Текст книги "The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul"
Автор книги: Douglas Noel Adams
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«Hello,» she said, meaningfully.
Dirk was as gracious as he knew how.
He bowed to her very politely, doffed his hat, since all this gave him a second or so to recover himself, and requested her permission to sit down.
«Go ahead,» she said, «it's your table.» She gestured magnanimously.
She was small, her hair was neat and dark, she was in her mid-twenties, and was looking quizzically at the half-empty cup of coffee in the middle of the table.
Dirk sat down opposite her and leant forward conspiratorially. «I expeg,» he said in a low voice, «you are enquirigg after your coffee.»
«You betcha,» said the girl.
«Id very bad for you, you dow.»
«Is it?»
«Id id. Caffeide. Cholethderog in the milgg.»
«I see, so it was just my health you were thinking of.»
«I was thiggigg of meddy thiggs,» said Dirk airily.
«You saw me sitting at the next table and you thought „There's a nice-looking girl with her health in ruins. Let me save her from herself“.»
«In a nudthell.»
«Do you know you've broken your nose?»
«Yeth, of courth I do,» said Dirk crossly. «Everybody keepth» —
«How long ago did you break it?» the girl asked.
«Id wad broked for me,» said Dirk, «aboud tweddy middidd ago.»
«I thought so,» said the girl. «Close your eyes for a moment.»
Dirk looked at her suspiciously.
«Why?»
«It's all right,» she said with a smile, «I'm not going to hurt you. Now close them.»
With a puzzled frown, Dirk closed his eyes just for a moment. In that moment the girl reached over and gripped him firmly by the nose, giving it a sharp twist. Dirk nearly exploded with pain and howled so loudly that he almost attracted the attention of a waiter.
«You widge!» he yelled, staggering wildly back from the table clutching his face. «You double-dabbed widge!»
«Oh, be quiet and sit down,» she said. «All right, I lied about it not going to hurt you, but at least it should be straight now, which will save you a lot worse later on. You should get straight round to a hospital to have some splints and padding put on. I'm a nurse, I know what I'm doing. Or at least, I think I do. Let's have a look at you.»
Panting and spluttering, Dirk sat down once more, his hands cupped round his nose. After a few long seconds he began to prod it tenderly again and then let the girl examine it.
She said, «My name's Sally Mills, by the way. I usually try to introduce myself properly before physical intimacy takes place, but sometimes,» she sighed, «there just isn't time.»
Dirk ran his fingers up either side of his nose again.
«I thigg id id trader,» Dirk said at last.
«Straighter,» Sally said. «Say „straighter“ properly. It'll help you feel better.»
«Straighter,» said Dirk. «Yed. I thee wad you mead.»
«What?»
«I see what you mead.»
«Good,» she said with a sigh of relief, «I'm glad that worked. My horoscope this morning said that virtually everything I decided today would be wrong.»
«Yes, well you don't want to believe all that rubbish,» said Dirk sharply.
«I don't,» said Satly.
«Particularly not The Great Zaganza.»
«Oh, you read it too, did you?»
«No. That is, well, not for the same reason.»
«My reason was that a patient asked me to read his horoscope to him this morning just before he died. What was yours?»
«Er, a very complicated one.»
«I see,» said Sally, sceptically. «What's this?»
«It's a calculator,» said Dirk. «Well, look, I mustn't keep you. I am indebted to you, my dear lady, for the tenderness of your ministrations and the loan of your coffee, but lo! the day wears on, and I am sure you have a heavy schedule of grievous bodily harm to attend to.»
«Not at all. I came off night duty at nine o'clock this morning, and all I have to do all day is keep awake so that I can sleep normally tonight. I have nothing better to do than to sit around talking to strangers in cafs. You, on the other hand, should get yourself to a casualty department as soon as possible. As soon as you've paid my bill, in fact.»
She leant over to the table she had originally been sitting at and picked up the running-total lying by her plate. She looked at it, shaking her head disapprovingly.
«Five cups of coffee, I'm afraid. It was a long night on the wards. All sorts of comings and goings in the middle of it. One patient in a coma who had to be moved to a private hospital in the early hours. God knows why it had to be done at that time of night. Just creates unnecessary trouble. I wouldn't pay for the second croissant if I were you. I ordered it but it never came.»
She pushed the bill across to Dirk who picked it up with a reluctant sigh.
