The Time We Have Taken

by Steven Carroll

  As she parks the car in the garage, the silvery gardens shimmering all around her, she is wondering if Webster chose, or if he had simply reached that point where he no longer controlled events and choice was obliterated by speed.

  30.

  An Unfashionable Jealousy

  ‘I knew I shouldn’t have told you.’

  Madeleine is not angry, but annoyed. And it is possibly this which disturbs him more than what she says. For this annoyance is as much as she can muster for now. Her anger, he concludes, she keeps for another time and someone else. He receives her annoyance. It is, like her gratitude, the best she can offer. There is, she implies with a shrug of the shoulders, insufficient reason for anger.

  Madeleine has just made casual mention of what she did the night before. She went, she says, to a nice little Chinese restaurant in the city with some work friends and, she adds with a glint in her eyes, a doctor whom all the nurses regard as handsome though, as they say, ‘taken’. But a bit of a ‘hunk’ all the same. He has never heard her use such words as ‘hunk’ before and it comes as quite a shock to Michael to hear the word so casually drop from her lips — a word whose company she has kept before, and not without a certain ease of manner. But the sound is all wrong, and the shock of it is not so much the shock that an obscene word or phrase from an unlikely source can produce, as the shock of inferior words or phrases from an unlikely source. Hunks, presumably, like the word itself, are beneath her. It is not a Madeleine word, at least not his Madeleine. But he is no sooner contemplating his Madeleine, than he is thinking of this other Madeleine who keeps the company of lesser words. And there is a light in her eyes when she speaks of him, a glint that is intended to be playfully teasing but which he now takes as excitement. And for a moment Michael cannot help but wonder just what sort of a roving eye his Madeleine has and how many men have caught it. He tries to ignore her playful teasing but glumness falls across his features. He has seen this look on his father’s face, a silly, childish brooding that his father was powerless to stop, and that Michael now feels likewise powerless to arrest. With the glumness, silence descends upon him. Glum silence. He is a child, like he always seems to be in her presence. And that is when she says it.

  ‘I knew I shouldn’t have told you.’

  And it is said in the way that an older sister might speak to a younger brother. Implying that he annoys her at times such as these, the way a nagging little brother would, a nagging little brother you just want to be rid of. He is not yet, this comment implies, mature enough to be told such things. Not, at least, without behaving like a child and ruining a perfectly good evening and turning all glum on her.

  And it’s true. He is one of those who bring their own dark clouds wherever they go. He keeps them on a string. They are always there, even on the brightest of days. It takes only a chance remark and he tugs their strings, drags them down, and blots out the sun.

  Jealousy is not so much out of fashion as out of favour. And she sees this out-of-favour jealousy in his eyes immediately. It is written all over his features, for this dark cloud he has dragged down on a string from the heavens is the dark cloud of jealousy. But the source of her annoyance is not so much the fact that he feels jealousy; it is her obvious belief that he has no right to feel it. Jealousy is for the privileged few upon whom anger — and love — are bestowed. To assume jealousy is to assume possession of her. And underlying the assumption of possession is the assumption that she is his property — and this assumption of property is what makes jealousy unfashionable.

  She sees in his glum jealousy the assumption of possession, and she rejects both his jealousy and his presumption with her mere annoyance. She gives no hint — as they continue walking (and he desperately tries to wipe the schoolboy glumness from his features, but the more he tries the more it resists and settles in, threatening to remain there all evening) — she gives no hint of disliking the idea of a jealous response. But not from him. His is the jealousy of the eternal sixteen-year-old. The result is a disdain that is consistent with the Age — but not because of it.

  As the minutes drag by, he realises that if he doesn’t soon wipe the glumness from his features she will also become bored with him — not simply annoyed — and so, to avoid compounding the error of his ways, he determines to wipe his hand across his face and smile.

  ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, eyeing the wintry trees along the street, quite possibly too bored already to say much more.

  ‘To get to the other side,’ he grins. ‘Any turkey knows that.’

