It was strange but at this her face seemed to brighten. Her eyes softened and the beginning of a dimple appeared in one cheek. ‘An incident?’ she said. ‘Fascinating. What happened?’
‘You haven’t heard? About the chains?’
‘Chains?’ she said, and the dimple got bigger.
I gave a succinct explanation: the golf club had an event, their car park got full and attendees had to park ‘elsewhere’.
She pounced on that word, ‘elsewhere’, like a cat toying with a ball of wool. ‘Elsewhere?’
‘Here, specifically. And when people came back to get their cars at the end of the evening, there were chains on their wheels. Big chains…metal ones. They couldn’t get them off. They had to catch taxis home, some at considerable expense.’ ‘They had to catch taxis? Horrifying. And Don—Don Thomas, was it?—he called the council, did he? I expect you’re all on red alert. Working in shifts, are you?’
It felt like a fly was buzzing around, annoying me. Celia didn’t seem to comprehend the gravity of the situation. ‘The mayor is very upset.’
‘Oh, she is, is she? Oh, dear. Was she upset that people from the golf club were parking their cars here? Because the car park is part of the senior citizens centre? Was that what upset her?’
I could feel red blotches start to appear on my chest and neck. I did what Dr Smithfield had told me to do: Breathe in-two-three-four-five-six, out-two-three-four-five-six. ‘No. She was upset about the chains.’
‘Oh, the chains.’
‘Also: it’s the council’s car park. It doesn’t belong to the senior citizens centre. Anyone can park there.’
‘Is that so?’ She folded her arms across her chest.
‘That is so.’ I folded mine too.
In the ensuing silence we heard the front door open. Hurried footsteps came down the hall and then a woman in a yellow cardigan appeared. She had short grey hair and was in a state of excited agitation.
‘Celia,’ she said—rudely, because she was interrupting an important meeting-cum-investigation. ‘She won. Betsy won.’
At this, Celia seemed to turn into a different person. One who was almost pleasant. ‘She did? All five categories?’
‘Four, the fifth is still going. They’ll announce later today.’
‘Who won?’ I said. ‘What did they win?’ I didn’t care what it was they were talking about, I only asked to make them aware that I had not suddenly become invisible.
Celia’s quasi-cordial aspect vanished. ‘No one won anything.’ Her voice was very cold, like icicles were hanging from it. Then, to stop the interrupter from explaining, she gestured at me. ‘Gladys,’ she said, ‘this woman is from the council.’
Gladys took a step in a backwards direction. She claimed it was nice to meet me but did not sound convincing.
Celia’s normal obnoxious self had reasserted itself. ‘Gladys is the club’s vice-president,’ she said. ‘Her main area of responsibility is—or rather, is supposed to be—communicating with the subcommittees. Isn’t that right, Gladys?’ This had the feel of a leading question. Leading questions are ones that have known answers but take you to an unexpected destination. The sort of question I should have been asking all this time.
In any case, Gladys was not excited anymore. ‘Yes,’ she said, slowly.
‘Yes,’ repeated Celia, at a similar pace. ‘Which means you should have been the one to communicate with the Christian choir that they cannot eat biscuits in the John Stanley room. Gladys, there were crumbs again. Crumbs.’
‘They are allowed to—’
‘Call them and tell them that they’re not to eat biscuits for supper if they can’t clean up after themselves. I mean it. If they do it again I’m going to kick them out. And then I’ll burn their hymnbooks.’
‘Celia,’ said Gladys. She gave me an apologetic look.
‘And some idiot’s taken all the chairs from the bingo room. They better not be using them for mahjong. Bingo’s tomorrow and no one’s going to be able to sit anywhere. I want them back in there by three o’clock this afternoon. On the dot, Gladys. Three o’clock.’
Gladys shook her head at Celia and turned to me. She asked (nervously?) if I was there for something in particular.
I most certainly was, I told her, and was quite prepared to commence a cross-examination when Celia interrupted once more. ‘No,’ she announced. ‘We’re done. You and I are finished here.’
