Spirit of Progress (12 page)

A
s Katherine returns to her tent on a red, rattling train, the likes of which once took young soldiers from the training camp just north of her land to strange-sounding places such as Gallipoli and El Alamein (and Katherine remembers those trains — two wars, same trains), and as Rita contemplates the distracting blessings of History blowing in unexpectedly through the front door, Sam has been at work on a large board for hours. But if you were to ask him how long he’s been at it, he wouldn’t know. Sam has long lost track of time. Four hours, five? Who knows? But a painting has appeared. At least, that’s the way it seems. Of course, he knows he has painted it. There is nobody else in the room, and there has been no invisible guiding hand. It is his work. It wasn’t there when he stepped off his bicycle and walked into his studio, but it is now. And it is almost finished. It has appeared, and very quickly, for that is the way Sam works. Sam is not one of those painters who slowly layers
brushstroke upon brushstroke, building a picture up over days, weeks or even months. For better or worse, Sam works with the kind of speed that characterises the century into which he was born. Sometimes he has produced two or three paintings in a single day. It is his way. But, at the same time, it is cause for wonder whenever he steps back and sees that a painting has appeared. It is a cause of reflection too, for there is a part of him that wonders, each time, how long this can go on. How long before, one morning, a painting doesn’t appear. Then doesn’t appear again. But now he casts the thought aside as he brushes in the sky.

It is nearly done. And all, seemingly, without conscious thought. If he has thought of anything at all throughout the whole afternoon in which brush and hand moved across the board, it is of the cows in Skinner’s paddock. A cow stands in a paddock under a blue, winter sky munching grass, thinking nothing. That is the process. Sam paints like a cow munching grass in one of Skinner’s paddocks. The munching does not require thought on the part of the cow. The munching almost takes place independently of the cow. Almost, Sam muses, staring at the painting, as if the cow is not a cow but a vehicle, a catalyst even, through which the munching conducts itself. The munching requires the cow, but the cow doesn’t know that. And Sam thinks of a catalyst because, like all of them, he reads Eliot. It is Eliot who wrote of the catalyst when talking about the process that has just produced this painting. And it is a process. Something that wasn’t there before (be it a poem or a painting) is suddenly there, in the
world, but the thing through which the process conducted itself remains the same. Unchanged. Inert. Cows. Artists. It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. Something happens that leaves Sam a spectator to the process, even though it is Sam who owns the hand that holds the brush that applies the paint (in this case a house paint called Ripolin) that takes on the shape, the colour, the form of a scene.

After staring at the painting, Sam notices that the light outside is fading, that it will soon be dark, and he switches on the light. And in the fading light of the day and under the glare of the electric globe, he completes the bold patch of blue sky in the right-hand corner (quickly applied) as well as the trunks of three spindly trees. With that the painting is finished (for Sam is also one of those painters who knows exactly when to stop), and the hand that held the brush now drops it onto his work bench.

The job is done. The scene is complete. A painting has appeared. An old white tent sits on a bare, scrubby square of land, brown and green and muddy. Shrubs and bushes hang on for dear life. A pile of firewood to the left, a small fire to the right. And in the foreground a white-haired old woman strides towards you, her right hand at her side, her left raised in angry protest, shooing you away. As he stands staring at the scene, Sam hears Miss Carroll’s voice again, fresh and sharp as it was earlier in the day when she told him to leave and pointed in the direction of his leaving. And, as well as this, Sam remembers the mud of the road you can’t see, the inland wind with the snow still on it and the faint smell of burning wood. He can visualise the scene
beyond the frame or, more correctly, beyond the edges of the board, for this painting will be exhibited the next evening without a frame. He brings all of this to the painting because he knows the place the painting comes from. And so even though he chose to work from the newspaper photograph in the end, he has been to the source, brought his knowledge of the place to the work itself, and because of this his painting of the photograph, he reasons, has changed the photograph. The two are not the same and his painting is not a copy. The photograph is now not alone. It exists alongside the painting and the one has changed the other, just as new works inspired by old works change them. Sam frames his thinking like this because, once again, he is drawing on the words of Eliot — and Sam, at once, believes it all and believes none of it. Such theory is useful. He takes none of it seriously and takes it all seriously. He will, in fact, paste the newspaper photograph and the article to the wall beside the painting when it is exhibited, so that people can decide for themselves and choose to believe all of it or none of it, to take none of it seriously or all of it seriously — to call it a copy or an original, art or a fake. The only change they will notice is the patch of blue sky in the top right-hand corner, which he added possibly to hint at a world beyond the scene (a hint of those other worlds to which he will go as soon as he can, but to which Miss Carroll will no longer go, her roving days now over), or perhaps because the painting just needed blue. He can’t remember. If he ever knew. He smiles. Just out of view he sees, once again, Skinner’s cows, munching grass under a blue mid-winter sky.

