Are you visiting women? Do not forget your whip!
Nietzsche

I sat peering into my shoes at my reflection. Yes, it certainly was raining. From the verandah I glowered at the sky, which drizzled back with calm authority. I emptied my shoes and slipped them on. Greenhouses all summer, they now felt like blotting papers pasted onto my feet.

‘Bloody trapped!’ boomed a voice about a foot from my ear. Out of the closing door of the youth hostel staggered a girl beneath a vast rucksack nobbled with little compartments. A lace curtain was draped and pinned around her red satin body. Strapped under her feet appeared to be two small lengths of railway sleeper. Her hair hung in lots of tiny plaits. She seemed to have dressed herself from the contents of an old lounge room.

‘A well’, she slithered from her pack. ‘Here take this for half a sec.’, and swung it onto my lap. I felt like an inverted beetle pinned under a rock. After a long, disapproving look at the white stuff covering the top half of the environment, she placed the rucksack on the floor.

‘Ah there you are’, I sighed as one emerging from undergrowth.

‘And here I’m forced to bloody stay!’ Then, accusingly, ‘What are you?’

I scanned the horizon. My name? religion? parents’ occupations? At this stage I was so well shorn, looking like a bald man in an undersized suede cap, that close inspections, especially from articulate girls, filled me with the urge to hide.

‘Your guide for the day’, I rallied.

‘Guide dog, more likely. It’s too wet, so piss off.’

I decided that she was probably trying to grow a moustache.

‘Yes; but off to where can I piss?’

Her mouth smirked, but the eyes seemed remote.

‘No.’ She zipped up her fly absently. ‘Well yes, o.k. Come on’, and she dashed out into the thick drizzle. I fled after. The first puddle had quite a sobering effect.

‘I lied’, I shouted to her back, ‘I am a simple hosteller!’

By now we were slapping hard down the wet drive like bears in full flight, keeping to the side where trees offered a splotchy sort of shelter. She ran nicely with that feminine awkwardness about the hips. Turning into the main road, she dashed across in front of a truck which braked sharply, then she disappeared into a tea shop. I waited in the rain for the traffic to clear.

Behind the shop’s vast front windows, five people sat resolved to mind their own business. They were almost all cylindrical or conical old women in raincoats. One young chap with strong features and glasses was being harangued into reserves of polite stupor by a silver-haired old lady most resembling a weather-beaten medieval statue. The wind had blown her hair into crazy disarray.

I moved to the darkest corner where the girl sat.

‘Sit down’, she snapped like a duchess relaxing the rules.

‘Most kind’, I wheezed, easing myself down in soaking wet jeans.

‘Your tea’s ordered.’

‘Black for me.’ The Indian waitress looked up and smiled inscrutably. She was performing some sacred ritual over the slow and careful collection of cups.

“I don’t know why they come here!’ the girl stated, eyeing the cylindrical women but earning a frown from the waitress.

‘A bit of excitement I suppose’, I ventured.

Our teas arrived. Mine was white coffee.

I was trying to find some alternative to ‘Do you come here often?’ when, from the corner of my eye, the door appeared to be flung open by a rampaging but momentarily indecisive gorilla. The outline of the man’s pointed chin, head and ears suggested a diamond shape. As his broad body suddenly lurched again towards us I realized that this must be the truck driver. The man’s mouth thrust down and away at the corners through which he hissed breath.

‘Hullo’, commented the girl to me, taking an abstract interest. He was wet. His face was tired but animated, as if it had been driven over by his own tires.

‘Bloody, bloody!’ He calmed down enough to pick up my cup, barely spilling a drop and miraculously by the handle, then splashed it into my lap. Steam rose about my face. Then he dashed the cup onto the floor as if he had toasted my health, and strode to the door neither slowly nor in hast. I couldn’t see his face, but a well-dressed man just entering did. He seemed to remember something and vanished back into the street. The door banged shut and open again.

‘Hullo’, commented the girl again, with a narrowness of conversation I was beginning to tire of.

‘Ahggh’, I pleaded through clenched teeth, though apart from the stinging bits, the coffee felt quite warm.

‘What a cheek that chap had. And he completely ignored me.’

The waitress muttered, ‘Ooo Gud’, and began to stir towards the scattered pieces of cup, ‘Dissis goowin’ to fah.’ She inspected a piece for damage.

‘I’ll pay for it’, I soothed as warmly as I felt able, but she was lost in her piece of cup.

‘Gracious pet, there’s so many cranks about.’ The wild-haired old woman was stooped at my side. ‘But don’ choo worry, my son’s a parking inspector. Why only last month Stan, that’s my husb. . .’

