John sat down with a sigh. His legs were heavy, and the ball of his left foot throbbed. He passed a weary hand over his face, and shrugged his overcoat from his shoulders. It fell across the back of his chair. He sat for a moment, doing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling nothing. He was tired. It had been a long day pounding the streets handing out leaflets for the newest bar in town, marketing it. That’s what he did, and this was how he had decided to help his latest client: hands on. The design was done, the words written and the flyers published. The plans were in place and the newest bar in this little corner of Britain was open for business. In most ways his work was done, but the results would come over the next week. His objective was simply to fill the bar, and move on to the next project. If only life was so simple.
He reached for his bag. It was new, a messenger he had bought in a fit of trying to make himself look like a successful advertising executive. But when you look like a cross between Homer Simpson's love child with Johnny Vegas and the brother of Phil Jupitus, looking cool, and indeed groovy, is not easy. He shuffled in his seat hoping his big tummy wasn’t too obvious in this darkened room. A waitress bought him a glass of something cold and crisp and white. The wine glass was slippery with condensation. But his life was filmed with condescension. If the bar didn’t fill, he wouldn’t get paid. Marketing by results his client called it. Extortion he called it, after all, he’d have done the work, and the client had approved all the ideas, and added a few of their own. But John’s choices were few and far between. None-the-less, part of his fee, if you can call it that, was as much to eat and drink in the new bar as he wanted. Ringtone, for that was it’s name – not John’s choice, but he had to go with it – was an old formula in a new place. A telephone bar. John had been weary at the very idea. He’d seen them a thousand times before; he’d even pulled in one in London: it was Carrie Fisher, he remembered, at least her look-alike. She had liked his voice with its natural depth and orotund vowels. He may not have got much in the way of certification from his posh education, but John had grown up among people who spoke well, and it had rubbed off. He was more Eton than Ealing, and on the phone where there were fewer inhibitions, his voice had charmed the pants off many, and literally off Carrie Fisher. She was a princess, he remembered. No spring chicken, but an outstanding layer. He smiled at his own joke. After all, it was unlikely any one else would now, and bad puns were harmless to all but himself.
From his bag he drew the day’s paper, The Times. He quickly read through the main news, picking at a story here and there, gleaning what he could from the headlines and foraging further when he felt it was required. Over the sport he lingered for a while, catching up on the news of his beloved team. He heard so little of them now, here in the sticks, but when he had been in London, he hadn’t been that interested: like Buckingham Palace, he thought, when it’s on the doorstep you never go, especially schlepping all the way up from Barnes. Too far to walk, too odorous by train and too unreliable by No 9. Especially if Hammersmith Bridge was the usual nightmare that he remembered. Although he had a rather good night shot of it he’d taken what, more than 20 years ago, on his first proper camera, that stood even now by his bedside.
When he reached the back he discarded the main part of the paper and spent far longer on section 2: the arts coverage. This is why he loved The Times, for it’s irreverent view of the arts. Even the stuffiest laureate could get a drubbing, but more than anything John was feeding his weakness. He was a killer addict. Killer SuDoku. He’d only recently understood the main tricks and twists that made it all make sense and now he was addicted. Every morning, rain, snow or sleet, he was at the newsagents with his 60p to catch up on the latest challenge from the masters. He warmed up with a mild, got to maximum revs with a fiendish and then braced himself for the killer. He knew the theory, but the practise was lagging behind, and silly mistakes still crept in. He needed to spend time on them. He was well into his fiendish, remembering the make-up of the 4’s across the puzzle when the phone on his table rang. He picked up the old fashioned handset and said ‘hi’. His eyes never left the puzzle as he concentrated on the pattern of the fours and thought about how the two’s fitted round them.
‘Hello?’ said a gruff, husky voice.
John didn’t move. His pen hovered over the puzzle and his eyes didn’t stray from the page. Across the room his caller was looking at the table where this curious man sat alone and engrossed. The low level table lamp, with it’s old red shade threw the light down, so the caller could see the paper and his hands, but not John’s face, or his eyes.
‘What are you doing’ John was startled for a moment and said without thinking ‘The crossword’.
‘Oh’, said the deep voice.
‘Yes’ said John, ‘The Times crossword.’
‘Oh my God,' said the voice, ‘how friggin intellectual are you, posh boy’ and with a click the line went dead.
