The Electrical Experience

by Frank Moorhouse

  The St Louis Rotary Convention 1923, Recalled

  Becker wondered how he could fit himself into the McDowell house, so much carpet, so much bric-a-brac, so many pieces of furniture, so many clocks, so many standard lamps, so many travel souvenirs, so many barometers, pianos, and palms.

  ‘The house is too large for the wife and me now that the children have flown the nest.’

  His wife was in bed with a backache.

  ‘What will it be?’

  They sat with a drink.

  ‘My first trip to the States was to the St Louis Rotary Convention of 1923, with my father. I wasn’t a Rotarian my self, but joined Rotary as soon as we could get it going.’

  ‘That’s a fine record.’

  Of what?

  ‘That Convention, oh it was really something. The pageant at the Coliseum, corner of Jefferson and Washington streets.’

  ‘You remember the streets?’

  ‘Not bad for an old fellow. How is it I can remember the address of the St Louis Coliseum from 1923, but I forget the name of someone I met ten minutes ago? Why is that?’

  ‘It’s an often remarked characteristic of later years, sir.’

  ‘I remember the flowers—the Rotary Garden of Nations. And they had young girls and boy scouts, and the Rotary Band and the singing of a choir—the Italian Choir of St Louis. Funny that, don’t know why an “Italian” choir. Do you know St Louis at all?’

  ‘No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t.’ Becker shook his head, readying himself to be outknowledged on the United States.

  ‘There it was, in this vast auditorium, massed humanity. How many delegates and observers attended the convention, would you say at a guess?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘… that’s with wives, how many?’

  ‘No, I really have little idea.’

  ‘Six thousand—nearly seven thousand—and this was Rotary in 1923.’

  Becker moved his head, impressed, liking a good crowd.

  ‘It was almost pitch-black when we went in. The light gradually brightened at each part of the opening ceremony until the whole spectacle ended in a display of electric light. Now, at the beginning, there was the sound of a trumpet. The sound of a single trumpet in a black auditorium.’

  McDowell made a trumpeting action and imitated the sound of a trumpet.

  ‘A spotlight then revealed a single figure up there on this long flight of stairs—I think, if I remember, it was meant to be Columbia—standing on top of these stairs. The stairs were covered with green carpet leading to a terrace filled with pot-plants. We had the chorus of welcome sung by the choir—this Italian choir. Then a shrill whistle brought the boy scouts into the hall through the audience, and each bore a flag of the nations represented in Rotary.’

  ‘It must have been truly impressive,’ said Becker from behind his empty glass, thinking especially of the enigmatic spaghetti choir.

  ‘Oh, that was just the beginning. Another fanfare.’

  McDowell again made the trumpeting action and the imitated sound of a trumpet.

  ‘Another fanfare and from the top of the terrace, in sets of four, trooped twenty-eight girls, representing the twenty-eight nations of Rotary. All dressed in those classical robes and each wearing a band of flowers around their head—they represented the national flowers of the twenty-eight nations in Rotary, Australia included.’

  ‘Twenty-eight.’

  ‘Twenty-eight, each girl being one of those nations. They carried on their shoulders a huge garland, like a rope, which they hauled down to the main stage and then presented a dance. This was a salute to the visiting nations and an expression of their joy and exhilaration at being present at such a gathering. At the end of the dance the maidens—girls—went back up the stairs to the terrace and their garland was twined among the flags, the flags which the boy scouts had carried up. Can you picture that?’

  ‘Yes, sir, you certainly remember it. More trumpets?’

  ‘No, no more trumpet. This time, instead, the strains of the triumphal march of Aida. The rope of flowers was drawn to the top of a gold flagpole now—with your flag, the Stars and Stripes. This was the main feature of the spectacle, and at the same time a huge Rotary Wheel in gold and blue—Rotary colours—glittering, was lit up, twenty feet above our heads. Can you imagine it?’

  ‘Your description, sir, is vivid.’

  ‘John Henry Lyons—I think, if I remember, he was from Tacoma, Washington—led the singing. Do you know Tacoma?’

