The Art of the Engine Driver Read online

  When he is finally finished Bruchner stares silently down into Younger’s pot of lemon squash, his eyes glazed in struggling thought.

  Inside, the butts are mounting in Joy Bruchner’s ashtray. From the very beginning of the evening it was recognised by everybody as Joy Bruchner’s ashtray. It is understood that she will need that ashtray, and nobody has attempted to use it. A fact that has not gone unnoticed by Joy Bruchner herself, who eyes the mounting pile of butts.

  When they first arrived Bruchner sat her in a chair by the window and gave her a beer to sip on. But he has long since gone, and Joy Bruchner hasn’t moved from her seat all night. Through the lounge-room window she can see and hear her husband as he is speaking to Albert Younger. As she reaches for her cigarettes, she notes that his voice is rising, knows that it will continue to rise as the evening progresses, and that she will spend a long evening sitting by the window.

  The ball fires back into Michael’s hands as he counts the catches. Fifteen. Sixteen. The number quickly mounts. The sounds of the party are all around him, but all he can hear is the slap of the worn tennis ball as it hits the palms of his hands. The moonlight is still strong and he can see the ghostly framework of the house next to old man Malek. But his attention shifts to the black Wolseley at the corner of the street. It’s been there for an hour, not moving. Just watching. Nineteen. Twenty.

  Something is going to happen. He knows this. A car doesn’t stand in the street all night, while its driver sits in shadow watching a party, without something happening. Twenty-one. The front door of Bedser’s house opens, revealing the crowded entrance hall. Michael drops the ball. Patsy Bedser sits on the front steps with a drink in her hand and the broad-shouldered bulk of Hacker Paine, the war hero, the veteran of the Kokoda Trail, sits beside her. They are speaking softly, almost confidentially, and their heads incline toward each other like friends in a schoolyard. He can’t hear their words above the surrounding talk and the music, but he knows it is a serious conversation and he doesn’t want to disturb them. Michael looks from the car to Mr Paine, to Patsy Bedser, and back again. He is on the verge of approaching Mr Paine about the black car on the corner, but something stops him.

  Paine is now looking away, no longer talking to Patsy Bedser. No longer talking to anybody. His face has suddenly gone hard. Michael knows he should act. That if he doesn’t act soon something will happen.

  Bruchner’s voice is rising, his speech is slurring, his arms are waving and beer from his glass has just fallen over Younger’s new shoes. The tennis ball slaps back into his hands and he loses himself in the game. Twenty-five. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. When the ball finally drops onto the lawn Michael turns to the front steps of the house in time to see Patsy Bedser rise and step back into the entrance hall. Hacker Paine has gone. He hears Hacker Paine’s wife asking Patsy Bedser if she’s seen her husband, but Patsy didn’t see him go. Perhaps he’s just inside, she says. But Hacker Paine is nowhere in sight, and suddenly there is no one to tell about the black car on the corner. Beside him Bruchner is relentless, and Mr Younger, his glass of lemon squash gone, is looking like someone who is about to leave but every time he tries Bruchner raises his voice and he stays. Michael’s mother and her friend, Evie, are talking next to the front gate. Talk and laughter issue from the opened doors and windows of the house. Everything is louder.

  But when the music on the record player suddenly ceases, everybody stops talking. The singing of a small group by the record player, suddenly left unaccompanied and stranded, slowly dies. Laughter from another room subsides. The engagement party holds its breath. There is a moment of silence in which everybody, inside and outside the house, turns in the general direction of the lounge room where the record player is kept.

  Then the voice of Patsy Bedser is heard, echoing through the opened rooms of the house to everybody inside, issuing through its opened windows to everybody outside.

  She is calling the party to the lounge room. To squeeze in, to squash themselves into the lounge room. And while she hopes the walls of the lounge won’t burst she’d like to see everybody in the lounge soon, because her father will make a speech.

  37.

