Dora Tells Good Stories - A Working Class Lioness

 

Dora joined me for coffee this morning.

Back in the 1960s, half a century ago, Dora had the shop next door on this small lane, laundry and dry cleaning.

She told me of one of the working girls running into the shop, terrified and unable to explain why. Dora hid the young woman among the dry cleaning at the back of the store, then stood at her counter and prepared to face whoever it was pursuing the frightened lass.

A working class lioness.

Dora seemed unaware of the courage she displayed in this moment. This was just what Kings Cross women did for each other. They didn’t need to be told about feminism, they were teaching the subject.

It turned out the aunt of the sex worker was taking a stroll along Darlinghurst Road, and the aunt didn’t know about this career choice, and the aunt would have told the mother. A gangster or a disgruntled customer could be dealt with, but disappointing mum was too much.

Dora laughed at her role in this faux drama, finished her coffee, wandered off down Llankelly Place, peering into her old shop on her way, but not before apologising for boring me with her old stories.

Dora is a great artist.

Parkstreet

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The Tea Lady

She was the tea lady. She’d always been the tea lady.

Although that’s not strictly true. Her aunt had been the tea lady, but when the niece took over no one seemed to notice, they looked at her tea trolley, not her. 

She was an institution, or part of the furniture.

Management saw her as furniture and spoke openly in front of her, relying on a long tradition  of class confidentiality. She never breathed a word of what she heard, she was the tea lady, she knew her station.

However . . . if she overheard that someone was to be fired she couldn’t help herself, she always felt so bad for them, she would serve them first in the morning, the hottest tea, the new tin of biscuits. This became office folklore, the hottest tea, the new tin of biscuits, your last meal before being summoned to management, before execution.

He looked at her, not just her trolley. He asked after her aunt, he repaired her wobbly wheel, he thanked her every day.

When his ship sailed for the war he didn’t see her at the quay, waving and crying. 

He returned with medals and a wife, one knee that wouldn’t bend and a ringing in his ears that would never end. Over the next couple of years his medals tarnished, his English rose  withered, then died, partly due to the heat, partly due to the disappointment of marrying a dashing war hero then being married to a city office clerk.

She was the tea lady, the stoic tea lady. She waited one year and one day after the death of his wife before she tried to gain his attention. She brought him the hottest tea, a new tin of biscuits.

Thinking he was to be fired, he struck management on the nose, stormed out shouting something about not fighting for this, and she never saw him again.

She was the tea lady. She remained the tea lady until management saw her as an unnecessary expense, with coffee shops all around the staff could buy their own beverages. As part of a “family company” PR campaign the tea lady received a generous annuity. Her niece, who pushed a trolley on a new jet airliner, took her on trips to places she’d only heard about on the wireless, and heard about during the war.

One day, as she wheeled her luggage through a busy airport, she thought she saw him in the crowd, then realised the man she saw was the age he had been when she last saw him. Back when she was the tea lady. She’d always been the tea lady. She saw him repairing the wobbly wheel on her luggage trolley, then she was crying, and waving, but they were on the ship together, waving back at the crowd of strangers on the quay, and there was no war, and she was the tea lady and she’d always been the tea lady and she wished she could tell her niece not to cry for her. 

Parkstreet

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Hard Land, Soft Death

 

It’s a hard land, you can’t die in summer, the heat bakes the earth so hard it will be months before anyone can bury you. And you can’t die in winter, the cold freezes the earth so hard it will be months before anyone can bury you.

So people here must live forever.

This hard land makes hard people. Lost travellers pass through, they seem soft, pathetic and fearful. They talk of soft things, oceans and trees and love, but their words fall on hard ears. 

These soft people can die at any time, they can be buried in the soft ground, mourned by soft tears.

The travellers return home, never speak of the hard land and try not to think of it. The hard people never speak of their visitors once they leave, they try not to think of them.

Parkstreet

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Was I A Good Man?

 

On the large oak table sits a small box that once contained a new pair of shoes. The photographs that litter the table must have come out of that box. The old man looks down at the braces attached to his trousers, lifts a picture of a young man wearing braces and standing in front of a shiny new car that looks kind of 1950s. He can't remember, but the man can guess who the young man is.

He doesn't remember anyone else who appears in the photographs. There is a woman, must have been his wife, young in some shots and older in others, and two young people who must have been his children. 

There are a couple of photos of a house, maybe he lived there? Most seem to have been taken on vacations, various people he can't recall standing in front of scenes he doesn't recognise.

The man somehow knows that he is dying. He wonders what sort of life he has lived. The photographs tell him nothing. None of the people in them are present to ask. Are they just in other rooms in this house? Or are they far away?

He doesn't know. 

Has the photographic evidence spread before him been collected by the prosecution or the defense? Is this a collage of time well spent, or of time passing?

A young woman carrying a tray, tea, efficiently places, pours, is about to leave when she feels she should say something. 

“Fond memories, sir?”

The man desperately wants to grab this woman, ask her just one question.

Was I a good man? 

Then he is distracted by the box and his last thought is about what sort of shoes came out of it.

Parkstreet

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Drinking Beer With Jesus

 

An English fellow, he had been working with A.I.D.S. orphans in Africa for six months, had landed in Sydney to prop up a bar, press the alcoholic pause button. He said he didn't want to talk about it.

Turned out he did want to talk about it. When I asked he told me there were only two qualifications required for the work he'd been doing. The first was the ability to hug children and mean it, and not just cute kids. Snotty kids, scabby kids, smelly kids, dying kids, they all knew when you hugged them and didn't mean it. The other required skill was the ability to employ a shovel efficiently.

Then we laughed. I remember him laughing loudly when I called The Simpsons The Simmos, he thought it was hilariously Australian. He had plenty of money, from what I could pick up he could have bought the bar with cash, but he allowed me to buy him a couple of beers. He knew I wanted to.

We stumbled down the stairs together, parted ways.

"There is only love and death", he said as he shambled up the street.






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April, Tilbury Hotel, Woolloomooloo

 

Grape vine leaves falling 

Light, dappled through the trellis

Wine glass reflections 

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Max Kreijn, titled Sydney, work used as a logo for The Tilbury Hotel in the 1990s.

Bob Really Was A Moron

 

Don't get me wrong, I liked Bob, he was a good guy, and pretty smart in his own way, but he really was a moron.

He tried to talk me into joining him on his fool's errand. In his mind he was offering me what he saw as an opportunity. All I could see was the opportunity to die.

Bob was smart, he really was. He'd found a way to communicate with another dimension. He tried to explain it to me, how he'd done it, but it was all beyond me. I'm not as smart as Bob was, but then again, I'm still alive. He excitedly told me that in this other dimension there were people, weird looking people, but people just like us. I didn't see that as a very good reason to become excited. If he'd told me there were people who weren't like us there I might have been interested in going along with him when he discovered a method to transport himself to this other dimension. Instead I joined him for a champagne toast and threw the switch that sent him on his way.

I heard the whole thing, Bob had also invented some kind of transdimensional radio, I think that's what he called it. The more I think about it the more I realise that he was smarter than I could even comprehend at the time. I heard him arrive, breathless, but in one piece. I heard him greet the first people he met there, he actually said, "I come in peace". I admit it, I was a little envious at that moment, hearing him say those words, for real, in another dimension. 

Then I heard him being beaten to death.

I threw the switch to bring him back, but too late. Before he died he whispered, bewildered, shocked, "why, why?".

"Because they are people, people just like us, Bob", I replied.

Bob really was a moron.

Parkstreet

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