In the late-afternoon glare, Michael places the boots in his school bag, and as he walks up the street to the gaping mouth of the station, he carries more than boots in his bag. He carries his feet in his bag. The feet that will give him speed. The speed that will turn heads.
43.
The Distinguished Guest
While Michael is buying his boots, and while Webster takes yet another afternoon off to clean the engine of his car, Rita is waiting for Black to arrive. When a doctor enters a house the kitchen should be clean, the magazines stacked neatly on the lounge-room table, and a fresh towel placed in the bathroom. When the doctor’s dust-covered jeep pulls up at the front of the house, Rita checks everything one more time, because it’s not often the doctor calls. As he strolls up the gravel path, gazing at the birds passing overhead and the bright summer sky above, she puzzles over the easy, loping stride of this large man, whose face has grown puffy in the years they’ve all been here. He looks as though he could do with a good visit to the doctor himself.
There is no urgency to his walk, and it was the same when Vic had his first fit all those years ago. He stops and marvels at the flight of wild ducks on their way to the rubbish tip just north of the suburb. This is his way of going from a cold, to a death, and back to a cold again without getting too involved. She watches him walk to the front door, but doesn’t move even though she can see him perfectly well through the lounge-room window. No, she watches and she waits until he knocks, because to anticipate his knocking is to signal that his arrival is much waited upon — and the fresh towels in the bathroom would acquire the look of special-occasion towels (not an everyday occurrence) — and he will know that he is the occasion. Rita is not prepared to let him know this — and there is no emergency — so she waits until he knocks a second time then leaves her place by the lounge-room window, where she has had a perfect view of everything.
‘She’s here,’ Rita says after greeting Black and pointing to the closed door just behind them.
Inside that dark room, shut up against the afternoon sun, the tall, stooping doctor with the black carrying case of his trade smiles at the small, bony woman sitting up in the bed, and asks soft, reassuring questions about her hip and back. The old woman, who likes a chat, is explaining to him for the third or fourth time what a silly thing it was for her to fall over like that. As he goes about his business of prodding and tapping and listening, Black reassures her that it can happen to anybody and that she shouldn’t blame her age. Everybody falls over — and everybody gets up again.
And then, as if it were an afterthought, as if the main examination of the morning were complete and only the small, trivial matters needed to be attended to, he casually turns to her in the semi-darkness.
‘Now, let’s have a look at that throat.’
Like a white-haired girl eager to be of assistance, she opens her mouth wide as he shines a small, doctor’s torch down her throat. There is a low humming sound coming from deep down in his throat, casual, almost distracted, as if only one part of his mind is concentrating on the matter at hand, while another part is concentrating on something else altogether. She shuts her mouth, he switches the small torch off, stares briefly at the ceiling, then switches the torch on again and asks the old woman to open her mouth once more. And Mary obliges once again. Black motions to Rita with his forefinger and calls her to his side. At first she wonders why but then she sees the swollen creepers flourishing in pink triumph and is instantly sick in the heart.
When the examination is finished Mary shuts her mouth, then reaches for a butterscotch from the table beside her. Crunching on the sweet, her teeth still strong, she asks about her hip and he tells her it will mend, but slowly. She must be patient, and she nods as if to say that she expected him to say exactly that, that he would tell her what they all tell her, that in age, all things mend slowly — or not at all.
On the front porch, with the bedroom door well shut behind them, Black turns to Rita with a quiet certainty in his eyes.
‘I don’t think Grandma will be with us much longer.’
Rita asks how much longer, and he says not long, perhaps even days, for decline can be swift and dramatic.
‘She thinks it’s a summer cold,’ says Rita, aware of the fact that she too is now taking in the sky and the birds.
Black nods and tells Rita that there is no reason to change her mind. Let her keep thinking that, it will change nothing. Rita tells him that she craves cold beer in the afternoons and evenings and Black tells her that Grandma can have all the cold beer she wants.
