Estuary Sound, by Philippa Crane
An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.
The overnight show on Estuary Sound went out from a studio the size of a garden shed at the top of an office block in Hull, and between one and five in the morning Dee Rowntree was the only person awake in the building apart from the callers. Stan, the security man, slept in the lobby with his mouth open.
She liked it. She liked the red light over the door and the hum of the equipment and the feeling that she was talking to the whole sleeping city, and that a few hundred people awake in it, bakers and nurses and men on the night trawlers, were talking back.
The first call came at ten past two in the March of 1981.
‘Can you play ‘The Last Bus Home’?’ A woman’s voice, quiet, a little hoarse.
‘I can try,’ said Dee. ‘Who’s it for?’
‘You’ll be asked for it in a minute,’ said the woman, and rang off.
Dee frowned at the receiver, then shrugged and put on a jingle. Thirty seconds later the second line lit up. It was a lorry driver on the M62 asking for ‘The Last Bus Home’ for his wife, and Dee, who did not believe in coincidences, played it and said a cheerful word about the motorway and felt the skin tighten slightly on the backs of her arms.
At twenty to three the woman rang again. ‘Next will be a man called Pete,’ she said. ‘He’ll want something for his mother, and he’ll cry. Be kind to him.’
‘Who is this?’ said Dee. ‘How are you doing this?’
But the line was dead, and Line Two was already flashing, and when she picked it up a man said, ‘Hiya, it’s Pete,’ and then his voice broke.
Dee was kind to him. She played his song. When it was over she found that her hand, on the fader, was trembling, and she put it in her lap and held it with the other one and went on talking in her smooth night voice about the weather off Spurn Point, because that was the job, and the job did not stop for anything.
At ten past four she rang the engineer at home and woke him up. Was there any way, she asked, that someone could hear the calls coming in before she did? A crossed line, a fault? He said not, and asked whether she had been drinking.
The woman rang for the last time at a quarter to five, as the sky over the Humber was turning the colour of dishwater.
‘There won’t be any more tonight,’ she said. ‘You’ve done well. I used to sit where you’re sitting, you know. I always liked the quiet.’
‘Wait,’ said Dee. ‘Please. What’s your name?’
There was a soft sound, almost a laugh, and the line closed.
Later, when the breakfast presenter had taken over and the building was filling with the noise of the day, Dee went down to the lobby and asked Stan who had done the overnight show before her. He scratched his head. A woman called Maureen, he said. Lovely voice. Died, oh, six or seven years back. He thought it had been about this time of year.
“Dee is presented as calm and in control throughout the extract.”
To what extent do you agree with this view?
You should write about:
You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer.
120 exam-style questions on Eduqas GCSE English Language 1.3 Critical reading and comprehension, covering 1.3.1 Identifying and interpreting themes, ideas and information, 1.3.2 Reading in different ways for different purposes, 1.3.4 Supporting a point of view with textual evidence, and 1.3.6 Reflecting critically and evaluatively on text. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.