John looked at his hand. It was trembling. He relaxed it and laid it flat on the page. His concentration was gone. He couldn’t get back to the SuDoku now, and knew that this interruption meant he had to do that really annoying thing of writing all the possible number in every blank square and, by elimination, arrive at the answer. But that was plodding and predictable. Sure, it easily lead one to the solution, but the point was to reach it by inspiration. As a punishment he started on The Times crossword, as he had tried to impress his caller with his erudition, and, because it was the easy crossword in T2, he filled in three or four clues without much effort. The phone burbled once again.
‘Ask me a clue, posh boy’ said the gruff voice. There was muffled coughing, and the voice came back ‘excuse me’.
John had completely failed to notice if the bar was empty or full. He wasn’t alert to these things on that night. His tiredness was bred into his bones over months of anxious worry and he couldn’t have cared one way or the other, so he had just done what he needed to and got on with things.
‘Come on, posh boy, give me a clue’.
John gently and with more care than he intended laid the receiver back in its cradle. The last thing he wanted was for some bloke to be making a pass at him. What was he, the only gay in the village? Sure, this little town was in Britain, but he wasn’t interested in re-ordering his genes so he could give some gay chap a thrill that night. He put his paper in his bag, collected his coat and made his way out of the door into the wet night. He hadn’t had his supper. He was tired, cold and alone, but tomorrow was another day. And after all, someone had seen something, he thought, that made him approachable. So maybe it wasn’t all bad news.
The next day was not so different that the detail is worth recording until, in the evening when John was sat at his table, in the corner, more or less in the dark, and alone, just as weary, just as footsore and just as stuck on the killer SuDoku, his phone rang. John glanced at his watch, it was past 9, and lifted the receiver. He cradled it with his shoulder and folded the page so that he could see the crossword (easy). He said ‘hi’ into the phone, and read the first of the day’s clues. It wasn’t with interest or excitement that he recognised the voice from the night before. 'Hello, posh boy’ he heard. ‘are you still stuck on the crossword?’
‘Er, no’ John stumbled over his words, ‘it’s today’s, and I’ve only just started’.
Shit, he thought. Why do defensive? It’s only some bloke, albeit he sounds a little less aggressive today, on a wind-up. Why bother with them, any of them. He remained silent. There was a long pause.
‘Am I annoying you?’ came the voice. John’s manners got away from him and galloped out of control before he had time to rein them in.
‘Not at all’ he said, ‘it’s always nice to chat’
Nice to chat?! God! What was he like? A public school twit, or a cogent, educated thinker. The question was rhetorical.
‘Perhaps you’d rather be left alone’
John hauled back on the reins a bit and the runaway stallion slowed to a canter. He thought for a moment about his state of mind, he is the most clubbable of men, a man’s man, ready with a pint and a quip, and his sharp tongue had earned him the nickname Willie many years before, named for the greatest satirist of the time, Willie Rushton, now sadly dead. But John felt he was changing. He was quietening down, finding that the back-slapping rugger-bugger personality he had adopted over many years was draining him. He wanted to be quieter, more thoughtful and, bugger it all, more interesting to himself as well as everyone else. He wanted, above all, some space to think and just to be. This interruption, welcome as it would have been at almost any other time as a saviour from isolation was instead an interruption and a nuisance.
‘Well’, he replied ’it’s been a long day and I could do with some supper and a bit of time with my paper’ But all he heard in reply was coughing, and the click as the phone went dead.
He looked up, but the bar was dimly lit and this deliberate design meant he could not really see if many of the tables were full, let a lone who was coughing. He could dimly make out the sound of someone hacking way over in the furthest corner, but the stereo was loud and Peter Gabriel was pounding away at his Sledgehammer, leaving little room for John to be sure whether it was coughing or not he could hear. He sighed. He listened for a moment to the song that he knew so well, and realised for the first time that it is about love. But the good news, he thought to get off the thorny subject, was that from where he was sitting the waitresses all seemed to be working hard, and that, he felt, means that the place is busy. But there was nothing he could do now if it wasn’t, so he finished his glass, gathered his things and left, ready to take his campaign into another local town the next day.
After the next day in the neighbouring town, the now familiar pattern established itself again. John arrived at about eight, straight from the bus, and shrugged his damp coat on the back of the chair. He reached into his bag for the paper, but his time he wasn’t so interested in the SuDoku. For some reason he didn’t get further than completing the easy. He had a quick go at the T2 crossword too, but even that palled. He threw it down on the floor, folded his arms and sat, staring into his glass of wine and contemplating his work so far. He felt different today. He was ready for more. And was just beginning to feel he might really look at the bar tonight and see how it was performing, when the phone range.