  The trace of a smile lights her face and she takes his hand and warms it.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t get like that.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘There’s no need to. Nothing to fear.’

  ‘It’s genetic. It’s come down to me through the years. I had no choice.’

  ‘You poor thing.’

  ‘I know. But, you see, it’s gone. All finished. A sun shower.’

  They cross the road. The annoyance leaves her features, the fourth-form glumness departs his. They are now a happy young couple. Holding hands, chatting freely, because the young don’t have a care in the world.

  But his voice is a fraction too loud, his laughter a fraction too ready. It is an effort, this carefree chat. For, although the schoolboy sullenness has left his features, the memory of an older man with the air about him of someone used to the company of women, the possible hunk in question, relaxed in their company and possessing the gift of setting them at ease, stays with him. Michael has only ever seen him twice, but it is a persistent memory. And while they laugh and chat in the carefree manner of the young, an image hovers in the back of his mind. This man’s eyes resting upon Madeleine just that bit too long at the ball, before departing. Is this what he saw, or what he now sees in his mind’s eye? It is all part of this unfashionable jealousy, but Michael can’t help asking himself if this man knows her in ways that he knows her. Does he know the smell of her — her perfume, the hint of red wine always on her lips after coming from evening mass? Are these things the possession of this other, older married man the same way they are the possession of Michael? Does he know her smell and does he carry it with him on his clothes and his surgeon’s fingers that are so at ease with women and presumably do the talking for him when his lips have tired of speech?

  And then a thought, more troubling than the possibility that they both might possess knowledge of Madeleine in equal shares, occurs to him: that he might also know her in ways that Michael doesn’t. That they might not possess knowledge of Madeleine in equal shares after all.

  These thoughts — and he is as much troubled by the fact that he can even think them as by the thoughts themselves — lodge at the back of his mind as he strolls, hand in hand, with his Madeleine, making the light and carefree chat of the young.

  They come, they go — these silly thoughts. As Michael and Madeleine cross the road and a small, inner-city picture theatre comes into view, as they cross the serpentine tram tracks of the university terminus where a green rattler is preparing for its return run back down into the city and over the territorial border of the river, it is not only his moodiness and her annoyance that have gone. Having exhausted itself for now, this unfashionable jealousy of his also retires from his conscious mind and slips out of sight into those realms where it can get on with its business, unseen and untroubled.

  They enter the cinema and surrender to its welcome darkness, while, back in the suburb, Mrs Webster nervously jiggles the keys of a black sports car in her hand, her shoes crunching the gravel pathway that leads to the garage, every step taking her closer and closer to that point where she will no longer control events but events will control her on that excuse for a highway out there in the country darkness of the new suburban frontier.

  Inside the cinema, Michael takes Madeleine’s hand and is uplifted by a reassuring squeeze, small but unmistakable, enough to send the ball
oon of glumness out into the night and far, far away.

  31.

  Sitting for Immortality

  It was something of a surprise when Mulligan (the name that he signs on his works) approached the mayor, suggesting that if the mural were to be a history of the suburb then the story of the suburb ought to finish in the present day — and would His Worship, as a community leader, like to be in the painting? Mulligan, in the paint-spattered trousers of his trade, sat opposite the mayor, bulging eyes peeping through the fringe of black hair that was forever flopping over his face.

  Until then, if the mayor had bothered to think much about this artist the committee commissioned for the mural, he would probably have pronounced him a prick (barely looked at the committee, or the mayor, only had eyes, and pretty weird ones at that, for the wall). And, of course, nobody wants to hire a prick. But, after viewing his folio, they’d all had to concede that — though a prick he might be — he could paint. So, he got the job, despite the vague, uneasy feeling that they’d let someone into their ranks with — how did they all put it? — a touch of the ticking bomb about him.

