The Gift of Speed

by Steven Carroll

  ‘Are you annoyed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You can be. I won’t mind.’

  He swings round, facing her, tapping the stairs lightly with his fingers. Perhaps she wants him to be annoyed. That if he loved her he would be. That this was precisely that point in the conversation where grown people should be fighting. And if he were more mature he would know all this. But he’s not.

  ‘I wouldn’t blame you.’

  The anger drains from him in an instant. She looks up with the hat still in her hand and he knows from the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice that this is not an invitation for him to be annoyed with her or even to be fighting with her. So he takes those few steps that bring him to her because he knows it’s all right. And he knows too the significance of this invitation to Kathleen Marsden, of her being here like this with him in this stable, because she is a girl from the Home and there’s no shortage of voices in the suburb that will tell you all Home girls are sluts. If she were to be seen like this she would confirm the talk and make it all true. When she looks up and brings her eyes into line with his, it is clear that she brings the knowledge of all this with her too. It is important to her that he knows this, that he acknowledges it before anything happens, and that he sees that she runs the risk of confirming the idle talk of the suburb if she chooses badly. She needs to be assured that her judgment is good and she can trust him. It’s all in her look, and, satisfied that the point is made, she nods.

  Her lips are warm and taste of orange cordial. Her neck smells faintly of the yellow, lemon-scented soap the grocer in the Old Wheat Road sells. Once they would have hit each other to show their affections. And somewhere, hidden in a corner of the stable, their playground selves may even be watching, wide-eyed and puzzled by the arms and lips and fingertips of their older selves as they explore this mysterious new way of showing their feelings. When their arms encircle each other they each feel the full form and weight of their bodies as they lean against one another — he through the sack of her school tunic, and she through the grey school shirt and the baggy grey trousers of his uniform.

  But as mature as these older selves may be, they reach a point in this delirious exchange where neither of them knows what to do next. And so, their arms still encircling each other, they withdraw and Michael watches as Kathleen Marsden runs her tongue over her lips that must surely now taste of him, just as his taste of her orange cordial.

  ‘Better than hitting each other,’ she grins.

  He grins back. Then she turns to the open door of the stable, to the white sun and the glare of the afternoon and speaks without looking at him.

  ‘Time to go.’

  She pulls a face and their arms drop to their sides.

  ‘There’ll be a search party out.’

  Outside, in the relentless glare of the early February sun, she is furtive again, looking about for peering eyes as she steps through the long, dry grass and back onto the overgrown path that leads to the rear of the Home. They skirt the main building and slip out into the street by the pathway alongside the cottages. On the footpath she relaxes. He gazes down at her lips and she shakes her head.

  ‘Not here.’

  She is right. The window eyes of the Home are watching. She is a Home girl.

  ‘You’ll write,’ she says. ‘You must.’

  He nods and she promises to give him the address the next day in the schoolyard.

  It is Thursday. By Saturday the Home will be empty and the girls will be gone. While he is eyeing the Home she kisses him once more on the lips, quick as a bird, and is away.

  ‘Bye, Kathleen.’

  Even as he speaks he knows it is ridiculously formal given the way they now know each other. And it is while he is dwelling on this that she suddenly turns her head as she walks away over the gravel of the circular driveway.

  ‘Kate,’ she calls, without stopping, as if tossing a flower over her shoulder for him to catch. Then she turns back to the Home, no longer Kathleen but Kate.

  It is, he realises, her gift. She has no money to buy silly cards or whatever things people buy each other, and so she is leaving him the gift of her name. The name she reserves for her friends, which she gives as if tossing a brightly coloured flower over her shoulder.

  38.

  A Few Words

  When Michael leaves Kathleen Marsden, when he sees the last of her disappearing into the Home, he wanders distracted, along the hot afternoon street with the taste of orange cordial still on his lips. It is one of the few streets in the suburb that has kept its old trees, and the footpath and the street are dappled with shade, but it doesn’t stop the heat. He finds himself at the training nets in the school behind the home.

  At the nets the bicycle repair shop owner is chewing gum like the heroic Slasher Mackay, and Michael is snapped back into the world of speed, quietly wondering if the bicycle repair shop owner has always chewed his gum like this (and Michael has never noticed) or if he has only recently affected it. His whole mouth works on it, the bones of his jaw moving under his skin like that of a cow grinding its cud. He is not looking at Michael as he talks. He is leaning against the metal railing of the oval as the team prepares for training and Michael is aware of being late for the first time in memory. They are preparing for match practice and he is staring out across the dusty ground as the mats are laid over the concrete pitch and systematically hammered down with the kinds of spikes with which you would hammer a tent down. His lower jaw works continually on the gum and it seems to Michael that even when he speaks he is still chewing.

