Spirit of Progress (16 page)

I
t is, George knows, one of those moments. Moments that do not come along, he suspects, all that often in life but which may very well determine how that life will be lived. It is the first time such a moment has come into George’s life, but he recognises it immediately. Which is why he’s come to this park, the Kings Domain, on the other side of the railway lines, next to the river, where the sad, transplanted palms struggle against the cold and the windblown soot from the engines. Away from the hammering of typewriters and the cigarette smoke and the talk.

The course of his life had always seemed simple. Now this. And it’s not the voice of the writer in George to which he is listening at the moment but the voice of the journalist who stands on footpaths, the crowd all around him clutching the newspapers that he has helped write, feeling not just the power of words but the freshness of them, written at midday and in the hands of readers by
five. This voice is telling him, and it’s news to George, that he would miss it, more than he knows, if he lost it. And he is suddenly reminded of the wet, shining paint on Sam’s portrait of the old woman and her tent, the painting fresh, not yet dried, the old woman still stomping forward, determined on striding right off the composition itself and looking as though she just might. No sooner painted than viewed. No sooner written than read. He likes that. Everything still as new and exciting to the painter and the writer as it is to the viewer and the reader. And the thrill of standing in the midst of the newspaper’s readers, feeling not just the crowd flowing all around him but that current of communication that newspapers generate, conversations between people who have never met and, in all likelihood will never meet, but who, nonetheless, know one another or feel as though they do.

It is, at this important moment,
this
voice that George is listening to. It is the sensations of this George, who stands on footpaths, who sits in trains and trams, or just leans on lamp-posts at street corners reading his newspaper, that he is registering. And as much as he might have sat at the feet of Mr Hemingway and Mr Fitzgerald, he does not feel, when sitting at his writing desk at home, close to Heaven at midnight (as, indeed, a character from Mr Fitzgerald does), writing the stories no one has yet read and may never be read. Rather, when he thinks of that current of newspaper communication he feels close to Life.

And so, thinking over the editor’s offer, he does not, as he suspected he might, feel the deadening weight of
comfort or the locked door of security. Nor does he feel himself being (as those friends at university who called themselves Marxists might have phrased it) dragged into the world of bourgeois conformity, at the expense of the writer. He feels none of this. Instead he feels a kind of calling. For what he feels is not the lure of Heaven but of Life. And this is the importance of this moment, for he knows it calls upon him to choose between Heaven and Earth. And he may already have decided. For what he is realising is that it is not, as he always thought, the solitary world of the story-teller at his desk that calls — but the hammering of typewriters, the smoke, the noise and the daily production of the words that make up the continuing conversation that goes on every day, all around him, on the footpaths and trams and in the trains of the city. Before he even rises from his bench in this sodden park with its suffocated palms (and he wonders if he would simply be like a transplanted palm too, should he leave the country like everyone else), George knows he has made his decision. The moment has come to him, a decision has been made, and the course of a lifetime has been determined. Of this much, at least, he is certain.

George will become, in fact (and he has no inkling of this at the moment, on his bench, in the cold park, wrapped in his gabardine coat), one of the most famous newspaper editors in the country. His face will lose its youthfulness as faces do. And, in time, it will become a wise face. Even a worn one. Craggy. A face that readers will trust. He will rise to become the editor (sit in the same chair as the current editor, who spoke to George only an
hour ago) of the newspaper he has been with for less than a year. But this will not happen until the distant days of the 1960s: when his friend Sam is famous throughout the painting world, when the old lady who lives in a tent has long since died, when Skinner has, indeed, taken his name to the grave, and all that open country and farmland has been transformed into a suburb with all the suburban noises of children, cars and Webster’s factory. George will die suddenly in the mid-1970s (leaving behind a wife and a daughter, and a leafy house in a bourgeois suburb), in the basement of the newspaper offices — and he can have no inkling of this either on this sodden, mid-winter morning — watching the printing presses, and thrilling, as he will each and every day of his working life, to the production of the words that will make up the continuing conversation between strangers familiar with one another.

His decision made (and happily so), his moment met, George rises from the park bench and makes his way back, a lingering part of him wondering if he will ever know if the Place de la Concorde (as viewed by the solitary writer from the back seat of a taxi) really does glide by in pink majesty. And the George who rises from the bench, with that last lingering thought, suddenly feels older than the George who sat down just a short while before.

