Just Relations

by Rodney Hall

  – Soon we shall be needed, he said.

  His sister stood at the door, one foot in the sunshine, listening not to him but to the mountain where the roadmakers awaited permission to push their bulldozers through the rubble of gold and clear aside all trace of a battle best forgotten. She had withdrawn the privileges of sympathy from her brother and husband, the betrayer of her child. Last year, bushfires fumed along those forested slopes all summer, smoke smoothed the rocky mass thin as a paper cut-out; and the setting sun a dull white disc going yellow, eventually dried out to the brown blood of old wars; the foothills and boulders blue, the grass grey until evening when the mountain became soft smoky wool with loose threads left dangling from the tapestry for the white trunks of trees … she had seen the wooded islands of Greece stripped of their timber and left stark and waterless so that a race of philosophers and wrestlers could enjoy the satisfaction of clearing the sky itself of clouds and creating a man-made climate, however barren.

  Sebastian grunted as he slipped his shoes on without socks, as he folded his crackling body to grasp the laces, getting too old.

  Agenda and reports, briefings on the reports, a seat on the committee, the Department’s approval, what could be more important to the conscientious Canberra man? The seductive idea of committees: decision without individual responsibility. Civilization itself. Give us our daily bread of problems, for ours is the power and the glory. We’ll set up a Royal Commission with principles, guidelines, a policy-co-ordinating sub-committee, a tabulated breakdown of the budget, estimates, a system of assessment, ministerial advice, an establishment, sub-let consultations, implemented advice, a digest of documents, research addenda, a precis of findings by previous commissions of enquiry and so forth. Hand it to us: you do nothing, well do it for you, just don’t cause trouble, well get to the bottom of any scandalous affair for you, and if we need to use the High Court the High Court it’ll be, we’ll know what to do when it’s on the agenda, that’s what keeps the Public Service incorruptible. The point is, who will sit next to the Chairman? who’s senior to whom? are we being flown first class or economy? will the Commonwealth Car meet us in my name or his or hers? did somebody say there’d be a member of parliament with us? a senator? well a senator will do, what’s his first name? does he play golf? no chance he’s a queer I suppose? how shall I know what clothes to choose? you can do a lot of damage to your cause by the mildest hint of eccentricity or lack of it.

