Holden's Performance

by Murray Bail

  By the time the president finished his introduction (‘the Honourable Minister of Commerce, Home Affairs and the Interior on my left—excuse me, on my right talking to my wife—needs no introduction…’) a grey cloud in the shape of a brain moved into position directly above the intellectually indefensible road, trees swayed as skirts plaited around legs, the tablecloth rose and fell on the long refreshment table, and Hoadley the human loudspeaker, who smilingly had his hands on hips forming two transparent wings, couldn't hear his own voice, and switched on the race-caller's microphone.

  The sudden loud words of praise angled at the audience, something about the interior being the ‘engine of the nation's commerce’, and something else about the ‘headlights of prosperity’, barely had time to be caught up by the wind and go over people's heads before they were obliterated by the earsplitting screech of the Hoadley & Son sound system.

  Until then the crows spaced out on the telegraph wires had looked on silently but now they began croaking out their coarse lament of complaint. Crouching in front of the mike making adjustments with the ceremonial pliers Shadbolt only heard what happened next. Two figures leaned forward from the shadows of the trees with guns to their shoulders, and in a coordinated clap of thunder brought down the birds like fluttering black books. They were members of the local Young Men's Bible Class objecting not so much to the dried-out pessimism in the cry of the crows—after all, it had become engrained in the national consciousness—but in the apparent choice of the crows' four-letter words. The vigilante group was well known in the district. The audience concentrated with their arms folded on the Minister's words.

  Hoadley went on flashing his smile as if nothing had happened. Experience had taught him to expect all kinds of interruptions in the interior. And he'd be the last person to register impatience or alarm, and so out there in the middle of the sticks the small crowd accepted him. The Senator was all right.

  Meanwhile, Shadbolt had set about tracing the irritating screech to a speaker hooked into the groin of a gum tree. Shinnying up the ironbark trunk—giant koala in maroon blazer—he managed to get at the wiring while the Bible-bashers below stared at the sky for the slightest utterance of the dreaded carnal word unsuitable to human ears. He managed to reduce the interference just as the Minister wound up with added timbre to his voice, ‘I declare this super highway open…’ And snip went the barbed wire.

  At that moment drops of rain splattered the leaves and Shad-bolt was the last to reach the shelter of the trees. The women behind the table were brisk, mutton dressed up as lamb, and the men looked down at their boots concentrating on erosion and yields. Shoulder to shoulder he and Hoadley drank a cup of tea from the urn, the Minister making extravagant promises with his mouth full of scone.

  Shadbolt who hadn't said a word felt comfortable among the country people. But Hoadley out of the corner of his mouth said, ‘There's nothing doing here, let's go.’ Nodding and waving they retreated to the car, Shadbolt bringing up the rear.

  ‘A good day's work,’ Hoadley loosened his necktie and cuffs.

  They left the windswept plain, the chrome mascot on the bonnet aiming for a pubic fold in the distant hills, the entrance to Sydney and the sea.

  ‘Straight home today, sir? No detours or anything?’ Because of his height Shadbolt couldn't escape the driver grinning and winking at him in the mirror. Lowering his head he tried drying his hair with his handkerchief.

  The Minister pointed his ringed finger, ‘You've ripped your strides.’

  Shadbolt recognised a tone of gratitude.

  ‘Doesn't matter.’

  From his wallet Hoadley peeled off some fivers.

  ‘Get yourself a new pair on me. I'm told you can handle a car,’ he said in a louder voice. ‘And that you can be relied upon. Well, I know you can be relied upon. And God knows, that's what I need right now.’

  Shadbolt wasn't sure what he was driving at. He kept rubbing his hair with his handkerchief. Then he noticed a sudden change of expression in the driver's shoulders.

  ‘I'll talk to Alex about you. I've decided. I think that's what you and I'll do.’

  3

  Days and nights of an autocrat—women and words— views through a windscreen—the last tram—an Egyptian harbour—Harriet, the attraction of curves—a power play— McBee conquers the capital—the Colonel points to Shadbolt—Vern requires further proof—the fall of Mister Hoadley.

