Spirit of Progress

by Steven Carroll

  The observation deck of the last carriage disappears and the sound dies with its disappearance. All that remains is a trail of white-and-grey smoke and the faint scent of cinders falling on the paddocks. All is quiet again, leaving Katherine, a lone figure, standing on the dirt road that leads to St Matthew’s, whose bells, which she listens to from her tent in the evenings, will toll for a different age now.

  It is because she has risen early, to beat the sun, that she has seen it and heard it. The Spirit of Progress on the last part of its run after travelling through the night while she slept. And as much as she knows she won’t travel on that train or see the worlds it takes you to, she knows that she wouldn’t even if she could. For it would not just be another world it would take her to, but the wrong world. She would arrive and find herself in the wrong place and the wrong time, like some traveller who has forgotten the way home. Or can never return.

  No, this is her time and this is her place. She will see through the last of her time, then leave the world to others, such as Vic and Rita and their child, Michael, who is now five months old. And so, having been distracted by this train for the short time it took to break into view and disappear, for the brief time it took to shatter the stillness of this little community before returning it to its daydream calm, Katherine resumes her walk to the shops, conscious once again of the effort. A reminder that sooner or later the dutiful servant that is her body will retire and leave the mind that it once housed nowhere to go but elsewhere.

  38.

  A Goodbye of Sorts

  As much as Sam thinks he is alone, he isn’t. Removed from the crowds and the streamers and the noise, Tess is standing in the shade of a dockside building (its green army paint, slapped on only a few years before, peeling in the mid-morning sun), staring up at the liner in front of her, the prow of which is pointed towards the great world. A few years ago they would have been waving troops goodbye; now it’s war brides and the likes of Sam.

  At first she couldn’t spot him. Even thought she’d never see him in this crowd and that the whole exercise was a waste of time. He might even have been inside. In his cabin and away from view. Then she saw him. Sam alone. Nobody watching him. The unguarded Sam, upon whom she now concentrates. He is leaning over the railing, eyes on a group of women below him, although it’s difficult to tell from this distance. Vaguely aware of the January heat rising, even in the shade where she stands (her white cotton hat in her hand), she carefully observes the last of Sam. Sam, before he is changed by the years and by elsewhere into another Sam that she might not recognise should he return. The unguarded Sam. The way he is when nobody is watching. And, of course, nobody is. Not as far as Sam is aware. So it’s a form of spying, really. And part of her wonders what she would do should he look up and see her standing there, a distant white figure in shade, daubed into the background of the scene. A couple of bold brushstrokes. What would she do? Look the other way? Pretend she’s not there? Or just wave back? But he won’t look up. She’s safe. He’s looking at the crowds below, not the figures in the shadows — daubs of paint.

  She would never have known he was leaving if it weren’t for George. Sam had mentioned it in confidence to George. And George had mentioned it to Tess, in confidence. It was all a bit silly, really. Why all the secrecy? All the same, if George hadn’t told her she’d never have known and would not (after a long and spirited debate with herself) have come and had the chance to say goodbye. If that is what this is. Can one person say goodbye? If we say goodbye without the other person knowing, is it a goodbye at all? Or is that just one half of a goodbye? It’s like, muses Tess, one of those philosophical propositions about trees falling in the forest when nobody sees them and whatnot. She’s saying goodbye and she’s not. It is, she concludes, a goodbye of sorts. The best she can expect in the circumstances. But if George hadn’t told her she’d never have known and would never have had this much. And, for this reason, part of her is annoyed. But the wiser part knows that this day was always coming. If he chose to slip away without notice, that was his choice. Just as it was hers to be here and say a goodbye of sorts. The best that could be expected under the circumstances.

  Besides, she knows this much of him at least. That he’s the sort that just slips away, nobody watching. The solitary departure. And she nods, a moment of silent understanding. Yes, if she were leaving, she’d slip away too. She knows this much of him and she knows this much of herself.

