The Time We Have Taken

by Steven Carroll

  Michael is there at the invitation of the committee, but now they are all quietly wondering about the wisdom of their impulse. As a first-year teacher at the school — his old school — and someone still engaged in university studies, he is Youth. The quality they all mutually recognised they didn’t have and which they sought. Now all feel the disruption of his presence. All tacitly acknowledge, without even so much as the occasional communication of a raised eyebrow, that they have never really sat down with Youth before (not quite like this, not to make decisions) and there is a general, unuttered agreement that they don’t much like the feeling, especially with someone who has the air about him of sitting down to Sunday afternoon tea with the old fogies, someone who gives every impression of wanting to get away as soon as possible and who doesn’t say much because, presumably, he can’t be bothered. But, there you are, it’s done. And so they plunge onward.

  It is an idea they seek. If they are to be Centenary Suburb then the activities must surely all revolve around something that could possibly be termed a Crowning Event. But what?

  Silence settles on the room like a sudden dull patch in an otherwise bright day. This long silence — a thinking silence — is punctuated with sputtered suggestions (a concert, a ball, a gala cricket match) all of which are briefly considered then quickly dismissed.

  It is then that Peter van Rijn, who has again said nothing to date, quietly suggests a mural.

  ‘A what?’ says the mayor.

  ‘A large painting on a large public wall,’ the vicar of St Matthew’s says, in the manner of a translation.

  The mayor is about to do two things: tell the vicar that he knows perfectly well what a bloody mural is, and then laugh at the suggestion itself. But he sees the two priests turn to Peter van Rijn and nod, encouragingly. As does the rest of the table. He realises that the suggestion is actually being taken seriously, and he is a little tired of Peter van Rijn doing this, at the same time quietly congratulating himself now for having thrown that brick through his window all those years before.

  ‘He means,’ adds the priest of St Patrick’s, ‘something, well, for the purposes of illustration, along the lines of the Sistine Chapel.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know what he means.’

  ‘Only not so grand, of course,’ he adds, with a nasally laugh.

  There is a brief silence, then the mayor, reluctantly warming to the idea asks: ‘Do we have such a wall?’

  Each member of the Centenary Committee then bows their head, each contemplating the idea of a high, wide public wall in a public place. And whether the sheer force of the thinking conjures up the wall, or the wall announces itself to the deeply preoccupied mind of the vicar of St Matthew’s, he finds himself saying, ‘Of course.’

  All heads turn to him as he announces — as if it were perfectly obvious and how did they ever miss it — that the newly completed town hall has just such a wall in its grand foyer.

  The mayor is about to quash the idea, as if the vicar is proposing to paint the entrance hall of his house, when the rush of enthusiasm silences him. There are general nods, each to each, young and old, and the mayor finds himself once again nodding.

  The phrase ‘That’s it’ is uttered all around the room and everybody congratulates themselves on a job well done. But not completely, they all concede. For, what shall this mural be of? What will it depict? And then, as if all have hatched the idea at once — a mark of its inspired nature, too grand for a single mind — they all announce, simultaneously, over one another, overlapping one another, weaving in and out of each other’s words, that this grand wall will depict nothing less than the history of the suburb itself, from its sheep-farming origins, when that first fragile shop went up, to now. Of course, ‘all’ doesn’t include Michael, who is smiling along with the rest of them, but it is a smile, Mrs Webster notes, of a different kind. Nonetheless, it is as though a wave of common thought has passed through Mrs Webster’s dining room and uplifted them all. As if the idea itself — the Crowning Event — came from out there somewhere. From the streets, the footpaths, driveways, sporting fields, the public and private houses of the suburb itself, and rolled towards them, gathering in momentum as it went, with the inevitability of an idea that had not been dreamt up but that had always been there waiting for its day to be summoned — as if the suburb itself had spoken through them. How else could they all think and utter exactly the same idea at exactly the same time? The vicar of St Matthew’s announces that there is, in fact, a German word for this sort of thing, then adds that it is so long he’s quite forgotten it.

  And it is then, as everybody leans back in their seats and stretches, that Michael announces that he knows just such an artist. One who paints walls. One who has trained in Europe where great walls are painted. He doesn’t say that this artist lives downstairs in Michael’s student house and that he is known only as Mulligan. Instead, he paints a picture of a latter-day Michelangelo with whom he happens to be on good terms, and the committee turns to him (pleased that he is actually talking to them, and noting with the collective pride of the suburb that raised him that he can actually string a sentence together), each of them now tacitly congratulating themselves on having invited Youth into their circle (and inwardly conceding that Youth might not be so bad, after all). And all the time they are secretly imagining a grand wall of truly majestic appeal, to which, one day, people would come from all over the suburb and beyond. A place of pilgrimage even, and all sprung from the inner circle of the Centenary Suburb Committee, now seated at Mrs Webster’s dining-room table.