«Inordinate,» he said, «larcenously inordinate. And, in the circumstances, adding a 15 per cent service charge is tantamount to jeering at you. I bet they won't even bring me a knife.»
He turned and tried, without any real hope of success, to summon any of the gaggle of waiters lounging among the sugar bowls at the back.
Sally Mills took her bill and Dirk's and attempted to add them up on Dirk's calculator.
«The total seems to come to „A Suffusion of Yellow“,» she said.
«Thank you, I'll take that,» said Dirk turning bask crossly and relieving her of the electronic I Ching set which he put into his pocket. He resumed his hapless waving at the tableau of waiters.
«What do you want a knife for, anyway?» asked Sally.
«To open this,» said Dirk, waggling the large, heavily Sellotaped envelope at her.
«I'll get you one,» she said. A young man sitting on his own at another nearby table was looking away at that moment, so Sally quickly leaned across and nabbed his knife.
«I am indebted to you,» said Dirk and put out his hand to take the knife from her.
She held it away from him.
«What's in the envelope?» she said.
«You are an extremely inquisitive and presumptuous young lady,» exclaimed Dirk.
«And you,» said Sally Mills, «are very strange.»
«Only,» said Dirk, «as strange as I need to be.»
«Humph,» said Sally. «What's in the envelope?» She still wouldn't give him the knife.
«The envelope is not yours,» proclaimed Dirk, «and its contents are not your concern.»
«It looks very interesting though. What's in it?»
«Well, I won't know till I've opened it!»
She looked at him suspiciously, then snatched the envelope from him.
«I insist that you» – expostulated Dirk, incompletely.
«What's your name?» demanded Sally.
«My name is Gently. Mr Dirk Gently.»
«And not Geoffrey Anstey, or any of these other names that have been crossed out?» She frowned, briefly, looking at them.
«No,» said Dirk. «Certainly not.»
«So you mean the envelope is not yours either?»
«I – that is» —
«Aha! So you are also being extremely… what was it?»
«Inquisitive and presumptuous. I do not deny it. But I am a private detective. I am paid to be inquisitive and presumptuous. Not as often or copiously as I would wish, but I am nevertheless inquisitive and presumptuous on a professional basis.»
«How sad. I think it's much more fun being inquisitive and presumptuous as a hobby. So you are a professional while I am merely an amateur of Olympic standard. You don't look like a private detective.»
«No private detective looks like a private detective. That's one of the first rules of private detection.»
«But if no private detective looks like a private detective, how does a private detective know what it is he's supposed not to look like? Seems to me there's a problem there.»
«Yes, but it's not one that keeps me awake at nights,» said Dirk in exasperation. «Anyway, I am not as other private detectives. My methods are holistic and, in a very proper sense of the word, chaotic. I operate by investigating the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.»
Sally Mills merely blinked at him.
«Every particle in the universe,» continued Dirk, warming to his subject and beginning to stare a bit, «affects every other particle, however faintly or obliquely. Everything interconnects with everything. The beating of a butterfly's wings in China can affect the course of an Atlantic hurricane. If I could interrogate this table-leg in a way that made sense to me, or to the table-leg, then it could provide me with the answer to any question about the universe. I could ask anybody I liked, chosen entirely by chance, any random question I cared to think of, and their answer, or lack of it, would in some way bear upon the problem to which I am seeking a solution. It is only a question of knowing how to interpret it. Even you, whom I have met entirely by chance, probably know things that are vital to my investigation, if only I knew what to ask you, which I don't, and if only I could be bothered to, which I can't.»
He paused, and said, «Please will you let me have the envelope and the knife?»
«You make it sound as if someone's life depends on it.»
Dirk dropped his eyes for a moment.
«I rather think somebody's life did depend on it,» he said. He said it in such a way that a cloud seemed to pass briefly over them.
Sally Mills relented and passed the envelope and the knife over to Dirk. A spark seemed to go out of her.
The knife was too blunt and the Sellotape too thickly applied. Dirk struggled with it for a few seconds but was unable to slice through it. He sat back in his seat feeling tired and irritable.
He said, «I'll go and ask them if they've got anything sharper,» and stood up, clutching the envelope.
«You should go and get your nose fixed,» said Sally Mills quietly.
«Thank you,» said Dirk and bowed very slightly to her.
