Spirit of Progress (7 page)

V
ic slows his bicycle and hops off at his front gate. He wheels the bicycle through, his Gladstone bag carrying his tea and soap and swabs propped neatly between the handlebars, and removes the clips from his trousers. Inside, Rita sits and waits, her round body bearing the weight of the child who will become Michael. And even though she doesn’t know it yet (nobody will for some years to come), when the child does arrive and opens its eyes upon the world, she will not just be giving birth to the child alone; she will also, she will later discover, be giving birth to a generation. For just as the world that they are all stepping into will become the post-war world, and just as the phrase itself does not yet come so easily to her mind and to everyday talk, so too the name of this generation, like the child, has not yet been born and not yet been uttered. Eventually, economists and historians, or
whoever it is who puts other people’s lives in order and in perspective, will inform her that she was actually part of something much larger than she knew at the time, and that when she saw round women with bodies that had memories that went back a million years all around her wherever she looked, it wasn’t just her imagination. She will not just be giving birth to a child: she will be giving birth to a generation, the Baby Boom. Just as economies have booms (and busts), when the noise of production is everywhere, so too do populations. And sometimes those generations are given a name, as this one will. It will not simply be because their prams and faces will be everywhere; it will also be because of the confidence with which this generation will stride into life, for Michael and his kind will inherit a world of plenty that their parents only ever dreamt about. And the swagger they will adopt will be the swagger that comes with the assumption of plenty. The assumption of a future. The assumption, in short, of eternal Progress. Baby Boomers: a strange phrase, both Rita and Vic will think when they finally hear it, the sort of phrase invented by people who work in suits, in their spare moments when they put their feet up, to amuse themselves.

Of course, Rita doesn’t know any of this: that her roundness not only contains a child but a generation that will come as close as any generation in History to getting exactly what it wants. Or that its anthem will be Progress, and it will make History its own because it will write it.

At the moment, Rita is both waiting to give birth to all of this and waiting for Vic. As the front door opens she
looks up the hallway, not enough energy to rise. And as Vic enters the kitchen, the memory of the stick-figure soldiers and the fate that might have been his is still in his mind as he gazes upon Rita’s round body, containing the child that might never have been made had that fate been his.

Without speaking she points to the newspaper, spread out over the kitchen table, and watches while Vic studies the photograph and quickly reads the article. She smiles inwardly as he finishes, his face turning to the ceiling, his eyes rolling and his eyebrows rising, as she knew they would. He shakes his head quietly as he sits and asks Rita how it feels today, the roundness and the weight.

‘I’m walking like a duck,’ she says, then adds that she is too tired to stand and demonstrate the nature of this newly acquired duck walk. But there is just enough for a quack, which she delivers slumped in her chair, observing Vic’s grin and registering the boom of his big laugh that Aunt Katherine had so emphatically, and with that look in her eyes, warned her against. In the years to come, in the place they will go to live, that has open spaces so that the child’s long legs will have paddocks and fields to run across and so that the child will grow as naturally as a tree, one night in those not-too-distant years, she will hear Vic’s laugh in a crowd at a party and note that the boom has gone from it. Note that it is loud but not big any more. And this, and the fact that he will be drunk and saying silly drunken things, will make her sad. And it will not be a passing sadness but the kind of sadness that comes to stay when you finally recognise that something
is over, that it never lived up to what it could have been, that Aunt Katherine may well have been right, and that the question she posed to herself just before, whether she would do it all again, will be answered with more of a ‘no’ than a ‘yes’.

But tonight the boom is there in his laugh and his laugh is still big. Tonight she holds on to the hope that this roundness and its weight will bring laughter to the kitchen and, despite her tiredness, laughter rises from her too as her quack subsides. It is, she notes, the laughter of a happy room, laughter with the boom and the life still in it, and perhaps this is what her roundness and weight will bring more of. Laughter with the boom still in it, even if, at this moment, the only boom she knows about is the boom in Vic’s laugh, not the one to which she is about to give birth.

