Spirit of Progress

by Steven Carroll

  48.

  Rita Calls on History

  It was the photograph that drew her. The newspaper is spread out on the kitchen table. And there, at the centre of the front page, is the photograph. Mr Whitlam smiles at the camera (but, it seems to Rita, it is not a convincing smile), and on one side of him is a gallery owner who is familiar to Rita because she is a society figure these days as much as anything else, and on the other side a painter. Something about the painter is familiar. But what? It’s a puzzle. Possibly the name. Possibly the face. Why should she feel as though she knows him? Or has met him. Or, if she’s never met him, why should she feel some sense of their paths having crossed? Somewhere, sometime, long ago.

  It is while she is reading the article that accompanies the photograph that the puzzle solves itself. The painter, who lives on a farm in Kent, has returned for what they call a retrospective. And it is while she is reading a list of some of the paintings in the exhibition that she comes across the solution to the puzzle: ‘Woman and Tent’. Aunt Katherine, of course. She has never been told the title of the painting (or has no memory of being told, or has just forgotten anyway) but she is convinced that this is the painting of Aunt Katherine. And there, standing beside Mr Whitlam, is the cheeky young painter who disturbed Katherine one morning in that long-ago world that was still hovering between one thing and another, between what went before the war and what followed. And she tells herself she must remember to let Michael know later in the day when he finishes teaching, little knowing that he has already seen the painting at the exhibition the previous evening.

  So this painter did become famous. Famous enough to be seen on the front page of the newspaper talking to a former prime minister, a former prime minister preparing for one last election with a confident smile across his face that doesn’t convince Rita and, she regrets, won’t convince many others either. But it’s not just the painter. Aunt Katherine has achieved a kind of fame too. Aunt Katherine, who only ever wanted to be left alone, will now have to put up with strangers staring at her. Gawking, even. Grinning at this curiosity. And, trapped within the painting, she will be powerless to stop them. Or shoo them away. For strangers will stare and gawk and grin at her forever now, and the only recourse left to her will be the waving arm of protest, snapped by a newspaper photographer all those years before, caught by the painter in one go, and now frozen in time.

  And it is while she is contemplating this that she suddenly decides to go there. To see Aunt Katherine. One final visit. It is also a way of filling her day, and Rita is increasingly conscious now of the need to fill her days. For since she stopped working, the days that are not filled with something seem, somehow, aimless. And so, instead of History calling upon her, she will call upon History.

  There are few people around and she is free to wander. She passes lines of paintings of landscapes and outlaws and outback types. And she is surprised to realise that she is familiar with them, asking herself as she strolls if this is a measure of fame, that we are familiar with someone’s works without knowing who did them.

  Then, there she is. From the moment she sets eyes on the painting she is immediately back there: the newspaper photograph, the table upon which the paper sat, Vic, the weight that would become Michael, the kitchen of that small weatherboard cottage they lived in that winter, the street, all the streets and all the houses, and the cranes from the wharves clawing at the sky — all spring up around her. And she sees Vic, whose ashes now reside in a small urn in a crematorium near that subtropical town by the sea to which he fled and where he spent all too freely and all too quickly the last years of his life, as he was that evening over thirty years before, Aunt Katherine sitting opposite, her request that he visit this painter having been made, and Vic, with resignation written all over his face, knowing that he had no choice but to go. All those years ago, but as clear as yesterday.

  The power of the painting to do that, to conjure up that world to which she is both irresistibly drawn and which she never wants to see again, is quite a jolt. But with the jolt comes the thought that others, these strangers who gawk and grin, may look upon this portrait of an old woman (whom, she notes with the hindsight of the years, was a lot more fragile than she let on), but they will never know it the way Rita does. Possibly even this painter himself, who lives far away, and has possibly forgotten all the details. But all Rita has to do is look upon the painting, and all the details, the big and the small facts that constituted their world then, are returned to her. And with this comes a sense of possession. The painting itself may not be hers (and it never could be for it is quite valuable now, she assumes), but the world it so effortlessly conjures up will always be hers. Others, strangers, may gawk or grin at this curiosity from the past, caught by the painter (as Vic always said, and Rita now agrees) in one go, but Rita will always see another portrait altogether, one that includes the world beyond the frame.

  It is this world that she takes with her as she leaves the gallery and walks towards the station and the train that will take her to the villa (and she smiles at the flowery language of the real-estate agent, for it is really just a sort of flat with a garden) in which she now lives. And although her villa is not a tent and although it is not on the edge of the city, she lives there by herself, and there is this vague feeling of carrying a little bit of Aunt Katherine back with her. Aunt Katherine and all those sisters, who could command rooms with their sheer presence and their talk, and who unnerved her so when she was young, but from whom she now draws surprising strength.

  And she takes that strength with her as she boards her train and looks about the carriage, vaguely wondering if she has now entered that phase of living where, in the eyes of others, you become a kind of History, a picture of things past, as, indeed, Aunt Katherine was for the short time Rita knew her.

