Smythe's Theory of Everything

by Robert Hollingworth

  ‘Ever killed anything, Jack?’ The question was not unexpected; I was afraid Veronica would come out with something like that. I felt myself squirming.

  ‘I wish you could’ve met my sister,’ I said at last.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My sister Kitty. She might be still here if it wasn’t for me. I could have saved her. I was the only one in the world who could have put the brakes on that terrible accident.’

  Veronica poured us another Moselle.

  Newspaper this morning: In 1995 a Mr S. Turnbull of Texas bought a ticket in a lottery using the numbers rec-ommended by a fortune cookie. Later in the day his wife also bought a ticket using the same numbers. They won $1,628,946 between them.

  Luck - does it exist? Well, of course it does, both good and bad. It’s like a shooting star - it suddenly appears out of nowhere, burns bright for a while and then disappears until the next time. But the crucial question is, can it be channelled; can we induce good luck and avoid the bad? I was once told that almost every other week a chunk of Ayers Rock is posted from somewhere in the world back to Central Australia by a tourist who once visited there. There’s usually a note - they took the stone as a souvenir but realised that if they are ever going to stop their run of bad luck then they’d better return that piece of the sacred ground. The ranger’s office receives the item - sometimes it’s wrapped and boxed, sometimes it’s in an envelope and no bigger than a fingernail - and that bit of The Rock is put back as close as possible to the spot from where it was taken, using the enclosed map.

  If only we knew in advance which are the wise decisions and which aren’t. What if I’d told the twenty-year-old Heather, No thanks, I don’t go in for jazz? What if I’d told Sharon, Stay with Garth; he’s a nice guy when he’s not angry? What if I’d heeded a message on a fortune cookie? Would I have ended up in a second-rate nursing home without the means to buy a little privacy at breakfast? And what if I’d bought a bike and gone north with Kitty, or even had the common sense to talk to her on the phone, to tell her how important she was. The truck might have driven far away and she’d never have seen it. Unfortunately that kind of foresight is just not available in the real world.

  I never stole a chunk of anything from anywhere. But it certainly doesn’t mean that things are going turn out the way I’d like them to. The first time I realised that to be true was when Milo died. That’s why I decided to write the grand theory. I just wanted something to go my way; I wanted to create a pathway of my own; I wanted to get something right.

  When Veronica Phillips lost her enthusiasm for archery because of the president and the day she created a new canal through Fossy’s head, she got interested in petanque and, in turn, me. This led to numerous displays of affection at both her place and mine, which then led on to discussions - while staring at the ceiling - about the Big Picture. From there it was just a simple step to her volunteering to type up my notes - all seventy-three pages of them. Although she didn’t take to my theories.

  ‘No time. You expect people to believe this?’ She lifted her fingers off the typewriter and I put down my notes.

  ‘There’s time,’ I said, ‘but it’s just not a physical condition.’

  ‘Tell that to my boss when the Arthurton Street bus doesn’t show up.’

  ‘Picture a universe without people,’ I said, ‘no human beings at all. A universe like that, which doesn’t have people thinking about things, doesn’t have language - and it doesn’t have time either. All it has is change, according to the movement of things.’

  Veronica crossed her arms.

  ‘We live with illusions,’ I said. ‘Half of what we experience is based on misconceptions. We say we look out to the horizon or in through a keyhole, but in reality we don’t do anything to the subject at all. We just park our eye in the road of the light. We never actually “see” anything; we just take in the light that bounces off things. In that sense a man has never seen his wife,’ I tell her. But she doesn’t buy any of it.

  ‘Is this the sort of stuff they fed you at uni?’

  ‘Uni? I never went.’

  ‘You never went to uni? You went to a college, or … somewhere else?

  ‘I got off the train at Form Four. I wasn’t thinking about destinations …’

  ‘And you expect people to take all this stuff seriously?’

