Spirit of Progress

by Steven Carroll

  And she would answer because a call in the night must be answered. But what should she say? What are the words he would have her say to him?

  ‘Come into my tent, you simple man. And we shall sit and gaze upon the light inside that drew you and we shall know that we are not alone. And, together, we shall, each day, reflect upon this simple fact in wonder.’

  So he would have it be. Miss Carroll and Mr Skinner. He the call, she the answer. And, in this way, he would enter her tent and be gathered into its light. Even now. But he does not take that short walk to Miss Carroll’s tent and the simple words of a simple heart are never spoken. Not now, not ever. For the moment has passed when such words could be chanced. The chance was there, but the chance has gone.

  The night, as it does at this time of year, surprises him. Suddenly, all is pitch dark. Black. Except for the glow of Miss Carroll’s tent on the other side of his paddock. But it’s a different light now. It doesn’t call any more. Nor does it hold the comforting promise of company. Or, indeed, the potential that it once possessed. It is, he concludes before stepping in from the cold, a singular light, denoting a singular life.

  27.

  The Spirit of Progress

  The gallery is empty now. All of the lights are switched on, and Tess is seeing the exhibition the way everybody will the following evening. But this is a private viewing. Before everybody else. Her mind is free to wander, to speculate, without the interruption of conversation. It must feel like this, she’s thinking (strolling round the empty floor that will be crowded the next evening), it must feel like this for this assembly of artists or any artist, for that matter, just before you hand something over and it’s not yours any more. That moment between having something and losing something.

  She wonders, pausing in front of two soldiers and two young women, all lipstick, shaded eyes and high blonde hair, what there would have been left to say even had there been nobody else in the gallery when Sam delivered his painting in the manner of fulfilling an agreement. Nothing more, nothing less. What, really, was there left to say? Only this. That she should not be misunderstood. And by this she means his understanding of her. That she’d never thought of herself as having made him: he was always going to make himself. She knew that. And those who were suggesting that she was going around saying this kind of thing (for it is a small town, this city, and everybody hears what you said or didn’t say, and sooner more than later) are just plain wrong. Worse than wrong, they are small-town wrong.

  She was never even a muse, never thought of herself like that, and never wanted to be. She was just someone who fell in love. And who surprised herself when she did. Just someone who knew a few things and had an eye for the real thing. And Sam, from the start, when he first presented himself to the gallery just before the war, was, she knew instantly, the real thing. And he was always going to make something of himself; she just helped him along. That’s all she ever claimed, nothing more, nothing less. For that’s what lovers do, isn’t it? When you enter somebody else’s life they change you, and you change them. You grow a bit, or a lot, together. And you teach each other things. It’s all part of entering somebody else’s life, and them entering yours. For she, too, is not the same person she was before meeting Sam. And this is what was left for Tess to say to Sam.

  The sadness of having something, and losing something, will pass. But rumour and misunderstanding have a nasty habit of being passed on and becoming fact when they were never true in the first place. And she knows that none of this is helped by being seen by them all (the painters and the artists who come to her with their work, and their friends and their hangers-on, who go around saying all these things about her) as the cool, rich girl. Just the cool, deliberate kind who could steal your eyes and call them her own. And as much as Mr Fitzgerald might like to tell everybody that the very rich are different, she knows better. And if Mr Fitzgerald were alive now she’d tell him so. And if Sam had been alone at the gallery she’d have told him too. And she’d also have told him that if they, the two of them in their brief time, had discovered anything it was that they weren’t so different after all — the son of a tram driver and the daughter with the Swiss education. And, as much as the world might have told them to stick to their own kind, they’d discovered otherwise. But he wasn’t there alone and none of this was said. And now he may or may not be going around (or even go through life) thinking the wrong thing about her, which is no way to part.

  As she reaches the end of her wandering, her private viewing, without, in the end, being conscious of viewing anything in particular, she decides to write to him. Like a character from a nineteenth-century novel might write everything down one rainy Sunday afternoon, just to set matters right. And even though he lives only a stone’s throw from the studio, that’s what she’ll do. So that he will know. So that if, in time, the things that people are going around saying are ever passed on as fact, there will at least be this. A record. Which somebody may or may not discover one day. And, in so doing, discover the truth, and ensure that it is the truth, not small-town rumours, that prevail. And so she gathers her coat and her keys, and, turning one more time, taking in that moment in between having something and losing something, she locks the door and steps out into the chill of the dark street with the scent of rain in the air.

  It gives every impression of moving, and at great speed, even when it is standing still, as it is at this very moment on Platform Number 1 of Spencer Street Station. Especially now that the streamlined engine and its carriages, with their distinctive blue-and-yellow markings, have been washed and are gleaming under the platform lights. When was the last time it was washed? Vic can’t remember. And he views the train often. Of course, he is fully aware that this is more than simply a train, and a famous one at that. It is a prize, and tonight a gleaming one. For all the world a new train. A gleaming new train for a gleaming new world. For this new, post-war world will need trains such as this, not simply to carry people from place to place but for people to gaze upon and be reassured that the future they are travelling inexorably towards will gleam like the train that takes them into it. And its destinations, places on a map, are not so important as that reassurance. That all we have lost (and the loss is too great to be truly felt at the moment), all that has been spent and all that has been sacrificed in what people simply call the war will have been worth it. For this is what Hope looks like. And this is why the train looks like it is moving, even while it is standing still. It is both an arrow pointing towards the future and it is that future. And, what’s more, it gives every impression of having already been there and back.

