People who have turned down Honours and Knighthoods

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/document2012-01-24-075439.pdf

Notice Francis Bacon, Roald Dahl, Lucien Freud, Lowry, Graham Greene, J B Priestley and Philip Larkin.

Conversation

- You took your time.
- Yes.
- Free as a bird, eh?
- Free as a bird, brother.
- Well, we'd better order soon or else that bitch of a waitress will give us spit soup again.
- Frank.
- I've seen her do it, man, I'm not even fucking joking.
- Will you listen to me?
- What? I'm sitting here dumb as a tongueless son of a bitch. You talk whenever the hell you like.
- Shut up.      Gibbons is gone.
- The fuck do you mean gone.
- What do I? I mean gone gone, bloody gone, brother.
- Dead?
- How would I know? The bastard's gone, isn't he?
- Alright, Christ, I'm just trying to understand you you're coming at me like you always do with fucking riddles.
- He's gone, Frank, the hell is so difficult to understand about that?
- Alright alright. So what did you did?
- What did I do? I came here you thick shit.
- Settle down for Christsake, we're in public view in case you forgot.
- What are we gonna do?
- It's alright, it's alright.
-     What?
- We're going to call Dyle.
- Who the hell is that?
- You haven't heard of Dyle? Guys the talk of the pig room, the news room and every dank bar in this dumpcity hellhole.
- Alright well who is this underworld celebrity? And what's he gonna do, go find Frank and get it off him?
- I don't know what he's gonna do, I just know he's good.
- He's good?
- Yeah, when he does stuff he's good at it.
- Like what?
- I don't fuckin' know like beheading puppies.
- What the fuck are you...?
- Hi. Can I take your orders?
- Fuck this.
- Hi, yeah. I'll have a coke.
- I'll have the biggest omelette your chef can make with everything in it. By the way, where's that girl who was serving us before?
- She didn't come in today.
- Hmm.
- No food for you, sir?
- Piss off.
-       Jesus Harry, that guy looks like barely 20.
- So? What do you want from me?

Bishop Begromob

A man in dark clothes with a silver cross hanging around his neck passed through the busy square. Many looked his way but he did not return any gazes, and seemed to be instead gazing insistently straight ahead through his black rimmed spectacles. A film of perspiration was noticeable on the man's heavily lined forehead, and he moved slowly, with effort. At one point a man in a white polo shirt asked if he was alright and whether he needed help, but the bishop ignored him. When he had crossed the square, he moved into a patch of shade, and slowed his pace. The dark clothes he wore were darker still at each armpit.

He turned slowly to face the way he had come and watched a squabbling couple across the square shout at each other, one of them dropping their sunglasses. He spoke a single word, and the buildings at the far end of the square suddenly exploded, fire bursting from within them, and engulfing those nearby. Amid the sounds of screaming the buildings fell forward roaring white noise as they collapsed. Fire blossomed.
"Are you Bishop Begromob?"
The voice distracted the bishop, and blinked in the sun. He had lost his train of thought. He turned to look at the young man who faced him with a small smile and red eyes.
"I am," said Begromob, turning his gaze to look back at the far end of the square. The young man also turned his head, his smile disappearing and his forehead creasing. He looked at the busy line of buildings opposite them, and then back to Begromob.
"Are you ready?" he asked, looking at the bishop's intent stare and curled lip.
"Yes, I'm ready," said Bogromob, still staring. After another moment he looked away, and allowed the young man to lead him towards a cafe. Casting a last look back at the opposite side of the square, Bogromob muttered a single word under his breath.             

Algernon Adkins

Algernon Adkins rocked backwards and forwards on his heels listlessly, hazel eyes wide with innocent curiosity as he regarded the large building in front of him. He raised a slender arm, and his watch emerged from beneath his sleeve like an animal creeping from a cave. The time was, he observed, 8.58 am. It was probably too early for him to go in yet, he decided, and so instead he watched a pigeon battling a sandwich. A while later he once again regarded his watch, cheap jewel set amidst a forest of arm-hair, and found that it was 9.04 am.

A bit late, he thought. Excellent. That's what employers are looking for – someone who lives on the edge. A busy man, someone who doesn't suffer fools gladly, and might not turn up to work one day because he has far more important business to attend to.

He gazed for a moment more at the fat pigeon, before dragging himself away to enter the building.

It was an awfully large foyer, panelled in what Adkins could only assumed were panels, giving the place an airy feeling of regularity and soft monotony. Sitting behind the smooth desk in front of him was a smooth man in a beige tie with a face so creamy one might almost dip a finger in it. Adkins, however, resisted the impulse. Mastery of ones self is the key to being a good employ, he told himself, smiling at the creamy man. 

"Hello," he said, and the receptionist pulled a smile that was genuine and warm. "I'm here for a job." 

"Your name?" 

Adkins told him, and the creamy face swivelled to a computer screen, where it was satisfied, and the smile broadened, double cream.

"Floor seven, Petron will meet you there."

As Algernon Adkins wandered away, straightening his tie, the cream-man, whose name was Jonstone, watched him go, and he grinned wider and his cream face dried and cracked.   

   

Meet Burger

It was a dungeon of sorts: Burger collected chains and fixed them tightly to the walls, sparing no expense either on manacles and torture devices. He also collected the skulls of his victims, and put them carefully on a ping-pong table covered with a once white bed-sheet. Such was Burger’s style – there was a peculiar contrast between frugal arrangements and grander, more elaborate props. He had spent five hours carving runes into the wrack by hand. The room which had been called a cellar by the previous owners was now exactly how he wanted it to be, complete with tall stacks of his favourite comics lying in organic piles.

Sitting calmly - he was always calm - on a deckchair, Burger was eating a burger and sipping occasionally at a can of cheap beer when he could muster the energy to reach down and pick it up from the floor where it rested cold. Whilst he munched slowly on his home made meal, he occupied himself with an old hobby. The inevitable interview would, he imagined, go something like this:

“So you’re… Burger?”

“Yes.”

“Is that your real name?”

“Of course not.”

“Alright then. Age?”

“Forty-three.”

“Height? Weight?”

“Five eight. Ninety seven and a half kilos.”

“And you were a primary school teacher?”

“Before I was arrested, yes.”

“Jesus Christ. And you admit it? You killed all of those people?”

“Yeah.”

“What for?”

“Do you ask a fish why it swims? Would you ask a runner why they chose to run a marathon?”

“And you ate how many of your victims?”

“Most of them. The tasty ones, I guess.”

“And how’d you tell if they’re tasty?”

At that point Burger would give the interviewer his best look.

“I taste them.”

He paused mid chew and picked something hard and unpleasant out of his mouth and flicked it away thoughtfully. Perhaps a walk? He considered carefully the prospect of fresh air whilst swallowing his last mouthful of meat and bun. No sauce. Sauce would spoil it.

“A walk, yes,” he said aloud to the pile of skulls which he was sitting in front of. They were arranged in a small triangular-based pyramid of three by three by three, faces outwards on all sides. He picked up his beer and with effort, and then got up with a little grunt of complaint, raising a hand slightly in goodbye to the skulls on his way back upstairs.

After locking up the concealed entrance to the dungeon as usual, Burger left his house and set off into the middle of Sunday, a few comics under his arm. In the warm sunshine, he slapped a pair of sunglasses onto his face, and trotted towards the park, hoping to find a bench.