Then it is dark. He puts on his coat, picks up his keys and takes the board, the paint still not dry, from the easel, leaves his studio and begins the short walk to the gallery (the space waiting on the wall to be filled) where the painting, which he shall simply call ‘Woman and Tent’, will be exhibited the next evening.

V
ic, an hour before work, is cycling through the back streets of the city. There is little traffic, even for this time in the early evening. But Vic is not trying to dodge traffic; the fact is he likes these back streets with their old buildings (warehouses, shops, terraces and pubs, many left over from the gold rush days). These back lanes and bluestone buildings return the old city to him and it’s not hard, if you close your eyes, to hear the sounds of old times. For Vic is, at heart, a romantic. An artist even. With an artist’s instincts. But what type of artist? He’s neither a painter nor a writer, and although he has a natural ear for popular song, music does not spring from him. Nor anything else that people call art. So, if he is an artist, what type is he?

It’s a thought that puzzles him as he cycles along Flinders Lane. One that he dwells upon. Although he has never dwelt on such thoughts before, not in any serious way, it suddenly seems to him that there really ought to be
an answer to the question and that he should find it. He is, as he pedals across Swanston Street into the shadow of St Paul’s on the other side (and he would never phrase it like this right now or even think of it in these terms until later in life) beginning to engage with the age-old business of serious living. And central to it is finding out the nature of this ‘What?’ An artist without an art is no artist at all. And Vic, for the first time, is seriously dwelling on just what that art might be. As well as dancing to dancehall bands, Vic has also closely watched these bands
make
their music. And envied them. Envied them, he now realises as his pedals go round and round like his thoughts, because they are — how shall he put it? — expressing themselves. Releasing themselves, even. Yes, they have discovered how to make something of all those thoughts and feelings and impulses that come and go or come and stay, and which can fill whole days and the waking hours of the night. He has watched them all — the guitarists, the pianists, the trumpeters and the singers — and sometimes they look, against all obvious appearances, as though they’re not there at all. That their bodies are on stage but the part of them that makes the music is somewhere else. As though this thing that they’ve found has given them wings and they fly away. Perhaps that is what they’re doing when they’re expressing themselves. The expression releases them and they fly away.

Vic wheels into Russell Street, still contemplating just what it might be that he can call his art. But when he stops at the address on the card in his pocket, these thoughts suddenly seem a fanciful waste of time. He steps
off his bicycle and takes in the building in front of him. It is one of those old warehouses that brings back the old city to the likes of Vic, but which is, for the time being, an art gallery. And so, with his awkward rendezvous now upon him, he enters the building.

As Vic makes his way along Flinders Lane to the gallery, Sam leaves his studio with the painting of the old woman and her tent. It is an unwieldy size, too big to be carried under the arm. Besides, even though Ripolin is a fast-drying house paint (favoured, he is told, by Picasso, among others), parts of the painting are not yet dry. So he holds it by the edges, carrying it (facing inwards so that the street doesn’t see it) the short distance to the gallery. As he walks he can smell the paint, and the fact that the paint is still wet is exciting. This is how it should be. A painting is completed, a painting is exhibited, drying as it hangs on the wall, sparkling in all its newness. As new to the painter as it is to those who will view it. An old woman, Miss Carroll, strides across the wet, muddy grass of her lot of land, her arm raised, shooing away her visitors and their prying eyes — the image fresh and bright, the brush only just having left the board. In his pocket is the newspaper photograph that he will paste to the wall beside the painting, so that those who look upon the approaching figure of Miss Carroll, both in photographic form and in the painting, can decide for themselves. Is it a copy or an original? Art or a fake? Life or merely an imitation of an imitation? As he walks, Sam is conscious of not just carrying a painting, a portrait of what we were before we
entered these post-war years, but a challenge as well. And what’s more, a challenge that contains more questions than answers, and is happy to play with possibility rather than seek certainty.

