Sylvia

Joanne Lowe

Haslemere, Surrey: Tuesday 3.06 am

Her mother had always proclaimed a telephone ringing in the shadows of the early morning never heralded good news. This phone call was no different although Sylvia was unaware of this at 3 o’clock in the morning. 

The hot water pipes had ceased to ping and gurgle when the ringing noise broke into the near silence of the bedroom; its quiet perfection marred only the gentle breathing of the sleeping couple. Gradually the sound permeated her subconscious. Was it already time to get up? Surely, she had only just fallen asleep. Sylvia forced her brain to locate the source of this unwelcome summons. Gropingly, she understood it was the telephone ringing not the alarm clock sitting on her bedside table. The phone rang again. 

She levered her sleep-heavy body into a sitting position and slid her feet reluctantly onto the floor, wincing as they took her weight moments before they wanted to. Normally getting out of bed was a much gentler process; each movement completed before the next. Her body would then sort of slip into place so it could comfortably support her. But, conditioned to respond to the telephone’s imperative, there was no time for a gentle transition.  Sylvia stumbled towards the noise, trying to walk on the outside edges of her feet, hoping this might relieve the pain in her ankles. Her feet welcomed the change from the hard wooden floor to the soft woollen rug on her husband’s side of the bed but not the change back as she stepped off the rug towards the telephone. 

She half hoped the caller would give up before she lifted the receiver, but she knew this would leave her fretting about who had called and why. It would be better to answer it now. Sylvia forced her voice to push past the nocturnal dryness of her mouth, another unwanted sign of age. 

“Hello,” she croaked hoarsely. 

“Haslemere 72053,” she continued.

Silence.

“Hello. Haslemere 72053,” she repeated, a little louder.

The silence continued. 

Yet she knew someone was there. The receiver didn’t feel empty. But why didn’t whoever it was speak?

“Hello,” she said for the third time, her voice now verging towards irritation, all hint of sleep dissipated. 

At the other end, the caller replaced the phone with a click and the line disconnected. 

She retraced her steps and climbed back into bed. She wondered what time it was. Clearly some hours had passed since she had unplugged the television and climbed the wooden hill as her hot water bottle was cold when she brushed against it with her right foot. She was reluctant to turn on the light to check the alarm clock for fear of waking her husband. She patted his shoulder affectionately, remembering how once upon a time he would have welcomed being woken in the night. Now, because of his dodgy prostate, he already had to get up several times a night. He would be especially grumpy if she added to his nocturnal awakenings. 

Her anger faded away leaving an unsettled feeling in its place. 

“Why hadn’t the caller spoken?” She wondered. “If it was a wrong number, they could at least have apologised. Surely, they must realise it’s frightening to be woken up like this, in the middle of the night.”

She lay down on her right side and fidgeted until she was comfortable. Cradling her right cheek in her right hand, she started to drift off to sleep. As she relaxed, she remembered her lunch with her friend last Wednesday and the strange telephone conversation that had preceded it. Were the two telephone calls connected or was she letting her imagination run away with her?

London: the previous Wednesday

Every Wednesday Sylvia met her friend, Kay, for lunch. They were both secretaries. She worked for a firm of solicitors, just off Holborn Viaduct on the edge of the City of London. It specialised in buying and selling companies. Kay worked the Receiver for the Metropolitan Police inside New Scotland Yard. They had met for lunch every week for almost 12 years except when one of them was unwell or away on holiday. Although they had fallen into the habit of going on holiday at the same time, they never went together. They always ate at the same family run restaurant, Nascondino, except for two weeks in September when the restaurant closed for the owner’s annual return to Italy. 

Last Wednesday morning, she had walked past the restaurant on her way to work as usual. A handwritten notice had been taped to the door apologising for the restaurant unforeseen closure due to a death in the family. Once at her desk, she had telephoned Kay to let her know of the interruption to their normal routine. The phone had rung a few times. A well-spoken male voice had answered.

“Good morning.”

Assuming he was one of the policemen working in Scotland Yard, she had politely asked to speak to Kay.

“Who?” the male voice demanded. His voice was loud and staccato, official sounding.

Slightly taken aback by his tone, she replied “Kay … Kay Matthews, she works for …"

Before she could finish, the voice barked a question, “How did you get this number?”

“Sorry?” she said. 

“I asked how did you get this number?” The question was repeated insistently.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “There’s been a mix-up or something. I’m trying to speak to a friend, to re-arrange our lunch date. She works at New Scotland Yard in Westminster or is it Victoria, I can never remember which part of London it comes under, and I thought I’d dialled her number, but I must have dialled a wrong number, or perhaps we’ve just got a crossed line.” She stuttered and babbled, unnerved by his manner, and put the phone down abruptly, without waiting for him to reply. His aggressive reaction to a simple mistake was unnecessary, she thought, as she redialled. 

