Wren
Twenty-one days. Thursday.
My dad came to the radio station with his own plate.
Not a paper one. A proper white dinner plate, from home, wrapped in a tea towel, with a foil dome on it like a small silver hat, and under the dome eight rounds of bacon sandwich, cut in triangles, still hot enough to fog the foil. He'd also brought a flask, a bag of apples nobody asked for, and a bottle of brown sauce under his arm like a baby he'd been asked to hold at a christening.
"Dad. It's a radio show. You're on for twenty minutes."
"Aye, and I'll be hungry for nineteen of them." He looked round Studio B with his head back and his mouth a little open, the way he looks at a boat he's about to be rude about. "So this is it. Ten years I've sat in that van."
"Don't say it like it's a hospital."
"It's smaller than the van."
"It's the size of a wardrobe, Dad."
"With a worse smell." He put his nose to the console. "That's carpet glue. Is that carpet glue?"
"Warehouse downstairs," said Hector, through the talkback, in a voice with a lot of care in it.
My dad turned, and the two of them looked at each other through the glass, two men of a certain age in cardigans, one with a board and one with a plate, and I saw a thing I'd been waiting ten years for without knowing it: Hector Mabey, in the booth, being engineered at.
"What's your ground like?" said my dad.
"It's a ground loop," Hector said. "A hum. Electricity being sad."
"Aye. I'd say that's your earth."
"It's the earth and the building."
"Have you tried lifting it?"
"I've tried everything," said Hector, "except dying."
My dad nodded, slowly, as a man does at a verdict. "I'll have a look at it," he said. "After."
I found Sam in the kitchen with his hand on the kettle, not boiling it.
"You've got a face on," I said.
"I'm fine."
"You look like you're waiting for a result."
"It's a new segment." He turned round. His grey eyes had gone very still and very polite, which is what they do when he's frightened. I thought: he's nervous. He's built a thing for me and he's scared I won't like it. "I'd like it to go well."
"It'll go well. My dad's a natural. He's been rehearsing in the van for ten years. Don't tell him." I gave his arm a squeeze. It was tight as rope. "Chair."
"Good morning, Scarholme," I said. "It's Thursday. It's midnight. And tonight, for one night only, which is how my mam describes most of the things my father does, this is Dads After Midnight."
Sam had made a bed for it in nine minutes, a bit of the old shipping forecast and one note on the piano, and it was perfect, and I'd told him on the quiet that it was all right.
The first caller was a man in Seaton called Brian, who'd built his daughter a shed in nineteen ninety-nine and was still waiting to hear whether she liked it. The second was a lad of twenty-six, eleven days a father, whispering from a bathroom.
"I don't know what I'm doing, Wren," he whispered. "I put the nappy on backwards. It had a picture of a duck on it and I put the duck on the back."
"What's the duck doing?"
"Facing the wrong way."
"Then it's the right way for him, sunshine. He's got a long time to find out."
"Is that good advice?"
"It's the only advice I've got," I said. "Go to bed. Ring her mam in the morning." That's when I looked up, and my dad had a thumb in the air, and a triangle of bacon sandwich in the other hand, and his mouth full.
"Dennis Archer," I said. "My father. Ferry engineer for thirty years, Rotterdam run. Ladies, gentlemen. He's on air. Say hello."
"Hello," said my dad. "Is that on?"
"It's on."
"Hello, then." He chewed. "This is lovely bacon."
"You made it."
"I know I made it. I'm saying it's lovely." He swallowed. "Don't edit that, Hector."
"I don't edit," said Hector, flatly, on talkback.
I got him to do the engine room. He did it like he does it at every wedding: locked in the engine room at Rotterdam for six hours, in nineteen ninety-four, with a Dutchman called Joost, a tin of herring, and a spanner. "We had to learn each other's languages," he said. "By the end I knew three words of Dutch. 'Herring.' 'Spanner.' And 'if you tell Marijke, I'll kill you.'" The phones lit. The brown sauce, he said, he'd come to review, since the studio kept a bottle by the biscuit tin and a man must know what he was dealing with.
"The brown sauce," said my dad, with the bottle in his hand, to the nation. "This is brown. I'll give it that. This is not a sauce. This is a loose idea."
I put my forehead on the desk.
"Dad, you're meant to be talking about fatherhood."