  Despite her scepticism, Veronica suggested I send a concise version to Physics Now, a reputable quarterly where some of the best ideas are first aired. I’d read many of those theories, dense and dark descriptions of black holes, atoms, algorithms, plate tectonics, quantum leaps. It seemed like a good place to start. What if my theory was taken up? What if it was peer group assessed and somehow it changed the way humans think about the world? Kitty would have been so proud. I would have effected some control over my life, that random sequence of events that had so far gone all wrong.

  We waited three months, and then Veronica contacted them. What paper? they said. We get a lot of unsolicited material.

  We sent it to another professional UK magazine that was offering a prize for new and interesting theories. They published three, one on perpetual motion, one on why we yawn and a third on harnessing energy from lightning.

  Veronica sent my paper to Scientific America.

  What else has he done? they asked. What’s his history, his field of study, his qualifications, his credentials, his title?

  Title, schmitle. It was then I realised that Veronica was right. Authorities assume that non-authorities can’t possibly have solutions. Non-authorities are not qualified to have an opinion and an authority will make short work of them if they attempt to step into their field. Perhaps that’s the true meaning of an authority: one who main-tains the position by barring the non-initiated, though that definition won’t be in the Oxford.

  I then began writing to more ‘authorities’ than I can remember. I have a theory, I said. Don’t we all, they replied. I kept writing. It got so bad I wouldn’t go down for dinner and when Veronica knocked, I didn’t answer. But gradually it dawned; perhaps I wasn’t sitting on an idea to change the world, and maybe the world didn’t want change anyway. So Kitty was right as well: I shouldn’t be losing myself in the abstract, the frivolous, the de-lusional. My paper went into a manila folder which went into an old satchel which went into a free-standing wardrobe.

  Soon after, I realised that Veronica wasn’t going to be the love of my life after all. She left the Grace, got a job with a law firm and I never saw her again.

  I got interested in football and barracked for the Magpies. In 1990 they won the premiership over Essendon, the first time since 1958 - the year Kitty and I took off for Sydney. I got interested in politics. In 1990 Bob Hawke won the election for the fourth time. It was a real Labor period. John Cain resigned and suddenly Victoria had a female Premier by the name of Joan Kirner. Also that year, the Liberal Henry Bolte died.

  I once met that man. He was Victoria’s Premier for seventeen years, right through to the early seventies and he was the one Milo often talked about. He insisted on capital punishment, much to the disappointment of Ronald Ryan, who was convicted for shooting a guard when he broke out of Pentridge. Bolte made the decision to hang him. I cannot imagine a more cruel thing to do to any living thing, let alone a human being. The sudden jerk of your own weight, the crack as the vertebrae separates, the rope choking off the windpipe, hands tied and no way to relieve the agony. It was never proved that Ryan’s bullet killed the guard. But Bolte had him strung up anyway - which turned out to be a popular decision with the voters. That was in the mid-sixties and Milo was gone by then. I’m glad he wasn’t alive to see it.

  Bolte became a big drinker and I wondered whether Ryan’s hanging had anything to do with it. One day on my way to my favourite fishing spot I called in at the Meredith Hotel for lunch. I liked that pub. I never drank there but they made a good counter lunch. There’s something about a good country hotel that you can’t find in the city. Something about th
e smell of it, and the quietness. And the way you can leave your money on the counter when you go to the toilet. Maybe it’s changed now, I don’t know.

  That day at the Meredith pub I saw the old retired Bolte sitting at the bar all alone. The sun came through a side window and fell on him perched on the barstool, making his glass of whisky blaze with gold. It was about noon and there was no-one else at the bar. I couldn’t waste the opportunity.

  ‘Mr Bolte?’

  ‘Correct.’ His voice sounded gravelly - he hadn’t spoken in a while.

  ‘Just wondering, do you think you’d hang Ryan if you were in power today?’

  He just looked at me, his round, reddened eyes unsympathetic.

  ‘Have you any idea how many times I’ve been asked that? I suggest you go and do your homework, son.’

  Immediately I learned something: to be a good politician you should be skilled enough to evade the question while at the same time make the other party seem foolish for asking it.

