KILROY WAS HERE


PART ONE


STILL LIFE WITH JOINT AND GIN BOTTLE


1:THE HAPPY HOUSE DISHWASHER SERVICE CORPORATION


Spring 1995
The North of England


   If Kevin Kilroy had one ambition in the world, it was to work for the Happy House Dishwasher Service Corporation. They seemed like his kind of people: lazy, incompetent fuck-ups who didn't care who knew it.
   Kevin had more verbal and emotional contact with the operatives of the Happy House Dishwasher Service Corporation than with any other members of the human race. At least twice a week they came to the house when his mother was out, to lie, bluster, and refuse point blank to lay hands on the recalcitrant dishwasher skulking under the sideboard. They had first entered his life on a fine spring morning almost a year ago, when he'd only been unemployed six months. He had unexpectedly awoken that day more than an hour before his mother was due back for lunch, and was wondering whether the time he had alone in the house would be most profitably spent in having a bath, having a joint, or having a wank, and had just decided on a daring if rather unhygienic combination of all three, when there was a knock at the kitchen door. He answered it and found a sullen, rather simian man in overalls standing outside.
  "Happy House Dishwasher Service Corporation," the man said gruffly. "Come to mend your dishwasher."
  Kevin invited him in. The man entered the kitchen slowly and reluctantly, as if fearing a trap, then looked all around it uncertainly.
  "Where's the dishwasher, then?" he asked.
  "That would be the dishwasher there," said Kevin pointing.
  "Oh. Oh yes." A sickly grimace on his face, the repairman approached the dishwasher cautiously and bent to give it a closer inspection. "But this is a GX30!" he cried in dismay.
  "Does that make a difference?"
  "Of course it makes a difference!" yelped the repairman. "Of course it makes a difference! Nobody told me it was a GX30!I don't know what they expect me to do with this. It says GX31 on the invoice, see?" He held up a grubby piece of paper and pointed at it with a grubby thumb.
  "So it does," said Kevin.
  The repairman nodded triumphantly. "So they sent me out to repair a 31 and now you're telling me I'm expected to repair a 30."
  "I see the problem."
   The repairman sighed and shook his head. "What's supposed to be up with it?"
  "It doesn't drain properly and there's a wheel out of skew on the dish-rack."
  The repairman smiled wryly and nodded to himself.
  "Two jobs." He flicked the invoice with a fingernail. "It says one on here. Typical. I come out here to do one job on a 31 and they expect me to do two on a 30." He shook his head and picked up his toolbox and was obviously preparing to leave.
  Kevin was delighted. He had seen people like this in old films but hadn't thought they existed any more.
  "Aren't you even going to look at it?" he marvelled. "Only she seems to have been expecting you for weeks."
  The repairman turned and stared at him for almost a minute, taking noisy, violent breaths through flared nostrils and chewing his lower lip, hands on hips.
  "I can look at it," he said finally. "I can look at it, if that's what you want. But what they expect me to do with a 30..."
  He knelt down in front of the machine and gingerly touched it. After a small amount of difficulty he managed to open it.
  "Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?" asked Kevin, watching curiously as the repairman withdrew a small hammer from his toolbox and started to tap experimentally at something in the back of the dishwasher.
  "Tea please. Actually," he said brightening, "it's not all that different from a GX31. No promises, but I'll see what I can do."
  Kevin made the tea and went out to watch Richard and Judy. The engineer seemed much happier in his work. Kevin heard hammering and yodelling.
  When he went back an hour later the dishwasher was in mid-cycle and the repairman was beaming, obviously well-pleased with the fruit of his toil.
  "Good as new," he grinned, nudging Kevin playfully. "I had to take the bastard apart bit by bit and build it back up again, but I got it in the end. No different from a 31."
  Kevin smiled companionably and nodded at a dishwasher part that was standing on the sink.
  "Did you have to replace that thing?"
  "What thing?" The engineer glanced at the component in surprise. A frown of self-doubt passed across his face and left again. "Oh, that. No, that's nothing. That's just a bit left over. There's always a bit left over."
  Kevin considered this. "Er...shouldn't you put it back inside?"
  "Nah. Get by without one of those. Like an appendix. It doesn't really do anything."
  The engineer started to pack up his toolbox, sloshing through the growing puddle of evil-smelling froth that was seeping out all over the kitchen floor.
  "Should it be leaking like that?" Kevin felt it incumbent upon him to ask.
  "Um?" The engineer looked at the pool thoughtfully. "Oh - that'll probably put itself right in time. You'll have to accept that there's always going to be a bit of that. Sign here, please. By the way, the dishrack broke off. You'll need a new one. Bye."
