by Mark O'Flynn
‘Hi, Mitch. Late again,’ says Marjorie.
‘Yeah, the boss’ll be fuming, but I can’t start the day without a coffee.’
‘Big night last night?’
‘Nah.’
They obviously know each other, Ava deduces. The boy, Mitch, spills coins on the counter to pay for his coffee. He’s late for work. Ava can conjure a whole scenario for him too. A whole crowded universe. They lower their voices and Ava can no longer eavesdrop, as fine-tuned as she is with that activity. Writer at work. She can see Marjorie is flirting. She remembers flirting. She can also see that Mitch is completely oblivious to that behaviour. It’s an entire lifetime’s romance nipped in the bud. Strangled by its own umbilical cord. The young won’t be rescued, she reminds herself, irrespective of the pearly words of wisdom she may or may not have to offer. The young only want to be the centre of everything. And the centre of everything is the eye of the maelstrom.
Ava takes off her pith helmet and lays it across the machete. A coil of her hair springs up. The salt shaker is fuller than the pepper cellar. She opens the sugar bowl and, taking a pinch, pops the grains on her tongue. Then she does the same with the salt. Some of the tourists outside on the street open the café door to the tune of a small bell. Ting-a-ling-a-ling. Ava knows she should order quickly, otherwise she’ll have to wait for ages for these raggle-taggle gypsies to make up their minds as if they have all the time in the world. Mitch is already taking up enough of her oxygen. Communion with her fellows? Not yet. She raises her arm and signals to the waitresses. They are like a pair of Siamese twins tearing themselves apart with the sound of crepe paper. Marjorie wanders over. The tourists gaze up at the chalkboard menus, concentrating as if they are choosing between the doors to Heaven or Hades. It’s not brain surgery, for goodness sake, it’s only a sandwich.
‘Morning, Ava.’
‘Good morning, my lovely,’ says Ava. ‘Now, what will I have? Hmm.’
‘Tea?’ Marjorie offers helpfully. She glances back at Mitch at the counter.
‘Tea. Yes! Capital idea. Tip-top. You’re a mind reader.’
Ava’s doing a good job of disguising her impatience.
‘It’s what you have every morning.’
‘Is it? You saucy minx. All right, I accept your suggestion. Bring me tea.’
‘And toast?’
‘Yes. Toast as well. I bow to your experience.’
O bright Parnassus, Ava thinks, as Marjorie wanders off to her duties, her hair hanging down behind like a spray of autumn sunlight. How gorgeous the young look, especially from the back when they don’t know you’re looking. Like creatures from the thick of a coral reef. She tries to think back to the time when she had buttocks like that, but it’s too long ago.
‘And don’t forget the jam.’
She notices Mitch take his cup of coffee and wave goodbye to Marjorie (he calls her Marj), and head towards the door.
‘Bye, Mitch,’ Marj carols after him. There is a whole chapter and verse of innuendo in the look that passes between the two waitresses. Ava is a bit jaded with that. She gazes out the window. The tourists have dispersed like butterflies over a field of lavender. In a hurricane – may as well add that detail, she thinks. She studies the faces in the street on the off-chance a stray publisher might be passing by. Someone she might recognise. My goodness, is that Ava Langdon sitting there? How fortuitous. Good morning. And what’s that you happen to have in your calico bag?
No one. Just the usual familiar strangers scuttling across the creaking floors of their ever-pressing livelihoods. Bankers, firemen, secretaries. Bakers, real-estate agents, publicans. The numb mechanics of the world’s turning, illusory shield held up against death. A couple of sparrows squabbling in the gutter over some nondescript crumbs, they’re just as important. A paper bag blowing across the road in a puff of wind. The whole shemozzle breathing as one being, like some great, rolling seed tumbling about looking for a pot to sprout in. Life going on. And Ava observing it from the unassailable fortress of herself. How to describe that seed, those sparrows, the inner life of that fireman? Did she bring any money? Don’t say she forgot to bring her wallet. No, here it is in her pocket with today’s ration, a handful of coins in her pocket too. Her contribution to the national economy, the survival of the ant hill.
