Spirit of Progress

by Steven Carroll

  And so, the afternoon light dying outside, she sits, the weight of her belly almost pressing her into the chair, and is aware of looking at the room anew. Besides, it’s given her something to take her mind off the ache of her back as Vic finds his coat and shoes so they can take a short stroll around the neighbourhood before the light fades completely. She surveys the room. How many things have started here, or passed through here, and not just in the years that Vic and Rita have been here, but all the years and all the tales?

  It is then that Vic enters the room, his coat on in readiness for the walk. Rita rises, wraps herself in a big woollen jumper and smiles. For as much as she might be seeing this room anew, she has also seen enough of it for one day and is impatient to get out and see what’s happening in the world.

  Outside, where the cold sunset brings with it just enough colour to make the bare trees and power lines glow, Rita is not thinking of the streets as small because she’s been in the kitchen all day. But Vic is. And as he recounts the day, cycling to Katherine’s tent and back, he tells her about Katherine’s land (which Rita has never seen) and how the world suddenly felt wide. And how, cycling back, it felt less and less so. And that feeling of the world opening up, that feeling that you haven’t done everything you’re going to do and that there just might be more for you out there in the wide world of life, leaves you as the world shrinks back into what it was before you left. Until the world is small again. But he doesn’t share this last observation with Rita. Rather, he trails into silence, leaving her with talk of wide worlds and new starts.

  Besides, the pale orange sun is sinking and they have to turn back, leaving behind the petrol silos, the refinery and the silhouettes of the cranes at the wharf end of the street, clawing at the sky.

  They are turning back because Aunt Katherine will arrive soon. The second visit in two days. And Vic’s night off will be lost to him. He and Rita turn back so as to be home when she arrives: Aunt Katherine, whom Rita sees as History and whom Vic sees as Family — a hand that held his and made the world child-sized while he was growing into it, and which, now, will not let go.

  33.

  Webster and Skinner Observe Each Other

  It is late in the afternoon. The bulldozer is silent, parked at the edge of Webster’s land. The shrubs have gone, the hollows are levelled. Webster’s ground is already beginning to look like a building site. One bulldozer can do that. A bulldozer can do a lot, and very quickly. The pines are still there, but the world around them has changed and they have lost their function. Whatever it was in the first place. And the world to Webster is a functional place. Functional, in the minds of some people, might be a back-handed compliment, even a dismissive expression. But not to Webster. To Webster, objects matter in the world only in so far as they are functional. In his West Essendon factory, Webster (now that he is not manufacturing bullets for the Owen machine gun) has reverted to what he always did — making parts that mean nothing in themselves until joined with other parts manufactured in other factories. When these parts meet, they become whole: a functional object such as a lawnmower or wheelbarrow. And as he looks at the flat scrubby land around him, he sees blocks of land awaiting houses, houses that will grow lawns for his mowers to tame. Within days the ground around him has been levelled; shrubs, trees and old fence posts from a farm that once occupied the land have deferred to the will of Webster. Two acres of flat, level land have emerged and the site is marked out. Concrete will soon flow, foundations will appear. A factory will be born.

  Webster’s world is taking shape: a world of squares, rectangles and right angles. And not simply on the factory site but also where an old mansion (currently unoccupied, left over from the early days of the settlement) is being renovated for a new age, a new phase in its history. For just as this site will soon become Webster’s factory, the old house will become Webster’s mansion, and the ground upon which it sits Webster’s estate. It is all in the plans that he has with him, rolled up under his arm, which he has memorised. He can see it all: Webster’s world. He has visualised it all so often, and now, in the fading light of the afternoon, he registers the thrill of watching it all come to life. Just as he imagined it. A world unto itself.