For as much as this new world is called post-war, it will still carry, for a long time, the imprint of the sad and violent years. Of things that have long been considered beyond question, and of unquestionable certainties. Of choosing your sides (Left and Right, East and West), which Sam sees in the various alliances of painters and writers in this pressure cooker of a city, the radicals and conservatives, their arguments and the blows they sometimes come to — and all of whom will be at the gallery the next evening. For it will remain, this post-war world, a world of taking sides; of us and them, and nothing, no shades of difference, in between. So Sam is conscious of not just carrying a painting to the gallery but a challenge, a work that slips in between these opposing certainties to where those shades of difference lie. And, even as he carries the painting, he is aware of taking it all seriously and not taking any of it seriously. Of believing it all and believing none of it. And, with these thoughts, he tells himself once again that if a revolution ever came about, anything like the one many of the painters in this town want, then Sam would be one of the first to be lined up against a wall and shot. And this, playfully, leads to a brief contemplation of just who would shoot him, for he knows the types, and can even identify them, those with the disease of fatal purity who would blow his head away with impunity for a greater cause.

In fact, this pressure cooker of a town is still talking about the events of a few years before, even if the talk is less excited and less loud than it was then. Everybody still talks (serious talk and laughing talk) about the ‘affair’ that shook the city, the country and went over the seas. Two poets got together one dull afternoon at the Victoria Barracks, not far from where Sam is now, and armed with the most unlikely of books to help them created poems that were, to them, a joke. And all done that afternoon, or so they said. A laugh. A way of making fun of all those, like Sam, who read the poetry of Eliot and his kind. For the new poetry, this ‘Modernism’ with all its fancy ways, its fancy talk and terms, was, Sam gathers, gobbledygook to these two poets. And dangerous gobbledygook what’s more, because people actually took it seriously. So they thought they’d have a laugh. Catch a few people out, such as the editor of a magazine with whom Sam is friends. With this in mind they dreamt up this poet, wrote his poems (in the gobbledygook modern style), and sent them to the editor with whom Sam is friends, who immediately hailed the work as a major discovery. They even gave this poet a name: Ern Malley (who was conveniently dead). An unlikely name for a poet, Sam muses, but that was all part of the joke too. As was the fact that the manuscript was posted by his sister, Ethel, who confessed to not knowing much about art but thought somebody might be interested. Ern and Ethel.

Sam grins, then bursts into laughter because, well, it
is
funny. Ern and Ethel. Sam is laughing, not only because he can (that is, he is not the editor who was made to look
rather silly in the eyes of many people), but also because he takes all of it seriously and none of it seriously, believes it all and believes none of it. Part of Sam is also telling himself (something he could never say to his editor friend) that, well, you just had to hand it to them. Some stunt. Sam was, in fact, asked to paint the illustrations for the magazine, his friend the editor asking him to do so. And Sam, after thinking it all over, decided not to and said no in the end. Why? He still doesn’t know for sure. Perhaps somewhere in there he smelled a rat. Something wasn’t quite right. Everything was just a bit too convincing or convenient. Like those bodies that are washed up on enemy shores in wartime with all the right information on them, with the enemy’s battle plans sealed in waterproof briefcases. Somebody smells a rat. Too good to be true. In fact, Tess had said exactly this to Sam. Told him that something wasn’t right and cautioned him against having anything to do with it. So, in the end, Sam stepped back at the right moment rather than step in.

Which is why Sam, still continuing along the lane, allows himself a chuckle — because he can. Which is just as well, because this ‘affair’, and it has become an ‘affair’, is now famous, not just in this pressure-cooker town but all over the country and over the seas in other countries. But what Sam cannot really know for certain is that it will not just be famous for a few years, this season’s scandal, but for years into the future when this post-war world into which they are all stepping has spent itself, when the sides that split it are all fallen away and gone, when History has moved on as History will and History does. In that
impossibly distant world out there, people will still talk of this ‘affair’ as they do now, not long after the events themselves. And because this is a town that divides easily (in many cases, divisions that are never forgotten and never forgiven and which are taken to the grave), the town is still, as Sam turns into Russell Street, divided over the ‘affair’. Between those who think that those fancy modern types, with their fancy modern gobbledygook they call poetry, have now been shown a thing or two, and those who think (such as the editor of the magazine, who, in many ways, has no choice but to think this) that those two poets, in that afternoon of fun and laughs, and in the guise of a dead poet who never existed, let their conservative hair down, discovered other poetic selves they would never have discovered otherwise, and wrote the best poems of their lives.

