I just feel so ruddy fortunate to have a decent academic education. It obliges me to be of service in the world, even as I benefit from the knowledge of people whose education differs from mine. I went off to Berlin for two years, leaving my old farm ute parked in the street. When I got back it was high summer in Queensland and we drove down to the local watering hole to cool our feet. On the way back down the main road my driver’s side mirror simply flew off, and smashed at the roadside, the solid steel stalk that upheld it having rusted through to nix. And then the gears started complaining. It took us several goes to get up a medium-gradient hill – we creaked up slowly until a handy side street appeared, backed into that to get another run-up and take another bite at it. Traffic accumulated at my tail like well-wishers to a visiting dignitary, only lack in all dignity and free from well-wishing. Finally I took the thing groaning and spluttering dust into a local mechanic, a Laotian named Vince who took one look at the aged machine and said, I can’t handle this one. We will need to call in Sid.
Sid. What a guy. He is eighty, round and floury in his cement-dusted blue overalls, the fabric worn so thin it looks all snuggly and soft as down. He resembled in his courtesy that actor on Are You Being Served? who held his fingers to his lip when considering colour and girth – John Inman. He took my car to pieces very patiently and when, days later, they finally called me in he had assembled a teaching platform of worn-out sprockets and rusted-through parts in order to show me for sure and definite that (a) they weren’t cheating me and (b) I needed to change my ways. He left behind (without reluctance, I think) the fussy paint job his wife had set him out at Redland Bay and toiled all the way into the city by bus, an hour and a half’s early morning journey, so that he could take me on a long explanatory test drive and coach me – with a tact and delicacy I didn’t deserve – in the right way to care for my new shiny gearbox, the best way to use my foot on the clutch, basic things.
Today I realised that arghkh, the rego runs out at the end of June. And that the end of June is on Monday. And it’s still registered in Victoria, meaning it will have to go over the pits and be checked out. I rang Vince. “Sure,” he said, sounding so beautifully unalarmed, the television sqwarking in the background. Last time I was in there he showed me the framed photograph of his father, who always told him he could have his own business. An hour later Sid rang me back. “We can do it, luv,” he told me, “but you might have to get in here pretty early. Vince is gunna ring his mate for you, that does the roadworthies.” He asked had we been enjoying the vehicle, had we been out of town, off the road. I asked had he finished his work in the kitchen. He told me what was on his mind: seven months ago he got $40,000 worth of hail damage to his motor home. “And the insurance people are kicking up a fuss.” I said, “They’re not bad, are they. Do anything not to pay out!” He said, “I had to get the ombudsman onto them. Now I’ve just gotta write them a letter, only I’m not much of a one for letter-writing, I’m just no good at English, I’m struggling with it a bit.”
I said, Sid, would you like me to look it over for you? Because I am good at English, and letter-writing. Send it on to me if you like, I’d be happy to. His gratitude was so overpowering I felt shamed. I cannot understand engines, motors, mechanics. I look at those devices and my brain glazes over like a river in winter. I can feel the synapses cracking, it hurts, it makes me feel stupid inside. Sid parsed my rotten old engine like a chef diagnosing the herbs in a beautiful soup. But he’s no good at letters. And I rely on engines all day, in my computer, my car, on the bus, in the train. And he rides English as his only tongue, feeling no mastery of it and no ownership. How can we respect each others’ gifts better and expertise?
