He reminds his mother that he’s leaving in a few days, and she says she knows, but when exactly. He says he’s already told her, and she says he hasn’t. And because this could go on all afternoon he just names the day early in the next week. And she is surprised it is so soon, and her surprise annoys him because he’s told her and she already knows. But is her surprise really just a way of saying, yes, I knew, but hasn’t it all come around so quickly? Like growing up, and then leaving home and then leaving the country. Hasn’t it all come around so quickly? And there’s a hint of loneliness in that surprise, the realisation that sooner, rather than later, she will have to make do without the only thing she’s got left in the world. For however long it takes.
So they must have a farewell dinner and this is why Michael has telephoned.
‘When?’ says Michael. ‘What day is best?’
‘Any time. I’m just here.’
And he likes the way she says this. She’s never been one of those people who pretend they’ve got something to do when all the time they haven’t. She’s just there, and hasn’t she always been? Too easy to forget that she was always there, for all those big and little things that mattered so much at the time. And still is. She knows no other way. And they agree on the night before he goes. Somehow it seems best to say goodbye, and then be gone the next day. No hanging about. And he knows full well as he thinks this that it is the wise child speaking again.
And so, the day fixed, they return briefly to the goodbye look in Mr Whitlam’s eyes, and she tells him, almost in a by-the-by manner, that she plans to leave her job and work for the travel company. And how that should be fun. And, who knows, she might just land on his doorstep over there one day or night. There’s a brief silence, then she goes on. Does he think she’s being reckless? And he replies that she’s already told him about this and she says she hasn’t. And to cut things short he says he’s hardly one to speak. That he, too, has just resigned his job and will soon be taking off. Must run in the family. And they both have a laugh about that. And a laugh seems a good way to end the call. And so, telling her he’ll telephone either the next day or the next, they hang up. And among all the other concerns of the day, he’s left pondering the possibility of his mother landing on his doorstep one day or night, and concludes that it’s a possibility but a slim one.
At some point during their conversation the white figures left the playing field and the shadows are now stretched across the oval. The birds have returned to their trees, the cricketers retired to their clubhouses; the ground now green, gold and slowly slipping from shadow to darkness.
He rises from the couch and switches the television on, and pictures of polling booths, people and politicians fill the screen. And he thinks that somewhere in the background, everywhere in evidence but nowhere to be seen, Peter will have his feet up, his mind ticking over, with the mill horse of his art still going round and round, grinding out the language of Power, day in, day out. No rest.
The late showers never came. The afternoon sea breeze cooled the air and the high tide came and went and the low-water mark followed, more or less, on time.
It is late to be arriving at a party, almost ten. But Michael preferred to stay in his flat and watch events unfold on the television by himself. For it seemed a fitting way to farewell the mountain of Whitlam. For the mountain has lost and will soon speak to the cities, suburbs, countryside and farms to say that it is withdrawing from the landscape. And its withdrawal will be noted and not noted. The mountain will be remembered or forgotten. For we have few mountains, and it would be easy to imagine, once it has gone, that this is the way it has always been. And will be. But even as Michael tries to imagine this, the mountain forgotten to the extent that it never existed, he can’t. For the years they have just lived through were, indeed, mountainous. And the memory of that may be dulled by time, but surely never erased.
He is parked at the front of an inner suburban house belonging to friends of friends. It is large, with a garden and lawns. Coloured party lights are strung across the veranda. The sea breeze carries in from the bay and ruffles the wind chimes at the door. His window is wound down and he hears the faint tinkling of the chimes, music from a stereo and the sound of talk and laughter. Mountains withdraw. But this is not to say that the mountains are forgotten. Old music gives way to new, old jokes find new laughter, old dances give way to new moves. Life goes on. But, occasionally, someone stops and notes that something is missing, remembers for a moment what it is, then resumes the dance, drawn back into the rhythm of the years, which has a life all of its own, and through which we move, a succession of selves.
And it is while he is contemplating the chimes and the music and the coloured lights strung across the front of the house, imagining, as he always does, that lights and lanterns somehow transform houses into barges, and lawns into lakes, that he sees two figures emerge from the doorway. Two young women. They speak, but softly. And he can only hear the sound of speech, not what they are saying. And as they make their way along the path to the front gate he realises that the young blonde woman on the right is Mandy.
His impulse is to wind his window up, not because he doesn’t want to be seen, but because Mandy doesn’t. Not by him. The last few weeks have made this plain. But the two women are absorbed in each other’s company and don’t even notice, as they pass directly in front of him, that the car parked in the shadows, removed from the street light, has somebody inside, watching them as they pass. They do not notice him because he does not concern them. He is just something else in the world. And this leaves him free to observe, to note that she is happy. He doesn’t know how he knows this — but he is sure he is right — for she neither smiles nor laughs. No, this is not the happiness that announces itself through smiles and laughter. She is, he concludes, happily calm. There is something almost serene about her. And when she speaks he notes that the sound of her voice is soft and soothing, like chimes. And he is pleased to see her happy. And that the wrong, to this extent, has been righted, and that it did not require his presence or intervention for this to occur. No, this newly acquired serenity seems to say, your Mandy is not your Mandy any more, she doesn’t need you to put things right and will see things through in her own way without you.
