Ring ring

Hanging on the telephone

It was a dark night, and just a little chilly. She walked towards the telephone box, putting her hand in her bag and pulling out her purse as she did so, counting out the 10p coins until she had a pound in her hand. That would be enough for a good conversation if she managed to get through, she told herself. She put her purse back in her bag and reached for the door. It seemed to be stuck, and so she had to pull quite hard to get it to move, but eventually it did, and then the heavy door creaked open and she stepped inside the box.

The slightly yellow fluorescent light above her head was somehow soothing, as was the fact that the temperature in the box was a few degrees warmer than the street outside. The instantly familiar smell was a strange combination of electricity, Bakelite and disappointment.

The door has closed slowly and silently behind her, the enormous closure mechanism above her head doing its job as efficiently as ever, and she placed her bag on the little shelf above the phone directories and put her stack of coins on the top of the phone, observing as she did so that it was very dusty, as if it hadn’t been used for a very long time. Then she reached back into her bag and pulled out her address book, flicking through it until she found the first number she wanted to call.

She balanced a 10p in the slot, ready to push it in as soon as her call was answered. She picked up the handset and put it to her ear, listening to the purring dial tone for a moment, and then she dialled the number, placing her finger in the hole above each number in turn, and then rotating the dial clockwise to the stop, before releasing it.

She could hear the phone ringing at the other end and breathed out heavily. A long exhalation, followed by a moment of nothingness. Ring ring, ring ring. Time passed, while at the same time seeming to stand still. But nobody answered.

She flicked through her address book again, finding another number and repeating the process. Ring ring, ring ring. A voice at the other end, which was then obscured by the pips, beeping urgently. She pushed the 10p coin into the slot. Bang, clunk, chink as it landed on the other coins inside.

Brrrrr. The line had dropped before the coin landed. 10p gone, 90p left.

She dialled another number. Again, there was no answer.

She continued the process. Sometimes there was no answer, while at other times somebody at the other end picked up, and then she got the pips, followed by the line dropping before she had time to say a word.

In her mind’s eye, she could see the places she was trying to call. Red K6 telephone boxes for the most part, dotted around the country and indeed around the planet, standing silently, waiting for somebody to step inside and pick up the receiver as it rang, and then to give her the answer she was looking for.

You see, her address book had a list of telephone box numbers that she’d been given, and she was working her way through them. She looked in her bag again, pulling out a pouch of tobacco and some Rizla papers absentmindedly, before putting them back and looking at her mobile phone (she didn’t have any matches, so even though she’d love a cigarette, there wasn’t much point in rolling one now). Her mobile was off, and its battery was flat.

In fact, the battery had been flat for ages and, where she was now, there were no cellular telephone networks. Owing to a quirk she didn’t really understand, the only way she’d get back to somewhere where she could use her mobile again was to make contact with somebody waiting for her call.

And yet nobody was answering. She knew that some telephone boxes had ended up in graveyards, unloved relics, with peeling paint and most of their 72 panes of glass damaged or missing. Often without doors.

She shivered suddenly. It started to feel like it was snowing, so she looked up.

The paint inside the top of the phone box had become detached from the metal and was starting to fall, like snow, landing on her head and on her shoulders. Her bag looked like it hadn’t moved for decades as the flakes got bigger.

When she looked down again, she had just one 10p left. She wasn’t quite sure how that had happened, but as she watched the flakes turn into larger lumps of paint, she decided she needed to get out before everything came down – perhaps this box was getting ready to head to the graveyard too.

She pushed against the door and stepped out, back into the chilly darkness. As she walked away from the box, she looked back. There, on the top, completely silent, was a cat. Not miaowing, not purring.

Just watching.

It slowly dawned on her that the cat was the first living creature she’d seen for ages, so she looked back at it, and then walked away, sadly. If she couldn’t make contact, then there was no way out.

She decided that the only solution would be to keep trying, from a different phone box each time, until she managed to get through to the person at the other end.

She sighed and took out the Ordnance Survey map folded into her pocket. It showed where all the boxes were. She stared at it for a few moments, then folded it back up and set off up the road towards the next box.

Maybe she’d be luckier next time…

Thank you for reading this not particularly well written attempt to find an excuse to show some photos of telephone boxes. If, quite understandably, the thought of subscribing is too much to contemplate, but you’ve enjoyed reading something I’ve written, then you also have the option to simply buy me a 10 pence piece (at a very reasonable price) so that I can use it to make a phone call, if that’s still something you can do (contributions may in fact be used to buy mobile data, but I won’t tell if you don’t ask).