Finished? We hadn’t discussed anything. I said, ‘There was an incident and we needed to determine its root cause.’ But Celia would not have it.
‘What’s there to discuss? I don’t know anything. And neither does Gladys.’
‘But Gladys doesn’t know what we’re talking about.’
‘Nothing. She knows nothing. Do you, Gladys?’
Gladys said no, but this was not credible. One cannot be sure they know nothing when the subject matter has not been disclosed.
Celia got out of her chair and went and stood beside Gladys at the door. They were like two guards, one head guard and one of lesser ranking, escorting me from the building. If it wasn’t a new job, if I hadn’t been on probation, I would have stayed until they confessed.
Celia smiled as I squeezed past. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘Send our love to Mayor Bainbridge.’
7
I went to the office early in the morning to type the notes from my meeting with Celia Brown. I included a comprehensive overview of the salient events, plus a number of additional insights. Like how I could tell (even without a polygraph) that Celia was lying and how she didn’t seem to understand the hierarchy that was operating in the situation. Perhaps in future I should take a print-out of the council’s management structure, something to show my official status?
I was convinced Celia had coordinated the chaining-up of cars but couldn’t conceive how it had been achieved. Chains were very heavy. Either the old people were more agile than they appeared or they’d had help.
I printed the notes and put them in my briefcase. I wasn’t sure how to get them to the mayor. Maybe I should put them in the internal mail; there was a tray by Eva’s desk that said ‘Outgoing’.
Before I could decide, the phone rang.
The helpline didn’t open until nine, so I was not required to pick up but I did and it was lucky, because it wasn’t an old person or Eva or even Stacey, the mayor’s assistant. It was the mayor herself.
‘I was hoping you’d be in,’ she said.
‘Were you?’
‘Yes. I was wondering if you had something to tell me.’ She was talking in code, not saying what it was exactly but knowing that I’d know.
‘I have completed the task,’ I said.
‘Excellent. Why don’t you and I go get a coffee?’ More code. Let us discuss the matter elsewhere, away from prying eyes and ears. It really was a special project.
The mayor was wearing a black pantsuit that tapered in at the ankles. It made her look like a Power Ranger but in a really good way. She had her handbag in one hand and car keys in the other. She waved the keys at me.
‘I’ll drive,’ she said.
We had no trouble making conversation in the car. We were like old friends—I imagined this was what having old friends was like.
‘Your car’s nice,’ I said. It was a BMW, black, like her outfit and her handbag.
‘Thanks.’
‘Is black your favourite colour?’
‘Is black a colour?’ she said, and we laughed at my stupidity—black, a colour!
We pulled out of the car park onto the main road. The mayor didn’t say where we were going but seemed to have somewhere in mind, as she cut through backstreets and zipped around corners.
At a strip of shops, she parked outside a sleek-looking café where, it turned out, the barista knew her. ‘The usual, Verity?’ he said. ‘Skinny cappuccino?’
When he asked what I wanted I said, ‘The same.’ I’d never had a skinny cappuccino before but the way the word rolled
off the tongue was so satisfying I thought it might become my regular order.
We sat at a booth along the wall, her looking out, me looking at her. I watched her get a compact mirror and lipstick out of her bag and start putting the lipstick on.
‘I come here a bit,’ she said. ‘Christos and I—Christos is my husband—live just around the corner.’
Would it have been odd to ask where exactly?
‘What does Christos do?’ I asked instead.
‘He’s on boards.’
‘I was on a board once.’ Sort of. Sharon asked me to take the minutes at a Friends of the Animals meeting. It was very tedious and I left halfway through. ‘It was to help endangered species.’
‘That’s very altruistic of you.’
I hope I didn’t blush. I tried not to.
Our coffees arrived. The mayor snapped the compact shut and put it away. She waited until the barista was back by the coffee machine and then lowered her voice and said, ‘Tell me everything.’