Behind the wheel, Black is oblivious of the street and the suburb. It always comes to this. In the end. The Distinguished Guest is suddenly there, walking alongside us, decked out in his best clothes. An affable assistant. Possibly with an urbane quip or two tucked up the sleeve of his best suit. But Mr James, Black reflects, was never a doctor, and he never saw the other side of this Distinguished Guest — the ruffian with more than a few too many stingers inside him who won’t take no for an answer, and whose invitation is more than likely followed by a belch than a gentle quip. This is the side that Black sees.
And as much as his job brings him face to face with the ruffian inside the Distinguished Guest, he is never at ease in his company or able to accommodate him. It is always like this. Inside the neat, white house he has just left is an old woman whose life has been lived and who will soon be gone. Gone. It could be somewhere, it could be nowhere. It is all in the way you say it. And this, it always occurs to Black, is where it all breaks down; all those fine books and fine words he so admires. The Distinguished Guest goes where words can’t and never will go, and the cold look of disdain on his face tells you all you need to know about what he thinks of words.
44.
Mrs Webster at the Bedroom Windows
Something draws Mrs Webster to the bedroom windows, a sound so low that it gives every impression of not wanting to bring attention to itself. And because of this, Mrs Webster has noticed it. She looks down into the gardens and sees something move. At first she takes it to be a long shadow, cast by the moonlight across the circular driveway. Then she realises that this shadow is not swaying the way shadows do, but leaving the house altogether.
She pulls the curtains back and watches the progress of a car. It is her husband’s one indulgence. A game they play. He casually announces to her that he is working late and will sleep in the guest room. She always nods as though it makes perfect sense. But behind the nod there is a smile that he never sees. She parts the lace curtains. The windows of the car are dark, the driver hidden behind the glass. His indulgence had only ever broken her sleep once, a few years ago, and never again. Until tonight.
A harmless thing, she tells herself, as the long, low shadow of his car sweeps out along the driveway through the blue gardens. Because the car didn’t want to be heard, she heard it. For a moment she wonders if it means anything. She is a practical person, untouched by superstition. All the same, it is not like her to be standing by the windows this late and she lingers at the curtains when the car is gone a little longer than need be.
The long, low nose of the car parts the night. The houses are in darkness, the shops are shut, and the beast is loose. Its headlights carefully eye each intersection and corner. It is only as he passes the two towers of the flour mills (brilliant in the moonlight) and turns left into one of the two main streets of the suburb — the one street that will give him an unimpeded, straight stretch of road — that the eight perfectly cleaned and tuned cylinders of the car growl and rumble into primitive life.
Webster is perfectly still as he plunges the accelerator to the floor. He sinks into the seat, his head resting back, his eyes on the road, and merges with the car. He eases back slightly at the one curve in the road, the dogleg at the corner where St Matthew’s sits, its bells silent, then flattens the accelerator once again for the mile-long stretch of road that runs down to where the suburb officially ends. It will take less than a minute a
nd during that time car and driver will be one. For those fifty precious seconds the driver totally forgets who he is, what he is and where he is. He merges with the car, with the seat, the pedals and the internal workings of the engine itself. He becomes the car. He becomes speed and is transformed into sheer phenomenon.
The deep sleep of the suburb is undisturbed throughout. Just as nothing is stirred when the car turns and completes its return journey, before preparing to slip once again into the anonymous dark streets at the far end of the suburb that were once thistle and grass.
But instead of returning home, Webster does something he has never done before. He brings the car round on the dark, silent street that runs alongside the flour mills. Webster is not satisfied, the annihilation he craved, not complete. Once more he points the low, dark hood of the car out towards the darkness at the edge of the suburb where his ride will take him. Out to where the Scotch thistles and khaki grass still cover the land and there is space enough to accelerate into life or into death one more time.
45.