Kay suggested they try a French restaurant closer to her instead. They had both eaten a very pleasant beef stew, or Boeuf Bourguignon as the young, gorgeous waiter with the oh so sexy French accent, called it accompanied by a glass of the house red he had cajoled them into drinking. Their lunch had included quite a few more laughs than usual. As they were leaving, Kay had asked her to “be a dear and pop this card in the post for me”. Kay knew Sylvia passed a Post Office on her walk back to her office, so she often did this. 

“What’s it this time?” Sylvia asked. “A birthday card?” She glanced at the handwritten address on the envelope, Mr William Stokes, The Mill House, Manor Lane, Dorking, Surrey. “Just an old uncle I don’t visit as often as I should.” Kay replied, “Most of his friends are dead so I like to make sure he gets at least one card.”

London: Tuesday 7.50 am

Sitting down the following morning, in what had, over the years, become “her seat” in the fourth carriage of the 7.46 am train to Waterloo, Sylvia’s mind wandered. There was a strange security in sitting in the same seat every day, seeing the same faces, watching them age and then disappear, only to be replaced by younger, better-dressed models. She could always tell those on their first or second London job. Their suits were newer, smarter versions of what they thought was required for a job in the City. Some stood out: they had a jazzy lining or a fractionally wider stripe. These invariably disappeared as the suit wearer rose through the ranks and unconscious conformity took its toll. Only their ties continued to have a small sense of individuality, yet even this often dribbled away as middle age beckoned. She wondered what the person who ‘inherited’ her seat would look like?

She nodded her usual good morning to the man two rows ahead of her, admiring again his fine pair of mutton-chop whiskers, whose luxuriance had held on despite their progression from brown to mottled grey to pure white. She exchanged another greeting with the man on the other side of the aisle whose hairline had receded over the years so that now he looked like a monk with a tonsure. What did they think of her in their turn?” she pondered. 

There was only one unfamiliar face in the carriage this morning. It belonged to a young man whose face she could only see in the reflection from the window several rows ahead of her. Sylvia had the strangest sense he was trying to be deliberately nondescript, which was absurd, yet it was this which had caught her attention. What was even more absurd was that he appeared to be using the same reflection to examine her.

She turned away and looked out of the window next to her, remembering again the odd early morning phone call. Despite their rudeness, Sylvia hoped the caller had managed to get in touch with whoever they wanted. Phone calls in the middle of the night were invariably about accidents or death. They never brought good news, which made the urgency to answer nonsensical. Yet we are conditioned to answer as quickly as possible. Without wishing harm on anyone else, she was glad its unwelcome news hadn’t been for her. 

Acknowledging her thoughts were running away, Sylvia took her book out of her bag and began to read. The story was compelling but needed a lot of concentration.

The train clattered over the points just outside Waterloo. She put her book away and stood up, waiting for the train to stop. Normally she caught the No. 510 bus to Holborn but today she decided to walk across Waterloo Bridge instead, hoping this would dispel her lingering sense of disquiet. If she didn’t dawdle and if she used the subway under the Waterloo roundabout she would still be on time. 

The circular hall under the roundabout was one of the many gathering places for London’s homeless, known colloquially as Cardboard City. Most of these underground dwellers were harmless, their shouted insults generally incomprehensible, but they made her feel guilty, for being clean, for having somewhere to live, for having a job. Her sporadic deposits in their collecting tins only alleviated this fleetingly. 

It was warmer down here. The grey light revealed 7 or 8 tunnels radiating from the centre like the spokes of a bicycle wheel yet fresh air never seemed to reach its core. The smell was a fetid fusion of bus exhaust fumes, damp newspapers, spilt beer, and human dirt.

The dim light partially concealed the human mounds covered in cardboard, newspaper, blankets, and the odd grubby quilt. Most had their meagre possessions tucked closely around their bodies, partly for warmth and partly to prevent them being stolen by someone even less fortunate. An elevated few had their belongings stowed in stolen shopping trolleys. Sylvia wondered if possessing a shopping trolley was a sign of wealth in this community or if they were instead a hinderance, tethering their owner to a dirty form of capitalism. 

She kept her gaze fixed steadily on her exit tunnel as she crossed this foreign territory and breathed deeply when she came out into the light by the south side of the bridge. As she walked across the river, she glanced to her right The sight of St Paul’s Cathedral, one of her favourite buildings in London, always cheered her. Once again, Sylvia promised herself she would see the inside of it soon. On the north side of the bridge, she had a choice of two routes. One went past the soaring arches and stained-glass windows of the High Court where perhaps there would be yet another group of demonstrators or journalists noisily blocking the pavement. Or she could go past the recently sandblasted, white-pillared façade of the Royal College of Surgeons. 

