A Voice in the Night
At 2.30 the other morning the telephone rang in a London flat occupied by two friends of mine, Mr. and Mrs. D. The lady lifted the receiver and a man's voice said he was a GPO engineer testing the line. Mrs. D. said with some acerbity that this was an odd time to test it, whereupon the man got down to the object of the exercise, which was to deliver an unending flow of peculiarly gross obscenities. Mr. D., with admirable resource, told his wife to keep the man in play, made his way swiftly to the telephone in the caretaker's quarters and reported the matter to the police. Mrs. D. continued with great hardihood to bear the brunt until an operator's voice cut in and told her that she could now ring off. A few minutes later the offender was arrested in a suburban call-box. Aged 31, of runt-like and unprepossessing appearance, he claimed (according to the police evidence in the magistrate's court next day) never to have had any employment and to be a Communist. He pleaded guilty and was given fourteen days. Mrs. D., having sat up for the rest of the night drinking. tea and talking to her husband, felt next morning that she had better tell her Nanny what had happened, as she was likely to hear of it anyhow and might do so in a, way which would upset her. Having listened to the whole rather disquieting story, all Nanny said was " I wish I'd known you were making tea."
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