Where was she? The anonymous hero overseeing the trials and traumas of her people. Anonymous or eponymous? Her people, nevertheless, going about their business of being ants.
‘Your tea, Ava.’
Back in the tea shop, Ava starts.
‘Sorry,’ says Marjorie. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you.’
The honeyed waitress at her elbow, eyeing the machete warily, plonking (ever so nicely) the cup and saucer down on the table. Music of the spoons. Also, a little silver teapot, plus a side plate with two slices of toast, a dab of butter, a splodge of jam.
‘Toast. And jam.’
‘I thought I ordered honey.’
‘No, I’m sure it was jam.’
‘You’re doing it to me again, you naughty girl.’
‘I wrote it down.’
She holds up her notepad. Exhibit A.
‘That’s not writing. That’s just brain cells drying up.’
Ava can see the girl is perplexed, but there’s no time to explain. She must cross-examine.
‘Show me.’
‘It’s fresh,’ says Marjorie, showing Ava the order. ‘I just wrote down what you said.’
‘And who is “Sam”?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Does that not say “Sam”?’
‘No. Jam. That’s a J.’
‘Ah, there’s your solution then.’
All these words – the humming of the vespiary. If there were no words to describe it, would it be worth living? Wouldn’t life be rather going through the motions, like ants or wasps or moths. Do ants, for instance, feel injustice? The outrage of being swept up with the toast crumbs. Cognisance is everything, though without it, Arcadia. Sometimes Ava feels like her brain cells are dying, though not today.
‘Thank you, my dear. Might I trouble you for some hot water?’
‘Sure.’
Marjorie escapes. She clears another table and wipes it down. Perhaps she feels lucky to have got away so lightly this morning. Sometimes the old duck chews her ear off for half an hour, prattling on with her nonsense. She mustn’t forget to bring the water.
Ava twirls the teapot three times in a clockwise direction, three times anti-clockwise, just to keep the world in balance. She pours. Dash of milk. Dab, splodge, dash. Stir the sugar. The first sip – ahh – and all is right with the universe. She inhales the aroma. O the glorious cups of tea. Panacea for every ill. Calm hiatus. All harm held in check. She can feel the harmony oozing through her brittle old veins. She tops up the silver pot with the hot water, steeping every sixpence’s worth of tannin out of those tea leaves floating in the water like bloated ants. Do ants bloat? She has to say she has never seen a bloated ant. The injustice of it.
Marjorie goes about her duties, watching from behind the counter, her stockade. It’s quite a performance, not least the twirling of the pot, the rituals with the toast cutting, each slice divided into quarters. An egg would have been an adventure, except Ava did not order an egg. Or did she? She chews methodically. She drains the pot. She licks the little jam dish. She catches the eye of the waitress, the tall one with the legs.
‘L’addition, s’il vous plaît,’ Ava calls, almost snapping her fingers, but thinking better of it. Poor girl, just trying to make a buck like everybody else, even if she doesn’t know what a well-cooked egg is. Marjorie shrugs at the French and brings the bill. Ava spills a handful of change on the table and counts out the coins like someone trying to weigh their life in grains of rice. She still can’t get used to this new money. New to her. Dollars and dimes, it’s all
so American. She doesn’t want to be diddled and needs to be circumspect until her next royalty cheque arrives. Happy days. Then she’ll splash out. Wait and see. Champagne for everyone!
Well, she can’t dilly-dally here any longer. She’ll outstay her welcome. Her chair scrapes backwards on the wooden floor. An ugly sound. Reminds her too harshly of the hard-edged world. She dons her accoutrements. With her helmet on she squashes the genie back in its bottle.
‘Bonne chance, petite amie,’ she calls from the door, letting it slap back as if she is leaving the tent to cross the tundra. Marjorie waves, and for a moment Ava knows exactly what she is thinking. There, that’s the most interesting part of the day gone, and it’s barely nine o’clock. She’s wondering how the old lady occupies her time and if she has any family. If Marjorie, too, might one day end up like that. Like what? Like a dowager. Marjorie goes to collect the money, correct weight, and takes it to the till in which she knows there are no answers.