The two women pause at Mandy’s car, the car that he, too, has sat in, and for which, at the moment, he feels a certain possessiveness. Then Mandy, in fluid, almost trancelike movements, opens the driver’s door, slips onto the seat and leans across to open the passenger door. The young woman with her, brushing her fringe back, slowly slides onto the seat. And there is a faint thud as she closes the door. The engine starts, at first loud then settling to a low hum. Lights come to life with the engine, and the car draws out from the kerb, slowly drawing away from him, then turns from view, leaving him to the street, the faint tinkle of the chimes and the music of the party with its insistent rhythms. She was happy. The wrong, to this extent, has righted itself. And as the car drew away from him he knew, without doubt, that she was driving into another life. And that she had, without knowing, farewelled him as he had farewelled her.
As he steps onto the floating barge of the party, music — a gust of sound that makes talking impossible — rushes to meet him. A couple is dancing in the hallway, others in the lounge room where the stereo is pumping such levels of sound into the air that everybody is relieved of the courtesy of speech and the ritual of greetings. There are few dancers, they are widely spaced, and the lounge room has the look of a sad café. An unpopular one. Or, rather, one that was once popular, but which has fallen into disfavour. There are parties all over the city, all over the country. Some celebrations; others — like a wave from the ground offered to a departing plane that has already disappeared — just for the record.
There is a colour television on in the corner. The sound may be up or off — it is impossible to tell. The mountain of Whitlam is speaking, surrounded by three or four sombre companions. But nobody has bothered to turn down the st
ereo, so his lips are moving but his words are inaudible. The dancers occasionally look over and take in the spectacle of Whitlam; a couple even stops dancing and stares for a beat or two, then resumes the dance. They understand without the words. The mountain is departing. See, it withdraws (without waving). Then it is gone, and for a moment the screen is empty, the room itself more emptied than filled. Shadows step rhythmically this way and that, twirl, then resume their steps.
So the dancers dance, the music plays and at some stage between the end of one song and the beginning of another, Whitlam departed. He came and went. Observed only by the one or two dancers who paused for a couple of beats. Reluctantly. Like looking back when you’ve told yourself not to. And is there something else in that reluctance to look up? Did the early evening belong to another phase of life? The night was young, and so, too, were the dancers. But not any more. And there’s a touch of saying goodbye to your childhood in that realisation and watching the departing Whitlam, who will always be synonymous with the wild days of youth. Did the dancers know this, and is this why most of them chose not to look up — because they knew that at any moment, one or another of their steps would take them over the line from what they were into what they will become? And is it best not to look up or be aware of it when it happens?
The night was young, and so were the dancers. But their world has moved on and they, too, have been carried forward with that movement. A past has been created. The before and after of their youth, what they will soon call the Whitlam years, is now defined and the line, the shadow line, dividing one from the other, is now visible.
Michael looks out into the yard, blue under the party lights, and sees a familiar face here and there, but feels no desire for company. The party can go on without him. The dance without him. He has not yet been seen by anybody he knows and it is not too late to slip away. To slip back into the street as if he was never here.
Outside, the house is once more a floating barge lit by lanterns and the lawns are lakes again, and he concludes, as he slips into the driver’s seat and switches on the engine, that houses and party lights on nights such as these are best observed from the street. A before and an after have been created and it seems that all of them, Michael and his kind — whether knowing or not knowing or even wanting to know — have crossed that shadow line that divides what they were from what they shall now have to become.
12. The Sword of Damocles
When did they teach us to think in hand-me-down metaphors? Or didn’t they have to? Has it always been like this? The same words, going round and round and in and out of each other down through the centuries and the years, the days and the nights such as this one, their meanings determined before they are even thought, uttered or written — to the extent that the words write us. When did they teach us to think in hand-me-down metaphors without us even realising it?
Peter is sitting in his kitchen observing the party all around him. And he’s thinking of the same old words and the same old symbols and hand-me-down metaphors, because at some stage during the night the sword of Damocles came to mind. And he’s fallen into thinking about it: Damocles and the sword suspended above his head by a single hair, ready to fall at any moment. Damocles? Who taught him that?
And why is Peter, rather gloomily and on a night of victory, which should be a night of celebration and happy thoughts, dwelling on the sword of Damocles instead? Because the poster is still up there on the kitchen wall. And as much as he would love to tear it down, he knows he can’t, because that would confirm his wife’s pronouncement that it means something, and that he, Peter, knows what that something is. And so, the poster stays. And stays. And has now become something of a fixture. Permanent. At least, nobody has expressed any wish to remove it. Neither he nor his wife. It has become a sort of unspoken battle of the wills. A test. Of who will be the first to break. Who indeed? Not his wife, it seems, and certainly not him. And so it stays. A fixture.
