The Art of the Engine Driver

by Steven Carroll

  I sat on the bed with my hat in my hands and I still hadn’t taken my coat off. I didn’t know how long I’d been home. Our Patsy was at her friend’s like she always was after school and I was sitting on the bed staring at the empty drawers in front of me ’cause I hadn’t shut them yet. Her lipsticks and powders and polish had gone from the dresser, but there was perfume in the air. It was fresh. I mean, it was really fresh. She could still have been standing by the mirror and I could have just been sitting on the bed tying my shoelaces and we could have been getting ready to go out. But I knew we wouldn’t be going out anywhere again. So I closed my eyes and breathed it all in. The last of Vera.

  I know that perfume. I’d know it anywhere. It’s common enough, I suppose. But, even now, on the train or inside a shop. Even now I sometimes smell it, and think of Vera. I do. I was on the bed breathing her perfume in and thinking about getting up and following it about the house, like following her last steps, wondering where they’d end up, only I knew they’d end at the front door. I was sitting on the bed, the drawers opened and empty in front of me, the dresser cleared and bare, the smell of the perfume swirling round inside my brain, and I realised I was sitting on something.

  I knew it was a bloody awful thing from the moment I picked it up. I saw my name on the envelope and I could tell it was Vera’s hand that wrote it. She was always leaving notes around. Gone here, gone there. Back soon. I liked her notes. I’d always liked her notes, but I knew the one I was holding was a bloody awful thing before I even opened it.

  It wasn’t sealed and there wasn’t much to it anyway. It started off Dear George, and that’s as good as it got. Things aren’t right any more, she said. Things hadn’t been right for a long time, apparently. And she went on about things not being right and all for a bit, and I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. I brought the money home, didn’t I? I didn’t piss it up against the wall like some others. In fact, I wasn’t one for going out much at all because I’d always rather be in with Vera and our Patsy. And that’s God’s truth. Not that I care about God. And I didn’t boss her about like some others because I learnt very early on that you don’t boss Vera. So I was looking at the letter trying to understand what she meant when she said things weren’t right, but I couldn’t figure it.

  Then she talked about fun. I’m a good man, she said. She knows I’m a good man. And she made it sound like some kind of, some kind of limitation. Like I haven’t got the imagination to be anything else. And that’s when she said that she wasn’t having fun. Not that it’s my fault, she said. It was nobody’s fault. But I’d no sooner than read it and I was thinking of all the fun we had the Friday before. Friday was the big night in our house. Always was. And it was usually chips and fish in batter, a bit too much brown ale and soft drink for our Patsy. With a few of the old records and a bit of dancing before the old legs went funny. But apparently Vera wasn’t having fun and that’s why she’d decided to leave. Although, she never said she’d left. Not in the letter. It’s not like the movies where the notes always say Dear somebody or other I’m leaving you. The fact was she had left because I could see all her clothes were gone. She didn’t need to say it. I could see it all plain as the writing on the piece of paper in front of me and I was wondering what I was gonna tell Patsy when she walked in the door. That her mother’d gone because she wanted some fun in her life. Fun she called it.

  At first I thought somebody was shaking me by the shoulders, the way people shake you by the shoulders when they’re saying to you it’s all right, you’ll pull through, cheer up George. But nobody was there. Then I realised I was shaking all over and I can’t even remember now if I ever finished that letter or not.

  I learnt a week later that she took off with some flashy type. Some flashy type who sold things door to door. One of those shiftless flashy types that moves around the country, from place to place, and talks himself up because nobody else will. Because that’s all he’s got anyway. Talk.

  And that’s fun, eh? No home, no proper roof over your head. Just an old car filled with the useless junk that nobody in their right mind buys anyway, a flashy type in a cheap suit, and long days spent travelling from one town to another that looks more or less the same as the one you’ve just left. And that’s fun? Well, it shows there’s different types of fun in the world. And different types of people, who just might call that fun. But I don’t call that fun. I call that bloody stupid. I did then, and I do now. Bloody stupid.

