The Gift of Speed

by Steven Carroll

  A small transistor radio breaks into song from the shadowy banks of the pond and spreads through the quiet evening air. It is a familiar, silly song and they both turn their heads back towards the source of this disturbance. ‘Tedious’ is the word that floats across Michael’s mind as he listens to the familiar lyrics of this popular summer song. Tedious. The word is not new to him because Michael is a reader. But it is not a word he would use among his school friends. The word ‘tedious’ would stir the schoolyard in the same way that his mother’s dresses stir the street. It is a word that needs to be shared with the right friend. And Kathleen Marsden is just the one to share this observation with; but not just yet. Not while she’s still Kathleen Marsden. Not until she becomes Kate — as she is known to her friends. And it is while he is slowly shaking his head from side to side, while that tiny transistor radio continues to fill the entire arc of the horizon with its silliness, and while he is imagining a point at which Kathleen Marsden just might become Kate, that her lips slowly open and a single word drops quietly from them, while she too shakes her head slowly from side to side.

  ‘Tedious.’

  The music stops, it is now dark and the smile on Kathleen Marsden’s lips is in shadow. But it’s there, all right. As they turn back towards the tractor, the cart and a fresh party of church guests, it seems for all the world to Michael that here is a girl who can read his thoughts. The other possibility is that his thoughts were easy enough to read and the word she had uttered in response to the music had been clearly written in his eyes all along. That, or quite simply, Kathleen Marsden had the same response to the song and used the same word to describe it. He prefers the first. He likes the idea of this girl knowing his thoughts before he speaks them.

  Near the table they quietly watch everybody. They are removed from the comings and goings of the occasion, but somehow, without moving or speaking, seem to be part of it. The brown paper bag is on her lap. They’re not there yet, he thinks. Not yet. Kate would just eat the sandwiches without a second thought; Kathleen doesn’t know what to do with them.

  Then, as if the hours were minutes, a car door is slamming in the warm suburban night as the sweet smell of watered lawns rises to meet him. He is standing on the footpath and Kathleen Marsden is walking quickly back along the front path of the Home. A voice is calling from the front seat of the car asking Michael if he is fine to get back home and he turns to say he is. Yes, yes, he is quite sure. And as the car drives out from the kerb into that sweet suburban night, he turns back to the Home, just in time to see a wedge of yellow light fan the doorway, and Kathleen Marsden disappear.

  He stands on the footpath, longer than is necessary, gazing once more upon the mystery of the place. Only now it is a different kind of mystery. A small part of St Catherine’s Girls’ Home is now familiar and far from lessening the mystery of the place it enriches it. The mystery of the place is growing. Once it was the old building itself with its windows and doors and cast-iron patterns that made him stop in the street and stare. Now he has seen that mighty door at the front of the Home open and close, and a small part of the mystery it contains has come into his life. It is like entering a story, or strolling up the canvas path of a painting. Even though he is not permitted past the front driveway, he is entering the house nonetheless.

  On the way back, all along that short walk that leads from the Home to his street, the sweet scent of watered gardens and lawns rises to meet him. In those few hours he was away, when he was driven to the hayride, when he walked towards the pond, and when he was driven back to the Home, they were out — all of them. The gardeners of the suburb. They were out watering their lawns and gardens and filling the air with the scent of cut grass, damp concrete, flowers, gravel and wet bitumen, which is the rich, dense scent of a suburb and a suburb alone.

  15.

