(Copyright: Jay Raymond and Dr D.K. Conn)

Contents

How to relate to other people in a stranded elevator.

Humorous anecdotes you may read quietly or share with your companions

A list of Do's and Don'ts

A selection of stories about elevators

An application to join the Friends Of Those Stuck In Elevators Society

Mantras

Suitable exercises

Elevator games

Sundry musings

A play: Three Psychiatrists Trapped In An Elevator.

Hints on how to while away the time as pleasantly as possible

Advice from a psychiatrist

*

You may like to record your thoughts and emotions while the elevator doors remain closed. If they are sufficiently interesting, we may include them in our next edition.

*

When you finally walk out of the lift, don't throw this book away. Someone else may need it.

______________________________________

Please note that the American term elevator and the British word lift, as used throughout this book, are completely interchangeable. They refer to the metal and glass cages in which we travel vertically, assuring ourselves that they never break down. Should such an unlikely event happen to you, possession of this book will enable you to take command of the situation with perfect confidence.

INTRODUCTION

By Psychiatrist David K. Conn M.B., B.Ch. F.R.C.P.(C)

In this helpful book Jay Raymond encourages us all to laugh at our fears and there can be no doubt that humour is often the best medicine. It may be comforting for some individuals with a genuine fear of elevators to know that they have this volume in their purse or brief case.

If I do not offer an unqualified endorsement to all the remedies for elevatorphobia suggested by Jay Raymond, I am happy to say that most of them appear to be fairly sensible. I have provided some conventional medical background information and advice in the appendix.

In conformity with the book's general spirit may I suggest that the reader tries the following simple test to determine whether he or she may benefit from reading it?

Multiple Choice Test- Phun with Fobias

Before taking this test you must answer the preliminary question correctly:

Choose the correct answer:

a) Fear of snakes, thunderstorms and nuclear war is normal.

b) (For males) Fear of being stuck in an elevator with

Michelle Pfeiffer is normal.

c) (For females) Fear of being stuck in an elevator with

Kevin Kostner is normal.

d) All of the above.

You may now proceed

1. Ichthyophobia is:

a) Fear of itching powder

b) Fear of fish

c) Fear of spelling mistakes

d) Fear of I-thou relationships.

2. Climacophobia is:

a) Fear of stairs

b) Fear of orgasm.

c) Fear of inclement weather

d) Fear of mountain climbers.

3. Triskaidekaphobia is:

a) Fear of tape decks

b) Fear of stock markets

c) Fear of trinkets

d) Fear of the number 13.

4. Homilophobia is:

a) Fear of men

b) Fear of omelettes

c) Fear of sermons

d) Fear of heterosexuals

5) Gamophobia is:

a) Fear of gambling

b) Fear of television game shows

c) Fear of marriage

d) Fear of one's football team losing

The correct answers to these questions are as follows:

1) b

2) a

3) d

4) c

5) c

You are now judged to be sufficiently well informed to go ahead and read the rest of this book.

GENERAL HINTS

If you experience a momentary pang of anxiety when the lift doors fail to open, quickly remind yourself that you have everything at hand you need to enjoy life until the elevator doors open. By the time you have browsed through this book it is highly probable that the mechanical fault will have been mended. You don't have to read it, of course. You may prefer instead to consider some of your personal problems. If you succeed in solving them, you will thank your lucky stars that fate granted you time for quiet reflection.

Now, if you haven't done so already, PUSH THE EMERGENCY BUTTON.

*

Psychiatrists have devised a method of treating people who suffer from elevatorphobia. The treatment consists of locking patients in cells for long periods of time until it seems like their natural environment. It is called behaviour therapy. After a while they quite get to like it. They say it gives them a period of rest, peace and quiet away from the storms which rage outside. Now tell yourself that you are getting for nothing what other people pay a lot of money for.

So now you are over the first hurdle. You have pressed the emergency button, spoken on the telephone, if there is one, and done everything possible to make contact with the outside world.

There is little else you can do. The engineers are tackling the problem. It may take them a little time, but whatever you do and however impatient you are, do not try to repair the elevator yourself. And do not try to escape from it. Far better to settle down to reading this book. If you've missed that important appointment, don't worry. Whoever it was you were going to meet will be full of sympathy when you explain what happened.

A word of warning for when you do eventually meet up with this person. He or she will inevitably try to tell you about their own distressing experience in an elevator. Whatever you do don't let them launch into a full flood of reminiscence -- interrupt them if necessary. Convince both yourself and them that you have suffered an ordeal more terrifying than anything invented by the Spanish Inquisition, the Gestapo or the Marquis de Sade. You must embellish your account of what happened in every imaginable way. In particular don't forget to mention that you are now entitled to wear the badge issued by the Friends Of Those Stuck In An Elevator Society. (This is the equivalent of the Caterpillar club, which in case you didn't know is the proud insignia worn by those who have escaped from airplanes by parachute.) Wear, then, with pride an emblem of courage that only that rare breed of men and women who have been trapped in an elevator for more than ten minutes are entitled to wear. You must impress on your listeners that it was an important milestone in your personal history. Using sheer narrative skill turn your experience into something they will never forget and certainly wish they had never heard of. Do not spare any details. Pour out your anguished recollections, describe where you were going, what you were wearing, what you were thinking. Even go as far as to claim that it profoundly changed your life and turned you into the brave and resourceful man or woman you are today.

If you do all this with sufficient skill, you may eventually be invited onto the lecture circuit. Invent enough dramatic highlights and your experience will be made into a movie. In the meantime we would remind you again that space for notes has been made available at the end of this book courtesy of the Friends of Those Stuck In Elevators Society.

*

Later in this book there is a story about a lady who believed a frog had turned into a prince. Cynics will insist that anyone who believes it gullible and naive. But the truth is that even the most hardened among us cherish some illogically romantic notions that are completely at odds with the rest of our rational beliefs. So why not use this opportunity, while you are temporarily imprisoned in an elevator, to turn yourself -- if you are not one already -- into a handsome prince or princess. If beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, it is only necessary to modify the eye of the beholder for this to happen. Public relations agencies demand a great deal of money to perform this service. Why not do it

yourself?

This book can transform your life- Your Royal Highness. Congratulations on getting stuck in an elevator!

*

NOTE: We would remind you that if you are released before you have finished this book, you have the right to stay right where you are. There is no law that says you have to leave. Press another button to go up or down and continue reading.

If you have finished the book before the doors are opened, go through it again in case you have missed out on some of the finer technical points. You can, if necessary, read this book backwards, upside down, or, if you like a real challenge, both backwards and upside down.

IMPORTANT DO'S AND DONT'S WHEN STUCK IN AN ELEVATOR

Do ring the alarm bell

Do not under any circumstances try to escape from the elevator Do consult this book

Do not scream if you suddenly remember that you have left it at home. Just remember as much of it as you can.

ELEVATOR ETIQUETTE

If you are a man wearing a hat, take it off.

Do not wave it in front of your face and say Phew!

Do not pick your nose.

Do not breathe heavily.

If you find anything in this book funny, do not laugh put loud. (You may, if the other occupants appear to be in a tolerant mood, share the joke with them.)

Reassure your fellow passengers by displaying this book. They will applaud your wisdom and forethought in buying it

Elevator Itch

This is a well known psychosomatic symptom of being trapped in an elevator. If you are affected by this common symptom, go to the back of the elevator, affect an air of deep contemplation and scratch yourself covertly. When you are finished, return to your former position and after a suitable period of time cheerfully propose health-giving exercises.

EXERCISES

Having intensively researched the question of exercising within the limited confines of an elevator, we have concluded that it is very difficult to cater for everybody's needs. To be on the safe side we have concentrated on the kind of unobtrusive exercises which airline pilots sometimes engage in during their long hauls through the night skies. They have the advantage that they will not disturb the other occupants. We offer: knee wobbling, knee trembling, elbow raising and lowering, thigh muscle twitching, tricep-stretching, abdomen-crumpling, finger-walking and toe-twitching.

Imagine that you are an airline captain crossing the vast expanses of the Pacific. You cannot leave the cramped cockpit (which incidentally is much smaller than the interior of an elevator) and yet you feel the need to exercise and stimulate your blood circulation. Having satisfied yourself that the co-pilot is wide awake and the aircraft is on track, you begin to twitch one of your toes.

So far so good.

At that moment Air Traffic Control call up to tell you that both your destination airport and alternate airport are fog-bound. Nevertheless, you go on stoically toe-twitching. A fire-warning bell then sounds, accompanied by a red light indicating that one of your engines is on fire. You deal with the fire, at the same time continuing to vigorously twitch that toe, determined not to let a minor crisis deter you from exercises vital to your good health. At precisely that moment the stewardess comes in and informs you that a madman in the cabin is laying around him with an axe. In the face of this latest emergency you desist from toe-twitching. When you have overcome the madman and have him safely tied down in his seat, you relax once more. It is then you find with a justifiable sense of annoyance that you have forgotten which particular toe you were engaged in wiggling when all the troubles started.

Okay, you say, to hell with toes. Let's increase the blood flow to somewhere more important. Now you begin to pucker up your abdominal muscles, breathing slowly in and out. A strained expression appears on your face. The co-pilot asks if you are feeling all right, his expression clearly indicating that he hopes you are succumbing to a heart attack, which will guarantee him instant promotion. A disappointed look crosses his face, when you say that you are feeling fine. By now, however, you have decided that micro-exercising is more trouble that it is worth and tune in to the weather broadcasts.

Waiting in an elevator for the engineer to fix the mechanism, you don't have the excuses the airline pilot had for neglecting his body maintenance and so you are duty bound to stretch, twitch, wiggle and wobble quite vigorously for at least five minutes. Do it because it is good for you and in the comforting awareness that you can tell your fascinated listeners later on that this was one of the ingenious ways you thought up of passing the time. They will marvel at your resourcefulness, your presence of mind and total dedication to fitness. However, a word of warning: do not perform violent exercises which may alarm the other occupants. And try to avoid generating powerful amounts of sweat. This is plainly undesirable in a confined space.

RELATIONSHIPS AND MANNERS

You are a six-foot-two handsome, young, virile advertising executive in an otherwise empty elevator, on your way to visit your attorney to brief him on your impending divorce. Just as you are about to press the button a scantily-dressed Stripogram girl slips into the elevator on her way to give someone a birthday telegram. Between floors the elevator comes to a halt. Soon you hear an engineer shouting that it won't take more than an hour to fix. You notice that the young woman looks terrified.

What do you do?

1) Discuss the weather.

2) Offer her your jacket.

3) Tell her about your divorce.

4) Ignore her totally.

5) Stare at her and drool.

6) Stand on your head with your face to the wall.

Let us suppose that you are a semi-naked Stripogram

girl and you are stuck in an elevator with a handsome,

virile, young advertising executive. What do you do?

1) Explain that you are wandering around half naked

to publicise the greenhouse effect.

2) Ask if you can borrow his jacket.

3) Strike a series of erotic poses.

4 Read out loud an excerpt from this book.

5) Fart.

6) Scream.

The natural good manners of the heart should provide the correct answers to these questions. Nevertheless, in general terms the subject of Good Manners and Discreet Behaviour when trapped in an elevator needs careful consideration. Apply the exactly the same principles that you would imagine astronauts use in a space ship.

