The Time We Have Taken (23 page)

T
he moving hand has ceased to move. The wall is done. The twain converged, and now their time is over. And only this thing, this product of their convergence, remains. This portrait of a suburb, currently shrouded in the same drapes that have covered it all winter and spring.

Mulligan, his job done, is not there for the unveiling. It is an early September evening and he is watching the spring sun slip down behind a line of trees in a city park. Nearby, a child is running from its shadow. Again and again. Trying to kick off these giant legs that dog its every move. But all Mulligan knows is that the wall is no longer his. Out there in
the city the large march, this moratorium that swamped its streets, is over. The PA systems and the microphones have been switched off, the crackle of speeches is no longer in the air, the crowd has dispersed and disappeared into pubs, houses and parks. His wall will soon be passed back to the crowd and he has no desire to witness the exchange. Now he will have to find something else to fill his days, for the days will need filling. And if they can’t be filled then he will have to decide what to do with them.

While he sits, and while the spring sun slips below the tree line of the park, the foyer of the town hall continues to fill. The mayor, wearing the suit in which he sat to be sketched; the sitting member; the entire council; Mrs Webster; religious leaders; shop owners — Peter van Rijn standing apart from the rest of the committee, a lemon squash in his hand; bankers; sporting figures; those the community deems as ‘characters’; and the everyday faces of the suburb itself have all crammed the foyer for the unveiling of the wall.

It is their story and they have come to witness it. Their portrait. Now, and then. And the noise, it seems to Rita (who is standing back from the wall so as to see it better), is like Michael’s descriptions of a cricket or football crowd just before a big game. And when the mayor and a number of nameless officials walk to the front of the hall where a lectern has been placed, the
murmurs that accompany their movement are the same as the murmurs that follow the umpires out on to the field of play. Michael is not here. For, on this day, Michael and his kind have had their march. And this demonstration — a moratorium, they call it (whatever that is) — has shut the city down. The war, the war. Rita had barely heard of Vietnam before this war started, and now all she ever seems to hear is news of the war, and students like Michael, and demonstrations, like the one today, that stop the city. But that’s always the way — you’ve never heard of a place until someone starts a war there, and then you hear of nothing else but that place.

So, as the hall settles down, Rita is thinking of other things, while Michael will no doubt be walking back from the city after this giant stunt of theirs with all those university types he calls friends. She doesn’t even hear the introductory speakers, and only gradually becomes aware of the fact that the mayor is now speaking. And she is surprised, almost relieved, that he actually can talk in public. And the face of Mrs Webster, not far from her, has relief written over it too. For it is an occasion, an event, that demands ceremony. And as he talks, almost eloquently, Harold Ford, hand in his coat pocket where his pipe is, mayor of Centenary Suburb, eventually arrives at the subject of Progress. Here, Rita notes, Mrs Webster smiles. There is a line, he
says, a straight line and a true one, that runs all the way from then until now. It is the thread that connects them all, generation upon generation, and which has produced the streets, shops, factories, schools, libraries and public buildings of a proud community. Proud enough to put this little number together. Proud, but not too proud. On and on he goes, transformed by his moment. For (to Mrs Webster, at least) it’s almost as though it is not simply the mayor speaking any more, but all those portraits hanging in public buildings across the suburb, across all the suburbs, not so much portraits of people as portraits of the Age of Progress. And for those people, the mayor continues (the collective voice of those portraits, the suburb and all the suburbs, the voice of the Age itself issuing from him), for those who might be tempted to smile at the very idea, to those young people not here today (and Rita cannot help thinking that he is referring specifically to Michael, who ought to have been here) let us pose them the question — was it so bad, this world we gave you? This world of trimmed lawns and modest gardens, of brick and timber block houses that have stood the test of time better than anybody thought, of paved streets and footpaths upon which you can stroll and survey this society that we — the Age — gave you. Was it so bad, after all? And was the single idea that fired our factories and lit our eyes with
passion enough to bring this world into being really so amusing and so quaint?