  He didn't know it then, but it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Over the months to come Kevin conceived an immense fondness for the Happy House Dishwasher Service Corporation and its agents. In this day of consumers' charters, managerial ruthlessness and the rule of market forces, he came to feel they represented a last bastion of endearing amateurishness and good old inefficient British working practices, unsullied by the counting-house values of Thatcherism. The Happy House code of practice was to forestall everything as long as possible; their motto was never put off until tomorrow anything that could be put off until a week on Friday. The initial stalling tactic was simply to keep postponing the engineer's visit. At 5.25 on whatever day he was expected, a cretinous-sounding woman from head office would ring up and explain that their operative would be unable to keep his appointment, usually offering as an excuse some heart-rending personal tragedy - the engineer's mother being run over, for example - and offer to reschedule for the week after next. The engineer would then appear a random number of days after the appointment fell due - if it was the day for which he had been promised it was purely accidental. On one occasion the cretinous woman had rung to say that an engineer would not be coming when there was one already in the kitchen taking the machine to pieces.
  "But he's here now," said Kevin.
  "The engineer will not be coming today," the woman insisted. "He had to take his cat to be put down. He might come next week, but not today."
  This was Rule 2 of the Happy House training manual in operation: deny everything.
  "What seems to be the trouble?" a sullen young engineer inquired of Kevin as he slouched in one afternoon picking his arse.
  "The drainage-pipe, remember?You were round here last week and you said you had to get a new drainage-pipe."
  The engineer bridled and looked Kevin up and down angrily.
  "I've never seen you before in my life," he averred.
  Having to requisition new parts was another frequent Happy House delaying gambit - although all employees drove round in huge vans, they made it a point of honour never to carry parts with them - necessitating delays of several weeks at a time, which were routinely extended further when it was discovered that the wrong part had been shipped out from the firm's apparently antipodean storehouses. In the intervening period a succession of different engineers would turn up at the house almost daily, secure in the knowledge that they could not be called upon to fix anything, to confirm the diagnosis, poking around in the machine with great confidence and then explaining at length over coffee and biscuits how their hands were tied without the missing piece. When the part eventually arrived they would usually manage to fit it wrongly or fit it correctly but break something else off in the process; either that or the machine would succumb to a completely different ailment the following day and the whole routine would begin again from square one.
  What increased Kevin's fascination with this spectacle tenfold was the fact that his mother was a veritable Boadicea among consumer rights activists, a kind of junior league Ralph Nader whose name was legend in the complaints departments of at least a dozen major companies, who had never before been subjected to such systematic tardiness and ineptitude and so signally failed to gain redress or the slightest hint of penitence. A single letter of hers to the people who repaired the washing machine, referring to an employee who had arrived a day late and failed to wipe his boots before entering, had brought a junior vice-president of the company scurrying round to apologize in person and present coupons entitling her to a year's supply of free washing powder. After being overcharged for a meal in a roadside cafe during a weekend break in Ireland she had, following a protracted campaign of letters to such personages as the Irish Minister for Tourism, the British Ambassador, and Jack Charlton, been compensated with a two-week holiday as the guest of the Irish government and an assurance that the place would be closed down forthwith. If any other company had done to her what Happy House had done, she would have ended up owning them. In Happy House, however, she had met her match, and from them not one iota of contrition could she extract.
  Her letters went unanswered and her irate phone-calls were calmly fielded by the cretinous woman with inane homework-excuse explanations and empty promises. Once when she'd been waiting a month for a repairman with nothing to show for it apart from a brief teasing glimpse of one who had pulled up outside, eaten a pork pie in his van, and driven off again, Kevin's mother had flipped and screamed harridan-tongued abuse at the cretinous woman over the phone for an hour. Eventually she succeeded in being put through to someone in higher authority named Paul Stockton and, after an interminable period of further abuse and various threats, wrung a promise from him that an engineer would be round as soon as humanly possible and that there would be no charge for his services.
  The following day, Kevin answered the door to an individual in Happy House livery who, even by their standards, was a paragon of moroseness, surly resentment, belligerent apathy, and bad posture. After slumping heavily down in a chair and yawning loudly, he fell to perusing the warranty and Kevin's mother's written in structions as to what needed doing, raking raspingly through his chin stubble with a thumbnail. Suddenly, a gleam of fugitive hope and animation sparked in his eyes and they darted about the room.
