Forever Young

by Steven Carroll

  She turns around and walks to her tram stop. And a few moments later, while she’s standing there, she hears the town hall clock strike the precise second, minute and hour that liberates all the shop assistants, the salesmen and women, the floor supervisors and their managers, from their posts and duties, and knows that soon the stops will be crowded, the trams into which they will all pour will be filled and, soon afterwards, the city will become a ghost town. Its doors shut, its streets and footpaths all but empty. It’s the hour that the town hall clock once struck for her, and it’s odd to be looking at the spectacle through the eyes of the fanciful, who may well look foolish one day.

  When she leaves her tram she walks to the local primary school, now draped in the banners and posters and colours of a polling booth. And as she enters the school, the representatives of all the parties, and there seem to be so many, push their leaflets upon her. And she takes them. She always does, so that nobody is left out. Posters of Whitlam and Fraser have been fixed to the fences and gates. There is the smell of a barbecue, and music somewhere. It could be a public holiday, or a church fete. And when she looks at the poster of Whitlam, he has, she notes — for all the grandeur of his bearing, and he does have that look of grandeur, one of those who’s not frightened of thinking big or jumping on the trams of his fancy — that goodbye look in his eyes.

  And she notes, at the same time, that he was always theirs really. This Whitlam of theirs, Michael and his kind. He was always theirs more than hers. All part of their youth, like long hair and beards and young women wearing overalls. But now he’s got that goodbye look in his eyes, and all of them, Michael and his kind, have cut their hair and the young women aren’t wearing overalls any more. And what does that mean?

  She votes, she leaves, weaving through the queues inside the hall and out into the festive playground, the smell of barbecues and hotdogs, the sounds of music and talk, receding as she walks through the school gate, the eyes of Whitlam staring at her, even following her, from a poster wired to the fence.

  The late-afternoon glow is fading and she switches on the lounge-room light just as the telephone rings. She guesses it’s Michael, because of the time and the fact that, really, she receives few telephone calls. It’s usually Michael, and it is now.

  She tells him about the look in Mr Whitlam’s eyes, and he tells her that he’s called to remind her that he’s leaving in a few days. So soon? And he may be away for some time. She knows that. And she has had time to think about it and adjust to it. But, in the end, it’s possibly not so much the time he may be away as the distance. That and the nagging thought that sometimes they go away and never come back — except for visits to a place they once called ‘home’.

  They make a night to have a farewell dinner, the night before he leaves. And then she tells him she plans on leaving her job, then adds quickly that it won’t just be the ducks on the wall flying from now on, but your mother as well. And, somewhere in there, she says that she might just land on his doorstep one day or night, and there’s a bit of a silence before she goes on. And that gives her smile, because she well knows that you don’t travel the world to have your mother land on your doorstep. Do you? Certainly not Michael — or his kind, for that matter.

  We’re all gypsies, she adds. And they both have a laugh. And a laugh is a good way to finish a call, and they hang up. And in the silence that follows she wonders if she just might be being reckless, after all. But she also has the feeling that something has been set in motion and, for better or worse, she’s now set on a course and will see it through, to whatever or wherever it leads her. A modest picture of a modest life changes. Splash!

  That night, as she lounges on her couch, commentators, journalists and politicians are talking about the day’s events on the television. They talk of this seat, of this candidate, and of something called the mood of the country. Which is puzzling, but only mildly so, because she’s not really listening.

  She is recalling the posters of Whitlam she saw that afternoon at the polling booth. And how, for all his grandeur, he had that goodbye look in his eyes. The sort of fragility behind all the front, she imagines, that only a mother or a wife might see. And at some stage during the evening, no doubt, that goodbye look will become goodbye words. And there’s something moving in that, which, to Rita, is more interesting than talk about the mood of the country. He was never ‘her’ Whitlam in the same way that leaders of the past, of her past, belonged to her. Belonged to her in a way that they almost became one of the family. Like a sort of uncle or brother-in-law. And, of course, Vic never tired of telling her that Joseph Benedict Chifley, prime minister, was once an engine driver. That he grew up firing engines and learning, word for word, Bagley’s Guide to Locomotive Engine Driving, or whatever guide they studied in that foreign country of New South Wales. Joseph Benedict Chifley was hers in the same way that he was Vic’s. But not Whitlam. Not really. For although she has lived on into these times, she knows that they are not her times. Our times, the times we call our own, she imagines, only last for those years that it takes to marry, have children and watch them go out into the world — and into their times. So he has always been ‘their’ Whitlam — Michael’s and his kind’s, with their smart university talk, and that look in their eyes that says they know something you don’t (and never will), and their bottles of wine, not beer. So why should the goodbye look in the eyes of this Whitlam of theirs be moving?

