The Time We Have Taken (8 page)

L
ess than a mile from the school, as Michael sits at his staff-room desk and Lurch (cryptic crossword in front of him) lights the kind of old-fashioned cork-tipped cigarette that Vic smoked at formal social occasions, Rita takes Florentine writing paper from her bedroom drawer and begins with a simple ‘Dear Vic’.

She is then distracted by the day. A bright, autumn thing. Her roses, glowing in their second blooming like the whole street’s. The leaves of the birch, silver and green, in the centre of the lawn. The street is mid-week quiet, except for the stocky figure of Mrs K across the road pounding the summer dust out of a rug with hands and meaty forearms that look, equally, like those of a strangler and a pastry cook, for she is well known
along the street for her heavy Ukrainian doughnuts that come with at least three eggs. Having given the rug a thorough belting, she pauses and wipes her brow, for all the world like a peasant in a field of swaying wheat. She seems, this woman from a far part of the earth, to be no particular age. Or, one of those women who grow old while still young. She was old when she came here, not long after Rita, Vic and Michael did, and she’s just stayed that way. She hasn’t aged, because she was aged in the first place. But, Rita reflects, the poor woman might only be in her forties or less. She’s never really asked herself before how old Mrs K might be, and she now concludes that it’s impossible to say.

None of this goes into the letter. Dear Vic. At first it was odd to be writing to him, then she got to like it, and now (after seven quick years) she’s quite attached to what has become a weekly ritual. Did you know, she opens, that we’re a hundred years old? Not us, the suburb. Somebody’s got it into their head that this is the year — God only knows how — but it’s official. Centenary Suburb. That’s us. It’s going to be stamped on all official letters, she says. There’s going to be posters. Street signs will be altered. Names will be changed. There will be events. And she can see Vic laughing at all this because she is too. Then she adds that someone will do well out of all this — that mayor for a start. That the whole thing has a bit of a smell about it.

From there she moves on to the topic of the Webster house and Mrs Webster, then to Michael, who now talks to her like one of his students (and she wishes he wouldn’t). And the house. Michael is always telling her to sell it and go. And it’s always good when Vic says stay there, girl, if that’s what you want, in that way of his — and she can always hear his voice coming off the letter. The voice of her Vic, conjured up by his words, so that she doesn’t so much read his letters as hear them. And it doesn’t matter what he says; they’re usually about nothing much in particular. They never really told each other much anyway. It’s just good to hear his voice, and every time she opens his letters (and he’s a good letter writer), that voice is there. Vic’s voice. Vic’s words. No one puts words together in quite the same combinations and order as Vic does. So when she reads his words, his words are inseparable from his voice. And it’s not always like that, she pauses, reflecting on letters and styles. Most people don’t have a voice at all when they put words down. You can’t hear anything. But not with Vic. When he puts words on the page, he seems to throw the whole of himself into it — his whole body — like he does when he laughs. His whole body laughs when he’s
really
laughing, and his whole body writes when he’s writing.

And, as she finishes her letter and slips it into the envelope and addresses it to that little box of his at the post office, she wonders if he hears her voice as clearly
as she hears his. And there is also that part of her that wonders just how Vic is. How he really is. Because he never says. And she’s not sure if it’s her imagination, but his handwriting lately looks a little shaky. And it never did before. He always had such beautiful handwriting. Firm, flowing and confident, just like Vic. But it’s looking, well, it’s looking a bit old lately. And she can’t help but ask herself if the Vic she remembers,
her
Vic, is the same Vic who writes the letters and reads hers. Or has he changed like his handwriting? There’s nothing sadder than watching a big booming man grow old and shaky, until the boom goes out of him altogether. She’s seen it happen in others, big booming men, with booming laughs, and she couldn’t bear to see it in Vic. And there’s the silences between letters. They can go for weeks. And during them she’s always half waiting for the inevitable phone call in the night. For he lives alone, with a bunch of strangers for friends who’ll only talk to him as long as he’s propped up at the bar (and who probably couldn’t care who’s propped up at the bar beside them as long as someone is), and sometimes it can take days for anybody to find you. If something happens, that is. And that’s why she jumps when the phone rings at night. There’s a fatalistic part of her (which she sees in Michael too) that immediately tells her it’s bound to be bad news. Only it rarely rings at night, and she’ll be happy if it stays that way.

So when she writes these letters, she never says just anything, as though you’ve got all the time in the world to write a proper one later. Each letter counts. And every time she drops them in the post, she’s got to be content that she’s written the right letter.

She seals it and looks up. Mrs K has gone, the dust from the rug having been expelled into the still autumn air, and now, presumably, has settled onto the lawn and the flowers of her garden.