Let us suppose that you find yourself trapped in an elevator with a mother and four very active and noisy children between the ages of two and eight. A strongly recommended strategy is to claim that you are a schoolteacher. It doesn't matter if this is not true. The mother will immediately heave a sigh of relief, the three older children will look at you with something like awe. You have now become that much needed Embodiment of Discipline. The two-year old, of course, won't appreciate this and will bawl his head off. It is suggested that with his mother's permission, you place him on your shoulders and tell him to touch the elevator roof. Bend down so that he can't. Do this six times and finally allow him to succeed. He will give a delighted squeal. Now that you have gained his favour he will stay perched up there while you entertain the older children.

Ask them their names, whom they are named after and why.

Tell them how lucky they are to be stuck in an elevator, since now they will be able to tell everyone at school about it.

Play some games (I Spy is not recommended. The limited number of objects in an elevator will prove frustrating.) Try a simple quiz about television programs or sporting events.

Ask them in turn what they hate most and what they love most.

Ask each one in turn to tell a story.

Tell each child he is a cow, a sheep etc. and ask him/her to mime the part.

Tell them your life story- or as much of it as is fit to tell.

Read some extracts from this book.

Pretend that you are drunk and collapse on the floor. (Unless you are already drunk, in which case try to stay upright.)

Warning: It is inadvisable to make them laugh too much otherwise they will refuse to leave the elevator when the engineer has fixed it.

If you suspect that Candid Camera is watching you through a spy-hole, don't do any of these things. Be warned, though, that some people behave as though Candid Camera is watching them all the time and lead very dull lives in consequence.

*

The circumstances I have just described are fairly innocuous. You may be unfortunate and find yourself trapped with individuals who are natural enemies -- supporters of opposing football teams, a communist and a conservative, an agnostic and a priest, an author and a publisher. However, people are normally willing to sink their differences for the duration of the emergency. Even dogs and cats have been known to suppress their mutual antipathy in these circumstances. If you are very unlucky, you may find yourself in the elevator with people who will never, whatever is happening to them, be willing even temporarily to call a halt to hostilities. I refer, of course, to a long-married, devoted couple. If that happens, it is best to recognise from the very start that you are in deadly danger.

The conversation may very well go something like this:

He: Why did you have to go back to leave a note on the kitchen table?

She: Because I wanted Charmaine to take some frankfurters out of the freezer for when we get home from the cinema this evening.

He: Did you have to go back?

She: Of course I had to go back. You didn't tell me you had gone off frankfurters.

He: If you hadn't gone back, we wouldn't be stuck in this damned elevator.

She: So how was I to know. Do you think I'm psychic.

He: You act as though you are. Whenever I do anything wrong you second guess me. Like you told me I shouldn't have gone in the ice cream business last year. How was I to know it would be the coldest summer since records began.

She: I wasn't second guessing you. Any fool could have seen that this was the wrong time. We'd had seven hot summers in a row.

He: So why didn't you tell me?

She: I did tell you. I told you to go in for hot dogs. Why do you think we have frankfurters for supper every night. I filled the damned freezer with frankfurters, but would you take a hint? No!

So now all I get for dinner is frankfurters.

Last night you had hamburgers.

But tonight it's frankfurters and that's why we're trapped in the damned elevator.

You're being unreasonable.

No I'm not for God's sake. You second guessed me over the ice cream. Now it's my turn and I'm second guessing you over the frankfurters.

There's a lot of difference between losing twenty-five-thousand pounds over ice cream and getting stuck in an elevator over frankfurters.

The husband now rattles the doors of the elevator. The wife hits him over the head with an umbrella.

Whatever you do don't intervene. Of course it's obvious in hindsight that the wife was right. A freezerful of frankfurters is definitely a better investment than a freezerful of ice cream. A freezerful of hindsight would be even better! But you will get nothing but abuse from both of them if you even so much as talk to them. In fact you may never get out of the elevator alive.

Boy-Girl

Jessica remembered bitterly that the young man accompanying her into the elevator had once assured her of his undying love. He had said that all the hydrogen-bombs in the world would be unable to blow them apart. But last night her illusions had been totally shattered.

Elmer put his hand out to press the button to take them down to ground level.

They were both late for work -- Jessica in an employment agency, Elmer something to do with finance- he was always irritatingly vague about what he did for a living. Last night he had informed her out of the blue that he intended to give up his job and go to art school.

Elmer was thinking: I have to get rid of her. We had a good time, but you don't find out the truth about women until you have lived with them and by then it's too late. All that crappy talk about wanting me to work hard and get promoted. Jesus, she's really crowding me. It's definitely time to split. But how the hell do I get her out of the apartment when I had to plead for weeks like crazy to get her into it.

'Press it again,' Jessica said.

Elmer pressed the button, the door closed, the elevator made a whirring sound for a few seconds and suddenly stopped.

Elmer looked up at the level indicator. The lights had gone out. He said, trying to sound nonchalant, although his heart was pounding: 'I guess there's a power failure.'

'How can it be a power failure? "Jessica enquired, irritably. "The lights on the ceiling are still on.'

'They probably come off an emergency battery,' Elmer said, guessing wildly. 'Anyway, we're stuck.'

Jessica said with deep deliberation, after a pause, 'And you are just about the last person in the world I would want to be stuck with.'

Elmer replied, heavily: 'The feeling is mutual.'

Nevertheless, he felt deeply wounded. Hadn't he lavished presents on her, showed her around New York at enormous expense, introduced her to his friends. And what had he got in return? Criticism for being a spendthrift!

'Press the emergency button,' Jessica commanded.

'Press it yourself.'

Jessica elbowed him out of the way and pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

She put her purse down on the floor, folded her arms and stared straight ahead at the expanse of steel-grey doors.

Elmer, to emphasize the impassable gulf that existed between them, turned and faced the other way.

Jessica said: 'There's an emergency telephone. Lift it up and see if anybody answers.'

Elmer obeyed and called: 'Hey, we're stuck. Anybody there?'

Clearly there wasn't. He remembered the previous day hearing the janitor saying something about his mother being sick.

They were much later than usual leaving for work that morning, because they had quarrelled all night. A fearful thought struck Elmer. If Ben Grodzinski, the janitor, had gone to see his aged mother, thinking that everyone in the building had gone to work, they would be stranded for six or seven hours.

He pressed the emergency button again. Nothing happened. Feeling a sickening surge of fear, he suddenly sat down on the floor.

Jessica looked down at him: 'What are you sitting down there for?'

'I'm thinking.'

'Can't you think standing up?'

Should he tell her that the janitor had gone to visit his sick mother? No. No point. Nor was this the right moment to raise again the delicate question of getting her out of his apartment.

'Why don't you do something?' Jessica said.

'What do you want me to do?'

'Make a noise. Just do something.'

Elmer stood up and thumped on the metal doors with the flats of his hands, producing a hollow booming noise There was no response. Then he squatted again on his haunches and for a while concentrated on examining his shining black business shoes. Looking up at Jessica's nylon-clad legs, he meditated that nicely rounded calves hardly compensate for having the kind of banal mind that can only think in terms of jobs and money.

Jessica came from Minnesota. He had spotted her -- tall, slim and with flowing titian hair- as she went into Robin Employment Agency just off Wall Street. He had followed her and pretended he was looking for work. It was her first week in the job. She hadn't known the ropes and he had invented a curriculum vitae to keep the conversation going. She had come out on a date and after a sustained campaign he had finally brought her to bed. Later, he had made the fiendish mistake of falling in love with her and inviting her to leave the roach-infested room she was renting in the Bronx to join him in the Manhattan apartment, informing her that he was renting it from a friend. In fact, he owned it. To give his story credence he had taken a small amount from her in rent. Last night he had told her she must go. She had asked why she should be the one to lose out, when she was paying half the rent.

He had said half-jokingly: 'I'll make it worth your while to get out.' In a blazing fury she had replied: 'What the hell do you take me for- a hooker!'

Because she was a farmer's daughter from out of town he had imagined she would be a soft touch. But she was tougher than he had thought. No hope now of a reconciliation. He had got what he deserved for ignoring his father's advice never to have a live-in mistress. There was probably nothing for it but to have recourse to the law to get her evicted. Meanwhile his desire to escape from the elevator was becoming overpowering.

Jessica, unlike Elmer, knew full well that she didn't deserve her fate. She had come to New York to achieve her independence and through getting tied up with Elmer, had lost it. The row had started when he reaffirmed his intention of quitting his job in order to go to art school. If he carried out his threat, who would pay the rent? It would take years before he could earn money. She had thought they might make a go of it until this absurd idea had entered his head. In a heated moment during their row the previous night he had asked her to leave. But what right had he to ask her to do that when it was he who had persuaded her to give up her rented room? She hated him for being secretive about his job. She hated him for his irresponsible attitude towards money. She especially hated him for his indifference to her welfare.

Suddenly, Elmer began to expel his breath in a series of sudden sharp exhalations.

'What's the matter?' Jessica asked, alarmed.

'Jesus! I can't stand it in here any longer,' Elmer said. 'I just can't stand being confined.'

Jessica said after a long pause: 'Nor can I.'

'What the hell can we do then?' Elmer banged the floor of the elevator with his clenched fist.

'Don't be an asshole,' Jessica said, gently. She went on: 'Remember, you said last week that you'd like to take me to Europe.'

'Yeah'

'Well, let's go.'

'You mean when we get out of here?'

'No, let's pretend we're in Paris.'

Jessica squatted down opposite him.

For the next hour they travelled the capitals of Europe, describing each city, pooling fragments of knowledge derived from school, from travelogues and novels. When they tired of cities, they described the journeys and the scenery. They invented travelling companions. They laughed and after a while the bitterness of their quarrel the previous night evaporated.

Elmer said suddenly: 'It's a pity we're splitting up. I'd like to have taken you to all those places we were talking about.'

'We wouldn't have been able to afford it. We pay too much in rent.'

'I've got news for you,' Elmer said.

'And I've got news for you,' Jessica responded.

They occupied themselves with games remembered from their schooldays. Elmer made a crude pair of dice with some paper in his briefcase and they played crap. Elmer then looked at his watch and told her that he feared it might be several more hours before the janitor returned. 'There is one more game I can think of -- ' he added, "the one we didn't play last night..."

They were lying in a state of blissful languor, when the elevator suddenly began to move. They managed just in time to achieve a state of dishevelled respectability as the elevator came to a halt on the ground floor.

Ben Grodzinski, the janitor, looked astonished as they emerged. 'How long you been up there?"'he enquired.

'Just an hour or two,' Elmer replied, airily.

'There was a total power failure,' Grodzinski said. 'But I was sure there was no one left in the building.'

Elmer said accusingly: 'I pressed the emergency button and banged on the gates.'

'Gee, I'm sorry,' the janitor said, with a guilty look. 'That must a been when I wen' over to the drug store to buy a sandwich.' He added: 'I'd a called the fire service, if I'd known you guys were stuck up there.'

'No sweat. We needed a long private talk,' Elmer said, with an exaggerated pretence at a yawn.

By now Jessica had confided that she was pregnant and he had confided that he owned the apartment.

MANTRAS

The definition of a mantra for our purposes is a word or syllable used to assist both mental and spiritual concentration. We are looking for something at this particular moment which will take us as far as possible from the four walls of the elevator in which we find ourselves imprisoned. We saw in the previous story how a young couple managed to float away in their imagination to foreign countries. They were fortunate in being able to thus soothe and comfort each other. You may find yourself trapped in an elevator with a crowd of complete strangers- foreigners even.

Imagine the scene.

Kevre chekna ni honone?

Vos happierne aufzug?

Pourquoi l'ascenseur s'arrete?

Vosnefski leratrap?