  He strolls about, mentally building it all from the ground up, then finishes at the row of pines at the edge of his property and steps through them, finding himself gazing at the railway lines and the silos of the flour mills, towering over the land like a medieval fortress. The dying glow of the mid-winter sun falls over the walls, bathing everything in an ancient light, and Webster knows, without doubt, that he has found his place: the land, the sky, the sun for which he was destined, the dying light of which will glow in the gardens of his estate as it does now over the open paddocks of the community. Here he will create a factory and he will create a suburb. And he will know every worker’s name and what they earn, where they live, the number of children in their families, and what they do when they’re not standing at his machines pressing scrap metal. For in Webster’s world Webster will be all-knowing.

  And it is then that he is seized by the impulse to know more of this world beyond the immediate boundaries of the factory site and mansion. He leaves the pines, steps out over the railway lines, and, passing the flour mills, enters what his map tells him is the Old Wheat Road. It is dirt, with dirt footpaths either side, and double-storey shops from another era. Not much. But all of this will change. And it will be Webster who brings that change with him.

  For Webster is young. He has fire in the blood. In fact, there are times when Webster feels as though it’s not blood running through his veins but molten metal. Pure energy. Pumping through him. Enough for two lives. And this is the domain for which he was destined. The sleepy world to which, driven by the fire in his veins, he will bring change. Webster, his factory. The two synonymous with each other. So that in time (and not much at that) he will simply become known throughout the suburb he is summoning into existence as Webster the Factory.

  Past the old wooden church to his left (the name of which he will soon learn, St Matthew’s), he leaves the Old Wheat Road and enters a dirt track that may or may not have a name and comes to a stop at a farmer’s fence. He can see cows, perhaps a dozen, and an old, solid, established farmhouse. The sort of house that speaks of generations of living, and he is contemplating this when he notices, for the light is fading rapidly, someone standing at the back of the farmhouse. Over the paddock he can make out the snowy hair of what he assumes is the farmer, standing at the back of his house, contemplating the land he has looked upon, more than likely, all his life. If the light were better, Webster would see that he wears the clothes of another era. But he knows, all the same, that he is looking upon what was. That it is the Past standing at the back of the farmhouse (and at a rather odd angle), and that, he, Webster, is the Future.

  After a minute he realises that the old man hasn’t seen him, has not, in fact, even looked in his direction. His eyes, Webster assumes, are fixed on some distant point, and it is then that Webster follows what he calculates is the old man’s line of vision and comes to an abrupt stop at a tent, glowing in the late-afternoon light. A tent? Webster gazes upon it, puzzled by its presence. It is glowing because someone has lit a lantern of some kind inside the tent. And it puzzles him because the tent and its glow have lit in him some unexpected, undefined emotion. Then, and it comes as quite a shock, he realises that it is happiness. And not just happiness; he knows in his blood that it is a moment of well … pure happiness that the sight of the tent has recalled. And recalled from another time, another place. Which to Webster is deeply puzzling because he thought he was happy. He is on the verge of watching his dream materialise, and all that he has worked for becoming fact. No longer the stuff of dreams. Then this tent, and its glow. And a different kind of happiness altogether wells up in him. But why? And it is then that he remembers the holidays of his boyhood. Webster, the only child, and his parents, setting up a tent by a stream or in a farmer’s field
. Everybody clambering in, and the lighting of a lamp. The wind outside in the trees. The tent glowing in the dark. A world unto itself. And it is while he is staring at the tent, then back to the farmer, that the farmer turns and sees the solitary figure standing at his fence in the fading light. And, having been seen, Webster raises his arm and waves, the farmer waving (if, it seems to Webster, a little warily) back at him.

  Does the farmer know who Webster is? If so, does that explain the hint of wariness in his wave? Webster looks up to the sky, the last of the sun fading on the flour mills, and knows he should return to his car (his Bentley parked by the factory site) before the country darkness descends upon him. He turns back briefly in the direction of the tent, that feeling of pure happiness, like the memory that inspired it, having faded. He shrugs, eyes the old farmer who has now turned his attention back to the glow of the tent, and begins retracing his steps, to the levelled ground of Webster’s land, the place that will soon become Webster’s domain. A world unto itself.

