Arnos Hell Read online

  Arnos Hell

  by

  Eamonn Murphy

  This book is dedicated to all the hard working staff at NHS Direct

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  ARNOS HELL

  First edition. October 15, 2017.

  Copyright © 2017 Eamonn Murphy.

  ISBN: 978-1386061847

  Written by Eamonn Murphy.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter One

  “Good morning, this is NHS Direct, I’m Bob a call handler; can I take the telephone number you’re calling from please?” Already the words fell easily from Bob Harding’s tongue, though he had only worked there two months. That’s what happens when you say the same thing seventy times a day.

  “Eh?” It was the timorous croak of an old lady, a deaf one, probably. Bob said more loudly: “Can I take the telephone number you’re calling from?”

  Caroline, the nurse to his left, smiled. Everyone smiled when you had a deaf caller, mostly with relief that it wasn’t them. The lady on the line spoke again.

  “My telephone number?”

  “Yes, your telephone number.” After another ten minutes of shouting, he established that she was calling with a medication query. She had a headache and wanted to know if she could take paracetamol with all her other pills. Bob checked the queue and assured her that a nurse would call her back in ten minutes. It was three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon and they were not too busy, luckily for her. Had she phoned at ten that night she might have had to wait an hour, or more, for a callback. NHS Direct was always busy after the Doctor’s surgeries closed, and it was murder at weekends, call after call.

  Bank Holidays were Hell.

  He was about to close the call when she croaked a final query. “Worm you too?”

  She was plainly a native Bristolian and Bob, born and raised in the city and familiar with its dialect, knew she did not mean to inquire if he, too, needed worming. She was asking for his location.

  “The call centre is at Arnos Court,” he said. Strictly speaking, he was breaking the rules, as they were not meant to divulge their whereabouts. However, he was certain she wasn’t a terrorist.

  “Arnos Court?” There seemed to be an extra tremor in the voice.

  “Yes, the new office building.”

  There was a pause. Then she said, “My husband was buried there. I think it’s disgusting what they did, building on that land. Absolutely disgusting.” Her tone showed the depth of her feeling. In training, they had been briefed that some callers would have this response and there was a ready-made soothing script to paraphrase out to them. Bob didn’t have it to hand, though, and didn’t like it much anyway. “I’m inclined to agree with you, Mrs Taylor, but it was not my decision. I just work here.”

  “Oh, I’m not blaming you, dear.”

  “A nurse will call you back shortly.”

  “A nurse?” she said. “Aren’t you a nurse? Can’t you tell me?”

  He explained the system to her. “I’m only a call handler. I take your details, like a receptionist at the Doctor, and then put it in a queue and the nurse calls you back. Okay. Won’t be long.”

  He ended the call. He wasn’t supposed to do that either but she was the kind of old dear who would rabbit all day given half a chance. The nurse would soothe her. Bob regarded it as his job to be brusque and efficient about getting demographics, the nurse’s job to be reassuring and empathic and nice. After initial training, he had been mentored by Eddie Malony, from whom he had acquired this approach, though Eddie took it to extremes that bordered on rude.

  By one of those coincidences that dotty women put down to telepathy, Eddie tapped him on the shoulder at that moment. “Tea time.”

  Bob took off his headphones and glanced sideways at Caroline. She was young, with dark, curly hair, slim, pretty, a bit shy, and not seeing anyone at the moment. He knew because he had made subtle inquiries.

  The girlfriend he had known for years had dumped Bob three months ago. After eight alcoholic weeks in which he had sworn that women were the root of all evil and he would never touch one again (both the attitude and the alcohol level bolstered by Eddie Malony) he was becoming somewhat inflamed with lust. It was hard to sleep at night. He was only thirty. Eddie was forty-three, a big, red-nosed ex-labourer going to seed, and if he burned as much, which was doubtful, he doused it more robustly with wine. Bob liked Eddie but didn’t want to be like him. He would much rather have gone to tea with Caroline but somehow that never seemed to happen. She started later than he did so he had already set his break times. She did not set hers to match. Despite this lapse, Bob was sure that a tall, handsome, dark-haired man about town such as him had a chance with her. It was just a matter of getting round to making the first move. Yet he hesitated. She was a nurse, after all, and a high-grade one at that, like all those at NHS Direct. She earned a good salary. Bob was only a call handler. In the egalitarian, feminist, twenty-first century that shouldn’t have made any difference - but it did.

  In the tearoom, Eddie said, “Was that old bat you were shouting at moaning about the cemetery?”

  Bob nodded. “Her husband was buried here.”

  “Well, she’s still alive so it must have been recently, and I suppose he would have been moved with due respect. I keep meaning to check. Didn’t they tow the fresh corpses away and just leave the ancient ones with no relatives alive to be moved around by diggers? Not that any were all that ancient. They built this cemetery in the 1830’s.”

  “We should find out,” said Bob. “We’re bound to get people asking. Half our calls come from Bristol.”