  She thinks about this while the commentators on the television talk more about the events of the day and the mood of the country and, in the end, all she can say with any certainty is that when the goodbye look in Whitlam’s eyes becomes goodbye words, it will mean that a time is over. But not hers — Michael’s. And she realises with a shock that what it really means, at least to her, is that Michael will no longer be young. Young in the way that she has always thought of him as young. For how could he be any other way than always young? The eternal child. But when Whitlam says goodbye, he won’t be any more. And somehow, just to think of Michael and that whole generation that Rita and all the Ritas gave birth to as no longer young is more difficult than thinking of herself as no longer young. We can bear the fact of ourselves growing old, but not our children. Why is that?

  And so, when she looks back to the television and watches as the goodbye look in Whitlam’s eyes becomes goodbye words, she is barely listening. The election has been lost and won, or won and lost. But it doesn’t concern her, not at the moment. It’s the thought of Michael and his kind not being young any more that not only distracts her but absorbs her until she’s left sitting on the couch, still and quiet, as she would at the end of a film with a particularly sad ending: not wanting to talk or be disturbed. The job of bringing their children into the world, however well or not the job may have been done, is over. Finally. Irretrievably. It seems to her that the reality of this is only just sinking in. That she knew it, but didn’t want to know it. And it is this, this farewell to the youth of their children, all their children — to Michael, all the Michaels and all his kind — that she now draws into her, rocking back and forth ever so slightly on the couch as she does. The job is done. However well or badly. Finally. Irrevocably. Done. Let them know, if they ever ask, that we tried. In our way. Let them know.

  The face of Whitlam fades from the screen, the mountain from the landscape, and the commentators’ talk returns once more to the mood of the country. Rita slowly stops rocking gently back and forth and gradually lets the thing go that she drew into her. For now.

  On the couch beside her is a box containing bits and pieces from her trip: museum tickets, menus and postcards. And the names and addresses of people she travelled with over those twenty-one days of adventure. The sheep. Baaa. And she smiles to herself briefly. Such as the woman who owned a flower shop — Nellie — whom she has promised to stay in touch with. Just as Nellie has promised to stay in touch with her. It all seems long ago and far away. Not weeks but years. And it occurs to her that for most of those
on the coach, that twenty-one-day tour may be the first and last time they will ever venture out beyond the borders of their world. Into unknown lands. And they will all, no doubt, have a little box of bits and pieces that they will take out from time to time for their own amusement or the amusement of others, to re-trace the bus route through the Tuscan hills, or the walk from a bus stop to a public monument, or from a hotel lobby to the Gates of Paradise. And those golden doors will gleam once more for them, as if they were standing in front of them, until the telephone rings or the doorbell chimes and everything is put away, back into the box.

  When she looks back to the screen again, the commentators have gone — having examined the events of the day and measured the mood of the country — and there is a variety show on in their place. She rises from the couch and switches off the television and the room is silent. A flat silence. Like something’s gone — from the room, from everyone — which may or may not return. Depending, and here she smiles briefly to herself, on the mood of the country.

  Michael will call tomorrow (or he said he would) and she will learn something of how his night went, but only something. For he never tells her everything. Not now. Of course not, it’s been years since he did that, when she was a young mother and he was impatient to tell her everything. Everything. A life distant enough to be another life altogether, yet not distant at all. A five-year-old hand reaches out in the night … tell them we tried.

  It’s a quiet world out there beyond the lounge-room curtains — a hushed world of houses, villas and sheds. Of morning radio and evening news. Home and not home. Native and alien. Enough, and not enough.

  In a few days she will hear from her new employers and learn that in the New Year she will take a tour group, much like the one she was part of, to America. More specifically to California and the mid-west. And she will, for a moment, be disappointed, for she has acquired a taste for Tuscan hills and Paradise gates. But there will come a time in that American tour when she will stand and marvel at the sheer wonder of the Grand Canyon out there beneath her (which she never in her wildest dreams expected to see) and the wonder of the Rita inside who led her there.

  And that, in the end, among all the uncertainty and questions of ‘Should I?’ and ‘Shouldn’t I?’ and ‘What will everybody think?’, may very well be what you get for leaping on the tram of your fancy, and being foolish enough to go where it leads you.

  15. A Good Day for Work

  The spirit of Amerigo Vespucci is indoors today. The rain falls softly on the hills and valleys. It has all morning and will all day. This is no morning for setting out. The New Worlds can wait. The spirit of Amerigo Vespucci isn’t going anywhere. Let others lend their name to the Americas. He’s sitting by his window watching the rain, as is Art. And as Art watches the rain fall, he is calm and content. It is a good day for work.

