Sydney's Song (9 page)

“Not mine. He was only on child-minding duty ‘cause my parents weren't available.”

“Blessed,” she smirked. “Pass him to me anytime.”

Pete's unreadable eyes bored into mine from across the desk.

I liked his constant, unobtrusive presence. I liked his very pleasant voice. I liked his tone of speaking. But why did he prefer a silent method of communication? A look. An enquiring look. Why did he shroud himself with an aura of mystery?

I had to admit I had been thinking of Pete rather a lot lately.

“They took away my driving license!” sobbed my first caller, an elderly St. Ives man. Fury and helplessness coloured his voice. “Please send me the bus timetable.”

It was December. Parents asked for next year's school transport. I gave a mum in North Strathfield a detailed travel plan to James Ruse High School.

“No! My friend suggests a different way!”

I showed her that her friend's suggested route took considerably longer.

“Are you sure?”

Gosh, I always wanted to murder a customer who asked whether I was sure. This one ranted on and on.

“Your choice, Ma'am. Please feel free to give your friend a call. Consult her. Sounds like she's better able to advise what to catch. Thanks for your call!” And I pressed RELEASE.

“Good one Sydney,” Pete gave me a thumbs-up, his eyes now laughing.

“Thanks,” I smiled back. “Do you always listen to my calls?”

“I like listening to your voice,” he replied, looking into my eyes. 
Wow
. My heart beat faster. My intuition said Pete was interested in me. I could see it in his eyes. But I wasn't brave enough to confess that I liked his voice too. It floated across the workstation in a soothing tone.

In his quiet confidence Pete was different from the other guys. The others, Aussies or Brits, did their best to dance attendance and be charming. They hoped to win female hearts through their posturing, clothing, facial jewellery and hair styles. Sometimes I wondered how long it took Mike to gel his hair. Or how much it had hurt Kevin to have his tongue pierced in order to install the tiny ball he called a toy.

Pete was the antithesis of all that. He was uniquely unselfconscious and cool. So yeah, although I was determined to never fall in love, he had been troubling my dreams quite a lot lately.

The calls rolled in.

Melburnians, Queenslanders and overseas visitors were coming in for the holiday season. 1300500 could be accessed from interstate. Or from overseas by dialling our country code first. I had direct calls from England and Canada. At times I sounded like a Sydney tourism advisor because callers required it of me.

“From Central take bus 372 to Coogee. Stunning view along the cliff-walk up to Bronte, Tamarama, and Bondi. You can swim on these famous beaches, yes. Then take bus 380 to Watson's Bay. Great seafood. A fabulous ferry ride to Circular Quay. Interesting buskers, fascinating Opera House, Botanical Gardens. Take a ferry to Darling Harbour. Casino. Aquarium. All on a day pass. Call us for timetables, we're here to help.”

A guy from Newcastle was very impressed by me.

“Great service. You're the nicest person in your office I've ever talked to, Sydney. May I have your phone number?”

Whaat? He was flirting with me? So I said, “One-three-hundred five-hundred.”

He burst out laughing.

I wondered if these callers imagined how we looked. Some of us were blond. Some bottle blond. And we all resembled Miss World contestants, you know. Just… some had to join our in-office Biggest Loser challenge.

When a nice old lady called, I imagined my smiling Nanna Véronique. Or my cousin Kirsten, a hairdresser on a cruise ship, each time a grumpy girl called. Whenever a pleasant young man called, my mind envisioned Christopher Reeves, strapped in his wheelchair, looking up at me with the brightest, most-peaceful, clear eyes. Eyes reflecting his tranquil soul despite his terminal illness. That was how I met him once. At the Queen Victoria Building in the City. He was my model for polite callers.

And no, you don't want to know how I imagined a rude caller.

This particular morning I still received the you-wouldn't-believe-it calls.

“I lost my dress on the back seat of the bus Saturday evening,” a girl announced. “It was the L90.” Right. I gave her the number of Mona Vale Depot's Lost Property. I wouldn't even ask how she lost it!

