A Ringing Phone

A Ringing Phone

T HE LANDLINE IS

ringing. It is the toss of a coin whether she will answer. Oliver always calls her mobile. Only salespeople call the landline. And yet a ringing phone demands an answer. She recalls Alistair’s brother’s penchant for ringing the landline thrice to announce his safe arrival from wherever he had been travelling home from. He’s long dead now; Anthony barely spoke to Alistair by the end. It made Bridie less envious, less sad, to be an only child, seeing how their relationship eroded over the years. There were no siblings to disappoint her.

It has been a quiet day. It might be nice to hear someone else’s voice. Even if it is a salesperson. Sometimes, Bridie goes to the shops even when she doesn’t need anything, just for the opportunity to talk to someone, to use her voice for the first time that day.

‘Hello?’ she asks.

‘Oh. Hi. Hello.’ It is a young woman’s voice on the other end of the phone. Then it sounds as though she has covered the phone with her hand to say to someone near her, ‘She picked up!’

‘Hello?’ Bridie says again.

‘Hi, um, am I speaking to Bridie Bennett?’

She sounds like she might be a salesperson, but an inexpert one, because Bridie detects nerves there. Nobody has called her Bridie Bennett in a year. She changed her name back to Bridie Brennan once Alistair was gone – changed everything: the deed to the house, the bills, her passport, everything. Becoming Bridie Brennan again felt like coming home.

‘Yes,’ Bridie says. She supposes she will always be Bridie Bennett too. ‘How can I help?’

‘It’s a bit of a strange one,’ the young woman says. It’s hard to place her age with her voice alone, but she can’t be beyond her twenties, a slight Brummie accent. Bridie is intrigued. This is already the most interesting conversation she has had in months.

‘Go on,’ Bridie says.

‘Did you work at the University of Birmingham in the 1960s?’

‘I did,’ Bridie says, holding the phone a little tighter. Perhaps this young woman is a researcher working on an article about the history of linguistics, perhaps she is a journalist writing about women in academia in the 1960s, perhaps she is a scammer and is about to tell Bridie that her bank account security has been breached and she needs to move all her life savings into a new account. There are so many perhapses. But Bridie is not ready for the next question that the young woman asks.

‘And did you know a young man named Eddie Winston?’

‘I did,’ Bridie says, feeling the strange pain of his death again. Now she understands. The university is writing an

obituary for Eddie and asking for quotes from colleagues, though there can’t be many of them left. She wonders what she should say. There are no secrets to keep now.

‘He’s looking for you,’ this young woman says.

‘Looking?’ Bridie asks. ‘But. He died.’

‘Eddie Winston is sitting opposite me,’ the young woman says. ‘And he’d really like to see you.’

Bridie drops the phone.