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Bobski's first task was to go round the pilot plant, switching on the various pumps, tank heaters and odds and ends of machinery which drowned out the calm of the morning with a whirring and clanking medley of noises, combining to make up a demonic orchestra which would not cease until they knocked off at the end of the day. Ernie, meanwhile switched on the battered electric kettle and threw the grouts of Saturday's tea out into the yard before clearing a space on the unbelievably filthy, rickety wooden desk which served as the pilot plant office. He groped into the back of the equally grimy and tattered, doorless wall cupboard to find the chessboard which had, itself, seen better days. He was still lining up the chessmen when Bobski completed his circuit. "The usual?"
Bobski nodded and slapped a two pence piece on the table. "You not take white?" Ernie shook his head with a grimace of disgust. "Oh well, is all the same to me. I beat you quicker!"
The eighth white pawn had been broken and crudely repaired by dipping into moulding compound so that it was now a shapeless grey lump which only Bobski was prepared to have amongst his pieces in exchange for the advantage of starting the game.
Ernie donated his 2p with a show of weariness as Bobski made the inevitable P - K4 opening. He sniffed, wiped his nose on the sleeve of his once white lab coat and automatically played P - K4 back. His ears pricked up "Dozy bloody Pole, you forgot the fans!"
"So I did. My mind not on things, I have bad cough from TDI keep me awake all night."
"Bin on the nest, more like. You blasted foreigners are all the same."
"Maybe onetime, but I drunk too much wodka since then. Anyway, I have rupture." He went off, pressed a button and the wind instruments added their own subtleties to the overall cacophany. He returned to the board. Ernie, sighed and mentally abandoned the game as his opponent's hand settled on his King's knight. (It had long since passed into legend that Bobski had spent the War Years on the run from the Germans, during which time he had acquired an insatiable appetite for chess and hard liquor, discovering a lifetime's affection for the indirect and devious moves of the knight).
They were hard at work when the big wooden outer door swung back in the grasp of a black, rubber gloved hand to reveal the deceptively wraith-like figure of Dan, Dan the Catalyst Man. His wellington boots left an imprint, visible even through the layers of grease on the floor and, as his hand released its grip, four dark blue fingermarks remained like shadows on the woodwork. "Running red, this morning, are we?" quipped Ernie. Dan looked at the besmirched door with an air of bellicose puzzlement. "Use yer bloody eyes!"
"What you want?" Bobski removed a pawn with his knight before looking up. "Is a check!"
"You bin at 'em agen. I 'ad fifteen on Friday an' I only got thirteen left this mornin'"
"So you come blame me. What for I want your bloody buckets?"
"You was in doin' experimentals."
"I put all back just like was before, clean and tidy. You ask Ernie, he say I tell you true."
"What?" Ernie was transfixed, staring unbelieving at the knight which pinned his King and Queen.
"See, he agree with me. Go look for yourself if you want"
Dan departed, muttering to himself like a mother hen who has discovered the loss of her chicks, leaving a blue thumbprint to accompany his fingermarks as Ernie knocked over his king with a self-pitying shrug of his shoulders. "Did you have 'em?"
"Oh yes, I hide till Pike give him bollocking, then I give back."
Dan's buckets were a kind of extension of his personality. In contrast to the rest of the Plant, which everywhere bore the indelible imprint of his passage, he took inordinate pride in them, ritualistically washing them in solvent after use and stacking them up one inside the other so that they formed into a gigantic gleaming yellow phallic symbol, a monument to himself. They were twice the size of an ordinary bucket and a full one in each hand was as much as most would care to lift, though Dan could be seen at almost any time of day toiling to and fro about the Plant with them like some black boiler suited, scraggy milkmaid. He was terrified of Pike who made a point of braving the filth of the catalyst room in order to inspect them at the end of each day in the hope of catching him short so that he could issue him with a bollocking, the most exquisite form of torture he could inflict upon him.
It was part of the initiation rite of any new lab assistant to be sent to get two buckets of flame retardent from the barrel in the catalyst room. He would set off, eager to please and quite soon locate the buckets and the barrel on its stand beside them, conveniently fitted with a tap, and there his troubles would begin. The buckets possessed seemingly magical powers in that if he tried to pull them apart, they would weld themselves into a monolith, defying any attempt at separating them and he would eventually return sweating and empty-handed to the lab. On the celebrated initiation of Little Mike, he dragged all 15 of them back to the lab (no mean feat in itself) and set about them with a crowbar. The secret is very simple. A quick puff from the compressed airline which dangled beside them for that very purpose and they would pop apart with insolent ease. Encouraged, he would put one beneath the barrel tap, turning it full on, only to find that a tiny dribble of treacle, scarcely more than the thickness of a spider's web was all that would come out, despite the fact that it was obviously full. No amount of jumping up and down on it would persuade it to flow any faster, until, after a suitable period of suffering it would be explained to him that it was necessary to open the tiny air vent at the top of the barrel. The final humiliation would come when he tried to lift the full buckets, only to discover that they would not budge from the floor, hardly surprising since flame retardent had twice the density of water and each bucket was enormously heavy. Dan would then be summoned to show him how it was done. Muscleless arms would carry them with studied nonchalance and the new lab assistant would follow him back to the lab, head bowed in shame.