by A L McCann
“It’s nearly time, Paul,” Robert Walters said to his nephew. “Can you see the clock?”
The child, eight years old, was too engrossed to answer. Exhaustion and the constant shock of so much noise and movement about him had produced an abstracted state of mind that bordered on the ecstatic. Next to Paul was Hamish McDermott, who had grown into a stout, freckled child of twelve. The three of them stood on the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth Streets, opposite the post office. From their vantage point it looked like a crowded amphitheatre about to witness a gladiatorial combat or a triumphal procession. The arc light at the top of the post office flagpole cast a crimson glow over the celebrations.
A moment before midnight the first of twelve chimes rang out. Before the second had sounded the crowd let out a deafening cheer. A small cannon atop a roof on the other side of Bourke Street let off a round that was swallowed up by the noise.
“This is the first day of the Australian nation, boys,” Robert said, eager that they understand the gravity of the moment. “After this, everything will be different.”
As he spoke, Roman candles were ignited on both sides of Bourke Street and a mass of glittering golden sparks cascaded above the crowd.
Hamish wished Ondine, Paul’s younger sister, were with them to witness this. He was besotted with her, and had been put out when Anna hadn’t allowed her to accompany them. He would write something capturing the occasion, he told himself, and give it to her. How would he describe it? There were people, and moments of weird, clanging noise, and trumpets, as if they were at a strange circus. Then there was light, red light, and the street exploded into a shower of sparks that looked as if it were burning the people of the new nation. But whether it burnt or not, it was beautiful.
“It’s ridiculous to be in love when you are twelve,” his mother had told him. “You won’t need a girl for another ten years.” But Hamish still wished that Ondine had been allowed to come too. He wished she could have seen it all. He would have held her hand, and maybe told her that he loved her. What did it matter to them, all this talk of Federation? They weren’t real Australians anyway and the three of them – Paul, Ondine and he – were going to Germany, to live in the forest, just as soon as they were old enough. It was their pact.
To Paul, the arc light made the whole scene look as if it had suddenly been bathed in blood. In a miraculous transformation the celebrating crowd had become something frightening and hateful, yet the boy was mesmerised. The play of darkness and light and the postures of jubilation and drunkenness before him invited his imagination to run wild as he saw things that he had never dreamt of before. Men dressed like clowns capered along the street and beggars stumbled in and out of gutters; some of the faces looked like skulls, others like dogs’ heads, or masks, or people he thought he knew but couldn’t place. People drank, vomited, kissed, jostled or just moved through the crowd like lunatics or oblivious sleepwalkers. They were all jammed together, moving as one, yet still so alone, and the whole seething mass was soaked in the ghastly red light of its own blood.
But then, as some time passed, the crowd thinned and another transformation occurred. At first it had been a violent sea of bodies, but now it was a series of gentle flows and eddies. Slowly the flood dissipated and, as Robert took Paul’s hand and made to leave, the boy was engrossed by the sight of a sparse assortment of stragglers inhabiting a deserted, rubbish-strewn street. There was something eerie about it. It made him think of a painting he’d once seen depicting the aftermath of a great battle in which the field was strewn with bodies and debris. He wanted to stay and keep looking at the carnage and the forlorn sight of lost souls, but his uncle was now anxious to go and gently pulled him away from the street.
“We have a bit of a journey back home, Paul,” Robert said.
“Will Ondine still be awake?” Hamish asked.
“I doubt it, young fella,” he replied, smiling to himself.
In the distance, somewhere near the river, a cracked voice was singing, hopelessly out of tune.
With no thoughts of ‘er yesterday,
But dreams of a mighty state,
Great ‘mid the old grave nations,
Divine in ‘er aspirations,
Blessed be the men who brought ‘er,
Freedom’s starriest daughter,
Outa the night, inta the light.
The power and the glory,
For evermore.
“Amen,” another voice yelled out at the conclusion of the song, prompting a burst of boisterous laughter that rippled along the banks of the river.
As the century ended, as the clock struck twelve and other people cheered and hugged, Anna held her daughter on her shoulder. Ondine had wanted to go into the city as well, but her mother, not feeling hardy enough to tackle the tumult, decided that Robert would have his hands full with the two boys. Albert was scheduled to work the Melbourne–Geelong line and wouldn’t be home until late, so rather than spending such a significant night alone, Anna went next door to the McDermotts’, where a group of men from the wharves and their families had gathered to celebrate the arrival of Federation.
For a while Ondine played with the other children, leaving Anna to chat and have a glass of cider. She was taken by the easy sociability of these working men and their open, if slightly uncouth manners. Since Albert’s troubles, Jack and Sarah had been warm and supportive neighbours. When Albert lost his job at the insurance company they continued to interact with unembarrassed candour, and when he found work again as a train conductor, Jack slapped him on the shoulder and congratulated him on his return to the “ranks of the Southern Cross”.