There is no one present with whom you can share your thoughts. To all intents and purposes you are totally alone. You have pressed the emergency bell. You have taken all possible steps to let the world know of your plight. You have cursed the maintenance company for its inefficiency. For the moment at least you don't wish to read any of the short stories or articles in this book. You don't have your worry beads with you. You don't even have your pocket telephone. You could play with your pocket computer, but fate usually arranges at moments like this for it to be out of battery power. You have gone through your wallet looking at totally unfamiliar jottings and wondered what they were supposed to remind you of. So what else is there to do?

You can meditate.

This is where the mantra comes in. A good mantra can overcome impatience, hunger even thirst. It can overcome Time itself. So, at least, the experts say.

Here is a mantra: Omni, omni, omnium.

Repeat that ten thousands times and I guarantee you won't know what date it is never mind the time of day. Repeat it another ten thousand times and you probably won't be able to remember your own name. This is okay. You now have a chance to choose to be some other person not trapped in an elevator. You choose a name at random and say to yourself that's great. Joe Soap/Joan Soap isn't trapped in an elevator. But you suddenly remember you have chosen the name of the guy/girl who volunteered to live for a hundred days in a bathysphere at the bottom of the ocean. So you change the name. You choose a celebrity this time and suddenly remember that you read in a recent newspaper article that he/she is in the throes of a financially debilitating law suit. You'd rather be where you are safely cooped up an elevator. At least you know you'll still be solvent when you walk out. You could go to sleep. But if you're not feeling sleepy, why not try another mantra?

Here is one: Time is a continuum; time is a continuum, continuum, continuum; time is a continuum. Continuum, continuum; time is a continuum.

It gets to be a tongue-twister after a while, so you skip the hard bits and repeat : continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum,continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum, continuum...

You then shorten it to uum, uum, uum, uum, uum, uum, uum, uum...Another five thousand of these and you give a big yawn. You fall asleep. You are still dreaming when the elevator doors open.

But supposing the mantra doesn't achieve its aim. You can recite the following poem aloud instead, It was written in prison by the seventeenth-century poet, Richard Lovelace.

Stone walls do not a prison make

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage;

If I have freedom in my love

And in my soul am free;

Angels alone, that soar above,

Enjoy such liberty.

It doesn't matter if the word <hermitage' is unfamiliar. The foreigners all around you won't know what it means, either. They will, though, be highly appreciative of your efforts to entertain them.

Perhaps one of them will recite a poem in his native language.

Nyes choiveka de glassnost

De helvetia da pestroika;

Chichania, oi vey, chichania.

If you don't like his poem, you can lead everyone in a chorus of Omni omni omni um.

APPLICATION TO JOIN THE FRIENDS OF THOSE

STUCK IN ELEVATORS SOCIETY (FOTSIES)

I, being over the age of eighteen and of sound mind, do hereby apply to join the Friends Of Those Stuck In Elevators Society. I agree to abide by its rules, by-laws and principles and vow never to perform any act, or speak any words, which might bring the Society or any of its principal officers into shame or disrepute. I further vow to aid, abet and give such moral support as is within my power to all victims of stuck elevators (in both northern and southern hemispheres) and further promise that I shall listen sympathetically at all times to their complaints and tales of woe and misery however exaggerated, and promise to publicly support their case with all the vigour at my command whenever called upon to do so.

Signed.............

To qualify for a bronze badge the applicant must provide sworn testimony from a qualified elevator engineer to the effect that he or she has been trapped in an elevator for at least ten minutes, or for two separate periods of five minutes each. For a silver, gold or titanium badge the respective qualifying periods are thirty minutes, one hour and one hour twenty-five minutes.

Send five dollars for a bronze badge, ten dollars for a silver badge, fifteen dollars for a gold badge. The titanium badge, is free.

The Society exists to provide a moral force in favour of well-maintained elevators. No joining fee is required.

Your attention is again drawn to the blank pages at the back of this book on which you are invited to record your thoughts and emotions, should you ever find yourself trapped.

VOTING RIGHTS

I am now obliged under the articles of the Society to make a brief reference to a seemingly anomalous situation. The observant among you may have noticed that no person can become a member of the Society under the age of eighteen. Why should someone of sixteen or seventeen be denied membership? It seems very unfair. The answer is that once you grant the right to own a badge to a minor you are on a slippery slope.

The rule which strictly limits membership of the Society to those over the age of eighteen came about as a result of a vexing piece of litigiousness on the part of one of our own members, which is currently awaiting resolution by the Supreme Court of the U.S. of A. It is unlikely to be settled this century.

The law suit came about as follows: Mrs. Lucy Schweik, at the time seven months pregnant, was stuck in an elevator in a building in Cleveland, Ohio, for eleven minutes thirty-three seconds. She sent for, and was duly awarded, her bronze badge. A few days later she wrote to the Society demanding a similar badge on behalf of her unborn baby. She claimed that the child had also suffered as a result of its incarceration in the elevator and was therefore deserving of a badge. It should be explained that the award of a badge gives the holder full voting rights in the Society.

We find ourselves unable to accede to this request, because of the important constitutional issue involved. If we gave way, the argument for voting rights on behalf of the unborn would become irresistible and could have alarming consequences. Politicians seeking votes would feel duty bound to go around kissing unborn babies. What if Mrs. Schweik had been seven weeks- or seven hours pregnant! The implications are truly frightening. It could even lead to a situation in which the voting officer of the future would place an electronic gadget on the swollen belly of the mother and instruct the embryo to kick right for Republican, left for Democrat.

That is why, wishing to avoid any further complications that might arise from this contentious issue, the Society has decided, pending the decision of the Supreme Court, to refuse to grant badges to minors.

THE FROG IN THE ELEVATOR

("It is a law of nature that when a drunk announces that he has seen a UFO his claim will be backed up by any number of reliable eye witnesses.")

This principle seems also to apply to frog sightings. A secretary alone in an elevator on her way to work saw a frog, which she described as about a foot long and nine inches tall. No frog that size has ever been seen in N.Y. state, although they grow pretty big in the swamps of Louisiana. Because she was employed by an important tenant in the building, Gargoyle Electronics, the computer software corporation, her claim was given respectful attention. A thorough search was made of the entire forty-nine floors of the building. But nothing even remotely resembling a frog was found

A few months later, a cleaning lady, Rosita Baroja, was in an elevator on her way to work on the nineteenth floor in the same building, when it stopped between the eleventh and twelfth floor. She rang the emergency bell and waited. Nothing happened. She lifted up a telephone, but there was no reply. After taking a series of deep breaths, she told herself that the longest time she would have to wait to be rescued was two hours. It was six a.m. and the first office workers arrived at eight. Then she remembered with a sinking heart that it was Sunday morning. She had come in at her boss's special request to clean out a suite of offices that had just been vacated and was to be occupied on Monday. She felt pretty miserable at the thought of being trapped for the whole weekend. No one would enquire what had happened to her. Her husband had deserted her six years previously and her eight-year old son was in Mexico, spending the summer holiday with his grandparents. Time stretched endlessly ahead. She looked through her purse, seeking for something to distract her attention. Then out of the corner of her eye she saw a frog cowering in the corner. It was not as big as the frog allegedly seen by the secretary employed by the software firm -- just a poor, wee shivering thing about two inches long. But Rosita was pleased to have a companion. She said in a soft voice: "Hello, frog. You okay?"

There was no answer. But she hadn't really expected one.

She hummed to herself, to keep up her courage and rang the emergency bell again. She pictured her dark-eyed, black-haired, nimble son, Pedro, playing in the sunlit village where her parents lived, and wished she was there, even though the last time she had gone home she had felt a stranger. Pedro, though, would soon make himself at home. He was a bright boy. He could do astonishing things with the second-hand computer she had bought him the previous Christmas. She remembered that he sometimes played a game called the Frog and The Princess. The game had, in fact, been given to her by the secretary who claimed to have seen the monster frog. Everyone now believed that the secretary had hallucinated as a result of playing the Frog and The Princess game too often. Perhaps that was why she had presented it to Rosita, saying that she had had enough of frogs to last her a lifetime.

Rosita had watched her son play the computer game many times. There were weird underwater scenes. Monster fish with huge jaws kept darting from behind reeds and water lilies to grab the unfortunate frog during a dangerous mission he had been asked to undertake on behalf of the imprisoned princess. Rosita decided that she would be prepared to kiss the tiny frog in the corner of the elevator, as happened in the computer game, if only it would enable her to escape.

After a while the silence becoming unbearable, she addressed the tiny, panting creature in the far corner of the elevator: "Frog, would you get me out of here, if I kissed you?"

Silence.

"Of course you would! Men have sighed for my kisses." Rosita remembered years previously a truck driver telling her: "My sweetest, if it weren't for my wife being pregnant and having three kids already I'd marry you tomorrow." She had been seventeen then and new to New York. She hadn't kissed him, but now ten years later, she wished she had. She had been a fool to marry Pablo. He was a good-for-nothing. But at least she had her son. One day, though, he too would leave her and then what? Perhaps she would go back to Mexico, although deserted women had a tough time there. They had a tough time everywhere. Look at her now -- trapped in an elevator because she had come in on a Sunday to make a little extra money.

She found herself saying: "Oh, frog. Get me out of here, please. I can't stand it any longer. You advise me to say the rosary? But I've forgotten all the words. Anyway, God doesn't live in big buildings and big cities. Perhaps, though, He lives near the ponds where you come from. Perhaps He lives in Central Park. That is if He hasn't been mugged by some of those crazy kids on drugs. These dealers don't care what they do to children. I'd move from the neighbourhood, but I can't afford to. If I had qualifications I suppose I could get a better job. But then I would be a different person. If I had any brains I wouldn't be stuck in this elevator talking to a frog.

Suddenly, the frog seemed to disappear. She supposed he had squeezed himself through a minute gap between the wall and the floor.

She cried out in real distress. "Frog, don't leave me all alone." And then, in a fit of remorse: "Okay. Perhaps you have a wife and kids to look after. But frog, if you can, tell someone I'm here!"

Rosita lay down on the hard floor of the elevator, turned on her back and gazed up at the ceiling. Everyone, it seemed, left her. First her husband and now the frog. She pictured him finding his way through to the stairs and then hopping down slowly flight after flight after flight. Perhaps he would tell someone that she was there. But how can a frog communicate? Through telepathy? One of her neighbours claimed that she could talk to her sister in San Francisco when they didn't have the money to make a long-distance telephone call. So if human beings could do it, perhaps animals could. Perhaps the little frog would tell a cop that she was here. She hoped nobody would tread on him. Being a clever frog, he would seek his own natural element -- he would get into one of the sewers, perhaps through one of the fire hydrants, and make his way to his Central Park pond.

She shut her eyes and visualised the frog swimming through the dark sewers, occasionally hopping onto the ledges when the dank water became shallow, hiding in a dark recess when he saw a rat. Then plunging in again and manfully swimming with that peculiar, ungainly movement against the tidal stream towards the opening in the sewer which he knew instinctively would lead out to the pond where his wife and family lived.

She was sure she had planted an idea in his mind that would make him convey the message that she was all alone, suffering in an elevator. Before finding his family he would dutifully inform a human being that she, Rosita, was stuck between the eleventh and twelth floors. There were always plenty of people strolling around Central Park. It would just need one sensitive person who understood frog language to get the message. Perhaps an old man who had lived in New York all his life and had achieved a true understanding of the world. He would scratch his mane of snow-white hair and say: "Gee, I can just feel it. That little feller is trying to tell me something. There's someone stuck up there. I'd better go and warn the fire service."

