Spirit of Progress Read online

  And there is a large part of George that wishes this were not so. In an ideological age, an age that has long insisted on the necessity of taking sides (and the moral superiority of those who do), George is not particularly ideological. This does not mean that he doesn’t understand the prevailing ideological stand-off nor care about it. He does, but he is distant, detached, about ideology in the same way that he one day hopes to be distant and detached about the whole country. If his university education has taught him anything, it has taught him that he is one of those who are now adrift. His father is a shopkeeper, his mother a mother. He is what the ideology of the day regards as that most slippery of customers, the petit-bourgeois man. Neither working class nor middle class. Fleeing one and aspiring to the other. A deserter to one and an upstart to the other. Not to be trusted.

  In fact, he is not aspiring to any of that: class, wealth or status. He is, as far as he is concerned, quite simply adrift. And happily so. Free. Distant, and happily distant. If he aspires to anything at this particular moment it is to the kind of woman he is now speaking to. To Tess. No, he doesn’t want class, wealth or status. He just wants her (which, he silently concedes, could be just another way of having all the rest). To the likes of his father she is one of those who are out of reach, and a good thing too. To the likes of his father there is happiness and there is contentment. Contentment is preferable because it is more lasting. And contentment is found with one’s kind. Not with the kind of woman that George is currently in the company of. Only tears are to be found there. Stick to your kind, George, a voice like his father’s tells him. But George isn’t listening. George is adrift; unaligned and unencumbered. And this is why part of George wishes that it wasn’t simply because he is the critic for the newspaper that Tess is talking to him. But he knows full well that that is the long and the short and the tall of it. And that is also why when he tells himself that if he aspires to anything at all it is to the kind of woman he is with, it is a playful telling. A little story, something to be toyed with; a toy to be taken from the toy box of fanciful living and to be put back when play is over. A sort of daydream. And because he is the one making up the story he knows better than to believe it.

  As she takes him around the space, an old warehouse that has been vacant for many years (and which she picked up for a song), the list of ifs is gathering in number. Because there will be so many paintings in this exhibition (for it is a survey of all that the city’s painters and sculptors produced during the war), more than the usual gallery space is needed. And there are paintings on the walls already, as well as sculptures and small artifacts on the floor and on tables. The gallery area is being filled with images and objects and colour. Bright, luminous colour that seems to light up the warehouse. And it is an odd collection of images: grotesque, sleazy, bizarre, absurd, violent and sadly triumphant — for the years that produced them were all of that and more. Already there is an air of excitement about the place, a sense of moment. And as much as George is contemplating all of this, the list of ‘ifs’ is gathering. If he was not leaving the city as soon as he could. If he had the knack of saying the right thing at the right time, which he doesn’t and it’s part of the reason he became a writer. If her poised self were not so unassailable and his not so adrift. If, indeed, she was not married with a daughter who is a mirror image of her, and if she was not happily married, for he has seen her with her husband, a banker, and concluded that there is happiness in the union. If it was not for all this and so much more, George just might fall in love with this woman. But for all the reasons he has gone over and over again as they have walked around the gallery space, he wouldn’t stand a chance. And with this thought the voice of his father rings with truth. But he is adrift, so what can he do but ignore the ringing? It is a call he will not take for the time being. Or possibly ever. And so, as she guides him round, he is playfully compiling a list of ifs.

  As she remarks upon this and that exhibit, he becomes aware of her favourites, not so much because of what she says but because of the enthusiasm with which she speaks of some more than others. And he is conscious of being led in a certain direction, towards certain artists more than others, so that when he comes to write about the exhibition he will mention these artists more than others. Of course, she would never say which are her favourites; they are all her children. But she does hint.

  At the end of the tour she adds that the exhibition is not complete. That she is still waiting for some artists, and it is here that she offers a number of names. And although the name of Sam is in the middle of the list, it is the way it is dropped into the middle — a little too casually — that catches his attention. Although George has a naturally playful turn of mind, indeed, an aspect of the eternal child, he also has the child’s capacity to recognise instantly and see through such things as calculated, casual remarks. Whether he is right or wrong, he is suddenly contemplating the possibility that not all young men like himself simply play with the idea of falling in love with a woman like this. That this poised and worldly self of hers might not be so unassailable after all. That the very rich, as Mr Hemingway informed his mid-western friend, were different only insofar as they were very rich. And that sometimes this woman just might fall in love with her favourites (and he has heard small-town rumours to this effect), the favourites whose names she is apt to drop casually into the middle of a list of names so as not to single them out.

  But his list of ‘ifs’ is still the same, and his speculations remain playful. At the door of the warehouse that sense of moment he felt walking around the gallery comes upon him again as he stares back at the images inside, the grotesque, the absurd, the violent and the sadly triumphant. And he can’t help but think, yet again, that when they all finally leave this place that they can’t wait to be shot of they just might find that they have left their best behind them, and that pressure cooker of a city at war the best thing that ever happened to them.