Today she decided to take the legal route. At the end of New Fetter Lane, she turned right into Holborn Viaduct which ran across Farringdon Street to the offices of Lovell, White & King where she worked. The firm’s nickname, Lovely, White & Clean, always amused her. It was a good endorsement for a firm of solicitors.

As she went to walk through the revolving entrance doors, the reflection of a man in a baseball cap on the other side of the road caught Sylvia’s attention. He looked strangely familiar. She turned to look at him properly, but he had gone. Shrugging it off she walked into the building and stood, waiting for a lift to the seventh floor where her desk was. Staring at, but not seeing, her reflection in the mirrored panel to one side of the lift buttons, Sylvia brought up a mental picture of the man leant against the building across the street. He hadn’t been carrying a briefcase. He hadn’t been wearing a suit. These alone made him stand out. Suits and briefcases were the norm in this part of London, unless you were a black leathered motorcycle courier. He hadn’t even been carrying an A-Z like a tourist which might have explained him being there. 

“What made me notice him? she thought. “He’s ordinary looking...just like the man on the train this morning.”

“That’s it!” she exclaimed out loud. “But it can’t be the same person. How likely is it that I would see two identical men in London on the same day?”

As these thoughts coalesced in her head, she realised such a coincidence was unlikely. “Are they the same person? And if so, were they or rather he, following her? And why?” Her thoughts ran on. 

“Are you getting into the lift?” a man behind her asked impatiently, trying to push the lift button with the bent little finger on his right hand. His other fingers were wrapped around a large Costa coffee 

“Sorry, what?” she replied, turning to look at him. 

“You work on the seventh floor, don’t you? Are you waiting for someone, or are you getting in?

“No...it’s alright, don’t wait for me.” she said slowly. “I’ve just remembered I need to do something down here. Sorry.”

She walked back across the reception area and stopped several feet back from the floor to ceiling windows facing onto the street. She didn’t want to be seen from the outside. The unknown man was back, lounging against one of the four statues on the bridge. She thought it was the one representing Science. 

“Who is he and why is he there? Should I go and speak to him but what would I say? If I accuse him of following me, he’ll think I’m a daft old bat who’s convinced men fancy her or else he’ll think I’m paranoid.”

All these questions and more swooped in and around her mind.

“Are you alright?” one of the girls from Reception asked. “Would you like a glass of water? Do you need to sit down?”

“Actually,” Sylvia said, “could you do something for me. You see that young man over there, on the other side of the road, leaning against the wall.” Sylvia pointed to him, making sure she was standing well back from the window.

“The good looking one, in the dark jeans and baseball cap?” said Angela.

“Is he good looking? I hadn’t really noticed. But yes, him. Could you keep an eye out and let me know how long he stays there or if anyone joins him?”

Sylvia knew this was an odd request, one that wouldn’t make any sense to anyone, it didn’t to her, but she needed to know. But she couldn’t spend all day standing in Reception, hiding from sight, waiting to see if anything happened.

“Okay,” said Angela, hesitantly “but are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes, fine, thanks Angela,” she said, turning back to the lift. She couldn’t help glancing once more over her shoulder. He was still there, looking bored and apparently uninterested in his surroundings.

Sylvia sat at her desk in the space she shared with three other secretaries on the 7th floor and tried to focus on the three piles of files her boss, Stewart, had left there. Each one had a small cassette tape attached to it. Stewart was one of the few solicitors who still dictated his letters onto a tape; the younger ones either did their own typing or dictated it straight onto a computer. Stewart had never learnt to type and saw no need to do so now. Speaking directly to the computer hadn’t worked either. He had given up in disgust at the stupidity of “that bloody machine,” which was incapable of “correctly reproducing what he said”. He failed to understand why a machine should find him so difficult to understand. He didn’t have an accent; his public school one didn’t count. Furthermore, the wretched thing had no understanding of grammar or punctuation, and it took him far too long to correct its mistakes. He had always had a secretary and would continue to do so. If anyone asked, he would pedantically explain, Sylvia understood what he said and was able to produce clear, grammatically correct letters with appropriate punctuation, oblivious to the fact it was Sylvia who understood these. 

Sylvia was quietly glad he was intransigent on the subject. They would see out their working lives together. He would not allow her to be replaced by a machine. But she recognised things were changing and sometimes regretted his stance. He had never asked her what she wanted. Sometimes she thought she might have quite liked to learn how to use a computer, but she never said anything.

She turned on her word processor, inserted the first tape into the Dictaphone, put the earphones into her ears, moved the foot pedal to under her right foot, opened the top file and began to type, forcing her mind to concentrate on Stewart’s voice rather than on her uneasiness. Gradually the familiar sound of his voice relaxed her, enabling her to type his letters and attendance notes, quickly and efficiently, accustomed to the vagaries of Stewart’s dictation. 