‘Hi, hello, this is…’ he paused, remembering, ‘this is table’ he looked quickly, ‘seven’.
'Hello table seven. You sound happier tonight’ It was a new voice, and this time it was female. It was atttractive: he knew instantly that someone with a voice like that was someone he could like.
‘Yes’ he replied, ‘I suppose I am.’ He thought.
'How are you?’ it seemed polite.
‘Much better thank you’
‘Oh good’ he said, not understanding why, but feeling he had hit the right note of politeness.
‘Have you had an interesting day’
‘Actually I have,' he said 'I stood outside Marks and Sparks handing out leaflets and admiring women as they chose their new undies, through the window’
‘Undies! You mean they chose their knickers through the window?’ The voice was amused, a catch in the throat.
‘No, no’ John was embarrassed and rushed ‘I mean I was watching through the window'.
'A voyeur?’ There was definite laugh in the voice now. Something in the voice made John sit up , He began to take much more notice. He liked the way the conversation was easy, it amused him and cut through his tiredness.
‘Oh I hope not’ he said ‘ merely an observer. Do you think they didn’t like me looking?’
'I don’t think they gave a flying … hoot’ came the reply. Quick and assured.
‘Enjoy your supper’
John was startled. A waitress put a well-intentioned salad in front of him. John looked round, still with the phone in his hand, but the gloom in the bar made it difficult. He was being observed, but he could see no one looking his way. He replaced the receiver and pulled the plate towards him. The phone murmured in its cradle.
‘Enjoy your salad’ said the voice.
There was a chuckle and click. He looked again, but there were no clues in the darkness. He was alone.
As the last morsel of chicken caeser transferred from John’s fork to his mouth the phone on his table warbled again. 'Was that good?’
He applied a napkin carefully to his mouth and with his free hand pushed the plate away.
‘Do you know’ He said, reaching for his wine glass, ‘it was’.
He took a mouthful and swallowed. There was silence.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Hello.’ she said.
There was another pause. Anxious to fill it, but worried about being thought forward John considered what to say. Something was piquing his interest. He liked the voice, the care, even careful, way with words.
“Have you eaten yet?’, he said. Good, he thought. Neutral, but interested. As good a start as any.
‘Oh Posh boy, is that all you can think to ask me?’ John sat bolt upright in his chair. Posh Boy? How…? Who …? He looked around, and as he did so thought he heard a smile down the phone.
‘Is that… was that …? Oh my goodness’, he said. ‘Have you had a cough?’
‘Yes’, she said, ‘but it’s gone now. And it’s not a smoker’s’
‘No’ he said, ‘it was all yours’.
She chuckled.
‘I’m sorry,’ he went on ‘ I’ve just realised something and I’m most terribly sorry. I .. I don’t quite know what to say. I’m in shock’
‘Do you need a doctor?” that smile in the voice. It really was most beguiling.
‘No, no, not that kind of…’. He paused. ‘What do I call you?’
‘Whoa, posh boy, abrupt change of subject’ she said. Was that an accent he could hear. Lilting R’s and S’s that whispered on her lips. Nordic?
‘Yes, I’m sorry he said ‘But I feel like we’ve talked before, yet here I am starting afresh.’
‘We have’. She said, 'you are’.
And they talked and talked, each interested and interesting, for as many hours as the bar stayed open. They found out much about each other: from him she found out details, from her he found out very little, but the conversation came easily and they laughed together often. But once when John stood to look around she told him not to try too hard, if he looked too much she would disappear, just fade away.
‘Tell me your name’, he wanted to ask. ‘And I’ll tell you mine’ he would offer, but he was too slow and she asked him first, and he felt like a little boy in the playground once more, and his tongue was tied, no longer free to range over their fast and extensive conversation.
He asked her to go first. But she wouldn’t. He asked many times and tried different ways to find out anything that he could hold onto as solid fact, but she was coy, secretive and …. interesting and enigmatic and intelligent and witty and fast and funny. John enjoyed her company more than he knew how to register without sounding pushy.
'What’s wrong, posh boy, are you ashamed of being a Tristan or a Jeremy’
‘No, he laughed ‘nothing so glamorous’
‘But at your posh schools they had posh names to match’ she enquired.
