Cloudstreet (47 page)

The board was lighting up again.

Well, thanks a dozen, but I’ve got to get back to work. There’s a lot of buggerizing to be done.

She heard him laugh.

Well, I’m going to keep after this tea.

Good luck, Earl.

Rose pulled the plug on him, and went to work on the rest of them before the whole three floors fell on her. Darken came in and Merle and Alma behind her. Rose glared at them; they were ten minutes late.

Bairds, good morning … just putting you through … one moment please … Where the hell have youse been? I’ve had the Charge of the Light Brigade on my hands here … Bairds, good morning …

Gawd, look who’s in a tizz this mornin!

I spose we’d better begin, ladies.

Heads on, bums down, I reckon.

But by the time they got their headsets on, the switchboard had cooled off.

You bludgers, Rose said with a smile. What have you been up to?

Oh, a meetin of minds in William Street.

Sailors, I spose.

How’d you guess?

Who else is gunna go you three in a group at nine in the morning? They must’ve been at sea a good while to pick a pack of rough sheilas like you. Bairds, good morning … Oh, it’s you again.

Listen, he said on the other end, sounding sort of mature and well-fixed, why don’t we meet somewhere? You sound like a smart girl.

Only meet smart ones, do you?

Somewhere close to your work? You’re on Murray Street, right?

That’s right.

Righto. What about lunch? Let’s meet at the GPO.

First column on the left as you go up the stairs, she said. Twelve o’clock. Bring your teapot.

When he’d rung off, the switch was quiet and the others were quivering with suppressed laughter.

Looks like their mate caught up with them, said Merle.

Whose mate?

The sailors, said Alma. He wasn’t in our league. They reckon he only goes for the roughest scrubbers, and I bet he’s glad he found ya, love.

Rose smiled tolerantly across their squall of hysterics. The door opened, and Mrs Tisborn came in from the office. They ruffled themselves into sobriety and blushed guiltily.

This is a switchboard, not a fowl house!

Rose had a light on.

Bairds, good morning.

My name’s Toby, by the way.

Very good, sir. Shall I put you through to kitchenware?

What?

Rose pulled the plug on him and felt the sweat slipping down the inside of her blouse. Mrs Tisborn was prowling, the great buffer of her bosom aimed here and there.

I’ll be watching you girls. And remember, Miss Pickles, you’re still not too good for Hosiery.

Thankfully, a light came on and Rose caught it first. When she plugged it through, old Teasebone was gone.

Cor, blimey, whispered Darken. Straighten yer seams, girls. It’s stockins for the lot of us.

Penal servitude, said Merle.

You rude thing, said Alma.

It was him, said Rose. My date.

Geez, love, even Blind Freddy could’ve put a girl straight on that score. No salmon and onion sangers for you today.

Through the crowd she sees the bloke leaning on the first pillar above the post office steps, and her first impulse is to go on ahead and buy those salmon and onion sandwiches at Coles and forget the whole flamin thing. He’s not bad looking. Good suit, nice pair of shoes. Glasses, though he doesn’t seem the squinty, limp type. Hatless. A bit of an individual, it seems.

She’s too nervous for this. What’s a bloke like that want with a shopgirl like her? He’s no run of the mill lair. He’s the sort of man you pray will come out of the smoky gloom and ask you for a dance.

Rose wheels back for another look and finds herself going up the steps. Now or never, Rosie.

When she gets to him, his eyebrows rise and Rose feels herself being given the onceover. Before he can, she gets the first word in.

Gday, Earl. Haven’t strained yourself, have you?

He smiles indulgently.

Hello. I thought you’d be a looker.

Boom! goes Rose’s heart.

They stand there a full moment in the spring sunshine with people coming and going around them, posties wheeling past on their heavy old PMG bikes.

You hungry? Rose asks. I am.

Yes, yes, let’s get a bite.

They wind up at the sandwich counter in Coles and Rose forgoes the salmon and onion. They eat and Rose swings on her stool like a girl, waiting. This bloke seems different to men she’s known. There’s no big talk, no flashing of money, no nervous guffaws.

I’ll guess and you tell me how close I am, he said, wiping his fingers on greaseproof paper. You left school at fifteen. Your dad votes Labor, you play netball, you’d like to be a lawyer’s secretary and you sleep with your socks on.

Rose smiles and knows whatever she says will sound stupid. Patchy, she says, but boring enough to get me right.

What’s your name?

Rosemary.

Rose.

Yes, she says relieved.

What a talker. You need the switchboard between us, do you, before you can really fire?

I spose I’m used to it. I suddenly don’t know what to talk about.

Football? The common cold?

Just ask me out, she says.

Let’s go out together. Friday.

You’re a reporter, she says. You went to uni, your parents live in Nedlands and you’ve tried to teach yourself to talk like one of us.

Us?

Friday, she says. Meet me at Shenton Park station. Seven o’clock. Bye.

She slides off her stool, minding her stockings.

She steps out into the sunshine and has to concentrate to find her way back to work, though it’s barely a block away and she’s walked it every lunch hour for years.

Well, she thinks, hardly believing her cool delivery. Well. She wondered about her guess. A reporter? Yes, she’d seen those blokes around. Fast movers, funny, sharp, always asking and watching. Yes, he’d be right there in the thick of it. He’d know politicians and criminals. He’d be a mover and shaker. Well, well.