  The Speeches

  Rita edges into the crowded lounge room and finds a spot near an open window beside Joy Bruchner. She is nervous, and she doesn’t know why. It’s not her giving the speech, but she’s nervous all the same. And as she watches George Bedser, shuffling from one foot to the other in front of the gathering and occasionally clearing his throat, she realises she is nervous for him.

  The speech isn’t her responsibility, but some part of her has assumed responsibility. If it falls flat, if it is a disaster, if George Bedser is left looking like a fool and the party falls to pieces it will be because she didn’t will him on. She knows it is ridiculous, but for a moment, Rita is convinced she holds the fate of the party in her hands and she concentrates hard as Bedser begins.

  From the moment he starts speaking she knows she can relax. George Bedser is a natural. A reluctant one, but a natural nonetheless. She’s never heard him talk so much. But he’s standing up there in front of all these people and he’s doing it well. And he’s got no notes, or paper. He doesn’t look like he’s prepared anything, but he has. Rita would put money on that. He’s been working towards this night for years. And he’s proud in that quiet way of his. He’s proud of himself for having done it all on his own. He’s been thinking about this speech for months, Rita would put money on that too. And it’s funny, this speech of George’s. Rita didn’t think he had a joke in him, but he’s got a few all right. And they’re all good. She can hear Vic’s laugh come from where the fridge is. He’s laughing. But at this stage of the game she knows it doesn’t mean much. Vic will laugh at anything after a few too many, except himself. But everybody else is laughing too. Including Rita. And nobody’s interrupting with any of the usual stupid remarks. They’re just letting George get on with it. And so he is. When the applause comes it nearly brings down the house, ’cause everybody knows what it all means to him. And even now, as he’s slipping away from the table, he’s got that sleepy-eyed smile on his face. And he’s pleased with himself, because he knows his job’s done now and he can sit back for a bit.

  Relieved, Rita leans back against the wall and eyes Patsy’s fiancé as he stands to take his place at the front of the room. But her attention strays and soon she is studying Patsy herself because something troubles her about Patsy. With her hair like that, and her dress, and her smile, she looks the part. She laughs and talks like a woman who’s happy. Like a woman whose night it is. Whose night has arrived. But Rita feels sad for her and can’t figure out why. Maybe she’s just sad for herself, but something’s not there in Patsy’s eyes.

  This young man, whose name she doesn’t know, is talking to the party. He clearly doesn’t want to be talking to anybody, let alone a roomful of strangers. Everybody is listening to him and watching him as he does. They’re all summing him up, and he knows it. That’s what happens when you talk to a roomful of strangers. They sum you up. But Rita is neither watching him nor listening to him. She’s watching Patsy, the way she observes her fiancé, the way she listens then looks down at the floor like she’d give anything to be somewhere else, the way she folds her fingers in and out of each other. Rita is watching all this, and something’s not there.

  Next to Rita, Joy Bruchner is sitting beside a small mountain of ash. The two women glance at each other, and the most minute of greetings (a nod and a raised eyebrow), passes between them. Joy Bruchner stares at the floor and her eyes have the vacant look of a woman who is resigned to being left alone. The way she has of staring at the floor, or out through the lounge-room window, Rita thinks, is a way of turning herself invisible. For if Joy Bruchner is not looking at the room, then the room is not looking at Joy Bruchner, and nobody will notice her shame. The shame of being the wife who is led to her place, who is given her shandy, her ashtray and her chair, and who is then publicly ignored for the
rest of the night. She could simply rise and leave, but that would draw the silent, sympathetic attention of the room, and everybody would then see her sadness and her sadness would be confirmed in the eyes of the street. And so she stares at the floor, or out the window, and her sadness remains inside her where nobody can see it because nobody is looking.

  When the room laughs she looks up and her lips form a brief smile. When the room applauds, her hands clap soundlessly along before folding up under her chin. She could easily ignore the laughter and the applause, but when she joins in the laughter, when she brings her hands together in feeble applause, there is a moment when she could almost convince herself that she is one of them, however briefly. One of the room. Like all of those around her. A woman who laughs and listens and applauds and rejoices in the happiness of others. It is her link with them, for without that brittle smile, without the absent-minded slapping together of her palms that she offers as applause, she may as well give up entirely. A ghost by the window who need really not exist at all.

