Without a further word being spoken, without question or the need for explanation, Mrs Webster nods, simultaneously responding to the urgency and need in Rita’s request, to a sense of doing what’s right, and to a faint, niggling sense of quitting herself of a debt that she needn’t have acquired.
With that, they stroll back to the house, quietly arranging the details of time and place, then part at the steps of the house as the wind springs up again, a sudden gust, a seasonal tantrum, scattering cloud across the sky and tossing fragments of the estate — leaves and buds — into the disturbed air.
The first thing Rita notices later that evening (a quiet Monday night, damp, cool and late enough for no one to be about) is the fit of the leather gloves on Mrs Webster’s hands. They are skin tight — almost a second skin — and black and shiny like the car itself. She slips them onto her fingers with the unselfconscious expertise of a jet-fighter pilot or a burglar. Rita is not sure which. But she looks upon Mrs Webster now as if gazing upon a highly trained killer or a master thief, and a slight smile passes across her features. Rita knows her movies. She has known her movies since she was a teenager — in those distant days before the word ‘teenager’ was even invented. And because she knows her movies, because she spent her youth immersed in them (much to the disapproval of her mother, who forever told her that the movies were all right but they weren’t life), she now feels as though she is in one, and the movies are life, feels as though she has been transformed into one of those ordinary types who find themselves lifted out of their humdrum houses and swept up into a world of drama and incident. And the darkness of the Webster estate and the silence of the surrounding suburb all add to the feeling of having entered a new dispensation — the world at night. That dark, quiet place that is governed by rules different from those that prevail during the day. She can feel the beating of her heart (something she rarely stops to even think about, let alone feel) and her palms are moist. At first she is not sure if it is fear or excitement that she’s feeling, and then decides, noting that she has not felt the sharpness of fear or excitement for many years, that it is both. In short, she is alive. And, it seems at this moment, she could count the number of times in her life that she has felt this alive on one hand.
Mrs Webster’s hand, that of the trained killer or the master thief, turns the key in the ignition and the car leaps into life. Immediately, it settles into an inaudible hum. The shiny black hands of Mrs Webster (who does not speak) turn the wheel with the lightest of touches and guide the car quietly down the gravel driveway of the estate, the way, no doubt, Webster would have guided the beast whenever it beckoned him. As they ease out into the suburb, the headlights part the night and they slowly, quietly, slip through the dark streets, down to one of the two main roads of the suburb, the same road that, apart from a slight dog-leg opposite St Matthew’s Church, gave Webster his long, straight, uninterrupted stretch of bitumen.
And although the plan, the understanding, is to turn right at this point and drive to the new frontier out to the north of the suburb, where the excuse of a highway that runs through the thistle country can play host to speed the way the suburb once did, they don’t. When they reach the intersection, the car pauses and Mrs Webster hesitates, her gloved, black fingers drumming the wheel. Rita stares at her, not sure why on earth they’ve stopped. Then, as Mrs Webster’s head turns left, not right, she understands. And it is then that Mrs Webster glances at Rita and says, quite simply and in a tone that suggests she’d rather not be disappointed:
‘Well?’
Rita nods. And, as she does, she is not sure where the nod came from; whether she is deciding, or whether she has reached one of those points where events take over and you simply go with them. Mrs Webster acknowledges her response with the most minute arching of the eyebrow before turning her eyes back to the wheel, the windscreen and the intersection. And as the engine now rumbles with — it seems to Rita — unimaginable power, she lightly touches her seatbelt as if any second now they might indeed blast off, and that pale spring moon hovering above St Matthew’s spire isn’t so far off at all.
At first, speed is everything she imagined it might be. The sudden explosion of energy, the kind of propulsion she associates with rocket ships. And, even though she has never been on an aeroplane, there is a distinct feeling of being on the verge of taking off, of leaving behind the bitumen, the suburb and that part of the earth upon which it sits.
