The People's Train (21 page)

You see. I have committed my own crimes. It is not surprising at all that a woman should behave like Hope, given the provocation offered by her late husband.

Then why hadn’t she abandoned him long ago? I asked. Nowadays it astonished me more and more that she hadn’t.

I don’t presume to know, said Amelia. He’s abandoned
her
now, in any case. But whatever Hope’s small sins, they don’t come close to matching Emmeline’s grossness. She let those young women dynamite, she let them starve themselves, she let them throw themselves under the king’s horse, and yet, as soon as the war begins, she becomes a conventional rallyer of the troops. At least Hope restricted herself to membership of a benevolent society for the troops – the young men are going to need it when they come back maimed.

Sometimes, in the early evenings, I went round to the fruit shop owned by Lucia’s parents and would be brought into the parlour at the back of the shop. The Mangravitis were wary of me but pointed me to a settee above which hung a black, blue and gold tapestry of Naples and Vesuvius. It was not their home – they came from a small volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

I began to wonder if Lucia was as shy as she appeared. She was, for example, powerful enough to persuade her parents to have me as a guest. On the other hand, she was dutiful. Her life was spent in mutely serving out the fruit and vegetables her father bought every pre-dawn at the Brisbane markets. She was brave enough to give me one of the letters Podnaksikov had sent her. Another had obviously been too private, but she said that he had been impressed by the journey to Egypt, the blueness of the Red Sea, and then riding a donkey around the pyramids. He had made many Australian friends, he’d said, and they’d nicknamed him Igor. That was obviously the sort of cachet he wanted to achieve. That and survival.

The letter she gave me, despite a gesticulating quarrel with her mother and father, was a very primitive card, on which was printed:

Podnaksikov had ticked
I am well,
and that was all there was. It was hard to tell where he was now, still in Egypt or working with the wounded in Lemnos or toiling at the cliffs of Gallipoli.

I heard news second-hand from Kelly, who was discreet for once and did not blurt it out all over the Trades Hall Hotel: Hope had left her widowed home now and gone to live with Amelia. And apparently Buchan came courting there.

One day – telling myself I was going for Amelia’s sake – I caught the tram to Amelia’s house and climbed the stairs. Knocking on the screen door, I was answered by Hope, her hair a little astray.

Artem, please come in. Would you like to see Amelia?

I wanted to see you too. Your husband, Hope ... It was a tragedy.

She bowed her head.

Such a waste it all is, she said. He should have married someone else. So should I. I am both bereaved and liberated, Artem. But marriage has a power beyond the sum of its two members and it holds people in place even when they dream of being free. I have to tell you, I wept for him. As for Mr Buchan, I suppose you think I am an abandoned woman.

In my world, there is no such creature, I said.

I will marry Buchan, she said. Although you are an excellent man...

This statement would have been a matter of serious grief for me only a few months before. Now, I barely needed to hide my true feelings.

Well, I said, I don’t know that he’s any more suitable than me. Do you know who you should marry? Paddy Dykes.

She made a face and laughed. She was relieved by my attitude and thought it was a joke.

It’s the truth, I insisted. He’s the most honest man in Brisbane.

Do you know what my husband wrote to me? she asked. Well, you wouldn’t. He wrote,
Here in the Gallipoli peninsula, I am making an argument no one can rebut.
And we can’t rebut it. So I am attending his public memorial service, and the hypocrites can say what they want!

I had time to notice that she made the most exquisite widow on earth. Before I really knew it myself I’d tried to kiss her – in part as a goodbye. She turned her face away.

No, Tom.

Justly feeling a fool, I went in to see Amelia. Her mouth was even more cruelly twisted. I wanted to take it and mould the muscles back into shape.

Hello, dear Artem, Amelia told me. I am on the way down into the shades.

Not yet, Amelia, I said. You can’t orphan me so easily.

Don’t patronise me, Tom. Once the brain and its veins turn on one, it does not stop, it’s all set on betrayal.

She dropped her voice and grabbed me with her thin parchment hand.

I’m not taking sides, Tom, and it is not my duty to work everything out. But I allow nothing improper to occur on my premises.

If Amelia was right, when Buchan called at Amelia’s place he called not as a lover, but as a suitor.

Then she sat up and resumed full volume.

