Spirit of Progress (3 page)

No longer caring about the mud on his shoes, the journalist arrives at the farmhouse and pauses at the front gate, at a neat white picket fence that surprises him simply for being there. Pushing the gate open, he steps up the path to the stone house, a solid construction that has the look of having been there for some time. He knocks; there is no answer. He knocks again and a tall, slightly stooped figure emerges from the sideway. This, the journalist assumes, is the farmer, for he has a farmer’s face — ruddy from being out all day, his springy hair already turning white with age. He wears the kind of canvas trousers and collarless shirts that nobody wears any more, and it occurs to the journalist that he too, like the old woman in the tent, is a walking image of the way things once were. The farmer smiles. The journalist introduces himself and explains why he is there.

‘Miss Carroll?’ the farmer asks.

The journalist nods, pleased that he at least has the name. He removes his notebook and pencil from his pocket, for the farmer seems quite happy to talk. In fact, he gives every impression that he likes a good chat. And the journalist, noticing no sign of anybody else around or any sign of female presence (lace curtains, flower pots), and observing the couldn’t-care-less, take-me-as-I-am demeanour of the farmer, concludes that he is a bachelor who, indeed, likes a bit of company and a chat. As he talks, the journalist takes notes. She is, the old woman, Miss Carroll. A pensioner. She arrived in December and pitched her tent. She owns the land and says she will build a sleep-out on it. The tent is temporary. She shops at the local butcher and grocer, and gets water from the farmer’s tank. He offers to help but she won’t hear of it. It’s her pride, he adds. She’s a proud old woman who keeps to herself most of the time. He doesn’t know where she came from and nobody visits her. The farmer knows this, he adds, from the rare chats he’s had with Miss Carroll (rare because Miss Carroll doesn’t stop and chat all that often because she’s not the type), and from what he’s learnt from the locals, who tend to think of her as a strange old bird. The journalist asks him how long he has been on the farm and then realises that he doesn’t know his name either. Skinner, says the farmer. Skinner. A name, the journalist imagines, that belongs to the same age as the clothes that Skinner is wearing, the sort of name that dies out. For names, like certain species of animal life, do die out. Names that you see on old
gravestones, like Rudge and Smead. Names that you don’t see any more, as though when the body dies the name dies with it. And Skinner seems to the journalist to be one of those cases, one of those names. He wonders if certain names have extinction written into them. Doomed to become the sorts of names that you don’t hear much of. Like something out of Dickens but not out of life. And to what extent does the name, Skinner, Rudge or Smead, determine the character? To what extent does the name consign the possessor to the life of the bachelor that Skinner clearly is, so that the family line dies out, and with the death of the body the death of the name? All determined.

It is one of those idle speculations in which the journalist finds he can indulge while continuing to ask questions. The world may be littered with Skinners, but this is the first one he’s ever met. And Skinner is telling him that his family has owned the farm for three generations, but that he will be the last, since there is no one to take over. It is then that Skinner, possibly allowing the fact to sink in or acknowledging some deep sense of biological failure, looks down at his feet, a glance that is a story in itself. Even if it is not the story the young journalist is being paid to write, it is a story. A story that the writer in the young journalist may write one day and which he dwells on, even as he takes notes. The locals, he is told, call this Skinner’s Farm. But they won’t for much longer. And it is then that he talks about the offers from real estate agents, of their offers to buy the farm and divide it up into quarter-acre lots, the likes of which Miss
Carroll has pitched her tent on. Skinner, the journalist realises, knows full well that the world his family has created and possessed for three generations will soon pass into History. For, the real estate agents tell him, something called Progress is upon them. Skinner mutters the word and looks about him. This thing called Progress is irresistible, it seems, and the muddy world they are looking upon will soon give way to another and become unrecognisable. And another after that. And another again.

As the journalist puts his notebook back in his coat pocket he thanks this Skinner, who escorts him up the path to the front gate. It is then that he notices the slightly pigeon-toed walk of the farmer and the way he seems to lean to one side when he walks.

