Forever Young

by Steven Carroll

  Suddenly she’s like one of those deliberately playful, innocently inquisitive characters from a drawing-room comedy. And, he notes, she does it well. But at the same time there’s that uncomfortable feeling of being pinned to the wall. Peter laughs the question off, but the laugh rings hollow in the room.

  Trix eyes him once more, a look that says she never seriously expected a response, then rolls onto her back once again. But at the same time it’s a look that says she just might have stumbled upon something, the way these games sometimes do.

  The smile that came with the hollow laugh fades from Peter’s face and Beth is once more mindful of the cigarette smouldering in her fingers. It is then that Trix springs from the couch, seemingly well satisfied with a good evening’s work, and stands upright.

  ‘I’ll leave you to old times.’

  She leaves the room and Beth follows her. She is gone for a minute, possibly less, and when she returns she is wearing a dressing gown, as if to say that without the company of her fox she feels naked. She sits back in the same armchair, now staring at Peter suspiciously. He’s not one for social calls, not in this town. He doesn’t call often, and when he does it’s for a reason, that look seems to say.

  ‘So, why are you here? It’s certainly not to talk about old times.’

  How old is she? His mind is ticking over. Early forties, thereabouts. But with the drink and the smokes she looks older, despite aquiring the weathered manner of some Left Bank intellectual. No, he corrects himself, she’s actually entered that ageless zone. Her unapologetic years. Her take-me-as-I-am years. But she’s not on the Left Bank and she’s not Marguerite Duras. She’s a journalist and she’s stuck in this place with the rest of them. A journalist to whom all the others once deferred, but not any more. On the slide. In need of a little something. Just what Peter needs.

  ‘No, I’m not here for old times. Besides,’ he adds in a brisk, let’s-get-down-to-business manner, brushing some imagined speck from his trousers as he does, ‘I’m not too sure we shared enough of those days to call them old times, anyway.’

  She sips her drink, the same scotch he has beside him.

  ‘I’ve got a story for you.’ He pauses. ‘Would you like to hear it?’

  She stares at him, saying nothing. He pauses again, a dramatic pause. A little too dramatic and too long, but still she’s waiting.

  ‘Whitlam will not lead them into the next election.’

  ‘Pigs!’

  Until now there has been a quiet air of expectancy in the room, which Beth’s sudden laughter dispels.

  ‘Is that it? They’ve already challenged and he won.’

  ‘Just.’

  Her laughter has subsided but there is a smile left on her lips. He returns his attention to the imagined speck on his trousers, brushing it off again.

  ‘Well, if you don’t want it …’

  The implication is clear: he can take it elsewhere.

  ‘He led them out of the wilderness,’ she begins, ‘he gave us the nearest thing to a revolution that we will ever have. He’s their mountain and ours. And, heaven knows, we have few mountains. Don’t you realise what that makes him?’

  He lifts his eyes from the imagined speck on his trousers to the ceiling as he speaks. ‘That makes him … an expendable hero.’

  Untouchable is more what she had in mind. But as he takes his eyes from the ceiling and stares directly at her she’s also got to concede that he has the air, the certainty, of someone who knows something. She may not believe it, but he does.

  Of course, it’s preposterous. But, big news always is. At first. Isn’t that what makes a big story big? That it is the preposterous that becomes actual and takes everybody by surprise. How many times has she read a big story and silently proclaimed to herself, ‘I don’t believe it?’ So, what if? And she’s aware, as she poses the question to herself, of excitement now beginning to course through her veins with the whisky. Indeed. What if?

  ‘They’re going to lose, again. Very badly, again. Very, very, badly.’

  ‘It doesn’t look that bad.’

  ‘They know better.’

  Again, there’s that air of absolute certainty. The calm certainty of someone who knows something. There’s no flinching in those eyes. The preposterous happens. Indeed. What if? But it does raise the question of why he, Peter, a ministerial staff employee, earmarked for higher things, but not just yet, should know this. And, as if reading her mind, for he seems to be, he answers her unspoken question.

  ‘I have my sources. From the old days. From old times. From that playground of easy uprisings … “What do we want? When do we want it?” ’ He smiles. ‘You know, when we all marched together. When history had iron laws, and history was on our side. I was there. Remember?’

  She nods, remembering that, indeed, he was.

  ‘But you can’t stay in the playground forever, and you can’t stay forever Left. Can you? But I’ve still got my contacts. We’re useful to each other from time to time. And, believe me, this is one of those times.’

  ‘Why can’t they just tell me?’

  ‘And be shot for treason? No, they need a buffer. They need a go-between. They don’t have long — one or two months? Not long, and they know it. Believe me, they’re serious. But they need you. They need the papers. You start it. The others follow. And soon things write themselves. And once that starts, as we both know, anything can happen. Things take on a life of their own. And at some stage we reach that point where we don’t control events any more. They control us. And the speculation gets to the point where it becomes self-fulfilling. That’s what they want. These people are beyond sentiment.’