  Skinner takes his eyes off Katherine’s tent, for his peripheral farmer’s vision tells him that there is someone else on the horizon. And although the light is thickening, he can still see the clear outline of someone standing by his paddock fence. Furthermore, he knows who it is, by repute, if not by name. He knows that this is the factory owner who has acquired the land that was once an adjoining farm. Just as Skinner’s land will one day be acquired. And when the factory owner raises his arm and waves to Skinner, Skinner returns the wave (the second time he has waved to a stranger today), albeit warily. For Skinner knows it is shadowy figures like this who are the Future, those who come to look briefly upon the world that they will erase. And so when Skinner waves, it is not a greeting (for a greeting contains either cheer or welcome) but more an acknowledgment, nothing more, nothing less, that the shadowy figure who brings the Future with him has arrived, and that he, Skinner, will not be going into that Future with him. It is a simple acknowledgment of the fact that the old is giving way to the new. That it has always been like this and always will be. History finds us useful for a time, then History moves on as History does.

  Skinner turns back to Katherine’s tent, and as he does so he is aware of that shadowy figure by the fence slipping away into the half light. But his eyes are fixed on the tent, his mind upon the glow of its promise and what might have been.

  And it is while Skinner is contemplating this, and while the shadowy figure of Webster is withdrawing from the picture, that the light is extinguished and the glow disappears. And soon Miss Carroll emerges from her tent, carrying what appears to be a small overnight bag, and starts walking up the dirt road that borders her property, towards the Old Wheat Road. Come into my tent, you simple man, and together we shall sit … His impulse is to wave (for the third time that day) but he doesn’t. He decides that she would not see him in this light, even if she was looking in the direction of his farmhouse, which she is not. In fact, it seems to Skinner that she is studiously not looking in his direction. There is also that part of Skinner that does not want to be observed standing at the back of his property, staring out over his paddock in the direction of Miss Carroll’s tent. For Miss Carroll, in observing him, may well come to the conclusion that this is not the first time that Mr Skinner has stood there. So he doesn’t wave.

  Unobserved, Skinner watches her pass and can’t help but wonder where on earth she might be going at this time of the day, which is rapidly turning to night. He watches until she disappears into the Old Wheat Road. And with nothing left to look upon, Skinner turns back into his house and closes his door on the scene.

  34.

  A Victorian Lady

  At first, Rita doesn’t recognise her. Aunt Katherine is not quite a different woman, but Rita had to look twice to confirm that it was, in fact, Aunt Katherine. For this is an Aunt Katherine that she has never seen before. And neither has Vic, for that matter.

  The hair, which always looks as though it has simply settled wherever the wind has blown it, is brushed and combed and tied at the back into a white-and-grey bun. A bun that Rita can imagine Katherine wore when she was a girl, and as a young woman. The sort of bun that women from the age of Queen Victoria would have worn. In fact, Aunt Katherine is a kind of echo of the portraits of Queen Victoria that still hung in classrooms even when Rita was a school girl. And the face. There’s powder on her face, Rita observes (in the light of the hallway where she is standing, staring at Aunt Katherine). And lipstick. And something around the eyes. Not much. Not showy. But just enough to make a different Katherine. Enough to make Rita look twice.

  And the clothes. Gone are the dark sacks she always seems to be throwing over herself — or, perhaps, it is always just the one sack. They are gone, and in their place is a long, black skirt, ankle length, and a black, button-up top. Both of which, like the bun that her hair has been brushed into, have the appearance of clothes out of another era. The sort of clothes that women don’t wear any more. But it is clear that Katherine once, on special occasions, wore them, and is wearing them again. They are her clothes, from her era, and she stands before Rita in the doorway like a perfectly maintained and outfitted Victorian lady of a certain age.