R
ita is staring down into the kitchen sink. This spot, this room. This is where she spends most of her days and nights. It is the centre of things — of the activities of the morning, afternoon and evening. The table, the stove and the kitchen sink.

The stories of whole days of effort and labour are written into these plates as they pass from one side of the kitchen sink smeared with the remains of meals, pass through the water, and emerge on the other, clean and shiny and ready for the whole process to begin again, and again, and again. And, depending on the day and the mood, this can be either an uplifting thought or a depressing one. For it never ceases, the whole process: from the icebox (for, like most houses, this one does not possess a refrigerator; that will come later), from the cupboards and the pantry, to the chopping board, oven, table and back to the kitchen sink for the story of one day to be wiped clean in preparation for another to begin.

And here, right here where she is standing, is the still point around which it all turns. Where the stories of the day come to be wiped clean in readiness for new stories. For Rita can look at frying pans, layered with tales and memories, and saucepans and the pressure cooker (the one in which the stews and soups are prepared that last for days and which get better with time), and read them as you might a book. She can look at all these things, these implements, these tools of the trade, and she can calculate when they came into the house, how long they have been part of their lives and the dinners that have been cooked on them. The nights, good or bad, or neither good nor bad, but just nights. And suddenly this room is humming, rattling with memories, stacked one upon the other, memories that are all little stories. Stories that, sometimes, she is happy to wipe clean from the plate as she would from her memory, if she could. And others that carry the left-overs of contentment, even happiness. It all passes through here.

She wonders if anybody else thinks of this place, the kitchen sink and everything around it, in quite the same way. For it wasn’t until recently when a neighbour dropped by, looked around and complimented Rita on the nature of the kitchen, that she did. A kitchen, her neighbour remarked with gravity, is the window onto the house. You don’t see the rest of the house unless you’re invited into it, but the kitchen is where most of the house’s days and evenings are spent, and the nature of the kitchen tells you a lot about the nature of the house.

She left Rita with that thought, and a nod, and the thought lingered as some thoughts do. And from that
point on, Rita started to think of this place differently. As the centre of the house, through which stories come and go. A stage. To most people though, it’s just the kitchen. No grand stories here. You sit, you eat, you rise and you go. A place where the small talk of the day is exchanged. Nothing more. But following this line of thought, walking from the sink to the table to take the weight off her feet, she tells herself that there’s no reason that the talk should be thought of as small, and the stories as being so little, so insignificant, that they’re not really worth remembering, let alone recording.

How many times has this room been witness to words that couldn’t wait to be spoken, and words that wish they never had been? The place to which aunts bring their requests in full expectation of them being carried out, where drunks slump and unfamiliar affection dances. These and all the little things that fill your days. And isn’t that enough? Enough to make the talk uttered here and the occasions enacted here, which never seem like much at the time because they’re just the small talk and the unremarkable stuff of unremarkable life, worth looking at a second time? And a third?

And so, the afternoon light dying outside, she sits, the weight of her belly almost pressing her into the chair, and is aware of looking at the room anew. Besides, it’s given her something to take her mind off the ache of her back as Vic finds his coat and shoes so they can take a short stroll around the neighbourhood before the light fades completely. She surveys the room. How many things have started here, or passed through here, and not just in the
years that Vic and Rita have been here, but all the years and all the tales?

It is then that Vic enters the room, his coat on in readiness for the walk. Rita rises, wraps herself in a big woollen jumper and smiles. For as much as she might be seeing this room anew, she has also seen enough of it for one day and is impatient to get out and see what’s happening in the world.

Outside, where the cold sunset brings with it just enough colour to make the bare trees and power lines glow, Rita is not thinking of the streets as small because she’s been in the kitchen all day. But Vic is. And as he recounts the day, cycling to Katherine’s tent and back, he tells her about Katherine’s land (which Rita has never seen) and how the world suddenly felt wide. And how, cycling back, it felt less and less so. And that feeling of the world opening up, that feeling that you haven’t done everything you’re going to do and that there just might be more for you out there in the wide world of life, leaves you as the world shrinks back into what it was before you left. Until the world is small again. But he doesn’t share this last observation with Rita. Rather, he trails into silence, leaving her with talk of wide worlds and new starts.

