Garnet Ghost

Ollie remembers the spare room

The back of the kitchen table had a good space for a microphone lead. Orla used it to connect an old tape deck at an age when other children put cards in the spokes of their bikes, says her brother Ollie. One morning she left her recorder out during the first rain in a month. The drops coming off a gutter sounded enough like loose change that Ollie looked at his own pockets when he heard it. Later on, when she'd picked up hours at the small station, Ollie tried offering her a mug without looking up, the way presenters accept the tea at a break. He knocked it so sharply that she called out his name from around the corner. He claims there's no such thing as a private kitchen in his sister's house.

Orla says she spent four years choosing when other people's voices would be heard before she picked up a regular relief shift. She liked working under somebody else's theme music. If someone came in with news from the volunteer hall, she could work out a sensible place to fit it without an audience hearing her argue.

Orla on the chair

At DGM there used to be a stool behind a crowded parts table. Orla sat down there after bringing the Porsche 914 for an initial inspection. The old floorboard sounded a warning when people walked up, so she could stand aside and be busy with something as they reached the bench. She developed a good view of the practice gate and used it to tell workshop hands when heads would be needed. Most of those people assumed there was a reason she had no slot of her own.

One afternoon somebody needed a spare wheel. Orla already had one she'd checked, and she knew the sound of the wheel they'd taken off when it rolled against the nearest leg of the workbench. She pushed hers out between the parts trays. The person who took it invited her around to the car to see whether it fit. There was a good square of sun on the front of the table she'd never stood in. She watched the sun move all the way across it while they tried the wheel.

Imani remembers the bench

Imani Bell remembers that Orla would wait for the end of a question and quite often hear what the person still hadn't asked. She liked being allowed to turn a conversation over quietly. On a good afternoon she kept Imani company by the big thermos, sometimes after an opening came up to take the Porsche out. Once she asked Imani to hold her place and came back before the tea was cold. It was obvious from her mouth, which was trying to be straight, that she'd enjoyed herself. Imani let her tell it to the table in her own time.

Orla says the first look at a practice line always seems to take her too long. She trusts it more on the repeat, and has learned to ask for one before the person keeping the register moves on.

Next Sunday's tape

She has a blank reel from Ollie with a note asking her to make sure she hears herself in the next thing she records. The station shifted her Sunday hours, leaving a full morning for the next DGM test. She plans to carry the Porsche keys in the pocket she can reach from the chair and book time early. Even if she'd rather ask first whether anyone would like tea.