The Gift of Speed

by Steven Carroll

  In that shady corner of the garden where she sits — as Frank Worrell prepares to rise and meet his moment — sixteen-year-old Kathleen Marsden resolves to hold her world together over the remainder of the summer with her will, and live each day as though nothing changes.

  22.

  A Diesel at the Mill

  Vic turns his cheek to the wind then looks down to the road passing by beneath him, at the wheels of Rita’s bicycle spinning round, as he rides to the Old Wheat Road for the morning shopping. It is a familiar path, past the school, its red-brick classrooms quiet under the peppercorns, past the tennis courts, freshly raked and sprinkled, and up into the Old Wheat Road. It’s an easy and pleasant ride — best taken in the mornings, before the sun bakes the suburb — and Rita’s bicycle, never used by her, is as good as new and travels smoothly.

  It wasn’t really that long ago he regularly pushed Rita along Toorak Road and up the Tivoli Road hill. Not really that long ago, but long enough to be another life. Yet there are days and nights when he could swear that nothing’s changed, and others when he’s remembering the actions of somebody else whose name happens to be Vic. A different Vic. A Vic as separate from him as a character in a book or a movie, whose name might also be Vic. The years do that. The years were his. The years were his, and Rita’s, and the boy’s, and the years went quickly. All twenty of them. And you don’t walk out on all those years just like that. But you can’t keep this little number up all your life, either. Can you, Victor? he asks himself quietly as he enters the Old Wheat Road. Not so long ago it was like the main street of a wild west town, all weeds and dirt and long swaying grass. Now it’s just like anywhere else. He parks his bicycle outside the butcher’s and removes the clips from his trouser legs. You don’t just walk out on twenty years.

  But soon, before the years run out altogether, he will. Then they’ll both have to start again. No longer Vic and Rita. No longer ‘we’ and ‘us’, but what they were before their lives merged and led them all the way out here to a world of neat new lawns and glistening weatherboard houses. To everybody else around him these are the streets they will live their lives in. Even the young families look old, like they’ve arrived at their stop and their journey is over.

  Inside the butcher’s he chats about golf, because the butcher is a mid-week golfer. And he plays like one. He swings his club like he’s swinging a leg of lamb, and most of the time he may as well be. The cool smell of the shop rises up through the sawdust at Vic’s feet, and he stares out the window at the greengrocer’s opposite while taking in the sound of the butcher’s meat cleaver. A few moments later the greengrocer weighs the onions that Vic will fry with the steaks he has just bought, then gently drops them into a brown paper bag as though they are semi-precious stones. The pharmacist hands him his new supply of pills and tells him — like he always does — that the pills are useless with grog. Vic smiles as he always does and takes the pills, and the pharmacist smiles as he passes them over. That’s the other thing about the suburb, everybody knows what’s going on.

  Then, somehow, he’s standing at the junction of the two main streets of the suburb, opposite the flour mill and the milk bar that’s recently taken on the fancy name of The Rendezvous. The steaks, the onions and the pills are in his string bag, his bicycle is resting against his thigh, the clips are in his pocket. How did he get here? And how long had he been here? There was a sound, he remembers that, and a vague sensation of being called. But what called him? Whatever it was he answered the call and followed it as if he were walking in a dream, and part of him wonders if he’s not having a turn. A small one, but enough to throw everything out of whack. But he’s not. This is different. This is like being roused by some previous incarnation and he can’t decide if he’s been roused from a dream or is entering one. Then he hears it again, the thing that called him. Long and deep. Like it knew he was out there. He takes in the deep throb of the engine, the hiss of the Westinghouse brake, the power of the thing, this shunting diesel, as it effortlessly carries a line of trucks laden with grain along the service track that runs beside the mills, then out into the world of diesel and steam, where trains go on without him.

  It’s at times like these that he has to remind himself that he was a driver once, and that he drove, drank and walked with the best. He watches the diesel chugging away from the mills, and knows that the driver is a mug. He also knows that he, Vic, could get in the cabin even now, and drive that thing — a mere shunting diesel — the way it was born to be driven.

  Then it’s gone, and he’s left at the junction holding the handlebars of Rita’s bicycle with one hand and the string bag of shopping with the other. On the way back, through those quiet, trimmed streets, he notices that the players are out on the tennis courts, that the schoolyard is silent and snoozing through the holidays, and notes that the morning will be gone if he’s not careful.

  23.

