W B - 15 The telephone call

The telephone call.

George handed me the yellow handset. I took it from him, put it to my ear and listened. I started a pretend conversation to keep my grandson happy.

‘Hello, who is speaking?’ 

‘Is that the Samaritans?’ asked the voice. 

‘No, this is a private number,’ I said, about to put the phone down.  The quiet weeping from the other end of the line dissolved my anger. I waited for a moment then said ‘Can I help you?’

‘I’ve got no one to talk to. I can’t do it on my own and now I can’t even call the right number. I’m useless, I’ve had enough, I’m going to end it for both of us.’ I recognised the desperation in the voice. I’d been there myself. How could I now just hang up with a cheerful ‘Sorry, wrong number’ and then get on with my life?

‘Who is there with you?’ I asked.

‘It’s just me and Eleanor.’

‘Who is Eleanor?

‘She’s my baby.’

‘You can talk to me if you like,’ I waited. I now suspected the telephone was the only tenuous lifeline this poor soul had left and I knew I should choose my words with care. ‘My name’s Susan, what’s yours? ‘said the shaky voice. 

‘I’m Mary. Can you tell me what the problem is Susan? I promise I won’t tell anyone or do anything you don’t want me to.’ 

‘Hello Mary. I can’t talk for long. I’m in a phone box and I haven’t got much change.’

‘That’s no problem, give me the number and I’ll call you back.’ 

I rang her back, quickly, on the house phone, would she still be there? Had she got the right number this time? 

‘Hallo Mary,’ said Susan. 

I sighed with relief.

‘Why are you so upset then, Charley, sorry, Susan? It sounds like everything is fine, both you and Eleanor are healthy and you obviously mean to keep the baby or you wouldn’t have given her a name.’ I could hear Susan crying at this.

‘Of course I am going to keep Eleanor. How could you possibly think I could kill her?’ she said ‘ I’m upset because, when I told my Mum and Dad about Eleanor last week, they kicked me out and told me they didn’t want to know me any more. “How could you do this to us?” They said. They even took my mobile. They said I wasn’t their daughter any more.’

‘Err, well, I was seventeen and still at school when I fell pregnant with Charlotte. My boyfriend, Kevin, disappeared and I haven’t seen him since.’

‘How did you manage then?’ asked Susan

‘Mum and Dad were great. They really helped me and made sure we had everything we needed. It was still difficult but I worked part time in Boots while Mum looked after Charley and I managed to buy a small flat and save so that she could go to university if she wanted. The hardest part was being totally responsible for someone with no one to share the load with.’

‘That is exactly how I feel, but at least your mum and dad helped you and you had someone to talk to.’ I realised then how alone Susan must be feeling. I was starting to feel responsible for her now, or perhaps she was beginning to fill the gap in my life which had been there since Charley had left?

‘Well, err, perhaps you would like to come around here one evening? We could have a chat and a cup of tea.’

‘I would really like that, Mary, you are so easy to talk to.  I’ll have to go now, there is some guy hammering on the glass again’ 

‘OK,’ I said, ‘but please ring me tomorrow evening or anytime during the night if you need to talk. Promise me. Please.’

‘OK, I promise,’ said Susan. 

*****

I managed to get through the next day at work although my heart wasn’t really in it and my thoughts were elsewhere. I got home early and wondered what time Susan would ring. I waited by the phone to make sure I would hear it. When it got to ten o’clock I started to wonder and by midnight I was very worried. I eventually dozed off in the chair by the phone and awoke, stiff and cold, at six next morning. What could have happened? Susan had promised and I was certain she would have called if it had been at all possible. 

I struggled to get ready for work and eat some breakfast, hungry after missing my meal the previous evenings. I set off for the twenty minute drive across Bristol to the Avixa insurance offices. I listened to the news, as usual, on Heart FM. The second headline was a local item. A young woman’s body had been found on the river bank far below the Clifton suspension bridge, a ‘popular’ suicide spot. She was described as five foot three , slim with long blond hair. There was no mention of her being pregnant but I thought they would keep that private until she had been identified. Her clothes were also described but by this time I had stopped listening, stopped the car and stopped worrying about Susan. 

I knew she was dead, Susan had no troubles now. All my talking and listening had been a waste of time, I had failed my new friend. I had thought I was a good listener but now I knew I was useless. I should have persuaded her to stay with me last night, she could have slept in Charley’s room. She had died because I hadn’t helped her. I couldn’t face work now so I turned the car and  meandered home. 