  ‘No, sir, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘I’ve been there, have been to the States now seventeen times. But I’ve told you that. John Henry Lyons from Tacoma led the singing. We sang “The Star-spangled Banner”, “God Save the King”, “America”, “Old Black Joe”—we had song books, of course—but I have never heard men sing out like that since.’

  ‘It must have been some occasion.’

  With a mustering of fervour, McDowell said, ‘I have never seen anything like it in my life. It has never been equalled in my experience.’

  McDowell sat there, back among the fanfares and the dancing maidens and the boy scouts.

  Then he returned, became the host, rose to fix drinks—but again, paused, mid flight, both empty glasses in his hands, before the ice-bucket, finding the return from 1923 difficult.

  ‘Rotary,’ McDowell said, holding onto the word, ‘Rotary is my religion’, re-engaging, putting down the glasses and going on with getting the drinks. ‘I hope you don’t find that sacrilegious, me saying that, but Rotary has guided my every adult act,’ McDowell said.

  ‘Oh no … no, sir.’

  ‘I’m not the churchgoing type, but I am an ethical man and I believe there is a Great Chairman in the Other Country which is the destination of us all.’

  Mortality was never far from Becker. Becker, replenished by his drink, wanting to ask about the poor food Rotary ate, and about the treasure promised by Consistent Effort, said instead, ‘I have never been in one place long enough to join.’

  ‘I often say that there is no need to be in a club to live by the principles of Rotary. What we need is not more men in Rotary, but more Rotary in men.’

  Then McDowell mused, ‘It has guided the raising of my family. Now take the family. There is good authority, you probably know, for the proposition that a child owes no natural affection to the parents, that such affection will, however, result from kind treatment, companionship, and studied care. The sacredness and survival of the family, I argue, is largely dependent on the environment of Fellowship that is made around it. That’s what Rotary and life are about. Complexes cannot live in the Rotary Home. Do you agree?’

  Becker scratched around in the remnants of Course 231, Social Psychology. ‘Complexes, sir, I don’t fully follow.’

  ‘A complex is when people aggravate their differences, while Fellowship is generally interpreted as a development of the principles on which there can be agreement. One is the seeking of conflict: the other, harmony.’

  ‘I follow.’

  Again McDowell slipped into reverie.

  Becker slugged down the drink.

  McDowell came up out of the reverie, saying, ‘What is your honest opinion of my daughter Terri?’ A darkness of trouble about his face.

  ‘I really don’t know her that well. I spend so little time at the main office.’

  Two hands masturbating between her legs.

  ‘We haven’t seen her for a year.’ The darkness blackened and without comment McDowell rose, left the room, and returned with a letter.

  ‘I want you to read this. Tell me what you think of a daughter who’d write this to her father.’

  ‘Really, sir, I don’t think it’s my place.’

  ‘Go on, I’d like your opinion. I’d like an American approach.’ McDowell shook the letter at him in the agitated way of the elderly.

  He knew the contents of the letter. He knew no response to the contents. He was thinking of the wording of a response and not read
ing the letter, he saw it all there in key words from the night in the bedroom under the Archfiend in Goat Form. A loud, blurred letter written with a felt-tipped pen. He saw the words: shaven head, castration, lice, methedrine, a pit of snakes, your cursed daughter.

  You didn’t need a Soc. Psy. 231 to know it was the letter of a speed freak screaming to her father.

  ‘Really, sir, I don’t think it’s my place to comment …’

  Two hands masturbating between her legs.

  ‘Please, I’d be grateful for any comment. So difficult to seek advice in this town. About this sort of thing.’

  He guessed McDowell wanted to be confirmed in his judgement. Becker returned to the letter, pretending again to read, and then said, ‘I guess, sir, it’s part of her search.’

  McDowell didn’t acknowledge this, but said, ‘Do you read the Reader’s Digest?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I do.’

