Chapter 12
To get to my tutoring sessions with Miss Dunn, I walk to the main road and catch a bus.
If you’re over twelve at the Refuge, you get a MyMultil train, bus and ferry pass along with your pocket money. It’s cool that you can go pretty much any place in Sydney, but the rule is that you’re not supposed to go to a certain list of off-limits places, like Kings Cross and Redfern.
There are a couple of people I keep seeing on the bus. One is a dwarf man with dyed purple hair who always has headphones on. Another is an European-looking lady who always carries lots of shopping bags. Today, they’re both on the bus. It’s going to be the same bus ride as always, or so I think, until the woman sitting behind me starts talking.
‘I am not a loose woman!’ she says loudly.
I turn around in my seat and glance at her. She’s older, wearing a daggy sweater, with short hair and a face set in a permanent frown. Her eyes have that million-miles-away look. Not the full quid, Daddy would have said.
‘I said, I am not a loose woman!’ she says, even louder. She’s not talking to anyone on the bus; she’s talking to someone who’s not there. Even so, everybody on the bus, except the dwarf who’s nodding to the music on his headphones, starts finding something else to do. The European lady pulls a letter from her purse and pretends to read it. A uni student pulls a textbook out of his backpack and opens it. Another student turns his head to the window.
‘Please stop casting as-per-sions upon my character!’ the woman says firmly. She has trouble pronouncing ‘aspersions’. Why bother using words you can’t pronounce?
The bus fills up gradually. A noisy group of teenage boys gets on, and their loud talk drowns out the woman who’s not the full quid. They’re also drowning out the dwarf’s music – I see him purse his mouth, look annoyed, and turn up the volume.
‘I do not sleep around,’ I hear the woman mumble, as I pile out of the bus with all the people getting off at the University bus stop.
Miss Dunn has me wait in her office while she takes care of some business upstairs. While I’m waiting, I look up ‘aspersion’ in the dictionary that I find on one of the bookshelves. Slander, calumnious report or remark. In other words, telling lies about someone. I kind of figured that was what it meant.
‘Sorry to keep you, Len,’ Miss Dunn says, coming back into the office. She notices me putting the dictionary back on the shelf. ‘Did you want to borrow one of my books?’
‘I was just looking up a word,’ I explain.
‘Yeah?’ Miss Dunn says. Today she looks tired, with dark circles under her eyes. ‘What word, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Aspersions. As in “casting aspersions upon my character”.’
Miss Dunn laughs a little. ‘Casting aspersions upon my character. How appropriate. There’s certainly plenty of that in the academic world.’ I get the feeling that the meeting that she just had upstairs didn’t go very well. ‘Anyway, let’s get to work.’
After we’ve finished, Miss Dunn apologises for not offering me tea, explaining that she has to finish an article she’s supposed to write. I’m disappointed, but not offended. I’m glad Miss Dunn thinks I’m mature enough that she can speak to me honestly.
Not staying for tea and a chat with Miss Dunn leaves a hole in my afternoon. I decide to walk back to the shelter instead of taking the bus.
Casting aspersions upon my character. The phrase keeps twisting itself around in my mind, annoying me like the whine of a mozzie right next to my ear. Everyone else on the bus has probably forgotten about the woman who was talking to herself. So why do I keep thinking about that peculiar thing she said?
I’m at the top of University Road when it hits me. Casting aspersions upon my character was a line in that Clarissa Hobbs, Attorney at Law episode that aired a few weeks ago.
I’ve just about replayed the whole episode in my head by the time I make it back to the shelter. It pisses me off that the nutcase woman who says embarrassing things out loud on city buses is a Clarissa Hobbs fan, just like me. One of the things I’ve always liked about Clarissa Hobbs is that no one else at the Refuge watches it.
It takes me a whole week to stop being annoyed about that. Fortunately, I never see the woman on the bus again.