And it is at this moment that Rita (noting that Mrs Webster is nodding in agreement) sees that the mayor has become what she can only call emotional, even sentimental. Which is odd, because she never picked him for the sentimental type. But there he is, his face quivering every time he utters the words ‘Progress’ and ‘pride’ and ‘community’. And it occurs to her, possibly for the first time, that he just might believe it all, all this talk. And just as it has taken her by surprise, she suspects that it just might have taken him by surprise as well. That he had thought he simply trafficked in politics; never believed any of it. That he thought he would simply stand up, walk to the lectern, make a speech and sit down again. Just like all the other speeches. But something caught him out this time. A bit of emotion, an outbreak of humanity, the anarchy of which has ruffled his hair and tie.

As two council functionaries begin to pull the curtains back, the wall becomes a stage, the foyer a theatre, and a hush falls across the room as it does at the beginning of a performance. And it has power this thing, for the hush becomes a silence as a jigsaw of colour and form gradually begins to take shape. Soon the drapes have been pulled all the way back, and there, from one side of the wall to the other, is a
grand tale. And as the crowd realises that this grand tale runs in a straight line from left to right, in much the same way as you would read a book, heads turn to the left and begin reading the images. From the very beginnings, open land, open country, just the way the leaders of the suburb imagine it all. But, not quite. For there are, in fact, figures on this landscape that Mulligan has created. And these figures, these earlier inhabitants, are hunting, fishing, painting, or simply standing still and looking over the valley out there in the old thistle country. People. Whole families. Just living. Just doing the ordinary and extraordinary things that everybody does. And the mayor is staring intently at the wall because this is not part of his grand story at all. Nor, it seems, is it part of Peter van Rijn’s, because he is looking just as puzzled as the mayor. This is not History as most of those gathered in the foyer of the town hall understand it. No, History begins with an open field. Nobody in it. An open field, thinks Peter van Rijn, waiting to receive the footprints of settlers. Settlers who will carve something out of this open field, create a farm, then a community, and finally a shop. This is how History works. It begins with an untamed open country. Then people arrive. Not before.

But, as their eyes all move from left to right following the straight line of the story, these figures are no sooner in the picture than they are out of it.
No longer there. Written out of the picture and written out of the grand story that it tells. The straight line of History is moving relentlessly from left to right. Settlers have arrived. Fences have gone up, farm houses where there was an open field. Then more fences, more settlers and houses. A community forms, is magically thrown onto the wall. And a shop appears. A fragile wooden affair that in Peter van Rijn’s mind, at least, should have been where the story began, for a shop marks the beginning of settlement and the beginning of the suburb. The first of its hundred years. All the years that have led to this night. But it is there, nonetheless, this fragile wooden thing that heralds a community and brings to the community the gift of exchange.

And from the shop the narrative sprouts streets and houses and more shops. Progress is upon them. And Progress is rapid. For soon the flour mill rises from the ground, its twin silos like medieval keeps, dominating the land. And a railway, running in the same straight line as the story, appears on the wall. Stations and trains join houses and streets. And then the factory, low and wide like the cheap land it is built upon. Webster’s Engineering. And Mrs Webster gazes in curious wonder as she notes that her life has been transformed into History. History as this painter sees it. And there is even a black Bentley on the wall, gliding through the streets of what is now
undeniably a suburb, like royalty that has only just acquired its title. And it occurs to her that even though it will soon be torn down, Webster’s Engineering will always be up there on this wall now. And that, at least, is something.