  Father Unknown

  I’ve had it, Ivy, I said. I’m sick with it. I’m sick with the worry. And you can get an idea of the state I was in, because I didn’t know her all that well, and I didn’t know what she was going to say, or even what she thought of me. Or if it was going to ruin everything, or if the whole ceremony would be called off there and then. I just knew I had to say it and say it fast. Get it off my back. So with my best hat in my hands — darned before I left — and my heart in my mouth, I said I’ve had it, Ivy. I’m sick with it, the moment I sat down in one of those soft, cool armchairs she kept for visitors. And she gives me a comforting tap on the knee because she’s seen a few things, Ivy. She knew how to settle you down, that was her gift, she could calm anybody down and get them to talk like they’ve never talked to anyone before, drunks and no-hopers, that was what she did and the Prahran police looked after her for it. She had the gift of saying the right thing at the right time, just like she did to me that Sunday. And so she taps me on the knee and says what is it, with Rita in the other room all the time wondering what on earth we were up to.

  I just let it out there and then, because I had to. It’s the licence, I say. And I leave it at that for the moment, and she’s staring at me because she hasn’t the foggiest what I’m talking about. The certificate, Ivy. They’ll need the father’s and mother’s names and particulars. You can have mine any time, that’s not a problem, but you can’t have the father’s. Oh, I can give you his name if you like, but it won’t mean a thing because Vic never knew him, and I suppose you could say the same for me — except for a few months, if you know what I mean, Ivy. She’s staring at me all the time, this good woman, she nods and smiles, and all the time she’s nodding and smiling at me I’m sick inside. Because I feel like I’ve brought it with me, this stain. This awful stain. And it’s making me sick that something that happened so long ago, so far away still has the power to do all this. Not because I care, not much. They can say all they like about me and already have, all those years ago. But Vic, what did he do? What did he ever do, but get born? And now we’re going to have to write something down on that certificate, Ivy, and I don’t know what it can be. I don’t know what it is we can find to say. Then the priest, and I don’t know what to tell him either. I’m sick with it, Ivy. I’m sick with the worry of it all being a disaster, a disaster that’s all my fault because I’ve got this thing, this stain. And it just keeps spreading. I wouldn’t mind if only it’d just stop with me, but it doesn’t. Do I make myself plain, Ivy? She nods and smiles again, and I know she understands exactly what I mean. I don’t tell her this — not that she’s all that religious, because she doesn’t appear to be, but because she’s so practical, this little woman — so I don’t tell her that maybe if I weren’t around any more the stain would stop with me. And it wouldn’t hurt anybody else, and there wouldn’t be any disasters, disasters that I know would be all my doing. I’d stay away, I’d go away forever, never see my boy again if I knew that would give him a clean start and make him happy, because that would make me happy. But it doesn’t work like that. Does it?

  While I’m thinking all this, keeping this bit to myself, she leans forward and taps me on the knee again and says don’t worry about the priest. Leave the priest to me, and she nods, this good, sensible woman, and I know that that bit at least is all right. She knows the priest, the priest is one of hers. Not a word will be mentioned. Nobody’s going to say a word, she says, because I won’t have it. She gives me a firm nod, this little woman, and there’s a don’t-mix-with-me look in those eyes all of a sudden. And I know it’s not for me, it’s just to let me know that this is the look that she’ll be keeping for anybody who might dream of opening their mouths or even so much as breathe a word. It’s to let me know that she’s got this look in her and that she knows just when to use it. And that when she does, nobody mixes with her.

  Then she points to the table beside us, and for the first time since stepping into the house — and it’s a large, open house, big enough to have a guests’ room, which we’re sitting in — I notice that there’s a silver teapot on the table with some scones and jam that look like they’ve
just been done. As she picks up a cup and a saucer, she quietly says, and as for the certificate, Mrs C, don’t you give it a thought. And she lets the milk settle in the cup before stirring it in. It’ll just say ‘Father Unknown’. But nobody will see that bit that doesn’t need to know. She gives me that look again that assures me nobody will know that doesn’t need to know because she won’t have it.

