The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

by David Ireland

  ‘Why didn’t you just find her, feel her and forget her?’

  ‘She said she loved me.’

  They roared.

  When the Humdinger asked him one day, ‘Should I be honest?’ he replied, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wait for it. I haven’t finished,’ said the Dinger. ‘Now take my case. I’m twenty-nine and have two brothers—one in the Liberal Party and one serving six years for rape and arson. My sister Peg is on the streets and Dad lives off her earnings. Mum is pregnant by the boarder and because of this Dad won’t marry her. Last night I got engaged to an ex-prostitute and I wish to be fair to her: should I tell her about my brother in the Liberal Party?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ambrose, ‘I’ll have to think it over. Would you be offended if I brought this up at our prayer meeting on Thursday?’

  ‘Not at all!’ said Humdinger joyfully. ‘Bring it up all over the place.’

  ‘Thanks. I will.’

  ‘Now I know what Christian charity means.’ He even had the effrontery to shake Ambrose’s hand. The boy blushed with pleasure and pride.

  Ambrose was puzzled. The Two Pot Screamer seemed to hang round him for no reason. Two Pot was listening for any gems of conversation Ambrose might drop, so that he could retail them happily to the boys in exchange for the ready cash of popularity.

  Ambrose concluded he was queer. He went over to him one day and said, ‘You hang round me too much. I think you’re a homosexual.’ He walked away. Two Pot was amazed and followed him back to the plant lab where Ambrose was stationed. This time he said it in front of others.

  ‘Keep away from me, homosexual!’ Two Pot kept away.

  Later, Ambrose’s ability to hold first impressions blossomed strangely. After he had first been persuaded to go to the Home Beautiful he appeared to go without hesitation or doubt that this might conflict with his church youth ideas. He seemed to hold both things—the church and the Home Beautiful—side by side in his mind in such a way that they didn’t quarrel. There was no sort of correspondence between the ideas that settled in his mind: they floated in a mental syrup that isolated them from each other.

  A SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT ‘The Glass Canoe’s studying again.’ Woodpecker was keen to keep the talk going in the drink hut.

  ‘Hope it doesn’t bring on another brainstorm,’ said Angry Ant.

  ‘They were packing the shits when he went off his head in the control room last time,’ said Woodpecker. ‘He’s strong enough at any time, but he raced out on the plant swinging by his hands from some of the RSJs two hundred feet in the air.’

  ‘I’d give my right hand to be able to do the things he can do when he’s off his head,’ said Congo Kid earnestly.

  ‘He’s left-handed,’ explained the Ant to the Great White Father, who nodded to them both, watching the play of their tiny emotions across their faces, noting the progress the beer made in the flush of their skins and the merciful glaze of their eyes.

  ‘You can talk to him about it, I’ll say that for him,’ said the Ant. ‘Once you get him started he’ll talk about himself all day.’

  The Great White Father spoke. ‘You never know what a word will do to him. He may pass it off or it may bunch up his guts and open his face like a hand and expand his heart and contract his muscles and the next thing you know he’s wandering from girder to girder up in the structure like an ape. Or punching the shit out of you down here at ground level.’ He still seemed to hear the sound of the Glass Canoe’s voice as he was led away last time. Coming from his deep, powerful, protuberant, immensely resonant guts, that voice had a bone-jarring quality; the sound of it carried like the crack of a falling tree. There was a grandeur in his aimless violence, as if the man inside him that broke loose at such times was a hero whose nature it was to attempt the mightiest tasks.

  And yet this same man, when the Father had gone to visit him, was flabby from sedatives, sexual indulgence and professional sympathy; he had this foldy neck and his collar too small; he was clean round the mouth but a bit wet. And they said he was better.

  AN OBLIGING LAD Ambrose walked back to the cracker. A group of maintenance men brought in on contract to keep establishment figures down worked round the base of a huge tall thing. Was it the reactor? He thought it was.

