Waiting for the Bus in Newcastle
A
fictional account of some time this afternoon.
Ruth
Skilbeck
Another classic waiting-for-the-bus conversation
at a Newcastle bus stop today.
I walk along the hot pavement, with the
typically flat feeling that visiting Centrelink so often leaves in me, the residue
of resignation. Resigned despair, beyond despair. That is underlaid with determination.
As I said to my next door neighbor today. I am beyond embarrassment over money,
I don’t take it personally. To me it is all political. I have done all that you
are supposed to do to gain a full time academic job, and due to things behind
the scenes, was not allowed one. My poverty is not my fault.
So this week I was sure that I had sorted
out all my income “streams” and even sold three books, the first three I have
sold here, since they arrived in the box from the US last week.
So it was I had that typically flat feeling
I often have when walking the streets around Centrelink.
I had precisely $1.60 in my wallet – the
sum total of my current fortune, which was exactly enough for the concession
bus fare back to Adamstown. I had given up earlier after thirty-five minutes
standing in the public phone booth at the shops on the line to Centrelink and as
I had just enough cash left ($3.80 with about ten cents left over) I had gone
in to sort it out instead, and it was as well I did as I found out. I walked to
Hunter Street, the new bus stop shelter in front of the coming university
construction site.
There was a man sitting on the seat. I sat
down next to him.
After a couple of minutes it began, the
dialogue. One of the extraordinary everyday profound street dialogues that make
me realize I have developed some kind of strangely mutual affinity with this
place.
“It’s all man-made.” He says in a confiding
confident oratorial tone. As a conversation starter it hangs in the air. He gestures
in front of him at the sparse traffic on Hunter Street.
I do not say anything.
“Man made the seed and gave it to woman and
so life grows.”
He gestures again.
I do not say anything.
“You don’t have long.” He turns and look at
me earnestly. Blue eyes behind fleshy lids on a face that is round small and
looks as if his skin is stretched like a piece of shiny flesh coloured fruit.
“To make it all work."
“No,” I say, catching the gist.
“Name-of-Company
Waterside.” He gestures again. “Gone, gone, all gone. Unrecognisable.” His arm
traces an arc.
“I’m nearly sixty-four,” he turns to look
at me again.
“Waterside. Boilermaker.” He looks out at
the street in the direction of the harbour, hidden from view by the row of
shops. The waterfront that changed beyond
recognition when the steel works closed down.
“Boilermaker,”
he repeats. “I was a boilermaker.”
“Uhmm.”
I make a noise of empathy. Looking back at him in the eyes.
“It’s a terrible world” he says.
Pause.
“In the Middle East,” he adds, as if he
feels he has to temper his assertion.
Face turns to me. Flash of blue eyes.
“Uhmm.”
Pause.
“Hot today” he says brightly
“Uhmm.” I assent.
“What’s going up here?”
He gestures backwards at the boarded closed
fence of the construction site
covered with big glossy colourful drawings
of prosperity ahead.
“University?”
“Yes,” I say.
“When’s that happening?”
“Started.” “When’s it happening?”
“It’ll be finished in 2017.”
“2017?”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” he gestures at the semi-empty street,
smiling.
“Central place, not too busy a city, will
be modern.”
“Yes.”
He gestures again smiling brightly.
A bus full of passengers pulls up in front
of us.
A man walking down the steps is looking
straight at me, smiling.
He is wearing two heavy black orthopedic boots,
has very thin legs clad in flapping black trousers, long grey hair flying
around his head, lined face, smile reveals gap-snaggle teeth.
I semi-smile.
He exits left out of eye sight.
A couple of minutes later he returns into
view.
Gesturing expansively abrubtly he says in a
tone of alarm: “Can I sit down?”
Loudly crying: “I have terrible legs! Terrible
legs!!”
We move up on the seat.
“Civic, Newcastle, what is it?” he says
loudly.
The man to my right and I are both silent.
“It says Civic here, and Newcastle there,
what is it?” he continues, waving his arms at the street in the direction of Civic
train station, across the road, which is no longer in use as the train line was
closed down on Boxing Day.