  “I’ll e-mail one of our many committees and ask someone to work out a better desecration script.” From his dry tone, Eddie was being sarcastic, as usual. “We never had this trouble at Acuma House, you know.”

  Acuma House was the main NHS Direct site for Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, located at Almondsbury in north Bristol (or, more accurately, South Gloucestershire.) When the Trust expanded, taking on more general practitioners out of hours calls, there was insufficient room in that building for the necessary staff and far too few parking spaces. Therefore the NHS had established a satellite site in the swish new office block at Arnos Court, controversially erected, after much legal wrangling and many petitions against it, on the site of the old Arnos Vale cemetery. There were several call centre businesses based in the building, though NHS Direct was the only twenty-four-hour operation. The rest were insurance, banking and the like, usually only open from 8 am to 8 pm.

  Bob said: “At least you can drive here in ten minutes. Acuma House was a long commute wasn’t it?”

  Eddie shrugged. “About thirteen miles going through town, fifteen going via the M32 and the M4, which I did. It was fine on a two to ten shift, only took half an hour, but doing a seven to three I used to get stuck in the damned school run traffic. Silly housewives in gigantic jeeps picking up their spoilt, flabby, asthmatic
children to spare them walking a mile. My school was five miles away and we had to get the bus or cycle.”

  “When I was a lad...” croaked Bob, waving an imaginary walking stick. “I bet you could cycle here from where you live.”

  “I’m too old now,” Eddie emulated the resigned tone of a spent force whose best days are behind him, “and the streets of Knowle are too dangerous at night.”

  “True. Which reminds me, did you get the e-mail about the security tour? They’re switching the system on next Monday morning and we’re all getting the lecture and tour on Monday afternoon. Only two months late.”

  “Welcome to the NHS,” said Eddie. “Everything scheduled for August happens in November if you’re lucky. Where is the session?”

  “In the Hampshire Room at two o’clock sharp.”

  “Which means the woman in charge will show up at ten past nine. She will fiddle for twenty minutes with her laptop and projector as if she had never seen them before and then send upstairs for someone to help. The lecture will start half an hour late and end an hour late and contain much waffle and four hard facts which could be printed on one side of A4 paper. Welcome to the NHS. Bureaucrats R Us.”

  “You’re a miserable old bugger. It’s better than call handling, isn’t it, a bit of a break? Anyway, I think it’s a man doing the lecture and the tour afterwards, not a woman. And he’s not one of us NHS types. He’s from the firm that manufactured and supplied the system.”

  “Well, he’ll still be ten minutes late but he might be able to work the projector. Does this mean the spiffy new security system will get switched on soon? I’m tired of tripping over Arab terrorists.”

  “It was meant to be switched on in April when I started.”

  “And it’s July now. See? I’m always right.”

  “You’re always moaning.” Bob put his empty mug on the sink top and headed for the door. “Fifteen minutes are up. Let’s get back to those lovely callers.”

  “And to the lovely Caroline,” said Eddie. Bob reddened. “Ah yes, young friend, I have seen the way your eyes go moist and cow-like when she smiles in your direction.”

  “And I have seen the way your tongue lolls out, you sly lecher when she bends over the photocopier.”

  “I don’t deny it. I may not be a romantic anymore but I’m not gay. Women are all mad, you know, but some of them have nice bodies.”

  “Maybe you’ll get a good woman yourself one day, and be all sweetness and light.”

  “Maybe,” Eddie whispered. “One day.”

  Bob was startled into silence by the genuine sadness in his voice. Perhaps the old coot had a heart after all. Exiting the tearoom he nearly tripped over Anne, one of the supervisors, coming in.

  “I need a volunteer,” she said.

  “You always need a volunteer,” Eddie retorted. Anne was in charge of scheduling and was forever trying to cajole reluctant staff to do unpopular shifts. She did this with a combination of stern matronly efficiency, the bargaining skills of a Russian foreign secretary and a certain wolfish charm.

  “We don’t have a call handler for Saturday night. Sally is off sick.”

  “Sally is always off sick,” said Eddie. Bob laughed and Anne repressed a smile. Eddie habitually complained about the other call handers’ terrible absence records. He was never ill and attributed his good health to a steady intake of red wine. Like Domestos, he claimed, it killed all known germs dead.

  “Can you do it for me, Eddie?”

  He shook his head. “What day is it now? I lose track.” He looked at the ceiling for a moment. “Thursday. No. I’m on an early tomorrow, off the weekend, then night shift on Monday. And on Monday I have to come in at two for the security thing and then go home again and come back. I have the weekend off. Couldn’t do Saturday night.”

  “What about you, Bob?” Like a shark, Anne could do a threatening smile.

  “I have a day shift tomorrow and then the weekend off. The first weekend in three weeks. Have a heart, Anne.”

  “I haven’t got a heart; I’ve got a schedule to fill. All right, I’ll try to find someone else.”

  The lights suddenly flickered. Since they were in a room at the heart of the building, with no windows, everything went black for a split second. Bob’s heart skipped a beat. The lights came on again.

