(1)
The telephone taunted Bertie. He was terrified of stammering before he could get a single word out, inspiring whoever he was calling to hang up in irritation. Nearly all his calls were placed for him by a secretary, even when they were as personal as saying goodnight to his girls while he was traveling.
He could think of no reason why a prince shouldn't use the telephone for private matters. On several occasions, Bertie had accidentally overheard his brother saying intimate things to women, heedless of whoever might be listening on the line or in the corridor. It had been mortifying for Bertie, but no one had ever captured or broadcast such conversations. David had been safe.
What Bertie wanted to do wasn't nearly as dangerous, so why were his hands shaking? True, he'd had to steal the number from Elizabeth's desk - well, not had to, he could have asked, but that would have made him even more afraid to speak, and she'd have been suspicious. At least telephone exchanges were automatic in London, and there would be no receptionist at the other end of the line.
He dialed the exchange code, paused, continued. Took a deep breath as he heard the connection. Maybe no one would -
"Hello?"
The voice was young, too young, a child's. Bertie tried to reply. The syllable stuck in his throat. He slammed down the earphone quickly, breaking the connection, though his fingers had become so slippery that he nearly missed the hook.
This was ridiculous. Any common man could ring up a friend for a chat, or ring up a colleague for assistance. He wasn't doing anything shameful.
Perhaps later...but later there would be more children and a wife and even less of a reason for Bertie to be calling. What would he say? I just wanted to hear your voice? He'd sound daft. He was just going to have to wait, long, excruciating hours, until the next week.
(2)
Lionel's consulting room smelled of wood shavings and model glue. It made Bertie's throat tighten, but in a pleasant way, not at all the way it felt when he was locked in a stammer. And Lionel was very cheerful this morning, nattering on about a disastrous attempt to take his sons fishing, during which they'd caught only two small fish and the youngest boy had cried to watch them die.
"And how was your holiday? I suppose it wasn't much of a holiday for you. Did you have a nice time with your girls?"
"I did, yes, once the wretched rain stopped." Lionel smiled at him. Abruptly Bertie blurted out, "Logue, I can't use the telephone."
"Pardon?"
"I can't speak on the bloody telephone. I can answer when c-called, but I can't start a bloody conversation."
Lionel was gazing at him with a mix of sympathy and concern that embarrassed Bertie almost as much as his failure had done. Maybe Lionel's son had told him about the mysterious ringing with no one at the - no, if Bertie continued that line of thought, he'd never be able to look Lionel in the eye again.
"I suppose I had assumed you had secretaries to place your calls for you," Lionel said, nodding a bit as if something had just become clear to him. "I hadn't thought about personal calls. It isn't just stammerers who loathe the telephone, you know - many people find it extremely difficult to utter a greeting and begin a dialogue. I don't suppose you ever had the experience of trying to ring up a girl and getting her father on the line? The stuff nightmares are made of."
Bertie managed to match his smile. "They're all like that for me. I can't very well reply to a greeting with, 'Excuse me, but I need to do some breathing exercises before I tell you why I'm calling."
"But perhaps it would be better if everyone did that. It would stop things being blurted out in anger." Lionel laughed warmly, standing up, resting a hand on Bertie's shoulder as if he needed support before pushing off a bit to head over to the desk on the far side of the room. After a minute of fumbling around, he was back, holding out a piece of paper.
Bertie reached to take it. "What's this?"
He was immediately glad he had asked before he looked at the marks in Lionel's familiar handwriting, for he recognized the sequence at once, and it would have made him stammer as well as blush. "That's my number," Lionel said, smiling as he sat. "You can ring me up when you want to practice telephone conversations with your friends. I'll tell my boys that if they insist on picking up, they are to turn it over to me immediately whether anyone speaks or not."
Lionel knew perfectly well that Bertie didn't have friends he wanted to ring up. If it had been anyone else, Bertie would have suspected Lionel was laughing at him privately, but he didn't believe Lionel to be capable of that sort of cruelty. He considered allowing the misdirection to stand, but if Lionel had been clever enough to give Bertie such an excuse to call, it meant Lionel was clever enough to have figured out the rest.
"I hate not being able to reach you for days on end," Bertie said as crossly as he could, folding the paper and putting it inside his pocket watch. "I can't very well ring you up to explain that I'm having trouble ringing you up."
"Yes, you can." For reasons Bertie couldn't fathom, Lionel looked absurdly pleased. "It's always a pleasure to hear from you, Bertie. It isn't as if I can ring you up without your entire staff thinking I've lost whatever little sense of propriety I might have had. Ring me up any time you like - go home and try it later."
Bertie breathed in and out, feeling the tension in his chest ease, though he hadn't realized it was there. "Perhaps I will," he said, touching the pocket with the watch to be certain it was there. He wasn't going to tell Lionel that he didn't need the number on the paper; he'd already committed it to memory.
(3)
"Where are you going?" Elizabeth called after Bertie.
"I need to make a telephone call."
"A personal call? Can't someone put it through for you?"
"No. I need to do this myself. I told Logue that I can't bear to initiate telephone conversations, so of course he suggested that I start doing so immediately."
Elizabeth smiled. She knew by now that Bertie wasnt really annoyed with Lionel, and moreover that Lionel was probably right. "He isn't going to have you singing or shouting profanities into the microphone next, is he, darling?"
"If he does, I'll have him thrown in the Tower and beheaded." She laughed, waving him away.
Bertie shut the door behind himself. The telephone still taunted him, but he had no intention of letting it win this time.
He dialed the exchange code, the numbers, then waited for the sound that would mean the line was connected. His jaw felt tight. Perhaps it would be better to hang up and wait. Surely nobody expected -
"Hello."
He'd have known that voice anywhere, even through the static of a transatlantic telephone call. The tone wasn't that of a question but a welcome. In spite of himself, Bertie smiled.
"Hello, Lionel."
Note: I did my best to learn how telephone exchange codes/numbers worked in London prior to WWII, but I don't swear that I got it right. Please come join us at kings_speeches on LiveJournal or at Archive of our Own if you read this fandom!