  There it is again. That air of absolute certainty. The air of someone who knows something. The preposterous happens. And, slowly, the preposterous is starting to look possible.

  ‘Can I speak to them?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Can I know who they are?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘How high are they?’

  ‘Very high.’

  She pauses. ‘Are things really that bad?’

  ‘They think they are. And they know better than us. They went close to throwing the big man out last time, now they’re moving in for the kill. This is not simply a challenge. He will be there one morning, and gone the next. It’ll be a back-room job, and the back-room boys will have their way.’

  ‘Deposed?’

  ‘He’s not royalty.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’

  His eyes are fixed on her as she sips from her whisky glass then lights a cigarette. Beth, aware of him staring at her, is even a little self-conscious, asking herself if there’s a trace of a tremor in her hand that lights the cigarette. Does he see it?

  And as she looks back at him she can read his mind, just as he can read hers, all too easily. Once, they all looked up to you, didn’t they? That’s what he’s thinking. Once, they all deferred to you. But that was once. It’s true, she notes, it’s true. Somewhere along the line they stopped. Somewhere along the line her contacts dried up — retired or turned away or died. And somewhere along the line she became yesterday’s favourite. That’s what he’s thinking. Yesterday’s favourite could do with a good story. But why should he bring it to her? Is he sentimental, and do old times count for something, after all? And can she believe him? Can she really believe him?

  Every part of her professional, cautious self says don’t touch it. It would be an act of faith alone. More or less. It’s preposterous, but the preposterous happens. There are times when big stories drop in our laps. And is this one of those times? Once, when they all looked to her, she had a nose. She had instinct and her instinct was good. She acted on it, and she knew when to pounce. That was when she had confidence. Ah, confidence. So hard to get, so easy to lose. And this is a confidence game. Judgement, instinct, faith — when to pounce! Once, big decisions came to her naturally, when she took her confidence for granted. But as she got one thing wrong, then another (a
nd as much as she told herself that sooner or later everybody gets things wrong, that everybody’s human, it didn’t help), slowly, under the darkness of doubt, her confidence slipped away from her. And the more they all stopped looking to her, the more it gave her the slip. Now, her nose gets confused. The senses are dulled.

  But she notes again that excitement is coursing through her veins with the whisky as she raises her glass to her lips. Perhaps old times do count for something. That for all the changes we go through, the years bring with them a certain loyalty that never goes away. We forgive in old friends, even old associates, things we would never forgive in others. Perhaps old times do count and that’s why he’s here. For the moment she’s choosing to believe this.

  And, once again, she’s telling herself that the preposterous happens. And if she were to start events rolling until they reached that point where people no longer controlled events but events controlled them, and everybody else followed her there — wouldn’t they once again be looking to her? Just like old times.

  She’s not sure how long it has been since either of them spoke. But the room is not silent. For, it seems to her, it hums in the way that rooms in which things remain unspoken hum.

  He rises, about to leave, and she looks up.

  ‘It’s monstrous.’

  ‘It’s politics. Sooner or later everybody’s time comes round. And nobody walks when it does,’ he says.

  ‘How could they?’

  ‘They’ve already tried. Believe me, they will again.’

  ‘You’re convinced?’ she asks, with just that sense of pleading that those in need of convincing couch their questions.

  ‘Yes.’

  There it is again, that unflappable air of certainty, of someone who knows something. She walks him to the door, glancing at him in the hallway as she does, nose twitching, not exactly sure what it senses.

  Smoke curls from her fingers as she returns to the armchair, to the dregs of the scotch in her glass. What if? If they do try again, right on the eve of an election? Wasn’t it only five years ago that they all stood and hailed their mountain? And it was roses, roses, all the way … Now, they’re beyond sentiment. It’s monstrous. But what if? The monstrous happens too.

  When did it first occur to him? Maybe a week ago. A convergence of factors. Well, two of them. He doesn’t believe in synchronicity, the convergence of seemingly unrelated events that would mean nothing by themselves, but together do. He likes his Jung well enough, but when it comes to synchronicity he likes him in the way that you might like a novel. Synchronicity. No, it’s just coincidence dressed up as fate. Still, sometimes coincidence can look like fate. Like the convergence of those two events and the birth of an idea.

  He buttons his coat as he leaves Beth’s flat and strides out into the wide, deserted street. It was his first impression of Canberra, and it will be his lasting image of the place — streets with nobody on them. His flat isn’t far. But he decides that a walk will be good and deliberately takes a detour past Parliament House. He crosses a park, mulling over Jung and synchronicity, and there it is. All lit up. Hovering on the dark lawns. A mirage. If he were to walk into it now, the House, at this hour of the night, all lit up, for all the world hovering on the lawns — would it really be there? Or would it dissolve on contact? Recede, then recede again. Forever out of range. Sound and light. Never really there at all.