‘Some' he said, 'but they were too busy with themselves to be after me, and my name is too small and too boring to be interesting. I’ll tell you if you tell me mine’.
He bit his tongue immediately, he knew how childish he sounded, and here was someone to whom childishness seemed anathema. He wanted to impress her, not distress her.
‘John’ he mumbled, small and shy again.
‘Now you’.
He felt as if he was in the school yard, grinding away with his toe into the dust. She prevaricated and quibbled, but he said ‘play fair’ and she said it back to him and added one word more. ‘Geraldine’ she finally said. And he thought he heard the sound of a kiss blown to him as the line went dead.
He sat there waiting, willing the phone to ring again. But it didn’t. He tried to watch everyone as they left, was it her? This one? Her? That one? Or Her? But he had no clues, and no one even glanced at him as they left. He waited for the bar to empty for the waitresses to clean up, for his client, who looked happy enough to clap him on the back and say ‘goodnight John boy’. He had to leave, so he did. But something remained behind on that day. His happiest since he had arrived in this new place.
The next day was more of the same, handing out leaflets in yet another local town. But John was different he was happier, and had smile on his face. He even whistled, but not for long. His inability to hold a tune, or even hit two consecutive notes in the same key, was driving people away and his distribution rate slowed. He stopped and just hummed songs to himself as they bounced into his head. Always love songs he noticed, nothing else, just mournful or cheerful songs about love. But he was not falling for that! Not yet anyway. And he wondered about her all day, looking at every woman he saw, testing her with his eyes, daring her to be his phone friend from last night. He wondered if she was pretty, he wondered if she was blonde or grey or brunette. He knew her age was just a shade less than his own, but he knew little else material other than the name she had chosen to give him. Was it even hers? He didn’t know. All he knew was he had been truthful in his responses of fact, but he had no way of knowing how truthful she was. And anyway there was so precious little to go on that really it was immaterial. Yet she knew so much about him: his age, where he lived, what he did, he had even, rashly perhaps told her about his website, and all his contact details were on it, so she could, in theory get hold of him night or day. Were her eyes blue, he thought she has said brown and realised he had not told her his were too: he hadn’t known and had had to check in the mirror that evening. Happy bright eyes he had seen, shining and new. He just longed for the day to be over.
When finally he had handed out all his leaflets, and made his way home to the bar, he found the same table and sat their waiting. No call came, but he was too excited to attempt the SuDoku, so he dug out a book he had in his bag, an old hardback and a simple detective novel about horses and gallops. Nothing too taxing. Still the phone didn’t ring.
The waitress brought his supper and a second glass of wine. He waited on, frustrated and nervously excited. Then the phone warbled. He stuck out a hand, but as he got near to the phone it died in mid-ring. He picked up the receiver and said hello several times. But there was nothing. He clicked his fingers at a waitress, and immediately apologised. His frustration was not her fault. He asked her for a new phone and she bought one across. But still it sat there resolute and silent. He called her again, more kindly, and asked her to ring his table. She did, it worked fine. But the voice he wanted to hear would not come, until, as the evening was ending, it warbled again.
‘Posh boy’ she said.
'Hello’ he said, I thought you were not going to ring.'
'I’m sorry, my cold won’t go and I’ve had … other things to do’ he felt full of remorse; of course she did, a life, children , a husband perhaps, there was guilt in his voice,
'I'm sorry' he said.
'Why' she said. 'It’s not your problem’.
And the line went dead.
And it’s been dead ever since. John went to the bar for two more nights. But the phone did not ring again. He has never decided why the phone stopped ringing, perhaps it will again. He felt as though he had been taken to a fine and happy place, a sunny beach perhaps with shells and rock pools and castles made of glistening golden sand, but now the tide had gone out and left him, and taken all the castles and moats they had built together with it. But tides always come back in, don't they? It's nature, he thought. But this one seemed to be gone for a long time, it felt as if it was out forever. He could still see the water, a small amount on a distant horizon. And he could remember the warmth with which it had lapped around his ankles, and he knew he wanted that feeling again. Perhaps one day it would and they will talk again, and he can say he’s sorry for whatever drove her away. He understands but … but what? There was nothing, just talk. But there was! There was something. A connection?