“Fancy a coffee?” one of the other secretaries asked.

Sylvia started. She had been engrossed in her typing.

“Sorry?” she said looking up from the screen.

“Coffee,” mouthed Patricia waving her mug in the air.

“Yes, please,” Sylvia replied absently. “Milk, no sugar. Thanks.”

“Sylvia, we’ve worked together for getting on eight years, I think I know how you like your coffee by now.” Patricia laughed. “Unless you’ve had some kind of midlife crisis and started having sugar!”

As Patricia put the mug of coffee on her desk, Sylvia’s phone rang.

“Stewart Thompson’s office, Sylvia speaking.”

“Sylvia, he’s gone.” Angela whispered. “He looked at his watch, then just walked away. Do you think someone stood him up? If I’d been meeting him, I wouldn’t have been late.” Angela laughed suggestively. 

Sylvia knew she lived with her long-term boyfriend but that didn’t stop her from looking at other men. “Just seeing what’s around,” Angela would say, “No harm in that.” Mostly her looking was innocent but occasionally, after she’d had a little too much to drink when they went out to celebrate someone’s birthday as they sometimes did after work, her looking became too obvious, too lascivious, making Sylvia uncomfortable, somehow tainted by her behaviour. 

Despite being told the man had gone, Sylvia couldn’t resist walking to the windows fronting Holborn Viaduct several times that afternoon to check. When she left the building for the night, she glanced repeatedly over her shoulder to see if he had reappeared. 

Back on the Haslemere train she castigated herself for her behaviour. There was no reason, no reason at all, why anyone, let alone a young man, would do so. 

She knew if she mentioned the odd events of the day to her husband, he would only scoff, especially at any suggestion a young man might ever want to follow any middle-aged woman, let alone her. When she looked at herself in the mirror properly, which she rarely did these days, Sylvia thought she was still quite attractive, especially when she bothered with make-up. Most of the time she didn’t but when she did “she scrubbed up quite well for an old bird” her husband would say. She thought she was quite lucky really; she only had a few laughter lines around her eyes and faint marionette lines which had started to appear on each side of her mouth. She wished she didn’t have a double chin but overall, she thought she looked … presentable. Her neck was in reasonable condition, thanks to her mother, who had handed her a pot of neck cream on her 30th birthday and told her she needed to start using it. 

In France, mature women who had experienced life and developed a sense of who they were and what they still had to offer were celebrated, often described as “une femme d’un certain age” alluding to the wisdom, experience and elegance they had acquired along the way. Her husband had dismissed this as “French nonsense” when she mentioned it a few weeks ago, stating the French were only good at wine and cheese and running away from the enemy as they did in World War II.

When they watched television together, he would explode with laughter at the Harry Enfield sketches of the two Wobbly Randy Old Ladies flirting with a young man dressed as the gas man. In public, if he saw an older woman with a younger man, he could never resist muttering, under his breath, “ooh young man” mimicking the comedian’s tone of voice, an uncomfortable mix of pity and contempt. Sylvia had once asked him why it was so hilarious. If it had been two old men in raincoats flirting or chasing a young girl, no one would have found it funny. 

He had looked pityingly at her before explaining condescendingly “It was natural for older men, especially if they were rich and powerful, to have a younger woman. Men could carry on producing babies long after a woman had become shrivelled and dried up” citing Sean Connery and George Clooney as proof that men, especially wealthy men, became more attractive as they aged. 

London: Wednesday morning 11.30 am

“Sylvia, your friend Kay phoned about 15 minutes ago, sorry I couldn’t find you, you weren’t answering your phone,” Angela said. “She said she’s sorry she can’t make lunch today. There’s a bit of a panic on at work this morning. They’re not being allowed to leave the building. I did ask her why, but she said she didn’t know. They’ve just been told to stay inside at their desks. Do you think it might be a bomb scare? Or a fire? Or a terrorist attack like the one at Harrods?” Angela was breathless with gloomy excitement. 

“Dam!” said Sylvia “I hope everything is alright.”

“She works for the Police, doesn’t she? At New Scotland Yard?”

“Yes, but she isn’t involved in any of their operations, she’s more on the money side. Or at least that’s what I think she does.”

“She said she’d try and ring you later if things change.”

Sylvia put the phone down, mildly annoyed that she wouldn’t now get the chance to talk to Kay about everything that had happened over the last couple of days. 

There was no sign of the unknown man that day or the next. Despite this, for the next few weeks, Sylvia continued to pay more attention than usual to the other commuters on her train but none of them were unfamiliar. The same faces appeared every day. No one seemed to follow her or loiter outside her office so slowly the strange phone calls faded from her mind. But she still wanted to talk to Kay about them, if only to reassure herself she was worrying about nothing.