Idyllic Beginnings

Mends St, South Perth is one of my favourite places to start the day. I sit at one of four tables nestled in a crescent-shaped terrace, the frontage for some small shops and offices. More than these businesses, the row of plane trees alongside, the snatch of the Swan River ahead, and the trickle of passers-by below make this a place to ease in to the day (with the help of a long macchiato).

(Photo: Christian Heeb)

One recent morning my gentle awakening was startlingly interrupted.

About ten metres from where I was sitting, a curious, almost sinister-looking man walked up the stairs and through the sliding doors in to the cluster of shops behind me.

He wore a white short-sleeved shirt tucked in to navy blue trousers. Hunched shoulders and a pale complexion suggested a working life spent at a desk. His eyes were beady and his nose hooked. Wispy auburn hair formed a front-to-back comb-over and his neck rotated slowly like a periscope, trying to detect anyone alert to his schemes.

A few minutes later, he re-appeared clutching a tattered black satchel, and, periscope still swivelling, descended the stairs and climbed into a beaten-up white ute. He closed the car door and I returned to my musing, two spritely young mothers pushing prams catching my eye.

Then bang! Or, more accurately: screech, bang! The auburn periscope had reversed into a metallic-grey Mercedes Benz. Its tinny alarm pierced the air.

The young mothers and other early-morning walkers froze. At the alfresco café across the road, a sea of gaping mouths turned, like a row of clowns at the Royal Show. Two cyclists at the café and a chef who had been talking with them sprang to their feet and approached the ute, testosterone and a manly call-to-action kicking in. I remained seated.

The ute convulsed out of the parking bay as periscope stomped on the accelerator and the high-pitched whirr of a car doing too many revs filled the air. Periscope changed gears and the ute slid around a corner.

All eyes and hopes turned to the unlikely team of pursuers, who broke into a sprint. The cyclists’ billboard-like shirts and thigh-hugging shorts and the chef’s flowing white apron were unlikely pursuit gear. As they disappeared around the corner, the clippety-clip of the cyclists’ cleats and the thud of the chef’s workboots on the pavement mixed with the whining of the ute.

A handful of eager onlookers scampered around the corner after them. The rest of the street waited, on edge like the crowd in the dying minutes of a cliffhanger football match. My heart was galloping.

Ten minutes later the three pursuers re-emerged, panting, sweating, and looking dejected – the periscope had gotten away.

They needn’t have been dejected, for approving looks and a friendly murmur signalled their status as heroes – to be talked about by local shopkeepers and office-workers for the day ahead. Two young boys left their mother’s side and rushed to the cyclists, apparently deeming their valour worthy of autographs.

Gradually, the murmur subsided as people returned to their morning papers and hushed speculation.

For the rest of the day and some of the week that followed, I pictured periscope in his ute sliding around the streets of South Perth. To me, he will always be a man on the run. And, almost three weeks later, one question still plagues me: what was in the black satchel?