John still reads the paper, and still enjoys the Arts section more than the news or comment. He still does SuDoku, and he still markets other peoples businesses more successfully than he markets his own. But he doesn’t really care for the telephone anymore, and he rarely goes into bars now. He’s had enough of them. What's more, his girlfriend doesn't like them, even though she owns one and works in it. And later that night, when she's discarded her uniform, and as he pressed his hard heat into her, his client, his girlfriend, the waitress, called out from the depth of her ecstacy,
'Come on Posh Boy, fuck me',
he threw back his head and they both laughed, and came together.
He reached for his bag. It was new, a messenger he had bought in a fit of trying to make himself look like a successful advertising executive. But when you look like a cross between Homer Simpson's love child with Johnny Vegas and the brother of Phil Jupitus, looking cool, and indeed groovy, is not easy. He shuffled in his seat hoping his big tummy wasn’t too obvious in this darkened room. A waitress bought him a glass of something cold and crisp and white. The wine glass was slippery with condensation. But his life was filmed with condescension. If the bar didn’t fill, he wouldn’t get paid. Marketing by results his client called it. Extortion he called it, after all, he’d have done the work, and the client had approved all the ideas, and added a few of their own. But John’s choices were few and far between. None-the-less, part of his fee, if you can call it that, was as much to eat and drink in the new bar as he wanted. Ringtone, for that was it’s name – not John’s choice, but he had to go with it – was an old formula in a new place. A telephone bar. John had been weary at the very idea. He’d seen them a thousand times before; he’d even pulled in one in London: it was Carrie Fisher, he remembered, at least her look-alike. She had liked his voice with its natural depth and orotund vowels. He may not have got much in the way of certification from his posh education, but John had grown up among people who spoke well, and it had rubbed off. He was more Eton than Ealing, and on the phone where there were fewer inhibitions, his voice had charmed the pants off many, and literally off Carrie Fisher. She was a princess, he remembered. No spring chicken, but an outstanding layer. He smiled at his own joke. After all, it was unlikely any one else would now, and bad puns were harmless to all but himself.
From his bag he drew the day’s paper, The Times. He quickly read through the main news, picking at a story here and there, gleaning what he could from the headlines and foraging further when he felt it was required. Over the sport he lingered for a while, catching up on the news of his beloved team. He heard so little of them now, here in the sticks, but when he had been in London, he hadn’t been that interested: like Buckingham Palace, he thought, when it’s on the doorstep you never go, especially schlepping all the way up from Barnes. Too far to walk, too odorous by train and too unreliable by No 9. Especially if Hammersmith Bridge was the usual nightmare that he remembered. Although he had a rather good night shot of it he’d taken what, more than 20 years ago, on his first proper camera, that stood even now by his bedside.
When he reached the back he discarded the main part of the paper and spent far longer on section 2: the arts coverage. This is why he loved The Times, for it’s irreverent view of the arts. Even the stuffiest laureate could get a drubbing, but more than anything John was feeding his weakness. He was a killer addict. Killer SuDoku. He’d only recently understood the main tricks and twists that made it all make sense and now he was addicted. Every morning, rain, snow or sleet, he was at the newsagents with his 60p to catch up on the latest challenge from the masters. He warmed up with a mild, got to maximum revs with a fiendish and then braced himself for the killer. He knew the theory, but the practise was lagging behind, and silly mistakes still crept in. He needed to spend time on them. He was well into his fiendish, remembering the make-up of the 4’s across the puzzle when the phone on his table rang. He picked up the old fashioned handset and said ‘hi’. His eyes never left the puzzle as he concentrated on the pattern of the fours and thought about how the two’s fitted round them.
‘Hello?’ said a gruff, husky voice.
John didn’t move. His pen hovered over the puzzle and his eyes didn’t stray from the page. Across the room his caller was looking at the table where this curious man sat alone and engrossed. The low level table lamp, with it’s old red shade threw the light down, so the caller could see the paper and his hands, but not John’s face, or his eyes.
‘What are you doing’ John was startled for a moment and said without thinking ‘The crossword’.
‘Oh’, said the deep voice.
‘Yes’ said John, ‘The Times crossword.’
‘Oh my God,' said the voice, ‘how friggin intellectual are you, posh boy’ and with a click the line went dead.
John looked at his hand. It was trembling. He relaxed it and laid it flat on the page. His concentration was gone. He couldn’t get back to the SuDoku now, and knew that this interruption meant he had to do that really annoying thing of writing all the possible number in every blank square and, by elimination, arrive at the answer. But that was plodding and predictable. Sure, it easily lead one to the solution, but the point was to reach it by inspiration. As a punishment he started on The Times crossword, as he had tried to impress his caller with his erudition, and, because it was the easy crossword in T2, he filled in three or four clues without much effort. The phone burbled once again.