Such is the life of the street, and all the streets around it. And such is all she has to report. A rug is aired, a letter is written, and the voice of a loved-one returns for a moment while a silver birch glistens in the autumn sun and somewhere out there a committee prepares to sit. All around, the infinitely complex organism of the suburb is going about its business, unnoticed, and as unconscious of itself as the birch is of the pleasure its shining leaves give to anyone who cares to pause long enough to observe it.

S
he knows who he is, all right, the way you know things around the suburb. This is Rita’s boy, although he’s hardly a boy any more. She’s seen him round and about the suburb over the years. This is the first time they’ve met. And it’s an unsettling meeting. If that’s the word. Although his hand is shaking hers and his lips are turned up into a smile, his eyes are doing something else. They’re watching. No, more than watching. They’re judging. And although the smile is there, it comes with the shadow of a sneer. He is a teacher at the local school and he is on the committee because he is young. He is what they call the younger generation. Mrs Webster’s
round from home to factory and home again rarely takes in Michael and his kind, and this is the first time she has ever officially met him, or them, and both he and they have got her back up already. ‘Smug’ is the word that first comes to her, and ‘smug’ is the word that stays with her throughout the meeting. His lips curl into a smile as his hand shakes hers, but his eyes are judging her, and, she is convinced, he doesn’t approve of what he sees. And, what’s more, it is a judgment delivered with an air of invulnerability.

You can’t touch me, that look says. You ride through our streets like cardboard royalty, and, as you nod and greet the passers-by released from your factory floor or on their way to it, you register their weekly worth: Charlie Monger, foreman, forty-two of these new-fangled dollars and thirty cents; Les Lott, machinist, twenty-eight dollars and no cents; Teresa Krylov, secretary, not much. You ride through our streets like cardboard royalty and calculate the total cost of the labour you pass along the way. But you can’t touch me. I’m beyond your touch and your calculations.

This, sure as eggs, is what the look says as he smiles and shakes her hand, and this is what the look says to all of them throughout most of the meeting. He has this thing — they all do, this generation. This thing that is written into their features, this thing that enables them to smile and judge simultaneously,
this air of knowing more than they let on — this
learning
. For, in the end, it wasn’t speed that took Michael out of his street and his suburb — and, yes, she remembers how cricket-mad he was, as did the whole suburb. No, it wasn’t speed that got him out in the end; it was a university degree. And she inwardly pronounces the two words with deliberate, bouncing irony. It was this
learning
. The learning that they take with them wherever they go, and, yes, they will go places, this lot, for their learning is written across their faces. And there is a word for faces like Michael’s, the one that first comes to her and the one that stays with her throughout the meeting. And, for the one and only time in her life (if what his smile says is at all true — that he is beyond her touch), she deeply regrets that another human being is beyond her grasp. For, although she has affection for Rita, she has to confess that she would dearly love to wipe the smugness off her son’s face. Off all their faces, for that matter. Yet, as soon as she registers this thought, she corrects it. And not out of fairness or some inexplicable rush of generosity. No, it is simply that she knows such thoughts are the thoughts of the old, of those who, like her machines, have been superseded, and Mrs Webster is not yet prepared to call herself old.

It is not only Mrs Webster who is looking at the room differently now. So too are the others. Whether
it’s the hair, the sideburns or the amused look in his eyes as he takes in all their names, they can’t tell. But ‘smug’ is the word that occurs to all of them, although no one says as much. And Mrs Webster is seriously wondering if the damage to her dining room will be permanent. For it seems as though this revolution of which they all speak, this lot (and he does wear a red badge mysteriously inscribed with the word ‘moratorium’ on his coat lapel), in the same way, it seems to her, that the mayor talks of Progress, has already occurred and its representative is now seated among them, not so much as an equal member but as an inspector, here to report back later to all the others who, like himself, wear the red badges and amused grins of their kind. Their kind, and this Whitlam of theirs, who speaks to the whole country in the same way that Michael and his kind speak to the rest of us. This Whitlam of theirs of whom they speak as if he were not so much a person as a historical Movement. And, although she would never let on to Michael, she has, in fact, met this Whitlam of theirs at the opening of a new wing at a nearby hospital. He seemed, to her, to move about the room like a mountainous statue on wheels. And this mountain on wheels, she knew even then, was History. This much she felt compelled to concede. This Whitlam of theirs, this mountain with the gift of speech, who moved about the room like a public monument that knows its moment has come,
was History. The streets have not yet prevailed, but this young man is an intimation of what it will be like when they do. His presence is a disruptive one and there is a part of her that is not quite sure if she will ever be able to look at her dining room again without picturing the slightly raised eyebrow that she is observing now as the mayor (no doubt an amusing old geezer in Michael’s eyes, although only forty-three) explains the task of the meeting.

