Brian Wright

There were several unfamiliar faces around the cavernous room when Withers got into the centre just before midnight. It was Christmas, always their busiest time of year, and he remembered an appeal had gone out for volunteers to staff the graveyard shift.

He felt depressed about the night that lay ahead, and his mood wasn’t improved when Rees, the outgoing leader, handed over with obvious relief. ‘Rushed off our feet,’ the other man said. And his departing ‘Goodbye and good luck’ contained more than a trace of cheery sadism.

While getting his first coffee of the night from the rest room, Withers prayed for a moratorium, just this one time, on desperation and misery and suicidal thoughts. But he knew there was more chance of the earth reversing on its axis.

The inevitable incoming calls, more than a dozen in the first hour, forced him out of his introspection. As he went from booth to booth, offering the usual words of comfort and encouragement, he paid particular attention to the younger helpers. Their shells still soft, they often took things more personally than the old cynics like himself.

Not that his carapace was doing him much good these days.

He recalled his most recent bad memory.

The woman had rung, almost howling with pain, to tell of a lifetime of family dysfunction and self-loathing. It had taken all his experience to calm her down. In his textbook way, he encouraged her to look for positives, and she had finally admitted that she loved flowers, especially white roses. He even got her to laugh at one point. But when the line suddenly went dead, Withers knew that she had made up her mind. She wouldn’t be calling them again. 

Yet, this time, his sense of waste was mixed in with something different, something new, and he’d begun to wonder if, deep down, he didn’t actually despise the caller for throwing away her life. Compassion fatigue: it was a death sentence in their work. Withers had seen it happen all too often. Not many people had lasted as long as him.

The divorce hadn’t helped his state of mind, of course. Twenty-one years of marriage down the drain, his wife gone off with a younger man. Enough to make anyone feel less than charitable towards the world.

He wondered if it was even possible to do the job without a supportive home life - the stable to deal with the unstable. It suddenly occurred to him that he might, in fact, be moving over to the other side. When I ring with my sob story, he mused, I hope the helper will be professional enough not to recognise my voice.

They often used black humour as a defence mechanism, but this time it was too close to home. Feeling more despondent than ever, Withers went for another coffee.

As he poured hot water into a mug with LOVE HURTS printed on its sides, he wondered wearily if it was time to look for alternative employment, good works that were less troubling to the soul. Perhaps standing on a street corner with a collection box.

‘Hullo.’

The voice was friendly, buoyant even, unusual for the time and place, and he felt prepared to dislike its owner at once.

When he turned, she was smiling at him with a look that said, remember me? Withers stared blankly and then recalled that he’d helped out one of the newcomers earlier on, when the girl had been having difficulties with an awkward caller.

‘Hullo,’ she repeated quizzically.

And then: ‘Are you alright?’

He felt like breaking the habit of fifteen years, snarling at her, of course I’m not, you silly bitch, can’t you tell? Instead he leaned against the sink, his forehead throbbing, wondering if he would even be able to get through the shift.

‘Sit down over here,’ she said, ushering him to the table used for their rushed meals.

They were the only ones in the small room. He could hear the others outside, talking in the soothing yet unsentimental tones they were taught to use as the means of getting through to people who were often frightened and desperate.

‘Tell me what’s the matter.’

The young woman was trying the same technique on him, but with almost comical ineptitude. She must have come straight out of training onto one of their busiest shifts, he decided, a baptism of fire indeed. He knew they were short of people - too many out there wanting, too few wanting to give - but this was ridiculous.

‘You haven’t been with us long,’ he said, not intending it as a question.

‘No time at all,’ she admitted, still smiling.

Withers had seen it many times before, the beginners who put on a show of bravado, breezily defiant in the face of all the relentless misery. It was soon knocked out of them as a rule – one or two especially harrowing calls usually did the trick - after which they adopted the corporate persona, a sort of resigned fatalism. Realising the world to be a far worse place than they’d ever imagined. The ones that stayed with them, that is.