  C.I.A. interference? just our cup of tea. A nice little case of planning for ports or harbours? yes well you need a statistician, a numbers man, a customs man, advice on the look of the thing, PR, hundreds of details could be botched if there aren’t the right departmental committees at their back. What’s this one: a ministerial enquiry into child-bashing? good, that’s a lovely one, that’ll last for years, no end to the children, parents always pushed further than they can cope, it’ll take a thousand gallons of tea and a vat of scotch to straighten that one out, employment for paper and pen manufacturers, it’s very productive, an enquiry like this, and of course the travel industry gains, you can’t deal lightly with a serious matter like child-bashing, the Northern Territory child-bashers have every bit as much right to be heard as their brothers and sisters in Canberra, these things have to be understood before they can be acted upon, we shall need to go everywhere, and stay, no excuse for haste, unpardonable, the safety of children being at stake, whole lives ruined, future of the national character etcetera, you have to be patient if you want kids to talk at all, let alone talk freely, and against their parents, trust us we’ll get the full story, we’ll flinch at nothing being independent and with no axe to grind, it’ll take a few years perhaps, but let’s be realistic, in the end we’ll get it… as long as you’re sure I’m on the list, there hasn’t been a squeak out of Wilson you say? and Marjorie Longhurst thinks she ought to be on everything to do with children because she once had one. As long as you’re sure. We’ll do a wonderful job, such a heart-rending issue, will I be travelling first class? and are you giving me teeth enough to make our presence felt? Another one coming up? But then it’s a case of priorities. What is it? Enquiry into regional development, local complaints demanding re-routing of highway? What’s the story? Is it important? Is it news? Would there be travel? New South Wales country district: forget it. Not me, I take it the road isn’t begun yet? Half finished! Then what is there to do? A complaint, a local… thank you for the coffee Miss Appleby, is it stirred? biscuit? bless you … but that’s ridiculous, it’ll be finished in no time, why mention it to me? Complications with the Aesthetic and Historical Resources people? that’s more promising, a sort of green-ban perhaps, could be some mileage in that, I’ve got the picture, they want to save the place from the DMR, right? That could spin out, well I might be interested. But the bashed babies sound more in my line, with my training you see, far more challenging. Do you think it might backfire? I realize the problem with civil liberties, private lives and, yes, I do. Might the main road thing last? Which departments are fighting? All of us against no one but them! Why don’t we just build it? Who are they? You can’t be serious Martin. Such a waste of my… who? But Martin that’s ridiculous. And there’s this child-bashing. We’ve worked together how many years now? You know I’m an old hand at these enquiries, they won’t put anything across me. It’d be a waste. Drive there! Oh my God what next. I think I might be ill in any case. Spot of the old bother you know. Hate to let you down with your cowcocky committee but if health won’t permit … a who? Senator who did you say? Is he! He’s the one who’s investigating the Public Service surely. I begin to see. And isn’t he also the one named for that overseas investment survey? I know I did and I still do. I can guess how you feel about the Public Service one. He does look like being one of those thorns in the side. The overseas thing is really a national priority though. Bound to take ages, it’s so very wide-ranging and the implications … Might it necessitate a trip to Tokyo then? And New York. Martin, I do see that we have to consider responsibilities. We’ve known each other a long time, Wesley College ha ha and so on. Why should I let you down just because of a nervous complaint? What if I do come out in hives? This one is only for a day or two I suppose. Well then! Halloran isn’t it, Frank Halloran? Of course I met him a year ago you know, nice fellow. I’ve got it all written down in my book. There’s even a memo if I’m not mistaken. Yes at the Asian Trade Fair. We got on. Pleasant man. Should clear up this highway thing in a day. As long as there’s a car. Of course I don’t object to a long car trip. If there’s no air service how can it be helped anyway? No, you can only do what you can do. I’m most grateful anyway. I suppose we’ll be sharing cars? Once you can give me definite word I might phone Frank Halloran, he’d be glad to travel with someone he knows I expect. In any case I’ll phone right away I think, groundwork, tentative suggestion at least. And these local issues may seem small but they strike at the heart of democracy. People in Canberra don’t know enough of the grassroots issues. It’ll be an education, I’d be delighted. You’ll certainly need to be thinking about that overseas investment business, political hot potato. And I shan’t forget your interest in the other thing, the Public Service thing, Martin. Martin, Mavis and I were hoping, perhaps, you and Valerie might be free for dinner some time next week. Interesting couple from the Canadian High Commission coming over. Oh and I hope you’ll find someone to hold up our end at the child-bashing business.

  Mum Collins took a scorched felt pad in her hand and shifted the kettle to the cooler side of the stove, she opened the firebox and shoved in a couple more chunks of wood and slammed it shut, then she heaved her washing water over the heat. She wiped the backs of her hands on her hips and the palms down her apron front, pretending she was full of satisfaction with the world, but that was her way. The clock on the mantel kept getting a look from her and four times she went out into the yard for a confidential chat with Myrtle the housecow. She had some tricky questions for Myrtle too, such as: How’ll I b
e if they give me something that’s got to be read off the paper? This was the sort of thing Myrtle had never thought of. And if I come right out and say don’t pass me nothing that’s got to be read, what then? I wouldn’t shame the folks, not for anything. It’s a quandary right enough and no mistake. I’ll sit meself down next to Sebbie, that’s the ticket! He knows I don’t read and all. She looked again at the clock and said oh my God there won’t be time for washing the clothes. Bustling about in a mixture of nervousness and satisfaction, she switched the pots round on the stove and gave the ash-rack a good jolting so the ashes fell down as a red waterfall into the pan, wondering whether Jas Schramm got out of his bed sober and decent enough for a meeting.

