Storm in a Teacup

Luky

As a first generation immigrant into South Africa, I had a high regard for the value of a good reputation in my youth. In middle age, however, I discovered for myself that you cannot defend yourself against the malice of a lying tongue.

It was my father who inculcated my strong regard for a good reputation.  Newly matriculated and all of sixteen years old, I was working in a municipal library.  On Wednesdays and Fridays I had the afternoon off and worked from five to eight in the evenings instead.  On those nights I’d have coffee in a café until nine  when the bus left  the terminus.  At the bus stop around the corner from our street, my father would be waiting.  He’d put me on the steel bar of his bike and ride me home.

The colleague with whom I worked evening duty wanted to catch the bus to her suburb, which left at eight exactly.  The terminus adjoining the library, she suggested she leave five minutes earlier, leaving me to lock up with the handyman.  My father objected, and suggested I change partners with someone who owned a car, so that we could leave together.  He didn’t mind if I had coffee in a café in a brightly lit street but wanted me to have a fellow assistant with me in the library until it was locked up. 

With trepidation I informed the colleague concerned of my dad’s comments next morning at teatime.  Despite my yearning to be accepted as part of the team, I had been sensing a deep hostility from the group of older colleagues, as they always seemed to go silent when I entered the staffroom.  I felt that if I stepped out of line in the slightest degree, their dislike for me would come to the surface.  And I was too young and respectful of adults to believe I could handle open animosity.

My fears were well founded.  My colleague went blood red and venomously spluttered: “I’m amazed at the concern of your dad, since he seems to have no problem with your roaming the streets at night.”  Another colleague in her fifties, daggers in her eyes, joined the fray: “That’s right.  You’re a bad girl,” she said.  I gathered the shreds of my dignity around me.  “I’m not,” I stammered.

That night I told my father, that most inoffensive of men.  You could tell him anything in the world.  He never seemed to get shocked or angry the way my mother would. I needed the reassurance of his leavening humour but that time it was not forthcoming.  His eyes steely, he told me to see the boss the next day to ask him to get the colleague to explain her remark.  “The only thing we immigrants possess in this country is our reputation.  Take that away from us and we’re left destitute.”  I always think of those words when I hear the Shakespearean reference to the stealing of a purse.

The funny thing about the anger of a patient man is that it really spurs the recipient on to action, far more than that of one who is always cross anyway.  So the next morning found me in my elderly boss’s office.  After my father he was my favourite man.  Having heard my account of the incident, he called in my colleague, and made me repeat it in front of her. 

When I mentioned the attack on my alleged roaming of the streets, she denied it to my face, no doubt aware that the six people present when she made it would back up her story rather than mine.  The boss took no sides but told us to “kiss and make up”.   When we left the office, she whispered: “I’ll get you back, Miss!  Just you wait and see.  I’m going to tell the librarian you never charge the Dutch immigrants any fines.” 

There she was probably quite right.  Not only I, but she herself and the majority of our mutual colleagues gave those whose books were overdue a hefty reduction when they seemed short of funds.  The book-loving, impecunious-looking blue collar Dutch immigrants of the day with their bikes would certainly have fallen into this category.  (Twenty years later I visited the town again and found that many of them were now driving BMWs.)

While my colleague was still nursing her wounded spirits, our Solomon-like librarian phoned the town clerk and arranged that the five to eight evening bus be rescheduled to take in my suburb as well as my colleague’s and that the departure date be put on ten minutes.  Then we were all happy and there were no repercussions.  Ironically, she and the others and I became firm friends afterwards and we all cried when I left the library three years later.   She used to tell my future from leaves left in my teacup and predict a wonderfully romantic life for me.  Although this looking into the future conflicts with my religious principles, I felt that in this case it marked a fitting end to what amounted to little more than a storm in a teacup.

Looking back today, I no longer agree with my dad that reputation is all-important, for in regarding it so one renders oneself too vulnerable to the malice of one’s detractors.  Though the incident did teach me that it may be healthy for all concerned on occasion to drop the mask and clear the air, I cannot feel that it really matters what people think or say of you, for they usually get the wrong end of the stick anyway.  In the end the only thing that really counts is what God knows of you.

*Photograph taken of spring flowers in beautiful Dublin by Rev. Catherine - please feel free to use photograph copyright free for any educational or spiritual purpose