“What the (
bleep
) do you think you're doing???” screamed a woman from Perth.” (
Bleep
) trackwork so close to Christmas?! Can't you (
bleep
) pick a better time? I'll be arriving in Sydney with luggage, a toddler, and a baby in a twin pram! How will I get on and off your (
bleep
) replacement bus to Scarborough? And I'm a single mother! Who'd (
bleep
) help me?”

In lashing tones she raged against CityRail, swearing her head off. We weren't paid to take abuse. If she had not mentioned the babies, I would have terminated the call immediately. Her kids—like myself—had not asked to be born, right? They could not choose their parents either. It was these helpless children I was determined to help. I gave her the station's phone number for assistance in moving her luggage and kids.

Now what exactly was the privilege of a single mother? Did it entitle her to unrestricted tolerance? Was her offensive language justified? Could we take a poll on this? Or, was she a single mother in the first place because she was so vicious her man couldn't stand her?

Eating alone had to be one of the saddest and loneliest activities on the planet. Eating alone forced on you the excruciating fact that you had nobody to love and nobody was there for you. Simply unbearable. At home, I never ate except a bit of fruit on my days off.

I forced myself to eat while I had company, whoever was scheduled to have the same lunch break. Yesterday it was Bristol's backpacker Mark, who looked so English like a young Paul McCartney. Before that it was new manager Ratko, a Czech.1300500 was a revolving door. My manager Justin would soon disappear to a lucrative job in Kings Cross, where the lifestyle was also convenient for his sexual preference.

Today I lunched out with former-geophysicist-turned-mum Nina.In the lift we encountered our then Immigration Minister, whose office was one floor down, with his hulking bodyguards. He nodded quietly and we nodded quietly back.

“I don't think he likes migrants,” I told Nina.

“On the contrary. He's friendly with our community because we're migrants-through-the-front-door. He occasionally attends our events.”

Hornsby's Mall makeover was a complete mess, with only takeaway food. We ordered grilled fish and sat in the Florence Street promenade.

“Aren't you scared racist people will treat you badly?” I asked Nina.

“No. Australians are
very
friendly. I've heard of some racist ones. Perhaps I've unknowingly encountered some, but when you behave like a model citizen they wouldn't have any reason to express their leaning, would they now?”

She explained migrants-through-the-front-door meant the UN gave them priority due to the persecution against their religious community. In their homelands others attacked and killed them and theirs, while authorities watched. As they were an anti-violence community with the principle
“Love for all. Hatred for none”,
they peacefully left.

“This is home now. It's no hardship to show gratitude to Australia.”

“I'm proud Australia assists the oppressed,” I offered. “But some people look down on people they don't know, thinking the women are backward and oppressed by their men. They wouldn't know you're very smart.”

“It's no big deal. No one will think badly of me, except the low people. And no one will honour me, except the honourable.”

She further told me there were over 1100 ethnic-groups and over 700
active
languages in Indonesia, which made me sad thinking of our vastly diminished Aboriginal languages.

Nina belonged to the Minang ethnic-group of West Sumatra, a strongly matriarchal people. For over a thousand years women had been the heads of families. Only daughters can inherit.

“How cool! I've never heard of that before. Western suffragettes were only a hundred years ago. But who is persecuting the Minang people?”

“No, I didn't explain it well. Minang is my ethnic group. But the one being persecuted is my religious group, Ahmadiyya. In Muslim countries we're persecuted by other Muslims, the majority, who refuse to accept us as Muslims.”

“Why?”

“Many issues. We don't believe in any form of violence.”

In her sect women received equal treatment to men, with most of the women highly educated. She had a cousin who was an actual rocket scientist in the literal sense of the word. No kidding.

Pete flashed his light when I floor-walked after lunch.

“This guy's yelling his lung out ‘cause his 178 is shockingly late,” he told me. “What's happening?”

I checked with Ratko. He walked to Pete while calling Sydney Buses on the cordless phone.

“No reported delay,” Ratko reported.

“Whaat?”

“Sydney, that's what we're told. We're under the obligation to tell customers exactly what we're told.”

“But Radio Room fired that out right away! They didn't check first!”

Ratko lifted his arms, giving up.