Michael is there at the invitation of the committee, but now they are all quietly wondering about the wisdom of their impulse. As a first-year teacher at the school — his old school — and someone still engaged in university studies, he is Youth. The quality they all mutually recognised they didn’t have and which they sought. Now all feel the disruption of his presence. All tacitly acknowledge, without even so much as the occasional communication of a raised eyebrow, that they have never really sat down with Youth before (not quite like this, not to make
decisions
) and there is a general, unuttered agreement that they don’t much like the feeling, especially with someone who has the air about him of sitting down to Sunday afternoon tea with the old fogies, someone who gives every impression of wanting to get away as soon as possible and who doesn’t say much because, presumably, he can’t be bothered. But, there you are, it’s done. And so they plunge onward.

It is an idea they seek. If they are to be Centenary Suburb then the activities must surely all revolve around something that could possibly be termed a Crowning Event. But what?

Silence settles on the room like a sudden dull patch in an otherwise bright day. This long silence — a thinking silence — is punctuated with sputtered suggestions (a concert, a ball, a gala cricket match) all of which are briefly considered then quickly dismissed.

It is then that Peter van Rijn, who has again said nothing to date, quietly suggests a mural.

‘A what?’ says the mayor.

‘A large painting on a large public wall,’ the vicar of St Matthew’s says, in the manner of a translation.

The mayor is about to do two things: tell the vicar that he knows perfectly well what a bloody mural is, and then laugh at the suggestion itself. But he sees the two priests turn to Peter van Rijn and nod, encouragingly. As does the rest of the table. He realises that the suggestion is actually being taken seriously, and he is a little tired of Peter van Rijn doing this, at the same time quietly congratulating himself now for having thrown that brick through his window all those years before.

‘He means,’ adds the priest of St Patrick’s, ‘something, well, for the purposes of illustration, along the lines of the Sistine Chapel.’

‘Yes, yes, I know what he means.’

‘Only not so grand, of course,’ he adds, with a nasally laugh.

There is a brief silence, then the mayor, reluctantly warming to the idea asks: ‘Do we have such a wall?’

Each member of the Centenary Committee then bows their head, each contemplating the idea of a high, wide public wall in a public place. And whether the sheer force of the thinking conjures up the wall, or the wall announces itself to the deeply preoccupied mind of the vicar of St Matthew’s, he finds himself saying, ‘Of course.’

All heads turn to him as he announces — as if it were perfectly obvious and how did they ever miss it — that the newly completed town hall has just such a wall in its grand foyer.

The mayor is about to quash the idea, as if the vicar is proposing to paint the entrance hall of his house, when the rush of enthusiasm silences him. There are general nods, each to each, young and old, and the mayor finds himself once again nodding.

The phrase ‘That’s it’ is uttered all around the room and everybody congratulates themselves on a job well done. But not completely, they all concede. For, what shall this mural be of? What will it depict? And then, as if all have hatched the idea at once — a mark of its inspired nature, too grand for a single
mind — they all announce, simultaneously, over one another, overlapping one another, weaving in and out of each other’s words, that this grand wall will depict nothing less than the history of the suburb itself, from its sheep-farming origins, when that first fragile shop went up, to now. Of course, ‘all’ doesn’t include Michael, who is smiling along with the rest of them, but it is a smile, Mrs Webster notes, of a different kind. Nonetheless, it is as though a wave of common thought has passed through Mrs Webster’s dining room and uplifted them all. As if the idea itself — the Crowning Event — came from out there somewhere. From the streets, the footpaths, driveways, sporting fields, the public and private houses of the suburb itself, and rolled towards them, gathering in momentum as it went, with the inevitability of an idea that had not been dreamt up but that had always been there waiting for its day to be summoned — as if the suburb itself had spoken
through
them. How else could they all think and utter exactly the same idea at exactly the same time? The vicar of St Matthew’s announces that there is, in fact, a German word for this sort of thing, then adds that it is so long he’s quite forgotten it.

And it is then, as everybody leans back in their seats and stretches, that Michael announces that he knows just such an artist. One who paints walls. One who has trained in Europe where great walls are
painted. He doesn’t say that this artist lives downstairs in Michael’s student house and that he is known only as Mulligan. Instead, he paints a picture of a latter-day Michelangelo with whom he happens to be on good terms, and the committee turns to him (pleased that he is actually talking to them, and noting with the collective pride of the suburb that raised him that he can actually string a sentence together), each of them now tacitly congratulating themselves on having invited Youth into their circle (and inwardly conceding that Youth might not be so bad, after all). And all the time they are secretly imagining a grand wall of truly majestic appeal, to which, one day, people would come from all over the suburb and beyond. A place of pilgrimage even, and all sprung from the inner circle of the Centenary Suburb Committee, now seated at Mrs Webster’s dining-room table.

But as Mrs Webster farewells them all from her doorstep, she is secretly eyeing a distant corner of the garden — Webster’s corner, where the garage is — and she is no longer thinking of public walls and crowning events, but quietly contemplating Webster’s one trifling infidelity.