I provided a thorough overview: ‘Call volumes this week have been quite erratic. Monday and Tuesday we received 25 phone calls before lunch but yesterday we received four in the same time period. One possible use of the unexpected free time was to continue the statistical analysis I had commenced previously but given you’d asked for my assistance on a special project…’
I had her full attention. It was glorious, to be so seen. And by her. She was the mayor of a whole municipality, in charge of everything.
‘I decided to visit the senior citizens centre. I didn’t tell them I was coming, I wanted to see what it was like, how it operated, what the people were like, on a normal day.’
‘And?’
‘Underwhelming. Quite old and uninviting…and so is the building.’
‘That lot aren’t even the worst,’ said the mayor. ‘You should meet the miniature train society. Did you see Celia?’
‘Yes. She was interesting.’ Interesting was a euphemism—the mayor got it straight away.
‘She’s very interesting, isn’t she?’
I adopted a tone of forced diplomacy. Just enough so she’d know that was what I was doing. I said how ‘refreshing’ it was to meet someone so ‘direct’ and ‘matter of fact’.
The mayor was amused, internally. ‘Celia used to be fairly normal, you know. I don’t know what happened. What did she say about the car parking?’
‘She claimed to have no knowledge of the incident in question,’ I said. ‘She told me she knew nothing about anything. On the night it happened she was home by five and in bed by six.’
The mayor rolled her eyes.
‘I don’t believe her,’ I said.
‘No, I wouldn’t have thought so.’
The barista did something with the sound system, and the music changed. It had been light and upbeat but now it got darker and moodier. The mayor rubbed her temples. ‘Drives me crazy,’ she said, half under her breath. ‘This is not what you get into politics for, Germaine…Do you have any idea how many people there are in Deepdene?’
I said no but I could probably estimate.
‘Let’s just say Celia Brown isn’t the only one. But everyone thinks them and their backyard are all that’s important.’
I maintained a fixed expression. I was waiting for her to tell me what to do next, but she was talking about how idealistic she used to be, how you can’t be everything to everyone and how no one wants to pay rates but everyone wants unlimited kerbside collections.
I suppose she saw me glance at the clock. ‘Sorry.’ She grimaced. ‘It gets wearing, that’s all. Closer you to get to the “community”, the further away you wish you were.’
I understood that.
The mayor sighed. ‘Write them a letter. Tell them it’s not their car park, they don’t have exclusive use of it and if they don’t want to share, we’ll make them. If they’re not careful it won’t be the senior citizens centre, it’ll be the every citizens centre. Or the no citizens centre—’ All at once she stopped and looked behind me. ‘Don?’
I started to turn around but he was in motion, a moving pink polo shirt. He stopped in the gap between our table and the next. The mayor got up and the two of them kissed the air beside each other’s cheeks.
‘How are you?’ he whispered, holding her arm under the elbow.
‘Good. How are you?’
‘Good, good.’
I got up too so we were all standing, and quite close.
‘Don, you remember Germaine?’
‘I do. Hello, Germaine.’
FACT: He remembered me—this time.
FACT: People only remembered people they felt were important to remember.
FACT: I had reached this level of importance.
The mayor said, ‘Germaine met Celia yesterday.’
Don winced. A sympathy wince—for me. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
I told him it was fine, no problem, anytime, whenever.
Meanwhile, the mayor bent down and picked up her handbag. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, thinking we must be leaving. But, no. The mayor only needed to use the bathroom. If there was ever a more timely toilet interruption I hadn’t experienced it. And it got better: ‘Don, can you hang around?’ she said.
He sat in the seat the mayor had vacated, opposite me. He and I were at the same table. The only other time we’d been so close was at Sudo-Con 2006. I was glad he’d forgotten. After he’d said what an impressive shirt I was wearing, he said, ‘Name?’ and I said, ‘Alan Cosgrove.’ He’d laughed. Not unkindly, but not amused either. What kind of person couldn’t remember their own name? I got a cold sweat from remembering.