  And he seems happy. It’s difficult to tell, though. There’s no great smile on his face and he’s not laughing. But something tells her he’s happy. And it occurs to her that, even though he’s in the midst of the crowd, he’s also watching it. Removed from it. Everybody else, it seems, has somebody to say goodbye to. But not Sam. Sam has no such distractions. Sam is slipping away. And so he is free to observe the spectacle in a way that the spectacle isn’t.

  Then that sound, the long, baleful moan of the liner. Once, twice, three times. And soon the streamers snap and fall, and something final gives way in Tess as well. Something she hadn’t expected but should have. Goodbyes are like that, even goodbyes of a sort. As the boat leaves the docks and begins to move away, quite quickly it seems to her, she steps from the shade (which is diminishing as the sun travels higher in the clear blue sky) and walks towards the edge of the docks, not caring now if she’s spotted or not. But she won’t be, for the crowd is all arms and hands and sound. One sound. And it is then that she raises her arm and waves as the crowd waves, for she is free now to wave in a way she wasn’t before. She is in the midst of the crowd and won’t be seen. The minutes pass. And although the liner is large, it is surprisingly swift and rapidly becoming distant. And, once again, she asks herself if a wave that won’t be seen constitutes a goodbye at all, and arrives at the same conclusion. And all the particular goodbyes that everybody came to say become, as the ship slips further and further from them, a general goodbye. The goodbye of the crowd, which she has just joined. And people are waving now, not because anybody can see them, but, Tess concludes, for the record.

  And Tess, too, waves for the record. Stands and waves. Then just stands there, the splash of the water below barely audible, the seagulls circling above. Then the wake subsides, the gulls move on. And still she stands there; ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, she’s not sure. Until the ship passes from view. And the last of the crowd, those who wave for the record, disperses because there is nothing left to wave to.

  There will be other days, other boats, other crowds. But this ship had to be farewelled all the way into elsewhere. That is why she is still here. As much as anything, she is saying farewell to a phase in her life that she knew, even while it was happening, would never come again. Not even for a day. And so, having said a farewell of sorts, the story feels like it has been given the ending it had to have. And with every ending comes a beginning. Even though it was a goodbye of sorts, it has at least, or so it seems right now as she leaves the more or less deserted docks (covered in today’s streamers, which will soon be swept away by the sea breeze to make way for tomorrow’s), given her this much.

  39.

  Heaven and Earth

  It’s another world in the basement. Others, such as Sam and all the rest of them, might travel to the ends of the earth to find elsewhere but George finds it right here, under his nose. In the basement of the newspaper offices, watching the first edition of the morning paper coming off the presses. George is years from dying but he sometimes imagines that if he were ever granted a choice of where to die it would be here in the basement, in this newspaper world in which he now spends so many of his days and nights.

  Sam, he calculates, checking his watch, will be somewhere in the Great Australian Bight. Or so he imagines. He’s not really sure how fast boats travel. When George said goodbye the day before (telling Sam that he wouldn’t be at the docks, and Sam telling him that he didn’t want anybody there anyway) he couldn’t help but notice that Sam had the eyes of someone who wasn’t coming back, whose
eyes were fixed on the horizon and the great world out there. On George’s desk upstairs is a row of books: fiction, poetry and criticism. Books that have been with him for most of his adult life, which he dates from an afternoon when, at the age of eighteen, he picked up a copy of The Great Gatsby and read it from cover to cover in one day, telling himself as he put the book down that that was it, that was what he wanted to do. That or nothing. No in between. They’ve since been read and re-read, this row of books, this private canon. But these days they represent the life that he walked away from, the life he’d committed himself to at eighteen, the ‘that or nothing life’ with nothing in between. Once it was everything. And whenever he thought of himself, throughout his university years and in the Education Corps where he saw out the last of the war, biding his time, whenever he imagined himself in the years to come, he saw himself as a solitary figure seated at a desk, head bowed in concentration, a lamp to light the page. And heaven just above his bowed head. One part of him in this world, the other above it all. Whenever he sought to define himself, it was in terms of this image. And it stayed that way until the newspaper editor offered him another possibility, another life altogether. Once, the life of the solitary artist was everything. Then it wasn’t. And, in the end, he’d like to think he chose earth rather than heaven. But he will keep those books and part of George will always hang on to that image of himself, like a snapshot of a younger self, and occasionally wonder what if … and, what if? But not really. For those books will become a record of the life he walked away from. And would walk away from again.