  Vic, who is standing on the platform gazing at the Spirit of Progress, is pleased that somebody has found the time, that somebody has seen fit, to wash the grime of the past off it, for Hope should shine. And even those who will never sit in its air-conditioned carriages will, nonetheless, travel with it because it is that kind of train.

  But, for Vic, it is also a prize. For only the best are entrusted with the Spirit of Progress. It is understood by all who sit in the driver’s cabin and all of those in the staffing office who put them there that this is more than just a train. Which is why you don’t have to sit in its air-conditioned comfort to travel in it because everybody in this new world will be riding the train of Progress. And it is at this point in his thinking and this point in his stroll that he stops and looks up to the cabin, to the engine that generates the motive force that draws the carriages, taking them from here to there with all the speed the Age expects.

  And there, in the cabin, is the bulk of Paddy Ryan. No longer the bloated figure at the bar of The Railway with the loud voice who could be just any drinker with too much in him. He is now Paddy Ryan, King’s driver, the master of the smooth ride. He is transformed simply by being in the cabin. And he is dressed for driving. Underneath his overalls, Paddy wears a pressed white shirt and a tie. For he is a driver of the old school who is in the cabin long before the train leaves, who has already inspe
cted the engine and who is now polishing the instruments inside the cabin so that everything gleams as it should. Vic knows all of this without need of witnessing it because he was once Paddy’s fireman. And as much as he is tempted to call out to him, he doesn’t, for he sees that Paddy is absorbed in the tasks at hand. Attentive to every small detail, leaving nothing to chance.

  And so, leaving the platform, making his way towards his train, a goods train that will bring coal back from the damp open-cut mines in the country east of the city, Vic is left contemplating the scene he has just left. That, and what in time might come to pass. The possibility that he, too, might one day sit in the same cabin Paddy Ryan now occupies, and, in simply being there, become likewise transformed.

  While the train sits at the platform, gleaming with Hope, those who will share the future into which it will take them and those who will not share it prepare for evening. Katherine dims the light on her day and Skinner watches her light dim before turning back into the house. No great event, Katherine tells herself, has taken place. She just had a few dreamy thoughts, the way you do from time to time, and now she’s getting on with things the way she always has. On her own, thank you very much. No great event. She was a girl again for a moment; now the moment has passed. No damage. No harm. A chance came and a chance went. The shadow of another life appeared before her, then faded away, back to where it came from. And while Vic walks towards his train, his rendezvous with an awkward situation now behind him, Rita feels movement in her belly and reads impatience in that movement. The impatience of a child who has been too long in the belly and can’t wait to get at life, the child who is simultaneously travelling towards birth and travelling in the hushed comfort of a TGV towards the west of France, quaint villages and quaint steeples, worlds removed from the one they are all about to enter, flashing by his window. And she likes that impatience because it speaks of energy and Life.

  As she registers this movement, George mulls over the contents of the note in his pocket on the train home, and Sam, his painting delivered, his duty done, turns his thoughts towards leaving, while Tess, taking in the hint of rain in the air, is mentally composing the letter she will send to Sam that will set everything right.

  And, all the time, Hope gleams under the lights of Platform Number 1, waiting, like an arrow, to be shot into the future, taking them all with it, whether they are seated in the first or second-class compartments of its carriages or not, for they are all travelling in the train called Progress, and they are all travelling along those silver rails that stretch out into the distance, and which converge, but never meet.

  Part Three

  Thursday, 18 July 1946

  28.

  Horizon

  It is not the first time that George has heard the phrase ‘post-war’. It had been used throughout the war, especially when people began to think that they might actually win and that the war, which some predicted might go on for years, if not decades, might actually end. He hears the phrase dropped often around the office now, especially by journalists who not so much pride themselves on, as define themselves by, the ready use of such phrases. They slip from their tongues with ease, these phrases. As though … and George is staring at the face of the newspaper’s editor (leaning back in his chair, eyes briefly on the ceiling) … as though certain people are custodians (however chosen) of the new phrases that are continually entering the language, and it is through them that phrases such as ‘post-war’ reach people such as George, and through George enter the talk of the general population until soon everybody is using them as though they always were. All of which is leading George to speculate upon the origin of the phrase, for it must have been first used by somebody, sometime. But as the questions of who, why, where and when pass through his mind, George tells himself to concentrate because the editor is talking to him.