Then she realised that human beings and frogs live in different worlds, that their minds could never meet and she was reliving the world of the fantasy computer game.

She stood up and wept a little.

An hour passed. An hour of unbearable sadness and solitude. She rang the emergency bell again and again. Nothing happened. She tried to think of someone to whom she could send a silent message through space and time. She thought of Tommy, the bell hop in the ritzy hotel opposite, where she had once applied unsuccessfully for a job as a chamber maid. A small ginger-haired man with a wizened urchin face and a cheerful line of chatter, he had said when she left after her interview: "Hey Rosita, you know something- you have lovely eyes. We should get together some time." That was years ago. But he still waved to her occasionally from across the street.

She shut her eyes and concentrated on him. But all she could see was the swollen face of a frog leering at her and saying: "Kiss me, honey, and I'll turn into a handsome prince." The frog pouted his membrane-thin lips the moment she kissed him and disappeared.

She counted the money in her purse and then counted it again. She was in arrears with her rent. Nevertheless, she tried to decide what she would give Pedro for Christmas. Perhaps she would buy him a book on computers. He was fascinated by the way they worked. Buying his fare to Mexico to enable him to see his grandparents for the first time had been a heavy burden. But she would somehow find the money for his Christmas present.

Suddenly, she heard a noise. The elevator jerked slightly and the doors opened. Outside stood Tommy in his fancy bellhop uniform. Impulsively and full of gratitude for her deliverance, she kissed him on the cheek as she stepped out into the corridor.

"How did you know I was here?" she asked.

"You were lucky. I came across the street to call a cab for someone and heard the alarm bell ringing. Honey, it must have been real tough in there all by yourself."

"I wasn't by myself. There was a little frog here with me." She pointed. "Down there."

Tommy walked over to the corner of the elevator she had indicated, stooped down and picked up a discarded packet of Philip Morris.

"Looks like a cigarette packet to me," he said laconically. "But I guess anything is company when you're stuck in an elevator."

Postscript

The gold braiding worn by Tommy and the bellhop on the Philip Morris cigarette packet is a handdown from the splendid decoration adorning the chests of nineteenth-century army officers. It is called "frogging". The legend of the frog who changed into a handsome prince probably originated in the romantic head of a young sempstress employed in sewing "frogging" onto military uniforms.

DREAMING OF BISHOPS AND CHIMPS

I was once trapped in a lift with a bishop and an animal trainer who was handcuffed to a rather dejected-looking chimpanzee. The bishop looked disappointed when the trainer refused to let him pat the chimp on the head. He obviously wanted the chimp to know that they had something in common. It occurred to me that he might have been listening to a recent radio program during the course of which a distinguished zoologist had stated that human beings share ninety-nine per cent of the genes of primates.

I admire both kinds of primates -- the one for his ability to swing gracefully from trees; the other for his ability to spin graceful theological arguments. As I waited impatiently for the elevator doors to open, I observed the chimp looking at the bishop and the bishop looking at the chimp and pondered on the differences in their behaviour brought about by a mere one per cent of genetic material. Snatch a banana from a bishop in normal circumstances and he will give you a brotherly smile. Snatch a banana from a chimpanzee and he will break your leg.

However, it is just possible to imagine circumstances in which a starving bishop might fight to the death over his banana. It is equally possible to imagine an over-fed chimp suffering the loss of his banana with an air of long-suffering Christian fortitude.

Trying to forget the perverse behaviour of the elevator machinery, I allowed my imagination full rein and saw in my mind's eye a banana held aloft by the Statue of Liberty. <Give me a banana or give me death.' Both hungry bishop and hungry chimpanzee deliberately misquote Patrick Henry as they race each other up the narrow staircase that leads to the top of the famous statue. (It was the lunch hour, hence my preoccupation with food.) If I was going to be trapped much longer, I asked myself, should I rattle the gates of the elevator violently like an angry chimp, or pray like a bishop. Neither activity, I realised with a sinking heart would make the elevator engineer work any faster.

Heaping curses on the heads of those responsible for trapping us in the elevator seemed an agreeable kind of compromise. I was about to ask the bishop if this was ethically correct, but guessing the answer he would give, I shut my eyes instead and tried to imagine that I was a bishop dreaming that he was a chimpanzee. (That is the wonderful thing about being trapped in an elevator. You can be anybody you like.) So there I was- a chimpanzee but still at heart a bishop -- because once a man of the cloth always a man of the cloth. My fellow chimps were busy in the jungle doing the things chimps do- tearing leaves and fruits off the trees, grooming their intimates and friends, establishing ascendancy over other chimps. Suddenly, I, Bishop Chimp, found another chimp called Champ Chimp -- doing things to my wife. Making a threatening rush at Champ Chimp, I succeeded in throwing him down into a steep rocky gorge.

Now by sheer good luck, Bishop Chimp, you have established yourself as King of the Chimps. All the lady chimps enthusiastically present themselves to you. What should you do? You examine the problems from every possible moral angle. Is there a divine sanction that allows Champ chimps to do all the things that are forbidden to bishops? Does that one per cent of genetic material the zoologist talked about free you from all moral constraints and allow you to spread your genes around with boundless generosity? The lady chimps crowd around you. They tell you that you are a chimp, not a bishop. And what is more a Champion Chimp with obligations to pass on his genes. Better not become too confused with theological reasoning, otherwise you may find yourself in turn being thrown down a rocky gorge.

Meanwhile, for a change you turn yourself into Smith, a plain, ordinary chimp totally without ambition other than to have an occasional banana. He is lying lazily stretched out on the branch of a tree, one hairy, muscular arm lying limply. He is fast asleep and dreaming that he is a bishop. How does he know anything about bishops? He once observed a high-ranking dignitary wearing a mitre and clad in episcopal robes arrive at a nearby village. From his vantage point in a tall tree he watched the whole performance of the bishop blessing the village and observed with what deference and respect he was treated by the village elders.

Chimp Smith imagines himself presiding over a colony of chimps and being treated like a bishop. He would love to wear those picturesque robes and carry the ceremonial staff -- apart from anything else it would be extremely useful for getting fruit down from the trees. But as much as he would like to emulate the bishop and enjoy his privileges, he asks himself is it worth giving up his present comfortable situation just to raise his status and be allowed to make an occasional rush at an unattended female. Hardly. However, sleeping bishop and sleeping chimpanzee agree that to change places for a short while would do no harm and might even enable each other to understand each other's view point a little better. Which perhaps explains why the bishop wanted to pat the chimp on the head.

Suddenly, the elevator doors opened. Everyone - except the chimp - gave a sigh of relief.

Being stuck in an elevator can yield some very interesting insights.

ANECDOTES

Our survey shows that most people would like to be entertained when they find themselves stranded in a elevator. Good jokes, alas, are scarcer than good quality diamonds. The authors of this book have tried to concoct a few, but would be the first to admit that they fall well short of the precious jewels of humour you deserve. They will possibly seem funnier if one of the passengers trapped with you reads them out aloud. You may think the chances of finding an accomplished raconteur in a stuck elevator are very small, but our researches show that in this kind of situation all kinds of hidden talents suddenly appear. It is rumoured that John Cleese once found himself in a stuck elevator and the occupants implored him to stay on telling jokes long after it was repaired. Cynics, of course, will say that the story was circulated by his agent.

THE MAN WHO HAD TO TEST THE ALARM BELL

Aristotle Xxerxes was in insurance of some kind. He had introduced two X's into his name to distinguish himself from another Aristotle Xerxes who lived in the same building. He was fat with treble chins, but what he looks like doesn't really matter, because the chief point of interest about him was that he didn't trust the alarm bell in the elevator. He lived on the twenty-fourth floor and said it would kill him if he was stuck in an elevator with a defective bell, so he had to make sure it worked every time before he closed the elevator doors.

The janitor assured him that he checked it every morning. <Aha!' said Xxerxes, <but suppose it decides to fail the moment after you've checked it?' The janitor hadn't got a suitable answer. So Xxerxes checked the bell every time and was a considerable nuisance to everybody, especially the janitor, who had to come out of his little office every time to make sure that it was Xxerxes testing and not a genuine emergency.

One day the janitor asked Xxerxes sarcastically if he checked the fridge door every time to make sure that the light went out when he closed it. Xxerxes gave a throaty chuckle and said <Smart ass, the light in the fridge isn't a matter of life and death. So don't make stupid comparisons.'

From then on fierce animosity built up between the two men. The janitor became more and more enraged each time he was called out. Xxerxes would say without a hint of apology as he strode out of the elevator: <Testing, I was only testing.'

Remembering the story of the boy who cried <Wolf' too often, the janitor couldn't wait for the occasion when Xxerxes really got stuck in the elevator. He sat in his dark cubby hole, looking forward to the glorious day when he would sit there smoking a leisurely cigar, while Xxerxes grew madder and madder waiting to be released.

Eventually, his dream came true. The alarm bell rang and a passer-by told him that Xxerxes was stuck between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth floors. He immediately retired to his little office and lit up a large cigar, enjoying the luxury of knowing that he could leave Xxerxes imprisoned for at least half an hour. That was how long he calculated it would take him to finish the Havana cigar. When he finally stubbed it out and rescued Xxerxes he intended to say: <You should'na kept testing the bell.'

Unfortunately, it was the other Xerxes- the one without the second X in his name- in the elevator and by the time the janitor opened the doors he had suffered a heart attack.

The moral of the story is that cigar smoking can be detrimental to other people's health.

*

McTavish, A ninety-five year old fanatical golfer went into a shop to buy a set of fourteen very expensive golf clubs. The salesman knew that he could not really afford them and tactfully suggested a cheaper set. <No, only the best will do. These clubs are to be buried with me so that I can play golf in Heaven.' The following day he returned thirteen clubs, saying: <I'll only keep the driver. I've just realised that Heaven is a place where you always hole in one.'

*

<What kept you?' said the old lady who had been trapped for half an hour in the elevator.

<I was missing a spare part,' the elevator engineer replied.

<In the head?' the old lady replied testily.

*

A broker is telephoned at home by his office and told that the stock market is crashing. The elevators in the building aren't working, so he takes his son's parachute, jumps out of his penthouse apartment, lands in the Hudson river, swims ashore and makes his way wet and bedraggled to Wall Street, where he finds the situation far worse than he had imagined. His partner gloomily advises him to go home and jump again - this time without his parachute. The broker reminds him that he can't get back into his apartment because the elevators in his building are out of order.

<Climb the stairs.' says his partner.

Climb six-hundred stairs!" he replies indignantly. <You want I should have a coronary!'

LADY LUCK

Uncle Harry used to say Lady Luck always has you in the palm of her hand. He was a born gambler. Ten years younger than my father, he seemed closer to my own generation. My mother constantly complained that my father had no pride in his appearance -- he wore the same blue suit for the office every day and a <hacking jacket', as he called it, for casual wear at the weekends. Harry-boy, as she affectionately called her brother, was debonair, dressed stylishly and used expensive after-shave lotion. He was passionate about horse racing and like a lot of gamblers was very superstitious. He used to say: "Everything comes in threes. When you get one catastrophe, you can bet your life two more will come in quick succession." I once pointed out to him that so many bad things happen it's meaningless to divide them into threes. But he didn't like rational argument. That is one of the chief characteristics of gamblers. If they were reasonable they wouldn't be so eager to donate their hard-earned money to the bookmakers.

