|
Janet Charmanonline works |
|
televisioner i. the foyer of the Manchester Unity building now demolished led in high gloom to a heavy doored theatre where the scrutineers attended every Saturday to watch the Lotto draw but no news staff entered there they strode direct to the lift or for fitness tramped the stair to the first floor where all drama was addressed in the cold light of fact or infotainment ii. once on my way to work i paid eighty-five dollars in the Salvation Army shop across the road for an ex-Tourist Hotel Corporation dressing table you could tell it came from them by the chalking on the ply back i carried it carcass first and in three more trips for the drawers- across the barn-dance crossing assembled my little bit of the asset strip in a shadowed foyer corner to await the finish of my shift and phoned to get my mate to hitch the trailer up to haul it home intending it become the kitchen bench but at knock off had to wrest it from an editor who deemed it unwanted and would have helped it walk iii. one Sunday someone no-one famous went for a run and left their briefcase propped against the building’s open door which swung to so the next one in thought they’d found a leather bag planted in the foyer and raised the alarm then a tall plainly fit handsome middle aged intelligence officer came from the naval base and linked a chain to the case handle wrapped the other end around the bull bars on his jeep and reversing jerked the thing out of the building into the street which they’d closed to traffic and blew it up with a smoke crack demolishing the absent owner’s sandwiches this precaution taken because of the Trades Hall bombing -unsolved at time of writing- in which the caretaker perished and all of us the staff evacuated were stood in pale sunshine watching when the runner returned and inquired what was happening that night they put it on the news as an item there is a public duty to inform -it was a light bulletin but the briefcase owner’s name was not revealed and i’ve forgotten it but not how he looked iv. another day unusual bleeding started and i rang the chief receptionist at her after hours number and told her why i was night switching the phones took a taxi home to lie perfectly still in bed to no avail and whoever heard next week-end no-one said a word for which i still thank them apart from one woman quite high up and good at her job who came and found me at the switchboard and said me you could have told i would have understood but later when i was carrying i used to put the phones on night switch and go and vomit often -a good sign my doctor said- in the convenient bathroom off the stair well until i was shocked out of it one shift when i went in there and found a grey heron oblivious to its reflection at attention on the vanity it had the pebbly stare of Walt Whitman on the cover of my pulp copy of Leaves of Grass the volunteer for Bird Rescue who worked in tapes had brought the creature in as it was in a critically debilitated condition and her husband had dug in his toes over the hourly feedings of chopped fish stimulated down its gullet at that time a lawyer i knew worked for Inland Revenue and told me she had recommended Bird Rescue be denied charitable status because biblically speaking -which was the legal precedent- only species with souls can enjoy tax concessions those Bird Rescue women often find they have to give up everything v. another operator had the shift that dovetailed with mine most times i’d come in from the dark corridor to the light and find her holding court one day i thought sister what you have got that i haven’t is a narrow waist although you aren’t as cute as the new face on The Business Report but then she didn’t have to be because she was not on camera now it happened that one evening Robert Creeley poet gave a reading of his writing and the new face of The Business Report was spotted by The Herald in the crush and tipped their readers off poetry for Lorne Street fashionistas Café Alba’s liquid lawyers literati broker rush but late last night when it was hot to sleep i switched on BBC TV and there she was the new face reading news in daylight on the other side of the world looking not a whit older -unlike me although both of us are in the next millennium less happily i also recalled the time she introduced her crew -who just for once were crowded round my desk- to a stoutly cut suit we assumed was her boyfriend and i close by was not included in the introduction she didn’t see me i was a mechanical adjunct to the switchboard and how silly tonight to feel this slight as she speaks to me by satellite vi. next thing wear was coming into fashion so one journalist sewed leather patches on her jacket then someone laughed and pointed out she’d placed them far too far above the elbow not to the point at all and the elbowed one thought get these suede cuts off hacking jacket not my own skin under this is burning and never wore that garment in the office again but the argument i had with her which made her ever after somewhat disdain me -i thought- was to say a tortured