Besides, the pale orange sun is sinking and they have to turn back, leaving behind the petrol silos, the refinery and the silhouettes of the cranes at the wharf end of the street, clawing at the sky.

They are turning back because Aunt Katherine will arrive soon. The second visit in two days. And Vic’s night
off will be lost to him. He and Rita turn back so as to be home when she arrives: Aunt Katherine, whom Rita sees as History and whom Vic sees as Family — a hand that held his and made the world child-sized while he was growing into it, and which, now, will not let go.

I
t is late in the afternoon. The bulldozer is silent, parked at the edge of Webster’s land. The shrubs have gone, the hollows are levelled. Webster’s ground is already beginning to look like a building site. One bulldozer can do that. A bulldozer can do a lot, and very quickly. The pines are still there, but the world around them has changed and they have lost their function. Whatever it was in the first place. And the world to Webster is a functional place. Functional, in the minds of some people, might be a back-handed compliment, even a dismissive expression. But not to Webster. To Webster, objects matter in the world only in so far as they are functional. In his West Essendon factory, Webster (now that he is not manufacturing bullets for the Owen machine gun) has reverted to what he always did — making parts that mean nothing in themselves until joined with other parts
manufactured in other factories. When these parts meet, they become whole: a functional object such as a lawnmower or wheelbarrow. And as he looks at the flat scrubby land around him, he sees blocks of land awaiting houses, houses that will grow lawns for his mowers to tame. Within days the ground around him has been levelled; shrubs, trees and old fence posts from a farm that once occupied the land have deferred to the will of Webster. Two acres of flat, level land have emerged and the site is marked out. Concrete will soon flow, foundations will appear. A factory will be born.

Webster’s world is taking shape: a world of squares, rectangles and right angles. And not simply on the factory site but also where an old mansion (currently unoccupied, left over from the early days of the settlement) is being renovated for a new age, a new phase in its history. For just as this site will soon become Webster’s factory, the old house will become Webster’s mansion, and the ground upon which it sits Webster’s estate. It is all in the plans that he has with him, rolled up under his arm, which he has memorised. He can see it all: Webster’s world. He has visualised it all so often, and now, in the fading light of the afternoon, he registers the thrill of watching it all come to life. Just as he imagined it. A world unto itself.

He strolls about, mentally building it all from the ground up, then finishes at the row of pines at the edge of his property and steps through them, finding himself gazing at the railway lines and the silos of the flour mills, towering over the land like a medieval fortress. The dying glow of the mid-winter sun falls over the walls, bathing
everything in an ancient light, and Webster knows, without doubt, that he has found his place: the land, the sky, the sun for which he was destined, the dying light of which will glow in the gardens of his estate as it does now over the open paddocks of the community. Here he will create a factory and he will create a suburb. And he will know every worker’s name and what they earn, where they live, the number of children in their families, and what they do when they’re not standing at his machines pressing scrap metal. For in Webster’s world Webster will be all-knowing.

And it is then that he is seized by the impulse to know more of this world beyond the immediate boundaries of the factory site and mansion. He leaves the pines, steps out over the railway lines, and, passing the flour mills, enters what his map tells him is the Old Wheat Road. It is dirt, with dirt footpaths either side, and double-storey shops from another era. Not much. But all of this will change. And it will be Webster who brings that change with him.

For Webster is young. He has fire in the blood. In fact, there are times when Webster feels as though it’s not blood running through his veins but molten metal. Pure energy. Pumping through him. Enough for two lives. And this is the domain for which he was destined. The sleepy world to which, driven by the fire in his veins, he will bring change. Webster, his factory. The two synonymous with each other. So that in time (and not much at that) he will simply become known throughout the suburb he is summoning into existence as Webster the Factory.

Past the old wooden church to his left (the name of which he will soon learn, St Matthew’s), he leaves the Old Wheat Road and enters a dirt track that may or may not have a name and comes to a stop at a farmer’s fence. He can see cows, perhaps a dozen, and an old, solid, established farmhouse. The sort of house that speaks of generations of living, and he is contemplating this when he notices, for the light is fading rapidly, someone standing at the back of the farmhouse. Over the paddock he can make out the snowy hair of what he assumes is the farmer, standing at the back of his house, contemplating the land he has looked upon, more than likely, all his life. If the light were better, Webster would see that he wears the clothes of another era. But he knows, all the same, that he is looking upon what
was
. That it is the Past standing at the back of the farmhouse (and at a rather odd angle), and that, he, Webster, is the Future.