Toby Raven

At six-thirty that Friday, Rose was waiting outside the Shenton Park station. He lurched up in a Morris Oxford and nearly took her left hip from its moorings. The first thing she learnt about Toby Raven was that he couldn’t exactly drive. He made his way, but that’s the best you could call it. Rose climbed in, suddenly twice as nervous, and they hopped away.

Well, well, he murmured, smiling widely at her after a few moments.

Hello, said Rose.

Hel-lo.

Toby sent the car in a swoon towards the kerb and Rose prayed that he would never again feel moved to take his eyes off the road.

It’d taken all afternoon to dress for this, and she could barely move for starch; with her nervousness turning so quickly to naked fear, the sweat on her steamed up the tulle and the car began to smell like a laundry. She pulled the wrinkles out of her gloves and tried not to ruin her lipstick with gnashing as they drove beneath the long shadow of Kings Park and beside the river reclamation to the lights of the city centre.

Gawd, she thought, this should be a fabulous feeling—cruising with a beau—if only a girl wasn’t afraid of dying. She sat back as Toby swooped and swerved, grunted and grated, and took deep breaths as the colours of the city broke over her; she did a real job of seeming perfectly serene.

They passed through the high class end of town with its grand hotels and ballrooms to cross the railway bridge into shabby streets and boozers’ parks. Toby wedged the car up on a kerb with a thud that nearly put Rose’s head through the roof. He sighed triumphantly.

Let’s go in.

Rose couldn’t see anywhere likely to be an eating establishment. There were shopfronts, houses, shadowy doorways. She got out and smelled garlic.

You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, Toby said beside her. It was hard to tell what he meant, but she smoothed her great full skirt graciously all the same.

He led her to a narrow doorway where a big, bumper-breasted woman met them and took them down to a crowded, smoky room full of tables, chairs, tablecloths, candles, laughing people, chinking glass and cutlery. Great vats of spaghetti were carried past by boys, and jugs of wine that reminded Rose of nosebleeds. People seemed to be speaking all kinds of languages, and some seemed to know Toby.

They sat at a small waxspattered table, and bread was brought. It wasn’t exactly the dining room at the Palace Hotel.

Where are we? she said, trying to look pleased.

Maria’s. This is where the real people come.

Rose felt her cheeks glowing. Beaut!

How do you like your spaghetti?

Oh, she huffed, like my tea—as it comes.

He laughed. You’re not about to let me go on that tea business are you?

Listen, she owned up, I don’t know a thing about spaghetti. Or the real people. I’ll just have whatever you reckon.

Two carbonaras, he told the boy. And a jug.

Do you come here a lot? Yes, all the time. Terrific place. It’s a hideaway for those in the know, you might say. We all come here. Makes a bit of a change from the old mutton and boiled veg.

Toby smiled at someone over Rose’s shoulder and now and then she sensed an eyebrow raised.

You know all these people?

I know who they are and they know who I am. Some of us are friends, associates, old flames. I’m clubbish, you’d have to say; it’s my last concession to a bourgeois past.

Rose tried not to panic.

You okay?

Rose strangled out a yes.

You’re not nervous? Don’t be nervous. I’m quite safe, you know. Not respectable but I am able to restrain myself with a lady.

Rose smiled. She ran her fingers along the checked tablecloth.

What are you thinking? You want to go home?

We’re different, said Rose.

You don’t know a thing about me! he protested gaily.

Then tell me. What do you do?

Is a man only what he does?

No, Rose said, only what he is, I spose.

Well, Rose, you’re dead right. I’m a hack. A journalist on the
Daily
. I is probably what I does.

You’ve been to university, or something, haven’t you?

Ah, sharp lady.

See, we’re different.

So what?

Rose smiled. You write, then?

Well, you couldn’t call what I do writing, though I do scribble a bit in my own time. Do you read?

Yes, she said breathlessly, I read.

Thank God. Thank Jesus, Mary and Josephus, she reads! Rose, you’re a lovely girl. The moment I heard your snooty twang on the phone I knew it was love. See, we’re not so different.

Rose laughed. Toby was so confident, his face so full of mad expression, his hands seemed to crackle with animation. He fitted the din and swirl of this place.

The spaghetti came with wine and salad. Rose hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so she went to work. It was like eating kite string but the wine soon took the awkwardness out of it.

Tell me who you read, he said with a lump of cheese camping on his chin.

Oh, Gawd.

Don’t be shy.

I love books. My room is full of them. I read the whole Geraldton library end-to-end when I was a kid.

Name some names.

But Rose didn’t know names, she only remembered stories.

You name some, she said.

Toby grinned, closed his eyes: Hammett, Steinbeck, Hemingway, James Jones, Mailer, D. H. Lawrence. Xavier Herbert, Sillitoe, Camus …

She let him go on and on in a winy whirl as people brushed by with friendly nods and vats of red sauce. Their duffle coats and minks flapped, their pockets jingled, their laughter blanketed Rose Pickles in, warm as all get-out.

Rose had enough wine in her to keep calm as they jerked their way through the traffic to the Esplanade. The lights of the river seemed more beautiful than she’d seen them. The palm trees along the foreshore cast weird silhouettes.

One of the world’s strangest towns, said Toby, aiming them down Riverside Drive.

I wouldn’t know, said Rose.

Perth is the biggest country town in the world trying to be a city. The most isolated country town in the world trying to be the most cut-off city in the world, trying desperately to hit the big time. Desert on one side, sea on the other. Philistine fairground. There’s something nesting here, something horrible waiting. Ambition, Rose. It squeezes us into corners and turns out ugly shapes.