The only seat available is against the window looking back towards the table and the whole roaring mass of the room with its piped music, laughter and poker machines. It is a view of the table and the room that he is unaccustomed to, but (once he was over his initial annoyance) it very quickly becomes an intriguing one. And, because the conversations around him are intensely animated and he can find no way into them, he is given a feeling of distance from the whole thing that he’s never had before. Suddenly he is looking at the table and the room differently. More precisely, looking at his seat differently. The one that he would be sitting in right now if this stranger hadn’t slipped into it while he wasn’t here.
At first he resents this woman — whose name he is told upon sitting down but immediately forgets. And it isn’t the fact that she is sitting in his seat; it is the way she is doing it. She is leaning forward talking to one of the usual crowd (a former banker’s wife), in a flowery summer number with legs crossed, utterly oblivious of the casual manner in which she has done this thing which has never been done before. And, for a short while, this casual demeanour of hers is an affront — an insult.
Then something odd happens. The feeling of distance gives way to a feeling of invisibility. Which again, strangely, he likes. Vic is a big talker. He likes to talk, especially with a beer in his hand. And every night, at this table, in his usual chair, the talk and the beer flow in equal quantities. But not tonight. Tonight he is invisible. And the feeling is new, but good.
He watches their mouths open and close. At first he hears what they are saying as they drink their shandies, sparkling wine and beer and eat their — what do you call them? — pretzels. But at some stage, and it is quite early in the evening, he stops listening. He looks from one to another then settles on the woman in his chair. And soon he isn’t even looking at her. He is looking at that anonymous steel chair, the padding of which, he imagines, has moulded itself over the years to accommodate his buttocks. And he falls into calculating the nights, the number of occasions he has dropped into it, but no one occasion stands out. A couple of evenings, good and bad, eventually surface. And it occurs to him that he could spend his life (or what’s left of it) in that chair or one just like it and never really be able to distinguish one night from another, or one song or singer from another. That what’s left of his life could pass in a routine blur until one night he either rises from the chair and never sits in it again, or sits in the chair and never rises from it again. People die in chairs as much as they die in their beds. And this chair of his, which until now had been acknowledged by the table as his and his alone, has the look of a chair in which someone could live a slow death. It is now that kind of chair. And he has never noticed before because he has never seen the table and the room from this angle and therefore never looked closely at his chair the way a stranger might. And he finds himself thanking the nameless woman who has so casually occupied his place and thereby given him this altered view.
And all the time a faint, nagging voice is saying — this isn’t like you. This isn’t Vic. Bloody Christ, look at yourself. Vic, the life of the cabaret hours, always the centre of things in your accustomed place, and here you are not even listening. On a hot spring night with your dancing shoes on and a glistening beer that mysteriously appeared before you — and you’re not even drinking.
And it is then, while they are all engrossed, utterly lost in this talk of theirs to which Vic is not even listening, that he quietly departs, like a train giving the platform the slip. Before he knows it, he is out once more in the balmy night. Behind him, in the club, at his accustomed table, there is a space where he had just sat. And at some stage the table will notice this space and ask each other if anybody saw Vic leave. And the space he has created will be an awkward one for a while, until somebody comes along. With that in mind, he ambles back up the road he strolled down only an hour or so before, and soon he is sitting on his doorstep, looking out over the town.
Then the breeze is upon him. He turns his cheek to it and he is driving again. The glow of a long-ago furnace illuminates the cabin and Vic has his head out the window, his freshly shaven cheek (shaved twice, even now, as he did every time before a shift) open and alive to the constant rush of air as the engine speeds through the night. His hair is blown back, his eyes aglitter. The beam of the headlight parts the night, the moon hovers over an open field, and, as he breathes it all in, the cinders, the cool air and the warm scent of freshly brewed tea, he is no longer Vic. He has simply become the moment as he always did when he drove from midnight into morning with the wind on his face.