As he makes his way back to the car and the waiting photographer, the journalist glances back over his shoulder at the solitary figure of Skinner (who nods to him, a nod that strikes the journalist as more than just a goodbye) standing at his gate, leaning slightly to one side, his toes pointed inward, looking out over his property to the horizon, as if he just might be able to catch a glimpse of this puzzling world of Progress gathered there, and which might fall upon him at any moment now, like sudden rain.

The image of Skinner stays with the young journalist all the way back to the city. A solitary figure standing at the gate of change, at the gate of the world that has always been his but which he will soon pass on to others. For the paddocks, the stable (in which Michael and a girl called
Kathleen Marsden will kiss in the distant year of 1961), the milking shed and the house, and the generations of care that have been invested in it, will soon become the lost domain of what was once Skinner’s Farm. For Skinner’s world is already lost, and Skinner, somewhere behind those vague and affable eyes, is perfectly aware of it. Although vague is not the word, the journalist corrects himself, taking in the gathering clutter of workers’ terraces that constitute much of the inner city and which will eventually become the victim of what the new city planners will call slum clearance. Skinner is merely distracted by change. Change that will soon leave him ambling about where his farm used to be, in clothes that nobody wears any more, wondering who on earth all these people could be, and what all these houses and shops are doing on the paddocks that were once his. For it is just possible, the journalist imagines, that Skinner was born and has lived all his life on and around those twenty or so acres that constitute his farm and never really ventured much outside. While beyond its fences the world changed around him. And it is that world, the post-war world, that is currently speeding towards him, a solitary figure at his gate, the last custodian of a world that has already passed into History and which only lives on in isolated pockets such as Skinner’s Farm and the old woman’s tent.

It’s a quiet drive back and while the journalist is arranging his notes for the story he will write, a part of him is lingering on that solitary figure and asking himself if it will be the same for all of us. That one day we will all find ourselves walking around in the clothes that nobody
wears any more, with a distracted, affable look in our eyes, wandering pigeon-toed through the wrong world. And perhaps that is why the image of the old farmer has stayed with him throughout the drive back. It is a hint, an intimation, that sooner or later we will all stand at that gate.

Then his thoughts return to the old woman, at this moment quite possibly brooding in her tent, for she had the look of a brooder about her. Possibly a small kerosene heater keeping her warm (and here the image of her small, white fists returns to him) as she broods on the intrusion and those people who come along and disturb you when all you want is to be left alone.

As they enter the newspaper building with its grand façade, a touch of New York overlooking the Princes Bridge rail yards and the soot-covered palms of the Kings Domain across the river, that world they have just intruded upon seems far away. It’s out there all right, though. But not for much longer. For what he has come back with are notes, dispatches from a world that hasn’t entirely disappeared but is slipping away even as we watch it. He clutches his notepad, as if having journeyed in time and brought back with him evidence of his travels, along with the mud on his shoes.

L
ate that afternoon, the journalist, in his favoured gabardine coat, is standing on the footpath outside the newspaper offices. He has a copy of the paper open, a broadsheet that can be difficult to hold in windy conditions or cramped spaces in trams and trains, and is reading the story he wrote that afternoon: ‘Old Pensioner Has Pioneer Spirit’ (not that he thought up the headline; someone else did that). All around him the offices of the city are closing and its workers are walking towards the station with, he notes, that brisk, purposeful stride that the homeward bound always possess. The footpath is busy and he stands out for two reasons: he is the only stationary figure in the moving crowd and he is reading the newspaper, oblivious, it seems, of that crowd. But he is not. The fact is this is where he likes to read the paper, in public places; a people’s paper, he reasons, should be read among those people — on footpaths, and yes, in the cramped spaces of trains and trams. He likes to observe
people reading the paper that he has helped compose, and, sometimes, observe them reading the very story he has written. For he is as interested in readers as he is in writers and writing. He likes to put a face to readers, to observe their habits and to try to gauge, by the expressions on their faces (a frown, a raised eyebrow of disagreement or surprise, even a smile) what they think of the piece they’re reading. It’s a habit, a ritual even, that harks back to his first days working at the paper when he saw, in stations, pubs and parks, people holding and reading this paper, and he not only felt part of a continuing conversation with the readers of the city but part of a grand project, a communication as vital as breathing. That was when he really felt the power of words and writing. For although there is a part of this journalist that does not regard himself simply as a journalist, he does not, equally, believe in any ivory-tower notions of writing. He has, after all and in his own way, sat at the feet of Mr Hemingway and Mr Fitzgerald and all the others he regards as his teachers. They write (or wrote, as is the sad case for Mr Fitzgerald) to be read. And he has always wanted to be read. And since working for the paper he has discovered the thrill of it, discovered that he likes being read. The sheer speed and immediacy of it. That you can write something in the afternoon and watch people reading it that evening. Furthermore, he likes the confirmation of observing his work being read. And that is why he is standing on the crowded peak-hour footpath reading the paper. At the front of the newspaper offices, where he is most keenly aware of the current of words to which he has contributed
flowing through the crowd as the crowd itself flows down to the station, stopped by the traffic lights where they hurriedly read the front page or their favoured columns before moving on. Yes, he likes the confirmation of being read, as much as the thrill of being a part of that continuing exchange of words, which he thinks of as a conversation between people who have never met but who really have — the writing and the reading being the meeting. The newspaper: the meeting place.