Soon, the streets are paved; tennis courts, the golf course, cricket fields and street after street of box houses, white, red, green and blue stretching out to the line of the horizon, all spring up. All filled with people, walking to or from the station and shops, serving and receiving in frozen motion on the tennis courts or forever chasing a red, red ball across a dusty cricket field when the time was theirs, before the time was taken from them. And standing at the end of it all a final frieze of figures: the mayor, Webster (drawn from his portrait), councillors, the sitting member and shop and factory owners (all of whom sat for immortality and now have it), all gathered at the end of the narrative, not so much individual figures as portraits of Progress. And all — it suddenly occurs to Mrs Webster, who did not sit — staring, not forward, not in the direction of the unwritten, out there off the wall, where Progress lies waiting to take whatever form it will. No, not looking forward, but backwards. While Michael, she reflects, while Michael and his friends have been out there in the streets of the city marching in this thing they call a moratorium, shouting and singing songs, the words of this Whitlam
of theirs in their ears (this Whitlam, who talks to the whole country the way Michael and his kind talk to the rest of us), while they have been out there, this frieze of public figures has been revealed, upon this wall, to be looking not forward but backwards. Like — and the conclusion is inescapable — yesterday’s men. And like yesterday’s men they are forever now, upon this wall, facing the wrong direction.

And it’s not just the direction they are facing. They don’t look right. It’s not striking. It’s not dramatic. But it’s there. In their faces, and their gestures. Something not quite right. A slight shift in the features, a wide-eyed countenance that borders on…what? After brief thought, the only word she can call upon to satisfactorily answer the question is ‘silliness’. A wide-eyed countenance that borders on silliness. They have been made to look, and oh so subtly, just a little bit silly. Almost — and Mrs Webster seriously wonders if she is imagining this — possessing a hint of the inbred. And as she does, she notes the dark, gloomy eyes of the mayor, who is staring at Peter van Rijn (whose bright idea this whole business was) as if weighing the profit and loss of just one more brick through the shopkeeper’s window. Mrs Webster turns back to the wall, the foyer now filling with sound, and eyes that final frieze of public figures, remembering those odd portraits of old European royalty that she has seen on her trips abroad (without Webster, who
had no time for ‘abroad’ or its galleries) by painters whose only weapon was cunning, and who dared to leave behind portraits of kings and queens not looking quite right. And the same cunning, she is convinced, is up there on this wall. Barely there, but there all the same.

In the weeks that follow, this wall will, in fact, divide the suburb between those who dare to admire it and those who can’t bear to look upon it. Between those who nod in quiet amazement that a thing such as this has entered their world, and those who, from the first, had formed such a distaste for the thing that they would happily see it erased. And as much as the mayor — and all the mayors that follow — will be called upon to wipe the thing off the wall and banish it from their midst, it will survive, and, in time, become known across the suburb simply as Mulligan’s Wall. And eventually, even those who pronounced the thing an ‘eyesore’ will come to accept that the thing will stay, warts and all. For they’ll know by then, the whole suburb, that they’ve got something no one else has. Mulligan’s Wall.

Rita passes by Mrs Webster with a brief nod, the first time they have seen each other since their drive through the darkened streets of the suburb, and Mrs Webster nods quickly back. Rita leaves.

The foyer is now crackling with the sound of raised voices, laughter and squeals, the way railway
stations crackle with sound. No, noise. And, unlike the noise that Webster brought to the suburb, it is an unwelcome noise. For, whereas Webster brought the noise of production, this is the noise of mere talk. Mrs Webster departs, leaving the jolly public face of the mayor behind her (wearing the best suit in which he sat for the portrait, and which is now up there on the wall), and, in the car park, passes a pensive Peter van Rijn, to whom she nods and who is pleased, even grateful, to receive her nod.

As she starts up the old black Bentley (now immortalised on the wall), and as she passes the thoughtful figure of Rita striding towards the railway station (although the walk is far, Mrs Webster does not stop), she is glad to be done with the whole place. Glad to be putting the ancient beast of Webster’s Engineering down, glad to be selling up and moving on, without yet knowing where she is going. Glad to be looking forward and not back.