Out on the street Ava feels the chill in the air. She’s been sitting still too long. Her armpits are cold. She rubs her biceps. Fortified by the tea she strolls down the big hill of Katoomba Street. The street is about five or six hundred yards long. She has forgotten how many steps it takes. Shops, many of them empty (such is the state of the economy), line both sides, and sometimes in winter snow and ice make crossing the road a precarious business. Today, however, it is not snowing, although anything could happen. No longer perambulating, she is a woman on a mission. From the corner of her eye she examines the carriage of her reflection in shop windows. In the watchmaker’s display she appears floating amongst clocks and timepieces. In the newsagent’s she is ethereal amongst headlines. Nixon fallout continues … First female president for Argentina … She moves on. Next along is the baker’s window fogged with heat from the ovens, smells delectable wafting out the door. What a fine figure of a man staring back at her; that machete at his waist, now that’s a machete to envy, the rakish tilt of it. How many midnight panthers has she slain with that blade? What adventures. The people in the street, can they not see the readiness for action emanating from her? Her readiness to spring to the rescue. She hears a scream, but it is only a child screaming, distraught at the discovery that it is not the centre of the universe. Nevertheless, a scream. Its mother is trying to placate it with practised lies. It might have been a street crime where, in her mind, she leaps into the fray. It is a vision ripe for swift narration. She sees the gap-toothed purse-snatcher galloping down the street, fleeing the shrieking woman in distress, hands held in horror to her cheeks. My life savings, she cries, my child’s last blood transfusion. And Ava stepping into the path of the guffawing, oafish would-be-thief, machete raised, crying Halt! and the youthful miscreant, tripping in fright over his own feet, tumbling to a grazed, undignified surrender at her feet, her boot pressing him to the ground, the fear in his eyes, realising the terrible error of his ways, never no never again. Ava relieving him of the purse, flamingo pink, returning it to its rightful owner. Thank you, sir, thank you. Think nothing of it, my pleasure, madam. How can I ever? Please don’t bother your pretty little … My Egbert was so frightened. This little soldier here, no I don’t believe it, what a delightful child …
Swift narration and perhaps embellishment.
She stops. Is that how that scenario would go? Something is missing. Her hat? No. Her coat? Suddenly, in horror, she realises that her calico bag is gone. The bag containing the manuscript. The manuscript containing the – O holy Jesus – the kernel of her life. Her life! She spins around and scampers back towards the café. Suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, the world is focused on that single point of meaning. Out of my way, to the ants on the street. People in fact do step aside, as if she might be dangerous. How could she have walked so far without it? She flings the door open and charges inside. There are a couple of other people sitting at tables now.
‘My bag!’ she cries.
People look up at the panic in her voice. They stop chewing. Marjorie is wiping down Ava’s table with long even swipes. Ava still thinks of it as her table. The tea cup and side plate and serviette have been removed. The bag is nowhere to be seen – O damned Judas – Marjorie has replaced the cutlery and in a moment every trace of Ava’s presence has been erased. Is this the world in microcosm? To obliterate people as soon as they have disappeared from sight. Where is her—?
‘Did you forget something, Ava?’ Marjorie asks. Ava wants to slap her, the empty-headed harpy. Playing games with the kernel of her life! Marjorie points over to the till, where the other waitress, smiling, holds up Ava’s bag. O, you angel. She breathes a long, bottomless sigh.
Dear God, that was close. Ava snatches the bag and holds it to her breast. How can she have been so careless?
‘Thank you, oh my God, thank you.’
‘No problem, Ava. I went to the door but you’d gone. We knew you’d come back for it,’ says Marjorie, holding a handful of crumbs in the cup of her hand.
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Sure. It happens all the time. Umbrellas, jackets, all the time. One woman even left her baby here.’
‘Well, you can always have another baby.’
Ava checks to make sure the contents are safe. They are. Pink and perfect. What is a baby compared to this? She turns to leave, crying out once more over her shoulder:
‘Thank you, thank you.’
