From Table Number 9

Brady, we’re told, is a child of great potential. His teachers all acknowledge this and are quick to point out the things he’s good at. Like handing out the lunch boxes at break time. Brady is very good at remembering which lunch box belongs to each child—even though he’s only six. He can be a handful at times, but that’s boys, isn’t it? Lucy’s mum may not appreciate the difference between boys and girls, but Brady’s mum can tell her.

“Boys are made to be outside,” she declares. “It’s wrong to shut them up in a classroom. Girls might be able to cope inside all day, but boys just can’t. At home, Brady plays outside for an hour and then he’s happy inside with his iPad until dinner. That’s what they should do at school. Stagger the inside and outside time.”

Cheryl nods. It’s easiest just to agree with Brady’s mum.

“Lucy tells me the class are doing a play of the Three Little Pigs,” she says. “Brady would make a great big bad wolf.”

“Oh he would!” Brady’s mum says. “The teacher told me he’s been practising the part in the playground for weeks and can be quite ferocious, but … I don’t know. One of the Asian boys will probably be the wolf.”

Every week I sit in this cafe. Brady’s mum is in here regularly, often with Cheryl and some other school parents. Today there are five at their table. I count them off. Brady’s mum (I know her best because she speaks loudly and constantly), Cheryl, Sarah, Riley’s mum and one other in denim shorts and yellow plastic shoes. The topic is a familiar one: after-school activities. Sarah’s daughter, Lily, is learning the piano on Tuesdays. Her teacher is excellent—for girls at least! (Brady had a couple of lessons with her, but it didn’t work out.) Sam, Riley and Lucy have been in swim school together since they were babies. They are only five but can already swim a whole length of the pool. Riley’s mum thinks that parental care can be measured in swimming lesson bills.

“Between the two kids,” she says, “I would’ve spent thousands on swimming lessons, but so many kids drown. It’s neglect not to teach your kids how to swim. I don’t understand it.”

I zone out of the school mums’ discussion. There are others in my cafe. I notice a retired couple having scones and tea. They were here last week as well. In a minute the woman will leave her husband here with his newspaper while she does the shopping. It’s a nice arrangement, probably for them both.

A young family have just walked in. They take the corner table near the toy box. I’ve gotten to know the mother a little over the course of the year. She’s connected with a church in town and her sister’s kids go to school with mine. She comes in every week with her three-year-old and baby and a trolley full of shopping. (The little one would be ten or eleven months now—just starting to walk. I’ve seen them every week since the baby was born.) The husband is with them today. He’s a tradesman and must have had a job on locally. They both look exhausted as they sit there with their coffee and toasted sandwiches. The mother tries to get the toddler to eat a sandwich but she’s only interested in the milkshake.

Over at the centre table, a man in an unironed shirt and a badge is talking in a loud voice with another man. “I’ve been doing this for thirteen years,” he says. “At first, you’re not gunna be fast—we don’t expect it, but you gotta work hard. It’s hard work. Not for everyone. We take you on for a few weeks first and see how you go. If it’s not for you, we tell you. Sometimes you just gotta work a bit longer to get the job done. Some people don’t like that but it’s how it is. I got a good feeling about you, but.”

I can’t read the logo on his badge but eventually work out that he is some kind of cleaning contractor. The other man doesn’t look in a position to turn down a job but I wouldn’t want either of them cleaning my house. Perhaps they contract to businesses.

Two high school girls have just walked in. They are at that age where they clearly care about their appearances (the attention given to hair, makeup and skirt length tell me that) but haven’t yet gained the self-control to say no to the supersized strawberry thickshake or to stop drawing all over their arms in biro. They play at sophistication sitting in this cafe during school hours, toying with their phones and analysing what happened in maths class (not the maths). I like them. There’s something delightful about the leftover childishness of one on the cusp of adulthood. From a distance, anyway.

My cafe is in a small shopping centre in a newer suburb. It serves very ordinary coffee and unimaginative food, but the teapots hold three cups of quite nice tea and there’s a powerpoint next to my table. I come here each week to read and write and think and listen in to the conversations of other people. There’s never a shortage of conversations, for it seems that we humans have an inbuilt need to fill the air with words.

Words.

Today in this cafe, millions of them have been spilt. They are about communication, information, entertainment but they are so much more than that.

The school mums’ conversation, in its familiarity and monotony, couldn’t possibly be stimulating to the women (even the gossip they share is dull), yet it clearly serves some purpose since they are in here every week. Perhaps chattering mutes the soundtrack of discontent in Riley’s mum’s head. Maybe for Sarah, the familiar content is a comfortable chair in which she can rest between school drop-off and pick-up. Perhaps Brady’s mum, with her life so enmeshed with Brady’s, can’t help but talk about him—in much the same way as the high school girls need to rave to each other about their latest infatuations.

If the cleaning contractor had only been here for business, he could have wrapped up the interview in twenty minutes. But he wanted to talk—and there’s no more captive an audience than someone needing a job.

The only people without much to say are the marrieds. There’s the retired couple with the husband reading the newspaper—their conversation is minimal—and the exhausted couple with the little kids. She asks what time he expects to be home that night and he asks which day next week her mother is arriving. In both cases, the conversation is limited—perhaps because the older couple have run out of things to say to each other and the younger couple have run out of energy to say it.

Nevertheless, there’s a harmony in both relationships. The older couple are long-time partners in life and the young couple, for now, are partners in survival. The older woman asks if sausages will do for dinner, then leaves to do the shopping. The younger woman thanks her husband for coming. He kisses her and the girls and returns to work.

Of all the people in my cafe, I’m the only one here by myself. Perhaps some think my solitariness strange, but I revel in it. Alone? No. My thoughts are my company, my tea is my friend and the lives around me are the book that I read. And you, reader, are the recipient of my conversation.