I’m a Listener.
I'm one of those people who always seems to turn up, when you think you want to be on your own.
I’m that person who sits beside you on the bus and says hullo and you have to say hullo back but all you want to do is stare out the window. Or I'm the old fella in the pub who comes in and sits one stool down from you at the bar when you’re looking for nothing more than a quiet drink, and you think hell, I bet this bastard is gunna bore me to death about his gastric reflux or his footy team or his cousin’s wedding he went to in Wagga Wagga last week.
You give a reluctant nod and a grunt.
But if you thought back on it you'd realise, after that you did most of the talking.
And I remember everything you’ve ever told me.
It’s my gift.
Which is just as well as I don’t have much else to offer, but without it all of your snapshots of passing humanity would just keep rattling around in there and finish up in the coffin with you at day’s end and the world would be the poorer for it.
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One morning on the new electric train. On the way into town. Everything humming, smelling sort of new blue, like true engineering.
All I said was “Pretty flash eh?”
You would’ve been in your late seventies, had that slightly uncared-for look of being on your own, widowed in the last few years and still struggling to find a reason to get out of bed each morning.
“Yeah ... flash orright”, then you hesitated, like deciding whether to clam up or turn it into a conversation. “They got no soul though...”, and you look surprised, at yourself, surprised because you found a bit of something you didn’t know you still had. So I waited. Till you decided.
“I used to work on real trains – when I was young – I mean, train trains – down the Railways Workshops. Last of the steam.”
“Steam?”
“Yeah – real trains. Did my apprenticeship.”
“Different time.”
“Yeah, whole different age. All gone now.”
“Yes – bit sad.”
“I was too young and too stupid to realise what a privilege it was, to be working on the last of the old-timers. Couple a years later they were all scrapped. Even then the diesel-electrics had taken over half of the Erecting Shop.”
You were already staring ahead, seeing it again, being there. Face hard to read.
“But geez steam was filthy. And the whole place was bloody noisy too - overhead cranes, rollin’ stock, forge hammers goin’, grinders. Noisy. And a big workforce, all Union men, lot of old blokes amongst ‘em been there all their lives, never knew anything else. But by then they were only puttin’ patches on the last of the steam locos – mostly RX Shunters, a 520 Streamliner or two, the 620 Mountain Class – they were beautiful bits a machinery. Real engines. But, they were really only waitin’ for the big new diesel-electrics to finally make them obsolete. Machines and men...”
You nearly stopped there. But you were seeing those old men. Working.
“They were staid old pluggers, never be able to adapt, all they knew was the old ways. And the place was full of their unwritten rules. Typical Union stuff. Protocols. Nods and winks. Couldn’t wait to bugger off when me five years was up, frightened if I stayed I’d a finished up like them.”
I waited. Waited for you to say – “I remember...”
“Yep – some weird old blokes too...”
The silent part then, the space where you decide. One way or the other. Go on or turn away.
“I remember - two guys - big guy and a little guy, been working together forever – bits of weirdos - scratched each others’ crotches when they thought no-one was lookin’. Stuff like that. Geez they were gross. All the apprentices hated bein’ assigned to ‘em, but it was a rotation. Three months at a time. They did the main bogie axle bearings - big ones, whitemetal, had to be hand scraped. Shitty job, boring, tedious.”
You half smiled. Hard to say from what. People smile in the oddest places.
“The big guy had this thing - did it to all the young blokes - if y’ turned y’ back on ‘im, the old prick! He always wore bib’n’brace overalls but no jocks, and he’d stick his hand down the back of them and scratch his arse, I mean, really dig it round, up to the first knuckle, then he’d grab you round the chest and hold his finger under y’ nose. Phwaaaw it was gross. Old hands all thought it was funny but it was just gross. Foreman always turned a blind eye. Like with all the unwritten rules. It was how it worked.”
Another space, shorter this time. But you were back there.
“Another guy, when I was in the Pump Shop, about once a month he’d say to one of his mates – “I gave the ferret a run last night” – and they’d say – “Geez, good one Herb” – and he’d smile a bit like he was a hero – “Yep, probably only a piss-horn but y’ don’t wanna waste ‘em do ya?” – “Nah, never. Didja make the missus smile?” – “Yeah, keep her goin’ for a while” – just about word for word. I was only seventeen but...”
Hard to read what your “but” said, something deeply critical, like you were remembering the simple morals you had, back when you were still green and untested.
“Yeah, all or ‘em a bit strange. Well, most of them...”, and you smiled, made a noise through your nose, not quite cynical, not quite amused. “Nah, they was all a bit strange! But my favourite was Bert Wells.
“Bert was one of the tradesmen. He was about sixty, shock of grey hair, trembly fingers, always on the go, eyes that went straight through ya, looked a bit intense y’know? - strange old coot. But he was the best three month stint of the whole sorry lot for my money. I even put in for an extra one the next year.”
And there, that smile again, your lips pursed like wisdom was ticking over in there.
“Bert did the cylinder rebores - big mothers they were, fifteen, twenty inch diameter, one each side of the loco - did them in place with a portable boring bar, just took the head off and the back-plate and bolted her through, skimmed out about twenty thou to get the insides round again, did a real fine cut to bring up a clean finish, then fitted a new piston and rings. Nothing complicated but easy to do it wrong.