Speed
The lights of a house don’t need to be on for a house to be stirred. And just because the lights of a house are off, it doesn’t mean that the occupants are sleeping. The lights don’t mean anything. Vic has been awake for hours. He is normally a deep sleeper, someone who can fall asleep anywhere. It is, he suspects, something he learnt on those long nights when his engine had broken down or the tracks were blocked up ahead and there was nothing else for it but to get what sleep there was to be had. And if you can learn to sleep bolt upright in a driver’s seat with only the cabin windows to rest your head on, you can sleep anywhere. But not tonight.
He hears it, out to the north of the suburb, that familiar distant growl. At first, its visits were irregular, often months apart. This was how it was for years. Just when he thought it had gone away and died a natural death, it was back. Now, he hears it more and more. And whereas once there was something magnificent in its growl, something simple and elemental, there isn’t now. It was still the same car and presumably the same driver you would raise your hat to if hats were back in fashion — but something had gone from the whole caper. And he couldn’t put his finger on it.
Then it occurred to him that it wasn’t the sound of the car that was different — it was him. It was because in his heart of hearts he knew he was leaving everything — the house, suburb, the whole shooting match. Physically still here, but where it matters, all but gone. The sound of the car fades, drifts like it always does, back into that corner of the suburb from which it comes, its anonymity all part of its mystery. But then, when the sound is gone, the driver does something he has never done before. He turns the car around and the whole thing starts all over again. It is uncharacteristic, and Vic is alert and awake, listening as intently as he always did in the days when the sound first drove into his nights.
The low groan, the roar of the acceleration, the rattle of the bedroom venetians as it passes out there on the main road, the long, slow fading of the engine until it becomes a low hum are all there again. But this time it tapers into silence. This time he doesn’t hear the car coming round for the return journey. This time there is only silence. And as much as he listens and waits, the silence remains.
Vic wants to stay awake so that he can confirm its return (for he is absurdly concerned), but the sleep that he has been denied all night catches up with him.
He wakes in daylight, oddly troubled.
When Vic eventually learns of the car’s fate he will take the story personally, for what it will tell him is that the time for shooting through is near. That one can stay on in a place like this for only so long. That the suburb has changed and can no longer absorb the things it could when it was on the frontier. A suburb is tamed by time, subdued by its own speed. In the flicker of a bored eye, a paddock becomes a suburb, the frontier shifts, and all the types that the place was once wild enough to take in, must either adapt or go.
In the days that follow — through talk and a large notice in the local newspaper (the same newspaper that will also carry a photograph of the ex-detective, Gannon, standing in front of a city court) — word will filter through the suburb that Webster, the factory, is dead. A giant, the local paper will write, has gone. And the suburb will agree. Webster the factory has gone. Undone by speed. Even those who suffered under him — those who were abused by him on the factory floor, those who broke under his intolerance, who couldn’t keep pace with him, or those who simply didn’t like him — will mourn him, even weep for him. Webster, the factory, they will note, is gone. And something, a centre they never knew was there until it wasn’t, will be gone from their lives. Everybody chooses differently when the time comes. Webster’s is a death Vic will instantly respect upon hearing of it. The death of one of those who come and go on their own terms. And if hats were back in fashion, he would indeed still raise his to a fellow sentimentalist.
46.
A Bowler in Batsman’s Boots
On the day the suburb wakes to the death of Webster, Michael is contemplating the district club oval — a field so completely green and thick with grass that it could easily have sprung from a book and he, Michael, were about to step onto one of its pages. He pauses at the gate — his new boots in his school bag — and dwells on the curve of the white picket fence surrounding the oval before taking that first step into the world of the great Lindwall. For it is on playing fields such as these that he will find them all, those distant figures that fed his youth. And it is at this moment, before stepping over the gutter and onto the oval, that he appreciates, for the first time, the deeply thrilling private joy his father must have known when his dream was so close that he could almost see his name on the roster board of the Big Wheel drivers.