  I don’t remember what happened to that letter. I only remember breathing in Vera’s perfume like she was still there in the house, and I remember getting up and walking about the house and opening all the windows.

  When George Bedser finds himself suddenly looking round at the record player because there’s a song playing, he realises that he must have missed the last of the speeches. Patsy is already slicing up pieces of engagement cake. Her fiancé is finding chairs for those who need them. Rita drifts out to the front lawn again, Vic stays in the hallway near the refrigerator. George Bedser’s English friends are singing along to the record. Couples are dancing. George Bedser sits down. The party doesn’t need him any more.

  Minutes later, Patsy is standing on the porch farewelling the first of the guests to leave. The Millers, clutching their wrapped slices of engagement cake, wave from the street and begin walking back to their house. Doug Miller is not a drinker, but he is feeling light-headed as he lowers his hand after waving farewell, rests it on his son’s shoulder and gazes up at the sky for the comet. This time next week, he thinks, he is scheduled to work late at the factory and will miss Saturday night with the family. But that’s no matter. It is still a week away. And he doesn’t really mind. Besides, he’ll be finished by nine, the drive back from the factory is a short one, and he will be home for a late dinner.

  The children are tired, their feet dragging. He carries his son, his wife carries their daughter. Behind them music from George Bedser’s party is still audible and Doug Miller walks slowly back, whistling quietly along with the music, tired, but alive to every moment, every sight, every sound, every smell.

  41.

  Diesel and Steam (III)

  A writer has said that the next best thing to presence of mind is absence of body; and no doubt many a driver would dearly have loved to be absent in body in preference to facing some of the sudden difficulties that have presented themselves.

  Bagley’s Australian Locomotive Engine Drivers’

  Guide

  In the sealed world of the engine cabin Paddy Ryan is leaning back in his seat. The diesel is working without effort, the noise in the cabin is minimal and the ride is a smooth one. Paddy is alone. The fireman is still in the nose of the engine preparing the tea.

  The converging headlights part the darkness in front of him. The long, straight stretch of track that leads into the town at which they will stop for five minutes is visible for miles. Paddy is leaning back in his seat, eyes on the track before him. He is perfectly still. A study in concentration. A driver utterly absorbed in the job at hand; eyeing the track, glancing at the gauges before him, watching for the signals up ahead. But Paddy sees none of this. Paddy Ryan is dead.

  He has just had a massive heart attack. It was all over in a second. Possibly two, but not likely. No time to call out. No time for any last words, if only muttered to himself. One moment he was leaning forward slightly, anticipating a mug of tea and licking the last of the ham and mustard from a troublesome tooth at the back of his mouth. The next his body convulsed and the bulk of Paddy Ryan fell back against his seat. His right hand, the hand that dwarfed so many pot glasses of beer, is firmly wrapped about the throttle.

  Paddy Ryan, Queen’s driver, Big Wheel driver, Loco’s best, has quietly, and alone, passed from his working life into railway history. At his funeral, a week from now, the secretary of the union will deliver his eulogy, will say of Paddy that his kind will not be seen again, that nobody smoothed the rails like Paddy, that Paddy was the maste
r of the smooth ride, and the master is gone.

  The Spirit is travelling at just over seventy miles an hour and has just passed through the first of its red lights. The fireman is crouched in the nose of the engine, at its tip. He has unscrewed the top from the tea jar and is whistling quietly to himself as he shakes the tea leaves into the boiled water of the pot. He continues whistling to himself as the leaves sink into the water. He waits for the tea to brew before giving it a gentle stir. If they were not driving a diesel, if it were steam, the fireman would be sitting beside Paddy for there would be no nose to disappear into. The fireman would see what has happened and take over the train. But he can neither see nor hear the cabin from here. This is the young man’s first job. He is nineteen. No wife. No girlfriend. The train has now passed its second red light.