“Bert’d show you how to do one, at the start, then he’d watch you do two or three and pick the hell outa you till he reckoned you were doing it his way, then he’d skive off after that, leave you to it. But God help you if you didn’t get it exact, he‘d go mental for ten minutes and then wouldn’t speak to you for the rest of the day, just tell ya t’ piss off yr effen useless. But next morning be good as new. Like a different bloke. Actually I always wondered if the old bastard was a bit – y’know - schitzo.”
Then you made a circular motion, across your neck.
“He always wore a four, five foot length of cheesecloth, did it sort of two-looped around his neck – like a scarf - and flaired off over one shoulder like he was always ready to take to the air in a bloody Spitfire. It was his trademark, irritated the hell outa the foreman, he kept tellin’ him he’d get it caught in the boring bar one day, and tear his lunatic bloody head off. But Bert’d just say - “Hah!” – like some sort of - y’know - cavalier scorn! – and he’d flick the end back and say - “Lunatic?! Who’s the lunatic round here then? I’M sane! I’VE got the certificate to prove it! Can YOU say that?” – and hard to tell if he was serious or not, ‘cause he was a bugger for tellin’ some wild stories. But dead straight-faced. Like he was always darin’ you to scoff.
“He mostly trotted them out when he had at least three of us cocky young blokes standin’ around. When we shoulda been workin’. Skivin’-off was an art form in the joint. You’d get a chit to pick up some tool from the Stores and it was expected you’d take an hour to get it. Or if it was really slack your tradesman would put a bundle of drawings under your arm and tell you to go for a walk but look busy or be invisible. Give the Supervisor respect. All part of how it was done.
“Anyway, the game was to congregate around Bert, and one’d say – “Hey Bert, tell Micko about blah blah blah” - an’ he’d be off.
“One of his favourites was how he was an expert on bloody tomatoes! And the guys’d keep really serious faces on and say – “Whoo, tomatoes eh Bert?” – and he’d rattle off strings of botanical names, say where each variety originated, diseases they were known to cure in some ancient South American tribe, and how he’d even given lectures on tomatoes in Oxford. The university. And how he’d been awarded some sort of gold medal from Kew Gardens.
“Then there was the one about bein’ a champion downhill skier, and how in one race on an Italian mountain he set a new world record, always said he’d done the six mile course in a touch under four point five minutes. At which point one time the brains trust of the group just had to say – “Geezuz Bert, so you was averaging – what - 80 mph?” – and he just nodded and said – “Yep, wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Then there was Monte Carlo - the racetrack - said he’d come third one year, in a car he’d built himself. Oh, and once he flew a Tiger Moth under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And then there was the time he did some work for the FBI – that one was always hard to keep a straight face over I can tellya! Us young blokes thought he was absolutely full of it. But the game was to make out we were taking him dead serious, see what’d come out next, then made jokes about the poor old sod later, behind his back.”
You were nodding and smiling by then, but good smiling, and I thought you were done, a piece of your youth satisfyingly revisited. But you finally looked at me, like I was someone you knew well, could be trusted.
“I went round to Bert’s place y’know, about a year after I’d moved on, when I heard he’d had his second heart attack and retired, heard he was struggling, thought a visit might cheer him up. Geez, the old bugger was stuffed. On his own. Shufflin’ about. Skin and bone. Only had about six weeks to go as it turned out.
“Anyway, we chatted for a while, an’ he made some tea and we sat in his lounge. And there on the mantel was Bert’s other lives.”
I loved how you paused then, you were in the zone and you were keen to tweak the effect. It was a healthy sign.
“There was a photo of him with one of those mortar-board hats on and a black robe, and two other guys just like it handing him something, in some sort of classic hall thing, carved ceilings, big audience. Another of Bert and two other guys in old-fashioned motor racing kit - leather helmets, dirty faces - with laurel wreath things around their shoulders and a rack of ancient open-wheeler Mercedes and Bugattis in the background. Sure enough, another with Bert posing on skis, goggles and gloves hanging loose, looking up into the Alps, thick snow, a line of skiers in the distance. Then Bert in the cockpit of a Tiger Moth, engine tickin’ over, familiar-lookin’ scarf fluttering in the prop-wash! Beside it a shot of a biplane with the same identity markings, going under the bloody Coathanger!
“And he watched me y’know? – over his cuppa tea, lookin’ at me lookin’ at them, lookin’ at him, the him that was. And right in the middle of all those photos was that bloody certificate to his sanity! Framed and mounted like he was proud of it. Some certified release thing, from the mental hospital, signed by three doctors! But right by that, a snap of him and J Edgar Hoover! I could not believe it!
“So, there was me, standin’ flat-footed in front. Still too bloody young and still too bloody dumb to – to – I dunno – say the right thing. Not even sure now what that would’ve been. But maybe me being totally struck dumb was the right thing.”
You nodded some more then. Like you were agreeing with yourself.
“Great old fella. And funny old world, eh?”
But you were finished.
© T. R. Edmonds 2016
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