  After Mulligan had approached him, he found himself re-appraising the man. Perhaps they got it right, the committee. Perhaps, even, it was an inspired choice. Here was a man, after all, who had studied in the great schools of Europe and who was now informing the mayor that there is a long tradition of such public portraiture. Rembrandt did it. The rest of the Dutch masters did it. They all did it. Only back then, of course, public figures paid to have their faces in the paintings of a master. It was, Mulligan had explained, their stab at immortality. For if the master’s work lasted into the centuries to come, so would they, through their faces up there on the walls of their cities and the framed canvases in their galleries. That, he further explained with a smile, is why they always wore their best clothes.

  And that explains why the mayor is now wearing his best suit. In an empty room at the back of the town hall, with the curtains drawn back and the afternoon light streaming in through the high windows, the mayor is standing, looking intently into that future where his painted face will live on long after the suit has fallen apart and the body inside it has turned to compost. He has been standing like this long enough for his back and neck to begin aching. Not that Mulligan notices. He works frantically with charcoal and paper, large sheets of butcher’s paper strewn about him on the floor. None of which the mayor is permitted to see. Even when he asks.

  ‘Only ever show children and fools unfinished work,’ Mulligan explains, not even looking up from the easel, ‘and, I assume, you are neither.’

  And so it goes throughout most of the afternoon: the mayor, dressed for immortality in his best suit (and with a new-found interest in the group portraits of the Dutch masters), and Mulligan, layering sketch after sketch upon the floor, as he commits the eyes, ears, nose, forehead, mouth, chin, trunk and limbs of His Worship the mayor of Centenary Suburb to paper, so that, when the time comes, he can, without thinking, commit it to the wall in the foyer of the town hall, where it will stay for as long as the town hall does.

  When they are finished, Mulligan rolls the sheets up and secures them with string. At no stage is the mayor permitted to see any of it. And, the artist explains, it will be the same with the wall. He explains that when he finally begins work on the real thing he will work behind a large drape. And it will stay that way until he has completed the job for which he was commissioned. No sticky-beaks, no prying eyes, no unwanted, intrusive observations floating up to the decking upon which he will stand or recline, intent, his body motionless, fingers only, brush in hand, silently scuttling across the wall behind the drape. No one else, just the artist and this wall for which, he is convinced, he has been destined all his working life. He, Mulligan, and not a committee, will paint this wall.

  The mayor returns to his office as the day shuts down outside (winter is only a month old, yet seems to have been around forever), contemplating this Mulligan, Michael and the whole bunch of them. They seem to be more of a giant club than a generation. A very big but exclusive club. They all seem to recognise each other — Mulligan, Michael and their kind. And this Whitlam of theirs, around whom they gather. And it is then that he sits at his desk and seals the official letter he has written to this Whitlam of theirs, requesting that he open a new sports ground. Harold Ford trades in politics, but he doesn’t believe any of it. He has seen them come and go over the years, and he has a nose for History in the making. He has looked at Michael, Mulligan and this Whitlam of theirs, and he sees History heading straight for him like the Spirit of Progress on bright new shiny rails. You mightn’t like this particular train, Harold Ford (he tells himself), but you’ve got two choices: you can stand there and get run down by it, or you can book a first-class seat right now and be there when it pulls into that platform marked Destiny. And for this reason he has invited this Whitlam of theirs to Centenary Suburb.

  The mayor will not be the only one to sit for immortality. Over the next few weeks, the local member will sit for Mulligan, along with a councillor or two and the aptly named Charles Draper, whose clothing store has fitted the school, the sporting clubs and the families of the suburb for two decades. Their faces, trunks and limbs will be committed to sketching paper after a series of sittings, and, when the time comes, their distinctive features will join a group portrait on the town-hall wall, their images part of the grand narrative of the suburb, and upon which the children of the future will gaze. But they will all, at a later date, concur that there was always something vaguely unsettling about sitting for Mulligan. Something unsettling about the way Mulligan looked at them, as though they ceased to be community leaders, and, under his scrutiny, became curiosities. As though there was something inherently amusing about them standing up there in his makeshift studio in the town hall for hours on end in their best clothes. And they all confessed to a certain feeling of, well, silliness afterwards.

