The Art of the Engine Driver Read online

  And when we leave our trains and are standing back on the platforms of our stations, we begin the final march home. In the winter dark nobody sees us as we disappear, one by one, into our suburbs and streets and driveways. But in summer, that final rubber walk is performed in the full glare of the late-afternoon sun.

  In his mind, Vic is leaving the station after one of the numerous sessions at The Railway and taking that final walk home, like he has so many times before. Like he did the previous week. As he approaches the Englishman’s house he remembers the spectacle with sober detachment. The Gladstone bag that he carries is filled with swabs, soap, a tea jar, his billy, and the two bottles of Melbourne Bitter he bought at the pub. His folded newspaper sits on top. He has been drinking with his mates after work, and they have been drinking the only way they know how.

  The sun is low across the flour mills and the shadows are long as he walks down the pathway that leads from the station to the old wheat road. As he crosses the road, passing the milk bar on one side and the television repairer’s on the other, his head is still filled with the noise, the shouting, the radio, the races, the smells, the smoke and the arguments of that crowded hour in the pub. That crowded hour in which they all drink the only way they know how.

  And, swaying as he moves, possibly shaking his head at something that may have been said, he turns into the old wheat road and walks home the only way he knows how, leaning into the street, leaning into the summer breeze as if warily advancing into a future that might shut down any minute and leave him stranded in the street. Dazed and staggering. Ridiculous again.

  24.

  Mr Malek

  As they leave the house of Mr Van Rijn behind them they hear a voice, soft, but grumbling and argumentative. All three, Vic, Rita and Michael, suddenly swing round to the source of the sound. Standing at his front gate, in his best suit, tie and shined black shoes, is the short, square figure of Mr Malek. He is drunk already, muttering at his front gate and swaying from side to side, but he is not talking to anybody in particular. He is drunk on the clear liquid that he makes himself in his back yard.

  His hands grip the iron gate as he leans forward, staring down to the dirt pathway, muttering something indistinct, possibly arguing with himself or with an invisible presence. The three of them try not to stare at the Polish gentleman swaying by his gate and carrying on an argument with increasing passion. He is repeating the same phrase over and again, and the three have slowed discernibly in their pace, concentrating now on what he is saying. At first it is utterly foreign. It could be German, an old Polish phrase or something in Russian. A place, a name. It is difficult to tell. Then he rattles his gate, raises his voice and everybody hears.

  ‘Get fucked,’ he says, rattling the gate again, but more furiously this time. ‘Get fucked.’

  Michael begins to laugh, but his mother stops him. Quiet, she says. Let him be. And in that still, soft summer night Mr Malek rattles the gate again and again, as if shaking the life out of somebody. The shaking increases and the rattling of the gate can now be heard all along the street, and all the families walking up the dirt footpath to the Englishman’s house now turn to observe the spectacle of old man Malek, who is staring down at his feet in that deeply, private world he inhabits, shaking the life out of his front gate, oblivious of the street. He speaks little English and nobody really knows him. Any of the stories the street tells could be true, that he was a resistance fighter in the war, that he was captured and his mind went funny. That he was just a potato farmer who went broke and whose mind was always funny. That he lost his memory when a bomb went off and now he doesn’t know who or where he is. The street believes the first story, is used to the sight of old man Malek rattling his front gate and lets him be.

  His voice rises with the racket he is making and is now clearly audible to everybody.

  ‘Get fucked,’ he calls. ‘I know what get fucked is. You think I don’t know what get fucked is. I know it. You get fucked,’ he suddenly calls, raising his head to the sky, amid a spasm of gate rattling, as if addressing himself to the setting sun or some face in the low, streaked cloud above the pine trees of the school.

  Then just as suddenly he drops his head, the rattling of the gate slowly subsides, and his address returns to mutterings.

  ‘And you. And you,’ he says, nodding back down to the footpath now. Almost inaudibly, he adds, ‘Everybody, get fucked.’

  In his best clothes, he is dressed for the party, and like everybody else in the street he will have been invited. But he is already a tired figure. Silent now, with his elbows leaning on the gate, he is staring down at his shoes, shining in the twilight. He swivels his feet, from his heels, moving them backward and forward in an arc. He is almost dancing. His shoes swing from side to side, reflecting as they move the last of the sky’s peach glow.

  Soon, he turns those shoes around, faces his house, and takes the small stone pathway back up to his front door. It is early in the evening but he is already exhausted. He is stooped and every now and then there is a slight stagger, a stalling in his progress, a swaying from side to side as he negotiates the pathway.

  Those families who are out in the street and who have been observing old man Malek’s antics, now turn back to their conversations. Malek stops halfway along the path to his porch. He raises his hand to his chin, suddenly lost in thought and turns back to the street as if he really might join that pilgrimage down to the Englishman’s house at the bottom of the street. Why not? The invitation is on his mantelpiece, he is invited after all. His suit and shirt are pressed and his shoes are luminous from having been polished all afternoon. Why not? But he suddenly drops his hand to his side, as if dropping the thought as well, and walks back to the house.

