Interview

We've moved on a bit - Johnson is being interviewed in an unspecified location about his actions and what led him to act like he did.



Interview Phase VII

“More ice?” I asked him.

“Thanks,” said Johnson, pushing his glass across the table. I dropped in a chilly handful of slippery cubes. “Hope there’s no egg on your fingers.”

“No egg,” I promised.

“Thanks,” said Johnson, sucking in half of the liquid in a couple of gulps. He coughed a sliver of ice from the back of his throat and crunched it noisily. He had shaved this morning, though his hair looked a little greasy-damp it was hard to tell whether that was down to hygiene or the heat. He was dressed in yet another crisp, clean shirt and smooth, light cotton trousers.

“Not drinking today?” I asked.

“Oh, you know. It is a little early isn’t it?” sighed Johnson, indifferently, he was gazing, unblinkingly at the ceiling, executing his rocking back-and-forth on the chair movement, testing the angles. Such a show of boredom and weariness so early in the day didn’t seem to be a good omen.

“Fancy a walk?” I asked, brightly.
“A what?”
“A walk, you know,” I struggled, “A walk.”
“Get out of this room for a bit?”
“Why not?” I smiled.
“Are we allowed?” he asked, seeming suddenly cowed. Back to the person he was long before any of this happened.
“Of course,” I assured him, “of course we are. I’m in charge here, you know.”
“You are?”
“Come on,” I said, “before I change my mind. Hang on. You wait here. Just got to make a call.”
“You’re in charge though?”
“Yes, Johnson,” I said, “I am, and don’t think for a minute that you can pull one on me, alright?”
“Because you’ve got help?”
“Exactly. So don’t be a …”
“Clown. I know,” said Johnson. He added, “Don’t worry, I won’t give you any trouble. I’ve got nowhere to go.”

We took the lift down to the ground floor and walked across the expansive reception area and through the atrium. Plants towered over us like huge umbrellas, fifteen, twenty-feet high and in terracotta pots as wide as I am high. Our footsteps hit the cool marble as we passed the desks, the staff, the security. Refusing the offer of a car and driver, we felt the goodbye-blast of the air-con and the cooling electric fans on our backs and walked out onto the street.

Released from our cocoon, the pure daylight was blinding, the heat, track-stopping, the noise hit us from all sides, an intense wall of sound. Suddenly there were other people on the planet. Real people, not just characters in Johnson’s story. I’d lost track of the hours, forty-eight? More than twenty-four, certainly. I couldn’t see much smoke, a few slim twirls here and there in the distance, but the smell was everywhere. Not the smell of cooking or of fuel being burned for heat, God knows, more heat wasn’t needed here, no, this was the smell of burning garbage, of smouldering tyres and plastic and shit. The humidity meant that it hung around the face and you pulled it into your body with each struggling breath, and with each step breathing became more of an ordeal.

“Let’s go down to the harbour,” I suggested after we had walked for a hundred yards or so, bumping through the crowds, determinedly not buying anything despite the pressure.

“Taxi!” shouted Johnson.

I looked at him sharply.

“Sorry. Don’t mean to take over. I mean, you’re in charge and all that. But, honestly, fuck this. I mean, fuck it over up sideways down. How do people cope with this all the time? How? Paradise. Some people at home, offer them the chance to live somewhere like this and they’d think, I’ll have some of that, tear your fucking arm off, they would. But, honestly. Look. Feel. Christ. It’s bloody unbearable. I feel like one of those blokes hundreds of years ago, you know, press-ganged. One minute you’re having a pint in your local in the Yorkshire Dales where it’s pissed down forever and you’ve been cold all your life, this is before the invention of the umbrella of course. Although I grant you, you might have looked a bit of a twat herding up your sheep in a smock and a brolly. Next minute, alright, couple of months down the line, on some ship being flogged and buggered all the way, or is it sodomised rather than buggered? I’m never sure of the distinction. You’re being bitten to buggery, buggery again, see? Bitten to soddery by these monster flies that don’t bite like that back home, no way lad, not in’t Yorkshire, and you’ve got sunstroke and sunburn, and all your clothes have rotted away, and you’re permanently thirsty. You’ve got a crazy itch in your nethers because you’ve caught a social disease from the bastard who was there before you. Shit, and now your descendants are doing all of that for fun. Taking a year out. Backpacking. The great adventure. I’m a traveller, not a tourist. All that crap.”
Johnson was laughing. His face already bore traces of sweat-streaked grime and his shirt and trousers were spotted with dirt and speckled with damp.

“Are you getting in this cab or what?” he asked.

We found a harbour-side eating and drinking place, although eating looked to be a dangerous option. Anyway, it had a stretch of tatty but pretty, red and white-striped awning which was cool underneath, and we took a table near the rail and overlooking the water. Two impossibly large, and frosted with the cold, bottles of beer arrived together with two tiny glasses.