  They’re in there. Late-night members, ministers and their staff. Nowhere else to go — reading papers, hatching plans. Nothing else to do. That’s what the place is for. And that was how his idea came to him a week or so earlier. It was simple. Mundane. There were four or five of them, the opposition, gathered in the corridor of the House one morning. Heads down. Quiet talk — always the most dangerous. Two shadow ministers and their staff. Not just ordinary shadows and not just ordinary staff. And why did he think … something, something is happening here? They looked up, saw him, stopped talking and moved into someone’s stuffy little office.

  Of course, it was nothing. But it felt like something. Something can not happen and feel like it has. You are sitting in a train and think the train is moving, when it’s the train on the next platform. But for that moment you think that your train is moving — and it may as well be. If you can create the impression that something is happening, it may as well be happening. Thinking that it is — that’s all that matters. You don’t have to wait for events to fall into your lap for something to happen — you can create the impression that it is. And for that moment when it feels like it is, it may as well be. The effect is the same. The damage the same.

  And if he could look at that closed, furtive group and think something was happening, why not others? It’s all in the effect. So, what might they have been up to? Peter’s taste is for the epic. For even though he was trained in law, he moved in the company of literature students and always read. Developed a taste for Tolstoy. Even had a cat named after him, a black beast of a thing he now fondly remembers as being as big as its name. And so when he asks himself, What? What could they have been up to?, his instinct is for the Tolstoyan. And the possibility came to him almost like inspiration. Their mountain, what if they were about to demolish their mountain? Can you create events in which you take no part? Can you script them and then watch the script come to life? If only for a while. It’s a tantalising thought. One that is way beyond the dull routine of his defined tasks — and all the more tantalising for it.

  It suffered the fate of all such tantalising thoughts and was soon forgotten. Until later, that same morning, when he’d looked up from his tea and newspaper in the cafeteria and seen Beth sitting two or three tables away. She was alone. And it struck him that this was a different Beth from the one he’d observed when he first arrived in Canberra. In those days, she would never have been alone. Not unless she especially wanted to be. And she didn’t look, at this moment, like she especially wanted to be. No, she looked ignored. Worse, forgotten. And, surely, it was only a matter of time before her paper moved her on and gave her some women’s magazine to edit. And that was when the tantalising thought returned. What if the tantalising thought and the forgotten journalist in need of a good story converged and became an experiment in inventing reality? All created by an anonymous artist?

  Two seemingly unrelated events — a tantalising thought and the appearance of a washed-up political journalist who just might find the thought equally as tantalising, and who just might set things in motion. Synchronicity? No. Not even fate — but fate waiting to be written.

  He had nothing to lose. Especially if nobody knew. If the artist who created it all remained anonymous. And if it worked, well, success has a thousand fans: he could reveal himself to the inner circle of those who matter and his stalled career could start to move again. And so, knowing he was not the first and would certainly not be the last, impatience impelled him. But, above all, there was the sheer exhilaration of the game: he was tantalised because it was tantalising.

  He sat watching her as if, indeed, he’d conjured her up, going over the idea until it started to take on the solidity of a plan. A plan, what’s more, that just might work.

  That was a week ago. And as much as he’d pushed the tantalising thought to the back of his mind, if only to test its strength and resilience, it kept returning, more insistent and more tantalising with each return.

  And so now he continues his walk back to his flat, the seed planted, leaving the House, white and all lit up in the night, hovering on the dark lawns. There and not there. Real, but not. Solid, but for all its appearance of solidity giving every impression that it just might dissolve upon being touched.

  Peter opens the small illustrated volume and all the familiar characters, the lush green fields and lanes, the farm and the fir trees — that whole story-book world — once more reveal themselves. Peter Rabbit is poised on the brink of adventure: the vegetable garden, the watering can, the farmer and his rake. And as that story-book world opens, so too does the past. A double-terr
ace student house suddenly springs to mind, and the balcony upon which they all stood, the inner-city street they looked down upon and the purple door that led them into that world the house contained, when they were story-book animals. Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit, Bunny Rabbit and Pussy Cat. He was Bunny Rabbit; she, a girl called Louise, was Pussy Cat. Together they had adventures. And all the doors of all the rooms in their story-book house now open with the illustrated volume and all the familiar characters look up to him from their places and nod or smile as if never having grown up or changed: Pussy Cat, Bunny Rabbit, Michael, Madeleine.

  In his student days Peter had played Spanish revolutionary songs on his portable stereo in his room, and the music had drifted down the hallway along with the smells of tobacco and hash. But those revolutionary songs, of a conveniently distant time and a conveniently distant revolution, were, Peter knew even then, all part of an assumed attitude, like his way of slopping around in an old Brooks Brothers shirt and not caring if cigarette ash fell on it. The songs, the attitude, the ash on a young man’s sleeve — all adding a sort of colour to him, which the girls noticed. So the Moroccan rug his father had once brought back from his travels and which Peter had nailed to his wall, the revolutionary songs and the casual attitude to expensive shirts were all part of the play-acting they all played at, Peter more than the others. And it was probably no surprise to anybody, least of all himself, when Peter lifted the needle on the Spanish revolutionary phase of his life at the same time as he stubbed out his last joint, and crossed the floor, without breaking stride, to the conservative side of politics.