Harry-boy was a little on the skinny side- quite tall- with an aquiline nose. Except when he had just suffered a severe loss on the race track, a smile usually played on his thin lips. His hair was deep ginger and he sported side-burns, now becoming flecked with grey. He always had plenty of girl friends. My mother used to say he had inherited all the Irish traits in the family. My maternal grandfather made a lot of money in the building trade but drank much of it away.

Oddly, Harry-Boy planned his biggest and most ambitious gambling coup after he had made a promise to stop gambling. My mother had told Janice, his latest girl friend, that if she didn't do something about it he would gamble away all their future happiness. Janice set about trying to cure him. He tried to avoid any binding commitment, but she finally cornered him and managed to extract a promise that he would never gamble after they got married.

After rashly giving this promise he became obsessed with the idea that he must concentrate all the winnings that life owed him into the space of the next few weeks. He thought of backing out of the marriage, but his promise to Janice was just as sacred to him as a debt to his bookmaker. Curiously, apart from dressing snappily, his personal requirements were quite modest. Money for its own sake meant very little to him -- money had been invented for gambling. Perhaps, considering what happened subsequently, it was as well he took this view. He had, incidentally, tried to wriggle out of his promise by offering a modified marriage vow, which declared: "I promise to endow thee with all my future winnings till death us do part," an offer which Janice contemptuously refused. With the prospect of being deprived of his favourite pastime only days away, he felt an irresistible compulsion to concentrate a whole lifetime of gambling into the very little time that remained. He was like a field-marshal who dreams of fighting one last epic battle before going into retirement.

Two days before the wedding he got word from the girl friend of the girl friend of a Famous Trainer that while all the smart money was going on High Heels, the hot favourite to win the two-thirty at Kempton Park, the Famous Trainer himself was heavily backing a little-known thirty-three-to-one outsider called Gingerman. This seemed a nod from the gods. Something he couldn't possibly miss. A last chance before marriage to become a gambling legend.

Harry-boy, by the way, had no illusions about his own future prospects. He knew that he would never rise further in his steady job. Janice would give up work when they had children. A life time of shared domestic toil and drudgery lay ahead. His only way to make a mark in the world before darkness fell was to show that he had <the bottle'- as he put it- to gamble everything he owned. This, in effect, amounted to a sixty-five thousand-pound flat bought outright with money inherited from my grandfather. He raised fifty-thousand pounds by way of a mortgage on the flat. By the time he had obtained the money the odds had slackened to seventeen-to-one. Even so, he calculated that he and Janice would start their married life in great style.

Unfortunately, as he stood before the lift gates on his way to spread his bets among various bookmakers, Janice appeared. She had come to visit him at lunchtime in order to make love -- she was a girl with healthy appetites.

"Harry, darling, where are you going?"

"Just down to the pub for a quick pint."

"No, don't, Harry." Putting her arms around his neck, she whispered sexily: " Let's go back into the flat and have a little cuddle."

"I can't, sweetheart. I have to see this fella. I promised him."

"You promised? I bet it has something to do with the horses."

"No, I swear on my honour."

"Then come on- it can't be that important."

"I'd love to, darling. But you know how it is."

"I don't know how it is."

She followed him as he stepped into the lift. The doors closed. There was a slight movement as the lift began to descend. Then it jerked to a halt.

"What's happened?" Harry-boy enquired, slightly alarmed.

"I don't know, do I?"

"Well, press the button again. I'm in a hurry."

"O.K." Janice pressed the button. Nothing happened.

"Shit!" Harry-boy exclaimed. "We're bleed'n stuck."

"So what," Janice replied, putting her arms round him. "We can do it here just as well as in your bedroom."

"Give over," Harry-boy exclaimed impatiently. "I've got an important appointment."

"With a horse I expect," Janice said tartly. "Remember you promised to give up gambling."

"After we're married. That's what I said. Press the button."

Janice pressed it. Nothing happened.

Harry-boy looked at his gold wrist-watch.

"Would you believe it! The opportunity of a lifetime and I'm stuck in a bleed'n lift."

"So you were on your way to place a bet."

"Bets, darling. Bets plural. I've had a tip like I've never had before and I'll never have again."

"How much were you going to bet?"

Harry boy cast his eyes nervously down at the briefcase containing the money.

"Never you mind. This bet"- he put his hand over Janice's hand, removed her finger and pressed the button himself. The lift jerked and then stopped- "is not just a bet, it's an investment in our future. We'll be in clover when it comes off, living in the lap of... What's the matter with this bloody lift. It moved and then stopped."

"An electrical fault I expect...Harry, I don't want you to place this bet."

"Why the hell not! I said I'd stop gambling after we're married. This is my life and it's my money to do with as I like. Nothing's going to stop me from placing this bet."

"I know, darling," Janice said quietly. "As you say- it's your life and your money. I can't stop you. I was just expressing a wish that you wouldn't place the bet."

"You don't want me to win do you. You're putting the mockers on it."

"I do want you to win, Harry. But I want you to win happiness not money."

Harry-boy looked at his watch with a pained expression. There were five betting shops within a radius of five miles and he had planned on whizzing around to each one of them in his car fifteen minutes before the race. Only ten minutes remained.

"I am trying to get you out of the lift, Harry. I keep pressing the button. But I wish you wouldn't misunderstand my motives. Like I said, I'd love you to win. I would like us to be rich. But if you have a big win it will stoke up your gambling fever. Then you'll never be able to stop."

"I've given you my word I'll stop when we're married."

"You won't be able to, Harry. It's like a disease. My dad had it and it ruined everything for us kids. The only way you can stop a child from doing something dangerous is to let it suffer a little pain. Then it learns the lesson. It's the same with you, Harry. That's why I'm glad the lift has stuck."

"For Christ's sake, Janice. Let me get out of here." Harry-boy banged on the lift gates fiercely with his hands.

"It won't do you any good, Harry. We'll never get out in time. You might as well resign yourself to it."

Harry-boy gave a deep groan, feeling as though his life force was being sucked from him by a cruel, malevolent fate.

Janice put her arms round him and gently edged him into a far corner of the lift.

"Come on, darling.," she said in a low cajoling voice. "I really want you. You are so lovely when you're angry."

"Oh, get to hell," Harry-boy said wearily, putting his briefcase down on the floor. "I'm not angry. I'm just shattered, completely devastated. "Press that button again, will you."

Janice pressed the button but nothing happened. When she returned to him he put his arms around her. Disinterestedly at first, but with a show of warmth as she wriggled her body against his. They were kissing when the lift began to move under the influence of a signal from downstairs.

Harry-boy glanced anxiously at his watch. Too late: it was two-thirty.

Gingerman romped home at fifteen to one- the odds had fallen slightly. Harry-boy bemoaned his fate but married Janice. He kept his word never to gamble again.

But he was right when he said that Lady Luck always has you in the palm of her hand. Janice had cunningly pressed two buttons at once, effectively neutralising the lift motor with the palm of her hand.

THE ELECTRIC EEL

I once got into conversation at a party with an impresario called Sean Gallagher -- I never did learn what kind of shows he specialised in. He was portly, bald and looked like an ex-boxer. I spoke to him because on his lapel he was wearing the glittering titanium badge of the Friends of Those Stuck In An Elevator Society. I wanted to boast that I was entitled to wear a similar badge but unfortunately I had left it on another jacket. As a result, instead of allowing me to describe my experience, Gallagher insisted on giving a protracted account of his own.

'Isn't it terrible', he announced -- 'that feeling you get when the elevator comes to a halt between floors and you think the doors are never going to open again.' He grinned, showing a mouthful of gold teeth, as he looked around at his audience. "I didn't know until then that I suffered from- what's that word? -- phobia. My shrink informs me that they can terrorise in all kinds of different ways. Since then I have met variety of phobias. There was this guy who couldn't wear a belt, because it made him feel hemmed in. He couldn't wear suspenders for the same reason and was forced to walk with his hands in his pockets to keep his pants up. Eventually a doctor cured him. Got him a job as a janitor in a nudist camp. You think I'm kidding! I'm not. When that first fearful sense of panic hits you, you think you're about to die. And when the doors finally open and you get outside you're so happy you could jump over the Chrysler building.

'I bet you've heard some of the remedies. Breathe deeply and imagine you're a tomato. Stand on one leg and recite the Gettysburg speech backwards. Try to remember the ten worst movies of the century. None of them work. The only thing that saved me when I was stuck for one hour twenty-minutes fifteen point two-five seconds- earning my titanium badge in the process -- ' He pointed to it proudly-- 'was that I had the good fortune to find myself in the company of Isaac J. Hornstein, the famous science fiction writer. He's a funny little guy, with a scrawny little beard and wears pebble spectacles. Looks like nothing. But, oh boy, what a fantastic story teller!

'When the elevator stopped between the twenty-ninth and thirtieth floor, he said to me: 'I have a feeling we're going to be stuck for at least half an hour. Ring the bell! For Chrissake ring the bell!'

'Then he started shaking- he was practically foaming at the mouth. I do not exaggerate. I said: 'It's all right. They'll have us out soon. Be patient. When God made time he made plenty of it.' I wasn't feeling too good myself, I might tell you.'

Eventually, when he had calmed down a little, he gave me a resentful look and said: 'Don't give me that bunkum about time. I know every theory about time that has ever been written. I'm Isaac J Hornstein, the science fiction writer. Of the thirty-three books I have published twenty of them have been about time. It also happens to be the theme of my thirty-fourth, which is coming out in the spring. It's called The Electric Eel.'

"He started shaking all over again. To soothe him, I said: 'Tell me all about your book. I'm very interested in science fiction.' Actually, I think it's a load of shit. But it seemed the only way to get the little guy back on the rails.

"He glanced down at his wristwatch, gave a twisted grin and muttered: 'Consider yourself lucky. It's not everyone who has a chance to hear Isaac J Hornstein telling one of his own stories.' He added grumpily: 'One thing is certain -- we won't get out of here in a hurry.'

This is the story he told me while we were waiting to be rescued.

Gymnote One- you can look it up in the history books- was the very first French submarine. It was launched in 1888. A much larger and technically superior version was built subsequently in great secrecy at Brest by the French navy and was completed in 1898. Gymnote, by the way, means electric eel and it was so named because of its extremely complicated electric circuitry. It had eight torpedo tubes, a crew of thirty and could stay submerged for twelve hours. Shortly after it had completed its trials in the Bay of Biscay, Robert Bruissard, its commander, was ordered to sail it to Toulon in the Mediterranean, with orders to make a series of mock attacks on the French fleet. Bruissard, by the way, was something of a genius. Not that it did him much good.

Halfway through its journey the sub hit a submerged wreck and foundered. There were no survivors. At that time the French were still smarting from their defeat by Bismark. National pride as well as national security forbade any mention of its loss. The relatives of the dead seamen were notified that their menfolk had died on active service but were given no other details.

I don't want to upset you, but the situation of those gallant seamen trapped on the ocean bed was infinitely worse than ours. We know -- he looked at his watch -- that there is a very good chance that we shall be rescued from this elevator in twenty-five minutes or less. They knew that in a few hours all their oxygen would be consumed and they would perish miserably.

Robert Bruissard, as well as being a French naval officer, was also a brilliant scientist. He had been given this important command in order to monitor the workings of the complex electrical apparatus on board with orders to make radical suggestions for its improvement. He had recently been in correspondence with the young Albert Einstein, having developed certain ideas of his own about Relativity, whose importance has, in fact, only recently been recognised.