Certainly, when Tess, who is waiting for Sam to arrive with his painting, thinks of the ‘affair’, she thinks of those two poets (whose names will never be as well known as the poet they invented) in the same way that she thinks of this miraculous assembly of artists she is about to exhibit to the city. She imagines (a speculation she once shared with Sam lounging in his studio, and which he now recalls) that the next year, or the next, or the next, they will become haunted by the thought that they might just have left their very best behind them one dull afternoon in the Victoria Barracks as the war played itself out. When they were not themselves but somebody else who never existed, but who, nonetheless, would become more famous than they ever will, and whose fame will haunt
them for the rest of their lives. At least, this is the way Tess thinks of the ‘affair’, not that either of the two poets (whom she has met) would ever say such a thing, or give any hint that they might have.

The chuckle having subsided, Sam carefully lowers the painting to the footpath at the front of the gallery and pauses before picking it up again and carrying this portrait of what we once were, this challenge (which
is
a challenge and not a hoax), inside to where a space awaits its arrival.

Inside the gallery, Tess has been waiting. Sam said he would deliver the painting that afternoon and she is waiting because she knows he will. She has watched him work and she knows from watching him that he works fast. He thinks about what he will do before painting, possibly imagines the whole thing before lifting a brush. And this is why he works fast and this is why she is confidently waiting. She has no doubt that any minute he will walk through the door with the painting and the empty space reserved for it on the wall will be filled. Her only regret is the presence of others in the room — two painters and the journalist, George, who writes the reviews. And she likes them all but would rather have the opportunity to talk to Sam alone, which she hasn’t done since they parted. Their paths cross these days and they talk, but it’s not the same talk. Not the talk of two people in love and alone, saying whatever they want. So when Sam arrives she will not be able to say what she wants.

The two painters are contributors to the exhibition
and not happy about where their paintings have been placed. They don’t say as much but they eye the prized space where Sam’s painting will hang, and while they don’t talk about favourites or Tess playing favourites, their talk and their manner imply as much. It is, she muses, unavoidable, possibly even good. All this tension. Everybody living so close to one another, everyone’s paths crossing all the time because the city is small as far as cities go and nobody can leave. As much as they want to leave, they’ve had to stay here all these years and see it through. But, unlike the others, Tess does not want this to change. And has never wanted this to change. She, more than any of the others, is in a position to see the talent that has miraculously assembled in this regional city, shut off from the great world by the sad and violent years of the war. They are, she has silently noted time and again, better than they know, and she, more than any of them, can see this. They are too deeply immersed in the moment they are creating to see this, too busy creating and fighting to notice, too preoccupied with wishing themselves elsewhere to see what is happening here. They miss all of this, but she doesn’t. And so, when they complain about where their paintings will be placed, when, without saying as much, they imply favourites and favouritism and look longingly at the space in the gallery reserved for Sam’s painting, it is all part of this moment.

And it is, she has long concluded, one that will never come again: this convergence of people, place and time. A small city, shut off from the world, bickering and
squabbling, both petty and grand, but bursting with its moment. They are a small miracle, this assembly of artists to which this room is testament, something that comes along once only, but they are too busy squabbling over whose paintings should go where to realise just what they’ve done.

And when she thinks of many of them, she gives them a name that has an irresistible aptness. She can’t help it. Like Dada or Fauve, it seems only right to her that they have a name. Even if nobody else knows it. Or ever hears it. And the one that comes to her, over and over again, is one of those funny names: Angry Penguins. The name of the magazine that printed the poems that launched the man who never was and created the ‘affair’. An odd name. A goobledygook one. But she likes it. Angry Penguin. Angry Penguins. Bright young things in dinner suits. Children, really. Gifted children, but children. Playing happily one moment, tantrums the next and at one another’s throats. Fins, like arms, flapping frantically. Yes, it fits, she muses, a Mona Lisa smile at the corners of her lips. Something irresistible to it. But as much as the thought appeals to her and irresistible as it may be, she keeps the playful thought to herself. Christenings have their time and place, and this is not it. Time will, in fact, eventually give them this very name, and a mystic smile will once again come to Tess’s lips when it does. But for the moment, they have no name; they are just this miraculous assembly that will not come again.