  Inside he stands before the mantelpiece with the invitation to the engagement in his hands. He runs his fingers over the gold embossed card, then puts it back. The walls of the room are lined with photographs from another time and place, all family shots or country scenes. Through the lounge-room door his wife, dressed in her everyday clothes, looks up from the kitchen table and stares at him. She watched him polish his shoes that afternoon in readiness for the party. And when he asked her, she pressed his shirt and his suit. She even watched him dress, knotting and re-knotting his tie until it sat just right, and she started to believe that he really might go to this engagement after all. Then she watched him sit down to drink in his good suit and shoes and she knew he wasn’t going anywhere.

  She studies him, swaying before the mantelpiece with the invitation in his hand, says nothing, then returns to her task. She is making doughnuts. Rich European doughnuts, with four eggs and butter. Later, when they are ready, she will take them to the party and offer the plate to the Englishman as a gift for his daughter’s engagement, but she will not stay.

  As she stirs the mixture she tells her husband, in Polish, to sit down before he falls down. Old man Malek slumps into an armchair and loosens his tie. It may yet be early in the evening, and he may well have been dressed for the party since late in the afternoon, but he will be asleep in his armchair before it has begun.

  While he is sleeping his wife will place his good shoes on the wooden rack in the bedroom before slipping out into the warm, summer air and delivering the gift of her plate. And when they ask her to join the party, she will thank them without speaking, shake her head, clasp her hands together, and hurry back into the warm scented air of the street.

  At home she will stir old man Malek from his armchair and guide him to bed. When the house is cleaned, she will join him. She will lie there, unable to sleep, listening to the faint sounds of the gramophone music coming from the party, and the occasional bursts of laughter and cheers.

  25.

  Diesel and Steam (II)

  The Spirit is now two hours away from the city and is nearing a station. Paddy knows the town, not just because he has driven there hundreds of times, but because Vic once lived there when he was first married to Rita. He’d gone
there to escape all his boozy mates, like Paddy, but it didn’t work and Vic was back in the city within a couple of years.

  The colour has gone from the sky and it is now dark. But the headlights of this engine are good and Paddy can see well into the distance, which is just as well because it takes a lot of track to stop a train like this. You need a lot of warning. You need to be able to see into the future, and with headlights like these you can. Paddy holds up his old, tea-stained mug to the fireman who takes it and shakes his head. One day, says his fireman, one day you will wash this thing. Never, says Paddy, saying that the tea would lose its flavour. He takes his tea black, with two sugars, and the inside of his mug is encrusted with the years.

  The fireman rises from his seat, takes his own mug with him, and steps down into the nose of the engine. Just before his head disappears he grins at Paddy, waving his mug in the air and threatening to clean it for him. You bloody dare, says Paddy to the already disappearing face of the young fireman, and it’ll be the last bloody thing you do. His eyes quickly return to the track in front of him, noting that it is the first humorous exchange between them. There might just be a bit of cheek in the young coot yet. A fireman’s got to have a bit of cheek, keeps the driver amused. A bit of cheek, but not too much.

  In the solitude of the cabin Paddy concentrates on the track. But for a moment he slides the window open beside him. A sudden rush of summer air enters the cabin and he looks up to the shadowy clouds and three-quarter moon, briefly dwelling on the colour of the sky earlier that evening.

  There is a goods train approaching the town from the border. It is a small train, only eight carriages, carrying mostly wheat and grain for the Melbourne silos and warehouses. The locomotive hauling it all is an R Class steam engine. Designed in Melbourne and built in Glasgow, it is the last of the large passenger engines, a steam age answer to the oncoming age of the diesel locomotive. A passenger engine, hauling farmer’s grain.

  The driver is from a border town whose life revolves around the railways. If the station dies, because the engines won’t need to take on water there any more, the town dies. He is sixty-four years old and has driven steam all his life. To him the R Class engine, with its sweeping red guards that give it the appearance of movement even when standing still, is a beautiful piece of work. A functional but eminently pleasing combination of uncluttered lines and concentrated power. This engine can go. It can match any of the new diesels, and with a well-made fire in its furnace by a fireman who knows what he’s doing, it could roll the lot of them.

  This man is not a Big Wheel driver. He has never thought of himself as a great driver or a driver of distinction. He thinks of himself simply as a good, honest driver. A craftsman. He has no pretensions and is normally very cautious. But tonight, to satisfy his mind and affirm his faith in the engine he is driving he has let it go and taken the train to the maximum speed limit allowed, and even beyond. As a consequence this goods train is moving.

  It is uncharacteristic driving on his part, but he is a year from retirement and he wants, once and for all, to be satisfied in his own mind that this engine can do everything he thinks it can. And he may cop a fine for speeding for the first time in his driving career. So be it. He has been a model of caution all his life and one blemish in the Safe Working book at administration at Spencer Street will not undo all of that.

