hundred metres. Here are stronger, more decisive signals: coastal stations’ call signs, flung from towering masts. Poldhu’s transmitting its weather report; a few nudges away, Malin, Cleethorpes, Nordeich send out theirs. Liverpool’s exchanging messages with tugboats in the Mersey: Serge transcribes a rota of towing duties for tomorrow. Further out, the lightship Tongue’s reporting a derelict’s position: the coordinates click their way in to the Seaforth station, then flash out again, to be acknowledged by Marconi operators of commercial liners, one after the other. The ships’ names reel off in litany: Falaba, British Sun, Scania, Morea, Carmania , each name appendaged by its church: Cunard Line, Allen, Aberdeen Direct, Canadian Pacific Railway, Holland-America. The clicks peter out, and Serge glances at the clock: it’s half a minute before one. A few seconds later, Paris’s call-sign comes on: FL for Eiffel. Serge taps his finger on the desktop to the rhythm of the huge tower’s stand-by clicks, then holds it still and erect for the silent lull that always comes just before the time-code. All the operators have gone silent: boats, coastal stations, bugs—all waiting, like him, for the quarter-second dots to set the air, the world, time itself back in motion as they chime the hour.
They sound, and then the headphones really come to life. The press digest goes out from Niton, Poldhu, Malin, Cadiz: Diario del Atlántico, Journal de l’Atlantique, Atlantic Daily News … “Madero and Suárez Shot in Mexico While Trying to Escape” … “Trade Pact Between” … “Entretien de” … “Shocking Domestic Tragedy in Bow” … “Il Fundatore” … “Husband Unable to Prevent” … The stories blur together: Serge sees a man clutching a kitchen knife chasing a politician across parched earth, past cacti and armadillos, while ambassadors wave papers around fugitive and pursuer, negotiating terms. “Grain Up Five, Lloyds Down Two” … “Australia All Out for Four Hundred and Twenty-one, England Sixty-two for Three in Reply” … Malin’s got ten private messages for Lusitania , seven for Campania , two for Olympic: request instructions how to proceed with … the honour of your company on the occasion of … weighing seven and a half pounds, a girl … The operators stay on after the Marconigrams have gone through, chatting to one another: Carrigan’s moved to President Lincoln , Borstable to Malwa; the Company Football Team drew two-all against the Evening Standard Eleven; old Allsop, wireless instructor at Marconi House, is getting married on the twenty-second … His tapper-finger firing up her spark gap … Short, then long … Olympic and Campania are playing a game of chess: K4 to Q7… K4 to K5 … They always start K4… Serge transcribes for a while, then lays his pencil down and lets the sequences run through the space between his ears, sounding his skull: there’s a fluency to them, a rhythm that’s spontaneous, as though the clicks were somehow speaking on their own and didn’t need the detectors, keys or finger-twitching men who cling to them like afterthoughts …
He climbs to six hundred, and picks up ice reports sent out from whalers: FLOEBERG/GROWLER 51N 10′ 45.63″ lat 36W 12′ 39.37 long … FIELD ICE 59N 42′ 43.54″ lat 14W 45′ 56.25″ long … Compagnie de Télégraphie sans Fil reports occasional light snow off Friesland. Paris comes on again; again the cycle pauses and restarts. Then Bergen, Crookhaven, Tarifa, Malaga, Gibraltar. Serge pictures gardenias tucked behind girls’ ears, red dresses and the blood of bulls. He hears news forwarded, via Port Said and Rome, from Abyssinia, and sees an African girl strumming on some kind of mandolin, jet-black breasts glowing darkly through light silk. Suez is issuing warnings of Somali raiders further down the coast. More names process by: Isle of Perim, Zanzibar, Isle of Socotra,
They sound, and then the headphones really come to life. The press digest goes out from Niton, Poldhu, Malin, Cadiz: Diario del Atlántico, Journal de l’Atlantique, Atlantic Daily News … “Madero and Suárez Shot in Mexico While Trying to Escape” … “Trade Pact Between” … “Entretien de” … “Shocking Domestic Tragedy in Bow” … “Il Fundatore” … “Husband Unable to Prevent” … The stories blur together: Serge sees a man clutching a kitchen knife chasing a politician across parched earth, past cacti and armadillos, while ambassadors wave papers around fugitive and pursuer, negotiating terms. “Grain Up Five, Lloyds Down Two” … “Australia All Out for Four Hundred and Twenty-one, England Sixty-two for Three in Reply” … Malin’s got ten private messages for Lusitania , seven for Campania , two for Olympic: request instructions how to proceed with … the honour of your company on the occasion of … weighing seven and a half pounds, a girl … The operators stay on after the Marconigrams have gone through, chatting to one another: Carrigan’s moved to President Lincoln , Borstable to Malwa; the Company Football Team drew two-all against the Evening Standard Eleven; old Allsop, wireless instructor at Marconi House, is getting married on the twenty-second … His tapper-finger firing up her spark gap … Short, then long … Olympic and Campania are playing a game of chess: K4 to Q7… K4 to K5 … They always start K4… Serge transcribes for a while, then lays his pencil down and lets the sequences run through the space between his ears, sounding his skull: there’s a fluency to them, a rhythm that’s spontaneous, as though the clicks were somehow speaking on their own and didn’t need the detectors, keys or finger-twitching men who cling to them like afterthoughts …
He climbs to six hundred, and picks up ice reports sent out from whalers: FLOEBERG/GROWLER 51N 10′ 45.63″ lat 36W 12′ 39.37 long … FIELD ICE 59N 42′ 43.54″ lat 14W 45′ 56.25″ long … Compagnie de Télégraphie sans Fil reports occasional light snow off Friesland. Paris comes on again; again the cycle pauses and restarts. Then Bergen, Crookhaven, Tarifa, Malaga, Gibraltar. Serge pictures gardenias tucked behind girls’ ears, red dresses and the blood of bulls. He hears news forwarded, via Port Said and Rome, from Abyssinia, and sees an African girl strumming on some kind of mandolin, jet-black breasts glowing darkly through light silk. Suez is issuing warnings of Somali raiders further down the coast. More names process by: Isle of Perim, Zanzibar, Isle of Socotra,
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