The dear, dead days before direct dial

[nineveh_uk]

Following on from antisoppist’s recent post on whether Peter Wimsey enjoyed his job in advertising in part because it gave additional opportunities for stalking running into Harriet leads me to a further question:

when Peter rings up Harriet’s flat for the first time in Gaudy Night, how did he get her phone number?

Harriet has just been abroad for 18 months. Peter knows she is back because she’s been mentioned in the Times*. She has recently returned to a new flat, and a new telephone number. I think we can assume that the new number is not in the phone book on the grounds that even if she weren’t ex-directory**, which I’d expect her to be given that if she can’t avoid nasty letters from strangers she doesn’t want nasty phone calls as well, there hasn’t been time for the number to enter a new book in the few weeks in which she’s been in London again.

A quick search of the internet has not been especially fruitful, but the Daily Mail tells me that directory enquiries started with the first telephone service, so that would have been an option, except that Peter doesn’t know Harriet’s new address (she tells him that she has moved flat in answer to his comment that she has a new phone number), and if the books were being used we’re back to the original problem of her not being in them.

So how did he get the number so quickly? Would the operator have sufficient local knowledge to put him through to Miss Vane, newly living in a Bloomsbury flat at an unknown address? Has he phoned the host of the literary party, or got Sally Hardy to do so? Has he phoned Harriet's agent with an excuse, or is that too embarrassing? As Parker lives round the corner, has he got him to make an official enquiry?

I am assuming that he didn’t in fact see her at Ascot, have her trailed home, and only waited for the paper to give him an excuse for knowing she was back, or got whatever border agency there was at the time to report...

*As Bunter’s duties including reading the paper and picking out notable articles, one can only imagine what he was thinking as he marked that particular column in black ink.

**Assuming that to be an option at the time.

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

Friendly operator (and normal behaviour) seems to be the LJ consensus, too.

I’ve decided that he doesn’t think in the first place that Harriet might have got a new flat after being away for 18 months because he has a big enough income that the fact she probably needed the rent money to support her travels simply hasn’t occurred to him.

[antisoppist]

simply hasn’t occurred to him
Very good point, no it wouldn't.

The start of the call with "Miss Harriet Vane?.. Is that you Harriet?" in a voice of curious huskiness and uncertainty also sounds like someone who has just phoned the wrong person by mistake and is worried it might have happened again. Not that I have ever analysed it in such detail before.

Did the operator need to give him the number or would they just connect him to the right person? And if the latter, is "you have changed your telephone number" a subtle request that she tell him what it is now please, which she does not take him up on? Unless she answered the phone by giving the number, something I still automatically do when at my parents', to the bemusement of the Finn who says "but they know what the number is, they just dialled it."

[nineveh_uk]

I always put the huskiness down to the emotion of getting to talk to Harriet about, and how she is going to reply, what if she tells me to go away? But the wrong phone numbers can't help. It is all very well to regard other people's breakfasts as collatoral damage in the quest, but the emotional strain tells. Hopefully the operator said, "Ah, [Bloomsbury 647]" so he could remember for the future. I note that also in GN, Harriet either knows Peter's number or assumes the operator will connect her via the address, as she doesn't check it when about to phone before wimping out.

Answering phones is definitely one of those things one inherits from parents. It's like the mitochondrial DNA of modern communications. I say "Hello".

[antisoppist]

I find the "Miss Harriet Vane?" a bit odd as a starter. Is he repeating what she answered the phone with?

I say "hello" on my own phone but "Exchange and number" if I have to answer my parents' phone, as instructed as a child, when even my mother has now switched to "Hello, farm name". Though mostly we were instructed never to answer the phone ever on pain of death in case we said yes to someone selling vast quantities of fertiliser or wanting dad to bale their field. This has resulted in all three of us being scared of telephones.

[azdak]

I find the "Miss Harriet Vane?" a bit odd as a starter. Is he repeating what she answered the phone with?


My guess would be that she just said "Hello?" when she picked up the phone, and Peter wasn't entirely confident he wasn't addressing a stranger (like answering the phone with your number, so that anyone who's dialled the wrong number realises that at once).

[nineveh_uk]

That's my assumption, especially if he's already got it wrong once. He does not, interestingly, introduce himself.

I always answer "Hello" (accept at work, where I say my full name). I once had a row on the phone as a child with someone who had dialled the number wrongly and insisted on being told what ours was, whereas I wasn't allowed to give it out.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

We have "You have reached [number]" on our answering machine, so as to give a clue to those who have gotten the number wrong that it's not the folks they want.