answering machine

My online pals joke phones are called mobile for a reason. Mine is a ten-quid model. Any drug dealer in prison would be proud of it. Top-up and Pay-as-you-go, or don’t go, in my case. Non-connected, but more than half-way to being connected.  I noticed a few of the numbers are outdated.

‘I’m no in at the moment, but if you ur one of them annoying bastards selling some shite —you can just goin fuck off.’

Archie’s message on his answering machine made me smile. He wasn’t really my pal, but my brother’s. But Archie and me got along just fine. A drink and a laugh. He was a head smaller than me, greying hair and a beer belly—bought and paid for—a cargo hidden under a denim jacket and layers of flannel shirts A few years older, but none the wiser.  That was his world, well, our world. The pubs he liked were workingmen’s. Guys crowded around the door smoking, and taking the piss. But they allowed women. Archie had been married a few times and had more kids than a Chinese orphanage, but I never met with any of them. He’d driven lorries, and had a HGV license, but he’d came into some money. His mum died and they’d sold her Council House. Archie hid his newfound wealth from the buroo.

Archie daytime drinking pal with old Joe. He was twenty-seven when Russia invaded Hungary. Old Joe had played in the same team as Ferenc Puskás, known as the galloping major because of his rank in the Hungarian army. He galloped away. Puskás played for Real Madrid. He never worked down a coal mine. Old Joe was young Joe then and he thought he wouldn’t have the chance to either. The Mineworker Union wouldn’t let him work in the coalfields without Union membership. And they wouldn’t allow workers to work for less then than their British workers were getting.

Old Joe whittled down to grey hair and Slavic features. When it was safe to go home he took Archie and the boys with him to see the sights. Budapest beer around thirty pence, which was cheap in any language. Archie, Baz and Bod, my brother, didn’t get much further than the pub across from their digs. Sometimes they didn’t even get that far. Archie fell asleep in the airport and missed the flight home.

It was the fags that got Archie. So they said, he couldn’t speak at the end, only wheeze.

I listened to his voice-message one last time.

Fran’s was an old number. It went way back to before I was married. She wasn’t really my girlfriend when we were younger. We’d kissed a few times under the mistletoe at school dances. One of us was drunk. One of her eyes was hazel coloured, the other blueish. There was a word for that kinda thing that I could never remember. Dark, shoulder-length hair. A big family of girls. Guinevere with a fringe and attitude in a female Camelot that lived at the top of the hill.

She’d contacted me through Fakebook. Heard I’d done a bit of writing and wanted me to ghost-write something for her in-laws, which was ironic, because she was divorced.

I didn’t accept right away, because I was writing something else. I’m always writing something else. But part of it was I wasn’t sure I could do it. And I didn’t know how to charge someone that was almost a friend for writing that might not be up to standard. She wouldn’t know, but I would, which would make it worse. I could fake most things, but not writing.

I did the only sensible thing and stayed offline for a bit. As easy as leaving your phone out of charge and laptop offline. Hoped she’d fall away back into the ether. But then she texted me on my brick of a mobile. Asked me if I was ignoring her. I’m sure if I’m phone was one of those modern types it would have a big smiley face and lol.

I should have mentioned Fran to my partner. Put it in a jokey way, because it was a joke. ‘You’re older and uglier than I remember. We all are.’ I’d planned to tell her I used to fancy her, and I’d checked out her profile online.       

But then it seems like you're almost having an affair, because when Fran phoned it was her I was jokey with. When I’m driving I don’t answer the phone. I’d just parked in our bay, and it was an instinctive thing behaving like an adolescent caught holding the flame. I guess some people make us revert to type.

I explained all that to the police. Mine was one of the last numbers she’d called. They’d taken my phone and my computer. I’d nothing to hide. Porn just bores me. No images of naked children that somehow appeared on my screen accidentally to account for. They returned my property. But that was about two years ago. Perhaps longer. Nobody counting.

I hadn’t deleted Archie’s number. There were other dead numbers. I hadn’t deleted Fran’s number.

I went upstairs into my computer room before shutting the door, and listening to make sure my partner was downstairs. A stack of books on my desk I’d still to read, with a notepad on top. Stupid, I know. All these connections go dead. The answer-machine, no longer answering. Not physics, but basic economics. Nobody paying line rental.

I called Fran, one last time, before I deleted her number. It surprised me to hear it ringing. Checked my screen to make sure I hadn’t accidentally called someone else.

‘Hallo,’ she said.

I dropped my phone—it bounced beneath the keyboard. I picked it up and held it to my ear. ‘Who is this?’

‘Who do you think it is?’

My hand shook. The screen jerked around as I checked the number on-screen. ‘Who is this?...Who the fuck are you?’

And she laughed as if we were having a normal conversation. ‘You know who it is.’

‘But—’

‘But what?’ she asked.

And I was going to say it, I really was. ‘Where are you now?’

‘I’m where you left me.’

I hung up, but my phone began ringing right away. The screen lit-up. I couldn’t answer it. I wouldn’t answer.