  Rita almost reaches out, almost touches the tip of Joy Bruchner’s shoulder. For that slapping together of her palms that she offers to the room as applause, even if she doesn’t know what she is applauding, that flicker of a smile she offers instead of laughter, the extraordinarily concentrated effort required to produce those two unselfish acts, means that something in Joy Bruchner hasn’t entirely given up yet. Rita sees this and that is why she almost touches the tip of Joy Bruchner’s shoulder with her right hand.

  But she notices Vic. He is beside the fridge and she is about to join him but the young man to whom Patsy Bedser has become engaged is still speaking and Rita leans back against the window, as Joy Bruchner settles back into her chair, her eyes upon the floor, waiting for that moment when the room will either laugh or clap, for that moment when she will bring her hands together in applause, when she will join them all and be one with the room.

  38.

  Mother’s Girl

  Listen, this voice is saying. He’s moved the cutlery on the table in front of him from one side to the other. He’s picked up a glass of something sparkling and put it down again. And all the time he’s talking, but only part of me is hearing. Listen, the other part says. Listen, that’s the voice you’ll hear for the rest of your life. That’s the face you’ll see. A voice dragged into speech, a body dragged to the table. A good face, good hands, a good heart. And look at my dad, looking out from under his eyelids with a satisfied smile on his lips like his life’s work is finally over and now he can take a break.

  He’s watching Allan speaking. And I can tell he likes him with the liking people have for their own kind. And it strikes me that marrying Allan is a bit like marrying your dad. And I like my dad and all, but I don’t want to marry him. Maybe that’s what my mum thought. Maybe that’s what she thought all those years ago, maybe that’s what she always knew. That she liked my dad and all, but she didn’t really want to marry him. Only she did. And then she had to go through the whole business of getting unmarried. Which would have been difficult because my dad’s a good man. Everybody knows that. But she left him all the same.

  For as long as I can remember they’ve called me dad’s girl. Always holding his hand, never far away. I heard it so often I believed it. Everywhere. Back home and out here. It was always the same. Only now I’m not so sure I am. I just might be my mother’s girl, after all.

  My mum, the slag who left a good man. And left her daughter. And a good home. They never said it like that, my dad’s friends, but I could see it in their eyes, their grunts and their shuffling silences every time someone dropped the clanger of my mum’s name. So, in time, I became dad’s girl. But, deep down, I wasn’t. And I’m sure if you sliced my dad open, you’d find another dad inside. The dad that got left. The dad that hasn’t changed since he got left, that fossil deep inside.

  Listen, I’m saying to myself. That’s the voice you’ll hear from now on. That’s the other voice in your life. And it’s a good voice. But is it the voice I’ve been waiting all these years to hear? My dad thinks the worst thing that can happen to you is to be left. I’m not so sure. To be left, somebody’s got to do the leaving. And that’s a different story altogether. My mum was nineteen when she married my dad and he was twenty-one. Now, I’m twenty-one.

  And I know I could just ignore this voice inside me and just go on with it all. This whole thing. I could. Allan proposed and I found myself saying yes. But I wasn’t so sure then, and I’m not so sure now. And I think that’s why I went through with it all. I went through with it hoping that that feeling, the one that tells you that you’re sure about things after all, hoping that feeling would just come with the night and all my doubts would vanish in a puff of candle smoke. But they haven’t and I’ve never felt more like my mother’s girl in all my life.

  And I know it sounds like a horrible thing to say, but if all this is true, if I’m her, if she’s me, then I know why my mum left my dad.

  39.

  The Laugh

  The first thing I hear when all the applause dies down is the laugh. I loved that laugh when I first heard it. From the moment I heard it. He gave that laugh everything he had. It was a big laugh. And he wasn’t laughing at anyone. It wasn’t a snigger, or a sly smile, or a sort of snort like Bruchner’s got. It was big and generous. The sort of laugh you wanted to be around. You couldn’t match it, but you wanted to join in with it, even if you didn’t know what you were laughing at.