  Not long after, Bolte was seriously injured in a car crash which involved his neighbour. He was over .05 and faced charges which meant he would lose his licence and be disgraced as a citizen. Powers came to bear and during the court case somehow his blood sample went missing. The charges were dropped. I wonder if Bolte ever saw the irony in this manipulation of the law, the first time to hang a man, the second to save one - himself.

  Dell just called by. She says Clem is not confined to his room, but he is very depressed and unwell and is being kept in bed until he’s better. She said not to visit. She said let the man sleep. I might stick my head in later, if he’s up to it.

  We are waiting for the lunch table to be set when suddenly Pistol Pete says, ‘Oh Jesus!’ He calls for Nurse Gillies.

  ‘What is it, Pete?’ says Jim.

  ‘Accident,’ he says, and stares at his lap.

  ‘You spilt a cup of tea,’ I say.

  ‘Tea? Does piss smell like tea to you? Bloody useless catheter.’

  ‘Catheter?’

  ‘Yeah, you know Jack, the old man’s condom - I wear it like a tribal sheath. It’s a sign of bravery.’

  I glance at the patch on his trousers.

  Then Pete leans towards me. ‘Don’t worry, son, with this thing on it’s like having a root twenty-four hours a day.’

  Gillies arrives and begins to push him towards the bathroom.

  I never knew. The indignities of old age. I don’t need this kind of information. I decide it’s time for a new subject and I begin telling Jim that I’ve been writing about my time at the Grace. Just then Patricia Ryan comes past in her wheelchair.

  ‘I used to work there,’ she says.

  ‘At Grace Boarding House? I don’t remember you.’

  ‘In the mid-eighties.’

  ‘Before my time,’ I say. ‘I was there in the nineties. Right up until I was thrown in here.’

  ‘You don’t like it here, do you Jack?’

  ‘Course I don’t. Do you?’

  ‘You could make it a bit easier on yourself.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, you could try a bit of civility.’

  ‘Civility? I’m still coming to terms with being dealt a dud hand, Patricia. Unlike …’

  ‘Call me Pat.’

  ‘You may not have noticed, but unlike everyone else in here - Pat - I’m not an oldtimer.’

  ‘What about me?’

  For the first time I realised I was looking at another victim not much older than myself.

  ‘And what about Craig here?’ she says.

  She beckons towards the boy with the intellectual handicap lying prostrate on his wheelie bed only a few feet away. He’s facing away from us, towards the window again, to give him a clear view of a brick wall outside.

  ‘What’s wrong with the boy; is he spastic?’

  ‘We don’t use that term anymore, Jack. He has cerebral palsy.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘Just having a go.’

  ‘Have you talked to him, Jack?’

  I stare at her. ‘Talk to him? What am I, the amusement?’

  ‘Just say hello.’

  I look at Pat and realise she means it. My only interac-tion with the man - if you can call it that - was the day we crashed in the passageway. For the hell of it I call out, ‘Hello Craig.’ He has his back turned but to my surprise he sends back a long, ‘aaalaaah’, a drawn-out sound that is much louder than we need. To be honest, I wasn’t aware that he could hear that well, let alone understand. Maybe he only recognises his name. Why should I think otherwise; no-one talks to him, though sometimes a nurse will make a comment in passing: ‘Good morning, Craig’, ‘Come on, eat up’. I assumed it’s the banter rather than any serious attempt to communicate. Usually it’s just Craig’s voice calling out to the nurses, ‘Naaaaarrrse. Naaaarrrse.’ Over and over it goes and no response. If they parked him so he could see what’s going on it might settle him down.

  ‘Why don’t you tell him your story about being at Grace House sometime, Jack? He’d like that.’

  ‘Yeah, he’d be riveted I’m sure. Anyway what were you doing there?’

  ‘Washing dishes, cleaning up. Kitchen stuff.’

  I give her a quizzical look.

  ‘It’s not the work, Jack, and not the pay. You’re doing something good for others - there were a lot of people at the Grace who depended on it back then.’

