Tim Winton - Cloudstreet

When he’d rung off, the switch was quiet and the others were quivering with suppressed laughter.

Looks like their mate caught up with them, said Merle.

Whose mate?

The sailors, said Alma. He wasn’t in our league. They reckon he only goes for the roughest scrubbers, and I bet he’s glad he found ya, love.

Rose smiled tolerantly across their squall of hysterics. The door opened, and Mrs Tisborn came in from the office. They ruffled themselves into sobriety and blushed guiltily.

This is a switchboard, not a fowl house!

Rose had a light on.

Bairds, good morning.

My name’s Toby, by the way.

Very good, sir. Shall I put you through to kitchenware?

What?

Rose pulled the plug on him and felt the sweat slipping down the inside of her blouse. Mrs Tisborn was prowling, the great buffer of her bosom aimed here and there.

I’ll be watching you girls. And remember, Miss Pickles, you’re still not too good for Hosiery.

Thankfully, a light came on and Rose caught it first. When she plugged it through, old Teasebone was gone.

Cor, blimey, whispered Darken. Straighten yer seams, girls. It’s stockins for the lot of us.

Penal servitude, said Merle.

You rude thing, said Alma.

It was him, said Rose. My date.

Geez, love, even Blind Freddy could’ve put a girl straight on that score. No salmon and onion sangers for you today.

Through the crowd she sees the bloke leaning on the first pillar above the post office steps, and her first impulse is to go on ahead and buy those salmon and onion sandwiches at Coles and forget the whole flamin thing. He’s not bad looking. Good suit, nice pair of shoes. Glasses, though he doesn’t seem the squinty, limp type. Hatless. A bit of an individual, it seems.

She’s too nervous for this. What’s a bloke like that want with a shopgirl like her? He’s no run of the mill lair. He’s the sort of man you pray will come out of the smoky gloom and ask you for a dance.

Rose wheels back for another look and finds herself going up the steps. Now or never, Rosie.

When she gets to him, his eyebrows rise and Rose feels herself being given the onceover. Before he can, she gets the first word in.

Gday, Earl. Haven’t strained yourself, have you?

He smiles indulgently.

Hello. I thought you’d be a looker.

Boom! goes Rose’s heart.

They stand there a full moment in the spring sunshine with people coming and going around them, posties wheeling past on their heavy old PMG bikes.

You hungry? Rose asks. I am.

Yes, yes, let’s get a bite.

They wind up at the sandwich counter in Coles and Rose forgoes the salmon and onion. They eat and Rose swings on her stool like a girl, waiting. This bloke seems different to men she’s known. There’s no big talk, no flashing of money, no nervous guffaws.

I’ll guess and you tell me how close I am, he said, wiping his fingers on greaseproof paper. You left school at fifteen. Your dad votes Labor, you play netball, you’d like to be a lawyer’s secretary and you sleep with your socks on.

Rose smiles and knows whatever she says will sound stupid. Patchy, she says, but boring enough to get me right.

What’s your name?

Rosemary.

Rose.

Yes, she says relieved.

What a talker. You need the switchboard between us, do you, before you can really fire?

I spose I’m used to it. I suddenly don’t know what to talk about.

Football? The common cold?

Just ask me out, she says.

Let’s go out together. Friday.

You’re a reporter, she says. You went to uni, your parents live in Nedlands and you’ve tried to teach yourself to talk like one of us.

Us?

Friday, she says. Meet me at Shenton Park station. Seven o’clock. Bye.

She slides off her stool, minding her stockings.

She steps out into the sunshine and has to concentrate to find her way back to work, though it’s barely a block away and she’s walked it every lunch hour for years.

Well, she thinks, hardly believing her cool delivery. Well. She wondered about her guess. A reporter? Yes, she’d seen those blokes around. Fast movers, funny, sharp, always asking and watching. Yes, he’d be right there in the thick of it. He’d know politicians and criminals. He’d be a mover and shaker. Well, well.

Toby Raven

At six-thirty that Friday, Rose was waiting outside the Shenton Park station. He lurched up in a Morris Oxford and nearly took her left hip from its moorings. The first thing she learnt about Toby Raven was that he couldn’t exactly drive. He made his way, but that’s the best you could call it. Rose climbed in, suddenly twice as nervous, and they hopped away.

Well, well, he murmured, smiling widely at her after a few moments.

Hello, said Rose.

Hel-lo.

Toby sent the car in a swoon towards the kerb and Rose prayed that he would never again feel moved to take his eyes off the road.

It’d taken all afternoon to dress for this, and she could barely move for starch; with her nervousness turning so quickly to naked fear, the sweat on her steamed up the tulle and the car began to smell like a laundry. She pulled the wrinkles out of her gloves and tried not to ruin her lipstick with gnashing as they drove beneath the long shadow of Kings Park and beside the river reclamation to the lights of the city centre.

Gawd, she thought, this should be a fabulous feeling — cruising with a beau — if only a girl wasn’t afraid of dying. She sat back as Toby swooped and swerved, grunted and grated, and took deep breaths as the colours of the city broke over her; she did a real job of seeming perfectly serene.

They passed through the high class end of town with its grand hotels and ballrooms to cross the railway bridge into shabby streets and boozers’ parks. Toby wedged the car up on a kerb with a thud that nearly put Rose’s head through the roof. He sighed triumphantly.

Let’s go in.

Rose couldn’t see anywhere likely to be an eating establishment. There were shopfronts, houses, shadowy doorways. She got out and smelled garlic.

You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, Toby said beside her. It was hard to tell what he meant, but she smoothed her great full skirt graciously all the same.

He led her to a narrow doorway where a big, bumper-breasted woman met them and took them down to a crowded, smoky room full of tables, chairs, tablecloths, candles, laughing people, chinking glass and cutlery. Great vats of spaghetti were carried past by boys, and jugs of wine that reminded Rose of nosebleeds. People seemed to be speaking all kinds of languages, and some seemed to know Toby.

They sat at a small waxspattered table, and bread was brought. It wasn’t exactly the dining room at the Palace Hotel.

Where are we? she said, trying to look pleased.

Maria’s. This is where the real people come.

Rose felt her cheeks glowing. Beaut!

How do you like your spaghetti?

Oh, she huffed, like my tea — as it comes.

He laughed. You’re not about to let me go on that tea business are you?

Listen, she owned up, I don’t know a thing about spaghetti. Or the real people. I’ll just have whatever you reckon.

Two carbonaras, he told the boy. And a jug.

Do you come here a lot? Yes, all the time. Terrific place. It’s a hideaway for those in the know, you might say. We all come here. Makes a bit of a change from the old mutton and boiled veg.

Toby smiled at someone over Rose’s shoulder and now and then she sensed an eyebrow raised.

You know all these people?