In helplessness I turned to Pete, who was watching me closely. We looked into each other's eyes—feeling bad, guilty, very sorry for the caller. There was a shared understanding there…

Tuesday was my day off. I had asked our cleaner Vivian to come only every fortnight. Her pay came automatically from Mum's bank-account—Mum's way of showing me she cared.

“Rent out some rooms to students,” Vivian suggested. “Extra money.”

“No. The house isn't mine.” Mum earned a lot as the finance director of a multinational trading company, while Dad earned obscene pay with an American oil company in Indonesia. But the house still belonged to them.

“You Aussies are particular,” she chided. “We Asians never set boundaries. We help kids all through their education, and they never pack elderly parents off to nursing homes, isolated and lonely.”

“Can't choose our parents,” I shrugged.

Today I finally read my emails. Oh dear, there were hundreds unread, excluding spam. Alex wrote about being overseas for the first time. Mum said she and lover boy were going to Europe for a month. Dad invited me diving in North Sulawesi/Celebes. As a third wheel? Learnt my lesson, thank you. Vying for a parent's love was the outside of enough.

Panic assailed me. I absolutely refused to be alone during the holiday season. Moping. A single soul in an empty house.

My paternal Grandad Geoff had moved to beautiful Coolangatta after losing Granny to cancer. Retired, he spent his time fishing and gardening. He always found something to fix in his tiny house, too. The last time we were up north, the shape of tiles in his extra bathroom annoyed him so much that they had to be replaced.

He had called when my parents just split. Today, his answering machine said ‘Gone fishing'.

My maternal grandparents now lived in Canada, Vancouver-born Nanna dragging Dorrigo-born Grandpa Stuart over there. We had been visiting them every April school holidays, but my fond memories were of Dorrigo and horse riding on their old farm.

I loved Dorrigo, a tranquil tiny town with rolling green hills and waterfalls on the North Coast of NSW. Thinking of it now, I felt another loss.

My cousins too had left Sydney. Stephen, a commercial pilot, followed his Pommy fiancée to work in London. Kirsten, a hairdresser on a luxury-cruise ship, was having the time of her life on the ocean with endless blue water and blue sky. With her fixation on everything blue she had even worn a blue wedding dress. Currently she was
so
in love with hubby, gorgeous Third Engineer of her ship.

Their mum was Dad's much older sister, Aunt Olivia. She was a very tall woman with a booming voice, and was a professor of nursing in a university in Cairns. When we stopped by before holidaying at the Great Barrier Reef, she told Mum about peeling a victim of a failed suicide from a burnt mattress. There and then I decided I would never become a doctor or a nurse. No nerve for that.

There were other relatives but none in Sydney.

Brenna had gone to Victoria. Lucy was touring Australia with her ballet group. I wrote to several other friends and to my disappointment received prompt replies that they all had plans of their own for the holiday season.

I felt very distressed.

I dreaded being alone and feeling suicidal. I so needed to be near people that I ended up calling my office to tell them I would be available for work from Christmas to New Year's Day. Yes, they appreciated it as many agents wanted this period off.

It was mid-December.

Pete's eyes lit up—with gladness?—when I arrived at work very early. I couldn't help feeling elated. Someone breathtakingly gorgeous was happy to see me. So yeah, I smiled my rare, genuine smile at him.

“Morning Sydney.” Matt, who was chatting with him, greeted me.“Why so early? You usually show up very close to your start.”

“I was awake. My dog wasn't keen to go jogging, somehow. I figured I might as well catch the earlier train.” I did not tell them that my depression had jerked me up with pain at 4am. Since this occurrence had become less frequent, I hoped to be free of it soon.“You guys are early too.”

“I'm the only manager who lives nearby,” Matt explained. “They often schedule me to open the shop at 6am.”

Pete did not say why he was early.

I was in the kitchen about to make tea when he declared from behind me, “When I see you so skinny I feel like giving you loads of chocolates.”

Surprised, I whirled around.

“Tea is good, but you sorta look like you could use more nutrients.Here. Wanna try some chocolate?” He held out his hand for my cup.Again, a hint of clean citrusy scent wafted from him. Like a robot I handed him my cup. “Watch, so you know I don't drug your drink.”His smiling eyes twinkled with a teasing glint.