Keys on the Quay
The wind is always rotten as it passes through this part of the world. The smell of stale chips and fried fish wafts its way amongst the bustling crowds of businessmen heading to the ferries. Flocks of birds; scurry to find some morsel of food to keep them alive or to take back to their families. Sometimes I feel that the seagulls and the businessmen are not so different. The men certainly drew the short straw. They may be wealthier but what does that count for when you can’t fly?
Each morning I shuffle down the quay with my milk crate and an expensive accordion case which is now starting to fray at the corners like the foot holes of my jean legs, revealing the cheap fibreboard skeleton. The souls of my shoes are wearing so thin now that every step is a gamble on whether or not I’ll have a blow-out. It’s not too far to the harbour from my place, and I like the thrill. It’s a pretty turgent existence otherwise. I’m not sure if I know anybody that works as hard as I do, at least not as hard as I think I do. I give myself three days off a year, and if the New South Wales Blues lose the first two games, I have two days off a year. I don’t leave my spot on the quay until there is enough in my hat for a hot meal, rent and food for my gob-shite Jack Russell. So, every day I sit my crate down on the corner, unclip my tattered old case and sling my father’s old accordion around my shoulders. The salt air has jammed up a bunch of the keys, so my repertoire diminishes with every day spent in the sea breeze. I sit, and I wonder at everyone passing me. Their stories, their secrets. Every one of them has a different tale in my head.
For instance, the long-lost sailor, returning home to his family. He throws down his bags and wraps his young boy up in his arms. His pressed suit crimples as the boy wraps his legs as far around his father’s waist as he can manage, but what of his wife? She stands off the side of the scene, watching on with an unconvincing smile. She has a secret. Is she really a bad person? She holds her left hand under her right arm-pit to hide the bitter truth. She lost her wedding ring on a night she had taken another lover, problem being, she cannot recall which lover. With son in arm, the found sailor gives his wife a peck on the lips, picks up his cases and all three head off towards the street.
Just a peck. Would such a long time, alone while her husband is at sea, not warrant something more than a pathetic peck? But of course, he knows. How could he not? He’s been gone for so many months, how could he expect her to stay faithful. They were fighting before he journeyed off to the great unknown, she probably took three men into his bed in the week he left. For now, he would act the part of loving husband. In public and in front of their son, he would act the part. When they get home however, well, in all truth he’ll probably sit down to a nice dinner with his beautiful wife as he does every night when he gets home from Manly. Then, in the morning, he’ll pop two-dollars and thirty-two cents into my hat as he boards the ferry back to his desk job. It’s not so exotic, but life rarely is.
“Evening, Archie,” Old Thomas calls out to me as he hobbles across the planks with his walking stick and S-shaped spine. Accoutred in his tartan, collared shirt, a tether to his past. So much of his home has been lost to him in the time spent running from the devastation of Glasgow. The cuts on his knuckles still show from the three AM bar fights and the famine still haunts his frame. Shallow and sunken, his face is genuine, but when he smiles I see the pain.
“Alright, Tom,” I call back, before I can bite my tongue “How’s the shop?”
“Slow, slow,” Why did I ask? “Usually it’s Christmas that I’m my busiest,” he replies, “Lolly always gets my toys for the grandkids. ‘Nothing’s ever as good if it’s not hand-made’, she says,” Tom could talk underwater with a mouth full of bees. “Oh but did you hear?”
“Hear what Tom?”
“Oh, it’s not good. No, not good at all.” He trembled on his cane and stroked his beardless, creased face. He reminds me of Michael Finnegan. The winds blowing his whiskers in again. “They don’t know what’s got to her”
“no?”, I asked, nodding to the gentleman putting a two dollar note in my hat.
Sitting on the quay playing for as long as I’ve been, is not without its merits. I’ve come to learn what people like and what they don’t like. For instance, if I play Linger Awhile by Paul Whiteman, Old Thomas will tell me all about how he heard that song upon his landing in Sydney in 1924, and how it was the day that Balmain beat the Rabbitohs 5-3. Whereas, I take my accordion and play The Road to Dundee and Tom sways in a trance, transported back to slums where he fought for his supper and laid waste to any tom-foolery towards his missus in the pub on Thursday nights.
