Spirit of Progress (10 page)

T
he weight of what she carries is with her every day. But right now, for once, it is not the roundness of her belly that occupies Rita’s thoughts as she sits in the kitchen mechanically stringing beans, barely aware of the process. No, it is not the roundness that occupies her midday thoughts. It is the night before. She was slumped in her chair, listless, enough energy for a quack if not a duck walk, when she felt herself rising from her chair. Suddenly felt Vic’s arms around her. And her first reaction was, what’s this? Vic’s arms had not been around her for a long time, not like that, and she was struggling to remember when the last time was — the last time Vic’s arms encircled her, and the last time she felt joined to that half of something else that makes your half feel whole, the way, she notes, these things ought to be. Halves meet halves and become whole. That’s how it should be, and that’s how it was once. But when Vic’s arms encircled her the night before, she did not feel that
sense of one half meeting another half. At first it was … unfamiliar. So unfamiliar that she asked, what’s this? And with this question came the impulse to push him away, as you would the unwanted advances of just anybody. But this was not an advance and Vic was not just anybody. It was, the realisation slowly dawned on her, an act of affection. And so, in response to the question she posed herself — ‘What’s this?’ — she slowly, silently, spoke the word: ‘affection’, welcoming back something into her life that had not been there for too long.

Over their four years of marriage Rita has learnt much about Vic. About his nature. In fact, in those four years she has learnt all she needs to know about his nature. The rest of their years, she muses, will simply bring more of the same. The rooms in which they will live and in which the events of their lives will be enacted will change. Their faces will change. Their bodies will grow old. But, and at this particular moment she is sure of this, what she has learnt of Vic’s nature over the last four years will not change.

And one of the things she has learnt about Vic (who has just left for the shops) is that he is a man of appetites. Of course, everybody has appetites. Rita has appetites, and the child when it is born will have appetites. But Vic is a man
of
appetites. That is different from having appetites. You only have to watch, thinks Rita (and this sometimes annoys her, even disgusts her, and sometimes pleases her, depending on the night and depending on Vic), you only have to watch him eat his meal, the way he gathers it all into him, all of it, everything on the plate.
You only have to see that to know that Vic is a man of appetites and that appetites are large in Vic’s life. Larger than they are in Rita’s, or most people she knows, for that matter. And, being a man of appetites, his appetites need satisfying. There is something basic about Vic. That for all the smart things he says, the books he’s read (and he is a reader), his way with words, with music and dancing, for all of this, for all the things that told her when she first met him that his mind was different from most people’s she’d known, for all this there is something as basic as appetites about him.

And this is why, when she asked herself ‘What’s this?’, her first impulse was to push him away. But it was the way he put his arms around her that changed her mind. As if he’d remembered something, some afternoon, some night, from those days when they first met, and, in remembering that afternoon or night, also retrieved a feeling that had been carelessly lost, and in retrieving that feeling he retrieved those days when they first met, in which words of love were spoken, often and recklessly.

And so when his arms encircled her, the act brought with it a hint of those days. Back again for a moment. This is why, in response to the question, ‘What’s this?’, she answered ‘Affection’. For affection is not an appetite. An appetite requires satisfying. If you’re hungry, you eat. If you’re thirsty, you drink. These are appetites. Just as the child that will soon be born was, she knows, the result of appetite satisfying itself one hot Saturday night the previous summer. But last night was different. And again she can only say it was the way Vic’s arms encircled her
that told her this. Affection, she likes to think, is something given to you, an offering, a gift that, unlike an appetite, doesn’t require satisfaction and doesn’t ask for it. And because it is asking for nothing, because it is given, this spontaneous act of affection comes with something else that she chooses to call love. And love is not an appetite, not to Rita. Love doesn’t satisfy itself like hunger or thirst and then forget about itself until the next appetite arises. No, these appetites are passing things. They come and they go. But love is not a passing thing. Not to Rita.