  ‘I like the positive American approach of the Digest. It’s the only thing I have to go by. This drug thing comes stealing into the home. Remember also that it is not the behaviour of a teenager. Terri’s no child, she’s nearly thirty.’ McDowell was grimly bewildered. ‘She was nurtured in the good fellowship and ethics of this home. I can only put it down to the city life and the company of artistic types.’

  Becker had not realised that Terri was nearly thirty. Some search. Some of us, he guessed, were looking for more than others. Take himself, for instance.

  Becker handed back the letter. The apple is said to fall not far from the tree. But in this case it seemed to.

  ‘Her search, did you say?’ McDowell seemed to have just caught up with that, or to have gone back for it. He was having trouble with it, too. ‘You must stay the night.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, but, no, I have luggage at the motel, and I’d like to return there.’

  ‘Why, mother would be very hurt indeed if you didn’t stay.’

  ‘Really, sir, I’d prefer …’

  Becker stood up.

  McDowell stressed the invitation, the insistent host, the contest of politeness.

  ‘After all, you’ve been of such good counsel.’

  ‘Please, sir, I wish to return to my motel, if you would excuse me.’

  In the car McDowell laughed again heartily, and said, ‘I put a strong case, but always remember this, there are three sides to every question—your side, the other fellow’s side and the Right Side’, and laughed.

  Becker was not clear in his own mind to what, if anything, this related.

  The Telephone As Bolas

  All right then, it was a transactional world. Becker had learned that early enough. One good turn deserved another, a little kindness will be returned a thousand-fold. Sam was fond of saying, ‘Every conversation is a transaction: every meeting is a deal.’ Well, Sam, what was the trade tonight, what did I give, what did I get?

  The motel room was a comfort, to be sure. Not that he was retreating from L-I-F-E, no, sir, not by a dandy long shot. He was still ready to get out and dig for the treasure. But he couldn’t see why he should have been selected tonight in this fibro town to receive the ass-pains of Rotarian T. George McDowell and his errant daughter.

  A bourbon with ice. Fire and ice. I think I know enough of hate/to say that for destruction ice/is also great/and would suffice.

  Becker was not averse to poetry or to jazz music. He sometimes wondered if this did not soft-edge him, as it were, in business. Together with too open and too honest a disposition. Why don’t I look like a bastard? Why don’t I look like Lee Marvin? Please, God, make me look like Lee Marvin.

  Motels. A clean, safe passageway around the world. He could be in Manitoba. Or good old Atlanta. The joy of standardisation. All he asked of his little old hunk of life, for today, was the standard five-star motel. Tomorrow he might ask a castle.

  The telephone rang, causing Becker to drop his bourbon.

  Ah, shit.

  Who in damnation!

  Damn you, Sam.

  He heard the plug of connection. The telephonist said long-distance person-to-person, ‘Mr Becker?’

  ‘Yes, this is he.’

  He heard the wires, saw them stretching along the coast of this fibro nation. He saw the wires stringing him together with someone—a bolas—against his preference—the authoritarian telephone. He watched the mute whites and greys of the television, awaiting the intrusion of the call to bring him stumbling down.

  ‘Hullo, hullo, hullo,’ he said impatiently.

  ‘Hullo—’ a girl’s voice—‘it’s me, Terri.’

  Terri.

  ‘Jesus! What is this? I’ve just this moment come from your father’s house and now you’re busting in down the line.’

  Becker checked the anger in his voice.

  ‘I want to talk with you and apologise for my uncouth conduct the other night … the seduction hassle … it wasn’t cool, me unloading all that on you.’

  ‘Oh hell, forget it.’

  ‘What did my father say?’

  ‘Too much. We talked some, we even talked about you. Say, how did you know to get me here, and why this time of night?’

  ‘I made the bookings, remember?’

  He remembered all right now. From the mit of the father to the mit of the daughter.

  ‘Tell me what my father said.’

  ‘Now look, it’s very late.’

  ‘Did he tell you his daughter was crazy? I bet he didn’t.’

  ‘He showed me your letter. Yes, as a matter of damned fact.’

  ‘He showed you my letter?’ Outrage. ‘Why, that is not fair.’