Sitting on his doorstep, now oblivious of the view, he smiles upon the Vic that was. Was he ever so alive as he was then? And was his life ever so full of purpose as when he was doing, and utterly absorbed in, the thing he was born to do? Was he ever so complete as he was when he had it, this gift of the art of engine driving? For there was a time when he had it, a deeply privileged time when he had this thing to which he could go — in the mornings, evenings or whatever time the shift took him — and enter moments that were so complete he felt no need of any others.
And no matter where he goes, for all the grog and the way he stuffed everybody around, for all the bloody stupid drunken things he did just when things would be looking good, there is at least this to say of Vic in the end: that he once had it, this thing that enabled him to stand and stare up at the vast, indifferent heavens (as he does tonight) and not feel small. And it will always be a source of wonder to Vic that it was his job, his labour, that gave him this, and through which meaning entered his life. And as long as he can feel it all again as he does now, as long as he can summon it all up again, he can also remind himself that, once acquired, the art of engine driving is never lost or forgotten.
Out there, while Rita is discovering that at the heart of speed there is a wondrous slowness, the town has its dancing shoes on. But tonight it can dance without him. Tonight he is content with his memories, for they bring with them the reminder that he once had it. Something equal to the vast rolling eternity of this sub-tropical night, which the night itself acknowledges, and in recognition of which it now tips its hat.
47.
The Last of Madeleine
They are careful. Both of them refraining from even the most oblique of hints that this is their last night together. He has lived the hour before meeting Madeleine for the last time. He has swirled the hot chocolate round and round in his blue, plastic mug for the last time. He has risen from his desk, upon which sits George Johnston (read, and waiting to be re-read and shared, but, oddly, not with Madeleine), the book that will give him a place to go when a place to go is needed in the hollow years afterwards, and has left the house to meet her for the last time, as though it were just another night together.
They talk in the same way as they always do, and their easy conversational manner is the manner of two people with all the time in the world before them. It is a quiet Monday night, not their usual night. Her plane leaves on Wednesday, their usual night. She is wearing new clothes — new jeans, flared jeans. Madeleine is not someone who wears jeans often, certainly not flared jeans. But tonight she is. She is wearing new clothes, new fashions, as if she were wearing a new self, the self she is taking away with her. And, already, this change is a hint of all the changes he will never see. That and all the other selves that she will wear and shed from now on, just as she will never know the various Michaels that he will put on and take off over the years. Or what this succession of selves — together — might have amounted to. They will never know any of this. They have known the days, and the days are almost over.
The evening passes in its usual manner (pizza, Italian soft drink) and soon they are sitting on the bed in his room, backs against the wall, holding hands and staring out through the French doors that open onto the balcony and look down over the street. It is a damp, cool start to spring and the windows are closed. They have, by now, given up talking altogether. It is enough to sit and
hold hands, and contemplate the occasional passing headlights of a car or the street laughter of a world that goes on and will go on, indifferent to what is taking place in Michael’s room.
He is, he knows, on the brink of something momentous. That longed-for ending, the only ending open to them, the one that has been waiting throughout the year, is at hand. Minutes away. And after the minutes come the seconds, and, beyond that, the margin that was before him will be behind him and the brink will have been traversed. And already he is reminding himself once again that pain, after all, is a red, red ball. And the trick of feeling nothing, when nothing is required, is still good, like the wise counsel of the child he once was who learnt the trick young, and, having learnt it young, never forgot it.
Soon they will each rise, leave his room, descend the stairs, close the front door behind them and meet their ending. And when they have, when they have enacted it and lived the last of the seconds they have left together, they will stroll right off the page of what has been lived and known and go their separate ways.
