By Sandshoe

11/11/2010

I’ve not had a happy life she thought and so she brought to the Gold Coin Dinner at the Community House where we occasionally met at the coffee machine and exchanged pleasantries a gift of a volume of Schubert.  She said she would never use it, not now she had Cyril to worry about and he is a real worry she had added, making a ‘schcking’ noise with her teeth and fleshy lips.  She always had on the same blue cotton frock when our paths crossed. Her hair was a practical length.  As she handed me her brown envelope I could see her entering a music room to sit for an exam in pianoforte and being quietly sensible about placing the tip of her toe behind her left foot to bob a greeting by a bend of her knees before seating herself on command to be ready for instruction from that examiner.  I could see the examiner was a tall, slim woman in a brown frock of a soft flowing matertial that draped across one arm rest as the skirt was caught in a sudden movement to resume her seat between examinees. In the frame of the afterthought I realised I was transposing an image long forgotten in an imperative to forget. I had not known even she played the piano.  I heard the rattling of the beads and the rustle of the Mother Superior’s gown at the door of the same room, my memory and imagination playing their tricks like a counterpoint of melody underlying a rhythm being played in the immediacy of the coffee urn’s tap being turned on and off as patrons came to pour their complimentary cups of coffee and tea and pour their milk so the contents of their cups overflowed onto the stainless steel tray of the server.

We sang a duet together years ago when I was new to the community and my voice gnarled for her in a twist of sentiment to find the notes. No accompaniment. Had there been an examiner sitting behind a desk abutting the adjacent wall facing us the verdict would have been cutting. The duo applicants were equally unsure of their tune.  Through what had been for me years of an ordeal, I had faithfully practised before examination periods and lulled into an annual state of false security when I passed.  Notes come to me at rest. They fall into my mind after they have been struck and are resonant.  The years since I played them have left only these, my aftersongs.

“I thought you would like this.”

A pattern of fingers moved notes across bar lines turned into an arabesque of blue cotton. She maintained a sway when she conversed and her hands waved like stubs. She never stilled. Her lips splayed wide against her smile. The thick grey hair held by a clip was a withdrawn drape. The voice behind her was a wisp.

“I was the superintendent at the Gaol.” The thin old man was telling that story to his table companion he had been standing beside patiently where they waited together to take their place filling a cup with a choice of their hot drink. I know that story as if it is my alter ego. It moves in. At the end of a sideways glance reminiscent of a thief checking the lay of his land, the habitue smirks. He leans forward and confides he “did the last of them”.

“That was me,” he said. No-one else heard. He was cunning. I knew the words as a bare wrap of a suit of thinly cut tweed like dry bone as I was supposed. When he coughed it was mean and thin. He cleared his throat and lent backwards to where I had moved behind him so any of his words could blow into the air and not my ear if he addressed me.

“Of course, it wasn’t actually me. I didn’t do it. I was just the Superintendent.” He laughed like a thin cotton sheet falling off a line, soundless. He told me I could see execution worked.

The hubub of a gold coin dinner is cacophonic; the emotional stress of attending and attention to what is said is a tragic drama. The dischordants clatter in a tray of spoons and knives like women with screechy toned voices attracting vacant spaces around their persons in public places. Women with large shoulders from the weight of heavy loads and stooped and thin like fragile paper shapes.

Kent lurched across the narrow space between the tables and the coffee machine. His mouth fell open in an expanse at me of a loving grin of elation and saliva fell out on his jacket front he wiped in a brusque movement of laboured co-ordination. His control lapses as rapidly and he swings on his toes, hesitates, rocks, rests, looks away from anyone he is in conversation with as if by way of an emotional gathering of his internal strength… he either returns his attention to a companion or reverts to his transport of his awkward body across a room, around a corner, to undertake and complete tasks.

“I’m not working at the Church anymore,” he told me as he reached for a cup. His speech was a gruff heehaw I learned to understand. I handed him a cup and he cocked his head with a frown in his eyes and then laughed‘HA’ because I grinned at him. His mood is a natural volcano. He took the cup and peered into it to see if it was clean, grimaced, shrugged his shoulders and heehawed to me he worked in the place for a long time now and if they didn’t like it too bad. He was getting married he announced or so it sounded. He clouded over. He had been irritated by the bureaucrats. He was looking dark enough.  I stopped what I was doing where I had adjusted the trays by moving used cups and mugs into a plastic bucket. I economised the remaining cups onto one tray. The noise was thunderous in the room. I may not have heard properly Kent said he is getting married. He might have said he is married. He could have said he will never get married. I bent my head forward and tapped on my ear, looked up and bellowed as best as I could, looking puzzled, “Did you say you are getting married?” I swooped my head forward as close as I could in his direction and tapped again on my ear. He yelled into my ear he was getting married. The crescendoed noise battered me.  I hauled the mugs to the servery bench. I was only avoiding the executioner.  Every time I was face to face with him across a table or found him behind me in a queue for a doughnut I wondered should I tell someone about the executioner.