  Frank Worrell Went Down on One Knee

  Vic doesn’t know it, but while he was standing at the intersection of the Old Wheat Road and the main street, drawn to the diesel at the mill, gazing upon its familiar blue-and-yellow crest and listening to the ancient rumble of its engine, something perfect entered the world. Frank Worrell went down on one knee. In another suburb, in another city, but under the same sun and at exactly the same time, Frank Worrell went down on one knee and delivered into the world a perfect act — a perfect moment. A moment that was bigger than the whole of the year in which it took place because it will outlast it. A moment so perfect that years after Vic is no longer alive, years after the engine that he gazed upon is consigned to scrap and its ancient rumble silenced, people will talk of this act — the day Frank Worrell went down on one knee and drove Alan Davidson through the covers for four. Everything stopped at that moment — Davidson, Worrell, the players, the crowd, Michael with his head bowed over the plastic radio in the kitchen, and Vic at the intersection of the Old Wheat Road and the main street of the suburb. Everything stopped, except the ball. Oblivious of the nature of its going, the ball travelled majestically to the boundary. The batsman stayed resting on his knee, perhaps as oblivious of the perfection of the moment as the ball, or, more likely, reluctant to leave the stroke, knowing full well that he would never know such a moment again. Reluctant to leave this moment that he glimpsed back in the players’ rooms, this moment that he knew was waiting for him out there on the playing field. But the moment was now leaving him, and would never come again. And the bowler, as still as the crowd around him, seems almost grateful to have played his part in the construction of a perfect act. Michael can only imagine this as he stands with his hands on the kitchen bench listening to the radio. But he knows something extraordinary has occurred because the stroke is followed by silence on the radio. There is a silence because the commentators cannot find the words to describe what they have just witnessed. That is what perfection does to people — even those who know the game and speak of it often and well. Even though he cannot see the face of Davidson, even though he will not see it until that evening when the stroke is shown on television — he can picture it. A part of him is convinced already that this is a moment — not only of perfection — but a moment in which rivalry becomes collaboration. Together, they have made this moment. And as much as Davidson wants Worrell’s wicket, as much as he wants to see his stumps scattered across the ground, or — if not his wicket — as much as the bowler wants him unnerved and the stuffing knocked out of his bloody perfect composure — as much as he wants all this — Michael also knows that there must have been a moment when Davidson looked up from his follow-through, saw the stroke, and reached for the right words but, like the commentators on the radio, found only silence. Had he been less of a bowler the ball would not have been as good as it was. Michael looks at the delivery on television later that evening, and it is a good ball. Any less of a batsman and he would not have risen to the occasion and would not have found the stroke that was there waiting to be found. This shot was no acci
dent. The bowler, the ball, the batsman, the bat, the heat, the breeze, the humidity — they all had the possibility of this shot written into them and, together, the bowler and the batsman found it.

  No other moment in the remainder of the test will matter as much as this one stroke. Not the result, not the wickets that fell, or the runs that were gathered. Only this moment. That night in front of the television when he dwells on the shot and when he reads accounts of it in the evening newspaper, his faith — that something perfect can enter the ordinary world of streets and shops and trimmed lawns — is affirmed. And even those who don’t care much for the game will have paused before their television screens in acknowledgment that this was an event. For Michael, all that matters is that someone has done it. Worrell may have imagined playing just such a stroke all his life, seen it in his mind’s eye again and again, and always assumed that it would stay there — in his mind. Always assumed that perfection could not be taken out of the mind and placed in the actual world — that, like a particularly vivid dream, it would all dissolve on waking. But he has lived the dream, and it is documented — in print, photographs and on film. It is forever his — and everybody else’s. With that thought, Michael considers that there may even have been a moment of sadness on the part of Worrell — that when you live the dream, you lose the dream. That while the idea of playing the perfect shot remains a thought, it is always beckoning — and always belongs only to the dreamer, to be summoned up like a toy and played with, then dispatched when play is done. But when the dream and reality merge, it is not only finished, but belongs to everyone, for it has entered the world. And that might be sad. He fancies that this sadness might too be written into the shot, that as everything came together and Worrell could feel in his bones what he was about to do — in that split second when the player is privileged to feel the perfection of the moment before passing it on to the crowd — there was a deep sense of loss as well as giving. The stroke no longer lives in his mind, but has gone out into the world. As Worrell lingered on one knee, it is just possible he was trying to hold onto that moment a little longer, before losing it forever.

  As Michael cuts the newspaper article out for his scrapbook that night, it occurs to him that they all bring their gifts to the game — speed, daring, cunning, danger. But Worrell’s shot was something else. Worrell’s shot was a poem, the sort of poem that his English teacher constantly hammers them with, after having laughingly called them all peasants. And as he sits at his desk wondering why he should call this shot a poem, the word ‘grace’ pops into his head and then out of it as he writes the word down on the page in front of him and looks at it. He’s never thought about this word much before, and until now he’s never really understood what it meant. Now he does. Worrell’s stroke is a picture of grace. He now understands the word because he can picture it.

  For Michael, the world outside, where days tumble into days, and months tumble into years without anybody breaking ranks during the march to and from the station, bus stop and tram stop, will be just that much better for having been momentarily distracted by it. This thing of distracting perfection has entered the world, just as one day Michael will distract the world with the perfect ball — which will, in time and beyond time, become known as the ball that Michael bowled. For the lesson of Frank Worrell’s cover drive is that it can be done, after all.

  Part Four

  Saturday, 21ST January 1961

  24.

