THE CALL

To start with, I have two confessions to make. I do not possess a mobile. And I am unable to let a telephone ring unanswered. Maybe the two go together and cancel each other out.

When Jessica rang – on her mobile, from a wine-bar, about two in the morning – I answered, even though I was fast asleep. I have no living relatives, the dogs were all safely downstairs, in case of national emergency they’d presumably send out loudspeaker vans – but I still answered. Maybe I was hoping an Australian television executive had read one of my stories on the website and wanted to waste no time in bidding for the rights.

Jessica was inviting me to London, to stay in her flat for a while. Actually, to stay in one of her flats. For a weekend. Even more actually, I was supposed to be a buffer zone of some kind, because she was having men trouble (note: not “man-trouble” – if it had only been one, she could have handled it). The evenings would be my own (which was good, because there were in fact a couple of late-night Proms I fancied attending), but she wanted me around for the late mornings and long afternoons, when discussions might get “heavy”. And maybe also the very late nights and very early mornings, ditto.

Jessica is one of those women who are so attractive that you know from the very beginning you don’t have a chance. As with the over-elaborate cakes in a baker’s window, you gawp and you drool, and then you reflect that they probably don’t taste of anything very much apart from vegetable dye and anti-oxidant and you settle for a hunk of spicy bread pudding instead. I flattered myself that she had a certain respect for me because I’d never tried to make a fool of myself over her, but it may just be that she knew a serviceable mug when she saw one. Anyhow, I called in my obligations and got friends in the village to walk the dogs for three mornings and three evenings (I assumed I’d be back around lunchtime on Monday) and took the first train that my Network Card permitted.

Her greeting wasn’t exactly effusive: “There you are. Good. Sit down. Listen. You are to Guard the Phone. The Person Who Will Be Calling is Freddie. Don’t get into a conversation unless you feel your Inter-Island is up to it, which I doubt. In any case, he’s mostly high as a kite on ganja, which doesn’t help his comprehensibility but does make him an absolute sweetheart.

“The Person Who Mustn’t Know About Any Of This is called Justin, and he’s so jealous, he makes Othello look like Harold Nicolson.”

[Just when you’ve written Jessica off as an airhead, she comes out with lines like that. Though she probably got the information from an article on Vita Sackville-West’s garden designs that she read in a magazine at the hairdressers.]

“And what do I tell Freddie?”

“Say nothing. Do nothing. Wait till he’s called.”

“Ah. There are so many of us – waiting for The Call. Are you going to carry on doing this kind of thing, even after you’ve married Justin?”

“How did you know I was going to marry Justin?”

“If he was just a boyfriend, it wouldn’t matter. I mean, you’re obviously modern about these things, but I gather fairly clearly that he isn’t.”

“Modern? I’m being traditional as hell. You should see what my great-aunt Daphne got up to in the fifties.”

“Really?”

“Yes. This used to be her flat. There’s a scrap-book round here somewhere that her maid kept – all her fiancés are in it, and the men she was seen dining with at Claridge’s – I can’t help it. I have my mother’s genes.”

“And your father’s T-shirts.”

“The only call you’re waiting for is from the Head of Light Entertainment. Let me break it to you gently: they made the last Goon Show forty years ago.”

“Don’t you think they might do a commemorative edition for the Coronation?”

“I shall be late for my late entrance if I don’t go now. Guard The Phone! The answering machine has a clean tape in it, and I’ve wiped the dialling memory. The gin, of course, is in the fridge. Economise on ice.”

“Righto, Jess!”

“Call me a Jessy, and I’ll call you one!” and she was gone.

After much fiddling, I found Radio3. I knew she wouldn’t have any CDs worth listening to, or any books worth reading, so I spared myself the effort and disappointment and cuddled up on the big white sofa. The flat was the sort of place you felt you should have paid for admission to. A fitted bedroom writ large – lots of white panelling with gilded tracery that might lead into a cupboard or a corridor or another room. As time wore on, and In Tune turned into insufferable mutual back scratching, I looked round for the promised scrapbook, as relief from the bits that weren’t music. I found it easily, and rapidly became so immersed that all consciousness subsided – well, I had been woken early.

And I was woken again sooner than I wanted, and in exactly the same way. I jumped up, tripped over the telephone cable and broke it. Well, it stopped the ringing, as Quasimodo said of his deafness. Still half-asleep, I crawled round on the floor, found some trailing wires sticking out of the wall, grabbed the broken end of the cable that led to the answering machine and effected a repair that owed more to the skills of a tricoteuse than those of a telephone engineer. So it surprised me a bit when the ringing started again almost at once. Not wishing to soil the clean tape, I picked up the receiver immediately – and I was somewhat flummoxed to hear a female voice already answering.

That was some sexy whisper – bottle it, and you could forget Viagra. And the music behind it wasn’t bad, either. Schubert, the final impromptu from the second set, played, as far as I could judge, by Clifford Curzon, on a Decca Full Frequency Range Recording disc – which I happened to own, which was why I recognised it. [I could never take that ffrr symbol Decca used seriously since I came across Ernst Jandl’s poem, Schmerz durch Reibung, “Pain Through Friction”, in which he splits up the German word for woman into its component parts: fr – au! And then again: fr fr – au au! And so on. Five times. Wicked! – as they say.]

Anyway, there was this woman, whispering over the Schubert, and strangely enough saying nothing at all during the quiet bits and the rests.