  So, the first thing I hear is the laugh. And it strikes me that it’s different. Something’s gone out of it. It’s not the same. It’s loud, but it’s not big any more.

  He’s talking to George Bedser. They laugh again. Bedser moves on. Vic always finds someone to talk to when he wants. You can be anywhere. A small town, and he’ll bump into someone. Wait, he’ll say on some platform in the middle of woop-woop, I’ve just seen a mate. But Bedser’s moved away and Vic’s eyeing me off because he knows what I’m going to say.

  He’s already got the slouch of a drinker. The body starts to wilt from the shoulders down to the feet, and the feet are last to go. You can see it passing through them, all of them. Like wax on a hot day, they just melt into the floor. The whole bloody lot of them. Vic’s not there yet, but he’s on the way. I can see that. And when he looks up I can see his eyes are getting that lost look. The question is do I tell him? Can I really be bothered? And should I tell him something’s gone from his laugh while I’m at it? Should I tell him that when I hear it now I don’t want to join in? That when I hear it now I know it’s not the laugh it used to be. And instead of joining in, I just want him to please, please stop. To just shut up. I wish he could hear that laugh the way I hear it now and stop. Just like I wish he’d take it easy on the grog. So I’m walking across the floor wondering whether to tell him all this, and he’s looking at me like he already knows what I’m going to say.

  But if I say it I’m a nag. And who wants to be a nag? Everybody else’s wife can be a nag, but not me. I’ll never let anybody drag me down to that. I’ll leave before I nag. And that’s a promise. So we stand there beside each other, like strangers on a dance floor. And that might be fine, because we were strangers on a dance floor once and that was fun. Except then, we had it all in front of us. Silence then fed the anticipation. Silence was fun. But it’s not fun any more. Because it’s not that awkward silence that comes just before your life takes off like a rocket ship to Mars. Not that silence that comes just before all the nervous talk, when you blurt out all the things you’ve ever wanted to say because you’ve finally met someone you can say them to. No, it’s not that kind of silence. It’s just the familiar silence that comes after you’ve finally said it all.

  So when the speeches start up again, it’s a relief. We can stand beside each other in silence because we’re listening to the speeches. We can stand beside each other and laugh because we’re laughing at the jokes. And I’ll hear that laugh and I’ll know all over again that it’s not the
laugh it used to be.

  40.

  The Last of Vera

  Rita and Vic are standing side by side while a family friend is telling Patsy Bedser’s life story. The speaker leaves out the difficult events in their lives. He merely alludes to them. But this is enough to send a small flutter across George Bedser’s sleepy eyelids. Embarrassing moments are being dragged out onto the public stage. There is laughter. Somebody is hooting. Patsy Bedser is looking away. George Bedser hears it all. He hears the happy sounds of his daughter’s engagement, but he is not really listening.

  It happened just the way you hear. I came home and she wasn’t there. Not that she should have been, but I knew something was wrong. Straight away I noticed that. I don’t know why, but there was a silence in the house like someone had stepped out for a bit longer than it takes to do the shopping. Or drop in on a movie. Or a friend. I know that kind of silence. There’s a teacup on the sink, a half-eaten biscuit still resting on the saucer. And you know she’s ducked out and she’ll be back soon.

  But it wasn’t like that. The kitchen sink was clean. Bloody sparkling. And there were no messy cups around. No biscuits. No cakes. Everything was stacked away in cupboards like it is before a holiday. Like when we go to Blackpool every June for two weeks to see her parents. But it wasn’t June and we weren’t going on holidays. So I wandered through a spotless house. Vera always kept a clean house, but not like that.

  Then, and I don’t know why, I opened the drawers in the bedroom and her things were missing. So I opened another drawer, and except for a few odds and ends, they were all empty. Then I saw some old scarves hanging from the bedroom mirror, and her hats still on the rack in the hall, and I thought that maybe, maybe, it was all right after all. But I knew it wasn’t. I knew it was all wrong.