The Box on the Square, by Duncan Moir
An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.
The call was booked for four o’clock. Nesta Pryce had his letter in her coat pocket, and she had read the important line so often that the paper had gone soft along the crease: I’ll ring the box on the square, Mam, four o’clock your time, Sunday the ninth. Twelve thousand miles of wire, or sea, or whatever it was, and at the end of it, Gareth.
She was there by half past three. She had told herself she would not be, and she had put her good shoes on at two.
The box smelled of cold pennies and old cigarettes. Nesta stood inside with the door propped open on her heel, so that nobody could say she was hogging it, and looked at the black telephone the way you might look at a sleeping dog that could wake and bite, or wake and wag its tail.
She had practised what she would say. She would not cry. She would ask about the weather, and the sheep station, and whether he was eating properly, and she would not ask when he was coming home, because that was the question that had kept his letters short for two years. She said her first sentence under her breath, to the scratched paint above the coin slot. It sounded like somebody else’s mother.
At ten to four Ceinwen Ifans tapped on the glass. ‘Will you be long, Nesta? Only I want to ring our Ann.’ Nesta said she was waiting for a call from New Zealand, and watched the news drop into Ceinwen like a stone into a pond. By five to four there were three women on the bench by the war memorial, pretending not to look.
The church clock struck four, each stroke falling into the square like a coin into a slot. The telephone did not ring.
She thought of all the things that could stop it. Lines down. The wrong day, the wrong box, the wrong four o’clock. Gareth forgetting, or remembering and deciding that he had nothing to say to her. That one she pulled away from quickly, the way you snatch your hand off a hot oven door.
At three minutes past, it rang. The sound filled the box so suddenly that she stepped back against the glass. On the bench, the three women sat up straight. Nesta stood with her hand above the receiver, not yet touching it, and found that every sentence she had practised had gone, and that she did not mind at all.
How does the writer show Nesta Pryce’s thoughts and feelings as she waits for her son’s telephone call?
You should consider:
You must refer to the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.