I don’t think Tom’s ever been to Scotland but the way that song makes him feel tells me that maybe he had in a past-life. He gives me a wave and off he slowly goes. Up towards the Opera House. Not really sure why. Tom lives by The Rocks. I don’t think I want to come up with a reason either. A man needs some mystery in his life.
Every day is the same routine, except for Thursdays. Thursdays I bring Macca with me. He attracts quite a lot of attention, but I hate the exploitation of animals, so I’ve limited his stage time to one day a week. He chases the seagulls and businessmen up and down the quay while I steady my milk crate and lay down my hat and then I whistled for him to sit by my feet. I began to play, and he walked in a circle, trying to lay out a comfortable position for his bed to lay in.
A gentleman passed me and dropped four dollars into my hat. “Generous lot today, aren’t they?” I say to Macca who has long since drifted off to sleep.
“Hi,”
I hear a soft, sweet voice dance through the air and into my ears.
“Does he bite?”
I gathered my senses and saw her, crouched down over the little Jack Russell who is taking the opportunity to be touched by such beauty for granted.
“Only me,” I joke. She smiled.
“Had a long day out here, have you? Would you like something to eat?” she asked as I started playing once again.
“Fine thanks, brought lunch from home.”
She laughed and looked up at me with huge, brown eyes. They were like something big and brown and shiny and they did whatever a big, brown, shiny thing would do, only better. She’d turned my brain to mush, I’m never one to stumble on a simile.
“I was actually asking your furry friend here.”
“Oh,” I say as my cheeks flush bright red, like a fire-engine.
“You don’t look as though you live on the street,” she said as she stood and looked me up and down, “Shoes could have fooled me though.” One of my big toes was now poking out of the top of my left shoe.
“Pick a tune,” I say as I gesture my accordion to her.
“I’m sorry, I’m in a bit of a hurry,” She replies as she readjusts her satchel onto her shoulder.
“Not a problem then, enjoy your day.” I know her type. Snobby, precious. Never worked a day in her life, I’ll bet. ‘Daddy, can I have this?’, ‘Mummy, can I have that?’. Never a moment for blokes like me. I start my set back up and watch her through scornful eyes as she turns her back on me and walks along the quay. Most likely off to some fancy hotel on the rocks, under the Harbour Bridge, with her hotshot boy toy, or many. My mind snowballed further as I watched her drop her satchel onto the ground and sit beside it. I played slower. She pulled something wrapped up in a hankie, out of her satchel and hugged it. I watched as she unravelled it like it was a priceless gem or ruby. It probably was. That rich wanker. But why was she sitting down?
It was a harmonica. Brass and timber, nothing fancy, or shiny. She laid out her satchel and pushed it out in front of her and put the tiny instrument to her lips. The sorrow that cascaded from the pipes made me stop playing, altogether. Macca pricked his ears up and watched on with just as much awe as myself.
The gentle breeze of the quay caressed her scalp as it drifted through her thick, scraggly locks. The water danced along the wharf side, behind her as she swayed to the sounds of her tantalising melody. I found myself swaying along too, inhaling the crisp, stale sea air.
“Hey,” Someone yelled out and shook me from my trance. It was the girl and she was waving me over.
“Me?” I asked as my cheeks flushed bright red again.
“Know any Paul Whiteman?” I looked over her shoulder and there was Tom, standing with his fists clenched in front of him and jittering. “I don’t eat tonight if the people don’t get what they want,” she laughed. I got her all wrong. I picked up my crate and gave it to her.
“Here, I’ll stand for Whiteman any day.” She smiled and hoisted herself up onto her throne, where she belonged. Tom could hardly contain his excitement.
I began to play, and she began to follow along, only she didn’t follow, she was doing her own, groovy thing while old Tom danced like Balmain had just won again.
“Sorry for before,” I said as we played, and the crowd started to gather around Tom.
“For?” she replied, puzzled.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “There’s a little place just down from Pitt Street. It’s cheap and it’s right under my apartment.” She looked up at me with a mouth full of harmonica, though I could tell she’s smiling. “It’s not much but there’s a couch.” Her eyes reflected the orange sun as it dipped behind the silhouette of Luna Park as the crowd began to swell around us and the youthfully twisting Tom. I broke my gaze and stared around and the people, “You won’t go hungry tonight.”