And what followed afterwards? A hummed melody, perhaps from those days when, often and recklessly, words of love were spoken, but possibly new. She’s not sure because she was still slowly and silently and with a touch of wonder pronouncing the word ‘affection’ rather than listening. But it was one of those sentimental numbers, or maybe that was just her mood. And then a gentle rocking — or was it swaying? — and the first steps of a dance. A dance that took them slowly and gently round the room until the humming stopped and the melody faded into some half-remembered past when melodies like that were always playing or never far away. And when the dance stopped they stood still for a moment, and then she released him, he released her, and she fell back into the chair from which he raised her.

It is all of this that she is thinking about right now instead of, for once, the weight that she carries in her belly. And she will remember that previous night long beyond these days. She will remember it all, years from now when
the two halves that came together and briefly made a whole return to being two separate halves, and the child who is not yet born has grown and gone independently into this world that awaits them all. But what Rita doesn’t know at the moment is that she will remember the dance with such sad clarity because it will be Vic’s last memorable act of affection. Throughout all the years to come, nothing will have the sad clarity of those three or four minutes that it took them to dance around the kitchen table while Vic hummed a tune as if a band was suddenly in the room.

S
he enjoys a good fire. An open fire. The sound of crackling wood, the smell of leaves, the purity of the flame. A fire brings back her early days of travelling round the country, when she was a young woman, setting out for whatever it was that life had waiting for her to claim. That first field, that first fire, that first tea — for Katherine has never drunk anything stronger than strong black tea — brought with it the feeling that life was about to open up. And while she has never been a great admirer of Henry Lawson, with his droopy moustache and sad eyes trying to smile (playing for sympathy — and she knows the type; she’s met them often enough), she knows exactly what he meant when he wrote of the days when the world was wide. For the world
felt
wide then, wall-less, its possibilities endless, from the first moment she sat watching her fire in some farmer’s paddock, looking round at the last of the afternoon light and contemplating, as the smoke rose, the sheer breadth of it all: the field, the whole
country and the life she was about to live and which, more or less, she now has.

There are those, like her sisters, who may see it as an aimless, even a wasteful life, travelling from place to place, picking up work here and there, but for Katherine it was always the only life. And although she may just have a block of land and a tent to show for all the years, at least she can say that she knows her world and all the types that inhabit it; knows her world from one side of the country to the other. She’s travelled it, she’s seen it. And she won’t die, like a grey-haired old drunk she once met in some timber town (and who’d possibly never left the forest where he grew up and where he probably drank himself to death), muttering about strange creatures over the mountains and over the seas. Strange creatures and strange ways. It’s been her life and it’s given her this much. And she was prepared to accept from the start that it would be a single life. Not lonely, although loneliness was never far from her — but singular. For she has always been content enough with her own company and never felt the urgent need of anyone else’s. Company, she has felt for most of her life, would just get in the way. For she always knew that if it ever came to the point when she wanted to go one way and company wanted to go the other, she would simply go her own way. And so she has, all her life.

But all the same, Mr Skinner’s visit that morning prompted the thought that at this stage in Katherine’s life company might be a comfort. And, she concedes, thinking of the unwelcome visits of uninvited strangers
one day after the other, comfort might also be a form of security. She cannot travel any more the way she used to. And for some time now she has conceded to her sisters (one of whom is a nun in Adelaide, one a domestic in Surrey Hills, the other Vic’s mother, living in a country town nearby) that these days she needs to live near settlement. And with this concession to her sisters and to the years, she bought, with all her savings, this block of land. This block of land upon which she pitched her tent and which she calls home. And in calling a place home (which she has never really done before), she might also be allowing into her life, after all her wandering years, the idea of company.