I made a mug of tea, took it out to my sanctuary and just sat there in the morning sunshine. I could smell the phlox as I watched a bumble bee make its rounds.  Susan would never enjoy the warmth of the sun on her face again. Eleanor would never have a chance to enjoy these delights. What had made her do it?  The stupid, stupid, girl, why hadn’t she called me or rang the Samaritans from one of the special phones on the bridge? She had seemed quite cheerful when we finished talking. She was thinking of ways to deal with her problems and could even see a future for them both. What had changed after she hung up? What a terrible waste of two  lives. She hadn’t given Eleanor a chance of a life by cutting her own so short. I had failed them, let them down. It was all my fault.

The phone rang. I didn’t want to answer it but I knew they would only keep on pestering me about my gas supply or some such nonsense so I answered it.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi Mary, it’s Susan, sorry I didn’t call last night, it all got a bit hectic yesterday, sorting things out after our talk, then I couldn’t find the piece of paper I had written your number on until this morning and I knew you wouldn’t  mind if I left it until today, it was wonderful talking to you, you really made me look at things differently and helped me see a way forward, you are a real life saver, I’ve found somewhere for us to live, will you be Eleanor’s Godmother,  you’ll never guess what I have done now after your advice …’ 

I couldn’t speak, the tears rolled slowly down my cheeks.

W B - 13 Luck

W B - 13     Luck

James had always known that he was unlucky. He was famous as the only guy around who could produce an ‘edge’ from a ‘heads or tails’ when tossing a coin - no binary for him. He had always been known, even at school, as ‘Lucky Jim’ - irony started at an early age where he came from. He started to carry a lucky penny in addition to his rabbit’s foot in an attempt to change his luck but he soon lost the penny and his rabbit’s foot got eaten by his sister’s black cat which crossed his path one day. He tried to take up bird watching but he only ever managed to see one magpie at a time - he sometimes wondered when a blackbird would peck off his nose.

Because of his bad luck he had long ago stopped buying lottery tickets after he worked out the odds of winning for a person with an average sort of luck. The odds of any one ticket winning the jackpot were just under 13 million to one against. He figured out from this that, if he bought one ticket a week, he would win once every 250 thousand years. He didn’t think he would live that long. Because of his reputation, he had been banned from the lottery syndicate where he worked - at a bookies. His boss had concluded that his bad luck would rub off onto the punters so increasing the profits, which is the only reason he kept his job. He also worked out the odds of surviving a parachute jump so he didn’t take up that sport; why place your trust in some plastic sheeting and a few bits of string when you can stay in a perfectly good aeroplane?

James was descending into depression, everything he tried turned out wrong, he failed at everything. The last straw was when he was sacked from his job at the bookies, profits were down because the punters were winning too often.

He decided to prove once and for all that he had some luck left so he got his dad’s souvenir revolver from his time in the war, loaded it with one round and then spun the chamber. He held it to his head with a shaking hand and pulled the trigger, expecting to hear a bang and then nothing as the bullet entered his skull and macerated his brain.

He heard a bang but he had not held the gun steady enough so the bullet went wide, skimmed the side of his head and took his ear off. It whistled down the hallway and went through the front door, leaving a neat hole in the glass. James had been temporarily deafened by the bang so did not hear the scream from the man with the briefcase who had just reached the front step of his bungalow. 

James was now laying on the floor in the hallway, dazed and not aware of anything. The man on the front step had also dropped to  the ground with a wound to his arm that was now bleeding all over James’ front path. He had dropped his briefcase, which split open, spilling the lottery tickets over the ground and the cheque made out to James for 35 million pounds.

Later as they sat in James’ living room having just got back from A & E , they sipped a sweet cup of tea each and reviewed the events of the afternoon.

‘I was lucky because I won the game of Russian roulette at my first try,’ insisted James.

‘But you lost because you hurt your head and lost your ear,’ argued the man from the lottery, who was called Alan. ‘You only really won because you got the big prize from the lottery.’

‘So, am I a lucky person now?’ mused James.

‘I think you are very lucky, in fact you won against odds of 28.76 million to one. But, to prove your luck has changed, why don’t you toss a coin and see if you can call it right?’

James found a penny from his pocket and tossed it in the air, ‘Heads,’ he cried confidently. The coin bounced off the chair and landed on the floor - on its edge.