Telephone

Our old telephone used to ring loudly and stridently. It jarred on my husband's nerves. Then we bought our own touch-button piece of equipment. Its tone is gentler and less nerve-jangling, but when it rings I find myself rushing to answer it. It seems to demand immediate attention.

It rings often in this house and the caller may be a young man ringing from K2 or any other of my daughter's numerous friends from around the world. It may be a friend or relative of my own wanting to chat, or a salesperson trying to sell me replacement windows. Occasionally, the call is mysterious and totally unexpected.

When my daughter, Anna, was a sixth-former in school, I had such a call. It was from an unknown woman in the South of England, asking for "Mrs McCormack". She told me that she had intercepted a letter my daughter had written to the Moonies, and she wanted to warn me that my daughter would be in grave danger if the Moonies gained contact with her.

I asked her to tell me who she was but she said all I needed to know was that she'd lost a daughter to the cult and that she was doing all she could to save other mothers the heartbreak she'd gone through.

She urged me to speak to my daughter and ensure that she understood the dangers. She said she mightn't succeed in intercepting the next letter. She sounded uneasy, as if frightened of being caught telephoning me. Then she rang off.

When I asked Anna why she'd written to the Moonies, she said that she'd heard about them from a teacher in school and wanted to find out for herself what and who they were. I told her about the phone call and I let the matter rest there.

After leaving school Anna spent a gap year as a Project Trust Volunteer in Indonesia, teaching English in a Bandung college. Her passion to find out for herself led her into many dangerous situations. Mostly, I wouldn't hear about these until they were safely in the past.

Around Christmas time she had been very ill and she had done some solo travelling and had been attacked and robbed. Also, she and two other volunteers had experimented with magic mushrooms and the effect on her had been very frightening. I had learned enough to make me extremely worried and almost afraid to open a letter or answer the phone.

One Sunday, early in the New Year, I was preparing a taped message to send to Anna when the phone rang. Once again, a woman's voice I didn't recognise was asking for "Mrs McCormack".

She said she had a message for me from my daughter. Anna, she said, was fine and I had no cause to worry. She'd enjoyed a belated Christmas dinner with Anna and her friend, Hilary, three days earlier.

I asked who she was and where she was ringing from. "Virginia Watkins from Surrey," came the reply.

"Then you've got the wrong person. You can't have seen my daughter on Thursday. She's in Indonesia," I insisted, apprehension seizing me.

"I know she's in Indonesia. That's where I met her, in the home of Mrs Sheilah Campbell in Jakarta."

I felt reassured. Mrs Campbell was Project's chief representative in Indonesia and when the volunteers were ill or in trouble they usually went to stay with her. Then came the amazing revelation that my daughter had talked at length about her life to this stranger, telling her that she'd always regretted not going to boarding school as her mother had done.

Virginia told her she, too, had gone to boarding school and the conversation continued till Anna exclaimed: "I think you and my Mum went to the same school."

"What a ridiculous idea your daughter has!" she continued. "You and I couldn't possibly have gone to the same school."

I was inclined to agree with her but, nevertheless, out of curiosity, I asked: "Where did you go to school?" expecting her to name some school in the South of England.

"A school called Rochelle in Cork in Southern Ireland," she replied, much to my astonishment.

"But that's where I went, too," I gasped. "What did you say your name is?"

"Virginia Watkins."

"The only Virginia I knew in school was Virginia Drought and she was five years my senior."

"That was me!"

What a small place the world is! And how amazing that my daughter should meet a stranger from Surrey at the home of a Scottish expatriate in Jakarta and discover that this lady had, 50 years earlier, been in school in Cork with her Mum, who lives in Cannock!

The next mystery call took me far beyond the mundane confines of my normal life into the dangerous realms of international espionage. Anna, in her second year at Aberdeen University, had gone on a one-year exchange to the University of Oregon.

Before returning to Britain in the summer of 1992, she joined other students on a mission to El Salvador. All I knew at the time was that these young people, from various educational establishments in America, were going to study Spanish at a summer school in the University of San Salvador and that they would be lodging with local families under the auspices of an American organisation.

My main concern was that Anna should be home in time to fulfil her engagement to speak to the Cannock Soroptimists at their September meeting. As ever, she decided to maximise the adventure element. Instead of flying from San Francisco with the other volunteers, she chose to make her own way overland through Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.

Then came the phone call - an American woman's voice asking for "Mrs McCormack". She was ringing from San Francisco to tell me Anna had arrived safely in San Salvador.

"Is there any reason why she mightn't have arrived safely?" I asked naively, wondering why her arrival should merit an international call in the middle of a weekday.

"Well, yes. She went missing for 24 hours and we were afraid the Secret Police had her." I froze in horror and fear.

"Why should the Secret Police have her?"

I had to wait till Anna came home for an answer to that question. Then this lady advised me that, when I wrote to Anna, I should send my letters c/o Cispes in San Francisco. I asked about the address in San Salvador, which Anna had given me.

"Don't write there," she said. "You would be endangering Anna's life. Be very careful what you write in your letters to her."

How puzzling it all was to me!

Only afterwards did I realise that the address Anna had given me was the Headquarters of the Trade Union Movement in San Salvador and that, although the Peace Accords were being worked out, Trade Unionists were among the groups still being targeted by the Secret Police.

Anna learned to recognise these sinister characters in their dark glasses, cruising around in American-style limousines, watching from behind darkened windows, and she learned to evade them. No spy film could be more gripping than the reality!

I actually had already received details from Amnesty International about the murder of a trade unionist in the headquarters and a picture showed a blood-stained copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the wall under which he had been slain.

I later learned from Anna that it was her host who had found the body. She also told me of the night she spent with girls as young as 13, armed and in uniform, guarding the premises. They were members of FMLN, the guerrilla movement fighting for the Liberation of El Salvador. Anna also met their leader whom the authorities had never succeeded in capturing.

She was learning about a sensitive international situation at first hand and the information she was gathering was enough to place her in considerable danger, and I knew nothing about it till that mysterious phone call from a stranger in San Francisco.

I was later to discover what CISPES was and to learn that some of their members had been killed by the CIA and I then understood why I had received that unexpected call from a stranger in San Francisco.

I could write a book about the interesting phone calls I have had over the past 15 years, but the three I have described here are in a category of their own.