  Above him Paddy is still leaning back in the driver’s seat, his dead eyes focused on the job in front of him. Paddy is unmoved as he passes through the red light, the light that tells him to slow and allow time for the goods to slip into the loop. Paddy is also unmoved when a pair of headlights sweep round a long bend in the track two miles away as the goods becomes visible for the first time.

  The Spirit is still travelling at just over seventy miles an hour and the mile that it takes for the two engines to meet will be covered in less than a minute. The fireman is still crouched in the nose of the Sir Thomas Mitchell as the headlights of the two engines converge. Paddy remains unmoved, as if still concentrating on dislodging from his tooth that last, stringy strand of mustard-flavoured ham.

  42.

  Dancing with Evie

  So I’m dancing with Evie, and I don’t know how this happened, but it has. Rita left for the front lawn after the speeches, for a bit of air she said. Are you coming? No, I said. I’ll stay for a bit. So she goes, and I stay put. Then Evie appears, a beer in her hand, and she’s trying to get me to go outside because Rita’s out there by herself. But I’m not budging. And she says she’s not budging. So we settle in. And start talking. And all the time we’re knocking back the beers. And she’s no slouch with a beer, this Evie. And then somehow, somewhere along the way the talk stops, and we haven’t got our glasses in our hands any more, we’ve got each other.

  So, there I am. I’m dancing with Evie. And she’s a beautiful dancer, Evie. I haven’t danced in years and here I am dancing with her. She’s beautiful at it. She’s built like a dancer, too. And because I haven’t danced in so long I’ve forgotten how you get the feel of a woman when you’re dancing with her. Especially if she’s built for dancing, like Evie is.

  Did she ask me to dance? Did I ask her? Did we just start? I don’t know, but we’re dancing at the back of George Bedser’s hallway near the kitchen. Everybody else is standing round after the speeches and there’s a quiet song playing, and I know it so well but I’m buggered if I know where from. And all the steps are coming so easily, we seem to be gliding over this linoleum floor like it was marble. And I don’t know if it’s my imagination or the grog or what, but I could swear she’s snuggling up to me. The way you do when you’re dancing. Whatever, I’m bloody sure I can feel a whole lot more of Evie Doyle than I could at the start of the dance.

  That’s when I start singing. And I’m surprising myself because I’m remembering all the words, they’re coming so easily, even if I still can’t remember where I know the song from. It’s got me buggered because I like to connect a song to a place or a time or a memory, because a song’s not a song without a little bit of your life wrapped around it. So I’m singing away while we’re dancing. Well, sort of whispering really. And she’s a funny one, this Evie. She never calls me Vic, Victor or anything like that. She calls me handsome. Always has. And I like the sound of it, even if it makes me laugh. Neither of us are saying anything at the moment because I’m still singing while we’re shuffling round in small circles across that linoleum floor, with a bit of a breeze coming in from the back door. And just when I’m humming the piano solo, just when I’m about to start singing again, that’s when I feel her hands go up around my neck, like she’s supporting herself, or tired, or something.

  It’s automatic. The action pulls my head down towards her and I’m singing right in her ear. But soft. So only the two of us can hear. Besides, everybody else is standing round in the lounge room waiting for their cake. I can see the faint, light veins along her ear, I can see where it’s been pierced, and I can see the colours of the stone earring hanging from it. And there’s the perfume, and just below the perfume, I swear I can smell Evie’s skin. And all the time I’m singing I can see how clear that skin is. Almost transparent. And warm too. I can feel the warmth coming off her. I’m singing in her ear so close I could almost kiss it. And then I do.

  I close my eyes and don’t ask me why or how, but I know she’s closed hers too. I know this as surely as I know the song’s finished, we’ve stopped dancing, and we’re both standing perfectly still on the linoleum floor at the back of George Bedser’s hallway.