  16.

  The Indifference of Munching Cows

  It is good to be out on the open road. To be out of the city. Away from the same faces and the talk that is all too familiar. It is a crisp winter’s day. Blue sky, bright sun. The green paddocks glow. The winter flowers are luminous. The leaves of the bushes and gums lift and shimmer in the breeze, now in sunshine, now in shade. Dappled. But somehow that’s the wrong word, a word meant for a dappled countryside, which this is not. And as much as Sam may feel like he’s cycling through an Impressionist painting (most of which he has only ever seen in reproduction), he’s not and he knows he’s not. The light is wrong for a start. The scattered houses and buildings are wrong. The greenery is wrong. Only a line of bare poplars, lining the part of the road along which he is travelling, like so many upturned brooms, is right. No, it is more like those morning scenes from painters closer to home. McCubbin or Tom Roberts.

  Paintings he can see any time he likes. A country junction, a paddock, a farmhouse, purple plumes of smoke rising from a chimney to a wide blue sky. One look and you know how cold it is, for all the brightness of the sun. One look and you know how it would feel to kick the dew off the grass in that paddock. And this, it occurs to Sam as his legs work smoothly on the pedals, is the difference between paintings from here and paintings from there. You bring first-hand knowledge to a painting of scenes you have walked through: you feel the cold, you hear the silence and you smell the smoke. Paintings, to Sam, are transparent like that. A window to a world that is familiar, yet made unfamiliar, and the knowledge you bring to the painting adds dimensions (sound, smell and touch) that the flat, square object on the wall can’t have. A painting, he imagines, doesn’t necessarily end at the frame. But you can only walk into them, move about them, hear the cow bells and sniff the air if you’ve been there and you’ve got local knowledge to bring to the thing. Which is why when he looks at reproductions of water lilies and medieval villages and hedgerows in May he can only guess at sound, smell and touch. Can imagine, true, what it is to walk through those scen
es, but also has the disquieting feeling that when he finally bumps into the real thing it will be quite a jolt. Different from what he imagined. And does this mean that some paintings, depending on the viewer, finish at the frame? It’s a thought, a morning thought, and one that does the job of occupying his mind so that he doesn’t notice the effort required as he cycles up an incline, beside the railway line, noticing, quite near, a suburban train, a red rattler, bright in the mid-winter sun like a toy on a train-set toyland, travelling the other way into the city, close enough as it passes for Sam to read its destination above the driver’s cabin: Sandringham.

  Sam has made good time, for he is a good cyclist. He has even won trophies. Could have been a professional. Has the gift of smooth, speedy motion. Instead he chose painting, but cycling, now and in the years to come in all the places in the great world to which his painting will take him (for Sam will become as famous as everybody says he will) will always bring back to him those dewy mornings of youth when his future, like the road, was all in front of him.

  At the moment he is following the instructions given to him by George the previous night in the café. Soon he reaches the T-intersection and eyes what his map tells him is the Old Wheat Road, and, to his left, the flour mill that George told him to look for. With his pack on his back — a khaki pack from his brief, unhappy period in the army — he turns the front wheel and cycles carefully down the dirt track of what seems to be the main street of this small community, past the shops, the baker and whatnot. Established shops, three of them, he notices. Brick, their walls carrying faded advertisements for things that people bought once but not now. He eases past the small war memorial, which bears too many names for such a small place, the marble and gold lettering sadly new and bright, like the morning. There is nobody on the street or the dirt footpaths. No sign of movement behind the windows of the shops. The breeze has dropped. Everything is still. Everything except for Sam, the only moving figure in view. And although there is no sign of life behind the windows of the shops, he knows that somewhere in there the eyes of the owners will be upon him. He notices a few scattered farmhouses, a hall, tennis courts (unoccupied, and looking as if they have been for some time) and somewhere off in the distance a large, double-storey affair that might even be called a mansion. A turn here, a turn there, as the map tells him, and then he is staring at the tent.

  It is an old tent, weathered, with a large patch of canvas draped over one part of it. This tent has travelled, as has, presumably, the old woman inside it. Sam leaves his bicycle leaning against a fence, and a few cows glance up from their munching as he takes his backpack off. On his way back to the city the image of the cows will return to him. At least, not so much the cows as their indifference. Munching, glancing up, then back to munching. Odd that this image should stay with him. Until he realises at some stage during the journey back that this is how he feels when he is painting. When he is deep into a painting, so deep that he is oblivious of the world around him: at such times he feels like a cow munching in a field. He checks the contents of his pack: pad, charcoal, pencils. But from what he has been told by his journalist friend, George, his chances of even speaking to the old woman, let alone getting her to sit in front of her tent (the scene he imagines he will paint), are remote.