He picked up the bills and set out to visit the exhibition of waiters mounted at the rear of the cafe. He encountered a certain coolness when he was disinclined to augment the mandatory 15 per cent service charge with any voluntary additional token of his personal appreciation, and was told that no, that was the only type of knife they had and that's all there was to it.
Dirk thanked them and walked back through the caf.
Sitting in his seat talking to Sally Mills was the young man whose knife she had purloined. He nodded to her, but she was deeply engrossed in conversation with her new friend and did not notice.
«…in a coma,» she was saying, «who had to be moved to a private hospital in the early hours. God knows why it had to be done at that time of night. Just creates unnecessary trouble. Excuse me rabbiting on, but the patient had his own personal Coca-Cola machine and sledge-hammer with him, and that sort of thing is all very well in a private hospital, but on a shortstaffed NHS ward it just makes me tired, and I talk too much when I'm tired. If I suddenly fall insensible to the floor, would you let me know?»
Dirk walked on, and then noticed that Sally Mills had left the book she had been reading on her original table, and something about it caught his attention.
It was a large book, called Run Like the Devil. In fact it was extremely large and a little dog-eared, looking more like a puff pastry cliff than a book. The bottom half of the cover featured the normal woman– in– cocktail– dress– framed– in– the– sights – of – a – gun, while the top half was entirely taken up with the author's name, Howard Bell, embossed in silver.
Dirk couldn't immediately work out what it was about the book that had caught his eye, but he knew that some detail of the cover had struck a chord with him somewhere. He gave a circumspect glance at the girl whose coffee he had purloined, and whose five coffees and two croissants, one undelivered and uneaten, he had subsequently paid for. She wasn't looking, so he purloined her book as well and slipped it into the pocket of his leather coat.
He stepped out on to the street, where a passing eagle swooped out of the sky at him, nearly forcing him into the path of a cyclist, who cursed and swore at him from a moral high ground that cyclists alone seem able to inhabit.
Chapter 11
Into the well-kempt grounds that lay just on the outskirts of a well-kempt village on the fringes of the well-kempt Cotswolds turned a less than well-kempt car.
It was a battered yellow Citroën 2CV which had had one careful owner but also three suicidally reckless ones. It made its way up the driveway with a reluctant air as if all it asked for from life was to be tipped into a restful ditch in one of the adjoining meadows and there allowed to settle in graceful abandonment, instead of which here it was being asked to drag itself all the way up this long gravelled drive which it would no doubt soon be called upon to drag itself all the way back down again, to what possible purpose it was beyond its wit to imagine.
It drew to a halt in front of the elegant stone entrance to the main building, and then began to trundle slowly backwards again until its occupant yanked on the handbrake, which evoked from the car a sort of strangled «eek».
A door flopped open, wobbling perilously on its one remaining hinge, and there emerged from the car a pair of the sort of legs which soundtrack editors are unable to see without needing to slap a smoky saxophone solo all over, for reasons which no one besides soundtrack editors has ever been able to understand. In this particular case, however, the saxophone would have been silenced by the proximity of the kazoo which the same soundtrack editor would almost certainly have slapped all over the progress of the vehicle.
The owner of the legs followed them in the usual manner, closed the car door tenderly, and then made her way into the building.
The car remained parked in front of it.
After a few minutes a porter came out and examined it, adopted a disapproving manner and then, for lack of anything more positive to do, went back in.
A short time later, Kate was shown into the office of Mr Ralph Standish, the Chief Consultant Psychologist and one of the directors of the Woodshead Hospital, who was just completing a telephone conversation.
«Yes, it is true,» he was saying, «that sometimes unusually intelligent and sensitive children can appear to be stupid. But, Mrs Benson, stupid children can sometimes appear to be stupid as well. I think that's something you might have to consider. I know it's very painful, yes. Good day, Mrs Benson.»
He put the phone away into a desk drawer and spent a couple of seconds collecting his thoughts before looking up.
«This is very short notice, Miss, er, Schechter,» he said to her at last.
In fact what he had said was, «This is ve short notice, Miss, er»– and then he had paused and peered into another of his desk drawers before saying «Schechter».