  It is, he says, a hot day. But he does not bother with a sentence. The day is, presumably, too hot for sentences. It is simply the key word itself — hot — that he releases from his mouth as he takes his eyes off the oval and squints into the descending light of the sun and the pale blue of the sky. He pauses and dwells on the implications of the heat before going on. Big step, he says, just when Michael thought their conversation was done. Michael is not sure what he means by this and says nothing. This silence — in a conversation of silences — is noted, and the bicycle repair shop owner adds, his jaw working continually on the gum, that the step he has in mind is the one from kids’ cricket to grown-up cricket because Michael is playing with grown-ups on Saturday. His opponents will be, he says in two words, nodding at the mats and the players gathered all around, grown men. He then looks Michael up and down — tall, he notes, but nothing there. The question he is clearly asking himself is whether the kid is ready. And Michael, reading the unspoken question in his eyes, is wondering whether his first impression of the bicycle repair shop owner isn’t true after all, that this is a man who simply doesn’t like people and that this dislike shows in everything he says and does.

  Out on the field the last of the spikes are hammered in and the players, in a mixture of whites and street clothes, walk slowly back from the boundary where the club kit has been dropped. The bicycle repair shop owner watches the players depart the dry ground then turns back to Michael, his eyebrows lifting ever so slightly as he does, and releases two final words — soon know — the movement of his jaw untroubled by speech. He is not the captain of the team, but he speaks to Michael as if he were. The captain is the local real estate agent, a round, jolly man who does like people, who, when the team arrives at the club kit, shakes Michael’s hand, says welcome, and introduces him to everyone. The bicycle repair shop owner takes no part in the process and nobody expects him to. His eyes are always still with disapproval whenever he looks upon this jolly round man.

  As Michael walks to his bag, as he sits to put his white socks, his trousers and his hat on, he sees the opening bowler of the team putting his leather boots on, and he dwells on those boots — the soles, the thick laces, and the solid leather that hugs the bowler’s ankles. He laces his sandshoes, still eyeing the boots, while recalling his conversation with the bicycle repair shop owner and counting the total number of words that their conversation consisted of. It is, he calc
ulates, seven words — ‘hot’, ‘big step’, ‘grown men’ and ‘soon know’. Seven words, all of them spoken by the bicycle repair shop owner — none by Michael. Five minutes of conversation. This man offers the world words in the same way and in the same spirit that he offers himself.

  While he is thinking this the captain approaches him. He has a small, cloth moneybag in his hands. He passes it to Michael saying that everybody has been given one, that they are collecting money for the team, for a new kit, and would he care to take one. Michael looks from the captain to the moneybag and back again. He can hardly tell this man that he has as little time for the team as he does for this whole pancake suburb, so he quietly takes the moneybag and says that he will do his best, and the captain says that is all they can expect of anyone.

  When he steps onto the training field his head is filled with what must be done and he forgets all about the moneybag. He will not think of it again until he discovers it at the bottom of his training bag one warm Sunday afternoon in a few weeks’ time. When he sees it, he will know reluctantly what he must do, and his collection duties will take him into the driveways and doorways of the suburb and then on into the foreign, private country of Webster’s estate.

  Part Six

  12TH — 15TH February 1961

  39.

  A Private Country

  The high sandstone wall runs almost the full length of the block. Native trees that were here before the suburb ever came reach high up in the mid-afternoon sky. The heat is heavy, the birds have given up, and the trees — like the street — are still. Nothing is moving, not even Michael, who stands in the shade of a white gum at the entrance to Webster’s mansion. The wide gate, as always, is open. Michael stands in front of it, pauses in thought, peering into that closed world that exists behind the wall — and it is a wall, not a fence — before stepping over the line and entering the grounds that he has only ever glimpsed from the street.

  Those glimpses do not prepare him for the first, overwhelming impression of looking at Webster’s mansion from the inside — that immediate feeling of being in another country. The grounds are vast. He can see no end to them. Lawns, paths, gardens, wooded sections like small forests, go on and on as far as he can see. He can spot no sign of the three remaining walls, which are either hidden by the foliage or too far away to be observed. And winding through it all, is the wide, sweeping gravel driveway that leads up to the house itself.

  He walks slowly, not because of the heat, but because he knows he is out of his territory. He is in another country; these endless lawns, these small forests, these winding paths, all belong to someone’s private country. He wouldn’t be surprised to come across a railway station somewhere in the gardens — a personal train, and a personal driver just sitting there. Always on call. As he follows the crunching gravel driveway, he nears the house itself. It has two storeys, and is as high and wide as the Girls’ Home nearby. As he nears it he can see that everything has been carefully looked after, that the house almost looks a little too clean to be old, the paint too shiny, the iron balcony too sparkling.

  The upstairs windows are open to catch whatever breeze the afternoon may bring, but Michael can’t see anybody about. Standing before the house he listens hard for sounds of life — a radio, a raised voice, the rattle of a dish, but there is nothing to be heard. Then, looking about him once more — after closely observing the gardens and lawns and pathways — he leaves the gravel driveway, walks slowly up the stone steps and knocks on the front door. The sound of the large metal knocker disturbs the whole property — if not the whole suburb — and he looks back towards the front gate, suddenly afraid, but not sure of what. As thunderous as that single knock on the front door may have seemed to Michael, it has disturbed nothing. He tries again and there is no response. The house, the garden, the whole property, seems to be deserted.

