He knows he has found them without even seeing Madeleine. He is staring in through the yellow glass of the pub at a group of people that gives every indication of having been brought together for a purpose. His eyes — as indifferent as a camera — rove over the gathered faces then come to rest on her. She is seated at the end of a trestle table, her sister on one side of her and the older married man whom he first saw at the ball in the summer (and who speaks with the same ease and eloquence on the mysteries of the kidney as he does on women and country fields) is on the other. The very sight of him should feel like a physical blow, but his indifference protects him. Feel nothing, a voice is saying. It is a voice from long ago, a child’s voice, a wise one. A voice that learnt years before how to keep the world at bay, and how to feel nothing when feeling nothing was required. And because it is a wise voice he listens, and the blow that might well have fallen does not. It is a trick learnt young, and, once learnt, it never goes away. The child that learnt the trick when a trick was needed will always be there beside him, ready to take his hand when required, and whisper the right words at the right time. Feel nothing.
Her eyes sparkle, her face is radiant, she is glowing. Happy in a way that he never is when she is not there — happy in a way that some part of him is convinced she has no right to be. For it is an almost liberated happiness that she glows with. There is a liveliness to her manner that he is not aware of having noticed before: bright, flirtatious glances that he has no memory of seeing before, let alone receiving. Then again, he has never observed her at a distance before — and with this indifference. And the more he gazes upon this gathering, the more he becomes convinced that he is not destined to join them inside where there is noise and warmth and where Madeleine is happy in a way that he has not seen her happy before. It is, he concludes (as he steps back to take in the full panorama of the table and his eyes go click like a camera), a picture that is already complete, a group portrait, a tableau that stands as it is. One more and the balance would be lost, the harmony of the scene disturbed.
She has not seen him, but he has seen her. It is enough. The trick of feeling nothing was still good. The wisdom of the child he once was, still there and still valid. He could live with this, this departure. Feeling nothing was easy, if you learnt the trick early enough. Pain was a red, red ball, propelled through the air at speed to the other end of a cricket pitch, then propelled again and again. In the oblivion of the act of propelling it, throughout all those summers all those years before, he had learnt the art of feeling nothing. And like his father’s walk — a winter walk in summer — it was a way of being that, once learnt, was never forgotten. Control the ball and you control everything else. A trick like that, once acquired, would forever stand its possessor in good stead.
Back in his room, he falls into his favourite armchair and is idly staring at the double windows that in summer open out onto the street. They are living a story. And this, logically, is how the story must end. Furthermore, it is the ending he wants. The gift of Madeleine was a kind of blessed ordinariness, a sense of being connected the way everybody else was, a confirmation of the belief that there really was someone out there after all, just for him. When she is gone, his consolation will be this, the consolation of the right ending at the right time. An aeroplane, a departure, the gesture of a final heartfelt letter. And, when this ending is finally upon them and everybody has gone their separate ways forever, he will be left with a deeply satisfying sadness that it had to happen. The way it does in stories where the longed-for moment is reached, hearts break on the printed page, and everybody steps out into the vast unwritten life that is left to them.
In the books that he reads, in the books that he studies and writes about, books in which lovers meet and destroy each other with their love or their lack of it, there is a common thread — that what happens happens because it could not have happened any other way. The moment, to use a fashionable student phrase of the day, is structured that way. A young woman called Madeleine meets a young man called Michael, one discovering love, the other gratitude. Then they part, because the mixture of love and gratitude can only sustain itself for so long. She weaves the sunlight in her hair and leaves with regret in her eyes, not because she is leaving but because she could find nothing more to offer. Nor does she wish there could have been more, because that something more wasn’t in them to be discovered. Together they could only ever have amounted to what they became. And the regret is in her eyes, not because she wished for more but because she had always known that there was no more. Their story ends the way it was always going to. And with that ending he acquires — almost happily — the deeply thrilling sadness that tells him he has loved somebody. That he has known what it is to be connected and together they have known the days.
43.
The Mountain of Whitlam Comes to Centenary Suburb
The mountain of Whitlam has been lowered into the back seat of a white Commonwealth car. He has been shipped to Melbourne, and is now being ferried to Centenary Suburb. This mountain, which seems to fill the entire car, has been travelling towards the suburb for much of the year. He is lowered into the back seat, the door is slammed, and the car draws away from the newly completed international airport.
Soon, the gleaming white car, bearing its monumental cargo, is speeding along the newly completed freeway, built to carry traffic from the airport (whose runways, hangars and lounges sit uneasily upon the old thistle country north of the suburb) to the city, with maximum ease. Everywhere the signs of Progress are in evidence, as the car bearing the mountain of Whitlam travels towards its destination.