It seemed to Kate that it was very odd to keep your visitors' names in a drawer, but then he clearly disliked having things cluttering up his fine, but severely designed, black ash desk because there was nothing on it at all. It was completely blank, as was every other surface in his office. There was nothing on the small neat steel and glass coffee table which sat squarely between two Barcelona chairs. There was nothing on top of the two expensive-looking filing cabinets which stood at the back of the room.
There were no bookshelves – if there were any books they were presumably hidden away behind the white doors of the large blank built-in cupboards – and although there was one plain black picture frame hanging on the wall, this was presumably a temporary aberration because there was no picture in it.
Kate looked around her with a bemused air.
«Do you have no ornaments in here at all, Mr Standish?» she asked.
He was, for a moment, somewhat taken aback by her transatlantic directness, but then answered her.
«Indeed I have ornaments,» he said; and pulled open another drawer. He pulled out from this a small china model of a kitten playing with a ball of wool and put it firmly on the desk in front of him.
«As a psychologist I am aware of the important role that ornamentation plays in nourishing the human spirit,» he pronounced.
He put the china kitten back in the drawer and slid it closed with a smooth click.
«Now.»
He clasped his hands together on the desk in front of him, and looked at her enquiringly.
«It's very good of you to see me at short notice, Mr Standish» —
«Yes, yes, we've established that.»
«– but I'm sure you know what newspaper deadlines are like.»
«I know at least as much as I would ever care to know about newspapers, Miss, er» —
He opened his drawer again.
«Miss Schechter, but» —
«Well that's partly what made me approach you,» lied Kate charmingly. «I know that you have suffered from some, well, unfortunate publicity here, and thought you might welcome the opportunity to talk about some of the more enlightening aspects of the work at the Woodshead Hospital.» She smiled very sweetly.
«It's only because you come to me with the highest recommendation from my very good friend and colleague Mr, er» —
«Franklin, Alan Franklin,» prompted Kate, to save the psychologist from having to open his drawer again. Alan Franklin was a therapist whom Kate had seen for a few sessions after the loss of her husband Luke. He had warned her that Standish, though brilliant, was also peculiar, even by the high standards set by his profession.
«Franklin,» resumed Standish, «that I agreed to see you. Let me warn you instantly that if I see any resumption of this „Something nasty in the Woodshead“ mendacity appearing in the papers as a result of this interview I will, I will» —
«– do such things -
What they are yet I know not – but they shall be
The terror of the Earth», said Kate, brightly.
Standish narrowed his eyes.
«Lear, Act 2, Scene 4», he said. «And I think you'll find it's „terrors“ and not „terror“.»
«Do you know, I think you're right?» replied Kate.
Thank you, Alan, she thought. She smiled at Standish, who relaxed into pleased superiority. It was odd, Kate reflected, that people who needed to bully you were the easiest to push around.
«So you would like to know precisely what, Miss Schechter?»
«Assume,» said Kate, «that I know nothing.»
Standish smiled, as if to signify that no assumption could possibly give him greater pleasure.
«Very well,» he said. «The Woodshead is a research hospital. We specialise in the care and study of patients with unusual or previously unknown conditions, largely in the psychological or psychiatric fields. Funds are raised in various ways. One of our chief methods is quite simply to take in private patients at exorbitantly high fees, which they are happy to pay, or at least happy to complain about. There is in fact nothing to complain about because patients who come to us privately are made fully aware of why our fees are so high. For the money they are paying, they are, of course, perfectly entitled to complain – the right to complain is one of the privileges they are paying for. In some cases we come to a special arrangement under which, in return for being made the sole beneficiaries of a patient's estate, we will guarantee to look after that patient for the rest of his or her life.»
«So in effect you are in the business of giving scholarships to people with particularly gifted diseases?»
«Exactly. A very good way of expressing it. We are in the business of giving scholarships to people with particularly gifted diseases. I must make a note of that. Miss Mayhew!»
He had opened a drawer, which clearly contained his office intercom. In response to his summons one of the cupboards opened, and turned out to be a door into a side office – a feature which must have appealed to some architect who had conceived an ideological dislike of doors. From this office there emerged obediently a thin and rather blank-faced woman in her mid-forties.
«Miss Mayhew,» said Mr Standish, «we are in the business of giving scholarships to people with particularly gifted diseases.»
«Very good, Mr Standish,» said Miss Mayhew, and retreated backwards into her office, pulling the door closed after her. Kate wondered if it was perhaps a cupboard after all.
