Another excursion into shared memory… a house and an invitation to ‘ring here on the Red Phone’……

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IT WAS ANOTHER of those late night online conversations that spanned the distance between Launceston and Sydney. This time, though, it was Yvonne who had forgotten the incident. But, just as her recollection revived my memory of the package in the room and the exploding fuel drum, this time it was my recollection that revived in her memory the incident of… the Red Phone.

Not with a splash but with a gurgle

It was late afternoon on, I surmise, a Saturday or Sunday, and near the front door stood one of those public telephones that were then commonly found outside small businesses throughout the city. It was a big, bright, red coloured plastic thing atop a square pedestal of white metal panels bearing the message — ‘Ring Here on the Red Phone’.

But no one would be calling on that phone again. It had been prised open and someone had extracted the coins it once held.

I recall that there was someone there at the time and they asked us to get rid of the thing. Being obliging people, we complied.

We could light a fire in the backyard, Yvonne reasoned… what easier way to get rid of a Red Phone that by melting the thing?

But why? After all, the building had been all but abandoned after the femmes had gone through their split-and-barricade tantrum, and whoever had broken into the phone and pilfered whatever miniscule riches it contained was long gone. What was the point of further injuring the device?

Who knows? The decision was taken without thinking and into the fire it went.

A blaze less than successful

The blaze succeeded in scorching it a little but it failed to do much else. Some other means of disposal was clearly called for. Here, Yvonne  starts to recall the incident…

“After some time, the charred remains of the phone were fished out of the fire and I took its identification number off.”

I can imagine how it looked, Yvonne ’s probably criminal prising off of the machine’s blackened identification number. There we were in the backyard and there was this diminutive but determined young woman, dark hair flopping in front of her face, screwdriver of whatever in hand, muttering imprecations while doggedly bashing and levering off a recalcitrant piece of metal for no good reason at all.

“I kept this small metal plate for a long time and I think if I look through my boxes of stored papers I may even find it again, now,” she said.

“Here were you and I, with the debris of a minor crime. So we did the only sensible thing possible, we decided to get rid of the evidence”, she recalled.

“Loading it into the boot of your Mini, we knocked in one of the side panels of the stand and put the charred phone into the metal box. Then we drove around a bit, waiting for dusk, when we stopped down at a wharf.”

Here our memories diverge. Yvonne  says we were at “the very end of Glebe Point Road…. where Jubilee Park stretches along the foreshore and the dank waters of Rozelle Bay promised to hide our burden.” But I recall us sitting in the Mini, waiting for darkness by the park at Balmain Wharf. Of that I am certain.

In the gathering gloom of evening, a gurgle

We sat quietly in the gathering gloom of evening. To our left a narrow path led along the waterfront, a stone wall separating the dark waters of the harbour from the small, grassy patch of park. Thankfully, trees obscured the view from the nearest houses. In front of us the Balmain ferry wharf was deserted and there was nobody on the street.

The park had taken on that grey, deserted aspect that sets in with early evening. It was that time at day’s end when lights go on… a good time for the disposal of evidence. We sat for some time, waiting for the right moment. We wouldn’t move until darkness had fully set in and we were sure that there was nobody about.

Now it was time. I open the boot and we haul out the blackened, charred device – Yvonne at one end, me at the other. A last look around… ok, nobody about… let’s go… quickly now, over to the wharf… ready? Lift the thing onto the railing… now… shove…

SPLASH! Surprisingly loud, certainly loud enough to attract the attention of anyone we hadn’t seen.

“But… oh, horror… it floats!”, exclaimed Yvonne.

“Into the lapping waves we shoved the thing”, she recalled, “… expecting a quiet splash and a quick disappearing act, but instead it sat high upon the water like a lopsided Titanic”.

We had thought that its weight would carry it quickly to the bottom. But here it was, gently bobbing on the surface. What to do?

But, just then, a gurgling noise… a tilting… and, in the darkness of early evening we watched it slide into the grey depths.

“The phone inside shifted”, explained Yvonne , “and one end of the metal stand dipped sharply downwards. The last we saw of it were the words “Ring here on the Red Phone” slowly disappearing into the dark, oily waters.”

Our job done, we wandered nonchalantly back to the Mini, casually got in, started the motor, did a U-turn and drove up that long, steep hill that takes you to the Balmain shops.

Behind us, in the grey waters, the final bubbles rose unnoticed to the surface from a now-invisible and badly burned red phone.

One day, perhaps, a dredge will bring it to the surface, but until then it, like us, is undergoing its own sea change.