  I tell you, my eyes are only closed for a second. When I open them again Rita’s standing by the kitchen door staring at us both and straight away I know I’m in a bit of shit. Evie looks around and she’s gone without a word. Suddenly, it’s just me and Rita. And I know, I know at that particular moment, I shouldn’t be thinking any of this. But I can still feel Evie pressed up against me, like she’s left dints in me or something. I’m standing there, trying to think of something to say to Rita, but all the time I’m whimpering inside like Bruchner’s dog after he’s waved a steak under its nose.

  But before I can say a word. Before I can tell her it was an accident, that it was the grog, that it was just one of those things. That it was nothing. Before I can say any of this, she’s off. It’s all a bit confusing. One minute I’m dancing with Evie. Then Rita’s at the door and Evie disappears without a word and I’m left standing in the hallway staring at Rita who shoots through before I get a chance to open my mouth. And to make things worse this crazy song starts up on the record player, and I’m listening to some young bloke with a bad case of hiccups. And everything seems louder. And when I step out from the hallway into the lounge room it looks like everything’s gone slightly mad too. Because everyone’s cleared a space and Patsy Bedser is dancing with some flash-looking type in the middle of the room. What’s more nobody seems to quite know what’s going on because Patsy Bedser’s not dancing with the bloke she’s just got engaged to. And it’s obvious to me, and it’s obvious to everyone else in the room that, whoever he is, they’ve danced together before.

  But that’s their business. I’ve still got the scent of Evie on me somewhere, Rita’s just disappeared out the front door, giving it a good slap as she goes, and things have got themselves a bit tricky. But there’s nothing else for it. I know she’s at the front gate giving me two seconds to catch up. So I slide by the two dancers, which isn’t easy because they seem to be all over the room at once, and call out good night to George over the music. Thanks for the party, I say, but George’s not listening. And he doesn’t see me wave because he’s looking down at the floor.

  It’s only when I hit the warm, fresh air on the front porch that I realise I’m drunk. And it takes me by surprise. So I stand there for a moment just to steady myself. Bruchner, and Younger and Younger’s wife are all standing in a small group on the lawn beside me. I’d give them a wave but I can’t see the point because all I can hear is Bruchner’s voice.

  When I hit the street and look up to see Rita well in front of me and Michael on the other side of the street like he senses fireworks, I can’t believe it’s the same street we walked down just a few hours before. The sky’s dark. I can barely see the long grass of the vacant lot next door to Bedser’s and I can just make out the figure of Rita up in front of me. And even though I can’t see it, I picture that dress of hers with the one strap and remember how keen she was to wear it tonight, and I know I’ve made a balls-up of things again.

  43.

  Steam and Diesel
/>
  … what is a driver to do to ensure the safety of the precious human freight whose faith in his abilities never wavers? If he pulls himself together, fearlessly does the right thing in the right way at the right moment; if his judgement be quick as a flash, and without hesitating he does the best thing to meet the emergency, he shows himself in every way to be the master of the situation, and lays indisputable claim to be classed with the very best in his profession.

  Bagley’s Australian Locomotive Engine Drivers’ Guide

  The first thing he sees when they round the bend is the Spirit coming straight at him. One look and he knows that train is really hammering. He also knows there is no point in applying the brakes because the Spirit shows no signs of slowing. The fireman and the driver quickly look at each other, and the driver tells the fireman to jump. The goods is still travelling at sixty miles an hour and the fall, at best, will be painful. Both men stand on the steps of their respective cabin doors, stare down at the passing ground, look quickly back at the approaching Spirit, and know there is only one course of action to follow.

  But as the driver stares down into the blur of passing ballast on the side of the rails, he knows he won’t jump. With one foot raised on the driver’s side of the steps and both hands gripping the railings, he quickly looks back at the Spirit and tries to judge its speed. That diesel is hammering. That is all he can say with any certainty. But he knows his own engine. He knows what this thing can do because he’s just let it off the lead and he knows it can move. It can move faster than any diesel on rails. What’s more, he knows the loop is just up there. Within range, he’s sure of that. And something tells him that it can be done. The engine can do it. It will get him there into the safety of the loop and the Spirit will then pass on as will the danger.