Out on the street she exhales another sigh of relief. Be still my beating heart, I nearly lost you. She walks clutching the bag. Talk about a lesson in the fragility and transience of everything. What if someone were to snatch her bag? It’s been known to happen. Someone could knock her off her feet as easy as pie. She shudders at the thought. She’ll have to be more careful.
Before she knows it she’s at the bottom of the hill. She’s come too far. She crosses the road near the garage on the corner and starts to march back up the other side. A pigeon brushes past her face, flying under the shopfront awnings. It lands with a flutter of wings on a hanging sign which says Boots. Beneath it on the footpath is a montage of guano, speckled grey and white and pepper. Ava steps around it, off the kerb into the gutter where a passing car honks its horn at her, beep beep. Ava gives it two fingers. Footpath anarchy. She passes the Catholic primary school, St Canice’s, where the voices of the ankle-biters belting out a hymn spill from the windows: All things bright and beautiful. It’s a street in a town like any other. The bare trees shivering in the fleeting winter sun. The simple glory of it. She continues climbing the hill towards the red-bricked post office where her destiny awaits. Surely it must be open by now. In the sky there are several used cotton balls of clouds. She has to stop a couple of times on the way up, her pulse at a pace, a-gallop a-gallop, a trip-trap trip-trap, who’s that passing over my bridge?
She climbs the steps and shoulders open the door. It is quiet inside the post office, like Aladdin’s cave. Sim sala bim. Open sesame. The heavy door swings shut behind her, blocking out the noise of the traffic. There is a sudden hush.
‘Don’t panic. I have arrived,’ she says to no one in particular. Panic is the last thing the chap behind the counter looks like doing. In particular there is only a little old lady in the queue before her. How do these little old ladies get so old? Ava wonders. One day they are twirling girls, or brides, or presidents of Argentina, then the next they are about to take their false teeth and their wisdom into the grave with them, give it all up to – what shall we call it? she ponders – the ether of forgetfulness. Am I such a twirling girl? Ava thinks. Was I ever? When she was younger she would have stopped and written that down – the ether of forgetfulness – now she’s too tired, and already it’s gone.
Ava is slightly put out at having to wait. Don’t little old ladies realise the import of the pink and perfect wonder she has in her bag? All the old woman in front wants is a stamp. The stamp of a foreign queen, if you can stomach it. She fiddles in her purse. P
eople are blind to the splendour of radiance, and look, it’s everywhere. They wouldn’t have a clue if God stepped on their foot and said, ‘Excuse me, I think I might be next.’ Ava taps her machete in its sheath, holding her tongue. Eventually the old woman licks her stamp and moves aside. The post office man, whom she knows as Mr Dieter Meintollen on account of his name tag, and whose name she has homogenised to Mr Menthol on account of his fragrance, says:
‘Next please.’
Another human transaction. This is how the cavemen advanced, she considers, beyond the need of skewers and cudgels. Dieter has a thin, red moustache like a sunburnt shoe lace. That must take some work. There is a little vein the size of a mosquito wriggler on his chin. Originally from Randwick – Ava imagines reading between the lines – he has just come from his modest little home, where he has tied his daughter to her bed until the unwed pregnancy, or other domestic catastrophe, is resolved one way or another. A scene ripe for unlikely intervention and rescue involving a ladder and her machete. She could follow him home. She could save the day. At least, that’s what takes place inside Ava’s helmet. Is it a vision or is it a plot? No, she has to learn to be more realistic. She could conjure a scenario where Mr Menthol lives alone and loves his garden more than the sum total of all humanity. His freesias especially.
‘Good morning, good fellow,’ says Ava. ‘I’ve come to check my mail.’
The man stares at her, and eventually speaks.
‘You know you can’t bring that knife in here.’
‘What knife?’
‘That knife.’ He points to her thigh.
‘You’ll thank me for it one day,’ says Ava with confidence.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Who would foil the great post office heist when it happens? And it will. It’s inevitable. Now, about my mail.’