Yet somehow this young woman’s jauntiness was different. It seemed to be hiding something alright, but not just the usual nerves.

Instinct told Withers that the problems lay in her own past. A troubled mind, however, was not much use to other troubled minds. He should know. He wondered what she was doing there, how she had got past their vetting procedures. Did they have vetting procedures any more? He was too tired to care.

She was thanking him now, but he couldn’t take in her words, struggling to focus through the headache. ‘That’s OK,’ he muttered. ‘It’s what I’m here for.’

He thought about saying more, but didn’t want to hurt her, and instead debated whether to send her home out of kindness. Then he saw her admiration in her eyes - my hero - and decided it was time for a few hard truths.

Someone else, another stranger to him, came into the rest room just then and looked at them curiously. When he saw they were returning his stare, the man hurriedly helped himself to coffee and left.

Withers spoke urgently now, feeling guilty about being away from his desk, trying hard to sound less angry than he felt. ‘You know we’re both in the wrong job, don’t you?’

‘No,’ the girl said, ‘you’re really good at what you do.’

‘And what is it exactly that I do?’ Funnily enough, it was the question he’d been asking himself all night.

‘You save people,’ she said simply.

‘And what about the failures?’ he asked.

‘There are no failures.’

She still had the determined grin on her face, almost as if it wasn’t her normal expression but something assumed for the occasion. It was beginning to get on his nerves, and he snapped at her in his best leader tones, ‘Well, I happen to know better.’ Remembering his own most recent disappointment, the line going dead.

‘There are no failures,’ she repeated. He was surprised by her doggedness, looking as if she wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him.

He spoke very deliberately. ‘There’s a saying, pissing in the wind. Sometimes I think that’s all we’re doing here.’

Again she stood up to him; he gave her full marks for perseverance if nothing else. ‘My mother also had a saying. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ The catch in her voice told him everything he needed to know about her home life. Mums and dads, he pondered. Old man Larkin hadn’t been too far wrong on that one.

‘But I don’t believe it,’ she went on with passion. ‘Good intentions are just that, they are good. They’re never wasted, believe me.’

She fell silent then, her outburst spent, looking pale and exhausted.

He glanced at his watch. Nearly three in the morning. It was the period of the graveyard shift he always dreaded, his senses at their lowest ebb, half-expecting the next caller to be the devil himself playing a practical joke.

‘I’d better get back,’ he said. ‘You stay here and have a coffee. Then I suggest you go home and have a long sleep.’

Her smile seemed more natural now. ‘I was going to do that,’ she said.

Withers was halfway through the door when she spoke again. ‘I just wanted to thank you for your help. I’m truly grateful. We all are.’ Her voice was very soft, as if it barely had the strength to reach him.

Wondering how she could presume to speak on behalf of her colleagues, some of whom she had probably never even met before that night, he returned to the main room and saw that most people were hunched over their tables, bedraggled and sleepy-eyed. The phones were silent; and he offered up thanks for that.

Sitting in his spartan cubicle, Withers considered the young woman and their brief conversation. He wondered if he ought to recommend getting rid of her - no room for sentiment in the caring game. And yet, even if she seemed blatantly unsuited to the job, he couldn’t help thinking she was right about some things.

He remembered her words. There are no failures. The real failure, he told himself, would be to give in to his present unhappiness, with the work they did, with his life. And so he had no choice but to soldier on, fight his way back to some sort of equilibrium.

Hearing the phones start up again, he decided it was time for another of his rounds. Strange, but suddenly he felt a lot better - even his headache had disappeared.

The girl was nowhere in sight among the helpers, and he felt vaguely disappointed that she’d left without even wishing him goodbye. Then he thought of the rest room, perhaps she was still finishing her coffee.

The place was empty when Withers pushed open the door.

However, a single white rose rested on the table. The dew was still glistening at its heart.