‘Ask me a clue, posh boy’ said the gruff voice. There was muffled coughing, and the voice came back ‘excuse me’.
John had completely failed to notice if the bar was empty or full. He wasn’t alert to these things on that night. His tiredness was bred into his bones over months of anxious worry and he couldn’t have cared one way or the other, so he had just done what he needed to and got on with things.
‘Come on, posh boy, give me a clue’.
John gently and with more care than he intended laid the receiver back in its cradle. The last thing he wanted was for some bloke to be making a pass at him. What was he, the only gay in the village? Sure, this little town was in Britain, but he wasn’t interested in re-ordering his genes so he could give some gay chap a thrill that night. He put his paper in his bag, collected his coat and made his way out of the door into the wet night. He hadn’t had his supper. He was tired, cold and alone, but tomorrow was another day. And after all, someone had seen something, he thought, that made him approachable. So maybe it wasn’t all bad news.
-oOo-
The next day was not so different that the detail is worth recording until, in the evening when John was sat at his table, in the corner, more or less in the dark, and alone, just as weary, just as footsore and just as stuck on the killer SuDoku, his phone rang. John glanced at his watch, it was past 9, and lifted the receiver. He cradled it with his shoulder and folded the page so that he could see the crossword (easy). He said ‘hi’ into the phone, and read the first of the day’s clues. It wasn’t with interest or excitement that he recognised the voice from the night before. 'Hello, posh boy’ he heard. ‘are you still stuck on the crossword?’
‘Er, no’ John stumbled over his words, ‘it’s today’s, and I’ve only just started’.
Shit, he thought. Why do defensive? It’s only some bloke, albeit he sounds a little less aggressive today, on a wind-up. Why bother with them, any of them. He remained silent. There was a long pause.
‘Am I annoying you?’ came the voice. John’s manners got away from him and galloped out of control before he had time to rein them in.
‘Not at all’ he said, ‘it’s always nice to chat’
Nice to chat?! God! What was he like? A public school twit, or a cogent, educated thinker. The question was rhetorical.
‘Perhaps you’d rather be left alone’
John hauled back on the reins a bit and the runaway stallion slowed to a canter. He thought for a moment about his state of mind, he is the most clubbable of men, a man’s man, ready with a pint and a quip, and his sharp tongue had earned him the nickname Willie many years before, named for the greatest satirist of the time, Willie Rushton, now sadly dead. But John felt he was changing. He was quietening down, finding that the back-slapping rugger-bugger personality he had adopted over many years was draining him. He wanted to be quieter, more thoughtful and, bugger it all, more interesting to himself as well as everyone else. He wanted, above all, some space to think and just to be. This interruption, welcome as it would have been at almost any other time as a saviour from isolation was instead an interruption and a nuisance.
‘Well’, he replied ’it’s been a long day and I could do with some supper and a bit of time with my paper’ But all he heard in reply was coughing, and the click as the phone went dead.
He looked up, but the bar was dimly lit and this deliberate design meant he could not really see if many of the tables were full, let a lone who was coughing. He could dimly make out the sound of someone hacking way over in the furthest corner, but the stereo was loud and Peter Gabriel was pounding away at his Sledgehammer, leaving little room for John to be sure whether it was coughing or not he could hear. He sighed. He listened for a moment to the song that he knew so well, and realised for the first time that it is about love. But the good news, he thought to get off the thorny subject, was that from where he was sitting the waitresses all seemed to be working hard, and that, he felt, means that the place is busy. But there was nothing he could do now if it wasn’t, so he finished his glass, gathered his things and left, ready to take his campaign into another local town the next day.
After the next day in the neighbouring town, the now familiar pattern established itself again. John arrived at about eight, straight from the bus, and shrugged his damp coat on the back of the chair. He reached into his bag for the paper, but his time he wasn’t so interested in the SuDoku. For some reason he didn’t get further than completing the easy. He had a quick go at the T2 crossword too, but even that palled. He threw it down on the floor, folded his arms and sat, staring into his glass of wine and contemplating his work so far. He felt different today. He was ready for more. And was just beginning to feel he might really look at the bar tonight and see how it was performing, when the phone range.
‘Hi, hello, this is…’ he paused, remembering, ‘this is table’ he looked quickly, ‘seven’.
