Dear Phone

Hiro Candici phoned his nephew, Serge Gallagher,

and asked him for the phone number of Joseph Morpetho,

the manager of a local football club.

Serge couldn't remember it

and left the phone off the hook while he stepped outside to ask Gary Modler

who looked after a barrow on the corner of Fiddler Street.

Modler was married to Morpetho's ex-wife,

who used to be a telephonist before she went deaf

after being knocked down by a barrow,

a fact that hadn't affected her memory.

Hirous Canditi got Jerry Modler to phone Louis, his wife's cousin,

to ask him if he knew Gary Sutler's phone number

so that he could give him a piece of his mind.

Jerry pretended to have no change, so he said he'd ring later.

Hirous told him to piss off and he ran into the bar,

demanding to use the phone.

Harry Diego, the barman,

pointed to the phone at the back of the serving hatch

and asked Hirous to buy him a drink.

Hirous claimed that he could make ten calls for the price of a beer.

Harry Contentino owned ten barrows in Fiddler Street

and held another three off Gregory Square.

He paid his barrow boys badly

and expected them to keep him in small change for his phone calls.

He was always on the phone.

Louis, his wife's brother, ran the pub in Gregory Square

and had banned Harry from using the phone behind the bar

because he never paid for it.

Harry broke a bottle and scratched the paintwork

and vowed he would never drink in the bar again.

The same evening he was back to phone Zelda.

Louis allowed him to use the phone

provided he bought every person in the public bar a drink.

There were five people in the bar.

Harry said he could phone New York for the price of five beers.

Harrim Constanti insulted the operator

every time he picked up the receiver.

He never said please, always called the operator a deaf cow

and belched every time she asked him to repeat a number.

Hiro Contenti got to calling his wife Zelda after a telephone operator

who used to identify herself by saying, "It's Melba,"

every time he rang his mother for money.

It was a weak link, but Hiro thought it was amusing.

What also made Hiro laugh was the fact that this telephone operator

never seemed to need a natural break.

Hiro used to call her a deaf cow, yet he loved his wife.

It didn't make much sense to the woman who came on the Monday to clean the phone,

who thought Tender is the Night the greatest movie she'd ever seen.

Harold Constance lived on the phone.

He ate through it, he had a hotline to the supermarket

and he organised his sex life on it.

The phone in his office was always covered in crumbs

and was sweaty from being held under his armpit while he masturbated.

Hirohito Condottieri was the youngest child of an Italian businessman,

Paulo Condottieri, who lived for nine years under house arrest in Taiwan.

Paulo's only pleasure had been to use the phone.

He'd phoned people like other people blinked their eyelids.

It was a reflex action.

Arrested for forgery,

he wasn't jailed outright because his financial contribution to the state,

through his use of the telephone was immense.

The telephone company, at their own expense, had installed a phone

in practically every room in Paulo's house.

Paulo had died at the age of 83

over a telephone arrangement he had with a nightclub manager

whose girls contrived to give Paulo excitement over the phone.

The giving of pleasure had apparently been reciprocal,

for Paulo's favourite girl had borne a son

some nine months after Paulo's death.

And it was this child, Hirohito Condottieri,

who'd given his father's house to the nation as a communications museum.

Hirt Constantino spoke of the telephone with exceptional reverence.

Thanks to it, he'd escaped from Europe,

met his wife and set up his own business.

He hoped to order the rest of his life as successfully

through the telephone.

He taught his children to use it when they were young

and educated his Estonian grandmother

to treat it with admiration and affection.

When the telephone company

was having difficult relations with its employees,

Hirt went sick, complained of being deaf

and shouted at his children to have more respect.

When the telephone company employees went on strike

in a harsh winter that blew down telephone wires all over the country,

Hirt took to his bedroom.

His grandmother tried to interest him in letter-writing

and his wife bought him a two-way radio,

but Hirt's allegiance to the phone was unshaken.

He had a photograph of William Bell hung above his bed

and had his telephone directories bound in black Moroccan leather

with metal corner pieces and a silver clasp.

This is the forecast for the Greater London area until dusk Thursday,

issued 4pm Wednesday.

Temperatures will fall to 3°C with frost in the suburbs after midnight.

Thursday will be mostly dry with some sunny periods

and temperatures will rise to about 10°C.

Winds will be northerly, moderate to force four...

Henry Clementi's ex-wife, Zelda Maroni, lived in a small village

not too far outside Olaf-St Simeon.

The only telephone available among 27 people

was in the general store at the end of the main street.

Henry continued to correspond with his wife after their divorce

and he wrote to her on the first Saturday in every month.

One summer, there was a postal strike.

And feeling it necessary to continue to communicate with Zelda,

Henry phoned the general store and left a message there for Zelda

to phone him in Zürich at noon on the first Monday in each month.

For the length of the postal strike, Zelda phoned Henry from the general store,

but when the strike ended and the letter postal service was resumed,

Zelda insisted on returning to corresponding by letter.

Henry was reluctant to do that

and suggested he might pay for a phone to be fitted in Zelda's house.

To do this, a cable had to be laid from Olaf-St Simeon

and would cost a great deal, probably as much as it would cost Zelda to move

and buy a house in Olaf-St Simeon itself.

With no hesitation, Henry offered to provide the money for Zelda to move

and she agreed.