  Few capital cities of consequence are located at the edges of a country. The instinct's to set them down towards the middle. Some nations have transferred their capitals holus-bolus after realising the mistake. A capital positioned at the edges of a country remains at the edges of the mind.

  From the interior a capital can be seen by its citizens to be radiating power in all directions, a feeling reinforced by a psycho-geometric town plan of lawned circles and spokes, parliaments and palaces at the end of perfectly straight vistas. With so much symbolism invested a capital naturally is tenaciously defended. When the capital ‘falls’ a nation is weakened; almost too painful to contemplate. Here again, locating them away from the sea and adjacent countries is obeying a deep instinct, Moscow's experiences to the north merely being the most graphic among many examples.

  Newly erected capitals—Delhi, Brasilia, Yamoussoukro!—have had the good fortune of drawing upon the combined experience of the others. Naturally each one has been set down in the interior, and following the examples of Paris, Washington, Pretoria, they've been lavish with space, for it denotes confidence, and devices such as artificial lakes and the fluted column suggest, to the innocent eye, tranquillity and permanence.

  These last-to-arrive capitals have followed the eternal laws too literally, too eagerly, and with their concentration of two-hundred-foot wide avenues connected to circles like molecular structures, their deployment of obelisks, shadowless forecourts and memorials to the fallen, and their preference for buildings of the golden section, they display not so much obedience to the idea of a capital as an obsession for cleanliness and clarity, as though showing themselves and the world they have mastered the difficult local environment; cities then in the abstract, detergent capitals. Recalled in the mind's eye these new capitals have an aerial perspective. And because of the surrounding emptiness there is nothing to stop them spreading.

  For the first few weeks Shadbolt drove with a map spread on his knees, and at the end of each day lay crucified in his curtained room.

  The centrifugal forces of Canberra had entered his metabolism. For a good hour his body leaned this way and that, as if he was back on Frank McBee's motorbike. Closing his eyes he saw the slippery steering wheel bringing into view low white buildings and flagpoles, spinning away in vast semicircles of concrete. Even the word Canberra was circular in its loops and vowels.

  The dream of the capital was still being realised. The two-hundred-foot wide avenues radiating from orbs set in concrete, which happened to be geometric renditions of the sunrise of optimism around the pursed lips of his Aunt Dais, and thousands of other Australian women, were mostly complete. Still on the drawing board in late 1958 was the ornamental lake with its patently false bottom and the fountain designed to spurt at a permanent tremendous height, a measure of the nation's virility. The War Memorial had long risen up from a bare paddock. Crammed full of dioramas, captured weapons and tobacco tins perforated with Jarman and Jap shrapnel, it sported its own copper-cladded orb roof, maternal in its declaration of reigning superiority; this centre for khaki worship was given precedence of thirty, forty years over the proposed library and the national gallery. Other government offices occupied horizontal buildings set back in lawns kept alive by sprinklers hissing like summer insects. Town-planners in their peculiar uniforms of browns and suede outnumbered the elected politicians, while earth-movers and trench-diggers in faded navy singlets toiled over the flat landscape, Egyptian slaves being paid a living wage, cracking open the old yellow-brown soil and rock under a white sun, for there was still muc
h to do superimposing order over the naturalness. Thousands of flyscreens for the windows were still being stamped out all over the country and shipped in.

  The pattern of orbs and semicircles was repeated on a smaller scale in suburbs. Wherever Shadbolt drove he discovered no relief from the crescents, doglegs, returning boomerangs, cul-de-sacs uncompleted—never had Shadbolt come across so many dead ends. At regular intervals he passed a concrete velodrome where concave aerodynamics sucked in butterflies, bus tickets and interdepartmental papers, where civil servants and their masters could be seen going flat out in circles practising their craft. The centrifugal forces of Canberra…The constant veering to the right and U-turning had sent successive governments ‘further to the right’, produced endless steering committees, and cricked the necks and given stiff upper lips to the residents. It took a superhuman effort to follow another course. Older people found it especially difficult; they simply took the longer, roundabout way. It was a city where language itself became circular, self-centred.

