The end of the line

The end of the line
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday October 5, 2013

My home telephone is almost obsolete. It hardly rings any more. Sometimes I forget it’s even there. It languishes by the window on my desk, a wallflower obscured by the showy blooms of a potted cyclamen.

I know my home phone is lonely because as I walk past, it emits a weedy ‘peep.’ I see its will to live ebbing away, unable to compete with the thrilling gadgetry of my shiny iphone. I feel sorry for my home phone – trapped by its own limitations – good for talking, and not much else.

When I was a child, the telephone ruled from its own settee. Ours was Bakelite and sat like a black brick on a small lacquered table by the front door, attached to a bench seat upholstered in flocked green velvet. This is where we sat to answer the phone. The handset was a dumbbell, only heavier. Holding it to my ear for more than three minutes made my neck ache. Next to the phone lay a glossy white teledex that sprang open to reveal the numbers of everyone we knew.

Everything stopped when the phone rang. It had to: the cable to the mouthpiece was only two-feet long. My nanna would settle herself on the bench seat, wait politely for another three rings to pass, then pick up the handset: “Good afternoon,” she’d say, lips pursed to round her vowels, “Mrs Thornton speaking.” She knew rushing down the hallway made one breathless. (And being too eager was crass).

Calling someone on the Bakelite phone, however, took a 7-year-old’s concentration.  Dialling the number 1 was a short stop, so my finger only had to rotate the wheel an inch. But dialling the number 9 took effort, a full 240 degree trip. I can still hear the ticka-ticka-ticka as the wheel, reaching the end of the spring, lurched backwards, eager to discolate my index finger. Mum dialled numbers with the pointy lid of her Bic Cristal pen, the height of secretarial sophistication.

In my teens, the home phone was the centre of my universe. Ours was squat and custard coloured with a panel of ten push-buttons on the front. It had a springy cord which I could stretch from the side table, around the corner and under the pantry door. There I’d sit, out of earshot, between the dog biscuits and the bread bin, phone clamped to my ear, knees hugging my chest. I got leg cramps, but it was worth it. After forty-five minutes on the blower, it was decided – I’d wear my nylon parachute pants on Saturday night.

Sundays were for post-mortems on the electrifying events of the night before:

 “Didja see the way he was lookin’ at you?”

“As if! Was he really lookin’ at me?”

“He was lookin’ at you, all right!”

“Stoked! Was he lookin’ over his shoulder, or right at me?”

“Over his shoulder AND right at you!”

 “Get off that phone!”

“Gotta go, Mum’s doin’ her block!”

I’d emerge from the dim-lit pantry, blinking in the daylight.

Back then, I knew all my friends’ numbers by heart. Even now, twenty years since my besties moved out of home, I can still rattle off their childhood home numbers, along with my teenage phone patter: “Hi Mrs Simpson, how are you? Off to the tennis club today? Great! Is Jane there please?

I cursed holidays that separated me from my home phone.  One summer at Rottnest, with heartthrob Andy stranded on the mainland, I spent all my pocket money at the Bathurst settlement pay-phone. It was always occupied. Some bloke with a Swan Gold would be flicking through a tattered White Pages while he leaned against the glass talking cricket with a mate. I’d wait impatiently as my 3 o’clock telephonic rendezvous with Andy drew near. Finally, Swan Gold man would shamble off and I’d dive in, ramming coins into the slot, hoping Andy would pick up, not his Dad.

 “Hi Andy! It’s me!”

“Hey! Been swimmin’?”

“Yeah. At the Basin.”

“Hot here too. Cricket’s on.”

“Oh.”

“3 o’clock tomorrow then?”

“Okay”

“Okay. See ya.”

Now, phone booths are all but extinct. I don’t miss them. But watching an old episode of Dr Who, my 6-year-old son piped up as Tom Baker and his trailing scarf vanished into the Tardis: “What’s that blue box?”

“That’s a phone booth.”

I decided the next time we take the kids to Rottnest, I’m going to make a pilgrimage to the Bathurst phone box, that monument to 20th century phone technology.  (It’s still there, outside Unit 501.) I’ll tell the kids about the time I worked up the nerve to ring a boy I liked, only to slam the phone down in panic as he answered.

And that’s the thing with mobiles: they’re too delicate. Smart but fragile. I need a phone that can handle my temper when those blasted telemarketers call during dinner. Only the home phone appreciates a good hang up.