"Bruissard tried everything to bring the submarine up to the surface, but it was too badly flooded. As the air in the submarine steadily deteriorated, he remembered an experiment he had once made which suggested that linear time in an enclosed space could be affected by coded electrical signals. Desperate to try anything that could extend their lives by a few hours he ordered his men to conduct an experiment, the object of which was to encapsulate Gymnote Two in a Time Bubble. By doing so he hoped to delay the inexorable process which was turning the precious oxygen remaining to them into carbon dioxide and give rescue ships a chance to find them.

"Nearly a century passed and the Gymnote Two suddenly shot up to the surface. It had been preserved in a time warp for a much longer period than Bruissard had calculated. Unfortunately, his mind was clouded from lack of oxygen and as the submarine reached the surface he inadvertently opened the torpedo tubes. The submarine flooded and went down again. He died along with most of the other crew members. Five of the crew, however, survived the second plunge by seeking out pockets of air. Showing great presence of mind, when the pressures equalised, they managed to escape through the torpedo tubes. They scrambled onto life rafts which had floated away during the submarine's brief period on the surface. For a considerable time they suffered agonies from the bends. But when they had recovered sufficiently they began paddling towards the distant shore. Eventually, they landed, completely exhausted, on a beach in southern Spain.

"Their arrival attracted little attention. The modern sun worshippers who saw them dragging the life rafts onto the beach naturally assumed they were holidaymakers. The sailors had no idea that they had travelled into the future. Nor, having been submerged, had they the faintest idea of their geographical position. The sight of tanned women sunbathing topless on the beach made them believe that they had landed on a palm-fringed south sea island. This was not as unreasonable as it sounds, since at the time their submarine was wrecked European women only ventured onto the beach wearing voluminous bathing costumes.

The men whooped with joy at the sight of these almost naked bathing beauties. Hearing Spanish spoken, they assumed that the Pacific island on which they supposed they had landed had been colonised by Spain.

"Thoroughly exhausted, they slept for a while on the sand and did not wake up till the late afternoon. Soon, they began to feel hungry and thirsty. They held a council of war and decided the best way to acquire some money would be to entertain the natives. Twenty-four year old Pierre Fleury, who always carried a miniature flute on a lanyard around his neck, played a hornpipe while his shipmates capered and danced on the hot sands. Some holidaymakers threw coins at the feet of the strange-looking buskers. It wasn't long before they had acquired sufficient money to buy food and drink at one of the beach cafes. They were convinced they had arrived in Paradise. Which in a sense was true.

With the exception of a tough, forty-year old NCO, Henri Latour, the men were all young. It was their youthful strength and presence of mind which had enabled them to survive. They were all grateful to have been spared.

At first they were extremely puzzled by the strange sounds of native music issuing from transistor radios. Their first thought was that the Spaniards had brought the miniaturization of the phonograph to a fine art. They marvelled at figures dancing on the coloured screen of a television set in one of the beach cafés and dubbed it <the magic box.' Looking for a rational explanation of these marvels they theorised that the Spaniards must have chosen this particular Pacific island as a centre for scientific research. Jet aircraft whining overhead towards the nearby airport confirmed this opinion. They theorised that the Spanish had secretly invested all the gold plundered from South America in previous centuries in order to create a technically-advanced island in the Pacific. The human mind always plumps for the likeliest hypothesis. Nobody in their day, with the exception of Bruissard and Einstein, believed in the possibility of time travel.

Shortly after returning to the beach, Henri Latour held council with the men under his command, which is how he still thought of them, to decide their next step. He announced solemnly: 'Twenty-five of our comrades have died. We can count ourselves lucky to have survived. We must report to the local French consul and arrange for a passage back to France.'

The four naval ratings shook their heads and gazed longingly at the beautiful women all around them. Pierre Fleury, his legs half buried in the sand, was fascinated in particular by a young Englishwoman lying on a sunbed nearby. She had a mass of fluffy golden hair and the most beautiful figure he had ever seen. He lifted his flute to his mouth and played a few bars from the Magic Flute. His delight was unbounded when the girl recognised the tune and spoke to him first in English then in halting French. He had a consuming desire to stay with the girl on this wonderful island.

He pleaded: 'Can't we enjoy ourselves here for a while. The authorities probably don't even know yet that the Gymnote Two is lost.'

Latour replied sternly: 'It is our duty to report as soon as possible.'

Captivated by the native women wantonly exhibiting themselves on the beach, the men vigorously opposed any idea of returning immediately to France. Latour, who had just caught the eye of a passing brunette was suddenly converted to their point of view. He reminded himself of Captain Bligh, that stubborn Englishman who had tried to separate his men from the embraces of South Sea maidens a hundred years previously with disastrous results. There was little point in provoking a similar mutiny. Anyway, the more liberal tradition of the French Navy was supposed to take into account the physical and emotional needs of the men. When they had become bored with this place, as would inevitably happen, he would raise the matter again. The Navy would undoubtedly make due allowance for the horrifying ordeal he and his men had been through.

His mind turned to more pressing concerns -- the only clothes they possessed were the trousers and undershirts they stood up in. An approach to the French consul for financial help could only result in orders to start on the long journey back to France. Their initial success in raising money, however, suggested a way to survive.

'Very well, lads. Since we have arrived in Paradise, we might as well enjoy the local amenities. I propose that we sell the life rafts -- we'll tell the navy they were stolen while we were asleep. That should raise enough for tonight's lodgings. After that we'll get to work on a proper musical hall act.'

They responded enthusiastically to his suggestion. Jules Lebrun a twenty-three year old youngster from Normandy with a mop of straw-coloured hair, declared with enthusiasm: 'Terrific. How about calling ourselves Les Cinq Homards? We are already as red as lobsters from this South Pacific sunshine.' He added sombrely: 'And what's more we've just come up from the bottom of the sea.'

It was decided to work out an acrobatic-cum-musical routine. Henri, Louis and Charles would turn somersaults and then Pierre and Jules would clamber up on their shoulders. Jules, the possessor of a passable tenor voice would sing. Pierre would warble on his flute.

As soon as Henri Latour left to sell the life rafts, Pierre engaged the English girl in conversation. Meanwhile, Jules, Louis and Charles attached themselves to three Scandinavian girls further along the beach.

The girl told Pierre that her name was Fleur Patterson. Her father was a captain in the Royal navy. He declared ecstatically: 'You have a French name and a sailor father. We have so much in common we should get married as soon as possible!'

Fleur laughed. She found his dark good looks, boyish face and French accent very appealing. He gazed at her adoringly, as though he had never seen a woman before.

Henri Latour returned and immediately set off in search of the missing three ratings. When they were all gathered together he announced that he had obtained sufficient money from the sale of the life-rafts to provide bed and board for a day. In fact, he had sufficient to keep them for nearly a week, but calculated that the men would not work at their music hall act if they knew. Piqued at having had to search for the missing three ratings, he warned them that if they did not keep him informed of their whereabouts he would have them court-martialled. The threat was sufficient to extract a promise of obedience.

He marched them into a clothing store in the town and with an eye to their public performances fitted them out with baggy pants, red shirts and floppy linen hats. The men were particularly intrigued by an ingenious device that zipped over a pocket in the side of their hats. Latour doled out to each of them a few Spanish coins. When they complained that it was insufficient, he said it was for their own good and warned them about the danger of going with prostitutes. Eager himself to enjoy the fleshly delights of this Spanish island, he nevertheless felt responsible for their welfare.

They found a cheap hotel half a mile from the sea front. Before going to bed they engaged in fierce debate about their geographical position. Henri Latour insisted that they were on a Spanish island in the Pacific called Fuengirola. He had seen the name on postcards in several shops. They could not possibly be in European Spain, which was a poor, backward country. The exciting new inventions they had seen proved conclusively that they were on a Pacific island that had been kept secret from the world.

They went to bed early, too tired to eat an evening meal. Their minds and bodies were exhausted by their miraculous escape, but they were happy because they appeared to have landed in Paradise. Pierre was the happiest, because Fleur had agreed to meet him in the foyer of her hotel at eight-thirty the following morning.

*

Gallagher now interrupted Hornstein to ask a question: 'That has this to do with being trapped in an elevator?' Isaac J Hornstein answered: 'Like those five men of the French navy we are trapped in a kind of time capsule. You will understand when my story is finished.'

*

"The following morning Pierre awoke at dawn. Jules Lebrun, who was sharing the room, was still asleep. He washed, shaved and walked down to the beach with a towel. Standing looking out at the misty horizon, he thought of his comrades entombed in the Gymnote Two on the bed of the ocean. He groaned, as he remembered struggling upwards through the murky waters towards the light and, subsequently, the excruciating pains that had tortured every part of his body as he lay on the life-raft.

The beach was deserted. Stripping off his clothes he plunged into the warm sea. As he swam, delightful images of Fleur filled his mind. She had said she would be ready at eight-thirty. He had no means of telling the time -- the gold pocket-watch he had inherited from his grandfather now lay with the rest of his belongings at the bottom of the sea. A corona of dazzling rays appearing behind the scrubby hills to the east of town told him that the day was progressing. After a vigorous swim he dried himself, dressed hurriedly and returned to the hotel. The clock above the reception desk indicated that it was just after eight, so he set off along the promenade.

The crew of the Gymnote Two, it should be said, were all highly specialised technicians who had gone through a rigorous selection procedure. Their late commander, Robert Bruissard, had briefly held a professorship in physics at the Sorbonne. He had accepted a commission in the navy, because of a long-standing family tradition. The committee set up by the navy had nominated him to command the highly secret underwater vessel because of his scientific background and exceptional intelligence. Their judgement was in due course vindicated by the fact that five young men survived the disaster. But, of course, in the strangest of circumstances that they could never have foreseen.

Pierre was impressed when the desk clerk used a telephone to inform Fleur of his presence. Telephones were still a rarity in his native France. She emerged from the lift cage wearing a figure-clinging blue mini-dress which instantly aroused his desire.

'You look like a dream!' he cried out joyously. 'But is- is it acceptable on this island to wear such a dress?'

Slightly puzzled Fleur ignored his question, hooked her arm through his and said 'Let's go. I know a nice place for breakfast.'

As they strolled towards their destination, she said: 'This isn't an island, Pierre. Fuengirola is on the Costa del Sol. The nearest Spanish islands -- the Canaries- are hundreds of miles away.'

Pierre stopped for a moment and looked around. The shining motor cars, the endless vista of white balconied apartment blocks and the hoardings advertising sun-tan lotion gave him an impression that the world had painted itself anew in dazzling colours since he had left France.

He mumbled to himself: 'Nothing looks right.' Fleur looked at him wonderingly.

They continued walking for a while in silence and then, still puzzled, he said: 'Spain is so different from France. Women here run around with practically nothing on. I enjoyed seeing your beautiful body yesterday, but to tell the truth I don't like other people looking at you ... And how is it that Spain has so many new gadgets and machines?'

Fleur replied with a slight shrug: 'pain is no different from other European countries.'

While they were eating croissants and drinking coffee in the restaurant, Pierre drew her attention to the date on her newspaper, pointing out scornfully that there had been a misprint. Fleur pursed her lips primly. He repeated his remark in a slightly louder voice, his black eyebrows puckered into a perplexed frown. Fleur reproved him mildly, saying: 'Don't be silly,' and continued reading.

"Pierre then remembered his father's sage advice: Begin with a woman as you intend to continue for the rest of your life. He had already made up his mind that he was going to marry this lovely English girl. But as much as he loved her, he was not going to give in to her every whim and caprice.

