket of his suit. He surveyed Martin with naked eyes, candid, weary and brown-edged as an old dog's. 'I haven't seen a bike in years, though I did my share of riding as a boy. Where did you find this bike?'

    'At the metal-eater. Had to build it up from bits.'

    Mr Boston's excitement was now so great that he had to put his spectacles on again. 'Yes, yes, your mechanical aptitude and manual dexterity show up here on PA 52. And your patience. But…' and his voice fell like the Telly preacher's when he came to the Sins of the Flesh, 'it wasn't awfully honest, was it, taking that bike away from the metal-eater? It already belonged to the State…'

    Martin's heart sank. This was the point where the job interview fell apart. Even before he got his second cup of coffee. It had been going so well… but he knew better than to try to paper over the cracks. He hardened his heart and got up.

    'Stuff the State,' he said, watching Boston's eyes for the expression of shock that would be the last pay-off of this whole lousy business.

    But Boston didn't looked shocked. He took off his spectacles and waved them; a look of boyish glee suffused his face.

    'Stuff the State… exactly. Well, not exactly…' he corrected himself with an effort. 'We all depend upon the State, but we know it isn't omniscient. To the mender of washing-machines, the State supplies split-pins at a reasonable price, within a reasonable time. But suppose our supply of split-pins has run out already; because we imprudently neglected to reorder in time? We still want our split-pins now - even if we have to pay twice the legal price. That is my… our… little business. Greasing the wheels of State, as I always tell my wife (who is a director of our little firm).' He polished his spectacles enthusiastically with a little stained brown