The Caretaker.

Lady taking tea.. Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin..1735.

The Caretaker.

A play of one set, one act.

Characters:

Jean Clements…School Principle of the Hudson Street Primary school.

Her Husband unseen upstairs.

Scene : Suburban home kitchen, clean, minimalist and empty.

Opening scene; Enter Jean coming from work in an agitated manner..tosses car keys on kitchen table and plops handbags likewise…she brushes back a fallen lock of hair in an agitated manner…she then goes to kitchen bench to examine contents of shopping bag left there. She makes a sigh of disappointment as she looks at one of the tins there, reading the nutritional ingredients. She calls out loud to her husband upstairs..

Jean ; “ Why oh why did you buy this brand of canned fruit?..didn’t you read the nutritional values on the label? If you had, you would have seen that the carbohydrates per hundred grams were by far too many for one in my condition. ( She presses on ) IF you had taken time to read the label!…Heaven’s knows it is not a difficult thing to do…(She insists) and heaven’s knows how many times I have been there with you as I purchased the product!…AND haven’t I showed you as much?…anyone would think you do it just to vex me…and on this of all days when I’ve had nothing but trouble at the school.” ( She again reads the label of the offending item, she then reaches to place this item to the back of an upper cupboard with other offending items).

Jean : “ God only knows how difficult it is to deal with the everyday conflicts between those tenatious little terrors and their fussing mothers on any given day…really…the way some of those mothers fuss..you’d think their offspring were forged from a queens diamond tiara rather than some random spray of semen after a night on the Pimm’s Number One and lemonade!…Makes one dammed thankful I never had the enthusiasm toward childbearing or children in general…Being Principle is an act of professionalism, NOT a maternal instinct to guide one’s career!”

(She goes to the fridge and lifts a slip of paper under a fridge magnet)..”Did you see this list of jobs I put on the fridge? (she calls upstairs to her husband) The tap over the bath keeps dripping and drives me to distraction when I am trying to do my make-up.. and for heaven’s sake..can you PLEASE do something about the shade-cloth over the rose garden before it completely blows away and that “Blue Moon” gets thrashed by the damn flapping thing!”

( Jean fills and places the kettle in its cradle and prepares her afternoon cup of tea…she extracts a shortbread biscuit from a container and places it on the rim of the saucer..she gives the biscuit an affectionate and comforting peck of a kiss as she places it there. When the kettle boils, she pours the cuppa and takes it to the table.)

Jean : “ That caretaker at the school, Martin, pulled a whammy today..caused an awful fracas with one of the prep’ teachers…Pammy Shorren..the prep’ teacher who is married to the footballer chap..You

‘ve heard me mention Martin before, I’m sure..can’t be far off retirement himself..usually a witty, congenial fellow…good with the kids..you know, he sometimes gives these impromptu little stories to a gathering of kiddies when the come to the door of his janitor storage room to ask him silly things..like..oh..what is this thing for..or why is water wet?..those sort of things..and he’s never short of an interesting yarn to spin to their imaginations..sometimes so ridiculous that you just have to smile..and he’d catch me lurking there and he’d give me a wink as he finished and shoo’d the kids away or he’ll never get any work done…”

(Jean clears her handbag and an assortment of school files from the table..she then sits down with the cup of tea in front of her..)

Jean : “Ahh!..one peaceful moment in an otherwise troubled day ! ( she sighs deeply..she places a sweetner tablet into the cup and stirs, making a point to chime the spoon on the side of the porcelain teacup as she does so..she cocks her ear to listen to the sound as it resonates throughout the stillness of the room..she then ponders aloud on the day’s events.)

Jean : “Yes…a real whammy..that’s what it was..Pammy came to my office in a tizz accusing Martin of making a suggestion toward her that she found disgusting…especially from one as old as himself…I had to sit back in shock at her accusation..for I had never heard Martin even make ANY double entendres of any sort to ANY of the female teachers…being aware as he has informed me of his sensibilities toward the “placid nature of the feminine gender of the species”…He has a way with words..and I have always held him to that knowledge…as I have to all the staff…one cannot let the least infringement go unanswered lest the whole situation get away from one…not in the least.”

“By the way..What did the mechanic say about that grating noise as you put the brakes on in the four-wheel drive?..Is he going to keep it there for another week?…heaven help our chances for that trip down the coast if he does…I have to wonder sometimes if we should’ve taken it to that Greek fellah over in Croyden where we used to get our cars fixed…George was a good mechanic…never pressed for quick payment like they do now..I sometimes wonder if moving to the Eastern Suburbs was a good move..what good is a better post-code if your Range Rover is worse off, I ask?..”