“Did I ask for mouthwash?” remarked Johnson, quietly, the waiter long departed.
“You’re not so brave after all, are you?” I said.

There was a welcome breeze zipping gently off the water and we sat in comfortable silence for a while, watching the disorderly river traffic. Johnson smoked constantly, but called for water with the next round of beers.

“Bit dehydrated,” he explained, removing his sunglasses and wiping the lenses on his cottoned thigh.
“After yesterday’s intake?”
“H2O’s the way to go.”
“The, er, Big Red Book,” I ventured.
Johnson replaced his shades and turned his head back to the water.
“Not the time.”
“Why not?”
“Structure.”
“Structure?”
“Dramatic tension.”
“What?”

He turned his head back to face me, rested his elbows on the table and his hands assumed a praying position. He rubbed the tips of his fingers along his jaw line, hands still pressed together.

“A story has structure. I mean, I don’t want to take the wind out of your sails or anything, or upset how you want to structure things, but we’re going forward here in a certain fashion, we’re at a particular point in the story. OK, I’m taking the mick when I say ‘dramatic tension’, but it all leads to that thing.”

“That thing?”
“You know.”
“The book? The Big Red Book?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve seen it you know. The book.”
“I guessed you had. You had to, didn’t you?”
“Is that the only one?” I asked.

His fingers reached up behind the sunglasses and gave an exaggerated rub and dismissed a loitering waiter with studied politeness.

“Now, you know there’s more than one, so don’t.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Make it harder than it should be. Don’t take me for an idiot. Don’t make me out to be some sort of prize prick. And don’t play the innocent by asking and prompting and nudging and wheedling, bloody wheedling, that’s what you were doing, trying to get under my skin.”
“I did though, didn’t I?”
“Get under my skin?”
I nodded.
“Yeah. Just for a minute,” grinned Johnson, “just a tad. It’s a good job we get along isn’t it?”
“It is,” I agreed.
“Right,” he said, “let’s get on, then.”
“If we can’t talk about the book yet, that’s OK. How about this thing you did with Tim? The complaints thing?”
“Alright,” he assented.

A canopied craft slid past and hit the horn or hooter. Johnson and I both leapt a foot into the air, and I spilled beer down my front.

“Let me get that,” offered Johnson.
“I’m OK.”
He reached forward.
“It’s no trouble. We’ll get some water and just mop it off.”
“Leave it, Johnson, please,” I said, “I’m OK.” I pressed my back into the seat and crossed my arms in front of my chest.
“Fine,” he said, “just trying to help.”
“I know, just leave it, it’ll dry soon enough.”

Although the side on which we sat was populated with old-style low, mainly wooden, buildings, there were some modern high-rise buildings across the water. We watched besuited staff on their lunch breaks streaming out of the office buildings.

“Think I’d stay inside,” mused Johnson, “next to the air-con. Spent all morning cooling off then you dive out for lunch and end up all sweaty again. Makes no sense.”
“Get some fresh air, I suppose.”
“Fresh air?” he replied. “Fresh exhaust fumes, maybe.”
“Fair point.”
“Do you think any of this stuff in the air is carcinogenic?” asked Johnson, firing up another Rothman.
“What difference would that make to you?”
“None whatsoever,” he smiled, expelling a grey funnel of fumes from his mouth. “The way I see it, my cigarettes are affording my lungs vauable protection from these thousands of noxious pollutants.”
“Protection?” I protested. “That’s a new one.”
“Through years of dedicated smoking, I have formed a protective barrier around my airways and thus no nasties can find their way in,” he said happily.
“I suppose they get stuck on the tar.”
“It works for me.”

The waiter had been zig-zagging his way across the floor to our table. Finally he reached us, with two menus tucked under his arm and an expectant look on his face.

“We’d better order something,” I decided.
“He’s not going to take no for an answer is he?” observed Johnson.

The waiter stood still, His glum expression accentuated by his floppy dark hair, long face, and a droopy moustache. I reached out and took a menu, Johnson took the other.

“Fancy anything?” I asked.
“Another drink,” said Johnson. “You know what they say, one of the rules of foreign travel? Never eat anywhere which has pictures of the food on its menu.”
“Better than drawings,” I replied. “Just order something, you don’t have to eat it.”
“Cheer up, squire,” Johnson addressed the waiter. “I’ll have this thing that looks like it might be chicken. What is it anyway?”
“Chicken,” said the waiter.
“Two of those, thank you,” I said.
“Big mistake,” offered Johnson. “Might be awful. If it’s awful then we’re both stuck with it. If, on the other hand, you order something different, then that might be OK and we can share yours.”
“Or vice versa.”
“Or vice versa.”
“Can I change my mind?” I asked the hovering waiter. “I’ll have this fish dish. That is fish isn’t it?” I asked, pointing.
“Chicken,” said the waiter.
“Do you have any fish?” I asked.
“Today we have chicken.”