And it is then that she looks up to see Vic standing in front of her. With the sound of fading laughter still in the room, he takes both her hands, raises her tired frame, lifts her to her feet, puts his arms around her, starts to hum a tune that seems both familiar and new, and begins to dance. What’s this, she almost says. What’s this? And she can feel that there’s a light in her eyes. A hint of the light that was in her eyes when they first met, and which she was convinced everybody could see. The light that announced to the world that she’d met someone, without need of saying a word. That she was in love. That she had finally passed over the burden of her impossible innocence and was entering the world of experience. Everybody knows, she thought back then. Everybody.

And she was right. They’d have to have been blind to miss it. Love is a light. And with that light back in her eyes now, she also finds energy that wasn’t there a minute ago. Suddenly she’s dancing. Slowly, smoothly (for Vic, and how could she have possibly forgotten, is a born dancer), they move around the kitchen, circling the table with the newspaper and Katherine’s photograph open on it, swaying to this new tune that Vic half hums, half whistles, all of which swells in her ears until it seems as if there’s a band in the room. Vic, in fact, heard the tune only that day. It was a foreign-sounding song and when it was finished the wireless announcer said the name of it, in a foreign language, but it meant nothing to Vic. And that’s all Vic knows about the song. Although he’s only heard it once, it has stuck with him the way some songs do. So much so that he can hum and whistle it, note perfect. And he always will. Although he will occasionally hear the song again, he will not need to hear it in order to remember it. It will simply stay with him and he will find himself whistling it from time to time through the years, and one day Michael will ask him what that song is and all Vic will be able to say is that it’s a foreign thing about the waves dancing on the sea and that he doesn’t know anything more about it. This song will stay with Vic for different reasons. He’s good with melodies. He can hear something once and repeat it. Note for note. But most of all this song will stay with Vic (and he doesn’t need the words to tell him this) because it is a song about longing. Or that’s how he hears it, for Vic is at heart a sentimentalist and he brings all his longing to the tune when he whistles and
hums it, as he is now. And so he and Rita move, swaying and shuffling slowly, until the song fades and he returns her to the kitchen chair from which he had lifted her a few moments ago.

And with the fading of the music and the end of the dancing they both turn back to the newspaper and the image of Aunt Katherine marching across the sodden grass of her land, arm raised, as if she were, for all the world, about to march right off the page, through the door, down the hallway and into the kitchen.

S
kinner retires to the room that was once his parents’, switches on a small plastic wireless beside the bed and hears soft music, the sort of music that people listened to before the war when they were all younger and stronger, with the productive years still in front of them. But this is now yesterday’s music, just as the walls around him contain yesterday’s portraits and faces. And with yesterday’s music playing in his ears, he sits on the edge of the bed and contemplates the light in Miss Carroll’s tent. If he goes too close to that light, will it lose its glow? This is Skinner’s dilemma, and this is the dilemma that he takes to bed with him as Katherine lies back in her fold-out cot and goes over, once again, the sequence of the day’s events. There was a sound, somebody called out.

Rita, her feet hitting the hallway floor like the webbed feet of a mother duck, approaches her bed and a night of broken sleep, for the moment lifted by the thought that the roundness of her body might just bring
more of the laughter that is both loud and big that she heard tonight and that the future she and Vic are about to enter will be the clean start they’re looking for. And Vic, in the kitchen, raises a pot and pours tea in the same casual manner that the absent father he has never met may very well be doing at this moment, indifferent to the fact of Vic’s being in the world. The sound of Rita’s feet fade in the hallway, taking the weight and roundness of the future with her, while Vic lingers on the image of stick-figure soldiers, the past that might have been his and the future that Rita carries with her that might never have happened.

In the café with the odd Russian name, the journalist and the painter sit, the newspaper with Katherine’s photograph and the article the journalist wrote today open on the table. The two have been talking for some time, the conversation beginning with Miss Carroll, straying from her to talk of foreign places and that elsewhere that they all long for, then returning, again and again, to the strangely haunting image of the old woman and her tent. Before they step into whatever it is that awaits them in that elsewhere they long for, this painter has resolved that he will catch, on canvas or board or whatever comes to hand, with or without the subject’s consent, an image of the world that they are so intent upon leaving. A lasting image that will be there in years to come when the old lady and her tent have long since given way to houses and streets and factories and shops. Just one image upon which they can all look back and say, ‘That is what we were.’

