Predictably, there was nothing in the index for History of Takeaway or Food Hygiene Practices. Why did she have to order two meals, though? It wasn’t surprising she couldn’t finish it; the Red Emperor’s serves were huge.
When I asked, she said, ‘It was our wedding anniversary. Mine and my husband’s. We used to eat the beef in black bean and fried rice at the Red Emperor every Thursday.’
‘That’s nice. Why didn’t he finish the food? Late lunch?’
‘Because—’
‘They haven’t changed the recipe, have they?’
‘No, because he’s dead.’
If he was dead, why on earth did she order for him? I looked in the handbook for Inexplicable Behaviour with a quick detour through Dementia—maybe I was obliged to report it—and while turning through pages, I came to F for Food. That might be useful. A quick scan revealed that most of the information pertained to meals on wheels. ‘Have you thought about a delivery service?’ I said.
But she was still going on about her husband. ‘I just wanted to remember how it used to be,’ she said.
I told her she could have meals delivered for $16.50 per day, $17.50 if she was diabetic. That was for three courses, which seemed reasonable.
‘I thought for a few minutes I could just sit there. Pretend he was in the toilet and might come out any minute. I should have known not to bother.’
‘Sorry, diabetic is the same price; it’s gluten-free that’s extra. Meals can be delivered on Wednesdays and Fridays. No, wait. Depends which ward you live in.’
‘My husband was diabetic.’
I was confused. ‘Isn’t your husband dead?’
Her voice went soft. ‘Three years last Tuesday.’
I turned the volume on the phone up. ‘I’d say just get the normal meal. Diabetic, gluten-free, they never have the same flavour. Or you could try the Golden Duck on Cotham Road. They’re quite good.’
‘But—’
‘Enjoy the rest of your day.’ I hung up. The line went silent and then a very cool thing happened. The computer, which had been humming away in the background, flashed the following on screen:
— LINE 1 —
Call duration: 3 minutes 07 seconds.
Total calls today: 1
Total calls this month: 1
— HELPLINE —
Total calls today: 3
Total calls this month: 47
Average call duration: 19 minutes
They were collecting statistics. The computer was recording quantitative data on each phone call, both cumulative and individual. This was exciting in itself but doubly so given my call time was already well under the average. I had taken three minutes to get rid of my first caller, and Eva, who had answered calls in the previous month, was taking nearly twenty to achieve the same thing. How long had Eva been working on the helpline? I’d been there one day and already I was the best. I sat up taller and swished my chair from side to side. But before I could really soak up the moment, before I could fully revel in its glory, the phone rang once more. I pushed the pick-up button and a box flashed up on the computer screen.
It had a black background with red numbers. It was a timer, ticking off the seconds as they passed. Wow. Not only were they collecting cumulative statistics, but I could see how I was faring in real time. This was immediate feedback on performance and
It
Was
Wonderful.
If they’d had this at Wallace they’d never have got rid of me. It was hard data, objective proof, that I was not just good enough but very good. I felt a rush of elation. ‘Senior Citizens Helpline,’ I said.
‘Nancy’ was on the other end. ‘I broke my hip in January,’ she said, and embarked on a longwinded tale of woe. I tuned out, reduced the size of the on-screen timer and opened a spreadsheet. I plugged in the average call time and the number of calls waiting and tried to establish how many calls I would have to answer and how quick they’d have to be if I wanted to get the average down under fifteen minutes.
‘—and I think someone needs to come out and clean my gutters. It hardly even rained on Sunday and they started overflowing.’
According to my calculations the next 27 calls needed to be under nine minutes. The counter was at 6:19. ‘Clean the gutters?’ I said. ‘Sounds expensive. Listen, Nancy, is it? Nancy, if I were you, I’d save myself a good bit of money by doing it myself.’
‘I called last week and the woman said it was a free service.’
‘Do you have a ladder? Get a ladder and a broom. Lean the ladder against the wall and angle the broom into the gutter. If you get the angle right you should be able to dig the leaves out. Just jiggle a little and they’ll come off the side. You could have the whole lot done in less than an hour.’