«And we do have some patients with some really quite outstanding diseases at the moment,» enthused the psychologist. «Perhaps you would care to come and see one or two of our current stars?»
«Indeed I would. That would be most interesting, Mr Standish, you're very kind,» said Kate.
«You have to be kind in this job,» Standish replied, and flicked a smile on and off at her.
Kate was trying to keep some of the impatience she was feeling out of her manner. She did not take to Mr Standish, and was beginning to feel that there was a kind of Martian quality to him. Furthermore, the only thing she was actually interested in was discovering whether or not the hospital had accepted a new admission in the early hours of the morning, and if so, where he was and whether she could see him.
She had originally tried the direct approach but had been rebuffed by a mere telephone receptionist on the grounds that she didn't have a name to ask for. Simply asking if they had any tall, well-built, blond men in residence had seemed to create entirely the wrong impression. At least, she insisted to herself that it was entirely the wrong impression. A quick phone call to Alan Franklin had set her up for this altogether more subtle approach.
«Good!» A look of doubt passed momentarily over Mr Standish's face, and he summoned Miss Mayhew from out of her cupboard again.
«Miss Mayhew, that last thing I just said to you» —
«Yes, Mr Standish?»
«I assume you realised that I wished you to make a note of it for me?»
«No, Mr Standish, but I will be happy to do so.»
«Thank you,» said Mr Standish with a slightly tense look. «And tidy up in here please. The place looks a» —
He wanted to say that the place looked a mess, but was frustrated by its air of clinical sterility.
«Just tidy up generally,» he concluded.
«Yes, Mr Standish.»
The psychologist nodded tersely, brushed a non-existent speck of dust off the top of his desk, flicked another brief smile on and off at Kate and then escorted her out of his office into the corridor which was immaculately laid with the sort of beige carpet which gave everyone who walked on it electric shocks.
«Here, you see,» said Standish, indicating part of the wall they were walking past with an idle wave of his hand, but not making it in any way clear what it was he wished her to see or what she was supposed to understand from it.
«And this,» he said, apparently pointing at a door hinge.
«Ah,» he added, as the door swung open towards them. Kate was alarmed to find herself giving a little expectant start every time a door opened anywhere in this place. This was not the sort of behaviour she expected of a worldly-wise New Yorker journalist, even if she didn't actually live in New York and only wrote travel articles for magazines. It still was not right for her to be looking for large blond men every time a door opened.
There was no large blond man. There was instead a small, sandy-haired girl of about ten years old, being pushed along in a wheelchair. She seemed very pale, sick and withdrawn, and was murmuring something soundlessly to herself. Whatever it was she was murmuring seemed to cause her worry and agitation, and she would flop this way then that in her chair as if trying to escape from the words coming out of her mouth. Kate was instantly moved by the sight of her, and on an impulse asked the nurse who was pushing her along to stop.
She squatted down to look kindly into the girl's face, which seemed to please the nurse a little, but Mr Standish less so.
Kate did not try to demand the girl's attention, merely gave her an open and friendly smile to see if she wanted to respond, but the girl seemed unwilling or unable to. Her mouth worked away endlessly, appearing almost to lead an existence that was independent of the rest of her face.
Now that Kate looked at her more closely it seemed that she looked not so much sick and withdrawn as weary, harassed and unutterably fed up. She needed a little rest, she needed peace, but her mouth kept motoring on.
For a fleeting instant her eyes caught Kate's, and the message Kate received was along the lines of «I'm sorry but you'll just have to excuse me while all this is going on». The girl took a deep breath, half-closed her eyes in resignation and continued her relentless silent murmuring.
Kate leant forward a little in an attempt to catch any actual words, but she couldn't make anything out. She shot an enquiring look up at Standish.
He said, simply, «Stock market prices.»
A look of amazement crept over Kate's face.
Standish added with a wry shrug, «Yesterday's, I'm afraid.»
Kate flinched at having her reaction so wildly misinterpreted, and hurriedly looked back at the girl in order to cover her confusion.
«You mean,» she said, rather redundantly, «she's just sitting here reciting yesterday's stock market prices?» The girl rolled her eyes past Kate's.