  In the end, his steps had led him here, into this windowless basement with the continuous rumbling of the presses all around him, with the ink-stained hands of the operators and compositors, and the smell of cigarettes and ink everywhere. Rising up from the presses: noise, ink and smoke. This, to George, is the heart of things. This is where words, dreamt up in somebody’s head, meet ink and paper. Where the abstract becomes concrete, where it achieves touch and smell, dragged down from the heaven of someone’s mind and into the earthly world of sensation. Into the earthly world of newsagents, milk bars and street corners. And immediately. No waiting. No sooner thought than written and out there in the world. It’s a miracle to George. The whole world of the mind, becoming words that will enter other minds by being read. And, in being read, in entering someone else’s mind, these words fulfil their function. And the minds that dreamt them up and those that read them are less alone. And one’s experience of living is that little bit less isolated. No longer in the head but in the world. Shared. And immediately. Which is what George encountered when he first came to the paper. That shared experience of writing and reading. And readers. Readers on a scale he had never imagined possible before. And this is where it all comes to life, day after day, night after night, in this inky underworld of rumbling presses and shifting, shadowy figures such as George.

  He doesn’t have to be here but he has become increasingly enthralled by the sight of this miracle coming together and rolling off the presses, so that the continuous conversation between people who have never met and who don’t know one another, but feel as though they do, may continue. No, he doesn’t have to be here but he is drawn to the place. Even fascinated by it. Here, where the abstract and the concrete meet, where they are bundled up and sent down long chutes to be loaded into waiting trucks and vans and delivered into the world. And this will not change throughout his life, nor will the thrill of being here ever leave him.

  When the first of the papers leaves the offices, George takes the stairs up to his desk, picks up his coat and briefcase and calls it a day, even though it is approaching midnight. The street is deserted. The trains have stopped and the rail yards opposite the offices are quiet. The only sound is the revving of the trucks as they roll into the street and begin their rounds.

  The night is January warm, and as he strolls towards Swanston Street where he will catch the last tram, he carries with him, under his arm, the first edition of the morning paper, which he will read on the tram. And with that expectation comes the thought that he may well be the first reader. And that the first reader is always privileged, a sort of Crusoe on the beach, before the first footprints appear. But as much as he entertains this speculation as his tram arrives and he steps on (for George has, and will always have, the habit of playing with fanciful speculations at idle moments), he is also mindful of Sam, rolling with the waves of the Great Australian Bight (or wherever he may be), and wondering if Tess went to the docks that morning, and, if so, what sort of goodbye they shared.

  40.

  Singapore

  This is not his usual watering hole. This is not The Railway. This is what some people might call a famous pub, Vic snorts, if famous is the word. It’s old. Maybe that’s it. And the Americans drank here. The Americans drank everywhere, but especially here. Soldiers from everywhere drank here. Maybe that’s it too. But still, it’s quite a rundown pub to be so well known. For people to go out of their way to be here.

  Vic is not on his bicycle today. After his shift he took the train from the yards to Flinders Street Station, from where he would take the train back to Rita and the baby, Michael. But standing on the platform in the mid-afternoon heat, he thought of dropping in for a pot. Just the one. And so here he is standing at the bar of a pub into which he rarely steps.

  And it is as he is about to finish the pot of beer and keep his promise to himself to leave that he turns his attention to the figure beside him at the bar. He has been faintly aware of someone beside him but is in no mood for conversation. As he puts his empty glass down on the counter he glances at the figure and realises he knows him. But from where? He also knows that there is no time for conversation, that he must leave, and so decides not to dwell on where or when they might have met and is about to leave when the figure beside him turns and looks at Vic. And, immediately, Vic knows there is recognition in that look. And as Vic steps from the bar, the man, whose face, Vic notes, is thin and whose eyes bulge, speaks his name.