We settled on two chicken dishes and another round of drinks.

“The job with Tim?” I prompted, when we were alone again.
“As you know,” Johnson began, “it was dealing with complaints from all sorts of nut jobs. Not all nut jobs, I suppose, but after a while…” he tailed off and took on that worrying gaze that might mean we were in for half-an-hour of meanderings.
“Doing what exactly?” I asked, sharply, anxious to keep him from straying.
“Taking calls, correspondence, writing letters.”
“Who was this for? Which company?”
“It was centralised operation. They handled complaints for all sorts of places. Supermarkets, airlines, travel agents, railways, you know.”
“These places have their own departments for this sort of thing don’t they?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But, no, dealing with disgruntled punters has become very specialised. People are such arseholes now that they go on holiday with a notebook and a camcorder specifically looking for problems, all they want is to screw themselves a few quid in compensation. It means they’re not appreciating the natural beauty of the place, or enjoying dinner in the hotel restaurant. They’re picking holes in the local driver or guide and hunting under the table for cockroaches. Greedy, ignorant bastards. So a lot of places farm these things out to the professionals,” Johnson started laughing.
“You and Tim being the professionals?”
“Yeah,” he laughed louder, “can you believe it? To start with we were committed and diplomatic and did all that was asked of us.”
“But then you started writing letters like this?” I handed him a slim ring-binder containing twenty of the choicest, and he recited the first one.


Mr Gallimost
Thank you for your letter in which you claim (in your rather simple, child-like fashion) that you have reason to be dissatisfied with the service you have received from Jammesters Supermarket.
We at Jammesters Supermarkets are committed to providing top-flight service and high-quality products at competitive prices to our valued shoppers. Unfortunately, judging by your sketchy command of the English language, your atrocious handwriting, and your grubby notepaper which was covered in dirty finger marks, you are not the sort of person with which Jammesters Supermarkets wishes to be associated. Our new mission statement makes it perfectly clear that one of our main aims is to keep the riff-raff out of our stores. As we deem you, Mr Gallimost, to be riff-raff of the very worst kind, we have no interest in dealing with you or discussing your rather laboured points any further. Your letter has been consigned to the waste-paper bin, perhaps you will come across it in the future on one of your scavenging trips to the local dump.
Yours sincerely
Jammy Jammester
Chief Twat Co-Ordinator
Jammester Supermarkets


Johnson’s eyes misted over with tears, and his laughing-cough rattled its way around the patio and across the water.

“I’d forgotten that one,” he said, eventually.
“Was that one of yours, or Tim’s?”
“Joint effort, as I remember. I think he gave me the riff-raff line, oh, and the bit about the local dump was his too. Very good.”
“Why did you go down this route?”
“It was a horrible, horrible job,” he spat, venomously. “We started out with all the best intentions. Talked to the unhappy, talked them down, all of those angry people. Reached agreement, compensation, or not. Wrote the letters, took the flak. We were tactful, diplomatic. But the money was crap and it was no way to earn a living, you know? I just wrote one of these letters one day as a private joke. I showed it to Tim. He looked at me and there was never any question of not sending it. We’d both had enough, and it seemed like it might be fun.”
“Fun?” I queried. “Surely you knew it couldn’t last?”
“Of course,” he said, pushing away the plate of pale and anorexic chicken which the waiter had just placed before him. “Looks nothing like the picture,” he explained, “looks more like an insect.”
“So why not just leave?”
“This way was just more fun. Shake up some of these tossers who had nothing better to do but piss and moan all day. Shake up the companies too, give their precious reputations a bit of a caning. They’re no better. They’re out to screw the punter and I guess you can’t really blame the punter for trying to get something back.”
“So the complainer is in the right?” I asked through a mouthful of gristle and bone.
“No.”
“The company?” I spat the disgusting lump into a napkin.
“No. They’re both wrong.”
“What’s the answer?”
“Haven’t a clue,” replied Johnson, “but it was up to me and Timothy to chuck a stick in the spokes.”
“For the greater good?”
“Not really,” said Johnson, “for a bit of a laugh. I’d forgotten this one,” he said as he turned the pages
“I’m not surprised,” I observed, “you managed to bang out quite a lot in your last three days didn’t you?”
“Timed it around a Bank Holiday. Though it would give us an extra day or two before the first of the letters hit the doormats and by then it would be too late,” said Johnson, smugly. “Here, look at this one.” He passed the folder back to me and I read:


Dear Mrs Swottley
Thank you very much for your letter regarding your apparently less than rewarding holiday. I hope you will excuse as, handicapped by the sole option of using mere words from the English dictionary, like, we cannot quite convey to you the mounting levels of our excitement and eventual hilarity as we read through your interminable and dreary list of small-minded, petty gripes and whinges. While you undoubtedly raise some points of interest, sadly I have to report that they are of no interest to us in the least.
May we respectfully suggest that when the benefits office next gives you a fortnight off that you spend the time at home, thereby giving the civilised population of the world a well-deserved break from you pissing all over it and generally polluting it with your stench.
I remain, your obedient servant,
Jack Off
“Wanker by Appointment”
Toss-Off Holidays Inc.


