Spirit of Progress Read online

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Carroll.’ Skinner is all smiles and goodwill. ‘You’ve met the young gentleman who is here to paint the farm, I see.’

  Katherine, watching the two men nod to each other in greeting (a greeting that suggests they have met before and that the young man does have Mr Skinner’s permission to be there), calls out from her property. ‘I have, Mr Skinner. And I’m not happy about it. He’s just a nosy parker with a paint brush. And, by the way, Mr Skinner, he’s not painting your farm, he’s painting me.’

  It is at this point that Skinner’s eyes move to the large piece of butcher’s paper pinned to the easel and sees that, indeed, the young painter is not sketching the farm at all but Miss Carroll and her tent. And he can also see from other pieces of paper pinned to a folder at his feet that all of the sketches are of Miss Carroll and her tent. Not one is of the farm that will disappear when Skinner does and which he was foolish enough to imagine might be recorded by this young painter and possibly hang in the galleries of the country. For all to see. A record of Skinner’s farm and Skinner’s days. They are all of Miss Carroll and her tent.

  And it is then that Skinner turns from the sketches and looks to Katherine, whose stare (which he immediately takes to be an accusing one) and whose anger are now directed at Skinner, not the young man. But more than mere anger there is the accusation of betrayal in those eyes. And for betrayal, Skinner suspects, in the mind of Miss Carroll, there is no forgiving. However accidental. For the look also says, quite clearly, that he, Mr Skinner, has allowed this young man to intrude upon her privacy. Upon her life, which she has always kept to herself. He has, he knows, blundered.

  Skinner looks back to Sam and tells him to leave. It is, Sam notes, an order. But it is not delivered with anger. Far from it, it is almost sad. I gave you permission in good faith, Skinner’s tone says, and you have deceived me. No doubt you think me a quaint old codger. And it is true, I have acted with the trust of a quaint old codger. But you must leave now. Gather your things. You have stayed long enough, young man.

  And Sam does exactly what Skinner directs him to do, not because of any threat in Skinner’s voice, for there isn’t any, but because he knows he has stayed long enough and taken advantage of Mr Skinner’s good faith. And he could explain that he did so in good faith himself. That far from seeing both him and Miss Carroll as quaint old things, he is drawn to them. And his intention, all along, was to preserve an image, still shimmering with life before fading altogether, of what we once were. Before this new world, into which the likes of Sam are stepping, renders them History — faded photographs and unreliable memoirs. Myth. No, in his painting you will feel the cold inland wind, smell the burning twigs and see the bright expanse of blue sky that is there above them (although not in the newspaper’s photograph) forever humming with Life as it is now. He could say all of this but he doesn’t. Instead he folds his easel without speaking, straps it to his back, puts his paper, charcoal and paints into his pack, wheels his bicycle up the dirt road and waves, as he did that first time he saw Skinner, only this time the wave is not returned. Soon, he is cycling away, in the direction that Katherine had so clearly indicated only five minutes before.

  But Katherine’s arm is still at her side where it dropped. There they are, Mr Skinner and Miss Carroll. They stare at each other across the dirt road that divides their properties. No more than ten or fifteen feet apart. Katherine (vaguely aware of the receding figure of the young man along the street), is contemplating Mr Skinner. She can hear the words of apology he is now offering and which she is taking in and not taking in. How could she, she is asking herself, how could she have got it so wrong? No, not wrong. How, and she is searching for the right phrase, which is why she is both taking in and not taking in Mr Skinner’s words, how could she have gone … what? … so dreamy, at her age? She allowed some silly dream into her life and now look what’s happened. And it’s not the honesty of Mr Skinner she doubts. For he is, unquestionably, an honest man who has been taken in by a smooth-talking type. But something has happened and she is now looking at Mr Skinner in a new light. For what has gone is the dreaminess and the trust that comes with that dreaminess. And perhaps it’s all for the best. This is what happens when you trust someone else. They don’t mean to but they let you down. If they can let you down like this, they will let you down again. Perhaps she is better off alone, after all. She has always lived alone, without allowing company into her life, because that’s the way she was born to live. Better not to put your trust in company, only yourself. That way the world can’t let you down, even if it doesn’t mean to. And besides, there would surely have come a time when company wanted to go one way and she the other. And she knows full well that in such a circumstance she would go her own way, as she has always done. And is it possible, she now wonders, that the ungainly frame of Mr Skinner comes with the honest flaws of ready smiles and waves that the likes of the young man will always take advantage of, and to allow that ungainly form of comfort into your life is to allow those honest flaws into it as well? All of which just leads to complications, and that’s another thing she doesn’t want.

  So it has been an instructive day, but instruction is over. And if the afternoon’s events have taught her anything it is this: that she is not simply too old to trust in the company of others — she was always too old. Skinner is no longer speaking and Katherine has heard little of what he said. Katherine turns back to her block of land to build the fire for which she left the warmth of the tent in the first place, contemplating as she goes the ungainly contraption of Mr Skinner, and his offer of bread and jam and cream she had looked forward to, like a young girl, a dreamy young girl on a date. Which is a surprising thought for Katherine to entertain because she has never been on a date.

  23.