  An Unfortunate Maturity

  Michael is placing his cricket gear in his school bag. He is sitting on a small stool in the laundry at the back of the house. Vic is leaning in the doorway. It is a bright Saturday morning, bright on the green leaves and flowers of the garden, a gift of a morning. Vic is noting the care Michael takes in packing his bag and is wondering why he doesn’t just throw everything in the way any kid would. But he doesn’t. The white shirt, the pants — ironed the night before by Rita — the cap and the socks, are all carefully placed in the bag, folded one on top of the other like sheets in a linen press. Maids would have folded bed sheets like this in old houses, in that not-too-distant world when domestic staff, like his mother, folded the bed linen of the well-to-do with uncomplaining care, in that not-too-distant world in which his mother, and all their mothers, had paid for their futures, day after day, shift after shift, with the best hours of their lives. Now, with the Saturday nights that she never knew all gone, and with the future bought, she lies in bed and waits for the whole caper to end, her best hours given to people who never noticed. Those hours, Vic notes as he lounges in the doorway watching his son prepare for the day’s cricket, were her gift. And she gave them knowing she would never see them again.

  Michael’s bat, in its vinyl sheath, sits beside the bag. He seems older than his years, thinks Vic. Except when he’s throwing that ball down a cricket pitch. Not that Vic has seen him bowl much. Once, in fact. A year before. Rita took him to a match. He was standing on the boundary line watching the game, idly wondering who the bowler was — this bowler who seemed so tall and who ran so far before he even let the ball go — when he realised it was Michael. How could he not recognise his own son, whom he saw every day? But he hadn’t. It was, he reasoned, the unfamiliar surroundings and the unusual company of cricketers. It was not until Michael had turned and walked back to his mark that his features became suddenly familiar. The thought that crossed Vic’s mind then is the same thought that crosses it often these days. Where did he learn all this? Where did he learn to be what he is, a boy older than his years who doesn’t need him, doesn’t need any of them any more. Vic dwells on the sight of the boy who has grown while he was looking the other way, and it occurs to him that he must have been looking the other way for years. Michael, Vic notes, will organise his world in the same way that he organises his bag, layer upon layer. And having organised it he will learn to move through it in measured strides as he does on the field. The playing field, Vic is sure, is the boy’s centre. Out there, he knows his world wholly. Vic saw it that day as clearly as he saw that the boy did not need him any more. He will take that air of certainty that he has out on the playing field with him wherever he goes. Know one world, Vic has always reasoned, and you will have the key to them all. Michael may or may not have reasoned this as well, he may have come to this conclusion intuitively. But it’s where his confidence comes from. Vic envies him, envies him for this confidence that he never had, at his age or any other, and never will.

  Vic looks around the laundry noting that he too once sat on the same stool and packed his work bag in the days when the room smelled of steam and cinders, when the smell of his overalls and faded caps brought the job into the house. There are times when he can still smell faint traces of his job, but the smell, of course, like the job, has gone. What he can smell at such times are his memories.

  His bag packed, Michael remains hunched over it, staring intently at the contents as if something were missing but he can’t fathom what. Vic is amused.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Michael looks up slowly.

  ‘I’m trying to imagine a time when I’m not here,’ he says, nodding at the house. ‘When you’re not here, Mum’s not here — and we’re not us. It’s not that difficult.’

  He does this. He always does this. You ask him a perfectly innocent question and he does this. It is — at least this is the way Vic thinks of it — it is his unfortunate maturity. It’s the reason why Michael doesn’t need them any more, and it all happened while Vic wasn’t looking.

  ‘I’m getting myself ready,’ Michael continues. ‘I have been for years.’

  Sensible, Vic thinks as his tongue clicks the roof of his mouth and he scans the yard ablaze with that special Saturday-morning sun. Very sensible. He’s making sure he doesn’t get hurt. He’s been making sure for years. And although part of Vic wants to tell the boy to relax and just act his age, he is quietly pleased. Besides, he knows that the time for all that fatherly advice about acting his age and being th
e boy that he is, has long since passed.

  It is then, still staring out across the yard, that Vic begins speaking as if he is internally rehearsing something important and speaking out loud at the same time.

  ‘When you’ve grown. When you’ve gone to university, or working or doing whatever it is you’ve got your mind set on. I’ll go.’

  Michael nods without speaking, the gesture clearly saying that he knows this. That he has always known it.

  ‘I’ve got a little fishing town picked out up north. When everything is finished here. I’ll go there.’

  Michael nods again, knowing that he will be as true as his word. Then Vic turns from the yard to Michael.

  ‘This is just between us.’

  Michael’s eyes are steady.

  ‘Why did you tell me, then?’

  ‘Because this is a chat between you and me.’

  Rita is shopping. Mary is sleeping. They have the house to themselves. It is, it seems to Vic, the time for a confidential remark.

  ‘You won’t tell?’

  Michael closes his bag and looks up, shaking his head quietly, as the front door opens and Rita enters the house.

  ‘No. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t. And I just might, anyway.’

  Vic grunts in the doorway as Michael stands.

  ‘You always do this, don’t you? Both of you. You put me in the middle.’

  Vic notes a look of disapproval in his son’s eyes, a look that is there more often than Vic would like it to be, and he puts it down to the boy’s unfortunate maturity. It is the reason why he doesn’t need them any more. The reason why he doesn’t need anyone any more. And that, Vic concludes, while Michael sits with the bag between his legs, is a good way to be.