  ‘Look, if you don’t mind me saying, I seem to know more about you and your damned family than I want to damned well know.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have shown you my letter.’

  Becker began to wonder again. Why? Why me? She went on complaining.

  ‘You can see he doesn’t love me, can’t you?’ Becker took the question, stretched the telephone cable to its limit and, using one hand, poured himself a drink, adding ice.

  Becker was in need of a prayer as well as a drink.

  Here we go. ‘No, I don’t think he loves you. Not in the way you mean.’

  Rotary love, maybe? He didn’t bother to mention it.

  Terri went silent. The line was empty of voice.

  ‘How can you say that?’ she came back.

  ‘You asked me—I told you.’

  Again silence. He could hear a drumming on the line. Wind? God’s impatient fingers?

  ‘No one has ever said that before. Everyone said I wasn’t being fair to him.’

  ‘Well, you asked me. That’s the way I see it.’ Becker sipped his drink, watching the TV picture from the corner of his eye.

  ‘At least you’re straightforward.’

  ‘I’m going now. I have a big day.’

  ‘Selling Coca-Cola.’ Her voice, returning to normal, was good-natured, but had a derisive edge.

  Becker had met derision before. Becker knew about derision.

  ‘Yes, goddamn it, doing my simple self-appointed task of selling the best damned soft drink in the world, the best damned way I know how.’

  Becker believed, among other things, in prowess and the pursuit of excellence.

  The Creed

  Suggested Creed for New South Wales Country Schools, adapted by T. George McDowell from that used by the Queensland Department of Public Instruction.

  I believe in an independent and locally owned agriculture and town commerce; a soil that shall grow richer rather than poorer year by year; a town that shall grow richer in amenity year by year.

  I believe the measure of a day’s work is tiredness.

  I believe a clean farm and a clean town are as important as a clean conscience.

  I believe that self-employment is the highest goal for any person.

  I believe in the special inspiration which comes from working in the daily sight of nature.

  I believe the interests of the townfolk and f
armfolk are mutual.

  I believe the interests of the skilled man and the employer of skills are mutual.

  I believe that every piece of goods I help to manufacture or grow represents part of myself when it goes out into the world.

  I believe that life is of two parts, the Private and the Communal, and that the private shall be beyond the reach of the State and that the communal shall be shared.

  I believe that the town and the farm are a mutual entity, entitled to run its own affairs.

  I believe the only just and manageable government is Local Government, where those who govern are known to the governed.

  The Creed was not adopted by the Department of Education up in Sydney. They gave as the ostensible reason that it was ‘too long’.

  GWENTH MCDOWELL’S STATEMENT CONCERNING HER SISTER, TERESA MCDOWELL, JUNE 1969

  Confidential

  My name is Gwenth Mary McDowell, I am 36 years of age and I reside at Unit 6, 221 Penrose Avenue, Double Bay. I am a single woman. My occupation is Headmistress (primary). You ask me if there is anything I can say which may help you with the psychiatric treatment of my sister, Terri—Teresa. From what you tell me, I understand that she does not admit that there is anything wrong and has not sought assistance voluntarily, which makes your task so much the harder.

  I have not seen my sister for a number of years (except for one recent meeting), as she has cut off relations with her family and also because circumstance, and her way of life, have taken us in opposite directions. There is a six-year age difference, as well. No, I do not wish to place any importance on the age difference. There are many girls of her age and younger with whom I can speak as equals. Contrary to the talk in newspapers, people do not change that much, and there is, in my experience, no generation gap. It is more that some people, irrespective of age, seem to go in different directions—as if there were, in fact, two distinctly different sorts of humans. Sadly, I am being forced daily to this view. When you look at issues such as abortion, sex, and morality generally, there seem to be just different types of human beings and all the argument in the world won’t change it. Or so it would seem. As a Christian I am unwilling to accept that some people are beyond redemption, but it is difficult not to. I sometimes feel that an island, say Tasmania, should be set aside for those who do not want to accept things.