"This is about fatherhood," my dad said, with total sincerity. "This is how you find out if a man cares about his family. The sauce."
Then, over a bacon sandwich, in a voice he didn't change at all, he said something I wasn't ready for. "Wren, love. I used to sit outside your flat in the van. When you started. Three o'clock, you'd be going, 'Go to bed, Scarholme.' I'd think, aye, go on, then." He shrugged. "I never went."
"Dad."
"Not once. Your mother knows." He pushed the plate at me. "Eat a triangle."
I ate a triangle. On air. Nobody asked me to say anything and I didn't. Hector, through the glass, found something very important to do with a knob.
At twenty to two the phones went quiet on their own. That's how it works. Nobody tells them.
At one forty-one the board lit. Hector put him through. I faded the record out under myself and said nothing.
My dad knows, you see. He's heard every one of them, in the van, with a tea, with his window cracked.
"Thursday again, pet," said the Lighthouse Man.
I said, "Hello, you."
The pause. The hiss. The wind going past the hollow thing. Then, slowly: "Wind's gone round to the east. Cold in the lamp room, flask won't keep." A long breath. "Letter came Monday. Official. Brown envelope." Another. "Come spring they're automating us."
I'd had my hand on the fader. It stayed there.
"Little box up top," the Lighthouse Man said. "Does the job. Don't need the tea." Pause. "I'll still be up here, mind. Somebody's got to watch it watch itself."
And the clunk, heavy and settled. Then the line went and there was only the hiss.
Nobody breathed. You could hear the fridge.
My dad ate his sandwich through the whole thing. He doesn't hurry for anybody, my dad. He chewed, and the old man on the line said they were automating us come spring, and Hector swore under his breath, and my dad wiped his fingers on his trousers and said, "Poor sod."
Then he asked if there was any more brown sauce.
That was when I looked at Sam. He wasn't looking at the desk. He was looking at my dad's mouth.
He looked like a man whose horse has been withdrawn.
I thought: that's odd. And then Hector held up both hands, spread wide, and the texts came in so fast the screen went white.
"Automating," Hector read, out loud, off the glass. "'Automating. That's the Leeds man's plan.' 'That's page four.' 'WREN, THE OLD MAN'S READ THE BOOKLET.'" He scrolled. "'It's a hoax.' 'It's Ollie.' 'It's Producer Sam, doing voices.'"
"I do not do voices," said Sam, to the guest mic, very quietly.
"Somebody's read your booklet, Scarholme," I said. I said it lightly. I could hear my own pulse in the cans. "It's a very popular booklet. It's been read out on air by a woman who now regrets it. We'll get to the bottom of it. Right now it's a quarter to two, and I've a man in my chair with a sandwich."
At one fifty-eight, Hector held up two fingers.
"Vi," I said, with the Surgery voice back on like a cardigan. "Vi from the Headland. You'll never guess who I've got in."
"I can hear who you've got in," said Vi. "I can hear him chewing."
"That's a sandwich."
"It is the sandwich and the man." There was a pause, the length of a full stop with a good deal on either side. "Dennis, is it?"
"Dennis," said my dad, brightly, with his mouth full.
"You have a voice like a coal lorry."
"Ta."
"It was not a compliment."
"I took it as one."
"You would," said Vi. "You've raised a child who sings in the vicinity of a key. I heard that, in case you thought I hadn't." Another pause. I waited for the next barb, but there wasn't one. There was only the clock on her mantelpiece, loud and slow as ever. "Wren. You've let a man eat his supper over the nation's sleep. Next you'll have Brian from Seaton bring his shed."
"Vi, did you hear him? The Lighthouse Man? Did you hear what he said?"
"I heard," said Vi. "I'll not be drawn." And the line clicked, and she was gone, the way she does, with her last word in her pocket.
My dad laughed all the way through the next record, with the foil dome on his head like a helmet. "Coal lorry," he said. "She's got my number, that one."
At five past two he left. He'd the lads waiting with a flask, he said. He stood in the booth door with his bag of apples and his plate in its tea towel and kissed the top of my head, in front of the whole of Scarholme and a producer.
"Good lad," he said to Sam, and shook his hand. "Cracking idea."
"Thank you for coming, Dennis," Sam said.