She’s noticed Mr Skinner about — and she cannot recall now when he first told her his name, but it must have been when she was fetching water one day. She’s noticed him for some time (since pitching her tent late in the previous year). And while others might find him an odd contraption of a human being (and which might explain why he’s not married, possibly never married — he’s got the look), she doesn’t. The toes pointed in, the lean to one side like the leaning towers on postcards of foreign places, the ready smile — these may create the impression of an odd human contraption to some people, but not to Katherine. She thought long and hard about just what it was that came to mind when she looked upon Mr Skinner, long before he made his visit and prompted in her the impulse to allow company into her life, and to Katherine the ungainly frame of Mr Skinner suggests what she can only call honesty. And with that honesty,
a sense of trust. And it is not because he is a farmer: she’s known plenty of sly farmers who’ll steal your time and money if you give them half a chance. No, here is someone who has gone through life without affectation. He is, his demeanour tells the world, what he is. What you see is what you get. A frame and a bearing that can’t be disguised and allows the bearer no choice but to amble through the world honestly. So it is not just the fact that they have shared an Age together, that they are of a time and that their time is rapidly passing, that has prompted Katherine to allow the idea of comfort, in the ungainly form of Mr Skinner, into her life. It is what she can only call the honesty of his ungainly bearing and the feeling that she can trust him.

Were his gifts not an invitation? A gift, of course, may be taken in many different ways — a bribe, a way of compromising someone or simply a gift. And while Katherine has always been wary of gifts and those who bring them, she accepted Mr Skinner’s in the spirit in which they were given. And the gifts themselves — the milk, the butter and the cheese — suggested consideration. In the end, they were appropriate gifts, for, like the ungainly frame of Mr Skinner himself, the milk, the butter and the cheese spoke of honesty and trust. Spoke, and she means this in the best possible way, of a simple heart. For she thinks of herself, too, as a simple heart.

And with this reflection, the bread and cream, which Mr Skinner proposed they share, becomes an attractive thought. One she might even look forward to, if she isn’t looking forward to it already. And it is with this added
reflection that she realises that the idea of company — of comfort in the form of Mr Skinner — has indeed entered her life, a life that until now has been a singular one.

With these thoughts in mind, and motivated by the need to create a fire upon which to cook, Katherine pops her head out of the tent and looks upon the bright, mid-winter afternoon.

R
ita, still sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of stringed beans and a small pot of tea, has not forgotten about the previous night, the dance and the spontaneous act of affection. But, and she doesn’t know what prompted this except for the uneasy feeling that Vic has been away longer than it takes to do the afternoon shopping, this is also one of those moments when she’s remembering the bad times: afternoons and nights that saw Vic standing for hours at the public bar of The Railway with Paddy Ryan and the rest of that bunch who call themselves mates. Paddy, the father Vic never had, whom he looks up to just a bit too much for Rita’s liking because apart from being the master of the smooth ride, Paddy has nothing else worth looking up to.

As much as she’d rather be dwelling on the memory of Vic the previous night, that three or four minutes that gave her the best of Vic, she’s remembering the worst of him. The Vic who slumps into the chair in front of her
after The Railway, closes his glazed eyes and snores half the night away. And, as much as she doesn’t want to dwell on these things, they come back, clear, almost real. Until he
is
there, in front of her, and she’s looking over the bowl of stringed beans directly at him.