  But as Mrs Webster farewells them all from her doorstep, she is secretly eyeing a distant corner of the garden — Webster’s corner, where the garage is — and she is no longer thinking of public walls and crowning events, but quietly contemplating Webster’s one trifling infidelity.

  16.

  The Guitar and the Decade

  That evening, after having knocked on Mulligan’s door and entered the welcoming mess of his room to tell Mulligan he had a job for him, Michael is sitting with Madeleine in the lounge room of her flat. There is a guitar on the floor. Everywhere, Michael imagines, in all the houses, on all the floors, there are guitars. The guitar and the decade go together. Once, it was the Age of the Piano. Pianos, he imagines, marked the leisurely passing of time in a more leisurely age than this. Pianos spoke of ease and calm in that recently vanished world of their grandparents, the time signature of which was forever adagio. In that once-upon-a-time world where the piano ruled, the hours passed unhurried, and days were long. And the music that came from pianos was as ordered as the lives of the people who played them, and as long as the days through which they lived and played. At least, this is the way Michael, currently lounging on the floor in front of Madeleine, thinks of the piano.

  This, by contrast, is the Age of the Guitar. Wherever you may be, a guitar is never far away. But this is not an instrument that is content to mark the slow passage of time as music did in that once-upon-a-time world that resisted the ruffian of change. The guitar is an instrument that shakes things up. The piano is made for living rooms and quiet houses. As much a resident of the house as the family in it. The guitar is like something blown in off the street. It has the look of trouble about it. Like a stranger on the doorstep, who slips into the house, unwanted and uninvited, by dint of sheer front. Unpredictable, with an attitude suggestive of it being permanently up to no good.

  He could share these thoughts with Madeleine, and he would, if he knew her just a little more. If he was at ease with her as his lounging attitude would suggest, if he knew her just a little more he could relax, deliver his thoughts on the contrasting characteristics of the Age of the Piano and that of the guitar in such a way as to amuse her. He may even make her laugh (and he is convinced he doesn’t make her laugh enough). But in the end he keeps these thoughts to himself, convinced that thoughts sound best inside the head and silly in the open air, like quotes remembered, stored up and trotted out to impress s
ome girl if the occasion should arise.

  There is a guitar on the floor in front of them, and it also possesses, it occurs to Michael, when looked at from a different angle (he’s tilting his head to one side), a certain air of wantonness. This guitar is no longer a ruffian, but a vamp. Lounging there on the floor, all curves and trouble, lying on the floor like a challenge, not so much waiting to be picked up but daring anybody to do so.

  Madeleine sits on the sofa, the communal garden outside lit up by a line of full moons suspended on dark staffs, the foliage silver and white, not quite vegetable. Her knees together, she wears a short skirt — as is the fashion — and knee-high leather boots. She’s talking of travel, of the journey home, the one she’s been planning ever since the day she arrived here with her family on a ten-pound ticket (did she only ever agree to come for the boat trip, she’s not sure).

  ‘You know,’ she says, laughing, in that northern English, sing-song voice, ‘I’ve been talking about this for so long there are some people who think I’ve already gone and come back.’

  He too laughs, but his is a different kind of laughter, a laughter that, in part, wishes it were true — that she had gone, and that she was back. His is, in short, glum laughter. And, implied in what she says is the fact that he knew from the start that she was going. That he would only have her for a short time. She’s never withheld this from him. In the brief time they’ve been together, it’s been out there, in the open. You knew this, you always knew, Michael, so don’t go glum on me. This is what she may as well be saying.

  It is while he is contemplating this (thoughts of the committee meeting that afternoon banished to the back of his mind) that she reaches out for the guitar and places it on her knees, ready to play. Madeleine is learning the thing, but not seriously. As an amusement, for company almost, in much the same way that his father’s generation took up the harmonica. She holds the guitar like a non-smoker holding a cigarette for someone else, then assembles her fingers into the familiar triangle of the D Major chord. She then strums the strings and grimaces as a muffled sound emerges. She has strangled the chord. Possibly killed it forever. He returns the grimace, then suggests she try again, but to hold the strings down properly this time and at just the right distance from the metal fret. She complies, only to replicate the crime. And he is not quite sure how many lives the D Major chord has, so he is quite relieved when she gives up.

  ‘I’ll never get it,’ she says, handing the thing over to him.

