Behind the Staff Only door Mrs Tisborn was waiting. Rose went in and surrendered gladly to her training.
The switchboard was a fearsome altar of a thing that first week. Mrs Tisborn stood behind and hissed instructions while Rose searched for the right jack, the right hole, the right cord, the right number, the right moment. The headset clamped her skull and the mornings went on as though time was fiddling the books, but Rose learnt quickly and it wasn’t long before Mrs Tisborn’s violet breath was receding. Near lunchtime on the second day she could relax enough to comprehend who else was in the room, and at the break she met the Girls on the Switch — Darleen, Merle, and Alma.
Ole Teasebone given yer the runaround this mornin, love? What wuz yer name again?
Rose.
Yull be right. Yull put a hurdle in er girdle, won’t she loves? Eh, girls?
Rose found it difficult to distinguish Darken, Merle or Alma by voice alone because they sounded so alike. They spoke with a cackling kind of pegnosed lilt and laughed like they were being dug in the ribs by a shovel. They were roughmouthed and irritable, with the eyes of rouged cattle. They showed her where to get the best pie and chips in Murray Street, the very thought of which kept her off lunch in general, and they introduced Rose to the addiction of listening in. They were silly, dizzy scrubbers, and she liked them. They were the grousest ladies she’d ever met.
On the train home that Friday, she missed her station because something awful had come into her mind. The switchboard girls reminded her of her mother. The only thing that helped was their bovine bad looks and the fact that they laughed a lot. Just plug em in an shut up, Rose, that’s all yer need to know.
Yeah, she thought. That’s all I should need to know.
On pay day she gave the old man half her pay and he laughed and gave it back. On Saturday morning at teabreak, Rose bought herself a pair of Nightingale Seamless Stockings and a jar of Helena Rubenstein’s Estrogenic Hormone Cream. On the way home, the train carriage wasn’t big enough for her.
Geoffrey Birch Came Calling
Geoffrey Birch from Pemberton came calling for Hat. He was handsome and dull, with knees as big as soup plates, and Hat thought he was simply gorgeous. He took her to dances in his FJ Holden. He laughed at all of Hat’s wisecracking jokes. He loved her.
It disgusted Red, who imagined them smooching in that FJ down by the river. Elaine was sad and jealous. She liked having Hat around and she wanted a man.
Oriel flicked the shop lights off and on at midnight Fridays so Cloudstreet looked like a ship beacon and the FJ looked like a marauding enemy vessel.
Lester started putting a few bob aside for a wedding. He wondered if Geoffrey Birch knew he was courting the marble champion of the world.
And Hat? Hat was away with the fairies.
Jacks and Jills
Shove the jacks into the jills, says Alma at the switch. Rose blushes and laughs.
Good morning, Bairds, can I help you?
Bairds, good morning, sir, can I help you?
Can I help you?
Bairds.
Hello? Hello?
One moment.
I’m sorry, this is Bairds. Oh, you want beds!
Putting you through.
Jack into Jill! yells Darleen, and they all crack up.
Gawd, love, why don’t you feed yerself Good morning, Bairds.
Merle’s in love with a dwarf Bairds, good morning.
Good morning, Bairds yer a liar, she’s lyin.
Putting you through he’s shorter than Mum’s pastry!
Short ones’ve got fat thingies Good morning, Bairds.
Well she’s hardly the eye of the needle One moment madam.
Youse sheilas are gettin fouler every year Can you hold?
He’s never asked me, thank you, sir.
Disgustin Bairds.
Bairds.
Bairds.
Exhausted from not laughing, Rose ploughs through every day with a crazy happiness. She takes home pay and the pavement smell of the city. She puts on a bit of flesh. She eats. The world looks different.
Two Old Girls
One night at the Anzac Club while Lester was going dispiritedly through his routine, Oriel met a widow. You could tell she was a survivor, a leftbehind, by the far off look in her eyes and the way her tall, gaunt frame bent forward. Oriel could spot weakness and need a mile off.
Do you believe in Hell, Mrs Lamb? said the woman filling the urn.
Oriel gasped. It was like being struck in the face. Who are you?
Beryl Lee, Mrs. Hubby went down with HMAS Perth. I come down here to—
You’re lonely.
Beryl Lee subsided like a folding chair. Tears rolled down her face from her wild fargone eyes. Oriel held her close, felt the woman’s eyelashes against her shoulder.
You strike me as a Christian woman, sobbed Beryl Lee. That’s what I thought. That’s what they say.
If ever I should strike you Beryl, you’d think different.
Oh, Lawd, oh, Lawd.
People stood and watched. Even Lester gave up and stared from the stage. Two old girls, short and tall, hugging like kids.
Hell?
Hell is like this. It’s this cowering in the bottom of the cellar far from the smouldering trapdoor, between pumpkins and tubs of apples. It’s the smell of a karri forest rising into the sky and the bodies of roos and possums returning to the earth as carbon and the cooking smell falling through the dimness like this. Trees go off like bombs out in the light and the cauldron boils and spits all about. Hell is being six years old and wondering why you’re alone in the dark and no one else has come down yet. It’s the sound of your own breathing, the salty stink of your bloomers, the way the walls have warmed, the flickering cracks, the screams like a thousand nails being drawn, the hammering, throttling noises, the way the rats are panicking and throwing themselves against things. Hell is that shallowbreathing trance you slip into, the silence that goes on and on until it’s grown outside you and fallen on the world. Hell is when you hear noises in the world again, though nothing in yourself, and men’s voices make your throat cry so raw that light bolts into the cellar with a gout of ash and charcoal and the burning taste of air. Hell is when you’re dragged out past the black bones and belt buckles that are the others who never came down, out onto the powder white earth beneath the sky green as bile and swirling with vapours. Hell is the sight of your father’s face streaked with the ride, the twitching cast on him, the registration of facts. Hell. It’s only you left, and you’re awake.
Oriel woke and it wasn’t quite dawn. She lay there in the dimness until her heart settled back a little. With the edge of the blanket she wiped her eyes. Without washing, without making out her daily work plan, she left the tent ungowned and ran to the house, gumbling along like a spud crate to go room to room in the dim house checking that all of them were still there, that it wasn’t only her left again. All of them breathing in their beds, helpless and sweet in sleep. And Quick’s empty bed where she sat thinking while Fish snored.
Oh, how she hated to be a survivor, to be left. It had been a lonely girlhood for Oriel, even when her father remarried. She was a leftover from some other time, an embarrassment to him, a rival for her stepmother who wasn’t much older than her. But she learnt to be strong; she grew it in herself. When her halfbrother Bluey, who she loved like blood, left her on the dock at Albany, climbing the gangway and shouting back over his shoulder: Don’t worry, Or, I’ll bring a Turk back on the end of me bayonet! she knew she was pushing further into the kingdom of survivorhood. Her father was often away buying horses and there’d be only Oriel and her stepmother and the children. She grew steel in her.