I
n the last, bright days of spring, when estate agents pop to the surface like spring flowers, when ‘For Sale’ signs and auction flags flourish in sunshine and sweet showers, Mrs Webster watches one luminous Saturday morning as the paperwork passes across the desk of the mezzanine office and the factory passes from her hands into those of a young lawyer representing a business group from somewhere in Texas. This group own what they call a chain of department stores. The suburb had grown, its children had left home, the factory’s workers had aged with the factory and the suburb didn’t need it any more. In the brashness of its youth, the place had
required the noise of activity, the evidence of production, of small and large parts being hammered into shape by giant machines. Now it required department stores and supermarkets. The factories had gone to the new frontiers where the land was flat and cheap and the noise of Progress had followed them. Soon the acre of land on the corner of the two main streets of the suburb, that had been Webster’s Engineering, would be cleared, the factory levelled as though it had never existed, and a department store with racks of cheap clothes, the wonder of drip-dry shirts, shoes, toys and all manner of knick-knacks that nobody realised they wanted but which they soon would, will take its place. It will be known simply as Walter’s, and the new children of the suburb will grow up never knowing that it was once Webster’s corner, where Webster’s Engineering sat, as immoveable to the eyes of the young suburb as the pyramids. And when the new department store is built, the drapers by the post office, the clothing store by the station and the small shoe shop, all of which had survived until then, will disappear from the landscape one by one, and everybody will turn to the new department store for the things they both need and don’t need.

As the papers pass hands in the mezzanine office, she hears Webster’s noise die out there on the factory floor for the last time, and imagines the
glazed eyes of the suburb strolling along rows of cheap suits, nylon shirts and the latest drip-dry trousers, and something inside her that was long in need of dying expires.

In the late summer, when construction on the store begins, one of the owners will descend upon the site, step onto it in the same wondrous way that the Great Arnold Palmer had once stepped out onto the fairways and greens of the golf course — a suntanned god come briefly to earth — and inspect (for the first and last time) the place they had bought. By then Mrs Webster will be gone, the noise that Webster brought to the suburb will have been silenced, and the beast of production that he had dragged into existence will have been put down, its machinists and staff either retired or gone elsewhere. And that portrait of Webster in his prime, hanging above the fireplace in the library, will become a portrait of yesterday’s face.

The suburb noticed when Mrs Webster sold the factory, or, rather, that part of the suburb that had grown up with the factory. That part of the suburb that had grown up with its reassuring red-brick presence and cast-iron nameplate, a permanent centre to things, as permanent as Webster himself. An immoveable acre on a weatherboard landscape that drew strength from the brick-and-iron solidity of Webster’s Engineering. Those who had grown up with
all that noticed when Mrs Webster put the thing down; those who had been around long enough to assume that it — like themselves — would always be there noticed its passing as if a part of themselves had passed into local history with it. If Webster’s factory could go then everything could — and there were no centres, after all, that could be trusted to last. The new residents of the suburb, those who had not grown up in the factory’s shadow and shade, those who had barely noticed it in life, barely noticed its passing either.

The suburb didn’t raise an eyebrow when Rita sold the house, but the street noticed. Even those who had only recently come to the street, those who never knew the history of the house the way the more permanent residents of the street did. And when people tramped through the place they, no doubt, pondered the secret life of the house. No doubt drew their conclusions. As though the private life of the place had been offered to the street, as on those hot summer nights years before when the house — like all the houses of the street — would turn itself inside out and furniture, lamps and televisions would tumble out onto the front lawn and the private life would be lived in public. Except back then, everybody’s lives had tumbled out into public view together. The sale of the house had been
different. It was just her house on display. And, as necessary as the sale was, it was still, above all, an intrusion: a final sufferance to be endured before she could finally quit the place altogether.

But with the house now sold, she tells herself, packing old clothes in boxes as she contemplates moving back to
her
city, the city on the other side of the river, it is the last time she will suffer the eyes of the street, the last time she will suffer them looking suspiciously upon her house and its French windows, which, like her dresses, were always just a bit too good for the street and which the street recognised and registered as an insult.