«Yes,» said Standish. «It took a lip reader to work out what was going on. We all got rather excited, of course, but then closer examination revealed that they were only yesterday's which was a bit of a disappointment. Not that significant a case really. Aberrant behaviour. Interesting to know why she does it, but» —
«Hold on a moment,» said Kate, trying to sound very interested rather than absolutely horrified, «are you saying that she is reciting – what? – the closing prices over and over, or» —
«No. That's an interesting feature of course. She pretty much keeps pace with movements in the market over the course of a whole day. Just twenty-four hours out of step.»
«But that's extraordinary, isn't it?»
«Oh yes. Quite a feat.»
«A feat?»
«Well, as a scientist, I have to take the view that since the information is freely available, she is acquiring it through normal channels. There's no necessity in this case to invent any supernatural or paranonnal dimension. Occam's razor. Shouldn't needlessly multiply entities.»
«But has anyone seen her studying the newspapers, or copying stuff down over the phone?»
She looked up at the nurse, who shook her head, dumbly.
«No, never actually caught her at it,» said Standish. «As I said, it's quite a feat. I'm sure a stage magician or memory man could tell you how it was done.»
«Have you asked one?»
«No. Don't hold with such people.»
«But do you really think that she could possibly be doing this deliberately?» insisted Kate.
«Believe me, if you understood as much about people as I do, Miss, er – you would believe anything,» said Standish, in his most professionally reassuring tone of voice.
Kate stared into the tired, wretched face of the young girl and said nothing.
«You have to understand,» said Standish, «that we have to be rational about this. If it was tomorrow's stock market prices, it would be a different story. That would be a phenomenon of an entirely different character which would merit and demand the most rigorous study. And I'm sure we'd have no difficulty in funding the research. There would be absolutely no problem about that.»
«I see,» said Kate, and meant it.
She stood up, a little stiftly, and brushed down her skirt.
«So,» she said, and felt ashamed of herself, «who is your newest patient? Who has arrived most recently, then?» She shuddered at the crassness of the non sequitur, but reminded herself that she was there as a journalist, so it would not seem odd.
Standish waved the nurse and the wheelchair with its sad charge on their way. Kate glanced back at the girl once, and then followed Standish through the swing-doors and into the next section of corridor, which was identical to the previous one.
«Here, you see,» said Standish again, this time apparently in relation to a window frame.
«And this,» he said, pointing at a light.
He had obviously either not heard her question or was deliberately ignoring it. Perhaps, thought Kate, he was simply treating it with the contempt it deserved.
It suddenly dawned on her what all this Here you see, and And thising was about. He was asking her to admire the quality of the decor. The windows were sashes, with finely made and beautifully painted beads; the light fittings were of a heavy dull metal, probably nickel-plated – and so on.
«Very fine,» she said accommodatingly, and then noticed that this had sounded an odd thing to say in her American accent.
«Nice place you've got here,» she added, thinking that that would please him.
It did. He allowed himself a subdued beam of pleasure.
«We like to think of it as a quality caring environment,» he said.
«You must get a lot of people wanting to come here,» Kate continued, plugging away at her theme. «How often do you admit new patients? When was the last —?»
With her left hand she carefully restrained her right hand which wanted to strangle her at this moment.
A door they were passing was slightly ajar, and she tried, unobtrusively, to look in.
«Very well, we'll take a look in here,» said Standish immediately, pushing the door fully open, on what transpired to be quite a small room.
«Ah yes,» Standish said, recognising the occupant. He ushered Kate in.
The occupant of the room was another non-large, non-blond person. Kate was beginning to find the whole visit to be something of an emotionally wearing experience, and she had a feeling that things were not about to ease up in that respect.
The man sitting in the bedside chair while his bed was being made up by a hospital orderly was one of the most deeply and disturbingly tousled people that Kate had ever seen. In fact it was only his hair that was tousled, but it was tousled to such an extreme degree that it seemed to draw all of his long face up into its distressed chaos.
He seemed quite content to sit where he was, but there was something tremendously vacant about his contentedness – he seemed literally to be content about nothing. There was a completely empty space hanging in the air about eighteen inches in front of his face, and his contentedness, if it sprang from anything, sprang from staring at that.
There was also a sense that he was waiting for something. Whether it was something that was about to happen at any moment, or something that was going to happen later in the week, or even something that was going to happen some little while after hell iced over and British Telecom got the phones fixed was by no means apparent because it seemed to be all the same to him. If it happened he was ready for it and if it didn't – he was content.