  Michael relaxes, forgets his reason for being there in the first place, and decides to stroll about the property, to explore it as if it were a public park. He leaves the new front steps — that show no sign of wear — and follows a small, winding gravel track that runs off the main driveway. On the vast lawn to his right he sees the first signs of habitation — a mower parked by a low mound of grass, gardener’s gloves and a rake. A little further on a wheelbarrow, containing pots ready for planting. Later, as the track takes him still deeper into the mansion grounds, a bench with a sun hat perched upon it. But no sign of anyone. Michael is beginning to wonder if some disaster has taken place without his knowing and the whole suburb is like this — something so sudden that no one had time to pick up their hats and gloves, before hastily departing. The grounds have the ghostly look that things have in dreams, when some inexplicable disaster strikes without warning.

  He brushes his hands across some ferns in a shaded patch of the grounds. Above him a few birds warble in response to this disturbance then go quiet again. It is, indeed, another country, another place entirely, this mansion of Webster’s, and Michael is at the point of leaving when he sees what he at first takes to be a gardener’s shed. But there is something about the way this shed is tucked away, something in its very manner that suggests it doesn’t want to be discovered. Curious, he wanders on, intent only on having a quick look before departing. The large, garage-like doors are open to the gardens. There is another wheelbarrow parked next to it, a rake and a tray for the lawn cuttings. He starts as a bird flaps from a shrub close by, and then, as he nears the shed, he hears voices. He doesn’t know if he should stay or go, because the voices are hushed and the tone of the conversation is the tone that people adopt when they don’t want to be heard. This is a confidential conversation and he doesn’t really want to disturb it. But he is only a few feet from the shed door. The path he is standing on is gravel. It is quite possible that if he turned to leave whoever was behind the shed door would hear him depart and his departure would look highly suspicious. So, deciding that he has done nothing wrong, that the front gate to the property was open after all, and that he may as well go forward as go back, he takes those extra few steps that lead him around the shed door to greet the speakers.

  The man on his immediate left is tall and broad-shouldered. He is wearing a tie, suit trousers and shiny black shoes. This, Michael knows straight away, is Webster — the same man he saw earlier this summer standing in the doorway at the back of his factory. The other man, wearing overalls and holding a spanner, he doesn’t know. At first neither of them even notices him. And Michael barely notices them. All he can see is the gleaming, black nose, the sweeping curves, the smooth chrome trimming of what he knows is a rich man’s sports car. Michael doesn’t care about cars. You can’t bowl a car. Cars simply take you to and from cricket grounds. But there are boys at school who talk about cars all the time — who make drawings of cars in their exercise books when they should be making charts of climatic classification. These boys simply refer to it as an E-type. Consequently, even Michael knows that this is a famous car, famous enough for schoolboys to draw and dream about.

  He doesn’t know how long he has been staring at the car, but when he looks back to the two men they are eyeing him with a similar expression of astonishment. Webster studies the boy’s face and traces his line of vision, from his eyes to the nose of the car and back again. And when Webster meets Michael’s eyes, it is clear that they both understand each other perfectly. Webster, Michael knows, has no trouble reading his thoughts and has no trouble identifying the conclusions that this young intruder has reached. Without need of even seeing his own face, Michael knows it is an open book. ‘You,’ the look on Michael’s face says, ‘It’s you.’ And, just as Michael’s face is transparent, so too is Webster’s. At the same time that Webster is reading Michael’s thoughts, Michael is reading his.

  Webster orders the man in overalls to throw the tarpaulin back over the car, then turns his attention to Michael.

  ‘Well, good afternoon, young man.’

  Michael watches the green canvas shroud fall ov
er the automobile.

  ‘The gate was open,’ he says.

  ‘The gate is always open. What can I do for you?’

  Michael takes the cloth moneybag from his trouser pocket.

  ‘I’m collecting for my club. We’re buying a new kit.’

  ‘Oh. What’s wrong with the one you’ve got?’

  ‘It’s old,’ Michael says, still distracted. ‘And it’s falling apart,’ he adds, eyeing the man in the overalls who says nothing.

  ‘Well,’ says Webster, breaking into a broad smile. ‘That’s no good, is it, George?’

  ‘No good at all,’ the other man responds.

  ‘I can see we’ll have to do something about that.’

  Webster then takes his wallet from his pocket and Michael pulls the moneybag open. He watches as Webster drops some large coins into the bag. When the last of the coins has fallen, Michael pulls on the string that closes the bag and says thank you. Then, just as he is about to turn and leave, Webster pulls a note from his wallet, folds it over and pushes it into the breast pocket of Michael’s shirt.

  ‘And there,’ he adds. ‘There’s a little extra. For being such a good team man and coming all this way to find us.’

  Michael simply stares back at Webster. He couldn’t see the note properly, but he saw the colour. And he knows from the colour that Webster has just placed a ten-pound note in his pocket. A look of silent, but unequivocal understanding passes between the three of them. The coins are there for the club, the note is for Michael’s silence.

  Their business concluded, Webster inquires if he knows his way back to the front gate. Michael nods and turns to leave, his eyes falling on the green canvas tarpaulin before doing so.