But, just when she fully expects this to happen, something quite odd comes over her. A strange sense of not moving at all. Or, at least, moving in slow motion. Can speed do this? Like those snap responses and actions — jumping out of the way of a passing car, falling from a bicycle. They are, looking back, over in less than a second, but at the time seem to go on forever — every detail, every constituent moment of that split second unfolding itself in slow motion to the most minute scrutiny. Can speed do that? Like film that is shot so fast that it becomes slow motion. Or the spokes of a wheel moving at high speed, yet looking like they’re not moving at all. The noise of speed is all around her but at the centre it is silent. Mrs Webster is oblivious of her, lost utterly, given over exclusively to the task at hand. The cabin is still, the world at night glides by in easy frames as the film, the spool of her life, accelerates to the point where speed meets its opposite, where past and present clash, collide and cascade around her into a wondrous slowness. And soon, soon, she is seeing the suburb in which she has lived nearly all her grown-up life as she has never seen it before.
The bells of St Matthew’s hang still and silent in the night. The party lights, blue and yellow, that permanently drape the cedar on the front lawn of the house opposite, dissolve into an emerald glow. In Rita’s street, which runs parallel to them, over the rooftops and square houses, the young Bruchner once more beats his dog through Saturday afternoons that never end. Joy Bruchner’s ashtray forever fills with the butts of her dreams, piling endlessly, as she reaches for a cigarette with her free, trembling hand even while extinguishing the previous one. She is both alive and long dead; stubbed her last butt, blown the last of her blue, filtered breath into the air. The dog is compost, yet forever howling. That was us, Rita murmurs. That was us.
A comet that never seems to be moving crawls across a long-lost summer sky at infinite speed, while Vic, Rita and Michael pause at a vacant paddock in the old street, in another life, before moving on. That was us. Mrs Barlow protests simultaneously to her husband and to the empty room she now occupies, alternatively screeching and sobbing, wretched with the same complaints she has always been wretched with: the house is too small, the street is all wrong, and the suburb is stuck out on the edge of the world. Why, why, why did he ever drag her here? That was us. So too the sound of Desmond Barlow hacking his lungs out into a bucket day after day, to the accompaniment of Michael’s eternal bloody cricket ball ricocheting from fence post to fence post like a rifle shot. That, too, was us. And the house in which Rita lived out all these years (the house that they must surely now be passing) where everybody said things they never meant to say and heard things they were never meant to hear. That, too, was us. The house in which the married years, the mothering years, the working years, came and went, and which didn’t seem much at the time, she now, in this wondrous, unfolding slowness, sees as ‘us’, all of us. That lost tribe. At once exotic, strange and utterly familiar. Gone. Wiped away by time and speed.
‘Post-war’ we were, although we didn’t really know it at the time. And our children, our children who played and squabbled in these very streets barely days after the bulldozers had scraped them out of the sodden dirt and clay, our children became something called the ‘baby boom’ — you had to laugh at that one, all those booming babies — but we never knew that at the time. Things only get that neat afterwards. Things only get that neat when somebody who wasn’t there looks back on your life and tells you what you were really doing, as apart from what you thought you were doing — just having a shot. Just having
a shot at making things work and stuffing them up as usual. Just having a shot at being happy. Maybe not even happy, just happy enough. No, it wasn’t neat. Things only look neat when you look back, or when you weren’t there anyway, when you’ve got the distance (but not the days).
In the cabin of the car, in the midst of speed — Mrs Webster is utterly concentrated on the tasks at hand — Rita floats in slowness. Somewhere out there Vic is speaking words of love on a long-distant day. Wet kisses and wet words. And plans. Plans about the life they will live together, and which they have now lived — but which, in this wondrous slowness, is both done and waiting to be done again. As though, somewhere out there, this vast night of infinite possibility contains the chance of a miracle taking place — of finally getting it right. And what’s been done is undone, and done again anew. Properly, this time. She smiles, a slow peaceful smile.
