John Tait
Fitzroy, Melbourne
One Saturday evening, 1991

“Nancy, will you sing us a song please?”

I am squeezed in around a long dinner table with fifteen non-matching chairs. Our meal of donated left-over hospital food is coming to a conclusion. Hospital food is not great the first time around. Reheating it does not help. It has been an eventful dinner-time. Our grace before the meal was peppered with swear words. Lilydale Lil kept throwing herself backwards in her seat pretending to have a fit or something to that effect. Auntie Lizzy lost her false teeth. (I found them later buried in a regurgitated ball of mash potato.)

I am one of two men among thirteen women and probably the only sober one at the table. The other male is Ernie. He is virtually mute. His nick-name on the streets is Ernie the Grunt. I am told that before coming here he used to live in a doorway. As a volunteer, I knew I’d been accepted into this mad house for the homeless the day Ernie looked at me and spoke, “Howyagoin’, OK?” Ernie’s one job is to pour the tea.

Nancy, a tiny fragile sparrow, is sitting next to her mate Clara. She mutters something to herself as she tugs at her collar and looks at the ceiling. She never makes eye contact with anyone. She rises while nervously adjusting her wild hair. Someone takes the pepper grinder from the table and places it into her fidgety hands. Nancy gently clears her throat and announces in a cultured voice, “Red Sails In The Sunset.” She holds the grinder delicately between her thumb and forefinger as she raises it to her mouth.

Red sails in the sunset,
way out on the sea
Oh, carry my loved one
home safely to me

 She sailed at the dawning,
all day I’ve been blue
Red sails in the sunset,
I’m trusting in you.

Her singing voice is astounding – soft and pure – the last thing you would expect from this tortured soul. It is a well-trained voice. Her microphone technique is that of a professional. She has done this before. Sometimes when she gets home drunk she forgets the words of a song and seamlessly substitutes something from her own world that fits. “If you were the only girl in the world and I was the only tomato in Fairlea Prison,” is one example that comes to mind. I believe she had several stints in Fairlea Women’s Prison over the years, which is probably where she teamed up with Clara. I can only imagine the mischief those two got up to. It may have been Clara who brought her to us, but no-one seems to remember.

Nancy’s back story is a mystery. Where is she from? Was she ever married? Does she have a family somewhere? What happened to her that put her on the streets? Where did she learn to sing like this? Was she famous once? Word on the streets is that she used to sing on Saturday nights at the Collingwood Town Hall. Does she even know who she is? What do the voices in her head tell her? She is very private, never sharing anything of herself, except her song. Perhaps this is her only way of getting in touch with the person she used to be.

Swift wings you must borrow
Make straight for the shore
We marry tomorrow
And she goes sailing no more

Red sails in the sunset,
way out on the sea
Oh, carry my loved one
home safely to me

 The song is over. Nancy sits down and places the pepper grinder back on the table.

This is Ernie’s cue to grab the industrial sized tea pot and, in one motion, he roughly fills fifteen cups all parked in a row while soaking the table cloth at the same time. Job done.

John Tait comes from a teaching background but for the last 15 years has been in his dream job – running his own record store in Essendon. When things are quiet he writes and collaborates on music related books: Vanda & Young; The Dingoes Lament; Captain Matchbox & Beyond; Tait’s Modern Guide to Record Collecting; and a few in the works! He has also written feature articles, obituaries, liner notes, and some trivia questions for RocKwiz. He has recently developed a short course called The Secrets of Record Collecting.