Might I mention the guitar teacher who wanted ‘a beautiful woman’ to demonstrate sexual acts on and with (‘NO HOLDS BARRED! IT MUST BE FRANK!’) in Sex Education Lessons For Community. Might I refer in passing to the man of senior years who demonstrated for me a point of conversation how shapely his legs still were regardless his advanced years by unzipping his fly and dropping his jeans onto the floor in the kitchen next to the forgotten Tai Chi class in full Saturday morning swing on the other side of that roller blind divide. The flushed and agitated male and female Council staffers who had regrettably to be advised they could not attempt pulling rank again to urgently occupy the main community lounge by hiring it (for their sexual liasion) by the hour. It seems irony to me a Community Centre would not cook a cabbage (Pooh, smelly, the retired woman with the drinking problem thought drawing a stipend to run the kitchen and who else would keep it going as she had she declared bustling past me red and swollen. I think she was right.).

Complex Disabilities Youth was being emptied out of their bus when I called in the next day to collect the Schubert I had forgotten on a shelf (the first time I attended the address as a co-ordinator I identified the group’s name from a brochure). A cycle of wailing and crying alternately begins as these regulars are parked in the Hall and their carers feed them. The teeth of one young man protrude. His outsize and rigid face has the appearance of a type of cooking or industrial utensil for straining scree from a wash. One arm is lightly secured with a leather strap to avert his harm. I savoured in my imagination as I touched the Schubert that I could see the composer inscribing a delicate tracery of rests over treble and bass lines with a quill end. He is calling a student’s attention to apparent gaities of notes. A face popped out of the office. “Come here,” Gan hissed. He had turned his chair in reverse fashion to call out for me. I followed his wheeling advance forward again towards the desk. He spun the wheels into place. “I just want to say I’m not happy,” he began. He hung his head at the end of the denouement, took off his large black-framed glasses and cleaned their glass with a clutched handkerchief, and returned them to his face. “I imagine you are often unhappy with all the things you have to put up with,” hoping this kind acknowledgement I responded, “Maybe I can help you with something.”

“You surely know.”

“No.”

“I’ve been sacked.”

I am guarded. “That was impossible I thought.”

“So did I unless I shot someone. Fat chance. Blow me down you didn’t know. You didn’t?”

I placated him. I did not know and he had felt unnecessary anger at me I saw abate. His face was easy to read as it flushes red in response to all major emotions. Anger, surprise, excitement, shame, …

“It’s because of the way I smell.” He hung his head. “Can you check the lounge is cleared out of everybody for me? They had Court in there today. Be a darl.” There was that delightful gap-toothed grin.

I tapped on the door of the lounge. “Come in,” called a voice to my surprise. Its owner was standing looking down at his shirt over which a large biro stain had spread from its left breast pocket. He said, “O, hello.”

“Yes, I remember you. You’re, aren’t you, Juvenile Offence?” I did not know his title. I glided like any ambassador to a stance of ease at comfortable distance, “Is the room alright still? It’s not noisy?” I could not forget him rushing in the door of the Centre to the window at Reception and blowing my mind with an earnest supplication he wanted to be shown the room. To ensure it was suitable.

“Yes, it’s great” he said, dabbing at his shirt and looking perplexed, “it’s a pity about this.”

“Yes,” I offered, accustomed to debriefing the Men’s Group facilitator , “I wonder if I might be able to help by getting some kitchen paper. You could fold it and slide it into your pocket, and maybe tape some onto your shirt. Between the shirt and your suit coat if you are putting on your coat. If you have to go back to your office.”

He looked at me and stared, thoughtful, looked down and frowned again, “I have to go back to the office. You know I haven’t had this happen for a while. The last time was in the pocket of my trousers.”

I felt myself startle. I believed it did not show. He gazed over at me calmly. He continued with the same sincere gravity he demonstrated throughout this entire trivial exchange, “You know I have worked something out over the years that serves me well.” I noticed he was my years, mid-range 40s. It seemed confirmation was required I was attentive.

“Yes?” I supposed he would divulge a profound insight. About community, law.  I looked eagerly forward, reserved. Professional. I revelled in memory of debating lawyers in Political Science.

“I fill a bucket with water. I have that on stand-by. I pour detergent through the shirt fabric in another bucket and I turn it over. Pour more detergent through. Makes a mess if it’s a lot of ink.” He held a distinguished stance, he barely smiled, but his eyes appeared to with a fact more important to him than leaving this workplace and going home. “I can deal really with this stain. I have solved this. This is not a problem. Easy.” The thought occurred to me he was relieving me of anxiety. “I am glad to know that,” I offer, “Will I get you some paper from the kitchen?”

“No,” he said. He gazed in my direction.  “I’ll pop my suitcoat on when I go up to the office. No-one will know. Don’t worry.” He took his suitcoat and briefcase in one hand and extended his other to the door in a courteous gesture. I demurred I would leave him to see his way out. I would secure the windows.

By the time I bade him good afternoon and the windows were closed, the curtains drawn, I saw Gan had left the office. He wrote a cursory note to say goodbye. He had to go to Rainbows. I saw him struggle with the aloneness of the trek to the car park where for four years and in the main city preccinct for 19 he had battled the weather since his schooldays to catch buses and in subsequent years manipulated the folding up of the wheelchairs into the car he had used (it was bought for him by a service club) to continue to pursue his career in community. See you later, Gan.

 

 

by Sandshoe