The golf course, all deep greens and fairways and bouncing white balls, floats by in a dream. The words of love all spoken, the wet kisses all spent, Vic once again stumbles from the golf-course gate to the home where Rita waits, through the years she calls her married years, which were always spent waiting, waiting for something she was always too tired to name. And Evie Doyle, opposite, even now, eyes it all through her venetians, although she’s long since gone to heaven only knows where. That, that was us.
Houses rise and fall, at one moment gleaming with the promise of new paint, at another reverting to the vacant blocks, to the paddocks of thistle they were before the builders came along and the bare wooden frames that became houses were erected. And the bright tail of a comet that came to stay one summer, years ago, once again labours across the sky at the speed of light. And, though it doesn’t seem to be moving at all, that inevitable evening strolling back from the station will always be there waiting for her when she will look up to the sky and discover that the comet is gone.
And it is then that the spell snaps and the world is rushing up to meet her. The end of the street is hurtling towards them. It occurs to her for the first time during the drive that it just might be dangerous. That their world is no longer wide, no longer young and can no longer accommodate this kind of speed. That the wrong car at the wrong time just might appear. Unluckily, in front of them. Anything could happen. They are, she concludes, being reckless. Simultaneous with this thought, a car, a bright yellow thing, appears out of nowhere, as if having dropped from the sky. Rita is, at the same time, aware of lurching forward in her seat. They are being reckless, and silly. The car’s horn blares in the night, long and loud enough, it seems to Rita, to wake the whole neighbourhood. Mrs Webster’s foot falls on the brake and the car majestically slides into the T-intersection at the bottom of the street. The speed goes out of the night. Soon they are idling by the side of the street. Trembling. Alive. Having just travelled Webster’s road, where you could just as easily accelerate into death as into life.
Not long after, Mrs Webster pulls up at Rita’s house. Inside the cabin it is silent. The hum of the engine is barely audible. And because there is either too much to say or nothing left to say, they say nothing. So that was speed?
The sudden sound of Mrs Webster moving in the driver’s seat beside her brings Rita back. How long had she lingered with her thoughts? She has no idea. But, in Mrs Webster’s restless shuffling movement, there is the distinct communication that they have lingered long enough. There is a brief nod from her. Nothing more. A nod. A duty dispatched. No smile, no grin. And Rita once again reads the unspoken thoughts of Mrs Webster. No more, the nod says. No more. Come no further into my life. We have been reckless enough. All of this Rita understands. They are too far apart, as separate from each other as that part of the suburb that lies beyond the boundary of the railway lines is from Rita’s house. They have been a comfort, they have been a help. No more, no less. But for this alone Rita returns Mrs Webster’s gesture, a slow, thoughtful nod of her own, with just enough gratitude in her eyes.
As Mrs Webster pulls out into the street, there is a sudden growl from beneath the hood, the briefest of ceremonial farewells, before disappearing into the night. Quite alone, on the still, smooth footpath, Rita turns to face the house that was once ‘us’. The house that, simultaneously, will always be ‘us’ and yet not ‘us’ any more.
Rita is left with an overwhelming desire to be alone. Not to speak, not even to think. But to simply stand in her front yard and stare at the silvery rooftops, the paling fences, the trees and stars; feel the ground at relative rest beneath her feet but spinning madly towards the sun and whatever the day holds. My world, she marvels to herself. My world. From the golf course to the station, from the Webster estate back to the Old Wheat Road. A rectangle no more than a mile long and a half mile wide. Not much, but big enough to contain all their stories. And even as she stands, quietly marvelling at this vision of the street that fell upon her in wondrous slowness, even as she stands, drawing its many stories to her into one complete picture, there is also a vague sense of loss — both troubling and tantalising. A sense of having finally lost the thing she struggled against for so long.
They will all leave the suburb, and the place that was once theirs will become someone else’s, the suburb itself someone else’s suburb. But whoever they may be and however long they may stay, they will never have seen the thing born.
46.