And so he is reading the article he wrote this afternoon in the best place possible. In the world. His name does not appear on the page and nobody passing him on the footpath would know who he is or what he does, let alone that he gives them the words on the pages they all share. But although his name does not appear on the page, he does, of course, have one. George.

It’s not a name he would have given to himself. When he sees it in print, it doesn’t have the look of a writer’s name. And when he tries to think of the great Georges of literature, he can’t think of any — apart from Mr Orwell, who isn’t really a George but an Eric, but who writes, nonetheless, for the newspapers, and that thought cheers him up.

Most of all though, as he folds the newspaper into a neat, convenient roll, he is wondering what to do with the next hour. For George is also the art critic for the newspaper. It is now five o’clock and he has an hour to fill before an exhibition opens. There are two exhibitions this week: one for a single artist in a basement, the other a grand affair, a record of all the well-known painters of
the city to be held in a few days. Two shows, one week. Not unusual. In his brief time in the job he has been quite astounded at the number of painters and artists in the city. And the number of shows. It is a job that has also introduced him to the artists of the city, most of whom just want to get out of the place — this city, the whole country. Who feel they’ve been cooped up, with no possibility of escape, far too long. And so they argue, even fight (fists and all, sometimes), because that’s what you do when you’re cooped up and can’t get out. And what a time to be cooped up in this place, with its sooty palms and grimy little two-bob touches of New York or London, that will always be just that: grimy little touches of somewhere else. The Americans have gone but there are still uniforms on the streets and the occasional sad troop train carrying the returned troops, some of whom still have the bony look of stick-figure soldiers, those who were either too sick to move or who were unlucky and just had to wait their turn to come home because it takes a long time to end a war and bring back an army. George has a university degree (which is why he became the art critic, and which is why he still thinks of his favourite writers as Mr this or Mr that — because his tutors did) and when his time came to go into the army he went directly to the Education Corps and never left the city. Which is also why he was one of the first out of uniform. So the war never brought him travel (or death or danger or a bony frame that might stay bony forever) and like the artists of the city he too just wants to get out of the place. But, even now, he knows there will be a sense of loss when
he does, as there will always be loss in leaving behind the place they all struggled in and against for so long. There is also a part of George that wonders if the combination of this place and these sad and violent years that they have all just emerged from did not, in fact, bring out the very best in these painters with whom his job brings him into contact. That when they all flee and look back from wherever it is that they flee to, they might just conclude that they left their very best back there in that place in which the war trapped them, and which they dreamt of leaving for so long.

But what to do with the next hour? Grasping the rolled-up paper, containing the story of the old woman in the tent that will soon become yesterday’s news and yesterday’s story of yesterday’s pioneer, he walks back towards Little Collins Street just behind him, where there is a café with a faintly amusing Russian name, where these painters gather and where he may well meet one or two of them and pass away the next hour in that jumpy world of groups and factions, friends and former friends, old lovers and new, in which they all live.