  History Pays a Call

  It is late afternoon and Aunt Katherine has been sitting in their kitchen, the clock tells Rita and Vic, for almost an hour. When she first appeared at the front door it had seemed to Rita that the vision of Aunt Katherine striding out of the photograph in the newspaper, up the hallway and into their lives, had come true. She affects you like that, Rita is thinking. Larger than life, or, at least, larger than most of the lives she knows. She can’t say that she knows too much about History (even if she has lived through days that have contained more than enough of what people call History), but this woman, who unnerves her, is, in Rita’s mind, a sort of walking History. And so when she knocked on the door and strode up the hallway, with the briefest of greetings, it was History paying a visit. And it didn’t matter that it was Rita’s house, she entered the way History (war, depression, more war) usually does. Just barging in. No apologies. A sort of force. Yes, that’s what she is. Like the wind or a thunderclap.

  And, of course, she has come for a reason. Aunt Katherine rarely pays a visit unless there is a reason to do so. And there is a reason this afternoon. A request, actually. But a request, it seems to Rita, that assumes no doubt as to the nature of the answer. A request that never even contemplated an unfavourable response. The answer was always going to be ‘yes’. And this is precisely what Vic has said. Although his face tells Rita that he would rather be doing just about anything other than what he has been asked to do.

  Vic’s mother and her sisters, they are the only family he has ever known. They are, Rita knows, what stood between him and the world, for a child is no match for the world on its own. His mother and these sisters, they are what made the world smaller, made the world child-sized, while he was growing. They were his support and are now his burden, the hand he held and wouldn’t let go, and the hand that held his and which now won’t let go. The answer was never in doubt. And Rita knows it was not presumption on Aunt Katherine’s part that led her to announce her request as though the answer was never in doubt, but her understanding of all this. For when Rita opened the door and Aunt Katherine strode up the hallway, it was not History that Vic saw coming towards him but Family.

  She has gon
e for months, Katherine explained, without talking to anybody much (which is perfectly fine by her; most of what people call conversation is a waste of breath anyway), but in the last two days there has been one visit after another. The newspaper, the photographer (she did not mention the visit of Mr Skinner) and now this painter. One of those nosy types who won’t go away. Even when you tell them. And Katherine had nodded at them, firmly, indicating that the telling had been plain, and Rita can well imagine the scene. In the end this painter, this nosy type, did go but not before leaving behind a sort of card. And it is this card that Vic is currently holding, for it contains the address of an art gallery and a telephone number. The young painter, it seems, had asked to paint Katherine. Asked her to sit for him. And, of course, she had told him he was a nosy type and that he should mind his own business. But when she went back to the tent and sat and mulled over everything, the thought crossed her mind that there might just be some money in this. That these people might just offer a fee to paint the likes of Katherine, and after the photograph, the article and the attentions of the painter, Katherine is beginning to see herself as the others do, a little bit of History perfectly entitled to put her hand out. And, after all, she is paying off her block of land. And if all you’ve got to do is sit there and be painted, so be it.

  This is the request. That Vic go to wherever this place is and make inquiries on her behalf. She can’t go herself. She’s already thrown this painter off her land, twice. And told him to make tracks. Twice. But somebody else, inquiring on her behalf, that’s different. The kitchen is now silent, the talking is done, and Vic is staring at the address on the card. The telephone, of course, is out of the question. Nobody has a telephone and he’s not going to waste money on a call. So he is staring at the address. It is in the city and he will have to leave early for work so that he has time to ride his bicycle there first and return to the yards before starting the evening shift.

  It is easy enough. Not much further than his work. But, all the same, awkward. Vic is not someone to use the word ‘awkward’ all that often. It’s a bit English for his liking, all a bit stiff upper lip. The sort of thing that the English say when a bomb drops through the roof or someone dies — oh dear, that’s awkward. But the fact is this is awkward. Who does he talk to? What does he say? Is there any money in this? And, of course, there won’t be because nobody has any, least of all these painter types. Katherine doesn’t seem to realise this. But he can’t tell Katherine that because, when it mattered and whenever she was back from her wanderings around the country, she was one of those who made the world child-sized while he was growing into it. So, as awkward as the whole business is going to be, he will go. He will ask awkward questions. Then he will go to work.

  Aunt Katherine declines the offer of another cup of tea. The afternoon light is fading, it is winter after all, the days are short, and she must be back before dark. And so she rises, leaving the card with Vic, and strides back up the hallway. History returning to its lair, to its tent, or wherever History goes and rests in between paying visits.

  And when she is gone, with the briefest of farewells, Vic shakes his head and turns back down the hall, preparing for an early departure. It is, both he and Rita agree, a pointless journey, a waste of time. But which will be done, all the same. And so, an hour before he really needs to, Vic packs his Gladstone bag — food, soap and swabs, and places it between the handlebars as he mounts the bicycle. Rita watches his hunched frame as he cycles slowly up the street towards his rendezvous with an awkward situation.

  Her duck steps take her back into the house and she is aware of her weight for the first time since opening the door to Aunt Katherine. And she is contemplating the possibility, as she closes the door, that History, when it pays its calls, can be a welcome distraction as well as a disruption. Depending, and here she is mindful of Vic hunched in concentration as he cycles away, on who you are and where you’re standing when it passes through.

  24.

  A Painting Appears

  As 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 edge
s 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.