'Hello table seven. You sound happier tonight’ It was a new voice, and this time it was female. It was atttractive: he knew instantly that someone with a voice like that was someone he could like.
‘Yes’ he replied, ‘I suppose I am.’ He thought.
'How are you?’ it seemed polite.
‘Much better thank you’
‘Oh good’ he said, not understanding why, but feeling he had hit the right note of politeness.
‘Have you had an interesting day’
‘Actually I have,' he said 'I stood outside Marks and Sparks handing out leaflets and admiring women as they chose their new undies, through the window’
‘Undies! You mean they chose their knickers through the window?’ The voice was amused, a catch in the throat.
‘No, no’ John was embarrassed and rushed ‘I mean I was watching through the window'.
'A voyeur?’ There was definite laugh in the voice now. Something in the voice made John sit up , He began to take much more notice. He liked the way the conversation was easy, it amused him and cut through his tiredness.
‘Oh I hope not’ he said ‘ merely an observer. Do you think they didn’t like me looking?’
'I don’t think they gave a flying … hoot’ came the reply. Quick and assured.
‘Enjoy your supper’
John was startled. A waitress put a well-intentioned salad in front of him. John looked round, still with the phone in his hand, but the gloom in the bar made it difficult. He was being observed, but he could see no one looking his way. He replaced the receiver and pulled the plate towards him. The phone murmured in its cradle.
‘Enjoy your salad’ said the voice.
There was a chuckle and click. He looked again, but there were no clues in the darkness. He was alone.
-oOo-
As the last morsel of chicken caeser transferred from John’s fork to his mouth the phone on his table warbled again. 'Was that good?’
He applied a napkin carefully to his mouth and with his free hand pushed the plate away.
‘Do you know’ He said, reaching for his wine glass, ‘it was’.
He took a mouthful and swallowed. There was silence.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Hello.’ she said.
There was another pause. Anxious to fill it, but worried about being thought forward John considered what to say. Something was piquing his interest. He liked the voice, the care, even careful, way with words.
“Have you eaten yet?’, he said. Good, he thought. Neutral, but interested. As good a start as any.
‘Oh Posh boy, is that all you can think to ask me?’ John sat bolt upright in his chair. Posh Boy? How…? Who …? He looked around, and as he did so thought he heard a smile down the phone.
‘Is that… was that …? Oh my goodness’, he said. ‘Have you had a cough?’
‘Yes’, she said, ‘but it’s gone now. And it’s not a smoker’s’
‘No’ he said, ‘it was all yours’.
She chuckled.
‘I’m sorry,’ he went on ‘ I’ve just realised something and I’m most terribly sorry. I .. I don’t quite know what to say. I’m in shock’
‘Do you need a doctor?” that smile in the voice. It really was most beguiling.
‘No, no, not that kind of…’. He paused. ‘What do I call you?’
‘Whoa, posh boy, abrupt change of subject’ she said. Was that an accent he could hear. Lilting R’s and S’s that whispered on her lips. Nordic?
‘Yes, I’m sorry he said ‘But I feel like we’ve talked before, yet here I am starting afresh.’
‘We have’. She said, 'you are’.
And they talked and talked, each interested and interesting, for as many hours as the bar stayed open. They found out much about each other: from him she found out details, from her he found out very little, but the conversation came easily and they laughed together often. But once when John stood to look around she told him not to try too hard, if he looked too much she would disappear, just fade away.
‘Tell me your name’, he wanted to ask. ‘And I’ll tell you mine’ he would offer, but he was too slow and she asked him first, and he felt like a little boy in the playground once more, and his tongue was tied, no longer free to range over their fast and extensive conversation.
He asked her to go first. But she wouldn’t. He asked many times and tried different ways to find out anything that he could hold onto as solid fact, but she was coy, secretive and …. interesting and enigmatic and intelligent and witty and fast and funny. John enjoyed her company more than he knew how to register without sounding pushy.
'What’s wrong, posh boy, are you ashamed of being a Tristan or a Jeremy’
‘No, he laughed ‘nothing so glamorous’
‘But at your posh schools they had posh names to match’ she enquired.
‘Some' he said, 'but they were too busy with themselves to be after me, and my name is too small and too boring to be interesting. I’ll tell you if you tell me mine’.
He bit his tongue immediately, he knew how childish he sounded, and here was someone to whom childishness seemed anathema. He wanted to impress her, not distress her.
‘John’ he mumbled, small and shy again.
‘Now you’.