‘It’s just my hip is—’
‘Up to you, Nance. If you want to spend a couple of hundred dollars on gutters, that’s fine but it if was my money—’ I suppose I could have checked the handbook to see if there was anything in her claim for a free service but this seemed unnecessarily bureaucratic. No matter how you looked at it, it was more cost-effective to encourage people to do things themselves. It was empowering too. Nancy, though she was difficult to convince (8 minutes, 42 seconds), in the end agreed.
By the time I hung up, I felt more like my old self than I had in months. This might be my Waterloo. Of all the places and all the jobs. By the time Eva got back our average call time was 17:57 and the queue was empty.
‘Seventeen minutes,’ I said, pointing. ‘Call time’s down to seventeen minutes.’
‘Not for long,’ she said and eased herself down.
The phones rang through lunch and into the afternoon. I was pleased for both statistical and avoidance reasons, but of course there was a lull eventually. First thing Eva said was, ‘What did the mayor want?’
‘Nothing. She just introduced herself. I guess she does that with all the new people.’
‘No.’ Eva was very firm. ‘She doesn’t.’
‘Doesn’t she?’
Eva took a long, slow sip of Slurpee. She seemed to be scanning my face, sensing deception. I maintained a fixed expression.
‘Where did you work before here?’ Her tone was more interrogatory than conversational.
‘Wallace Insurance.’
‘Doing?’
‘Data analysis.’
‘Data analysis? Why you working here?’
I shrugged. She put the Slurpee down, setting it between us like a recording device.
‘How’d you get the job?’
‘I applied.’
‘Did you know someone?’
‘Like who?’
The phones were quiet but I put my headset on anyway. Then when her lips moved, I mouthed, ‘I can’t hear you.’ She persisted for a while but eventually capitulated and picked up the Slurpee again. Then she sat there for ages, staring at her screen and chewing on the straw.
5
On the way home I stopped at the food court near the cinema. The Indian place was selling containers of leftover rogan josh for four dollars each and I bought three: one for dinner tonight, one for dinner tomorrow, one for dinner on Wednesday.
In the elevator up to my apartment I ran into Jin-Jin from number 22. She’s in her twenties but dresses like a four-year-old. Tonight she had on tight pink pants, a pastel blue jumper and a Hello Kitty backpack. It took forever to get to level four. The smell of spices and lamb permeated the small, rectangular space.
‘Takeaway?’ she said.
I was not responsive. The less you said to Jin-Jin the better.
She pointed at the bag. ‘Lots of food for one lady, ha.’
Once Jin-Jin and I ran into each other in the car park downstairs and she saw me throw some rubbish into number 21’s bin. There was space in mine but the bags were full of fish bones and I didn’t want to stink it out. I said, ‘They gave me permission,’ and she giggled.
It was a sceptical giggle, a giggle that said, I got you
now, lady from number 23. Ever since, she’d tried to strike up a conversation every time I ran into her. It was like being held hostage. We’d see each other in the corridor and it was How was your day, Germaine? or Isn’t the weather nice? I lived in fear she’d knock on the door and I’d have to put aside my sudoku and make her a cup of tea. We might spend a whole hour, sitting there, talking and wasting time. It was not going to be a profitable enterprise: Jin-Jin was a student at the university and she wouldn’t have known anything I hadn’t already read about.
‘It’s for me and a friend, actually,’ I said as the lift doors opened and Jin-Jin followed me into the hall.
‘You have a friend?’ She grinned and squeezed my arm. ‘That makes me very happy.’
I wheeled my briefcase down the hall. Inside, I put one serve of curry in the microwave and the others in the fridge. I hung up my work clothes, put on a pair of tracksuit pants and sat on the couch to eat and read the mayor’s files.