The fading hours of the nineteenth century had gripped Anna with nostalgia, homesickness and regret. She thought about her father, who had died two years earlier, and her mother who, at the age of sixty-three, had refused to move to Melbourne and instead raised herself in revolt against a country she hated and planned her return to Germany to pass away in peace. She died of pneumonia in Port Adelaide, waiting for the Gothland to sail to Bremen.
As twilight fell Anna knew she couldn’t bear to be alone with these thoughts and gratefully accepted Sarah’s invitation as they watched Robert escort their sons towards their encounter with history. But now it was as if the passing of midnight had broken the spell. The century had turned and she finally felt able to leave the party and go home.
When she tucked Ondine into bed she knew she wasn’t looking forward to Robert’s return. Since Albert’s suicide attempt – she still called it that – and his subsequent breakdown, which saw him convalescing and then unemployed for almost three years after the birth of Ondine, Robert had helped her no end. He was always there to take a hand in the raising of the children and the running of the household affairs. He did this with such chivalry and commitment to his brother’s family that soon his mere presence, as surely as anything, reminded Anna of the desperate nature of her situation. She would almost have preferred to have been left alone with her enfeebled husband and their two small children, rather than encounter Robert’s good intentions at every turn. He made her feel as if she were living in some protracted state of hopeless dependence. He tried to sympathise with her and to help Albert along, but he had no idea what it was really like. Her husband had worn her out, living off her like a parasitic strangler vine, turning her into a shell of herself. She knew that, in a way, she had given up.
While Albert was unemployed he occupied himself with incessant writing. At first he wrote letters to newspapers complaining about larrikins on Clarendon Street, prostitutes around Albert Park, and the sorry state of the Hanna Street drain, “the river of the dead”, which had become a dumping ground for animal carcasses. Not one of these diatribes was ever published, but the act of writing seemed to mollify his anxiety and distract him from what the doctors had described as “nervous exhaustion and enervation”. Then he started going to the library in pursuit of other projects about which he remained secretive. She almost never saw him durin
g the day. In the grip of his graphomania, Albert was more complex than she had first thought, and it was this complexity on which she focused when she sacrificed herself in the hope of appeasing his obscure and sometimes violent inclinations. She was almost used to it. She’d learnt how to tame her fear and forget her shame, how to numb herself and act out her part.
And then, one day, there he was, standing in the living room wearing a train conductor’s uniform.
Anna felt her chest tighten. The children’s wooden train set was spread out at his feet. Paul pushed the red and blue carriages along the tracks, choo-chooing as they went.
“I got a job,” Albert said, morosely. But then a grin crept over his face. He grabbed her as if she should have been happy, mocking her with the irony of his celebration.
Something in her gave out, and though she was aware that she didn’t betray herself, she felt as if she were about to dissolve in the acid of her anguish.
“Dad’s a conductor,” he puffed out to the children.
Anna looked at the train set, the children and then at her husband’s uniform. She put her hand to her mouth, stifling a shudder as Albert’s hands ran down her spine. The man who hid himself away in the library all day and virtually raped her at night now revealed himself as a grotesque and regressing man-child. She was living in a nightmare.
That night, when he hauled her carelessly towards him, it was all she could think about. She forced herself to quieten her revulsion, becoming a pliant, but dead thing as he crushed her into the sagging mattress.
Why on earth should she feel guilty at having run to Winton? As her husband tore away at her like an animal, she knew there was nothing left to accuse her.
Paul was only three and Ondine was about to turn two when it first happened. With no money coming in but for the little Robert could afford to lend Albert, they were getting by on parcels of food relief from the Benevolent Ladies Society. One morning there was a knock at the front door. A messenger had an envelope for Anna. She opened it in front of him and found a ten-pound banknote.
“What’s this?” she asked.
She turned the envelope over. It had a St Vincent Place address. She knew straightaway it was from Dr Winton and the blood rushed to her face.
“Please take this back,” she said.
“Can’t do that, ma’am,” the boy said. “The doctor said that you could return it in person, or not at all.”
She left the children with Sarah McDermott and, flustered, hurried over to the doctor’s house, determined to return the money and let him know that his assistance was not required. He opened the door as if he had been expecting her.
“Hello Anna,” he said shamelessly. Not wanting to make a scene on his verandah in full view of the picnickers sunning themselves in the gardens opposite, she let herself be drawn into the darkness of his hallway. “I’m glad you came, but I’d implore you to keep the money.”
She looked at him, speechless. Her resolve failed her and, suddenly, she didn’t know what she was doing in this strange man’s house. He led her into a sitting room and positioned her in front of him on a leather couch, still standing while he spoke to her.
“I would like to help you, Anna. You and the children. And Albert, of course.”
She looked at him with suspicion and said nothing. She remembered the book by Dr W, the confronting illustrations, the sense of the illicit that had led her on as she walked through the city in search of some obscure thing that she could not possibly have put a name to.
“Will you allow me that?”