  “What was that?” he said.

  Anne shrugged. “Gremlins. Don’t look so pale, Bob. I won’t press-gang you for Saturday. The nurses can cope if they have too, though we do lose calls.”

  “Yes. Sorry, Anne.” He followed Eddie back to the call centre, heart still beating a little too fast. Stupid, he told himself. You’re a grown man now.

  He was. But the sweat was cold on his back.

  Chapter Two

  The next morning Bob saw Anne’s best shark grin of all - the grin that meant she had a bargaining chip. He was late. On finishing his shift at ten the previous night he had agreed to go for a pint with Eddie. Several pints later he had caught a taxi home, sober enough, at least, not to try driving. Since he’d left the car at work he had to get a bus in next morning, and since he woke up late as well was very late arriving, and feeling dreadful to boot. Anne pounced.

  “You are two hours late, Mister Harding. Need I remind you that to serve the public efficiently the call centre must be manned at all times?”

  “Yes, Anne. Sorry, Anne.” He was looking for the clipboard to put down his tea and meal break times and trying to stop his head spinning. He had fallen out of bed, dressed and ran for the bus and hadn’t even had a cup of coffee yet. He could murder a cup of coffee, and maybe three cans of coke. What he really needed was another three hours in bed. He glanced at the board which showed incoming calls. To his surprise, it showed only one. Normally on a Friday morning at nine, it was flashing red, showing at least four calls waiting or even seven.

  He stepped up to the supervisors’ podium and forgot the step, nearly falling headlong.

  “Are you unwell, Bob?” demanded Anne.

  “I’ve felt better.”

  He looked around. The call centre was fully staffed by this hour and it was mostly routine information calls anyway, people wanting a local dentist surgery or leaflets about lumbago. If they were ill at this time of day they rang their GP's. Though he was glad of a dull day now and then Bob, like Eddie, preferred the more exciting shifts when people rang up because the wife was choking or the baby had turned a funny colour. You felt you were doing something useful then.

  Anne leaned back in her chair and folded her hands on her belly. “I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

  “I can’t?”

  “Looking at the state of you, no. Take another hour off to get some coffee or whatever and sort yourself out. I’ll book you in for the full shift anyway.”

  “That’s nice.” He was immensely relieved. He felt like death warmed up and was not in the mood for the inevitable rude callers, deaf old ladies and mad people you always got when you were least prepared.

  “And in return, you will do the night shift tomorrow.” Even though Anne did not phrase it as a question he could have said no. His shifts were set and he was not obliged to change them. His time-keeping record, such as it was over two months, was excellent. One late wouldn’t count for much against him. But he was a new boy on the block and it didn’t hurt to get some credit with the shift arranger. Besides, he had nothing special planned for Saturday night, the loneliest night, he thought wryly, of the weak.

  “Okay.” He ran his eye down the list of names on the shift sheet and found the one he sought - Carter, Caroline. She had started at seven - on time - and was about to take a break. With sudden confidence, perhaps inspired by the remnants of last night’s alcohol, he decided right then to corner her in the tearoom and ask her out. He looked at the grinning Anne and grinned back. “Can I make one condition?”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “I’m on a two to ten next Saturday. Change it for a twelve to eight and I will
do this Saturday night shift.”

  She picked up her charts and looked at the sheets for the following weekend. “We look pretty well staffed next week. Okay. It’s a deal.” She glanced at the board. “But you have half an hour now to get your head together, not an hour.”

  He looked over his shoulder and saw that the board was flashing red seven, all back to normal. “Okay.” Caroline was just heading for the tearoom. He quickly followed.

  “You don’t look well,” she said as he spooned a lot of coffee into a big mug.

  “I went for a drink with Eddie.” With pleasure, Bob saw they had the small tearoom to themselves. The television was off but the refreshment machine was, as usual, making a loud humming noise, like a turbo-powered fridge. He pressed the yellow button to make its delicacy filled sections revolve for viewing and was pleased to see there was at least one can of coke.

  Eddie, eh?” Caroline was leaning against the sink, her arms folded across her chest, regarding him with a quiet smile. “Your mentor for call handling, your tea-break buddy normally, I notice, and now you’re going drinking with him. He’s getting to be like your big brother.”

  “Well after drinking with him I certainly feel double plus ungood.’ Bob paraded his knowledge of Orwell’s 1984. ‘And I’m stuck with a Saturday night shift as a reward for being late today.” He put a hand to his forehead as a wave of dizziness hit him.

  “Ah well, what else would you do on a Saturday night?” She poured hot water into both their mugs.

  He looked at her sideways. “I might go out with you.”

  She paused in pouring the water, but she did not flinch. “Milk?”

  “Yes please.” He was watching her, and she knew it.

  “Sugar?”

  “Two please.”

  “It’s bad for you,” she said, spooning it in.

  “Not as bad as drinking with Eddie.” He took a deep breath. “I said I might go out with you.”

  “I heard you.” She sat down facing the television. He sat next to her. “Do you think that’s a good idea?” she said.