They were very comprehensive, a complete history of everything that had ever happened in relation to the Deepdene Senior Citizens Centre and associated car park. There were plans for the original building, including estimates of construction costs, council audits, documents detailing electricity usage and the cost of cleaning contracts and information pertaining to current booking fees. There was even a recent land valuation.
While it was a council building, there was a committee that oversaw its day-to-day operations. They were the ones who organised the knitting group and the book club, the buses for group outings and the roast lunch on Sundays.
The name Celia Brown appeared multiple times. She was the long-serving president of the committee (fifteen years) and, in recent times, a prolific correspondent.
She’d sent letters complaining about everything: the golf club, the council, the building. There were highly detailed lists of things that needed fixing—the walls are falling down and the roof is leaking—and requests for more money and more space. I had a good image of her in my head: actually it was more or less a picture of Sharon. The words ‘serial pest’ came to mind.
I finished eating, put the empty container on the coffee table and opened the last file. Inside was a black and white photograph. Three older women standing side by side. The wind was blowing and they were laughing, their eyes squinted and their hair arced in strange shapes around their heads. They looked wild and crazy and unpredictable.
I lay back on the couch. Some people have no respect for rules and no sense of order. It was lucky for the mayor, for the council, for my career in general, that I had both these things in excess. I was just the one to put things right.
±
When I got to work, Eva was unexpectedly chipper. ‘Good morning,’ she sang out. ‘Guess what day it is?’
I gave her a wry glance. ‘Tuesday?’ It sounded like a trick question.
‘It’s not Tuesday,’ she said. ‘It’s Biscuit Tuesday.’
I didn’t ask. If she wanted to tell me, fine. If not, fine. I had things to do. I turned the computer on.
Meanwhile, Eva rolled back on her chair and bent down to reach under her desk. When she reappeared she was holding three tall glass jars.
‘On Tuesdays and Thursdays they put biscuits out in the tearoom upstairs. They’re complimentary—free, I mean. They’re not going to give you a standing ovation or anything.’ She waggled a jar at me. ‘We take turns to fill these with biscuits and guess what? It’s your turn. I did it last time.’
I could have said I wasn’t here last time. I could have said I didn’t know where the tearoom was. I could have said a million things but none of them occurred to me. All I was thinking was Free biscuits. Francine didn’t mention that in the interview.
‘Kitchen’s upstairs,’ said Eva. ‘You’ll find it.’
The tearoom had rows of plastic tables with plastic chairs and vending machines with fake wooden panels around the glass. There was a kitchenette in the corner and on the bench an urn and three big barrels, all in a row. They were labelled:
CREAM FILLED
RICE CRACKERS
SWEET
I pulled the lid off one and began to fill the jars, placing the biscuits on their side to maximise capacity. I finished the first one and the second and was part-way through the third when a portly man in a hi-vis vest appeared. He had short black hair and was holding a clipboard under one arm.
‘Hi.’ He clicked his heels together. ‘I’m Ralph, Ralph Garner. Risk Management and Health and Safety Coordinator.’
‘Germaine Johnson. Just started, Senior Citizens Helpline.’
He nodded, and I picked up the lid for the jar. ‘Well, Germaine,’ said Ralph. ‘You being new and all you probably don’t know about the biscuits.’
‘Oh no, Eva filled me in. Complimentary biscuits. Free, that is—no standing ovations. Ha-ha.’
‘Yes.’ There was a long pause. Ralph looked at the jars, lined up in a row. ‘Just so you know, we budget two biscuits per person per day.’
At this point, I began to blush.
‘Unless you have the rice crackers,’ he continued. ‘Then you can have eight.’
Another guy and a lady came in to make tea and coffee. They seemed to be moving very slowly: more pricked ears than parched mouths, you might say.
‘It’s so there’s enough for everybody, otherwise people miss out.’
More people came in. Another man with a mug, a bearded man, a thin woman who didn’t look like she could possibly even eat biscuits. All of them, eavesdropping and passing silent judgment.
I was still blushing. My hands got sweaty and slippery clouds started to appear on the glass of the jar.