  Up at the Mountain, Jasper was already tired, having been awake all night with the same worry, through a trial of jumping nerves and nausea to emerge calm in the morning. Locked in the parlour by his own arrangement, he had put his face on the floor, for coolness, breathing the air which had hung so heavy round the dead boy. Shamed that the senator probably welcomed his name on the committee list because of his drinking, that he was expected to let everybody down, and most of all that they had forgiven him in advance. So he set out to remake Jasper Schramm, nerve by nerve he extracted the old fresh body from the new ruined one, each usable memory torn from the enemy, at three o’clock he took off his clothes and stood revealed in his baggy disgusting flesh, shivering with self-knowledge. Then he put on his feud with Egmont and saw himself in the wrong, acknowledged his family’s mothertongue, he accepted the humility of a man who inherits all he owns and watches it squalidly dwindle, he put on his wife’s kindness, he dressed himself in the habit of a man who has no respect for his work, with his shoes his petty misdemeanours were tied to his feet, with his cardigan he fitted himself into the years of inaction. At dawn, standing ready in front of the window, Jasper Schramm was touched by the understanding that he had created something, even when he thought he was doing nothing. Yes, the hotel had become what no hotel could expect to be. The agonizing protection of his own privacy in public had made it a place where no one else need fear intrusion either. Without him, Remembering would never have been possible.

  His eye strayed to the picture beside him. He recalled it in his bedroom when he was a boy, his mother fixed it there, a hammer in her funny plump hand and a nail between her lips the way she held pins when dressmaking, and her asking where, through clenched teeth, and him saying he didn’t want it at all because it was full of ladies and nobody else. She pleased herself in the end. Domenico Ghirlandaio: The Birth of the Virgin. He gazed into the cool ornate chamber so meticulously portrayed, the irresistible illusion of air, the calmness of those women in the presence of the mother of the mother of God. An age of saints, because you couldn’t tell this mother from any other. Everything in good order and ready, the room telling its tale of the years of preparation. Mr Schramm heard the key in the lock. His wife came in, her figure upright with disillusion and stoicism. Appraising what she saw, she was proud of him. Morning light trembled in her tears for a second as she handed him his breakfast tray. He was a guest in his own hotel, as she poured the hot brass-coloured tea. Words wouldn’t come, not even a greeting. Framed by the room’s perspective, they looked into each other’s thoughts.

  Once his wife had left and set out for her morning chat to Mary Buddall, and Jasper had watched from the window the unbearable loneliness of that one woman’s back in the empty dust of the world, he struggled into the suit she had prepared for him. And ceremonially closed the Mountain, the upstairs first, each shutter and each window, then the downstairs beginning with the kitchen. He got pretty shaky. Perhaps one nip of whisky would steady him. After all, it would be fatal if the government men thought him nervous. He pulled the curtains closed, bolted the public bar, wiped the rust from his fingers. Surely just one nip wouldn’t hurt? The bottle was over there. Wouldn’t take a moment. He wavered among the upturned stool-legs. A small heap of dust and cigarette butts remained in the middle of the floor from when the cleaning was interrupted. He took a dustpan and cleaned it up. To occupy his hands, he carried the dust out to the bin and then replaced the dustpan in the closet where it belonged. He would not go back behind the bar again; the dear battered fittings, the stale smell, the magniloquent proportions of this room with its vulgar rococo mouldings, important mirrors, knick-knacks left by visitors, trembled with familiar music, the champion trout stuffed and varnished in a glass case, the black tankards hanging by hooks, the dead television with its smoked face, the half-empty whisky bottle standing fugitive among clean glasses, wooed him with a soft old lullaby. Jasper Schramm marched into the office shutting the past behind him, took a sheet of the notepaper his father designed in 1934 with The Mountain Hotel, Gem of the Goldfields printed across the top and acknowledged for excellence by world celebrities in smaller lettering at the bottom. He licked the point of his Biro and wrote in a loopy hand:

  THE MOUNTAIN WILL BE CLOSED

  OWING TO THE CONDUCT OF A

  MEETING WITH THE GOVERNMENT.

  As an afterthought he signed his full name Volker Hermann von Jaspers Schramm. The notice pinned outside, the door securely shut, he left. He did not look back. He did not hear the Rememberings clash in a tide as deafening as Waterloo. In his white shirt, black suit and black tie, he was decked out smart as a funeral, his hair bank-manager grey. The government cars, already arriving, nosing into the grassed footpath outside the School of Arts, made it impossible for him to go back.

  Twelve

  The School of Arts, perched on its tall spindly piles, quivered alive. Wind pushed and worried it, loose roofing gave out the periodic bassoon note, grey timbers grumbled together, nails complained in their sockets, the trellis swayed, grit rained against one wall. Inside, it was a drum. You could look through cracks in the floor, far down to the sunlit dust below. A few bars of light struck in through the gapped wall, probing among the figures seated round a trestle table, a table famous since the 1924 Country Districts Division Five Ping Pong Championships. All day the people sat suspended in a solution of motes, heard summaries and reports presented by departmental representatives, and no further discussion arising. The delegates waited, inert in the living building.