She tried to remain calm. She knew she was vulnerable, and as she admitted this to herself she scrutinised the doctor’s cultured, gentlemanly demeanour, searching for a hint of something more sinister, a propensity to exploit perhaps, a clue that would give him away and release her. Could it be his intention to humiliate her? He continued to speak and she endeavoured to listen, but the words rushed past her despite her efforts. Money, the children, his sincere desire to share his good fortune. Her heart was pounding so frantically it was all she could hear. She couldn’t bear it. The cool of the room caressed her and her skin prickled. She stood up. She had to get out, but his eyes seized her as she moved and held her just long enough for him to make his play.
“Any man could fall in love with you, Anna,” he said in an abrupt and impassioned turn. “But the thought of you loving any man is a travesty, an utter travesty.”
This sudden change startled her. Finally, the secret implication of Winton’s meandering, the secret she’d known all along, had worked its way to the surface.
“What are you talking about?”
The doctor paused, collecting himself. He breathed deeply for a moment, drawing in the air through tightly clenched teeth before regaining his composure.
“You wander from place to place,” he said. “One day you meet a man and stumble into a certain intimacy. How does it happen? What distinguishes him? Before you know it you’re doing the block with ‘your boy’, your heart’s idol, the romance of it all is overwhelming and in this realm of shadows you fancy that you are happy, contented, fulfilled. Good Lord! Only an idiot could put up with it, Anna.”
“It wasn’t like that,” she said, unable to disguise her annoyance.
“Of course it wasn’t. So why go on pretending? For the sake of respectability? A respectability that no one but yourself believes in?”
She met his stare and then quickly lowered her eyes again.
“I have no wish to, to…” But he couldn’t finish the sentence.
She wasn’t sure whether he was acting a part or not, but she didn’t let herself linger over the question of his sincerity. She thought about Albert, about how powerless she was in his hands, how vile and humiliated she felt. How dead, dead to her own pleasure. She was about to leave, but compelled by a sense of abandon welling within herself she remained in front of him, waiting for the certainty of her own desire to seize her. Winton appeared so vulnerable, as if his mask had fallen and she had seen something else underneath it. She had never seen this, this other thing, existing in a man, save for the moment at which Albert had stabbed himself.
“To live with our eyes open,” he mumbled. “That’s all.”
She touched his hand. She didn’t know what she was doing. But at that moment it didn’t matter. She had glimpsed something. It might have been freedom. It might simply have been the space to breathe. Whatever it was, she embraced it.
She touched his mouth. Her lips parted slightly as she held herself for him, his hand on the back of her neck, running up through her hair.
The next day, when Robert offered her money for groceries, she said casually that she still had some of the inheritance her aunt had left her, and that, for the moment, they could manage well enough.
“Very well then,” he said, relieved for her sake, and for his.
She turned away from him, unable to conceal her lack of composure as she thought about the doctor. Wasn’t she already prostituting herself? Albert had saved her from the disgrace of being a single mother left to raise a bastard son. He had also saved her from the shame of having to confront her parents with this guilt. And in return she repaid him with constant, abject submission. The shadow world of love had dissipated. She could clearly see what she had become, and it had happened well before Winton had sent her his ten-pound banknote.
In the early hours of 1901 the calm of the house gave Anna the pause in which to trace out the tangled threads of this existence. As she waited for her brother-in-law and her husband to return home, she watched Ondine sleeping, praying that her daughter might see with her eyes open right from the outset.
When Albert first began working out of Spencer Street Station he took umbrage at not being able to spend such long hours in the public library where he’d grown fond of the dim, yellowish glow of the old gas-jet lamps, the polished wood, and the musty smell of accumulated dust. As he slowly recovered his strength he had traded the banality of the accounts departme
nt, where books and figures had a deadening sameness, for the seductiveness of novels, poetry, essays and more obscure treasures fished out of the deep recesses of history. The secret knowledge of the library, which he imagined forming some vast, intricate system linking all the disparate faculties and inclinations of man, held him entranced as each of his obsessions ran its course, only to see another emerge in its place. The library, he came to believe, was the place in which the authentic being of man was possible, because in it all the tendrils of human possibility coiled around the essential but impossible core of authentic understanding, absolute knowledge and truth. These were, of course, literally out of man’s reach, but were nonetheless perceptible in the idea of the library – a vast, material metaphor for truth as resonant with meaning as any cathedral in the city. Behind the hundreds of thousands of words was a beginning, a world of soot and steam and shadow that stirred convulsively through the earthly endeavours of man. The word obscured this pure, sensual, brutal world, but it was also the key to it. With the faith of a religious maniac seeking insight, Albert buried himself in the library, reading books about the fall of ancient civilisations, the cults of tribal societies, the building of great cities, the secrets of nature, the powers of magic, the miracles of technology, the death of God, the birth of man and the perverse depths of the human mind.
At first the trains had been a poor substitute for this devotion to the absolute. Robert had urged him to apply for the job when it was advertised and Sid Packard, against his better judgement, had warmly recommended him to the Rail Board. Albert loathed the thought of working again. He saw work, in fact all forms of merely utilitarian endeavour, as ultimately futile and worthless.
“You have a family, Albert,” Robert urged him one evening in the Limerick Arms. “You have to take responsibility for them.”