‘Lookin’ forward to your cup of coffee, Ed?’
‘No money, Harry.’
‘Don’t need any, mate. No worries. I know ’em all down there. Milk and three for you, I seem to remember?’
Ed nods. Or at least I assume he does. I can’t actually see either of them because I’m standing—or, more precisely, strap-hanging—with my back to them on a packed Melbourne tram. Turning 180 degrees will discombobulate too many other travellers. But Harry’s voice is distinctive, penetrating. It seems to rumble the length of the tram. Its rich, gravelly timbre is the decades-long work of truckloads of tobacco and vast quantities of alcohol ranging, no doubt, from the infamous White Lady (milk and meths), various brown paper-bagged ports, and other fortifications to—in good times—conventional pots of beer.
The tram rolls on. With a precision that is the gift and glory of experienced Melbourne tram drivers, our man expertly misses several green lights, closes last-minute doors on desperate, late-arriving fingers, and clangs the bell at random intervals unrelated to the state of the traffic. Students battle their way on board at each stop, and everyone sways and braces as the driver engineers, for no apparent reason, occasional muscle-wrenching lurches—another indispensable skill from the Melbourne tram drivers’ manual.
‘Lotsa university students use this tram, of course, Ed.’
‘Uni-vers-it-y stu-dents,’ Ed says. It’s Monday morning and maybe Ed needs to treat words like explosives, any one of which might blow off the top of his aching head.
‘What I find,’ says Harry to no-one in particular, ‘is I get watery eyes in the morning. Could be the drinkin’, of course. I dunno. I’m seein’ the quack about it next time at the clinic.’
The tram grinds up to the university stop, and waves of students clatter into the roadway with a tintinnabulation of mobile phones. Released from the imprisoning cocoon of bodies, bags and bumping hips, I can now get a look at Harry and Ed.
‘I’m sixty-two this year, y’know, Ed. Sixty bloody two,’ says Harry. He’s a big bloke, blankly smiling, exuding unfocused affability from a ravaged face. Wispy remains of hair sprout from either side of his head in grey tufts. He has a four- or five-day gingery-grey stubble. His gnarled hands are covered in liver-coloured spots. All in all, he looks an unhealthy eighty.
As for Ed, he sits in a sort of catatonic state, nodding every now and then as Harry rattles on about this and that.