  It was, however, a small price to pay for immortality. And each of the sitters, in turn, shrugged this vaguely unsettling feeling off at the conclusion of each sitting, convinced that they were imagining things.

  32.

  Bunny Rabbit Eyes the Horizon

  While Michael is being driven back from the school by the kindly maths master who has designed the teaching timetable to allow for Michael’s studies (and who likes a chat and likes the company), Pussy Cat is set to pounce upon her Bunny Rabbit in the shambles of their room.

  ‘I was watching you. When you didn’t think I was. Your eyes were crawling all over her.’

  Bunny Rabbit, who is studying law, is learning, day by day, the need for words to be exact. People get into all sorts of muddles — his case studies tell him — simply because they think they’ve said what they mean, and they haven’t. And, more than just acquiring a growing respect for precision in language, he is also rapidly acquiring an intolerance of sloppiness.

  ‘Eyes don’t crawl,’ he taunts. ‘Have eyes got legs? Or arms? Or any other implements of crawling?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ he continues, still taunting her. ‘And neither do you. Eyes don’t crawl.’

  Pussy Cat is studying literature. She respects words for the possibilities inherent in them every bit as much as Bunny Rabbit respects them for their precision. She is happy to be ambushed by the unexpected and arrested by the inexplicable. She gives words licence to break the rules.

  ‘Yours do.’

  He laughs, then continues to taunt her. But he is composed. Part of him has had enough of Pussy Cat’s funny little ways — which are becoming funnier and funnier by the day — and is genuinely angry. The other part is detached enough to feel a certain satisfaction at the words coming so effortlessly from him. He is even finding time for a quiet, private chuckle before uttering them. He is, in short, performing. He is taunting his Pussy Cat, but he is also honing his skills. The skills that will stand him in such good stead in those days in the future
when he is a well-known barrister, an important back-room boy on the conservative side of politics, famous for his courtroom jibes and the cut of his French suits. But, for the moment, he is still wearing flared jeans and shirts purloined from his father’s wardrobe. His long, dark hair — which he will lose very quickly (along with the droopy moustache), making him virtually unrecognisable in later years, even to those who knew him well — hangs down to his shoulders. There is a square of hash the size of a piece of chocolate in his shirt pocket. A song is playing on the portable hi-fi about the marines landing on the shores of Santo Domingo. A well-thumbed, popular poetic study lies open on the desk, while the voluminous eighteenth-century novels, anthologies and law journals fraternise on the floor. He is a child of the Age. But, even as he taunts his Pussy Cat, he is aware of the fact that he is honing the skills that will make him master of another, less poetic age. And he will know his skills are honed when the poetic age of youth is sufficiently enough behind him to be amusing. Far enough behind him to become the stuff of light, confessional anecdote.

  Pussy Cat, or that part of Pussy Cat that is not trembling with anger about the way he lectures her on what her words do and don’t mean, can see all this. The flourishes, the hand gestures, the sheer acting of it all is leading to one place only — that future of his, already rolling out like a carpet before him, and across which he will stroll with accepting ease into the horizon of good fortune. And when he has crossed that imaginary line that separates today from tomorrow, he will have assumed what he will, by then, come to think of as his true condition, his true self. But Pussy Cat knows better. She knows they are trembling between two conditions: what they can be, and what everything and everybody tells them they will inevitably be when they finally grow up. She won’t accept that Bunny Rabbit has already chosen. And so, standing there in what she sees as the endearing shambles of their room (and which he proclaims a mess), the part of Pussy Cat that isn’t shouting at Bunny Rabbit at the top of her voice is moved by something so shattering she can barely contain it. Or barely name it. Then she can. For she has heard and been drawn by the most haunting of calls: not the desire for love, or to kill the thing you love, but the desire to save him. One part of Pussy Cat won’t accept that her Bunny Rabbit has already chosen. The other part, the part that is shouting and on the verge of spluttering tears, would dearly love to tear his crawling eyes out.