Look, I want to ask you, would you ever desire to return to Russia? After all the acrimony poured on you here? I have an estate. I can finance you. You are a remarkable man and I would like to see you restored to your true scene of activities – if it were not too dangerous.

This offer stunned me. I covered my eyes. It was so tempting, now with Suvarov and Rybakov gone, and the wearing thin of the connection between Hope and myself. But it was not the time yet. I was as active here as I could be in Swiss or French exile, and if I returned to Russia I would probably become a conscript.

There will be a time, she said with certainty, when it’s appropriate for you. I see you as a returning Russian, not as a Queenslander. I am not even sure I have become a Queenslander myself!

I uttered my thanks and took her hand.

I would certainly like to go when I am no longer a subject of the tsar – though that’s hard to imagine, even with every Russian front line in crisis.

We said goodbye. I kissed her hand, which was half blue for want of oxygen. When I came out to the verandah, Hope was not there.

The next Sunday the odious
Truth
called her Red Hope and expressed the wish that now she had taken part as an unworthy mourner in her husband’s memorial service, she might mend some of her radical socialist ways.

Accompanied by Paddy Dykes, I went down to the offices of the
Telegraph,
where a map of the Hellespont had been placed by the doors to educate Australians on where their sons were being killed. There behind Anzac Cove lay the ravine out of which Mockridge had tried to lead his men to the heights above. A pasted marker pointed to the place and declared: major mockridge fatally wounded here. A brave few had captured the top of the escarpment, but then had been ejected by fierce artillery and machine-gun fire.

Jesus Almighty, said Paddy, you’ve got to give it to him, getting all the way up there!

Kelly grew wistful for the faces of many of the men who had enlisted for whatever reason – a renewed sense of nation, a spiritual intensity or a desire to leave their squalid working day behind. He was supporting the widows and children, even though the government had made noises that they would do this. But they were still buying the desks and pens for the public servants who would give out the government’s mite to the families. The war had changed Kelly, who had begun by supporting it as a means by which labouring men would earn the gratitude of the government. Now he refused to consider the deaths a holy immolation.

A week or so after I visited Hope and Amelia, a note came to Adler’s in which Hope asked me to meet her and Buchan at the Samarkand. I thought she could have chosen a better place, a more anonymous or neutral one, to reveal whatever joint decision she and Buchan had reached. The steaming samovars of the place, the little cakes, the atmosphere were all reminiscent of the times we had sat there trying to charm each other. But they reminded me too that I had soon enough grown into the habits of a bad husband, and had loved her negligently. And now – like all the people I felt affection for – she was going to go away, I suspected, to Buchan’s city, Melbourne.

How soured love debases us! I noticed with a grim satisfaction that afternoon that she wore a black dress as if she were entitled to both mourning and Buchan. Buchan was beside her, wearing a restrained suit but the spats still. His clothes attracted the covert glances of the Russian working men and humble clerks who frequented the Samarkand.

He nodded. Tom, he said. The way he said it was eloquent: We can both be men about this, but if you take offence and throw a punch, I believe I can beat you that way too.

When we were all seated, and before the daughter of the shop came to serve us, Hope told me, frowning and with careful phrasing, Amelia is somewhat improved. She’s a determined woman and is telling me to go. She knows there’s some urgency for us to go to Melbourne.

I looked at Buchan and felt a sudden, if perhaps brief, relief that her history with all its contradictions and (quoting Amelia)
follies
would be his business to attend to now.

Buchan enlarged on the Melbourne idea.

From this distance Walter O’Sullivan seems to be doing the right thing. But he dominates a weak committee down there, and he’s got the unions so offside they won’t attend the peace rallies he puts on. So he sits there like Buddha, above the vulgar crowd. He sees the party as consisting of him, the supreme Number One. If he ever doubts that, his wife is there to believe in it harder than ever. I know him though. I reckon I can get him back on a more effective path.

I said nothing. I could imagine ordinary union members having a choice between Walter and Buchan.

It’s a wonder you didn’t go earlier then, I said to Buchan. Given that you see such an appalling crisis down there.

Only Hope looked away, embarrassed for the moment. I thought of how often she had saved me, and I felt ashamed.

If you’re telling me I’m a procrastinator, he answered, then I agree with you. I don’t mind telling you I didn’t want to leave Hope, but I am a friend of Amelia also, and Amelia had something to do with it. So be it.