  Jim clears his throat. ‘We introduced a Bill to support boarding houses. Though they’re pretty scarce these days. Now it’s nursing homes.’

  I look at Patricia. ‘You were a Mother Theresa,’ I say.

  ‘I did my bit, Jack, it seemed like the right idea at the time.’

  The right idea. So many people think life is about self-sacrifice; that it’s about donating your own happiness for the good of somebody else. Perhaps they think it will get them into Heaven. Bullshit, is what I say, firm and brown.

  The petanque boule may be thrown either from the palm or by turning the wrist over so the ball is released from the back of the hand. Contrary to popular belief, both are legal, yet most players prefer the back of the hand release because there is more control. It also allows the player to put backspin on the ball, thus controlling the way it lands. That’s one reason why most boules have a grooving system on the surface. The boule skids slightly backwards on landing and counteracts the momentum of the throw and the strong gravitational forward thrust.

  However, some balls are perfectly smooth. These boules are for the ‘shooters’; those players who wish to attempt a ‘petanque’; to knock the opponent’s ball away from the jack, although this is not only the domain of the smooth balls.

  The feet should be placed carefully within a small ring drawn in the gravel and a right-handed player will put his left foot slightly forward of the other. While this is true, my technique involves keeping both feet square to the front. I believe it allows for a straighter throw as the shoulders are square to the play. The jack or cochonnet is first tossed forward between 6 and 10 metres. Let the game begin!

  My point is that petanque, if played correctly, is a very sophisticated game and out of reach of all in here.

  It was between 1986 and 1990 that I wrote the new Theory of Everything. Of course, there’d been other Theories of Everything; a lot of people wanted a system that combined every law of physics and all the greats: Newton, Einstein, Hawkins - the Unified Field. But of course they want to do it by embracing the prevailing ideas, rather than questioning them. They try to encompass the conclusions of others rather than start at ground zero; they try to build a house of twenty-nine different-sized bricks.

  To my way of thinking, a lot of what is ‘known’ is pro-pounded by men with chests puffed out and an arrow of barbed equations notched and ready to poke out the eye of anyone who dares challenge them. Maths is marvellous, but as any scholar knows, it can be used to explain anything under the sun if you are proficient at it, if you are a genius.

  Of course E = mc2 is a beautiful
thing in itself, even if it did oblige Einstein to except the very thing he hated: the idea of an expanding universe. Energy, mass and the speed of light squared; the mass of a body, a measure of its energy content. But for me, the most interesting thing about Einstein’s theory is the statement that ‘any object has a certain energy even when it isn’t moving’. And Newtonian mechanics states that a motionless body has no kinetic energy at all. Physicists use terms like objects at rest, stasis and stationary systems. But any fool can see the glaring error in all this: the failure to recognise that nothing can be still. Matter and energy may be different forms of the same thing, but it’s motion that pre-empts it all and motion never stops.

  This afternoon I’m trundling around the passageway, more depressed than usual, thinking about old Clem trying to get a bit of decency back in his life, when I come across Craig again, parked in the little sunroom at the far end of our wing. There he is, just lying there on his wheelie bed facing away from the glass - I think he must have somehow turned himself over. His eyes are closed, his mouth hangs open, his teeth are as crooked as old tombstones and saliva drips onto the sheets. One arm extends out from beneath the blanket and his fingers project stiffly like a gesture in a religious painting.

  I’m about to turn when he suddenly opens his eyes and lets out a low, Gaaaaaay. Was that a word? Did I see a hint of a smile? What’s going on in there; how much does he know; does he comprehend Eden? Could he possibly understand where he is in the scheme of things? I stare at him.

  ‘In 1666 Isaac Newton proposed his theory of gravitation,’ I say, for no reason.

  Craig’s jaw seems to drop even further. He looks serious. His arm rotates though I don’t know if it’s voluntary. I bring my wheelchair in a little closer.

  ‘The theory explained all the things that were known so far and it was tested to show that the man was correct; that what he proposed was Truth, capital T.’