  With his pack at his feet, he calls out and watches as a head of white hair pops out from the flap of the tent. He knows she will be wary, even snappy, because she has been disturbed the previous day. And her no-nonsense strides, for she is now approaching him, tell Sam that the conversation may be brief. He attempts a smile and a cheery greeting, but she ignores both.

  ‘You from the newspaper?’

  ‘No,’ he says, remembering that he has the newspaper with him, that he packed it especially, and takes it from his pack to show her, suspecting that she hasn’t seen it. It is a calculated gamble. She may want it, she may not want it. It may work by way of introduction, give them something to talk about, or she may fling it back in his face. But when she comes to a stop, standing beside him at the edge of her property and he hands the paper over, she takes it without comment. She looks at the photograph, back at Sam, then reads the article in silence.

  At the same time Sam has the opportunity to study his subject closely. She is there, in front of him. A fact, not a photograph. A sort of walking myth. And, unusual for Sam, he is more than a little wary of his subject. This is not a woman who cares for the niceties of social convention and appearances. She says what she wants, and lives where and how she wants. She is beyond social convention. Society is not something that concerns her. Nor community. She asks only to be left to herself. But being unconventional she is a curiosity to the society she seeks to reject, and society will not leave her to herself. Hence the young painter standing before her.

  She grunts as she reads and mutters the word ‘pioneer’ dismissively. She hands back the paper to him, showing no interest in keeping it. And again this captures both Sam’s attention and his admiration. She doesn’t care. She really doesn’t care. Most people, he suspects, would be flattered to see their names in print, let alone their photograph, and would eagerly cut the piece out and place it in their scrapbook. But not this woman. She does not need the world’s attention or approval, or anything else it might be foolhardy enough to offer. And this, he concludes from her dress, her manner, her looks, her few words, is because the world is of no great interest to her. And it is of no great interest because it is not her world anymore and hasn’t been for some time. She needs neither its attention nor its approval. The world that gave birth to her and made her has gone, and soon she, one of its last remnants, will be gone too.

  ‘It’s not Mrs Carroll,’ she says, glancing at the newspaper. It is, she informs him, Miss Carroll. Always has been. Never been married. Never been courted. And that’s fine by her. She’s always been happy with Miss Carroll. And she’s always preferred it like that. No husband to get in the way, telling her what to do — because nobody tells her what to do. No, Miss Carroll is perfectly fine by her. She is a single woman and she is proud that she has lived her life, not somebody else’s. She says these things and she doesn’t say these things. States some and implies the rest. And Sam is taking in all of this. But as he is taking it in he is also noting that she is actually talking. And quite a lot. He has barely had to ask anything and he suspects that Miss Carroll is possibly happier to engage with the world than she might let on. That there is a part of Miss Carroll that is like those recluses who are just waiting to be spoken to. And so, encouraged by her talk, he decides to request what he’s come for. Decides that this is the moment, the reason why he is here, after all.

  ‘I’ve come,’ he begins, ‘because I’m a painter. Not a journalist. And I’d like to paint you.’

  He tries to say this as casually as possible, and alternates between staring out over the farmer’s paddocks and trying to read the reaction in her eyes.

  ‘Well you can’t.’ They have wasted too much time, she says, as it is. And time, she adds, is not something she has a great deal of any more.

  ‘I work quickly,’ he adds.

  ‘I’ll bet you do.’ She eyes him as she says it, implying that working quickly is no great virtue. A questionable quality, belonging to questionable types. Like this young man, with his slicked-back hair and his easy manner. She is also implying that there is altogether too much speed in this world. And, turning her back on both Sam and this world of quick work he inhabits, leaves him with a brief farewell.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he calls and watches as she turns. ‘Will you take this?’

  He holds out a small card, the card of the gallery at which the exhibition will take place, with a telephone number on it. She looks at it dubiously but, to Sam’s surprise, stuffs it into her coat pocket. At the same time Sam can barely see the point in handing over a card with a telephone number to a woman who lives in a tent. But it’s a strange world, he muses, and strange things happen.

  He watches as she walks away a
nd disappears into her tent, the newspaper still in his hand. He retrieves his bicycle from its resting place against the fence, noting the cows, and pedals back in the direction he came from. As he rides he notices, for the first time, a tall white figure standing in the paddock. He presumes this is the farmer. And he can’t help but think he has a lost look about him, the way he leans to one side, and, if Sam is not mistaken, a slightly pigeon-toed walk as he crosses his paddock. All the same, he looks a happy old codger. And with this thought, Sam gives him a wave, and the old codger waves back. In the pack his pad has remained unopened, his pencils and charcoal unused. The old woman is now back in the shell of her tent. Slipped from him. Slipped through his fingers like time. Gone like the world that made her. Taking her image with her.

  17.

  The Contessa Reflects