The eyes of Whitlam move from side to side, roving over the open fields. He is impassive and looks out the window as a hiker might, stick in hand, surveying a landscape from a great height. As the car moves smoothly along the shining bitumen, the houses that mark the fringes of the city pop up into view, first one or two, then in the intensifying numbers of a massed army. And although he looks upon them with the rarefied eyes of the hiker, he also knows that these fringe suburbs are his territory. It is suburbs such as these that house or once housed Michael and his kind, and it is Michael and his kind who will one day soon push the mass of Whitlam to power. This mountainous statue on wheels will roll inexorably to power in just a couple of years, and it will be Michael and his kind who will provide the motive force, just as coal and water produce steam and provide motive force for an engine to pull carriages. So, even though his face betrays no emotion, this Whitlam is acknowledging deep in his core that all landscapes, especially those as flat as the pancake suburbs around him, require mountains. And he, the mountain of Whitlam, has come to this coastal plain of suburbs built on grass and thistle because plains cannot move, whereas mountains, housed on wheels, can.
As they leave the freeway, his eyes lower and scan the typed pages his speechwriter has just handed him. He has come to Centenary Suburb to officially open a sports ground. A minister in government might have been requested for the job, but the mayor of Centenary Suburb is a man who trades in politics, not believes in it, and he knows a mountain when he sees one, and knows that this mountain will soon command the eyes of the landscape. It is written into all of them — the mayor, Mrs Webster, Peter van Rijn, the rotting hulk of Bruchner, and Michael and his kind — that this Whitlam will one day rule. And, even though he can’t know if the length of his rule will be short or long, the mayor is convinced that the country, and therefore the suburb, will never be the same again once the mountain prevails. And so, adhering to the age-old dictum that for things to stay the same things must change, the mayor has invited this Whitlam who moves with the unshakeable conviction that he is History, waiting to happen. The mayor is not about to dispute this. And so, when everything changes, the mayor will have the boast of having shaken Whitlam’s hand before it did. And boasts such as that just might be enough to keep some things the same. By which the mayor means the chair in which he sits and the office he occupies. And the wide purple ti
e and the long greying sideburns that he now possesses as he waits for the arrival of the Great Whitlam, are, too, the concessions one makes to change and to Progress, so that things might stay the same.
When the white Commonwealth car pulls up at the sports ground, the mountain of Whitlam is lifted from the back seat and is wheeled to the welcoming party at the front of the cream-brick building. Even as he approaches, the mayor is enjoying a quiet smile as he remembers drawing up plans for the building and the architect informing him that the first thing the builders, planners and everybody else involved would want to do is work out where the bar goes.
As the shadow that prefigures the sheer mass of Whitlam looms closer, the quiet smile fades from the mayor’s features and he is convinced that History is, in fact, rolling inexorably towards him and he is about to shake hands with it. And if Michael, who is standing just behind him, were to explain that cocktail of emotions that have overcome the mayor — and Harold Ford is an early-evening-martini man — he would, to the mayor’s great surprise, use the word ‘sublime’. He would tell him that what he is currently experiencing is that mixture of awe and terror that the great Romantic poets felt when they viewed, say, at close quarters, a snow-peaked mountain. For the mountain of Whitlam has this effect on the mayor, even if the word ‘sublime’ would be the last that he would draw upon to describe this strangely disturbing feeling.
And such is the kick of this particularly potent cocktail that when the mountain stretches out its hand, the hand of the mayor that reaches back is, for the first time in decades, betraying a hint of trembling.
They speak briefly and together note that the bar is in a good spot, then the wheels underneath the statue of Whitlam move down the line, greeting each of the welcoming party in turn. When he comes to the distinctly unmoved figure of Mrs Webster, he reminds her that they have met before, addresses her as Val (in a way that almost shocks the mayor, because nobody calls her Val) and indulges in the light chat of old friends catching up unexpectedly. But Mrs Webster remains unmoved, even distant. And, far from being flattered that he should remember her name, she is suspicious. She is wary of anybody with that kind of gift, if gift is what it is. And, as he moves further down the line, she shows no sign of emotional involvement, her pulse and the nerve endings of her being register no hint of sublimity.
Now, face to face with Michael — who (after having sat up in his armchair all night inwardly farewelling his Madeleine) is there, like the rest of the Centenary Committee — the shoulders of the mountain visibly relax. He knows he is shaking hands with the motive force that will propel him to power. For Michael, the lingering feeling (which will linger over the next few days, even weeks) will be an odd one. An odd feeling, in fact, that will accompany any future meetings with the ‘Great’ — that the ‘Great’ look so very human when you stand next to them.
After the tea and the biscuits, the mountain of Whitlam is wheeled back to the white Commonwealth car that carried him to Centenary Suburb, lowered into the back seat, and ferried back along the newly completed freeway to the newly completed international airport from which he came, all the way back his still, silent eyes roving over his domain and the change, everywhere in evidence, that signifies his time is upon him.
44.