  First you should take account of the chairman, a man pledged to impartiality, a man who wished to appear younger than he was, a figure of studied rectitude. Self-conscious about the placement of papery hands, the composure of lips, he had something private to hide. His hair, suspiciously dark, clung flat to the skull, he wore rings on four of his fingers, he had not quite grown accustomed to his false teeth. A magistrate, so formalities presented no difficulty. He didn’t look at anybody, either he hypnotized his papers or the circular fretwork vent set above the main doors which were rusted shut at their bolts and hinges.

  On his left sat an officer of the Ministry of Tourism, serving as minutes secretary, presenting a faqade of youthful eagerness, pen poised, a few headings sketched out on his pad, his clear eyes reflecting the room, his left hand dainty as a girl’s played the bass of the Appassionata, his suit coat hung open in the Italian manner. His fair hair, brushed up to the natural look, might well pass for natural out horse-riding on a breezy day. He would get on and the evidence was before him. Privately you might guess he was a sexual teaser destined to become respectably suburban, father of two and patron of pornography.

  Looking now to the north-east corner of the table we find a tall lady, one shank grown meditatively round the leg of her chair in wishful memory of childhood breakfasts, the other stretched a long way in front. She hadn’t had her daily sunlamp treatment but that made no difference, her skin would take months of neglect to recover, having been so burnt and oiled. With striking artistry she had drawn the face of Nefertiti on her own face giving the curious effect of their not quite coinciding. She had the same long tender neck, the same unblinking expression, thinking back a couple of thousand years to when she could order as many throats slit as pleased her mood. The
re was a gleam in her eye, and whoever spoke first, she would speak next. She had an answer for everything since the world revolved about her and her career. Even in the dimness she glowed, her dress being an opulent cluster of scarlets and golds, the Australian Aesthetic and Historical Resources Commission knew what it was doing appointing her as spokesman (not for her the coy modernism of spokesperson, oh no).

  Next to the lanky Nefertiti we find Mum Collins, transfigured. Her tufts of white hair stood up, more unkempt than ever and giving the impression of severe electric shock, her face with its furry moles and pads of flesh, her short neck and enormous bosom, her hands clasped like a petitioner, the chamois-leather fingers pinched cruelly by two plain gold rings, her everyday dress as it usually was, yet her eyes were in a blue fear, there was something untrustworthy on the table that reduced her confidence, sapped her self-esteem.

  On Mum Collins’s left sat an extremely discontented individual, a man whose sighs and figure expressed petulant irritation with his being there at all. He was perhaps forty-five, his face devoid of character yet with hair completely grey, he had been used up by something not worthy of him, his aspect was curiously sad, you can see he had once been dux of a private school by the random wrinkles proliferating on his boy’s face, remembered shreds of information not meaning anything, and creating none of that sculptural quality which marks out a definite character, even a bad one. A fan of puckers at the corner of his mouth pursed his face disagreeably. His particular silence constituted an accusation. He ignored the form of meeting procedure with the virtuosity of a thousand rehearsals. When he did look up it was to reduce Senator Halloran to ash. Three other committee members sat between them on the south edge of the table. First a bald man who kept polishing his head with a handkerchief and slipping his glasses off then popping them back on or casting them on the table like dice, snatching them back to polish them, then polishing the head some more, then blowing his nose in the same handkerchief (a dry blow done for the form of the thing), then experimenting with his glasses perched on the very end of his nose, then thrusting them up like an oldtime aviator on his forehead; beside this bald man lolled an immensely worldly person, one of those large-boned chaps who have elected to be thought elegant, to have panache, a dotted cravat tied in a careless heap against his stringy throat and a matching handful of linen frothing from the breastpocket of his grey suit with the pale check, his white eyebrows and suntanned nose, his good-humoured gestures and kindly sentiments, his fatuous line of thought, his careless nonchalance, offering gallantries to Miss Felicia Brinsmead in her Paris silk with a dash of colour at the throat, her bland moony face fixed to an expression highly unsettling for anyone hoping to engage her in rational discussion, her hands spread flat as if the famous table were the counter of her shop.