  Shadbolt had been supplied with a uniform, somewhere between a policeman's and lift-attendant's. Below his chin a necktie tapered like a narrow bitumen road, and he wore a cap bearing the nation's coat of arms which feature the kangaroo and emu, because they can't take a step backwards. Unlike the other drivers he wore the cap at all times—he even wore it when the Minister wasn't seated in the back—and he never had a Sydney tabloid open at the racing pages on the seat beside him. The coat and trousers were so tight he could hardly bend over, which is why, partly why, he often had a shoelace undone.

  At the crack of dawn he reported in at the car pool. There he made sure the Minister's car was topped up with water, oil and juice from the Middle East. He checked the tyres. If he couldn't see his teeth in the duco he used his handkerchief and a bit of spit and polish. He enjoyed the early hour when it felt as if the whole world unfolded from the echoing garage. After signing in he solemnly negotiated his way past the fleet, past the other drivers lounging against the bonnets and walls, the supervisor there striding about with his clipboard, and cautiously nosed the Detroit-designed front end out into the rectangle of daylight.

  Usually a bit of mist first thing: hedges took on ragged definition, trees and empty flagpoles appeared to rear up out of nowhere.

  Keeping his eyes on the damp road and simultaneously glancing down at the map on his knees, in case he was swept off course by a vicious circle, Shadbolt made his way over curving lines named after the first explorers who stumbled around in circles, and these formed a pattern with other lines named after the nation's artists and architects, the flying doctor and rural poets, characters out of fiction, opera singers and dead generals, the forgotten politicians, judges, backyard scientists, the longsighted graziers and businessmen—names assigned by a select committee with others thrown in to cover environmental factors—Waratah, London, Aboriginal myths—so that Shadbolt traversed the nation's culture rendered in material form, a ten-minute journey with plenty of dead ends, reaching by 7.30am the Minister's surprisingly ordinary bungalow in Lamington Street.

  If the Minister had been up all night personally dealing with a constituent's problems, Shadbolt sometimes had to wait for half an hour or so, pacing the length of the car. When Hoadley appeared he came to casual attention and opened the door.

  Hoadley sat in the front flipping through the morning papers. He consumed them as avidly as he did food, twelve newspapers a day, and when he told tales about the press or his opponents he spoke as if his mouth was full. Slowly he shook his head, half-talking to himself, ‘I could pour a bucket of good old-fashioned shit over half of these bastards, any time I liked.’

  Concentrating on the road Shadbolt could only nod.

  In that period of post-war growth the streets were ankle deep in manure. Everyone wanted to see the country grow. Building prosperity and therefore peace of mind and body through wheat-woolgold was the general idea; the country was run by cockies. And Hoadley for one endorsed it one hundred and ten per cent. A clean, spacious place like Canberra showed what was possible.

  Hoadley's responsibilities of Commerce, Home Affairs and the Interior were all under the one roof. Not far from the capital's centre, CHAI had the shadowless forecourt normally found in town hall architecture, and if reporters were waiting itching for a statement Hoadley positively leapt out of the car and took the shallow steps four at a time—something even Shadbolt had trouble doing—a display of tremendous energy, allowing the photographer gripping the Speed Graflex like a steering wheel to record an image of a government on the move. Otherwise he sauntered up, apparently deep in thought, in case any of his staff were looking down from the thousand and one windows.

  Shadbolt then drove the car around the back where it was set up for the day's work: the IN and OUT trays, ministerial papers, the desk calendar with the proverbs, folders, letters to be signed, the Cabinet submissions all stacked in the back seat. Shadbolt personally checked out the dictaphone and the cocktail cabinet.

  Often the department heads themselves came down and sought Shadbolt out as he sipped a cup of tea—CHAI being famous for its tea-breaks. They looked more worried than their Minister, and obedience had softened their lines; such is the nature of leadership.

  ‘Make sure he signs this,’ they'd say, sometimes tugging Shadbolt's sleeve. ‘See that the Minister gives the OK on these. Get him to sign here. I say, do you think you can get the Minister back by four?’