  49.

  Old Streets

  Where was it? The café with the Russian-sounding name that they all went to and which always carried with it a touch of elsewhere. Sam has spent the morning strolling through the old streets. The streets that made him. The streets in which he acquired his skills. Where they had all argued and fought, before scattering into the wide world. But where they had all helped one another in ways that they never realised at the time, for the best of reasons, for the pettiest of reasons. In many ways (and this has long since occurred to him) they were an extended family. One minute talking calmly to one another, the next at each other’s throats. Yes, they taught one another more than they ever knew in these streets that made them. And you take your streets with you, wherever you go. Or even if you don’t go. For the places themselves are continually changing, and the streets in which you acquired your skills are only ever yours for a short time before they become the possession of others. And after they have passed into the hands of others they become memory. Then myth. This, Sam reflects, is the form in which we remember them. And the way we fashion these things and turn them into myth, Sam has also long concluded, may not be quite right or quite true. The details may be wrong, even. But they will be true in their own way. These streets may have passed into other people’s possession, but part of them, part of their history, will always be Sam’s. Will always be the possession of Sam and all of them, before they scattered into elsewhere and left it all to those who would follow. Here or elsewhere. It doesn’t matter where you are.

  Sam has long since cast off his concerns about forgetting. For some things you don’t forget. And that which you retain is what the memory has chosen to retain. So in many ways there is nothing to be gained by strolling round the old streets, for they are not the old streets any more. They have passed into myth. The mythic memories, thinks Sam, that’s what you want. And whether the details are right or wrong is no longer the point, or his concern. He no longer thinks of this as forgetting but rather his way of remembering.

  But it is not simply the old streets that have led Sam to reflect upon all of this. It was the phone call from Tess. Her voice was brittle. She was shaken.
Rocked, even. For as much as it may appear to the world that she possesses this unshakable, unassailable self, she does not. For he has seen the unshakable shaken. He retains the memory of Tess leaving his studio for the last time on the point of crumbling into everyday tears. Tears that he was not permitted to see. Only a hint of them, along with the regret in her eyes, and which, he knew, was mirrored in his. No, he has seen the unshakable shaken and it is like being condemned, or privileged, to be present when the mighty fall. And although Sam has forgotten all about the Dancing Man (for it meant far more to Tess than it did to him), he remembers the nature of her departure that afternoon, how she took her crumbling composure with her into the street so that he wouldn’t see it fall from her, for it didn’t matter that the street saw her everyday tears. So when he heard her brittle voice that morning on the telephone, this was the memory that rushed to meet him. And then she had said it, the reason her voice was brittle on this bright, sunny morning. George was dead.

  One of their number, one of those who had chosen not to scatter into elsewhere, was gone. And the society that had bound them together through the years, the society of those who were there, was now diminished. And it was this, as well as Tess’s voice, that had led him out into the city in search of old streets.

  So George was gone. George, who had chosen to stay. George, who made his decision all those years ago when the moment was upon him — and which he later related to Sam in that café, the location of which he can’t seem to remember. Instead he finds himself standing in front of where the studio of one of their number was, a painter whom everybody said bore more than a passing resemblance to Toulouse-Lautrec and who now lives in Italy. His old studio has been replaced by a multi-level car park. His mind is half on the studio, erased by Progress, and half on George. Did George ever regret his decision? For all the success it brought him, was there part of the George he’d first met still inside the public figure he’d become? The George who, like all the rest, had fixed his eyes on the horizon where elsewhere lay? And did he ever discover if the Place de la Concorde really did glide by in pink majesty as it did for Mr Fitzgerald? For it was one of those images that stuck with George, and he spoke of it often in that jokey, academic way he adopted from time to time: give my regards, he’d say, to the pink majesty of the Place de la Concorde, if, that is, it glides by thus for thee, as it did for Mr F. Or did he discover that everyone has their own Place de la Concorde and that these things will always glide by, to successive observers, draped in different shades of meaning?

  Vale George. And Sam waves him goodbye as he did to that phantom farewell party on the docks when he left this city all those years ago. Vale George. You were one of us, even if you chose not to scatter. And you will always be part of that society that binds us together. The society of those who were there.

  With these thoughts Sam gives up his search for the café with the Russian-sounding name (which nobody could ever pronounce or remember, anyway), and strolls back to his hotel.

  In a few days he will attend George’s funeral, farewell Tess, then fly back to his farm (no more need of boats) and, in the converted old stable, pick up the brushes and paints of his trade. But he will return. Every year he will return to this place he couldn’t wait to be shot of, but which, nonetheless, will draw him back again and again, the way elsewhere once drew him away.

  Epilogue

  France, December 1977

  The Travelling World

  His world, the suburb in which he grew up, travels with him. A living organism, evolving and growing as it travels. Still alive. Still expanding. A day doesn’t pass when he’s not back there, however briefly.

