A False Alarm and a Very Small Brick Wall

Everything in this story is alleged, to protect “Darcy”... and ourselves.

I worked with a bloke years ago who, for the purposes of this story, we'll call Darcy. That wasn't his name. Probably.

Every station has a Darcy. The bloke who, despite spending roughly the same amount of time at recruits as everyone else, somehow comes out the other end operating under a completely different set of rules.

Anyway, we got turned out one night, probably around 11pm, to a smoke alarm going off in a low-rise apartment block. Nothing particularly exciting. Darcy was driving.

By the time we got there everyone had evacuated and there was a decent group of residents standing out on the footpath in their pyjamas waiting for us to work out whether their building was on fire. We headed inside, had a look around, worked out it was a false alarm, reset everything and wandered back out to the truck.

Except Darcy was nowhere to be seen.

When someone disappears at a job, particularly the bloke who's supposed to drive you home, you generally have a bit of a look for him. So we did.

Eventually one of the boys spotted him across the road, behind a low brick fence, squatting down like an angry cat taking a shit.

And I probably need to explain the fence here, because calling it a fence gives Darcy more credit than he deserves. It wasn't one of those six-foot Colorbond jobs where you could disappear for ten minutes and start a new life behind it. It was a little brick wall. Maybe waist height. It probably provided about as much privacy as crouching behind a wheelie bin and hoping everyone respected the arrangement.

All you could see was Darcy's head sticking up over the top.

On the other side of the road was an entire apartment block worth of people who'd been dragged outside at 11 o'clock at night. They had nowhere to go and absolutely nothing else to do except wait for us.

Just a fire truck, a few firefighters and, potentially, Darcy's head sticking up behind a brick wall.

I'm not sure whether any of them worked out what was happening and I really hope they didn't. Might've slowed down the calendar sales that year.

Eventually Darcy emerged from behind the wall, crossed the road and climbed back into the truck. No explanation. Nothing. Just got back into the driver's seat as though shitting behind a tiny fucking fence on a busy street was a perfectly normal part of the night.

And we carried on.

The funny thing is, I can't remember where the job was. I can't remember what set the alarm off, or even who else was there. After 17 years there are plenty of actual jobs I struggle to remember properly.

But I can still picture Darcy's head sticking up over that brick wall.

Funny the jobs that stay with you.