“Don’t know.” I say.
“I don’t
know, I don’t know,” he semi shouts.
“I’ve never been here before!” smiling.
Another man comes into view from the left.
I notice him walk down past the bus shelter.
I notice his stomach stretching out his red tee shirt in front of him. His slightly
erratic air, is he on medication, and then he walks back up again from the
right into view.
He walks up and stands right in front of the
man sitting to my right. Beneath the brim of my hat I notice his large belly
and legs in shorts.
“Three dollars! Three dollars!!” He shouts.
“No.” The man beside me is saying.
He moves and stands right in front of me.
“Three dollars!! There is commotion.
“Three dollars!” he demands again.
“He wants money! He wants money!” Calls out
the man to my right.
“Don’t
give him – don’t give him!” the man to my right shouts even louder.
“I don’t have any change” I mutter.
The man in the red tee shirt shuffles off
to the left and carries on along the street.
“HA! HA! HA!” the man to my left with the
wild grey long hair and thin legs laughs loudly saying the words HA HA HA.
A few buses arrive together, bus full of
passengers, and a number of people disembark suddenly. People are milling around.
Another bus arrives.
“Is this the superior connecting bus route to Hamilton?” The tone of enunciation
is clear and precise. A well dressed country gentleman, in a white suit with a
flower in his buttonhole, and wearing a panama
hat, is bending down and asking the man sitting to my right, waving his hand at
the bus pulling up.
“It’s the bus to Hamilton,” says the man
beside me.
“The shuttle bus to Hamilton” says a voice
from somewhere.
“The new one to replace the train!” the man says in a loud tone
of contempt.
“We should be taking the train!” His well dressed female friend wearing a long flowing
white dress, flowers in her straw hat, and carrying a large bag, says loudly
and belligerently with exaggeration, as if making a public point. They both
have theatrical expressions of utter disgust on their faces as they climb the
steps onto the bus, they look disgruntled and put out as they find seats and
sit down inside, I watch them through the windows.
The man with terrible legs gets on behind
them.
The 222 veers into view. I stand. But it is
behind another bus and it is not slowing down. It is pulling right, out into
the traffic. I am walking towards it but it is accelerating past me.
“Hey, hey!” The man I had been sitting next
to stands up, shouts and waves.
Flagging the bus.
The 222 slows suddenly to a screeching stop
yards ahead of the bus stop.
I hurry towards it. As I do I turn.
“Good luck.” The man says.
“Does this bus go to Adamstown?” I call up
the steps to the driver.
“Yes.” She is a rather sullen looking large
woman with pink lipstick, chewing.
I climb up the steps, show my bright cerise
concession pass in my wallet and fish out my last coins.
She holds out her hand, staring down at it.
I put the coins in her hand.
She continues to stare down at her hand
filled with coins.
I notice there is a tiny shred of tissue
paper on top of the coins that came out of my purse. Delicately I lift it off
thinking this may be what she is objecting to in her body language.
She continues to hold out her hand with the
coins in it, looking down at the coins, minus the scrap of tissue, not saying
anything.
She continues to look down at her hand.
“Do you have a concession card.”
“I just showed it to you.”
I show her again the cerise rectangle in my
wallet.
“Is that January? Is that January??” Her
voice is loud and carrying.
“Take it out.”
I do so.
“That’s January. It’s out of date. Three
dollars eighty.”
“I don’t have it.”
“It’s three eighty.”
“I don’t have it.”
“It’s out out of date.”
“I don’t have it.” Later, I realize my
tone, flat neutral, is exactly that of a Novacastrian.
There is nothing more to be said or read
into it. It is the bare fact.
“Well, make sure you get the right
concession card. It’s out of date.”
I walk down the bus aisle to the watching
eyes of the bus, people are smiling. In solidarity and enjoyment. The small
triumph.
The bus rolls on.
Adamstown,
Newcastle.
Copyright © Ruth Skilbeck 2015