  He is outlining plans for a new weekly magazine that the paper will soon publish. An old, weekly magazine for country readers has died a natural death and this will replace it. He has used the phrase ‘post-war’ because the magazine will capture the spirit of this new world. All its excitement, its sense of possibility. New horizons. Change. And here the editor looks directly at George. For the world has changed. The bombs and shells of the war didn’t just blow away old buildings, they blew away the old ways too. And, whether we like it or not, we’re entering a new world, with new ways, new phrases and new magazines. Magazines such as this one, the plans for which he is outlining to George. It will, he suggests, be called something in keeping with the spirit of the times. Something like, and his eyes roll back towards the ceiling, ‘Horizon’. And the editor ponders this for a moment as though he has just spoken it for the first time (which he probably has) and gives a satisfied grunt.

  It is a confirmation, and an indication to George (who is wondering why he has been called in), of how things do and will continue to work in this place. On the hop. Someone gazes briefly upward for inspiration, the word ‘Horizon’ appears, and a title is born for a magazine that may very well have been dreamt up in the same way. And while George is contemplating all of this, he is still no clearer in his mind as to why he has been called into the editor’s office and why the editor should take so long telling him of the plans for this magazine that will be the face of the new world.

  It is then that the editor tells George in a casual but calculated way that he wants him to be the editor of this new magazine. George, who has been at the paper for less than a year and couldn’t even type when he arrived. Not everybody agreed with the choice, he adds, but what’s an editor if he’s not going to follow his instincts? Yes, he says, presumably summarising objections that have already been aired by others, George is young. He is new to the job. And he’s never edited anything in his brief newspaper life. But it is precisely because he is young that the editor has chosen him. The rest, he informs George, will follow. It can be learnt. But you can’t learn youth. You’ve either got it or you haven’t. And George has it. And this post-war world will be a young world. What’s more, George reads. Has a university degree. And there is a large part of this editor — in his early fifties — that is sufficiently old world, old fashioned enough to respect this (although George, in his brief time at the paper, has learnt to keep quiet about that, as, indeed, he has learnt to keep quiet about his ambitions to become a writer).

  The editor, looking at his watch, tells George that he doesn’t have to decide right away. Adds that George quite possibly has plans to leave the country as soon as he can, like everybody else (which is possibly another reason why George has been asked because there is a mounting feeling that a whole generation will emigrate and slip through the country’s fingers the moment there are boats to sail in), but if he wants it the job is his, just let him know in a few days.

  And with that, and with George saying very little, the meeting is over. George returns to his desk, and, with the hammering of typewriter keys all around him, tries to concentrate on what he was doing before his appointment with the editor. A hardback publication, Mr Hemingway’s short stories, sits face up on the desk. There are new books on the desk as well, by new writers, for this new world. They constitute the future he has always imagined for himself. And whenever he imagined himself in the future it was always as the solitary writer. Now this, which he had never imagined or considered a possibility, for the newspaper was always just something along the way. Part of his plans, but only part. And so that small pile of books stares back at him inquiringly, and a silent question now hangs in the air, which he would contemplate if only the noise of the place would let him.

  29.

  Vic Discovers the Golf Course

  It is the golf course that draws Vic. He has always been drawn to golf courses and this will remain the case all his life. The golf course, to Vic, with its rolling fairways and distant greens, is where the world becomes wide. There are only two occasions in the regular round of Vic’s life — stepping out onto the first tee of a golf course and being in the ca
bin of an engine just as it leaves the city and he enters either country darkness or a blue horizon — when the world acquires width. When space enters his life and he becomes expansive with it. Vic is not a religious person. He is, in fact (although baptised into the Catholic Church, and his aunt a nun) determinedly unreligious. But this feeling of expansiveness, when the world becomes wide, for someone without a religion, is almost a religious feeling.

  And this is why Vic has walked right past Aunt Katherine’s tent, even though he has come specifically to see her. He had leaned his bicycle against a paddock fence and was turning towards Aunt Katherine’s block of land when he noticed the long row of tall pines and gums and saw, in between the trunks, what he instantly knew was a long, rolling fairway. Out here? And while part of him was wondering what on earth it was doing there, the other part was drawn to it. He stops at the fence and gazes upon the domain that brings with it that feeling of expansiveness.

  And as he stands there, occasionally looking back to Aunt Katherine’s land and taking in the paddocks, farmland, scattered houses and distant flour mills, the thought occurs to him that he could live in a place like this. And it is not simply the golf course but that sense of things opening up, as when he drives into the sunset or the sunrise. And it’s a feeling he doesn’t have in the inner-city suburb where he and Rita and the child who will be born in a few months live. A cluttered suburb, he now thinks, not far from where he was born and where he did most of his growing up. No, he doesn’t have this feeling there as he does here. And it’s all something of an intriguing surprise. A discovery. And what Vic can’t know at the moment as he stands by the golf-course fence (because it has not happened yet) is that what he is feeling, this impulse, this intimation that he could live in a place like this, is not his alone. That it is, in fact, characteristic of the time they are all entering. All the Vics and all the Ritas and all the children they will bring into the world will come to places such as this. It will be a fresh start. They will leave the old world behind, as well as old times, those sad and violent years, and they will strike out to cheap, open country such as this place, where the children they are bringing into the world can run all day and acquire long legs. No, Vic’s is not a singular impulse. It is a collective one. But he doesn’t know this yet because the movement out, from the old to the new, from the inner suburbs to the fringes of the city, hasn’t happened yet.