As he crosses the ground he is sure that all the speed that is within him could be released on grounds such as these.
At the nets he sees for the first time pitches that are neither concrete nor gravel nor sand nor dirt, but turf. He bends down on one knee to open his school bag and take his boots out. As he puts the new white boots on the grass, something turns his head and he feels the impulse to look about. When he does, he sees it, close up, for the first time. Speed. One moment he is holding his boots in mid-air, the next he has placed them on the ground. But in that time an anonymous white arm has whipped over and a dull red ball has covered the length of the pitch, soundlessly bouncing off the back of the nets. It is only a glimpse, and he has never seen speed close at hand before, but it is unmistakable. Whoever owns that anonymous white arm has the gift of speed. All around him heads are turning and watching closely as the boy runs in once more. Michael too. And as he watches the whole process this time — the run, the approach and the delivery — he realises it is not just the boy’s speed that is turning heads, it is the way he does it. An action too perfect to have been learnt. This boy has never studied anybody, Michael is sure of that. Why he is sure, he doesn’t know. But he is. Michael watches again and again, and every time it is the same — smooth, easy and perfect — too perfect to have been studied. The more he watches, the more he realises he is watching a natural. He has heard of naturals, those for whom everything falls into place because it is written into them. This action, this ease, this speed, are written into the arms and legs and back and brain of the natural. It is his gift and he is as unaware of it as a bird is of flying — or Kathleen Marsden of the brightness she brings with her. He is watching one of those for whom everything effortlessly falls into place — girlfriends, conversation, the prompt obedience with which a cigarette ejects itself from a soft pack with one flick of the finger. Life, he suspects, is full of naturals. And this bowler, whose speed is turning heads, does not have to look into books or photographs or films to see a picture of what he wants to become. He simply is. He simply does. And if you were to ask him how he does it, he would not be able to tell you. But Michael could. He knows he could, and he wishes so dearly that he couldn’t.
The boots glow o
n the glowing grass. The clock clock of bats and balls, the grunts, the comments of coaches and senior players carry across the nets and in from the curved lines of fieldsmen out on the ground. The first thing he notes is that the boots are heavier than his worn-out sandshoes, heavier than his school shoes. Heavier than anything he has worn. But heavy or not, these boots will give him feet, and as he picks up a ball from a metal bucket — a leather ball — a senior player directs him to a far net.
The natural is still turning heads and as Michael marks out the fifteen paces of his run he is determined to do the same. For if you don’t turn heads, you don’t have speed, and if you don’t have speed you have nothing and all the effort was for nothing. It has taken years to arrive at this point and as he stands at the top of his run he feels those years, and they are heavier than his boots. It has come down to this. To the next hour. If he is to turn heads, he must do it now.
As he stands ball in hand waiting to begin, all the wisdom of those years deserts him. The voice of the great Lindwall, the voice that tells him to begin slowly, to build speed gradually and not to overstretch at delivery, is nowhere to be heard as he starts his run to the crease. He hears none of their voices, all of those flickering figures in black and white who taught him. He is conscious only of the extra weight of his boots, of how slow and leaden his steps are, and of the need to push his legs, to lift his feet, to run fast. When he reaches his delivery stride he feels, for an alarming moment, as though his raised left leg, with the extra weight of the boot attached, just might continue on through the air and down the pitch without him. He is not even aware of where the ball has landed. Again and again, ball after ball, he is aware only of the need to push his legs. Faster than the time before, then faster again. But it is all wrong. More wrong than it has ever been, yet he seems powerless to stop it. Each time he releases the ball there is no sound of speed. Heads do not turn. And he determines, as he stamps back to the top of his run, that this time, with this ball, he will turn heads and everything will be as it should. The dream will meet reality, and somewhere in the northern distance of his suburb, life will come to a stop and everyone will be forced to agree that the boy has the gift of speed.
The Gift of Speed Page 18