  And in the three-and-a-half hours it has taken to get from Paris to this small town in the west of the country, that world has travelled with him. As he looked at the view from the carriage window there were two landscapes, external and internal. And while it doesn’t seem so long since he left Paris, the distance makes it seem as though he departed yesterday, or the day before, or last week or last year, not this morning. And the young woman who sat upon her suitcase, and who, oblivious of everything around her, observed her morning ritual of pastry and coffee — where is she now? He didn’t see her get on the train and he didn’t notice when she got off. She was there and then she wasn’t. But she will always be there now. Part of that travelling world he carries around with him, the young woman who marked the passage of time while he contemplated the engines of his youth.

  The Paris train has departed. The platform is left to the few travellers who have alighted, and Michael picks up his bags and goes in search of the bus that will take him to the coastal town where rooms over the town hall wait for him. And as he makes inquiries, an expensively dressed, middle-aged couple whom the train has deposited here too inform him that the bus will not run again until the evening, that they are going his way and will drive him there. And so, within minutes, he is sitting in the back of a speeding sports car, racing through country lanes — postcard lanes — but not, he remarks to himself, the countryside of his youth. No, he was not made by a countryside such as this, but by wide paddocks of dry swaying grass and scotch thistles. And he no sooner thinks this than he sees it all again. The three of them, Vic, Rita and Michael, once more standing before the wooden frame of what will become their house, on the dusty dirt road that will become their street, in the rectangle of land that will become their world.

  Here, a voice begins (a voice that is both here and now, and there and then) as he speeds through the country lanes, here will be your home. Here, it says, is the place where you will grow. And here are the paddocks across which your legs will run and where they will become long from running all through the morning and all through the afternoon. And here is the house you will return to when the day and its games are done. Here will be the kitchen, here the lounge room where you will watch television when television comes to the suburb, just as one day you will hear the ringing of the telephone in this room, the telephone that will ring for good reasons and bad. And here will be your bedroom, where you will sleep and wake and from which you will run eagerly into each day because your legs will be long and in need of running. This is the wooden frame of fate that will be home, and which will never really be home but to which, nonetheless, you will run at the end of each day. Here, where you will hear things and see things that you were never meant to hear and never meant to see. Here, where the expanding universe of memory, which you will take with you wherever you go, will be born. And here, where thoughts will come and go and collide in the night as you sleep, your unconscious will release dreams of dazzling luminescence or moments of quiet and unquiet reflection. For the unconscious, this voice that is both here and now and there and then, the unconscious and all that living world it contains has a clock, and the clock is ticking. And, as time gathers and life becomes long, the clock of the unconscious will be prompted by this or that scent, sight, sound or sensation, the ticking will become louder, the clock will ring, and the magician of memory will pronounce the magic words that will release it all.

  And then, as the sports car weaves through the wintry green countryside, Michael is silently humming a tune, a foreign thing (as Vic called it) about the sea, about waves dancing in the Gulf de Lyon or somewhere far away, and he is wondering how on earth it entered their lives. For it always seemed to be around. Radio? Record? He is also contemplating the repercussions of such little accidents: the French windows of the old house and French songs, as the town, and one of its nineteen windmills, looms in front of him.

  When the speeding car stops outside the town hall, Michael jumps onto the footpath, gathers his luggage, farewells the couple (the local doctor and his wife, he has learnt), and watches as they speed away.

  He lifts his suitcase and looks up at the town hall, above which he will live for a short while. The place to which he has brought that living, expanding world. The place where he can bring those remembered days and nights, and, at the same time, have the distance to look
upon them as if they were other people’s days and other people’s nights. And where he can see that world of flat, dry paddocks and scotch thistle, as others might see it.

  It is an old theory. And a simple one. And, armed with it, he pushes open the giant wooden door of the town hall and enters the foyer, where he receives the keys that will unlock the rooms that he will fill with books and paper and where there is a desk (a painter’s table, actually, in a painter’s studio) upon which he will sit his typewriter.

  As he mounts the stairs, on the other side of the world, where it is already night, the Spirit of Progress begins its run. No longer gleaming deep blue and bright yellow the way Hope should gleam, nor looking, for all the world as if it is moving even as it is standing still, this train has become an old train. For History has moved on, as History will, and, in an age of gathering speed, the Spirit of Progress itself has been overtaken. And soon it will no longer run along shiny rails that converge but never meet and never end. Progress will reinvent itself and new trains will run along those shiny rails until Progress itself is once more overtaken and everything begins again. History will move on, leaving, as it does, just visible from its observation carriage, those whom it found useful for a time. And among them, a white-haired old woman in front of her tent — her arm raised in protest, her tent pitched at the very edge of Progress, at the very edge of this world and all the bright, shiny new worlds that will be, and have ever been — indifferent to it all.