  ‘Hey son! You’re an operator. We can’t do this job with that valve turned on. Turn it off for us, son.’

  ‘OK.’ He closed the valve they pointed to. They were older than Ambrose. You don’t just say no when people ask you to help them. That’s like passing by on the other side.

  It was the feed valve. The plant had just got to its feet. Inside the control room things had been going well. The panel room was clear. Humdinger was gazing, in a pleasant trance, at the feed instrument. Flow steady, pump pressure OK. Suddenly the flow pen slid gracefully sideways to nil. No flow. The alarm sounded. What? He slammed the emergency steam handle over and yelled for a man to go out and see if there was trouble at the feed valve. The automatic instrument was no good if the block valve had been shut.

  Blue Hills ran out to investigate—despite their hatred of the company men ran in emergencies—and opened the block valve Ambrose had shut.

  ‘You better come in. Don’t touch anything here.’

  ‘They wanted it shut.’

  ‘Did one of our blokes tell you to do that? A foreman or someone? Was it Slackie?’ then he remembered Slackie had gone. He jumped before he was pushed. One of the new mountains of ore in the west had swallowed him. But he hadn’t got away from foreigners.

  ‘No, those men with the tools.’

  Blue Hills shook his head. The kid was an idiot.

  ‘They wanted it shut.’

  ‘Tell ’em they can’t have it shut.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘Don’t you know what valve that was? You just shut the rotten place down.’

  Ambrose couldn’t understand why everyone abused him. How could grown men ask you to do something wrong? He went inside to have a nervous pee. The trough was all over purple.

  A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS The qualities of manager and worker were listed in a company manual. Far Away Places found a copy of this blueprint just before the Brown Snake lost it, and made sure the Glass Canoe got it. He had no defences against his own mind and the personal interpretations he put on the comparisons shown in the list:

  MANAGER

  WORKER

  extrovert

  introvert

  cordial

  reserved

  gregarious

  prefers own company

  likes people

  likes technical work

  interested in people

  interested in mechanisms, ideas

  likes business, costs, profit and loss and practice

  likes the sciences, mathematics, literature and principles

  gets many things done

  gets intricate things done

  synthesizes

  analyses

  is fast, intuitive

  slow, methodical

  is a leader

  is independent, self-sufficient

  is inductive

  is deductive

  has the competitive spirit

  wants to live and let live

  bold and courageous

  modest and retiring

  noisy and aggressive

  quiet and restrained

  tough

  vulnerable

  impulsive

  intellectual

  vigorous

  meditative

  opinionated

  broadminded

  intolerant

  tolerant

  determined and impatient

  adaptable and patient

  enterprising, practical

  conservative, idealistic

  He looked down at his hands. They frowned at him. Poor Glass Canoe. Sometimes he thought he was a natural manager; sometimes he envied the qualities of the worker. He picked out combinations of qualities
he liked. Next day the combinations were different. Most often he picked out as his own the greater part of both lists; he was modest and bold, impulsive and intellectual, aggressive and restrained, inductive and deductive, enterprising and idealistic. Yet he was uneasy. This was dishonest, trying to be on both sides. He should be on one side or the other. That’s how it was on the list.

  In his worst moments he was so tangled none of the words on the list fitted him. I got hold of it months later in an open locker. One that had become vacant suddenly.

  NO COMPO From his window the Wandering Jew noticed Herman the German tramping through the blue gates, his left hand in bandages. He was late. Luxaflex too, from between venetian slats, saw the bandaged hand and checked the time. The Brown Snake saw it and rang the Union delegate for information. Oliver Twist, the Brown Snake’s lodge brother, promised to find out why Herman’s hand was bandaged. He rang back five minutes later.

  ‘Herman’s got something wrong with the bones of his finger.’

  ‘Did he do it on the job?’

  ‘Pinched a finger between two pipes.’

  ‘That’s not a disease. Did he notify it?’

  ‘Herman’s a hero. He doesn’t notify a little thing like that, the boys would never let him forget it.’