  We talk about the china, because you don’t see the kind of china she serves up all that often, and the house and the many rooms and her daughters. My ghosts have gone for now. I can feel they’ve gone, and I’m happy to talk about the little things. I’m listening to this good woman talk about her house and her china, and just as I’m thinking how lucky she is to be living without ghosts she says it. You’re not so alone, she says, staring out the window. I’m not so sure what she means, and I say I’m not. I’ve got my boy, even if he’s not such a boy any more, and I’ve got my sisters, even if I don’t see them. I know they’re there. She shakes her head. In your troubles, I mean, Mrs C — and it’s good of her to call me that because she knows I’m not. I don’t say anything because I’m not sure I’m meant to. I’ve got this odd feeling I might be interrupting her, although interrupting what, I don’t know. It’s as though she’s started something that she hasn’t quite finished, and I’m beginning to feel that I’m not the only one who needs to get something off my mind. You shouldn’t feel so alone, she goes on, almost dreamy. There was a lot more of it going on than you might care to think, and as she says it she gives her shoulders a little shrug, nothing much, but enough to be noticed, and she takes her eyes off the window and meets my stare for a moment. But this time the hard look has gone from her eyes and there’s something else there — I know she’s showing me another part of her. What’s more, I get the clear impression she doesn’t show this bit off all that often, that what I’ve said has stirred something in her, and when she’s finished, when she’s done telling me that there was a lot more of it going on than I’d care to think, she just nods quietly to herself.

  Because I don’t know what to say, and because I’m not even sure if she wants me to say anything, I just sit there and I nod back. But from her manner I can see that she’s not telling me this because she knows it from the helping work she does around the neighbourhood. No, this knowledge that there was a lot more of it going than you’d think is coming from somewhere else altogether. And I know I couldn’t have come to a better woman with my little secret, the one that made me sick with worry and dragged me all the way here, because this good woman knows a few things about secrets like mine. That’s when I look around this grand house of hers — its many rooms and the five daughters whose heads it puts a roof over — with a different eye.

  When the time comes we put her good china cups aside and rise. She takes me to the door and I see Rita — looking more like a girl in her mother’s house than she’s ever looked before — hanging about at the end of the long, dark hall. Don’t give it another thought, says her mother. And she’s got that hard look in her eyes again, and again I know it’s not for me. It’s just to let me know that she’s got it and knows when to use it, and that no one will know that doesn’t need to know, because she won’t have it.

  As I’m walking back through the park, the same elms and gums and lawns have got a Sunday look they didn’t have a few hours before when I marched along these shaded paths with this thing, this stain inside me that made me so sick it drove me out of the house. That’s all gone. Now, on the grand day, I can watch them all — but not too close — and I’ll know that nobody will know anything of what’s been said who doesn’t need to know, because that good woman won’t have it.

  From here, from this bed, it’s all another life now, another age. Tomorrow is another year. Already, another year. I can hear them all laughing, out there in the yard. With their glasses, and their beer, and their funny little sparkling wines, they’re laughing in the New Year. Those wonderful, young people. I hear it all, the way you do on hot, open nights like these, and I’m tempted to get up and join them, and I might. A cool glass of beer, and a laugh. They’re just what I need.

  16.

  Miss Universe

  A dream might look like this, if you could snap a dream and look at it the way you do at a photograph.

  Under a clear, starry night the television sits on the lawn facing the street. The armchairs and easychairs from the lounge room have been placed on the lawn as well, facing back towards the lounge room from which they came. Likewise the coffee table and the lampshade. In the heavy, summer heat, the house has turned itself inside out. The private life of the house is on display: what they eat, what they say — and sound never seems to carry so well as it does on clear, summer nights — what they choose to watch on the television, who their guests are, what they drink and how much of it they drink. It is a spectacle housed within a spectacle — a family on their front lawn, there to be observed as they themselves observe the shifting black-and-white images on the television.

  All along the street, on this New Year’s Eve, under the heavy night air, the houses have turned themselves inside out. The contents of their lounge rooms, kitchens and bedrooms have tumbled onto the front lawns like toys from a toy box. Televisions flicker amongst the shrubbery, mattresses have been dragged from bedrooms and children bounce in the moonlight. Laughter, telephones and the rattle of distant trains all hang in the air as if the sounds of the night are themselves too weary with the heat to move. Everybody’s lives are on display, but only the school headmaster and his wife — who live in the next street and are embarking on their regular evening walk — seem to notice.