This was not how I’d intended to meet my colleagues. I’d envisaged a get-to-know-you morning tea in which I told them interesting stories about data analysis and the insurance industry and they listened and asked questions at the end. It was misrepresentative to have them see me this way, because if anyone’s a stickler for the rules, it’s me. I return library books on time. I stop at give way signs even when it’s obvious no one else is coming.
The smell of biscuits was sickly and overwhelming.
‘I didn’t know,’ I said.
‘I’m new,’ I said.
‘These are Eva’s jars,’ I said, projecting my voice, for the people up the back.
‘It’s an easy mistake to make.’ Ralph looked sceptical about the ease of the mistake. I’d have been sceptical too if it had been someone else standing there instead of me.
‘If you wouldn’t mind?’ He tilted his head from the jar to the barrels. He wanted me to put the biscuits back. The assembled throngs didn’t formally divulge their opinions, but they seemed to agree.
I wrenched the lid off the jar and shovelled them back into the barrel with both hands.
‘Stop,’ said Ralph but I didn’t listen. I kept on shovelling. The crumbs that didn’t stick to my palms sprayed onto the bench. It would have been quicker to tip the jar upside down but I’d packed them in so efficiently they were stuck together.
‘Stop,’ said Ralph. ‘Use the tongs.’
Tongs? I stopped shovelling. As I looked across to the barrels, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. There were three pairs of tongs, one attached with string to each barrel. The room went quiet.
Ralph asked if I’d used the tongs to get the biscuits out.
I did not answer this question.
‘Probably best you hang on to them,’ he said and the bearded man tittered audibly into his mug. ‘We don’t want a bacterial outbreak.’
I avoided eye contact, hugged the jars to my chest and backed out of the room. When I was halfway down the corridor Ralph yelled, ‘You should be using a trolley. It’s bad for your back.’
Eva took no responsibility when I told her. ‘Can’t spell everything out,’ she said. ‘Anyway, you did good. Often the cream-filled run out by the afternoon.’
6
The phones didn’t stop for the rest of the day and
it wasn’t until the following afternoon that I was able to progress my special project. I waited until Eva went to the bathroom and then slipped away.
Driving down High Street past the Fitzsimmons Golf Club and into the long drive that led to the senior citizens centre, the contrast was stark. On one side of a tall cyclone-wire fence were rolling green hills and crisp sand bars and on the other was a square of patchy asphalt, a picnic table with no chairs and a weatherboard building with a slumped roof.
Inside was just as bad. In the foyer were two armchairs with stuffing bursting through the fabric, a bookcase filled with books (nothing contemporary) and on the far wall, a photo of the Queen looking, frankly, disappointed. It reminded me of the co-op Sharon and I used to get our food at. Smelled the same too, like old eggs overlaid with lentils and dust.
There was a door marked Office and on the bench beside it, a bell. I dinged it.
Ding.
No response.
Ding.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
The door opened halfway and two stern bespectacled eyes peered out. They were attached to a woman in a green T-shirt and a pair of elasticised black pants.
‘What,’ she said. It wasn’t a question.
I flashed my ID and said I was from the council.
‘Are you here to fix the roof? It’s about time someone came out about that roof.’
I said I was there to see Celia Brown.
She didn’t exactly open the door; it was more like she let it go and it didn’t swing itself shut.
Inside, four chairs were arranged around a coffee table. She shifted some junk off one and dumped it on the desk behind. Then she sat down; I sat opposite. She didn’t say anything.
‘So that’s you, is it?’ I said.
‘That’s who?’
‘You’re Celia Brown.’ It was a lot of effort, trying to maintain my professional demeanour.
‘If you say so.’
I’d allocated eight minutes for small talk but elected not to utilise all of them. Instead, I got my notebook out.
‘I’m doing an investigation for Mayor Verity Bainbridge. Not sure if you’re aware but there was an incident with some parked cars recently. We had a complaint from the golf club next door.’
The Helpline Page 3