  Over the valley, the hills, the seas and the continents, over in the land of eucalyptus leaves, the events of the day have been decided. At some point in the afternoon, somebody will telephone him and deliver the news, and when they do they will add, ‘Isn’t it dreadful?’ And he will agree, looking out over the hills and the rain. And they will add that he is better off away from the place and, once again, he will agree. They may even go on to say that they may well come and join him, that their impulse is to leave the country (how often has he heard that?), but he knows full well they won’t. No, it takes a certain type to leave their country. And neither a more adventurous nor a bolder type. Just a different type. Those who were always leaving. Who are better off out of it all.

  It is a good day for work. He rises from his chair and leaves the rain to fall without him. A painting, half-finished, is propped up against a wall: a portrait of that café they all went to with the Russian-sounding name that nobody could ever remember, but, all the same, one of those places that made you feel you were somewhere else, and which had to do until somewhere else was possible. Someone is standing in the doorway of this café, leaving; someone else is waiting to go in. Their faces are broad brush strokes of colour, familiar and unfamiliar. The café, the scene, is one of those constituent parts, one of those details that make up the whole, of a place and a time that once existed and which only exists now in this room, in this studio — a place and a time, he’d like to imagine, that could be rebuilt, if only mentally, street by street, building by building, brick by brick, from here.

  At some point in the day the telephone will ring, and one of those friends who still ring and write will say that something has gone from them. That once they pushed their tables and chairs back up against their lounge-room walls and danced all night, but not any more. Not that they won’t dance again, they will — but it will be a different kind of dancing. You only dance like that, they may well add, once.

  And when they say, ‘Isn’t it awful?’, he will agree. But what he’d like to say is that the events of the day will pass. That outside his window the rain is falling softly on the hills and valleys, and that it is a good day for work. And when he hangs up the telephone, when talk of the day in another time zone, in another world, has exhausted itself, he will return to the café with the Russian-sounding name and immerse himself in the scene.

  And wasn’t it always like this? These three or four hours of oblivion: this is where he is alive. The events of the day will pass, and he will watch them pass from here as he has for years now and will continue to. For as long as he has those three or four hours each day, they can’t touch him. Nothing can. And so, the brush poised in the air, he is ready to resume. Over the hills and the valleys, the seas and continents, to that city he once called home and which is his life’s work, certain events have come to pass that will, themselves, pass. He is a still, silent figure, his brush hovering over the canvas, the fire taking the chill from the air of the old mill house. Outside, the rain falls softly on the rooftops and towns, the valleys and hills. The spirit of Amerigo Vespucci is indoors. It is a good day for work.

  PART FOUR

  France, late December, 1977

  It is a living toy-town. The houses, buildings and streets are like one of those model towns that correspond to some reality out there beyond the model itself. At least, that is how it looks from the vantage point of the top floor of the town hall in which Michael is sitting, facing a wide window almost the length of the wall, which provides a panoramic view of the scene.

  The postman on his rounds, the café owner in the doorway of her café, the town doctor in his red sports car, now turning into the square where the bus driver finishes a smoke in between one stop and another — all under a still blue sky, with low white clouds, blown in from the Atlantic, looming over the tree-tops of the nearby forest — could all just as easily be model figures as real people. All as still as the morning air, caught in perpetual greeting: the postman waving to the woman in the café door, the bus driver holding up the three fingers that indicate the time until departure to an old woman carrying her shopping basket, the doctor’s red sports car paused at the corner, waiting for the stationer to cross into his shop. A toy-town caught in perpetual morning.

  Michael has been here a week, and every morning about now (just after nine) he calculates the time at home. It will be evening. A summer night. Friday. And all the rituals and activities that he was once part of or observed will be starting again. The five young women who most nights, in that vast, outer suburban hotel, perform their ritual dance to the scattered patrons of the pub will be sitting at their table, eyes blank, waiting for that moment when the band finishes and their cue, this song about a place called Nutbush, will activate them and they can once more line up on the dance floor and give those scattered patrons the feeling of company and comfort that they came for. And his old band, in between sets, will either notice or not, so familiar is the ritual. And Peter — the mill horse of his art retired for the weekend — will be sitting at the dinner table, having just flown in, bringing news of the capital with him: the minister said such and such; the PM thought otherw
ise. But what Michael doesn’t know is that while Peter speaks, his thoughts will be elsewhere, distracted by the memory of the poster that has just been taken down from the wall in his kitchen and wondering whether it is too late to regain those simple things that are so difficult to find and so easy to lose. And Mandy, with her newly acquired air of serenity (which he was thankful to have witnessed), will be going about that new life that he’s sure she drove into the last time he saw her, whatever it may be and wherever she may be going about it. And his mother, probably in her lounge room, the television on, with that which passes for the news informing her that the mountain of Whitlam is retiring from politics and will soon leave the political landscape. All of them, going about their lives through morning and afternoon hours that have already passed there and are yet to unfold here, just as in a few hours it will still be today here but tomorrow there — everything, Michael fancifully imagines, occurring simultaneously. Stay in a jumbo jet long enough and you become the eagle that looks down and sees no difference between any of it.