  And while Aunt Katherine could never have been called attractive, she is what the age that bred her might have counted as pleasantly plain. Modestly so. In short, respectable. Which is the last way that Rita would have described her, until now. And it is a lesson. That people can surprise you. That they have different faces. That people might easily contain people, who contain people, who contain more. And Aunt Katherine may very well be one of those.

  For a moment she reminds Rita of those bush women in the stories they read at school, who dress in their Sunday best for no one, and walk bush tracks, promenading for no one, because it keeps them in touch with the way they once were. But Katherine is not dressed for no one. And she is not sad like the women in those stories. Rather, she is impressive. A Victorian lady, with all the authority of her kind, standing on Rita’s doorstep, even a touch of the regal in the tilt of her chin, her face in half-profile. An expression that says she speaks plainly, and will accept no nonsense; the same no-nonsense bearing that once spoke for an empire that isn’t any more. For it has been swept away by the sad and violent years, and only the legacy and the left-overs of it will continue into this post-war world that Vic and Rita are entering, and which Aunt Katherine will not.

  And Rita is not sure how long she has been standing in the doorway staring at Aunt Katherine, at this figure that seems to have just popped out of History. And what’s more (and, she knows, ridiculously so) there is a part of Rita that is not quite sure how to address this figure. There is almost an impulse to curtsey. So she doesn’t know how long she’s been staring at Aunt Katherine without speaking, but it must have been long enough, for she suddenly hears Aunt Katherine’s voice informing her in the plain-speaking manner of the Victorian madam that she doesn’t intend standing in the cold all night. And, with the voice, the familiar Aunt Katherine returns.

  In the kitchen, Vic, too, is struck by the transformation in Katherine and watches his aunt, as he has never seen her before, sit at the table and delve into a shopping bag she has with her and extract a pair of black leather, ankle-high shoes. Her best shoes. Shoes that she must have had for years and worn rarely, for they are the sort of shoes you don’t see any more, but which look, nonetheless, new. The shoes she is wearing, Vic notes, are caked in the mud of the paddocks, the sodden ground upon which her tent sits, and the dirt tracks that call themselves streets and roads along which she would have walked to get to the station. These shoes she now removes and replaces with her best.

  She looks about the kitchen, from Rita to Vic — Katherine: the wild, pioneering woman who lives in a tent on the fringes of the city, who has pitched her tent all over the country, wherever the fancy took her, and always gone her own way, outside of, even indifferent to, society. And Katherine: the complete Victorian madam, from bun to shoes, what
the age that bred her might have counted as pleasing while not pretty, even plain, but imposing all the same, carrying in her bearing and manner, and in her upright carriage as she now stands to leave, the full weight and authority of an empire that no longer exists.

  35.

  The Subject Is Unobserved

  If anybody notices the elderly, Victorian-looking woman, it is only in the form of a passing glance. For the gallery is crowded, the walls are covered in images of the city and all that the sad and violent years have thrown up, painted by as many artists as there are paintings on the walls, and the spectacle of an elderly, Victorian-looking woman warrants, if anything, only a passing glance. Somebody’s grandmother. Even when she stands directly in front of the portrait of the wild-eyed, grey-haired woman and her tent, nobody gives her a second look.

  Which suits Katherine because she is free to stand in front of the thing and study it, without being studied herself. The Katherine in the painting and the Katherine standing in front of it are, it seems, two separate people. Enough for the subject not to be noticed, even when she is standing this close. And even taking into account that this particular painting occupies the most prominent place in the gallery. It is not, Katherine observes, the first painting you see as you walk in, but it does command your attention the way the most significant works in a gallery do. And Katherine is in a position to make such judgments, for not only is she a reader, she has also seen the most important (and the less important) galleries in the country during her travels. And this painting, this woman and her tent, is clearly one of those paintings that demands a prominent place. And she takes immediate pride in this. It is, after all, her. And those who have come to the exhibition (and there are many) file past and pause before this painting, and for a considerable time. But Katherine goes unnoticed.