The Moving Hand
The hand moves across the treated surface of the wall, sometimes slow, sometimes fast. But always moving. Mulligan, either reclining or standing on the scaffolding that he climbs each day up to his wall, seems to be both still and in a state of perpetual movement. As though he hasn’t a minute to lose. As though the wall will crumble and fall before he is finished. And so the hand is always moving; even when pausing in mid-air, hovering over the surface of the wall, there is minute movement, thumb and forefinger slowly twisting the brush this way and that, as if the hand itself were thinking. At moments like these, the mind of Mulligan is emptied. He has (he fancifully imagines afterwards) no more thought for what is happening than a farm animal munching grass in a field. The moving hand is a thing unto itself.
The weeks, the months, the whole winter and spring have passed like this. In a trance. The jigsaw of faces and places on the wall all destined to come together into one whole picture, the nature of which only Mulligan knows. Only Mulligan has the studies of the public figures he is committing to the wall, only Mulligan has the sketches that reveal the full sweep of the picture. But even then, even to Mulligan, it seems that it is only this moving hand that really knows what is going on, and he, too, is a spectator, watching it, day by day, skimming across the treated surface of the wall, a thing unto itself, that seems to be moving, even when poised, thumb and forefinger slowly twisting the brush this way and that. Somewhere out there, on this mild spring morning, the Great Whitlam has come to Centenary Suburb. But this is of no concern to Mulligan and the hand that moves or does not move, according to its impulses.
Not that anybody actually sees either the hand or Mulligan at the end of it, for he works behind long drapes that fall from the top of the scaffolding to the floor. He arrives early in the morning and leaves late at night. Moreover, he barely emerges for lunch or breaks. Mulligan has found a world to which he can go each day. His own world. And he barely notices the one he shares with everybody else, or acknowledges anyone else’s presence. Except when they come too close to his wall and his world, the one he will reveal to all of them when he chooses to let it go and open the drapes.
And those who walk past the shrouded wall, going in and out of the town hall offices — the mayor, the office clerks, Peter van Rijn and the various members of the Centenary Committee — have long since come to accept Mulligan’s terms. He possesses an authority that was, at first, difficult to explain. But he had it. Then the mayor looked up to the wall in late winter and acknowledged that at some stage the wall had, in his eyes and those of everyone else, become Mulligan’s wall. And the authority that they all accepted but found difficult to explain became recognisable as the kind of authority that someone has when they are speaking from their territory. Besides, in time, people had come to like the idea of a mystery in their midst. One that will reveal itself when the time comes. And the temptation to peek behind the wraps has been resisted, in the same way someone recognises but rejects the impulse to peek at the last page of a book.
What’s more, it has also been recognised for some that this Mulligan is one of those who, more than likely, possess a short fuse. The eyes tell you that an explosion is never far away, and that he doesn’t take kindly to people sticking their beaks into his business, opening their mouths to offer either comment or criticism. And so that world he is bringing into being spreads in silent majesty, day by day, across the wall for which Mulligan was destined and which is now accepted as his.
The moving hand of Mulligan moves on. Oblivious of the world around it. A thing unto itself. And Mulligan, either reclining or standing on the scaffolding, is a spectator to the designs and whims of the moving hand. But he also recognises that the time is approaching when he will part company with his wall, when it will no longer be his wall, and he will have to pull the drapes aside and give it back to the crowd. So he savours every day that he still has this world to step into each morning, for walls like this have a once-in-a-lifetime look and part of him is already contemplating how he will fill his days when the wall is gone from him.
45.
The Discovery of Speed (2)
‘Take me with you.’
Mrs Webster is contemplating this run of ratty spring days and how they show no sign of blowing over. It has been a week since that Whitlam of theirs visited the suburb, and she puts this run of windy days (which sprang up the same day) down to him. It’s all that hot air, she thinks. Then she eyes the sky and the estate gardens, stirred up by the winds, as if something more than just ratty weather were afoot. Rita’s words, at first, are lost in the wind and the distant drone of a passing plane. Then, as quickly as it erupted, the wind drops. The small plane passes. A mid-week silence desce
nds upon everything. Mrs Webster’s eyes turn from the gardens and Rita’s eyes are upon her, wide and expectant. The double doors of the garage are locked. She’s closed those doors forever. She knows as much as she needs to know, as much as she’ll ever know. But this woman’s stare is fixed, even unrelenting, and although she has silently vowed that she never again needs to take that drive, she feels, somehow, obligated. She is wondering why she should feel this obligation, because Rita is not close enough to be called a friend, nor, Mrs Webster suspects, will she ever be. But she has, Mrs Webster silently confesses, implicated this woman, drawn her into her life. She has told her the kinds of private things that you would tell a friend, and, in the absence of just such a friend, she chose to tell Rita. Perhaps in the hope that the acquaintanceship would grow, or perhaps out of mere selfishness, out of the sheer need to speak. Whatever, there is a residual feeling of having used this woman, that having implicated her in her life, having drawn her into it, she cannot snub her. And, perhaps, this also explains Rita’s long, direct stare. It is unapologetic. Uncompromising. As though, in some part of her, not consciously or deliberately reasoned, she has come to the conclusion that this much is owed her. This much is her due. For the service of having been the right ear at the right time, she has earned at least one request, and this is it.
The Time We Have Taken Page 20