After a minute he realises that the old man hasn’t seen him, has not, in fact, even looked in his direction. His eyes, Webster assumes, are fixed on some distant point, and it is then that Webster follows what he calculates is the old man’s line of vision and comes to an abrupt stop at a tent, glowing in the late-afternoon light. A tent? Webster gazes upon it, puzzled by its presence. It is glowing because someone has lit a lantern of some kind inside the tent. And it puzzles him because the tent and its glow have lit in him some unexpected, undefined emotion. Then, and it comes as quite a shock, he realises that it is happiness. And not just happiness; he knows in his blood that it is a moment of well … pure happiness that the sight
of the tent has recalled. And recalled from another time, another place. Which to Webster is deeply puzzling because he thought he was happy. He is on the verge of watching his dream materialise, and all that he has worked for becoming fact. No longer the stuff of dreams. Then this tent, and its glow. And a different kind of happiness altogether wells up in him. But why? And it is then that he remembers the holidays of his boyhood. Webster, the only child, and his parents, setting up a tent by a stream or in a farmer’s field. Everybody clambering in, and the lighting of a lamp. The wind outside in the trees. The tent glowing in the dark. A world unto itself. And it is while he is staring at the tent, then back to the farmer, that the farmer turns and sees the solitary figure standing at his fence in the fading light. And, having been seen, Webster raises his arm and waves, the farmer waving (if, it seems to Webster, a little warily) back at him.

Does the farmer know who Webster is? If so, does that explain the hint of wariness in his wave? Webster looks up to the sky, the last of the sun fading on the flour mills, and knows he should return to his car (his Bentley parked by the factory site) before the country darkness descends upon him. He turns back briefly in the direction of the tent, that feeling of pure happiness, like the memory that inspired it, having faded. He shrugs, eyes the old farmer who has now turned his attention back to the glow of the tent, and begins retracing his steps, to the levelled ground of Webster’s land, the place that will soon become Webster’s domain. A world unto itself.

Skinner takes his eyes off Katherine’s tent, for his peripheral farmer’s vision tells him that there is someone else on the horizon. And although the light is thickening, he can still see the clear outline of someone standing by his paddock fence. Furthermore, he knows who it is, by repute, if not by name. He knows that this is the factory owner who has acquired the land that was once an adjoining farm. Just as Skinner’s land will one day be acquired. And when the factory owner raises his arm and waves to Skinner, Skinner returns the wave (the second time he has waved to a stranger today), albeit warily. For Skinner knows it is shadowy figures like this who are the Future, those who come to look briefly upon the world that they will erase. And so when Skinner waves, it is not a greeting (for a greeting contains either cheer or welcome) but more an acknowledgment, nothing more, nothing less, that the shadowy figure who brings the Future with him has arrived, and that he, Skinner, will not be going into that Future with him. It is a simple acknowledgment of the fact that the old is giving way to the new. That it has always been like this and always will be. History finds us useful for a time, then History moves on as History does.

Skinner turns back to Katherine’s tent, and as he does so he is aware of that shadowy figure by the fence slipping away into the half light. But his eyes are fixed on the tent, his mind upon the glow of its promise and what might have been.

And it is while Skinner is contemplating this, and while the shadowy figure of Webster is withdrawing from the picture, that the light is extinguished and the glow disappears. And soon Miss Carroll emerges from her tent, carrying what appears to be a small overnight bag, and starts walking up the dirt road that borders her property, towards the Old Wheat Road. Come into my tent, you simple man, and together we shall sit … His impulse is to wave (for the third time that day) but he doesn’t. He decides that she would not see him in this light, even if she was looking in the direction of his farmhouse, which she is not. In fact, it seems to Skinner that she is studiously
not
looking in his direction. There is also that part of Skinner that does not want to be observed standing at the back of his property, staring out over his paddock in the direction of Miss Carroll’s tent. For Miss Carroll, in observing him, may well come to the conclusion that this is not the first time that Mr Skinner has stood there. So he doesn’t wave.

Unobserved, Skinner watches her pass and can’t help but wonder where on earth she might be going at this time of the day, which is rapidly turning to night. He watches until she disappears into the Old Wheat Road. And with nothing left to look upon, Skinner turns back into his house and closes his door on the scene.