“I wasn’t sure about the name, but Tim insisted,” grinned Johnson, “Jack Off. Quite funny I suppose.”
“And this one?” I asked. “To a Mr Smith?”


Oi Smiffy
Why don’t you fuck off and die?
Yours truly
The Customer Service Team
“Because you’re not worth it”


“Perhaps we were running out of ideas by that stage. Got a bit boring.”
“I’m getting the impression that you’re easily bored.”
“We knew the game was up. Tried to get our point across succinctly towards the end.”
“I’ve heard some of the phone calls.”
“Oh, that’s true is it?” asked Johnson. “Calls may be recorded for training purposes?”
“Oh yes.”
“I wouldn’t mind hearing some of those,” he suggested.
“Well, I haven’t got them with me, they’re all back at…”
“Fine. Fine. That was right at the end, of course. Just before we got fired. Probably wouldn’t add much to my life right now, would it? Hearing them again?”
“Apart from the nostalgic value? No.”
“Ice cream, dessert, fruit salad?” asked the waiter, who had slid up to the table unnoticed and was clearing away the barely touched main courses.
“He’s kidding isn’t he?” asked Johnson, nodding first at me and then at the droopy waiter. His eyes were masked by his shades, but I knew he was winking.
“Just some more water and another beer, please,” I looked questioningly at Johnson, who nodded his assent.
“Everything was fine?” asked the waiter.
“Absolutely delicious,” Johnson replied, “so beautifully presented and delicious that we didn’t want to spoil it by actually eating anything.”
“Thank you sir.”
“Please be sure and present our compliments to the half-educated toss-pot who threw this abomination together and expected us to eat it,” grinned Johnson, winningly.
“Thank you sir.”

The waiter returned quickly with our drinks and the bill. I settled it while he waited, placing a few worn, moist notes on the table.

“We’ll have these and move on, shall we?” I suggested.
“Sure,” agreed Johnson, pouring my water.
“Fancy a walk?”
“Why not? I was getting far too comfortable sitting here. Must be time to lose a few litres in sweat.”
“You don’t have to,” I said, I was just trying to make things a little less tedious, get us out of the dreaded room.”
“That’s fine,” he said, amenably, “appreciate it.”

We stuck to the riverside, seeking out the odd patches of shade. From time to time we sat on benches or steps. Johnson had bought a local newspaper.

“Best insight you get into a new place. That and going for a drink,” he said, fanning himself with the paper as we sat in an adjacent park. A small, recently constructed area with a few trees, some concrete seats and a pond which was spanned by a low, narrow stone bridge.

“These seats are comfortable aren’t they?” observed Johnson.
“Must be to deter the rough sleepers,” I said.
“Brilliant idea, concrete seats. Surprised they didn’t add a little broken glass.”
“So you and Tim got yourselves fired,” I said.
“Yes,” Johnson replied, standing and stretching.
“Was he still seeing Kate?”
“Do we have to?”
“What?”
“Go through all of this detail?” Johnson asked, hands on hips.
“For my notes,” I said.
“But you know this bit, at least.”
“I need to get all the details down, put everything in order, there are things you or I might not see as being relevant. But when they appear as part of the bigger picture they might, do you see?” I explained.
“If you say so,” he said, petulantly.
“Was Tim still seeing Kate?” I persisted.
Johnson sighed deeply.
“Don’t pout,” I advised him, “it makes you look like a spoilt little schoolgirl.”
“They saw each other on and off but not for long. They weren’t really much of a match. Tim, you couldn’t expect Tim to have a proper relationship with anyone. As soon he was out of their sight he was out marking his territory like a tomcat, sniffing around. And he wasn’t fussy either. You know, if he hadn’t pulled by two AM or so, then anything, absolutely anything would do. It was like a horror film at the flat some mornings.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
“Awful’s the word, some right old nightmares.”
“I meant that was an awful thing to say.”
“Oh, right,” said Johnson, “true, though. You never saw the aftermath.”
“Right,” I said, “you were out of work, without money or any income, and without anything to recommend you to a prospective employer. What did you do?”
“I made a phone call.”