'Mon petit choux. Look! The true date is 1898.'

Fleur raised her eyebrows and sipped from her cup of coffee, convinced now that she was dealing with a madman.

Pierre had not up till now told her about his escape from The Gymnote Two. His reluctance to mention the sinking of the French navy's most cherished vessel sprang from a strong sense of duty. Lack of money to pay for the breakfast they were eating now forced him to tell her the truth.

Fleur listened intently to his story. She recalled seeing the men dragging two life rafts onto the beach. But her doubts remained. There was no mention of a missing submarine in her newspaper. Then she realised that NATO might well have imposed a news blackout on the loss of a submarine. Her own father was always tight-lipped where naval matters were concerned. She remembered her mother once saying sarcastically: 'He won't even tell you what he's had for lunch if it's something to do with the navy.' There was a certain amount of evidence to support Pierre's story. His clothes, for example, looked as though they had been chosen in a hurry. As for his marvelling at things which everyone took for granted the likeliest explanation was that his brain had suffered as a result of his recent ordeal.

She enquired: 'How many of the crew escaped, Pierre?'

'Alas, only five of us: Henri Latour, an NCO, Jules Lebrun, Charles Montaigne, Louis Frenon and myself.'

'Don't you think you ought to see a doctor?'

He shook his head.

'I felt ill for a while. But I'm perfectly well now.'

"He was thankful that she now understood why he couldn't pay the bill for the breakfst.

'Have you contacted the French naval attaché in Madrid?'

'Not yet. Latour was convinced, until now that we were somewhere in the Pacific. There didn't seem any way of contacting the navy.'

'Why did you think you were in the Pacific?'

Pierre scratched his head and frowned.

'It was impossible to say where we had come up after being submerged. We had lost track of the time we were under water. Everything looked so strange. Are you sure that this is Spain?'

'Of course I'm sure. You must take it easy for a while. The naval doctors will look after you when you fly home.'

'Fly home?' The full import of her remark did not register for a moment. He had witnessed with amazement aircraft flying the previous day, but had not appreciated that they carried passengers. Meanwhile, he was gazing at her as though she had been created solely for his love-struck eyes. Her blond hair bleached by the sun was in a state of charming disarray. She possessed small, delicate features. The tiny wrinkles around her green eyes, so subtly made up with blue, added a hint of maturity to what could otherwise be the face of a charming infant. Looking down, he marvelled at her tanned thighs and long shapely legs.

Fleur, a librarian from Winchester, Hampshire, England. was twenty-nine. She was fascinated by Pierre's swarthy good looks and his boyish, innocent countenance. Almost from the moment he had first opened a conversation with her she had been convinced that she had found the man she was looking for. Intelligence and charm shone through in spite of the confusion he was suffering as a result of his recent experience. She was sure that he would soon regain his wits. In her mind she could see him in command one day of a French naval vessel.

"They arranged to meet where their first encounter had taken place. Pierre declared that he wanted to buy the sunbed on which she had been reclining as a memento of their first meeting. She laughed and he was delighted when she suddenly kissed him on the lips. He ran back to the hotel in a state of exaltation.

Sounds of singing and laughter greeted him when he pushed the door open to enter his room. Jules Lebrun was balanced precariously on the shoulders of Henri and Charles. Leaning forward to avoid contact with the ceiling, he was loudly and enthusiastically singing a sentimental ballad in a lyrical tenor.

'Come on Pierre.' Latour called goodhumouredly. 'Get that flute of yours and climb up. Remember, we shall be performing tonight as Les Cinq Homards.'

Pierre ignored the command and announced excitedly: 'I have to inform you this is definitely not a South Sea island. We are on the Spanish mainland. Spain by some miraculous means has leaped ahead of France in almost every way imaginable.'

'Never mind', Latour called out cheerfully, staggering from the weight on his shoulders. 'Climb up and give us a tune on your flute.'

He was a little drunk, having earlier shared a bottle of wine and drunk a few measures of Calvados with the brunette he had seen on the beach the previous day. He had come across her in a café and after a few drinks had arranged to meet her for lunch. He was not in the mood for serious conversation.

Suddenly Charles stepped out of line, leaving him with the full weight of Jules on his shoulders. Latour swayed for a moment and then deposited him unceremoniously on a bed.

Charles, a barrel-chested young man from Nantes, said with a serious expression on his broad, peasant face: 'If we are in Spain, then the situation has radically changed. The Navy will court-martial us if we don't report quickly.'

Latour scowled.

'A day or two more won't matter. After what we went through yesterday we deserve a little relaxation. The Navy doesn't even know that the Gymnote Two has foundered. ''ll send a telegraph message tomorrow to the Ministry of the Navy from the railway station.'

"Pierre interjected: 'That's not necessary. There are telephones here.'

Latour looked astonished.

'Telephones in Spain!' He tapped his head with the palm of his hand. 'I keep forgetting that we are not in the Pacific. And didn't we see airplanes flying through the air? There is something strange going on. Perhaps that stinking air in the Gymnote affected our minds.'

"Pierre said: 'I've found a marvellous girl. I don't want to go home yet. But it is our duty to let our loved ones know that we have survived. And yet the world seems to have changed tremendously while we were on the sea bed. Do you remember Bruissard saying that he was about to try out an experiment which might enable us to survive in a time bubble for a more few hours while rescue ships tried to find us. I thought he was just trying to raise our morale. But perhaps time actually did stop still while we were under the sea. Perhaps this is normal for submarines and we are the first to experience it. I have something else to say- these scientific advances that we have seen are not exclusive to Spain. Fleur, the girl I had breakfast with this morning, says that it has happened everywhere. And --' his adam's apple moved as he gulped: 'I saw an English newspaper. Clearly printed on the top was a date which declares that nearly a hundred years have passed by since we sailed from Brest.'

Latour was about to jeer, when he was interrupted by Jules, who said: 'Pierre is right. I saw a similar date on a magazine. You remember that the Navy kept emphasizing during our training that it was of the utmost importance for us to maintain secrecy. I believe it was becaus we were taking part in a some kind of weird experiment with time.'

"He looked around at the shocked faces of his listeners.

'Ridiculous,' bellowed Latour. 'Such an experiment would be a blasphemy against God. I accept that we are in Europe. But all that means is that it won't take us so long to get home once we've contacted the navy. But if the navy used us in this disgusting manner as guinea pigs we are entitled to contact them when it suits us and not before.'

Charles Montaigne, an electrician by trade, had modified some of the vessel's electrical equipment for Bruissard while the Gymnote Two lay crippled on the ocean bed. He hadn't in the least understood what he was doing. He had simply obeyed orders, supposing that the changes were intended in some way to alleviate the foetid conditions inside the submarine. But now he remembered Bruissard mumbling at one stage: 'It may, God willing, allow us to survive for a few more precious hours by isolating us in a time bubble.'

"He said 'Jules, I don't think our voyage was intended to do anything else but prove the seaworthiness of the Gymnote Two. But our captain was a strange genius. He did his best to save us. But he miscalculated -- instead of extending our lives for a few hours it appears he projected us into the future.'

After an awe-stricken pause, Pierre said solemnly: 'Then there is no going home. Ever. We have outlasted our families- everyone we ever knew and loved has died.'

Latour's face froze in disbelief. Jules Lebrun put his head in his hands and wept. Charles Montaigne crossed himself, sat on the bed and looked up at the ceiling with a martyred expression, as though imploring solace from Heaven. Louis Frenon, the diminutive artificer from Arcachon with a flair for handling machinery, smiled nervously, a reflex action that masked his anguish at the thought of never again seeing his wife and child.

The shock of what he had just heard threw Latour's mind back to his wife and five children in his native town of Lyons. He asked himself was he being punished for his frequent infidelities. If what was being conjectured was true, his wife and children would have died long since. It suddenly struck him that his conscience was troubling him more now that he was a widower than on the numerous occasions he had been unfaithful during his wife's lifetime. Without warning, he punched himself on the nose. Blood spurted onto the front of his shirt. The other men winced at the sight of their tough NCO acting like a madman.

His bloodied face expressionless, Latour went into the bathroom to get a towel. He returned shortly, snuffling and snorting blood, into its folds. Then he sat on the bed between Jules and Louis, put his arms around both of them and said hoarsely: 'Well, if Charle's and Pierre's theory is true, we are now free to do as we like. All those navy admirals with the gold braid and medals they awarded themselves are dead. We can drink and be merry and have all the women we like. And what's more the chaplain can't preach at us any more, because he's dead, too!'

He gave a loud laugh and then flung the bloodied towel into the bathroom. 'As for you, Jules, stop blubbering and think of your future. I''l tell you something, This is a better world than the one we used to lived in. From now on life will be one long holiday. And what's more we deserve it after the ordeal we've been through.'

Jules Lebrun murmured with a deep sigh: 'But everybody in the world is dead, including all our shipmates.'

Henri Latour patted him on the head encouragingly.

'Listen, lads,' he said. 'We can live or die. That's the choice we all have to make. Well, I for one intend to live gloriously. We owe it to our comrades to have a good time, in order to make their sacrifice worthwhile.'

"Louis whimpered: 'But we have no family. no possessions, no money...'

Henri Latour gave a bitter laugh.

They gave us little more than a pittance for going down in that wretched sardine tin. If you want money, you have to fight hard for it. We'll make a success of Les Cinque Homards. Incidentally, I had breakfast this morning with a peach of a French girl. She told me there are no musical halls here in Fuengirola. But there is a night club. She knows the owner and thinks she might be able to get us an engagement. Work is the best cure for sadness. So let's get on with our rehearsal.'

*

Kiki Saberski, the girl with whom Henri Latour had been drinking, was a talented thirty-five-year old journalist who worked for a Paris magazine. She was about to divorce her husband, Henri, also a journalist, who had recently left her in order to live with a young actress. During their eight-year marriage he had been persistently unfaithful. But she found his recent defection particularly hurtful because only a few weeks before they had decided to have a child. Since starting divorce proceedings she had desperately thrown herself into her work. Proving herself more successful than her husband seemed the only way to deal with her anger and frustration. Her health had suffered as a result and noticing signs of strain, her boss had sent her on a week's holiday.

Lying on a sunbed on the beach at Fuengirola, she had observed five sunburnt young men, all similarly dressed in navy blue trousers and white singlets, paddling in from the sea on two life-rafts. They seemed to be extremely tired from their exertions -- almost as soon as they arrived they flung themselves down on the sand and slept. Three hours later when she looked at her watch they were still sleeping.

Later that afternoon, as she passed them on her way to buy an ice cream, Kiki's attention was drawn to one of the men. He was squatting on his haunches, sifting the sand between his fingers, his eyes boldly lingering over her body. She swayed a little as she passed him, conveying a mixture of invitation and reproof.

The following morning she was surprised when he sat down at her table in a restaurant. He was now dressed in ill-fitting light-blue trousers and a crimson shirt. Looking directly into her dark brown eyes, he said he had recognised her straight away as French the previous day. Even without clothes she looked typically chic and elegant. She replied sarcastically: 'The fact that I was reading a French paperback possibly gave you a clue.'

'Yes, perhaps.' Henri conceded nonchalantly. 'But you are undoubtedly just as elegant with your clothes on.' He ordered a bottle of wine. 'Henri Latour at your service, Mademoiselle. Please talk to me. I am finding it very hard trying to make these Spaniards understand what I am saying.'

She replied pensively: 'Your name is Henri? That is a coincidence. I knew an Henri recently. But he turned out to be a thoroughly bad case.'