‘Aw piss off, can’t cha!’ The old woman took on the blank wonderment of someone watching a murder on television.

‘Piss off! Can’t you see he’s upset?’ The girl gestured to me without looking away from the old orator. I wondered for whose benefit this defense/attack was being made. The woman moved slowly back to her table, much sobered.

The room, too, had lost its mid-morning torpor. Women now seemed to be taking inventory of the contents of their handbags, arranging silverware, counting small change, and the young man was polishing his glasses almost flat, squinting through eyes that seemed tiny and naked.

‘Soom won hus to pey fo’ dis cup’, concluded the waitress after extensive research on the stress points of crockery.

One lady backed, tight-lipped, towards the door like an apprehensive cat. Raincoats rustled, coins clicked onto the counter. A gradual stampede ensued. ‘Cheerio’ someone called; the Indian lady grew darker.

‘We’ll pay’, volunteered the girl, nobly. Then to me, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Ernest, but my friends call me Ern. What’s yours?’

‘Ern?! Are you sure?!’ I felt tired. ‘Well Ern, how much have you got?’

‘Money? None, it’s all back at the hostel.’

‘Which is shut. Mine too. Bloody hell.’

We stood, eye to eye. Her cheeks were vast and flat like a rock face, from where the small eyes at the top appeared to be looking scornfully down at the world. On either side of her face hung a large ring of metal from the ear-lobe, like a handle or doorknocker. He looked thoughtfully at her toes.

‘Ah seys, soon buddy’s gut to pey fo’ dis cup.’

‘Look . . . er, Ern . . . I’ve already paid for a bus tour this morning, and it’s going any minute now. So would y’ be so kind . . . as to take care of this. . .’ gesturing at the waitress, ‘cup business for me? I’d be very grateful.’ Her teeth shot violently into view by way of a smile.

‘No, alright. You go ahead.’

‘Thanks’, she fled instantly. ‘Y’re a gentleman!’ Gone.

‘Gentleman’. Hell. The last person who’d accused me of being that was a very ungentlemanly girl at a party. I’d had to massage her thigh – several times – to correct that impression. But deep inside I knew there lurked a ‘gentleman’.

‘Jus’ you wet fo’ de buss to coom in, an’ he’ll fix you up.’ The waitress fell naturally to polishing her cups, a bit severely I thought. Her lips had disappeared, and her eyebrows and mouth seemed to be trying to get as far from each other as possible.

I sat. At midday, the sun decided to make a sort of leisurely appearance. Later, during the afternoon I counted 2729 faded little flowers on the wallpaper of the teashop (shouldn’t the number have divided by 4 or 3?) I also noted that most of the flies seemed overfed and sluggish. I finally borrowed some money from a striped man of apparent means.

‘Excuse me, would you give me thirty cents for a new cup?’

‘I dunno, let’s see the cup first.’

‘No, it’s to replace one for here.’

‘Broke a cup, eh?’ He had remarkable deductive powers.

‘Yes.’

‘Why not pay for it yourself?’ getting into his stride.

‘I haven’t got the money.’

‘Then’, he concluded revealing the cunning of his strategy, ‘you ought to work for a livin’ like everyone else!’

Eventually he handed me some coins, with a gracious smile. I paid the waitress, muttering apologies to her silent indignation, and slunk from the shop.

Outside the youth hostel, people of all ages thronged around the check-in counter as if held by a huge elastic band.

The girl was at the main fireplace, unpegging undies and socks from a piece of string she’d slung between two inlaid candleholders. I strode purposefully over to her. She looked at me, and then back at her undies, without appearing to see any difference between me and the undies in terms of reaction level.

‘Hi’, I tried.

She wore jeans and a baggy cheese-cloth shirt, through which two beady-eyed nipples stared up at me. I suppose she looked up.

‘Hullo. Had a nice day then?’

‘Well, I would hardly. . .’

‘Hold these, would you?’ I was loaded with underclothes.

‘Oh look’, I looked. ‘This afternoon I found some super digs – anything rather than rot in this dump – real flash and everything. So I told the hostel warden that you’d be checking out this evening . . .’

‘But what. . .’

‘It’s the only way I could get the room. It’s a double. I hope you won’t mind, just ‘til I find someone else.’

‘Well, no. . .’

‘We can go now. It’s a hotel run by a really nice family for ten dollars a day.’

‘Surely they can throw a grandma and some pets for that price!’

She took the underwear. ‘Thanks.’

‘A pleasure. Thirty cents please.’

But she was already bustling away, trailing a stocking like an invitation.

***

(published in Summerland; a Western Australian Sesquicentennial Anthology of Poetry and Prose. Ed. Alec Choate & Barbara York Main)