Michael has always been one of those who looks back on a moment even as he is living it. He closes the purple front door behind them and it is doors that he is contemplating: his, hers, and the length of doors that once opened and closed daily on his old street. The clear Nordic pine of Bruchner’s front door, the dark rectangle of old man Malek’s, George Bedser’s that once opened to everyone in the street for his daughter’s engagement party then clammed shut forever after. These doors, the doors of his life, they are all vivid. And he can, too, quite clearly, imagine himself at some distant point in time when this night is behind them, standing on the footpath some bright spring or winter’s day, contemplating Madeleine’s old front door, as it will be then, and the time they once shared. How terribly strange to be seventy. It is doors, the doors of his life that preoccupy him as they walk to the corner of his street (while Vic rediscovers the art of engine driving on his doorstep a thousand miles to the north of them, and Rita receives the gift of slowness), past Charlie’s milk bar, closed and dark, then left to the bank corner where the taxis pass. They have pulled one door behind them, and are about to close another.
It is either late in the evening or early in the morning (neither of them is conscious of the time), the streets are deserted and a chilly wait in this cool, damp start to spring seems inevitable when the pale light of a taxi turns the corner. This is good. This is as it should be. No time to say all the things that ought to be said that are probably best left to silence.
It is upon them. They have used their allotted months, weeks, days and hours — and now they are drawing on the last of their seconds. This is how a year ends. The taxi pulls into the kerb outside the all-night petrol station. Michael knows it will take less than a minute for the whole thing to be over, that the presence of the cab, the only vehicle on the street, will hasten the process, hurry them when they might have lingered and said all the things that silence says better.
All night they have been on the brink of something momentous. They eye the cab, the dark figure of the driver inside, then return to each other, knowing without need of speech that this is as it ought to be — for the thing to be done quickly. From the moment she slips into the cab and closes the door, the dwindling of their time will cease and the whole process will begin again in reverse. For the momentousness of the situation is this: that it creates a before and an after. Old time gives way to new time. And in between they now each traverse this no-man’s land in which they are simultaneously together and alone, two and one, the selves they have known and not known for the past year giving way to the selves they will never know.
They must have spoken, they must have said something to each other, they may or may not have embraced and kissed. He would assume they did, but, in the hours that will follow in his room, he will retrieve no memory of any such act. The only thing he knows for certain is that he is watching the last of Madeleine, her legs (clothed in the new jeans of her new self) disappear into the taxi as she slides across the back seat. The petrol-station attendant reads and smokes in his booth, the traffic lights change from red to green on a deserted intersection, and the taxi pulls swiftly out into the street. As it does, she quickly turns and glances back through the rear window and it is all as it should be, all written into their ending, this final glance. You’d have tired of me, it says. You’d have tired of my eyes, which you call green or blue, depending on how you choose to look at them, for their colour would become inconsequential. You’d have tired of my hair, which shines for you like gold in the morning sun now, but which you would cease to notice by evening. You’d have tired of my lips, and my kisses, and the whole of my body, which you have moved and troubled in ways that you shall never know, and which I would gladly have given you, if only for this — that you’d have tired of me when it was all done. Her face is sad and still, with that goodbye look in her eyes that she was always giving him and which she is now giving for the last time. And his head is shaking. Do you know me so little? But her stare is steady with sadness. You know you would, not now, but in that older, wiser heart that you carry with you and which will wake you one morning and tell you she was right, your Madeleine. In that older, wiser heart that will tell you that the boredom would have come, would have crept up on us day by day, until we became just like everybody else. And I couldn’t have borne that because it’s not our ending. I could never have borne watching us slowly turn into everybody else. I can with all the others that will follow — if they’ll follow at all; maybe I’ll live and die alone — but not with you. I could never watch us turn into them. That is their ending, not ours. Believe me, she knows what she knows, your Madeleine. I could have given it to you, the boredom of bedrooms that have given up, and given you their ending, not ours. But, look, I have given you so much more.
Her eyes remain upon him until the taxi disappears. The lights turn from green to red for nobody in particular, and when the taxi is gone he swings round to face the way he came and prepares to enter that part of his life that will be measured with such words as ‘afterwards’, ‘since’ and ‘once’. It is done. He has lived a story. They have their ending.
48.