'This time you have great good fortune,' Henri replied with an engaging grin. 'I happen to be the best Henri in the world. When I saw you on the beach yesterday I said to myself I need look no further: this is the girl I have been looking for all my life.'

'Who were the men you came ashore with?'

'We are lobsters who have emerged from the bottom of the sea,' Henri replied enigmatically.

It became apparent to Kiki during the rest of the conversation that something remarkable had happened. The five men, she learned from Henri, had escaped from a sunken submarine. What seemed odd was that he thought that they had come ashore on a Pacific island. He confided that they were short of money and planned to earn some by putting on a music hall act called The Five Lobsters.

"Her first conclusion was that he was a little unbalanced mentally and she wondered if he and his companions were sailors who had jumped ship. But Henri Latour's touching ignorance of contemporary affairs soon became glaringly apparent. She asked jokingly if he and his friends had escaped from Devil's Island and was taken aback when Henri replied with the utmost seriousness that with all the political wrangling going on in France it was very difficult to decide whether Dreyfus was innocent or guilty.

Her heart sank- the Dreyfus case had occurred nearly a century ago. She was drawn towards the man, but was he deliberately talking nonsense? Questioning him more closely, she concluded that he must be deeply involved in a fantasy that he was living in the previous century. She had heard of Americans who dressed in period costume and re-enacted the Civil War. Perhaps Latour was engaged in a similar game of make-believe. It occurred to her at that moment that it would make an interesting subject for a feature article in the magazine. But the odd thing was that he spoke as if his fellow sailors were also deeply involved in the same fantasy game. Perhaps this was a case of shared delusions- a folie á cinq. Finally, she came to the conclusion that: they were taking part in a period movie.

She decided to interview them all together. It seemed too good a story to miss -- a group of actors enthusiastically playing out their roles in real life. She was, in any case, very taken with Latour's confident swagger and his rugged good looks. When she repeated that she didn't much like his first name, he reminded her jovially that his second name belonged to an exceptional wine and purchased a bottle to emphasize the point.

'Henri,' she said, when they had finished the wine, 'Can I meet the rest of your crew?'

'All dead,' Henri replied gloomily, waving his arms vaguely in the direction of the sea. 'hen the news gets back to France there will be church services and national mourning. But we do not intend to inform the authorities for a day or two. I don't want to leave you just yet. You are much too beautiful.'

He took her hand and fondled it.

I know a night club which employs entertainers. If I introduce you to the owner, can I meet your friends?'

'Of course. I'll bring them along here today for lunch.'

'Very well. I'll introduce you all to Maurice Brady, who owns the club.'

"Henri smiled and replied: 'Afterwards we will go somewhere quiet and talk. You make my heart go pit-a-pat.'

His exaggerated courtesy was so different from that of the modern Frenchman that Kiki was almost persuaded that he was a leftover from a previous generation. But at this particular stage she believed that she was about to produce a feature article about some slightly crazy movie actors.

*

Les Cinq Homards' performance that night in Brady's Fuengirola night club drew an enthusiastic response from the audience. The resident keyboard player synthesized a flourish of trumpets on his instrument. Henri, Louis and Charles performed some back somersaults and then supported Jules and Pierre on their shoulders.

Perhaps because he was still in a state of shock from the gruelling cross examination to which Kiki had subjected them all that afternoon, Jules sang a little off key. Kiki, determined to arrive at the truth, had bombarded them with the most penetrating questions about their private lives.

The three men supporting the singer and the flute player, staggered a little under their weight. Pierre found himself involuntarily playing a little tremolo whenever their legs buckled. This seemed to amuse the audience. Soon, the Five Lobsters realised that they had stumbled by chance on an effective comedy routine. The audience were in fits of laughter as they staggered all round the stage with Jules's voice fluctuating wildly between basso profundo and falsetto. Pierre meanwhile improvised urgent beeps of alarm on his flute. When they had finished to the accompaniment of resounding applause, the club owner booked them for the next night at an increased fee.

Kiki accompanied them to their hotel after the show. She was convinced by now that they were all equally deluded, because they clung with such pathetic devotion to their original story. She had telephoned Jacques Bouchet, her editor, earlier that evening and told him to be prepared to meet five men all suffering from the delusion that they had emerged from a submarine that had gone down towards the end of the nineteenth century. They behaved as if they had been reincarnated. It had proved impossible to break their story.

Jacques Bouchet was at first unenthusiastic. However, she threatened to give the story to another magazine and he agreed to fly them to Paris and have them examined by a psychiatrist. Becoming more confident that she had got him hooked on the story, she asked him to look up naval records and ascertain if a submarine Gymnote Two ever existed. If it did, at least it would would demonstrate that Les Cinq Homards had done their homework with commendable thoroughness.

Kiki tramped up the stairs of their hotel and they crowded into the tiny room occupied by Jules and Pierre. A fair-haired English girl wearing pink shorts and a cerise blouse was already sitting on one of the beds. Pierre proudly introduced Fleur to Kiki as 'my English girl friend.' Henri had purchased a bottle of cognac at the night club. They were all in high spirits celebrating their first success in show business.

Kiki drank only Vichy water. She was determined to see what happened as the alcohol began to take effect. Soon, the first bottle was downed. Henri went out to purchase another. In his absence she asked some searching questions, but could find no flaws in their account of what had happened. Their speech became slurred as they engaged in a maudlin discussion about the fate of their dead comrades. A thickset, fair-haired young man called Charles kept referring to an experiment which their commander, Bruissard, had been attempting to carry out while they were running out of oxygen on the seabed. Kiki made a mental note of the name. Louis Frenon, a small, thin man, said angrily: 'It's all his cursed fault that we are stuck here unable to go home.'

Her doubts about the authenticity of their story were beginning to re-emerge when she noticed an old-fashioned pair of navy blue trousers hanging over a chair. She assured herself this odd survival had come straight from the wardrobe department of a film studio.

Latour returned triumphantly flourishing a bottle of cognac. His ruddy complexion and bent roman nose reminded her of a picture in the Louvre of one of Napoleon's triumphant army officers holding aloft a tattered regimental banner. He started holding forth, with a grin on his face: 'No need to be downhearted, men. We have everything we need. Success on the stage, plenty of drink and - with a lustful glance at Kiki -- ''omen... and money! I've been thinking -- the Navy owes us nearly a hundred year's back pay. Just think what that will amount to with interest added at two and half per cent! We are rich, comrades. Let's not cry just because we appear to have skipped a century.'

It was his obvious sincerity on this point that made Kiki's heart skip a beat.

Latour tried hard to persuade her to go to his room. But she declined. Although strongly attracted towards him, she felt there would be a better chance of persuading him to accompany her to Paris, if she held something in reserve.

Pierre walked Fleur back to her hotel along the almost deserted promenade. It was two-thirty in the morning. A warm breeze blew among the palm trees. A slender crescent moon hung in the sky.

'The moon looks like a slice of Gouda cheese,' Fleur commented, as they strolled arm in arm.

'We shall never know what the moon is made of,' Pierre replied with an air of authority.

His remark alarmed Fleur. How would it be possible to live with such a man set apart from the rest of humanity? Everything he said tended to confirm his story. He seemed incapable of dissimulation, which was the main reason she had fallen in love with him. She had once lived with a man who had deserted her after three years. Pierre by contrast seemed to possess old-fashioned virtues of fidelity and honesty. As for his ignorance of the modern world, it was purely superficial -- he would soon learn how to handle modern technology. She entertained a romantic vision of living with him in England. Eventually they would marry. She made up her mind always to keep his strange background a secret.

When they reached her hotel, Pierre kissed her. She took his hand and drew him up to her room. She unbuttoned the crimson shirt, pulled it over his head and kissed his chest. He stood for a moment, looking perplexed and then said with a shy smile: 'Are you sure you don't mind making love to a lobster?'

Fleur laughed.

"He gave a great sigh, as she undressed and stood before him as naked as when he had first seen her on the beach. He said with great conviction: 'It was worth waiting a hundred years for you, my darling.'

He drew her gently towards him. Making love in slow motion, as though the whole universe was in perfect harmony with their movements, they achieved timeless peaks of sensuous bliss.

Afterwards, lying in his arms, Fleur told him of her plans for him. He insisted, however, that they must live in France.

'You see', he said contentedly, 'We match each other perfectly like an algebraic equation. You say one can perform amazing mathematics on these -- what do you call them?- computers. But there is one thing these machines cannot do. They cannot make love. So let me at least prove my superiority in that regard.'

Fleur was happy once more to let him do so.

*

Kiki and Latour met for coffee in a beach café the following morning. She was wearing a purple silk caftan, through which, as she moved through the sunshine, he caught tantalising glimpses of her slender bikini-clad figure. She asked if he could persuade his friends to accompany her to the French capital. She hinted at all kinds of delights in prospect in Paris and promised to try to get bookings for his act at the Folies Bergère and other famous venues. It proved not too difficult to persuade him to accept the all-expenses-paid trip that Kiki had cleared with her editor. Les Cinq Homards packed their few belongings and travelled to Paris next day.

Curiously, the ninety-minute flight in a jet impressed them more than their experience of time travel. They had already adjusted to what had happened to them as healthy organisms always adapt to radical change.

Paris exploded on their eyes like an incandescent bombshell. They were booked into a private suite in the opulent George Cinq hotel, chosen with an eye to future publicity because of its apposite name. For several hours they were kept in isolation until Jacques Bouchet, accompanied by a psychiatrist, arrived to interview them The editor was by this time fearful in case they were snapped up by another magazine or newspaper. He was in the midst of negotiating a valuable deal with one of the television companies, having succeeded in convincing the directors that one of the biggest events ever in the broadcasting world was about to break on an astonished world. His admiration for Kiki was matched only by his gratitude for an exclusive that looked as if it would soon treble and quadruple the circulation of his magazine.

Bouchet was a slightly-built man of about fifty with a large nose and wisps of light-coloured hair on his cranium. He had once practised as an attorney. The psychiatrist, Dr. Albert Schneider, was immensely tall with an absurdly small goatee beard. Normally, he cultivated a de Gaulle-like hauteur. Today, however, he was as excited as a small boy with a new toy.

'Miraculous! Miraculous!' he whispered, bending down towards Kiki and Jacques in the corridor outside the suite after conducting his first cross-examination of the men. 'Your lobsters are psychotics all sharing the same delusion. By some process of auto-suggestion they have persuaded themselves they are survivors from the last century. There have been many cases of shared delusions- it usually happens to older people trying to compensate for certain deficiencies in their lives. But nothing has ever happened quite like this. For it to occur in what otherwise appear to be five normal, well-balanced individuals is incredible. I can hardly believe it!'

Jacques smiled at Kiki. The brief holiday had benefited her. She seemed in excellent humour and smiled back as she awaited his reaction.

He gave a little shrug and said: 'I had a suspicion when you first telephoned that these guys had formed themselves into an act and then decided on this story as a publicity stunt. But their account has stood up well to investigation. I telephoned a retired admiral and he confirms that a Gymnote One submarine was built. Plans made for a successor to be called Gymnote Two seem to have disappeared from naval records. He was familiar with the name Bruissard -- it is a distinguished name in French naval history. There was a serving officer of that name who left a professorship at the Sorbonne to take a commission in the navy in 1893. The official records state that he died in 1898 after completing five year's service. His widow was granted a small pension. Four other service pensions were granted to commissioned officers in the submarine branch that year and cash sums are recorded as having been paid to the families of twenty-five matelots who died in service.