  And Michael, who is sprawled on his stomach in a far corner of the lawn. He watches them too — his parents, their friends, as they drink their beers, their shandies, their sparkling wine and their lemonade. They are engine drivers, all of them, past and present, retired and still working. They talk of what they did, what they do, and how it’s not the same any more. Even from where he is, Michael can see the sweat on his father’s face, the sweat on all their faces, all the men, because they sweat, this bunch. The first hint of summer, a big laugh, the slightest effort, and they sweat. A lifetime of standing in front of furnaces, of stoking fires to the point where the heat they emit can drive hundreds of tons of metal and wood, might do that to someone. Might just leave the pores of the skin permanently open so that the slightest effort, or a laugh — and they laugh with their whole body, these people — is enough to bring on a good, satisfying sweat. Although his father doesn’t work any more, he sweats as if a lifetime of working habits, habits that he just can’t break — like waking at five in the morning — are all still with him.

  On and on they go, about their engines and their beer and their golf. Michael loathes all their talk. He loathes their beer that smells like vomit, and all their talk about it being the best beer in the world. All their stupid talk about — what is it again? — hops. And colour. He hears it every time his father’s friends visit. Just as he hears all about their golf — their Gary Players and their Arnie Palmers. He can just see them all, on the fairway with their silly little gloves that have no fingers and their nine irons with Sam Snead scrawled across them and their spiked Gary Player golf shoes. They talk about them — these famous golfers — as if they’re gods that just happen to be personal friends, as if they’re all on first-name terms — and all because Arnold Palmer played at the club one Saturday the previous spring. The great Arnold Palmer strode across the lawns of the club to the first tee and hit the ball into oblivion. His father and all his friends stood by the edge of the tee and watched the ball disappear. And when he’d finished, when the great Arnold Palmer had finished his eighteen holes with a club record score, when he strode back to the clubhouse, he shook the hands of his father and his friends, and from that moment on he was always Arnie. He had tossed his Spalding Dot number 1 into the air when he’d finished and Michael watched a group of young caddies clamber for the ball that Arnold Palmer h
ad hit. Ever since then the talk has been about how good he was with the kids, this Arnie of theirs.

  Golf. He loathes it and all talk of it. He lays quietly on the grass and keeps his loathing to himself. Besides, they have stopped all their talk about golf and beer and engines. They are talking about the most beautiful woman in the world. Michael studies them, and their wives, as they all in turn watch the television. On the screen black-and-white figures come and go. Women in gowns. Bright gowns, subdued gowns. They step forward, they smile, they speak briefly, they turn and return to their places. But it is the woman with the silver crown in her hair and the dark sash across her chest who occupies the screen. This woman is Miss Universe. As Michael rolls from his stomach onto his back, mentally playing with the images on the screen, he looks beyond the garden to the street and notices that all the televisions, on all the other front lawns, all contain the same image.

  He returns his gaze to his front garden, to his parents and their friends gathered round the small table with its snacks and beer bottles and ashtrays. Everybody agrees that it is a good thing, a fine moment, that this woman — the most beautiful woman in the world — is ours. Her name — it is true — looks and sounds like the names of the Ukrainian family opposite, or like that of Michael’s Polish friend down the street. But she is ours, and everybody nods that it is a good thing. There is a silence, then someone suggests it’s a pity, though, that she isn’t really one of us. Silently nodding, everybody agrees. It’s a pity, this driver friend of his father’s adds — encouraged by the general agreement — that she isn’t a real Australian. This is what he meant to say, and he finally says it. Again everybody agrees that it is a pity, the nodding beginning all over again. It is good; no one suggests it isn’t a good thing that this woman is now the most beautiful woman in the world. But it is a pity all the same.