And all the time, while the journalist and the painter talk long into the night, and while Webster contemplates a map of the place that will contain his world, the blue streamlined engine, with the bold yellow stripe down the side and the yellow crest at the front like a bird about to take flight, travels through the night in air-conditioned ease. For the
Spirit of Progress
does not stop for sleep, nor is the
Spirit of Progress
ever tired. It is out there, it is always out there, speeding through the night where nobody sees it, from sunset to sunrise, covering the distance between here and elsewhere on shiny rails that converge but never meet and never end.

S
kinner has been up since four. He milks his cows twice a day by hand. He is down to a dozen now, and they line up at the gate in the paddock waiting to be let into the milking shed. A lifetime’s habit brings both the cows and Skinner to the gate every morning at this hour when everything is in darkness, even in summer.

It is light now and he feels the effects of a bad night’s sleep. Skinner has always been a good sleeper, has always slept the sleep of those who rise early and labour through the day. It is Skinner’s dilemma that has kept him awake at night lately and he has made his decision. He will approach that light. At least, he will go to Miss Carroll’s tent and he will present her with a small gift. They have spoken before when she comes for her water, but only briefly. The gift, he imagines, will bring them more to say. Perhaps. A start at least.

He is standing on the back veranda, where he has nightly gazed upon her light, looking out across his
paddocks where his cows munch happily, their udders drained. He holds his gift. Or, rather, three gifts. In one hand is a small metal container of fresh milk, in the other a block of butter and some cheese. His milk, his butter, his cheese. He thought long and hard about what his gift should be, and these items, the product of his labour, are the result of deep consideration. A gift, he thinks, must be carefully chosen because it can mean many and varied things. It can be a welcome, the kind of welcome that anybody who has lived in a community for a long time extends to a newcomer. An act of generosity that is likely not to be repeated. But it might also be the way a small community such as theirs draws others into its circle, making it stronger. There, it says, we have given you this; now you are one of us. Now we have you. For with this kind of gift comes obligation. And those who do not wish to be drawn into the circle of the community (and Miss Carroll gives every indication of being one of those), who have always lived on the edges of a community, are faced with a choice when presented with such a gift: to accept or refuse. It is an awkward moment, for such a gift is an invitation, albeit an intrusive one to the likes of Miss Carroll, and a refusal of it a snub. And snubs are never forgotten. A gift may also be a way of saying thank you in such a way as to close the book, a way of seeing off a debt or an obligation for those who feel the obligation of such communal courtesies. A service has been rendered, it says. A payment made. Book closed. We need not bother each other again. But, and this is the gift that Skinner brings to Miss Carroll, a gift can also simply be an
expression of care. A way of saying, I have watched you carrying your bucket to and from my farm; I have watched you walking to and from the butcher’s, baker’s and grocer’s. You have entered my world, you and your light, and my world welcomes you into it.

This is the way he would like his gift to be received. And with this intention in mind he opens the gate at which the cows line up in darkness and closes it behind him before walking across his paddock towards Miss Carroll’s tent.

Soon he is standing on the road where the journalist and the photographer stood the previous day, contemplating her tent. It is light, still early, but she will be up. It is, he suspects, both her habit and her pride. It has been her habit, he imagines, to rise early all her life. She has that look. And in age it is pride that keeps her rising early, for it demonstrates both to herself and the world that she is still active and still of use to herself and that world. And confident of all this he calls out a simple hello. But even as he inwardly pronounces it a simple hello, he knows it isn’t. For although they have talked before, this, he knows, is different. This time he has come to her. She has not come for water; they have not passed, as they sometimes have, on the Old Wheat Road. He has come to her. Furthermore, he has come with a gift. This, in short, is a visit.

Moments after he calls, the flap of the tent opens and she pops her head out. She is wary and at first the look on her face does not speak of welcome, but as soon as she sees it is Skinner the look softens and Skinner draws confidence from this change of expression. He is, all the
same, stiff and rigid, his toes pointed slightly inward, leaning to one side, a faint smile spread awkwardly across his face. A manner that says, I am here but if you wish I can go. The manner of someone unused to calling, to making a visit.

‘Mr Skinner,’ she says, stepping from the tent.

‘Miss Carroll,’ he returns.