I'll tell you what I saw. Sam's face, when my dad said it. It was like watching a man being thanked for his service in a war he'd started. I put a record on and sat with the face for the whole length of a lorry-driver song.
I worked it out in the record after.
You don't work a thing out. It comes in through the floor, a bit at a time, and when you look up it's been there for ages. Your dad, though. In the car park, a week ago, in the cold, after Marguerite. I'd laughed. He'd gone quiet. Then Dads After Midnight, thought of on the pavement outside the Lamp and sold to me like a present. He'd love that. A sandwich, in a chair, next to a mic, for the one hour on earth when a man would have to be sitting still. And a face, at twenty to two, that had been waiting for something to come out of my father's mouth.
I took my cans off. I said, "Hector, a record," and I got up, and I put my shoulder into the booth door, and I went out into the corridor.
He came after me. I'd known he would. He pulled the door shut. The corridor was quiet, with the hum of the warehouse underneath and the red light going on and off at the end.
"You put my dad in a cage," I said, "to see if he'd bark."
"Wren."
"That's what it was. That's the whole segment. That's Dads After Midnight. You thought if the call came while he was sat there, it wasn't him. You thought if it didn't—"
"It was a test."
"He brought you a sandwich."
"I know."
"He's sat outside my flat in a van, Sam, for ten years. He told the whole of Scarholme. He said 'good lad' to you. You said, 'thank you for coming, Dennis.' You were thanking him."
"I had to know it wasn't him."
"Why would it be him?"
He opened his mouth and shut it again. "The voice. The hours. He listens every night. He walks in at half past two with your keys. He's a man who sits up all night in a van with a radio."
"He's my dad."
"That's why I had to know."
I laughed. There was a crack in it.
"Leeds rang me," I said. "You know that. Coastline One-oh-Two. Daytime drive. Sunlight, Sam. Nobody putting my family in a chair. I could take it tomorrow. I could be out of this building by Saturday."
He went white. "Wren," he said. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't—" And he stopped. He breathed in and held it. "Not because of this."
"Why not? You said take it."
"I said take it if you want it."
"Do I want it?" I said. "I can't tell. I can't tell what I want when you're in the room."
There wasn't a record long enough. I went back in.
On air, I took it out on him.
I'm not proud. I sat down, put my cans on, let the lorry-driver song fade and said, in the Surgery voice, soft and low and as warm as a bath:
"Scarholme, I've had a lot of texts asking what's coming in April. Is it a computer, is it a lighthouse, is it a Leeds man in a coat. I think it's only fair to ask the man himself. Sam. Anything you'd like to add?"
I turned the guest mic up. I held a finger over it.
I'll give him this. He sat in the chair with the stuffing coming out and looked me in the eye and said nothing, for nine seconds, which was how long I lasted in the quiet round. Then twenty. Then thirty. Hector's hand moved on the board. I could see his fingers hovering over the dump button, and I didn't look at him.
Forty seconds. On commercial radio forty seconds is a death.
"That's the sound of Leeds, Scarholme," I said. "Here's a record."
Gaz rang at a quarter past two. I'd forgotten to take him. The indicator went through the whole call. "I've had a fare, Wren," he said, "from the Quay, in the back, lad in a hi-vis, says he's in love with a nun." Tick, tick. "I said it's not a sin, it's just very difficult. Gaz, rank two, over and out." I laughed in the right place. I've no idea how.
At three I did the sign-off. I thanked my dad. I thanked Hector. I thanked Gaz and Vi and Brian from Seaton, and the lad with the duck. "And no thanks," I said, "to Leeds."
The pips. The news. The red light went off.
He'd not got up. He was sitting in the chair with his hands flat on his knees, and I had my back to him, winding a cable I didn't need to wind.
"It isn't your dad," he said. "I know that."
"Big of you."
"He was sat next to you with a sandwich when the call came. It's the only thing I've learned all week that I'm certain of." His voice was very even. "So somebody else knew my plan. Somebody who's read page four. Somebody who puts every call through without looking at the board, and has done for three years."
I stopped winding.
"Then it's Hector," Sam said.
In my head, quite clearly, I saw a smudge of green on a screen.
Through the glass, Hector had his back to us, and his hands were on the board, and he wasn't doing anything with them.
"Get out of my booth," I said.