And there is a detachment in the way she goes about these preparations that Rita finds curious. For, the house that was once ‘us’ is no longer ‘us’. She is packing up other people’s lives. And those small objects — once-favoured tea cups — those things that ought to move her, and which would have moved her just a few years before, now leave her strangely untouched.

She’s become, she notes, as distant from the whole business as Michael — or Vic, for that matter — and she never thought she would. One day, she’d tried to tell herself throughout those final years, one day this will all be a memory. One day she will look back on it all as the ‘past’. And all the things that matter so much now won’t matter then because they
will be distant things. But as much as she wanted it all to fade into the past, there was always the nagging feeling that there was something, well, indecent, not right, about simply rising from your chair and walking out on it all.

When things end, you don’t just get up and go. At least, Rita doesn’t. Not that she knows what to call that interval between the ending and the leaving. Last respects, perhaps. Respect for what they were, and what they tried to do. She only knows she would not have it done any other way. Vic, Michael, they’re the types that just get up and go. And while part of her admires that, part of her thinks they miss something. For in their haste to be rid of the past, they forget to say goodbye to it all. Or neglect to linger long enough for a proper goodbye to be said. Rita is one of those who cannot move on and leave that distant world of the past until she has lingered long enough to say goodbye properly. And perhaps this is what the last few years of waiting about the house have been for.

Now, the moment has arrived. She has said her goodbye in her own way, and in her own good time. The leaving can start and a beginning can be created out of an ending.

Not far away, Mrs Webster sits in the library of the estate, the books that Webster collected and never read, but which she did, are all around her. The
portrait of Webster that was not really a portrait of Webster but a portrait of the Age hangs above the fireplace. That was our age, she muses. We
were
Progress, only we didn’t know it then. But the world we made in our own likeness is changing around us and will soon be no longer recognisable as the world
we
made. Progress will wear drip-dry trousers from now on, light on the legs, cool in summer, and it will not stop and it will not look back in the way that we too neither stopped nor looked back.

It is late in the evening. That morning, the factory officially passed into the hands of the new dispensation, and she has gravitated towards this room to be alone with the portrait. She leans back in the swivel chair that was once Webster’s and breathes them in, the last hours of Progress.

Not just now, and not during the dark hours of the night, but on the Monday morning, when the doors of the factory will remain closed, this world will have changed. Outside in the sleeping suburb, the machinists and staff who, for most of their working lives, drove and walked to Webster’s Engineering, will not go to the factory any more. The clerks, accountants, and foremen will not go any more. Nor will Mrs Webster. And, within weeks, the red-brick monument to another age and its cast-iron nameplate will come tumbling down. She eyes the portrait. We dragged the Age into
being with heat and molten metal and giant machines and tiny objects that meant nothing by themselves until they became part of a greater whole — we did that. We changed the world around us; now the world around us has changed and us with it. Made us the past and turned the faith that fired our factories into a set of quaint, old-fashioned beliefs.

You knew all this, and that’s why you chose to go, to go while we could still call it our age. To go while those great machines of ours still pressed metal and tin and whatever came their way into the shape and face of our age. To go while we still had it in us to shape the times, before the times shaped us and gave the world a different face. That noise, that incessant hammering, those feet that marched to and from the factory floor, those hands that grasped the levers that crushed the scrap — that was us. But it’s not us any more.

She rises from the chair, whisky in hand — her step betraying the slightest hint of unsteadiness — and paces slowly about the room. Already, it has the look and smell of rooms that belong to other times, old times. These trophies (tennis, from the days when she first laid eyes on Webster and saw in his eyes and his actions the utter, unquestioned conviction that his time was upon him), these books (which she has read, but which Webster, a browser not a reader, only
ever flicked through), these framed photographs that captured their days, will soon have the dust of History upon them. And while there are those who are content, at a certain stage of life, to let the dust settle on their days, Mrs Webster is not one. And she never will be. As she finishes the whisky, she notes the unsettling thrill that comes of stepping out of your Age and into the uncertainty of a time that doesn’t yet know what it is.