It is their way. Whenever their paths cross, whenever they meet, on the Old Wheat Road or when she comes for water, this is the way they address each other. They do not use Christian names. Always Miss Carroll and Mr Skinner. To use first names, it is tacitly agreed and has been from the start, would be presumptuous. Would be to assume a familiarity that they have not yet earned the right to assume, but which one day they might. It is also a way of establishing a common identity. That they are Old World. That this is the way things were always done in the world they knew. One was formal; one did not assume. One did not play fast and loose with people’s names either, for to play fast and loose with the names indicated a talent (and talent is a questionable quality in this case) for playing fast and loose with the people who bear those names.

And so as Katherine approaches Skinner and they begin their conversation, it is as Miss Carroll and Mr Skinner.

‘Good morning,’ he says, nodding.

‘Good morning, Mr Skinner.’ She glances at the gifts, then adds, ‘I heard you this morning, talking to the cows.’

What she doesn’t go on to say is that she listens for him every morning, that she has, over the months she has
been on the land, become attached to the sound of Skinner bringing in the cows for milking. It is, in the same way that her light is for Skinner, a comfort. What’s more, a comfort that neither of them is aware of providing the other. So the sounds of Skinner at dawn and the sounds of the cows have now become synonymous with her mornings and ease her into the day.

He looks down at his gift. ‘I thought you might need these,’ and he holds out the milk in one hand and the butter and cheese in the other. He does not say he thought she might ‘like’ his gift, for liking something does not make it necessary. But if something is needed it adds weight to the gift. Makes it appear considered, not a mere fancy.

‘They are yours?’

‘Yes,’ he nods, emphatic. ‘The milk’s as fresh as the dew,’ he says, handing them to her. ‘And the butter and cheese are tastier than anything you’ll buy from the grocer.’

It is then that she smiles, Skinner’s gifts in her hand and arms, a large smile. The kind of smile that does not just come from the lips but the eyes as well. And it occurs to Skinner that she has not received many gifts. That she is not the kind of woman upon whom gifts are often bestowed. And it just might be that she is also acknowledging the care and consideration that have gone into the gift. It is with this smile that Skinner imagines he can also glimpse the previous Miss Carrolls, the Miss Carrolls who eventually lead you back to the girl. All still there, like those dolls that sit inside one another.
For Skinner has noticed this in people — how an unexpected pleasure not only lights up people’s faces, but gives you a glimpse of what they were. Releases the child in them. Gifts can also do that.

‘Well…’ His hands now empty, Skinner is not sure what to do with them or with himself. For to stay, after the giving of the gift, might be to imply that the gift was merely an excuse to talk. And idle talk, like the use of first names, would cheapen the exchange. So Skinner looks back to his farm as if to imply that work awaits him, when, in fact, the work of the morning has already been completed. Of course, he could find things but the truth is he doesn’t have to leave. But now that his hands are empty and the gift is given, he can find no just reason to stay. ‘Well then…’

‘Thank you, Mr Skinner,’ Miss Carroll says, Skinner noting that the smile is still on her face and in her eyes — that glimpse, that shadow of what she once was, the child, the girl, the young woman all still hovering about her.

But before he leaves, and he is distrustful of the impulse because it was not part of his intention as he walked across his paddock, but all the same, before he leaves he suggests (and it is more in the manner of a suggestion than an open invitation) that when she next comes for her water that she might like tea, adding that he also makes his own cream, creating, as he does, a picture of bread and jam and cream.

She nods and Skinner notes that there might also be trust in that nod; that if his gift has established anything it has established that. Trust. And so he leaves her standing
by the road, one hand holding the pail of milk, her other arm clasping the butter and cheese to her chest.

She turns as Skinner walks back. A gift has been given, a gift has been received. Trust, quite possibly, has been won. And, he observes as he trudges back to his farm, hope has entered his heart. He has come nearer to the source of the light that draws him out onto his back veranda each night, and upon which he will gaze again tonight, knowing that Miss Carroll has nodded in response to his suggestion and that, having nodded, Miss Carroll, when she next comes for water, will stay for tea and he will create a table of fresh cream, jam and bread when she does. He has come nearer to the source of the light. And the glow of the light, like the petal of a rose, has not been bruised by closer inspection.