  ‘Vic.’

  Vic stops. It is the sudden combination of face and voice that tells Vic who it is. The voice is shaky but still recognisable. The face, although it, too, is recognisable, is no longer the same. It bears only a resemblance to what it was. But enough. And without noticing, without being conscious of the move, Vic steps back to the bar and pronounces the man’s name in return greeting.

  ‘Alan.’

  As the name meets the face, Vic’s memory reconstructs it as it was only six years before. For this is one of the damaged. One of those who bring their damage back with them because they can’t help it. This Alan (and already their pots have been refilled and Vic has no memory of ordering them) is one of the old mob. His old mob. One of those with whom he spent his time in the army, before being called back to the world of engines and troop trains and supply trains. And in the public bar, which is quiet now but which will fill quickly near five o’clock when the office workers finish for the day, they raise a glass to the old mob. This is the life that could have been Vic’s. And this is the face that could have been Vic’s. Thin, eyes bulging. Lips that seem to be muttering even when silent. And as much as Vic wants to leave, he knows he can’t. Not yet. The time they shared will not allow it. Furthermore, this Alan has a story to tell (and Vic saw this from the start), just as he knew immediately that he has no choice but to listen until it is finished. And so they raise a glass to the old mob and Alan falls silent, eyes on the counter. And it is during this silence that their pots are refilled, and, once more, Vic has no idea who ordered them or if anybody did. But he pays, waiting for the silence to break, knowing that he should leave, but can’t. Not yet. Not until the story is told. And this silence, it occurs to Vic, is part of the story.

  Finally, Alan lifts his head, almost as if having forgotten Vic is there and only now remembering. ‘You keeping well?’

  It occurs to Vic that this is an odd question. One of those things you say because you feel yo
u ought to at times such as these. One of those courtesies that are observed because that is the way things are. Certain things haven’t been lost. Certain things have stayed in place. Not everything has been blown away. And, in the same spirit, Vic nods, indicating that he is keeping well, then responds. ‘And you?’

  Alan raises his eyebrows and turns the glass round on the counter. ‘I’m alive.’ And then silence. And it is during this particular silence, as the pub begins to fill, that Vic notes Alan’s index finger rise and fall. A gesture directed at the barman and which brings the response of two refilled pots.

  For a while they talk about the people they knew back then, with whom they shared that time. Names. And with the names, faces and stories come back to Vic as the last of the afternoon slips away and the pots are emptied and refilled once more. And again, as much as he wants to rise and leave, he knows he can’t. Not yet. For the time they shared must be marked with due respect.

  It is during one of the silences, the pub now quite crowded, that Alan turns to Vic and asks: ‘Do you know where we ended up?’

  Vic knows, but he says nothing, leaving Alan (whom Vic now remembers had a flair for birdcalls and once reduced a parade-ground march to laughter, and the march to a sort of stroll) to answer his own question. And amid the orders and shouts and the clatter of the public bar (all of which has an air of urgency because of the dwindling time) he turns to Vic, and, so it can be heard, almost shouts the answer.

  ‘Singapore.’ A brief snort that could be a laugh accompanies the utterance. A brief snort that says, what a joke. Singapore.

  In a sense, that is the story. And Alan has now told it. It is a one-word story, shouted across the public bar, but, quite possibly, drowned in the hum and heard only by Vic. But there will be details. For every story has details. And Vic now stands and waits for them, while also reminding himself that he must leave. But the details come slowly, and the story-teller cannot be hurried. For the details are painful ones. Vic hears that they, his old mob, barely fired a shot. About the death of so-and-so and so-and-so. The prison camp. And more death. And it is all told, it seems, in one or two-word sentences. Sometimes shouted. This story that could have been Vic’s, and which is anyway. So it continues, detail piled upon detail. One after the other. One, two and three-word sentences. A snort, a shake of the head here and there. And then the summing up. Singapore. End of story.