  ‘Is it serious?’

  ‘The finger’s off.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Right up to the hand. Three joints.’

  ‘Can he do his work?’

  ‘He can do ten men’s work.’

  ‘But he didn’t fill the papers in, eh?’

  THE BIG BANG THEORY That night, near nine o’clock, the Volga Boatman hid the boat and ran to the Home Beautiful with alarming news.

  ‘Going to raid us? What sort of raid?’ asked the Great White Father mildly. He was sprawled in a chair, his legs taking up the room of half a dozen.

  ‘It’s on now!’ said Volga wildly. ‘They’re patrolling the river. No one can come in.’

  ‘But they’re not actually attacking us. Is that it?’ asked the leader of the revels.

  ‘No, they don’t know where to start.’ Calmed by his leader’s example.

  ‘Then they’ll have a roll call on the plants shortly. We’ll just leave one at a time, those of us on duty. The rest carry on as usual. I’ve fixed up a ski lift. Our emergency exit.’

  No one took him seriously till they got to the river bank. When he pulled on a rope attached underwater to an anchor, he brought to light two strands of cable reaching an anchor point on the other bank, and from behind a mangrove-tree nearby, a windlass and a pair of water skis. All took cover as the security patrol passed in a skiff powered by an outboard motor. When it was gone, they sped across the river one by one, the geared windlass pulled just fast enough to keep them afloat.

  The patrol came back to investigate when the skiers’ bow waves caught up with them, but with the rope dropped on the river bottom they found nothing.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ asked the Great White Father of the few who remained to keep the Home Beautiful going, and didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Let’s have another beer,’ he suggested. They delicately agreed.

  ‘Whose turn to be barman?’ asked the Volga Boatman aggressively. He was a little ashamed of his earlier panic.

  ‘There was a young feller in the Nazareth branch of the Carpenters’ and Joiners’ Union once washed his friends’ feet,’ said the Great White Father. ‘I think I can pull you jokers a beer. Where’s the opener?’

  When the beer was doing its good work, he sat back and prophesied.

  ‘Their blasted operations would go phut! without the relief from boredom that our Home gives us. I’ve got a good mind to shut down for a few days and see how they like it.’

  They protested bitterly.

  ‘The whole place’d stop if the Home Beautiful stops.’

  ‘That’s what they’re trying to do.’

  ‘What they expect is eight hours a day from us, walking round pumps, watching pressures, doing all sorts of useless things. If only they’d get it in their heads that when we take it easy, things couldn’t be better. The other day I saw an ad in a magazine—there was a panel room in a big refinery in some emerging country. The men were allowed to read—there was a bar of books, the operators were alert, they had a radio and a TV in the amenities.’

  ‘What they need here,’ said a worker slumped in a corner, ‘is a real emergency. Something to go bang. Then they’d see which side their bread’s buttered.’ He was from a plant not likely to have bangs.

  ‘Not so much of this bang business. I’m on the cracker; it could go bang any time,’ said the Humdinger, digging Blue Hills in the ribs. Blue was lonely and had come for a beer. He wouldn’t touch the girls. He had a wife at home. He loved her, he said once in front of other prisoners. He was never silly enough to say it again.

  ‘I’ll stay on the wharf,’ said the Plover Lover. ‘Safest place. Always go over the side if something happens.’

  IT’S ONLY BLOOD ‘Don’t you worry, my fine boyos!’ yelled the Great White Father in great glee. ‘Somewhere in the world there’s a big bang with our name on it. Dig as deep as you like, twist and turn like eels or greasy pigs, it’ll chase us to earth. Boom. Little clouds of radioactive dust. But don’t worry—it’s a good clean death if it takes you squarely. You get the package deal—death, cremation and your ashes scattered over Sydney. All in one hit. Whatever life you’ve had up to now has been on the house. None of you paid to get here. It’s only one life you lose. One death. No more. Blood’s only blood. The human race doesn’t stop ’cause you stop.’