  He rises from the floor and, while resting on his knees in front of her, takes the guitar. His fingers assemble unbidden (he has played the instrument for years, ever since fast bowling left his world and the guitar walked in), and without really being conscious of the relative complexity of the process, he strums the same chord. And from the moment he strikes the chord, one single chord, he realises he has never struck a chord in anything like the same way before. It is as though he has unwittingly brought this thing, this instrument of the Age, to life (and the devil that lurks in its woodwork), for the sound seems to expand and grow in the room like vegetable matter. The whole room, all four corners, is filled with sound, and he looks down at the instrument as if he were holding an entire orchestra in his hands, not a familiar, cheap classical copy from a city store. And, with the sound still swelling, he looks up to Madeleine as if for an explanation, and sees only bewilderment in her eyes. For this sound has transformed the room, and has now transformed them. They not only hear the sound, they feel it. The sound enters them, enters the vast network of their nervous systems and is registered throughout their bodies in the same way that touch might be registered. And as much as she might now look upon Michael as the magician who produced this effect, Michael looks back at Madeleine in such a way as to suggest that the whole thing is a complete mystery to him. And, after sharing this moment of mystification, their eyes drift down to the guitar and now gaze at it in mutual wonder.

  And it is then that she leans forward, her eyes now firmly on his, takes the guitar from him and slides it onto the carpeted floor. He has never seen her like this, her eyes open and direct. Foreign, a Madeleine he has never known. Although she says nothing, she is willing him, asking him, inviting him to kiss her. She will not move, the look says. He will now come to her and she will receive him. And, with the sound of that single chord still in their ears, he pauses so that he might return the extraordinary directness of her stare, delve into the depths of her eyes (which still might be blue or green), because he knows they have never shared an experience such as this before. This, he is saying to himself, this is Madeleine. This is her. The Madeleine that neither he nor quite possibly anybody else has ever witnessed before. And then he is kissing her.

  He knows little of kissing (he assumes that neither of them really do), but he knows instantly that they have never kissed in this manner before. For not only is he kissing her, she is kissing him, the faint residue of wine still on her lips from the evening mass. She is both receiving him and seeking him out, at once playing him and being played, and all through the lips. No other parts of their bodies are touching; not hands, arms, thighs, bodies — only the lips. And everything about this moment that has overtaken them is being poured from one to the other through the margins of their mouths, these organs of speech that seem to have acquired a life of their own and no longer feel the need of speech; that have, in fact, shed the need, and, in this delirious exchange, have discovered a higher order of communication altogether. And so deep is the craving there seems to be no end to it. And just when he imagines that this might very well go on forever — and he is content to let it — he feels her arms encircle his neck and draw him back onto the sofa with her. And not once do her lips leave his, or his hers. It is almost as though they have melded, become one, a pose set in marble that will leave them kissing forever, a spectacle frozen in time and destined for museum gardens, one that will outlive both time itself and the elements.

  At first this other sound enters their ears like a door opening and closing in a distant universe. A door of no consequence in a faraway world — where two people (recognisable as Madeleine and Michael) lie on an identical sofa in a flat indistinguishable from the one they are in. But it is not a door of no consequence. It is theirs, and they spring from the sofa, their lips finally parting, and are almost sitting upright as Madeleine’s sister enters the lounge room, which, throughout the whole exchange, has been left in full light — the curtains not drawn, the room open to the casual or inquiring eyes of the flats opposite them.

  Her sister excuses herself, is about to retreat from the room, but they implore her to stay. But, as if having trespassed, as if in the company of two people who ought to be familiar but who seem disconcertingly foreign, she begins her retreat. They stop her. She sits. She sits, she knows, because if normality is to be returned she must sit and chat as if nothing has happened. And at some stage during the talk that follows, while uncertain conversation floats back and forth between them, Madeleine rises slowly from the sofa, picks the guitar up from the floor where it has been left to languish, and places it upright in the corner of the room. And, for a second, she fancies that it is staring back at her, satisfied with itself, its work done. She can still feel his lips, and he still feels hers as he watches her deposit the thing in the corner, both of them wondering what came over them, while staring at the guitar in the corner of the room as if the answer might be found in the infinity of chords contained within it, each just waiting for the right moment to be struck.

  17.

  The Letter is Received

  It could be any of the mornings of his life in the town. Vic has just come from the greengrocer’s and has left carrying a small bag of potatoes and beans. After the greengrocer’s, his walk takes him to the post office, where he checks his mail.

  And, on this morning, before he even opens his post box, he senses there is a letter from Rita. He turns the key, draws the tiny door back, and there is one of those fancy Florentine envelopes that s
he sends her letters in, this one written a few days before at the small desk in her bedroom. It’s either that or a fancy French envelope. He doesn’t know where she finds these things. What takes him by surprise, though, is the anticipation he feels. Of looking forward to the letter, and knowing that he will be disappointed if his intuitions are false and the letter is not there.

  He sits on a bench in the sun. The light is always good, and it’s the perfect place to read these communications from a previous life. He unfolds the crisp, decorated paper and the old street, its houses and gardens, the entire suburb, open out with the letter. He holds the Old World in his hands, and it is both near and distant, something for which he feels both a curious affection and cold curiosity. You don’t walk away from twenty years just like that. You always leave something behind, and you always bring part of that Old World with you, no matter how much you might imagine you haven’t.