Furthermore, it has become a conversation piece. For almost everyone here tonight has paused in front of this poster and discussed it. Sometimes briefly, sometimes at length. But nobody has ignored it. And, as often as not, the discussions are light and clever. Party talk that everyone enjoys. Well, almost everyone. The poster inspiring wit and laughter. Or what passes for wit and laughter. Occasionally, it inspires more serious discussion. And these are the lengthy ones. And it is surprising to see who dismisses it with passing quips and who stays longer to dwell upon its blunt message. But the fact is nobody has ignored it and the poster has become exactly what his wife said it would become when she pinned it up on the kitchen wall.
And so as much as he would love to tear it down, he can’t. If it were to be removed now, it would create a space. Even a vacuum. And people would notice, and note, that it was gone, as much as they now note that it is there.
And at some stage during the evening Damocles came to mind. And why Damocles? Because there is a touch of Damocles to the poster. More than a touch. For the poster contains a threat. And the possibility of the threat becoming real and fate falling on him is always there, suspended by a single hair. The sword will fall. It has to. He doesn’t know when — but he knows that one day or one night the hair will snap and the sword will plummet onto him. Onto them. Onto the house.
Perhaps someone, some visitor from the capital or a member of the party, will pass it one day and casually remark, in the presence of his wife, that they’d seen just such a poster in Beth’s place. You remember Beth? Poor Beth; what a business. Perhaps it will happen as casually as that, for he wasn’t the only contact Beth had (and the poster isn’t that common). Surely, from time to time, others had sat in Beth’s armchair, sipped the same whisky and noticed the same poster. Even discussed it. So perhaps one day any one of them, just passing through, will notice it in Peter’s kitchen and remark upon the coincidence. Or perhaps it will happen differently. Perhaps one day, in an unguarded moment, he will inadvertently refer to the original owner, and let slip her name. Wonder out loud where on earth Beth found it. And his wife may well conclude that this Beth (whom she never met, but read) was the grubby little affair at the heart of the matter, and he will be forced to deny it. And in denying it, may also be called upon to explain things. All the result of an unguarded moment. Such things happen. Or perhaps one day one of them or both of them will finally snap; the tension, at last, too great, and the game, the test of wills, will get serious. Heated words might follow and the truth be blurted out. And Kate will finally know what the handkerchief and the poster mean, and what he did, and quite possibly look at him at that moment and forever after as if she never knew him at all and had married a stranger. And he would remain a stranger to her, and she to him: strangers to each other living in a strange house they call home. Who knows what form the threat will take when the hair by which it is suspended snaps, but he is convinced the sword will fall all the same.
And, as much as it is a threat, it is also a constant reminder of what took place — the whole sequence of events that at first he controlled, but which very quickly assumed a life of its own and eventually controlled him. To the point that ‘events’ have now entered his house, his marriage and his daily life — up there, permanently, on the kitchen wall. A constant reminder that says: I am your works; look upon me and know that this is how our works return to haunt us. For we must all choose wisely when we do works and send them out into the world, or they will come back to us, to you, as I have.
For Peter, rightly or wrongly, with reason or without (it doesn’t matter), has become convinced that what is suspended by a single hair is nothing less than that which he calls his life: wife, family, house — and all the ingrained rhythms and routines that define that life, without which he would be lost. And it won’t go, this threat. And it is not distant like the memory of Pussy Cat is now. Nor does it fade graciously into the past, like the view from a rear-vision mirror, Pussy Cat’s sad, wise eyes absolving him as he leaves. No, it’s up there on the wall every day.
Then, as if having been silenced by his thoughts, the noise of the party suddenly returns: explosions of laughter, the constant rumble of talk and, under it all, low music. And now a hand is slapping his back. A familiar voice is speaking. Good work, it is saying. Good work. Cheers, drink up. Here’s to us. And Peter smiles and their glasses clink as they toast themselves.
Then Whitlam appears on the screen. And in the same moment in which Michael observes the dancers at the party, the blue party lanterns lighting up the house and the yard outside it; in the same moment that sees the headlights of Mandy’s car light up a pathway to a new life; and in the same moment that Rita eyes a box of travel mementoes beside her — in that same moment Peter turns to the screen and watches the farewell minutes, the last moments, of this Whitlam of theirs, who was once his. For soon he will be gone, banished from the scene. And Peter feels neither joy nor triumph. Nor is it indifference. And while he is contemplating just what it is, he notices his wife, not talking to anyone, separate from the groups around her, with a puzzled and puzzling sadness in her eyes as she, too, stares at the television. And it is then that she turns to him, a look that seems to say, yes, it’s a party, and, yes, we won, but I watch him leave and I feel something leave with him. And what is it? And what’s happened to us? And why aren’t things good any more? And, as much as he would love to answer the unspoken questions in her eyes, the answers remain suspended in the air with the cigarette smoke hovering over the lounge room.
Forever Young Page 24