“Blast!” she said. “I’ve put on the wrong side! But it’s the only way to stop Harry hearing me – Linton! Linton! Are you there?”

“Sure, I’se here,” said this broad West Indian voice.

“You have to lie low,” she said, “I’m afraid Harry suspects something. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.”

“Sure,” said Linton of the Limited Vocabulary. And there was a click as he hung up. And I was about to do the same, but suddenly a different man’s voice interrupted.

“Don’t bother to put the phone down, Daphne! It’s too late. I’ve heard it all. I’m listening on the extension in the bedroom. Putting that record on was an unnecessary ruse – in fact, it attracted my attention. There’s no point in telling me I’ve got a crossed line. I can still hear the music through the wall. You’re a bitch, Daphne. I knew that. But what’s worse – you’re a randy bitch. A bitch in heat. There’s only one way to deal with bitches like you. They have to be put down. And that’s what I’m going to do.” And he put the phone down with a thump that jarred my ear. And the Schubert hadn’t finished, either – it had just reached the bits that were like a telephone ringing...

Well! What do you do? You can’t do anything until you know where these terrible events are happening, so before I started pestering the police about this murder threat that I had overheard, I dialled 1471. And that was when I found that I didn’t have a dial tone. That I wasn’t, in fact, connected to anything at all, except some wires that came mysteriously out of the wall. Whatever they were, they certainly weren’t part of the modern telephone network, whose socket sat intact a foot away. I took the answer-phone out of circuit, and connected the telephone directly. When I lifted the receiver, I heard the familiar comforting purr, like a cat with infinite lung capacity.

And just then, Jessica returned. With Justin. No sooner had she flung herself down on the large white sofa (room for all three of us – and as many others as she wanted to play), and crossed her highly attractive legs in a manner slightly less vulgar than Fatal Attraction, than her mobile rang. A sticky moment. Given the fact that the telephone in her flat had been out of commission for a while, I, for one, had a good idea who it might be. But Jessica was up to the situation, as always.

“Whose mobile’s that?” she cried.

“It’s yours, silly!” said Justin, ingenuously. “It’s in your bag!”

“But it’s not my ring-tone! You know it’s not my ring-tone! That’s my ring-tone!” And she gave a rendition of her ring-tone which suggested it was a cross between the Sword-motif and “Any old iron?”

“That’s mine,” I said, and I hummed it – which was made easier, because I actually recognised it. It was a phrase from the last impromptu of Schubert’s second set.

“Really?” asked Justin. “That’s a proper ring-tone?”

“Oh yes,” I said, “Schubert, Deutsch 935, number 4, I wouldn’t have any other.”

“Don’t be tiresome, and always talking foreign, Mikey-poos,” said Jessica, “Deutsch, for heaven’s sake! I mean, we all know that Schubert’s German!”

“We have the same model,” I said, gritting my teeth, “and we’re always getting them mixed up.” And in my ignorance I touched the button that let Freddie’s broad West Indian voice flood into the white and gold room.

“DO go and take it in the kitchen!” urged Jessica. “It’s his boyfriend, you know,” she said to Justin, “and he’s terribly possessive. He’d hate it if he knew there was a girl around!”

“Quite right, too,” I heard Justin say, before the bedroom door, which was, in fact, one of those white and gold panels, clicked shut and the giggling began. In the kitchen, I turned on the tranny and dealt with Freddie as quickly and firmly as possible. Then I went back to my warm gin, which I cooled by the simple expedient of adding more gin to it from the bottle in the fridge. After which, I carried on reading the scrap book – there was, after all, nothing else.

After the glossy pages from Country Life I was quite surprised to come across coarse newsprint from the News Chronicle and the Evening Standard. What the clippings told me surprised me even more.

It seemed that there had been a double tragedy. Harry Sutherland (Eton, Guards, stockbroker, talented three-day-eventer) had been run over by a bus, outside this very block of flats. “He never looked where he was goin’,” said the driver, “just run aht in front of me, like the Devil was arter ’im!” His fiancée, Daphne Wilsmlow, had evidently seen the fatal accident, and, in a sudden fit of grief, had hanged herself with the telephone cord.

After I’d read that, I decided my gin needed to be made much, much, much colder, and I acted accordingly.

Then part of the wall opened, and Jessica came in, in her flimsy dressing-gown.

“Mikey-poos,” she said.

“You know I won’t answer to that,” I said. “Address me like a parcel, if you must, but not like that.”

“I’ve seen what you did to the answer-phone,” she said.

“All it needs is a new connecting cable,” I said, “costing £3.25. And we sorted the rest of it between us. It’s only my reputation that’s irreparably damaged.”

“And even that’s only true if you fancy Justin. And you mustn’t. Because he’s mine.”

“You are, my dear, welcome to him. And Freddie, too. Who is quite simply not my type.”

“Where’s my mobile?”

“On the kitchen table. Switched off – as far as I can judge.”

“Why did you change my ring-tone?”

“I didn’t. How could I have? It was in your bag.”

“Gosh. I suppose it was. How strange! You know I don’t want you any more?”

“Darling, I know you never really wanted me at all.”

“That’s a very cruel thing to say!” said Jessica, as she embraced me passionately, kissing me full on the mouth, with the slightest hint of tongue.

“But true,” I answered, disentangling myself after a modest grope.

“Yes,” she said, as she let me out, “many hear the call, but few answer it, and even fewer are chosen. At least the dogs will be glad to see you again.”

And they were.

4p.m. to 9.45 p.m. August 16^th 2002