Hope reached for my hand. Tom, aren’t we all in the same fight?

Even Walter O’Sullivan and Olive? I asked.

Buchan told me, There is right thinking and then there’s total delusion.

I shook my head. I didn’t say aloud that he was not exactly Vladimir Ilich when it came to right thinking.

Hope said, the labour college needs looking after too. It’s defunct. Walter doesn’t approve of it, because he didn’t think of it. With the war...

Buchan finished the sentence for her: ...O’Sullivan has let it all slide. As if educating people doesn’t matter any more, or is an idea you can dispense with.

You finish each other’s sentences, I observed, like married people.

Buchan said, Indeed. We hope to be married by a free commitment innocent of any minister of religion.

I’m sure Hope’s inherited wealth will help the college greatly, I remarked.

Hope was angry and no doubt entitled to be. In that light her cheeks genuinely looked like alabaster, even to a jaded lover, and now they took on a rose colouring. But she swallowed and refused to be baited by my backsliding rancour. They both watched me and I thought, How stupid of me, how gross, how bourgeois to play the aggrieved lover. Just like some fool in a drama not written by a firstclass talent.

As soon as I get to Melbourne, Hope told me, I will send you our address. If Amelia has another stroke, send me a telegram immediately. Can I rely on you to do that, Tom?

Of course I will, I mumbled. As if a man wouldn’t do that much...

I’m not saying you wouldn’t do it. Please don’t be offended. This is very awkward.

I suppose so, I said.

You will send me a telegram, Artem? Amelia is very precious to all of us.

You realise, I said. You realise...

I had been going to remind them that even if she received a telegram one day, it would be at least three days by steamer or a combination of rail and steamer before she was in Brisbane to see Amelia. I had been going to say that I had enough charges in my life without being burdened with the sole care of Amelia. Again, I had become a miserable, whining soul under the weight of their decision to go to Melbourne. Now I repented, and not before time.

I want you to know, I wish you well. But Buchan, I believe you should read more if you want to be a leader. Despite Plekhanov’s betrayal, you should read
The Role of the Individual in History.
You should also read Vladimir Ilich’s ‘Our Programme’ and
What is to be Done?
It’s not as if they’re as long as
Kapital.
You should also read Martov, even though he’s a Menshevik. As you know, men don’t always follow the wisdom of their original words, but that doesn’t cancel the words. You have to understand what we stand for by understanding exactly what they – the people we disagree with – stand for.

Sure, Buchan told me equably. Of course. Mind you, I have my own encyclopaedia.

He put his hand on Hope’s shoulder, and that nearly started the whole madness in me again. But I steered away from it. This crazy fellow who, totally unread, wanted to have people give a series of night lectures he dared to call a labour college. This woman who, while insisting on wearing black, wanted to decamp to Melbourne with a Scot in spats.

Yes, I said, you are a fortunate man. But all the leaders are thinkers too, and Walter is at least a thinker.

He took this with good grace.

Perhaps if we could combine Walter’s intellect and my capacity for action, we’d have a complete being.

Good luck, I said when I realised there was no profit in talking further. I wanted to ask her, more from curiosity than anything, Do you really love this joke of a Caledonian? But I rose and at last behaved properly, kissed Hope’s scented hand, shook hands with Buchan, and went to the counter to pay for the whole farce.

T.J. Ryan now sat over Queensland as its chief minister. With his round, fashionably bearded Irish face, he sang his siren song to the people of the state – the control of prices and new laws to improve the lot of labour. There were many who expected the moon, said Ryan, but he declared the best that could be delivered was a few moonbeams. Ah, the old cant, I thought, dressed up in Celtic-style imagery, in Celtic-style palaver.

He did begin state enterprises in milling and producing food. The growers of sugar cane were promised a fixed price for their product, and so the cane-cutting brethren who had come down, disconsolate, to Russia House in Brisbane were now able to return to their fields and take up their machetes again. State insurance and a state bank were set up. But the old venal banks were not obliterated. An arbitration system for labour was put in place. While not perfect, Ryan’s was indeed the best government I knew of in the world until that stage of history, yet his curtsies towards capital and the war continued and meant that he could not utterly win over a true socialist such as Walter O’Sullivan or make a restless Russian like myself a happy and grateful unthinking citizen of an antipodean Utopia.