He felt as if he was in the school yard, grinding away with his toe into the dust. She prevaricated and quibbled, but he said ‘play fair’ and she said it back to him and added one word more. ‘Geraldine’ she finally said. And he thought he heard the sound of a kiss blown to him as the line went dead.
He sat there waiting, willing the phone to ring again. But it didn’t. He tried to watch everyone as they left, was it her? This one? Her? That one? Or Her? But he had no clues, and no one even glanced at him as they left. He waited for the bar to empty for the waitresses to clean up, for his client, who looked happy enough to clap him on the back and say ‘goodnight John boy’. He had to leave, so he did. But something remained behind on that day. His happiest since he had arrived in this new place.
-oOo-
The next day was more of the same, handing out leaflets in yet another local town. But John was different he was happier, and had smile on his face. He even whistled, but not for long. His inability to hold a tune, or even hit two consecutive notes in the same key, was driving people away and his distribution rate slowed. He stopped and just hummed songs to himself as they bounced into his head. Always love songs he noticed, nothing else, just mournful or cheerful songs about love. But he was not falling for that! Not yet anyway. And he wondered about her all day, looking at every woman he saw, testing her with his eyes, daring her to be his phone friend from last night. He wondered if she was pretty, he wondered if she was blonde or grey or brunette. He knew her age was just a shade less than his own, but he knew little else material other than the name she had chosen to give him. Was it even hers? He didn’t know. All he knew was he had been truthful in his responses of fact, but he had no way of knowing how truthful she was. And anyway there was so precious little to go on that really it was immaterial. Yet she knew so much about him: his age, where he lived, what he did, he had even, rashly perhaps told her about his website, and all his contact details were on it, so she could, in theory get hold of him night or day. Were her eyes blue, he thought she has said brown and realised he had not told her his were too: he hadn’t known and had had to check in the mirror that evening. Happy bright eyes he had seen, shining and new. He just longed for the day to be over.
When finally he had handed out all his leaflets, and made his way home to the bar, he found the same table and sat their waiting. No call came, but he was too excited to attempt the SuDoku, so he dug out a book he had in his bag, an old hardback and a simple detective novel about horses and gallops. Nothing too taxing. Still the phone didn’t ring.
The waitress brought his supper and a second glass of wine. He waited on, frustrated and nervously excited. Then the phone warbled. He stuck out a hand, but as he got near to the phone it died in mid-ring. He picked up the receiver and said hello several times. But there was nothing. He clicked his fingers at a waitress, and immediately apologised. His frustration was not her fault. He asked her for a new phone and she bought one across. But still it sat there resolute and silent. He called her again, more kindly, and asked her to ring his table. She did, it worked fine. But the voice he wanted to hear would not come, until, as the evening was ending, it warbled again.
‘Posh boy’ she said.
'Hello’ he said, I thought you were not going to ring.'
'I’m sorry, my cold won’t go and I’ve had … other things to do’ he felt full of remorse; of course she did, a life, children , a husband perhaps, there was guilt in his voice,
'I'm sorry' he said.
'Why' she said. 'It’s not your problem’.
And the line went dead.
And it’s been dead ever since. John went to the bar for two more nights. But the phone did not ring again. He has never decided why the phone stopped ringing, perhaps it will again. He felt as though he had been taken to a fine and happy place, a sunny beach perhaps with shells and rock pools and castles made of glistening golden sand, but now the tide had gone out and left him, and taken all the castles and moats they had built together with it. But tides always come back in, don't they? It's nature, he thought. But this one seemed to be gone for a long time, it felt as if it was out forever. He could still see the water, a small amount on a distant horizon. And he could remember the warmth with which it had lapped around his ankles, and he knew he wanted that feeling again. Perhaps one day it would and they will talk again, and he can say he’s sorry for whatever drove her away. He understands but … but what? There was nothing, just talk. But there was! There was something. A connection?
John still reads the paper, and still enjoys the Arts section more than the news or comment. He still does SuDoku, and he still markets other peoples businesses more successfully than he markets his own. But he doesn’t really care for the telephone anymore, and he rarely goes into bars now. He’s had enough of them. What's more, his girlfriend doesn't like them, even though she owns one and works in it. And later that night, when she's discarded her uniform, and as he pressed his hard heat into her, his client, his girlfriend, the waitress, called out from the depth of her ecstacy,
'Come on Posh Boy, fuck me',
he threw back his head and they both laughed, and came together.