( She picks up a brochure from the day’s post and peruses the items offered..) “Don’t know if we need a garden mulcher just now..hard enough to get anything to just grow let alone to cut things down to feed the blasted machine..” ( she heaves a sigh of weariness and takes a delightful sip from her cup.)

Jean :  “ Anyway, I had to bring Martin into the office to explain himself…but between you and me, if Pammy’s account was anything to go by, he was skating on thin ice…I don’t want to sack the fellow this close to his retirement..but there it goes..if he had done the deed, there could be no other way..

So I dragged him into the office, sat him down and gave him the floor to tell his side of the story..

(During this monologue, Jean sips on her cupps and nibbles on the biscuit.)

“I didn’t “suggest’ anything really” he started….” I thought I made a rather innocuous statement, considering the situation,” he said…well tell me, I replied…Martin shuffled a bit in the chair and said that thinking back on it, it may have seemed like that sort of thing a younger man might use as a pick-up line, “..but I certainly didn’t mean it as such…give it a go!…at my age?..and Pammy’s age!?”…I just raised my eyebrows enough to show him I was getting impatient..He began..” I was there just outside my storeroom with the mop and bucket as one of the little kids had dropped and broke their water bottle there and I was clearing up the mess…the kids had just gone home and I thought I was there alone in the classroom block…but as I was finishing up, I saw Pammy.. Ms Shorren..come out of the end classroom and start walking toward me…She was walking toward me down the corridor past the other three rooms like she was walking down a modelling catwalk..and I have to say that those micro-miniskirts she wears and the black stockings that ascend to..to… where my memory forgets..AND the high heels that went a tap-tapping like some sort of Morse code upon the tiles did create an image in my mind that I should have just let pass by…but as she drew nearer, I leaned on the mop handle and contemplated the scenario..she stopped just away from me and looked at me in silence..and I don’t know what made me think of it, but as I leaned there on the mop handle with this image in front of me, I said ..”You know, Pammy…I’m not a religious man, so I don’t believe in a God….But when I look at you, I sure as hell believe in the devil”…and I swear to heaven that was it!..”

(Jean heaves a sigh of frustration..she continues.)

“You do know that Ms Shorren and her partner are quite the religious couple don’t you?…I told Martin.. Pentecostal..every Sunday without fail…down at the centre, singing to Jesus..Testifying their loyalty..I believe it is she that leaves those religious pamphlets anonymously at the front counter from time to time?…It was the reference to her having association with the devil most offended her…”

The long and short of it was that I would have to give the situation some thought and I sent him home…

To be honest, I did contemplate sacking him and I was needing a bit of time to frame my response..But then a strange thing happened on my way home to change my mind…I was there at Donahue’s  Hardware getting those hose fittings THAT I distinctly remember asking YOU to get and there was Martin walking down the footpath by that line of high school buses that park there..I was getting into the Statesman and there was Martin slouching along looking just a bit careworn..as those older men look..perhaps the burden of the day’s events weighing on his shoulders…and as he walked past this bus, there was a young man…oh around sixteen or seventeen years old, leaning out of the window of the bus calling and whistling to the high school girls…like young men do..”Hey blondie!…What’s your number?..give it to me..”…those sort of things and the girls tittering and giving him the finger…little good it did to dissuade him though…and through this noisy back and forth calling, just as Martin passed, the young fellow leans out the window of the bus, looks to Martin sympathetically and says “ G’day old timer”..in a confederacy sort of way…like two mates from the same background, fighting the same conflict but with one just came off the field of battle while the younger one goes on..; “G’day old timer”, he says….I mean really….men!

And I suddenly had a glimpse into that male world where there are behavioural expectations and rules that define their manner toward women..and it does not change from one generation to the next..a strange world of driven demands upon their own expectations…and I thought ..”I could sack him and bust him and make him regret even thinking what he thinks about women”..but I could never change that male desire within that makes him…and that young man behave…or at least think..the way they do…it is a choice between cause and effect..and really, I have to wonder if it is the male “weakness” in regards to matters feminine that makes us women stronger…Oh the choices one must manage to keep the ship on a steady and even keel…What is it with you men?

So I have decided instead to play the mediator and get Martin to apologise to Pammy, after all he IS a very good caretaker…and to make an edict about the placement of non-education literature in the school and perhaps even make a suggestion for a dress code for teachers and pupils at the school…really, the needs of caretaking in one’s working life demand a continuous review…”

( Jean finishes her cup of tea and calls out to her husband upstairs..” What have you prepared for dinner?…I’m famished!”.