  Besides, there is no danger. There is only the Spirit coming from Melbourne. He has all the time in the world to slow the engine down, ease back on the reglator and be ready to slip into the loop on the other side of the town, let the Spirit pass, then slip out the other side and continue on to Melbourne.

  He checks his fob watch, then looks ahead along the track, listening to the engine. It’s humming, and there’s more in reserve. Every second, every click of the rails, confirms his beliefs.

  26.

  The Red Letter Box

  On the other side of the street, shadowy figures in the twilight, the two sons and the daughter of a Ukrainian family are gathered round their new letter box, thoughtfully examining the square, wooden container. It is unpainted. In their best clothes, the three children are quietly discussing the box.

  Michael suddenly leaves his parents and runs across the dirt street to join his friends. As he nears them he can hear that they are speaking in Ukrainian and he can tell from the manner of their conversation that it is an important one. When Michael stops at the front gate they do not look up at him at first. They are still and concentrating on the letter box. When the oldest of the three children notices Michael, the others turn to him as well, greeting their friend in English.

  Michael’s parents have stopped walking and are standing on the opposite side of the street, observing the four children now gathered round the letter box. Rita smiles to herself because with their chins on their hands, and their arms folded, or on their hips, they look like three old men and an old woman. After a moment of silence the eldest looks up to Michael.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Michael is puzzled.

  ‘About what?’

  Of course, the eldest brother smiles, Michael has only just joined their discussion.

  ‘The letter box,’ he says, ‘What colour should we paint it?’

  Michael nods, now understanding the situation. The group is silent again until the eldest brother speaks up once more.

  ‘Anna,’ he says, pointing to his sister, ‘wants it to be the same colour as the house.’

  Michael looks at their square, weatherboard house and nods in agreement. But the eldest brother shakes his head. ‘Gregor,’ he adds, pointing to his younger brother, ‘wants it to be green.’

  Michael turns up his face and this time he shakes his head.

  ‘Well,’ says the younger brother, ‘You think of something.’

  All three then turn to Michael. His parents are calling for him to rejoin them, but his three friends are waiting for him to say something. He knows he has to speak, and quickly.

  ‘Why not red?’

  The three stare back at him, momentarily speechless.

  ‘Red?’, asks the eldest brother.

  ‘Yes. Why not?’

  The three children then turn to each other and begin laughing, clapping their hands, slapping their thighs, and repeating the word ‘red’. His simple suggestion has become an immense, one-word joke. And even though he spoke the word it clearly means something else to the others, and he is suddenly outside the circle of their friendship unable to understand the significance of what he has just said.

  ‘Why not? he asks, now annoyed with his friends.

  When they see his annoyance they stop laughing and the younger brother speaks.

  ‘It is impossible.’

  ‘Impossible,’ the elder brother repeats, followed by the sister. ‘The whole street,’ the oldest brother continues, ‘will think we are communists.’

  ‘Do you want the whole street to think we are communists?’ the sister adds.

  ‘But why would they?’ Michael asks, confused.

  ‘Because of the letter box,’ the oldest says, as if it were obvious.

  ‘Red,’ says the younger brother, ‘stands for communism.’

  ‘Don’t you know that?’ the sister says.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it does.’

  ‘Oh,’ Michael nods.

  ‘Do you understand now?’ the oldest asks.

  ‘Yes,’ Michael nods, ‘I understand.’

  ‘Good,’ his friend nods, ‘It is important to know.’

  Michael’s parents call to him again. Before he goes, to make amends, he suggests another colour.

  ‘Then why don’t you paint it white like Anna says? Like the house?’

  The senior brother nods thoughtfully, like an old man, in his best tie and shirt.

  ‘White is better, but it’s still difficult. In the old country the Whites were opposed to the Reds.’

  ‘Oh,’ Michael now nods learnedly.

  ‘Yes,�
� adds the older brother. ‘This is true. Do you believe me?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Michael. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘There were two sides, the Whites and the Reds. But that was in the old country and our parents don’t want to remember it. And if we paint the letter box white it will only remind them, and we don’t want that. Do you understand?’

  Michael nods slowly, half-heartedly, frowning slightly.

  ‘But your house,’ he says, pointing to the square, weatherboard structure. ‘Your house is white.’

  There is a sudden silence, and, horrified, the older brother turns to the house as if seeing it for the first time, and as if a whole new problem has only just occurred to him.

  It is at that moment that Michael’s parents call to him again, urgently this time, and Michael leaves the three children, the oldest with his chin resting on his hand, the younger brother with his arms folded, and the sister with her hands by her side. All three have re-assumed the attitudes they had before Michael arrived. All three have returned to silence. Only now, they are contemplating the house.

  Michael rejoins his parents and his mother asks what they were talking about. Michael explains and his mother shakes her head slightly, then glances back at the three wise children still studying their house. They are nearing George Bedser’s now and Vic has drifted on a few paces ahead, leaning forward as he walks, as if leaning into a strong wind.