The Unveiling of the Crowning Event
The moving hand has ceased to move. The wall is done. The twain converged, and now their time is over. And only this thing, this product of their convergence, remains. This portrait of a suburb, currently shrouded in the same drapes that have covered it all winter and spring.
Mulligan, his job done, is not there for the unveiling. It is an early September evening and he is watching the spring sun slip down behind a line of trees in a city park. Nearby, a child is running from its shadow. Again and again. Trying to kick off these giant legs that dog its every move. But all Mulligan knows is that the wall is no longer his. Out there in the city the large march, this moratorium that swamped its streets, is over. The PA systems and the microphones have been switched off, the crackle of speeches is no longer in the air, the crowd has dispersed and disappeared into pubs, houses and parks. His wall will soon be passed back to the crowd and he has no desire to witness the exchange. Now he will have to find something else to fill his days, for the days will need filling. And if they can’t be filled then he will have to decide what to do with them.
While he sits, and while the spring sun slips below the tree line of the park, the foyer of the town hall continues to fill. The mayor, wearing the suit in which he sat to be sketched; the sitting member; the entire council; Mrs Webster; religious leaders; shop owners — Peter van Rijn standing apart from the rest of the committee, a lemon squash in his hand; bankers; sporting figures; those the community deems as ‘characters’; and the everyday faces of the suburb itself have all crammed the foyer for the unveiling of the wall.
It is their story and they have come to witness it. Their portrait. Now, and then. And the noise, it seems to Rita (who is standing back from the wall so as to see it better), is like Michael’s descriptions of a
cricket or football crowd just before a big game. And when the mayor and a number of nameless officials walk to the front of the hall where a lectern has been placed, the murmurs that accompany their movement are the same as the murmurs that follow the umpires out on to the field of play. Michael is not here. For, on this day, Michael and his kind have had their march. And this demonstration — a moratorium, they call it (whatever that is) — has shut the city down. The war, the war. Rita had barely heard of Vietnam before this war started, and now all she ever seems to hear is news of the war, and students like Michael, and demonstrations, like the one today, that stop the city. But that’s always the way — you’ve never heard of a place until someone starts a war there, and then you hear of nothing else but that place.
So, as the hall settles down, Rita is thinking of other things, while Michael will no doubt be walking back from the city after this giant stunt of theirs with all those university types he calls friends. She doesn’t even hear the introductory speakers, and only gradually becomes aware of the fact that the mayor is now speaking. And she is surprised, almost relieved, that he actually can talk in public. And the face of Mrs Webster, not far from her, has relief written over it too. For it is an occasion, an event, that demands ceremony. And as he talks, almost eloquently, Harold Ford, hand in his coat pocket where his pipe is, mayor of Centenary Suburb, eventually arrives at the subject of Progress. Here, Rita notes, Mrs Webster smiles. There is a line, he says, a straight line and a true one, that runs all the way from then until now. It is the thread that connects them all, generation upon generation, and which has produced the streets, shops, factories, schools, libraries and public buildings of a proud community. Proud enough to put this little number together. Proud, but not too proud. On and on he goes, transformed by his moment. For (to Mrs Webster, at least) it’s almost as though it is not simply the mayor speaking any more, but all those portraits hanging in public buildings across the suburb, across all the suburbs, not so much portraits of people as portraits of the Age of Progress. And for those people, the mayor continues (the collective voice of those portraits, the suburb and all the suburbs, the voice of the Age itself issuing from him), for those who might be tempted to smile at the very idea, to those young people not here today (and Rita cannot help thinking that he is referring specifically to Michael, who ought to have been here) let us pose them the question — was it so bad, this world we gave you? This world of trimmed lawns and modest gardens, of brick and timber block houses that have stood the test of time better than anybody thought, of paved streets and footpaths upon which you can stroll and survey this society that we — the Age — gave you. Was it so bad, after all? And was the single idea that fired our factories and lit our eyes with passion enough to bring this world into being really so amusing and so quaint?
The Time We Have Taken Page 22
