For W.

For W.

给W。

At five o’clock on Sunday the electrician was lying under the carousel with a torch in her mouth, and she had been there since eight.

星期日下午五点，电工躺在旋转木马下面，嘴里叼着手电筒，她从早上八点就在那里了。

Her name was Bev. On Wednesday I had rung twelve electricians, and eleven had laughed at the dates or hadn’t answered. Bev had answered. From Monday to Saturday she worked for a big company that wired office buildings and didn’t allow its electricians to take private jobs; on Sundays she was her own boss. “One Sunday,” she had said. “That’s what you’ve got before your hearing. I’ll start at eight and stay till it’s done. If it isn’t done by midnight, it isn’t done.”

她叫Bev。星期三我给十二个电工打过电话，十一个人一听日期就笑了，或者根本没接。Bev接了。星期一到星期六，她在一家大公司工作，专给办公楼接线，公司不许电工接私活；星期天她自己说了算。“就一个星期天，”她说。“这是你在听证会以前能有的。我八点开始，做完才走。如果到半夜十二点还没做完，那就是做不完。”

So while the square had watched Father Tom open the letter box, and while my father told Mr Pike about 2001 in the café, Bev had worked through every hut on her own. She came out from under the carousel and took the torch out of her mouth. She was about fifty, small and strong, with grey hair cut very short and a voice like gravel.

所以，当广场上的人看着Tom神父打开信箱，当我父亲在咖啡馆里对Pike先生讲2001年的时候，Bev一个人把每一间木屋都检查了一遍。她从旋转木马下面爬出来，把手电筒从嘴里拿出来。她五十岁左右，个子小，很结实，头发灰白，剪得很短，声音粗哑。

“Lights, fine. Huts, fine, once your carpenter stops putting nails through my cables. Carousel, no.” The control box was from about 1985, she said, and the switch in it had melted. You couldn’t buy that switch any more. There was one that would do the same job at the electrical wholesaler on the ring road, and it was Sunday, and the wholesaler was shut. “If I had it by eight, I’d fit it and test it. Without it I sign for everything except the carousel. And a Christmas market without a carousel is a car park with lights.”

“灯，没问题。木屋，没问题，只要你们的木匠别再把钉子钉进我的电线。旋转木马，不行。”她说，控制箱是1985年左右的，里面的开关已经烧化了。这种开关现在买不到了。环城路上的电器批发店有一个能起同样作用的，可是今天是星期天，批发店关门了。“如果八点以前我拿到它，我就装上，再测试。没有它，除了旋转木马，别的我都签字。可是没有旋转木马的圣诞市集，只是一个有灯的停车场。”

The owner was a man called Ray Dunmore. Bev owed him for a job in October and wouldn’t ring him herself. I rang him from behind the florist’s van. He was at his granddaughter’s birthday party, and he told me so twice, with feeling. I let him finish. Then I told him what the switch was for, offered him double his price, and promised that Father Tom would thank him by name from the church steps on opening night, which I had not asked Father Tom about. There was a long silence full of children singing. Then he said he would meet me at seven, and that I was the most annoying man he had spoken to all year.

旋转木马的主人是个叫Ray Dunmore的人。Bev十月欠他一笔钱，不愿自己给他打电话。我躲在花店的货车后面给他打了。他正在孙女的生日会上，还很有感情地对我说了两遍。我让他说完。然后我告诉他那个开关是做什么用的，说愿意付他双倍的价钱，还保证开幕那天晚上Tom神父会在教堂台阶上点名感谢他——这件事我还没问过Tom神父。电话里沉默了很久，里面全是孩子们唱歌的声音。然后他说七点和我见面，还说我是他今年说过话的人里最烦人的一个。

I drove my father’s van to the ring road in the snow. It had no heater, and its second gear made a noise like an animal in pain. Ray Dunmore opened his shutter in a paper birthday hat, found the switch at the back, and took twice its price from my card without blinking. On the way home the van stopped at a red light and refused to start for four minutes, with cars sounding their horns behind me, and I laughed out loud, alone, for the first time in perhaps a year.

我开着我父亲的货车，在雪里去了环城路。车没有暖气，二挡的声音像受伤的动物在叫。Ray Dunmore戴着纸做的生日帽拉开卷帘门，在后面找到那个开关，眼都不眨地从我的卡里收了两倍的价钱。回家的路上，货车在红灯前停下，四分钟不肯发动，后面的车一直按喇叭，我大声笑了出来，一个人，也许是一年来的第一次。