The Art of the Engine Driver
The sub-tropical darkness falls suddenly. Out there, his little town is combing its hair, dousing itself in perfume and aftershave, and slipping into its dancing shoes. These are the cabaret hours, the hours to which the day was leading all along, that mark the conclusion of every day, and the Twin Town Services Club — nothing much to remark upon during the day — is now dressed in the glitter of its party clothes.
From his kitchen, while Rita waits to set out for Mrs Webster’s estate and while Michael sits in his room contemplating that hour before meeting Madeleine for the last time, Vic has a clear view of the club and the lure of its lights. The beers from the pub at lunch and the beers that followed the conclusion of the day’s golf are wearing off, no longer lift him, and there is a stale taste in his mouth that the fresh tea takes away. The club calls, the nightly dance of the cabaret hours, and the beers that will lift him once more. They’ll all be there, the usual crowd.
Vic closes the door behind him and nods to the blinking eyes of the club. We have an appointment, you and I, the nod says. Every night we have an appointment. Your table, by one of the wide club windows overlooking the town, is waiting. Your chair. Your accustomed place that allows you a full view of everything that matters. Come, Vic, come to the cabaret.
As he walks down the hill, in short sleeves, for the night air is summer warm, there is music in his ears. Songs, the bits and pieces left over from all the other nights like this are playing in there, as if having gone into both ears and never quite come out, which is what happens to songs. And one of them in particular (which he heard that morning in his kitchen) won’t go away, keeps nagging him, and he wonders why until he realises that the song (a light, sentimental thing like they always are) once moved him in the kitchen back in the suburb one bright morning long ago. And he now remembers the annoyance he felt then at being moved by a cliché. But cheap music does that. Takes you by surprise and gets under your guard. And he is annoyed once more, because some part of him is moved all over again. Only more so. And it is, he tells himself, because the song comes with baggage now. He is not simply being moved by a cliché any more, he is being moved by his memories of it, and the house which he left for which he now feels a sudden tenderness. The kitchen that he sat in then now appears to him, as he strolls down the hill to the club, in remarkable detail: the round green table, the smart new chairs, the servery looking through into the lounge room, the Laminex bench and the small plastic radio on it from which this song once issued (and he remembers telling Michael what a load of slop it was at the time) — this song that got under his guard one weekday morning years befor
e for all the wrong reasons and became one of those tunes. The ones that come back at you with baggage when you least expect it and just when you thought you’d left your baggage behind.
Inside, it is the music he hears first. Each week it is a new singer — artists, they call them — and they all have names, but needn’t have. They’re all one. Male or female. It doesn’t matter. They all say the same things, they all sing the same slop, and all manage to look the same. As Vic shows his membership card to the man at the door and watches other members signing guests in (as he himself did for Michael when he made his one and only trip up north to see the old man a few years before), he notes that this is the way it ought to be, after all. If each day is indistinguishable from the rest then so must each night.
In the main room he turns to where his table and his place will be waiting by the long, wide windows that overlook the town. And he can visualise them all, the same shifting crowd (retired bankers, teachers, builders and all the rest), without even clapping eyes on them. The same shifting crowd that comes together every night, the evolutionary history of which nobody remembers now. But it’s distinctly possible that this crowd — albeit with different faces — has always sat at the same table. That the table has seen them all come and go. And it occurs to Vic that if they were all assembled — all of them, from all the years — it is just possible that they all might bear a sort of family resemblance.
But even as he nears the table, he knows something is wrong. And he’s not sure what it is. It’s there all the same, though, and it’s wrong. As he gets closer, he sees it. His seat. His spot is occupied. How? Everyone sits in their places. Everyone at the table knows to sit in any other place than his, the one with the unimpeded view across the town. It is, the table knows, a one-man seat. And nobody has ever made the mistake of sitting in it, until tonight. This stranger has slipped into his seat — and the table has allowed it to happen — while he was walking down to the club, contemplating cheap music and baggage. Of course it shouldn’t matter, he tells himself. One chair is just as good as another. But these things can throw your whole night out, and it has.
The Time We Have Taken Page 21