  Many there were who feared when they heard this speech and hid themselves. One such was Blue Hills who went home straightaway, refused his wife’s offer of solace in bed—this was the way her conscience took her after her imaginary lovers had had their daily helping of love with her: she was lonely for sex, but it had to be more interesting than Blue Hills—and had nightmares all night about huge dragon-shaped missiles flying over thousands of miles of empty Australia to drop at last right on the refinery and Blue Hills. The thought of one dropping on to his own head, the nagging doubt whether he would feel pain before it killed him and if so, how much, these fine conjectures gave him the hot and cold sweats and made his wife wonder if she had been right in not insisting on twin beds, although when she got right down to it and remembered the lusty lover she imagined climbing through her window one fine day and the space he needed to do a proper job on her, she knew a double bed was best. For months after, Blue Hills looked up warily every time he went out into the open air. Daytime was the worst.

  ‘Look, we’re flooded with light from that damn sun and there’s no roof on the world. They’re up there. They’ll get us for sure. They can’t miss!’ Sometimes he refused to go out.

  One of the few who smiled at the threat of bangs was Cheddar Cheese. The Great White Father noticed this smile as it peeped from behind a blue and gold can.

  ‘Hey, Cheddar, did you get twenty dollars a pint for your blood?’

  ‘No, man.’

  ‘Price too stiff?’

  ‘I got twenty-five. Boy, I can choof out a pint a week sometimes. I’ve got it made.’

  ‘Hard way to make a dollar.’

  ‘Easy. It’s only blood.’

  ‘Only blood! Why can’t you get them to fix you? So your blood won’t be rotten.’

  ‘What? And lose twenty-five dollars a throw?’

  ‘What are they researching?’

  ‘How to fix my blood.’

  ‘Hope they find a cure for it, anyway, Cheddar.’

  ‘You do, do you? What about my twenty-five?’

  ‘I don’t know, Cheddar. All my instincts tell me to get up and address the multitude. But I don’t know what to say. Twenty-five dollars or good blood. No. I know what to say all right, but it would hurt your feelings.’

  ‘I’ll go away then and make it easy for you.’

  ‘If I say it I’ll say it to you, not
behind your back. No matter what you say, I still hope they fix you up.’

  ‘Well, that’s nice and sentimental. You can give me a big kiss if you like.’ Knowing he was going to die gave him the guts to stand up to anyone.

  ‘Drink your beer, Cheddar.’

  ‘I will. And I’ll take one in later to the Sleeping Princess. She likes a nice little gesture.’

  ‘She fell asleep on me last time,’ said Humdinger. ‘She didn’t even notice my little gesture.’ It was his turn. He went in. He couldn’t make up his mind if he liked to look at her face or her back. He spent his half-hour spinning her round like a top.

  SOMETHING FOOLISH In bad weather the Volga Boatman still rowed his little skiff across the river Eel, carrying miserable freight to the Home Beautiful for the blessing of the body and the satisfaction of the flesh. The Great White Father was there to receive them as they stumbled wet from rain, river and dripping mangroves.

  Ambrose had been snared into painting the door of the bed hut. The Great White Father in his infinite wisdom had decided to give Ambrose some little foolish action to remember his Puroil youth by, and painting the door in the rain was foolish enough.

  ‘Never forget that the man who puts most into the job gets the most out of it. The man working for a crust should be docile, content with low wages, poverty and a poor education, exhausted every day after hard toil and grateful to his employer. Promotion is the prize for hard work, energy, competence, enthusiasm, self-sacrifice and getting your nose brown up the foreman’s arse. The rain’s from the south, here’s a pot of paint and it’s for the good of all. Go to it.’

  He settled back with another can while Ambrose, who didn’t see anything incongruous in painting in the rain at three in the morning, lurched outside. You would have had to tell Ambrose particularly and carefully that painting in the rain was unusual before he began to think so. Three in the morning…