  When Hoadley arrived trailing secretaries and petitioners, and speaking loudly, he immediately produced expressions of attentive interest all round, for he was popular but evasive with his staff. Settling in the back seat he gave Shadbolt the nod, ‘Let's get out of here’, and went forth in his capacity of Minister of Commerce, Home Affairs and the Interior, ready to satisfy the needs of fifty per cent of the electorate.

  Vern's handwriting had grown larger and rounder, missing the tram tracks altogether. It veered clean off the Woolworth's quarto. So bad, Shadbolt held it at arm's length. He turned the pages over. The hand of an unsteady someone, a man he once knew, and a decent man, losing his rocker?

  And yet for all their ungainly appearance the words according to Vern still represented solid, pedantic precision; enough for Shadbolt to smile picturing the windswept distracted face, lumps of ivory for teeth. As always, Vern enclosed proofs and reported in machine-gun delivery the local news which didn't make it into the Advertiser, news of Wheelright and Flies, complaints that the cul-de-sac had now completely filled up with red brick houses facing west without verandahs, and the rise in bus fares.

  The letter had been forwarded by the hieroglyphics of Mrs Younghusband, her lines as black and as sloping as the hairs stroking her arms. The contrast with Vern's could not have been more startling. Vern's scribble had been enlarged by a matter of urgency. He'd spotted Shadbolt's averted face behind a bigwig Minister, opening the door for him. He enclosed the relevant proof. For the first time Shadbolt saw himself in grey-and-white. There he was haloed in blue pencil, and above his driver's cap— to put him on the spot—a question mark. Shadbolt recognised it as the first morning he'd pulled up outside CHAI. He'd been meaning to tell Vern he'd moved to Canberra.

  Out of focus his angled posture shrank into the background stipple of car, portico and idle onlookers, frozen there as grey matter, which tended to propel Hoadley's more active figure forward, Hoadley's dark suit attracting the ink and stronger definition, and a sparkle of optimism to his teeth and bulging shirt front, which is why drivers are assigned uniforms of photomechanical grey.

  Something shifted inside Shadbolt: the old lump returned to his throat.

  He pitied his uncle stumbling around among his statues, and he wasn't sure why. Vern—his decency—it seemed to be wasted. He lived to one side. He seemed separate from the rest of people. His work of proofreading was itself private, invisible. Shadbolt then saw his own position in Canberra. Trying to shake off vagueness he did a bit of blinking while drumming the steering whe
el. He added up his experiences of the last few years. He tried to. How he had changed. What had he learnt? He had met hundreds of people…that was something. Anything else? Conscious of his heavy body, heaviness throughout, he wondered if and how in any way he had altered. It was difficult to know if he had changed at all. Through a windscreen the situation was at least clear, all laid out, he believed.

  ‘I'm going to call you “mudguards”,’ Hoadley had said; and with not a trace of the old hoodwink and smile. Mudguards? Shadbolt soon found out why. ‘You're going to take a lot of shit on my behalf. But I trust you. What we have here is a beginning of a mutual understanding.’ He inspected his fingernails and then suddenly slapped Shadbolt on the back. ‘The country needs you.’

  Being a Minister's driver carried plenty of perks. In the subterranean society of the car pool it was noticeable how the chosen ones stood apart. Expressions of worldly superiority had entered their faces, plus just a touch of condescension.

  They were carriers of state secrets, and knew it. With all this constant arriving at and gently accelerating away from important and even momentous events it was only natural an aura of power rubbed off on them. Why, some of the things they couldn't help overhearing…

  There was also the matter of overtime at triple rates. It was rumoured that a few drivers of the most disorganised Ministers earned more than the Ministers.

  It was a job for the chosen few. A man could go for twenty years and be passed over. Some went to the most extraordinary and ridiculous lengths to attract the attention of the supervisor or a Minister—a strategy which involved loss of detachment and guaranteed they would never gain selection. Certainly only mature-age drivers reached the short list, preferably bald or with a touch of judicious grey at the temples.

  And now here was this character brought in from the outside, over the heads of everybody, if you could say that about somebody over six foot and a half, barely in his mid-twenties.