Don said, ‘I hope Celia wasn’t too hard on you.’
‘She was fine.’ I didn’t want to talk about Celia. ‘You remind me of someone,’ I said.
Don averted his eyes. ‘Do I?’
‘Yes.’ I was watching him carefully but he wouldn’t look at me. ‘Do you know Alan Cosgrove?’
‘Alan who?’
‘Cosgrove. He plays sudoku.’
‘What’s sudoku?’ Don’s face was a picture of innocence. Did I have it wrong? Did they look the same, or only similar? Maybe I should get my eyes tested.
The mayor returned, smelling of peach perfume. ‘Don,’ she said. ‘We have to talk.’
Don was happy to talk. I was also happy to talk—or do anything that would keep me there.
Only:
‘Do you mind, Germaine?’ said the mayor.
‘Not at all,’ I told her. The three of us could sit and talk and get to know or possibly just watch each other. We could forget the last few minutes had ever happened. Alan who?
The mayor nodded and smiled. Don nodded and smiled and so did I. Should we get another chair? I wondered. A long moment passed in deliberation.
And then the mayor coughed. Perhaps she wanted me to get the chair.
‘Do you need a Cabcharge?’ she said, and I realised my mistake.
I got up. ‘No, I can walk.’
How far was it? It must have been three kilometres.*
‘Are you sure?’
I was quite sure, I said, and hitched my handbag on my shoulder. The bell above the door signalled my departure but when I waved from the footpath, even though I was at the window right in front of them, they didn’t notice.
‘What time d’you call this?’ said Eva when I got back.
I didn’t tell her I’d been in already. Coffee with the mayor, meeting Don—how much of it was secret? I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t want to talk about it, not right now. Had I ruined it with Don? I crossed my arms and hugged myself.
‘Phone’s been ringing off the hook.’ Eva’s tone was accusing, as if this were my fault.
‘Has it?’
‘It has.’
Oh, well. Call stats were important but they weren’t the only measure of performance. I had other tasks with other indicators.
‘Isn’t that why they employed you?’ she probed. ‘To answer it?’
‘It’s part of my role, yes.’ An increasingly small part, I hoped.
The biscuit jars were on Eva’s desk. There were not many left. She extracted a handful of rice-cracker shards, her face thoughtful, reproachful. Then all at once her expression changed completely. She started laughing.
‘I’m joking,’ she said, between breaths—she was struggling to breathe. ‘Isn’t that why they employed you? That was a joke. And you believed me.’
I didn’t understand. What was funny about aspiring to improve our collective performance? For a moment I’d almost liked her.
Eva dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. She picked up a biscuit jar and offered me the crumbly contents. I declined.
‘A few of us are going to lunch today,’ she said. ‘You want to come?’
It was a kind offer but deeply unappealing. It was hard enough sitting next to her. ‘I brought lunch from home,’ I said.
‘So eat before you come.’
‘What about the phones?’
‘You know what? No one cares if we don’t answer them. Nothing happens.’
‘Maybe next time,’ I said.
‘Who knows if I’ll invite you next time?’ She cackled like a hen.
Before I put my headset on, I checked the current stats. They were worse than I thought they’d be. Total call time had increased significantly since yesterday morning with almost no corresponding increase in total number. It was as if Eva answered the phone once and never hung up. That was the only way of accounting for what the average was.
When I was ready to take my first call I switched the phone to online. It rang immediately. ‘James’ was on the line. He sounded distressed; his voice had a desperate pleading edge to it. ‘Can you help me?’ he said.
‘Maybe…Not sure yet, need more information.’ I wasn’t promising anything. They held you to it if you did.
‘It’s about the pension,’ said James.
As soon as he said ‘pension’ I groaned. Pensions had nothing to do with council. They were up to the Department of Social Services, a federal body. But even with my limited experience, I knew how people got when you told them that. They just wanted someone to complain to, and call times at Social Services were even worse than ours. Which was an achievement in itself.
The Helpline Page 4