woman is porn and that they never show but to expose a tortured man reveals a crime perhaps i was wrong i don’t want to know vii. during The Springbok Tour demonstrations because i had to get to work in time to do the phones i could leave all the action before any arrestable offence was asked of me which was a huge relief the crews of course stayed out there till deadline and returned crumpled ill at ease exhausted to cut their items all parties sitting down after the day’s fracas to see if it came across my father who found rugby a bore got himself a ticket to the Eden Park match just to prove a point and my mate would drop me off at the protest before he too went to watch oh yes we prided ourselves on our tolerance those times and i thought the officer who called the Hamilton game off knew how weakly angry we had all become how objectively tired we were of it going on and on viii. those were the days of double time and working weekends at the newsroom paid extremely well i could sit there making poems during any lull or niggling at the sports editor to unveil the meaning of sport and one night all the power went out i felt my worry swelling in the dark until the producer came through to ask if i was alright and assured me it wasn’t a political act only some trucker in agony on State Highway One from sticking it to a power substation and the lights came on again ix. i ate the sticky centered scones hot jammed for morning tea and ogled the occasional politician the biggest of them eschewing the couch demanded to be interviewed in a straight back chair because sofas make you look like a pudding and that’s my on camera tip for everyone x. after that woman was cautioned not to use Kia Ora at Telecom i was careful to say it too but people from Te Karere were always embarrassing me wanting to hear ke te pehea quoi? that was more than i could do -i wore a pink triangle to work during The Homosexual Law Reform Bill- but it was on my jacket which hung over the back of my chair news is non partisan- so if you called in you probably didn’t see it xi. then the screens came to the news room and the typewriter was extinguished and when i asked the North American installer if you could play a video clip and compile the script in the same window he was pissed off because that hadn’t been invented yet he was the magician who let us all into the system while we learned yet sooner than you can say receptionist a day came when i’d click on a file i’d been used to read in- embargoed stories internal memos dead e-mails- and find the wall had gone up Berlin Jerusalem in the news room then in the spring the installer married a particularly smart- arsed Kiwi woman someone who’d begun as the news receptionist- and nothing she said frightened him he just carried her off in her brief skirts and svelte pants to a new life as his wife when i took over after her shifts i’d open the desk drawer and find her curiously strong peppermints the vial of Dior parfum she touched to her wrists and short lists xii. in those days blue movies were screened in a council property on Queen and i was vox popped in the street by a Sunday paper photographer who asked if as a rate payer i thought this lease should be renewed i said get out of it those good old boys who want to watch meat flicks should hop the Farmers free bus to the clubs up on Karangahape Road then when i got to work i admitted shamefaced how i’d hurriedly retracted this opinion not for publication when i realised the cinema proprietor fighting for his lease -now deceased so i can say this- was my neighbour over the way and i didn’t want him glowering at me every night as i collected the milk from my letterbox but the couple or three editors and crew who heard me mention it weren’t in agreement thought it rank censorship not to renew the lease they liked to visit the skin flicks and parlours some in every work place i guess live and let live liked to talk about the new girl among themselves and after a hard day drift in for a laplook paying for it as i’d crack open the spine of a novel and inhale the type one young man who employed prostitutes -well that’s what it was- also advised me against bidding at antique auctions on anything upholstered if it’s a Louis Quartorze Chaise it’s still a second hand couch he said textiles depreciate they can never be a reliable investment xiii. week after week some kid would ring anonymously and bleat expletives at us till i said you must be so unhappy son if you’re alone ring Lifeline at this number da da da they’ll listen till the cows come home to everything he never called again xiv. well when they built the new news room they didn’t need a weekend operator on double time to field their calls and so with a new baby squalling in my arms i was let go for years after i’d wake into the darkness of a dream of working late and be in a glass walled building by the harbour the blackest night wrapped round remote city glitter televisioner the switch-board burning up with calls i’d lost the knack to answer xv. the news keep watching you watch it © Janet Charman |
|
Comments
|