  "Where's the money?" he demanded. "This isn't covered by the warranty. I need a £28 call-out fee before I open me box."
  "It's free," said Kevin. "The manager said so."
  The man sneered in disbelief. "Free? Why?"
  "Because you're crap. She's been waiting for you a month so the manager said it was free."
  "He wouldn't say a thing like that," said the man, happily picking up his box. "Bye."
  Kevin, who had been given to understand that his own continued residence in the house depended on his not letting the man leave without fixing the machine, manouevred between him and the door.
  "If there's any problem you're to call Paul Stockton," he said.
  "Who's he?"
  "Your manager."
  "Never heard of him."
  After a certain amount of pleading, cajoling, swearing, and manhandling, Kevin succeeded in getting the man to the phone. Glaring poisonously at Kevin, he dialled his office.
  "Hello Brenda? Is there a Paul Stockton there?" He nodded and looked triumphantly at Kevin. "She's never heard of him."
  "He's the manager," said Kevin.
  "He's the manager, apparently," the man told Brenda sceptically. "So I've just been informed...well put me through then." There was a pause. "Hello? I'm out on a call and a young gentleman's just told me that you said they didn't need to pay the call-out charge...Yes...That's right...I see." He put the phone down. "He says you're lying," he said, and fucked off.
  The most response Kevin's mother's screaming matches with Brenda ever produced was to procure the services of Mr. Roberts for an afternoon. Mr. Roberts was the shitkicker among the engineers. Kevin could tell that the first time he saw him march boldly in and go straight to the machine without even the customary preliminary cup of coffee and suspicious scrutiny of the warranty. Mr. Roberts wore cowboy boots and the calm self-assurance of a man with his act together. Mr. Roberts ate, drank, breathed and dreamed dishwashers. He disassembled and reassembled them in his sleep. He carried all the right tools and bombarded Kevin with a truly awe-inspiring barrage of technical jargon. He was frankly contemptuous of his colleagues' abilities. "They're scared of dishwashers," he sneered. The machine would often provide up to two whole weeks of uninterrupted service after Mr. Roberts' magic touch.
  Even Mr. Roberts, however, was not always proof against the Happy House curse. Kevin's faith was shattered one fell October morning when Mr. Roberts withdrew his head from the dishwasher's maw with a look of blank bafflement and pained failure.
  "Thompson's been here," said Mr. Roberts ominously.
  He turned and fixed Kevin with a resentful and accusing look.
  "Thompson's been at it, hasn't he? This is his work. No-one else would do something like that."
  Thompson, it seemed, was a rogue operator at large in the Happy House organization. He struck at random, following his own agenda. Like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, his methods had become unsound. His speciality was sealing up dishwashers so that no-one else could get inside them, although he also made a practice of spiriting away vital components or, as in this case, joining together two previously unconnected components in a way that could not be undone. He would be retired immediately if anyone could ever locate him, but he never visited head office when anyone else was there, preferring to steal in at dead of night to select his next victims. They could only guess at his movements from rumours, possible sightings, his unmistakable spoor. Like Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984 or some folkloric goblin, he was a semi-mythical scapegoat for all Happy House catastrophes. Mr. Roberts urged Kevin to call them immediately if Thompson should come back here, and, above all, not to let him get his hands on the dishwasher.
  Who could fail to love such people?
  Today, though, Kevin had been forced to go out and leave a Happy House technician alone in the house, and only hoped it would still be standing when he got back.
  For weeks past the entire Happy House organization had been engaged in hunting down a part the dishwasher needed, a rare and elusive creature called a nether-spindle. There was, it seemed, only one spare nether-spindle extant in the whole corporation, as nether-spindles almost never broke down, and no-one seemed to know who had it at the moment. Two engineers had each accused the other of hoarding it. ("Have to get Charlie round to fix this. Charlie's got the nether-spindle." "But he's already been round. He said you had it." "Charlie said that? Bastard! He knows full well he was the last one to have the nether-spindle. Well, that'll do me. Bastard!"). Then there was a rumour that Thompson had taken it. He had recently been sighted out near Preston and Mr. Roberts was hot on his trail. But in the end it turned out that the nether-spindle had been at head office all along: Brenda had been using it as a paperweight. The fitting of the nether-spindle now in progress was a momentous occasion and Kevin was keen to see how they would fuck it up. He had a more pressing engagement, however: he had been summoned to the D.S.S. for his six-monthly inquisition.



Chapter 2

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