In fact, at this moment, he is just stepping from the butcher’s, pausing on the footpath to shake the sawdust from his shoes. In front of him is The Railway. And the thought of a beer is tempting. But not really. He is driving tonight, and never drinks before driving. None of the drivers do. So he contents himself with the thought of a beer. At first Vic didn’t like beer. But he only drinks beer now. No wine or spirits. And he takes pride in that. Others might hit the serious stuff but not Vic. Just beer. Even if he didn’t like the taste of it at first. Then, one hot day, the memory of that first beer came back to him and this time he liked it, or, at least, the memory of it. Then he liked it too much. Although Vic would never say too much, for Vic has no idea of the Concept of Too Much. Someone need only say ‘One more’ and Vic will agree. And it’s not for the flavour. After hours of drinking, neither Vic nor anybody else could taste the beer any more. Yet, without thinking, he will always agree to one more. For just as the taste of beer did not come naturally to Vic (it was something he had to learn to like), so too Vic has learnt
how
to drink. More correctly, Vic has learnt a
way
of drinking. A way of drinking that he has learnt from Paddy Ryan, and from the other drivers, the older drivers, who pass their ways on to the younger drivers. They pass them on so that their ways will not be
lost and so that this
way
of drinking will remain a tradition. For when something becomes a tradition it becomes irresistible. It acquires weight. It acquires History. This, it says, is the way things are done because this is the way they have always been done. Beyond questioning. And, in this manner, Paddy not only passes on the art of engine driving but his world and the traditions that define it, ensuring that a little bit of Paddy goes out there into the future and the tradition that was passed on to him will be passed down the line and beyond. In this way he will not suffer the indignity of being the one who allowed a tradition to be lost. And so long as these ways remain tradition, something greater than the circle of drinkers gathered at the public bar, they will also remain unquestioned.

Vic turns away from The Railway and enters the greengrocer’s, as Rita rises from the chair and rinses the stringed beans. His fingers are drumming, tum-ta-tum, briefly on the counter as he hums a tune and contemplates the mid-winter fruits — and those ways of drinking handed down by Paddy and all the Paddys that went before, until they became a tradition. And central to this tradition — and its rules — is the Concept of Too Much. For the very suggestion of too much is an unwanted intrusion. The Concept of Too Much does not wear the overalls of the engine driver. It wears the clothes of some snooty type who doesn’t belong because he doesn’t understand.

His Gladstone bag filled with shopping (the same bag he uses for work), Vic turns towards the refinery that
looms over the houses for the brief walk home, the sun breaking through the clouds, the streets suddenly sparkling, Vic whistling.

But the rules of this tradition of drinking do not come as naturally as his whistle. To some, such as the snooty types who don’t understand, it doesn’t come at all. There will, inevitably, be those who will say at first, no, they have had enough, and, thereby, allow into their circle of drinkers the Concept of Too Much. They have, in saying this, committed a fundamental error — such as braking too quickly at a platform and snapping a train in half, or over-heating a furnace — and it is Paddy’s job to correct these errors, be it on the job or at the bar. The circle must not be broken, and as long as anybody within that circle calls for one more — Vic, or Paddy himself — the circle stays closed. Moreover, it is an insult to the remaining drinkers, for the Concept of Too Much, when it speaks, assumes a degree of sober reflection that, it is implied, the others in the circle don’t possess. The Concept of Too Much is not, it proclaims, a pub drunk, but the rest are. Inevitably there will be those who will continue to say ‘No more’. In such cases one of two things will happen. They will be banished from the circle or they will cease to say no. And they will agree, thereafter, to one more, without thinking.

And so Vic slumps into chairs after closing time, unable to rise, because over the years he has learnt a way of drinking. And one day, just like Paddy, he may become a custodian of that tradition, so that its ways will be passed on. Just as, one day, he may inherit the
Spirit of Progress
.

So Rita, settling back into the kitchen chair (sipping her tea, the beans draining by the sink), loathes the name of Paddy Ryan and won’t let him into the house. As much as she knows that Paddy learnt these ways from some other distant drunk who passed them on to him, she blames Paddy all the same.

Her eyes are still lingering on the apparition of Vic before her when she hears the front door open. The vision fades, the reality is home. This afternoon it is the best of Vic who is back. The best of Vic who places the shopping on the kitchen table. The best of Vic who fills the room with his whistling (pitch perfect). And as much as she’s read about hearts leaping in books, she’s never felt such a thing until now. She could jump up and tell him that her heart is leaping but she’d have to explain why. Besides, there’s no energy to go leaping about, so she leaves the leaping for her heart to do.