The Electrical Experience (3 page)

The words and the smile were then expunged from his mind, leaving behind no trace or residue of self-mockery.

Around the time of the Sesquicentenary George put this in the local paper, but very few took the trouble.

 

‘For a festive occasion dip electric-light globes in a mixture of sodium silicate and gelatin, coloured by water-soluble dyes. The thickness of the mixture is a matter of experimentation.'

On 9th July 1938, when George McDowell strode home from business that evening to eat his tea before going to a meeting, his wife, leaning back from the rise of steam while straining the beans, told him that she was expecting their third child.

He kissed her on the cheek, she averting her eyes from the beans as a gesture of appreciation for the kiss and to separate the announcement from her task of straining the beans.

‘In or about February,' she said.

‘It will be hot in hospital,' he said, frowning at the bad planning.

‘Doctor says to expect a somewhat difficult birth because of my age.'

‘Forty isn't that old,' he said, himself being thirty-five.

‘For having children, the medical profession seem to think so. I told him that three was our plan.'

He washed his hands in the bathroom with Solvol.

Of course it meant the training of another child. The training of a child had always been heart-racking. He did not relish the punishment of children, the beatings, the smackings, the sobbings, the locking of children in the broom closet. There was always, too, what seemed to him to be the un necessary messiness
and untidiness of untrained children which remained for him a puzzle of nature.

He was pondering also the coincidence that on the day his wife should be pronounced pregnant, he should change his name.

As they sat down at the dining-room table, the girls prim and quiet, serviettes under chin, ‘The Lord make us Truly Grateful', his wife asked, ‘At work today, dear, anything of interest?'

‘Yes, as a matter of fact,' he said, twinkling, glad at last to be asked, having waited for what seemed a correct and decorous length of time and distance from his wife's announcement of the coming of the child, ‘I changed my name today,' he announced, lightheartedly.

‘How do you mean?' she said, moving fruit in the fruit basket, a way she had of making herself steady, by being busy.

The children looked towards him with wide, unsure eyes.

‘How do you mean, Father?'

‘I'll show you,' he said, and, leaving the table, he went to the sideboard. Failing to find paper, he went then to the telephone table.

He returned with a pad and indelible pencil.

With a flourish, determined but not yet habit, he wrote, ‘T. George McDowell.' He licked the pencil and wrote in indelible purple, ‘T. George McDowell.'

‘It's longer' was the first thing his wife said, staring at the new signature, pushed across to her on the pad headed Messages.

The children peered across.

‘Why, Daddy?'

‘What does T stand for?' the older daughter, Gwen, asked.

‘T stands for Terence, Daddy's other Christian name,' Thelma told the children.

He went on eating, looking not at the food but at the new signature.

‘Why don't you use it if it comes first?' Gwen asked.

‘A long story,' T. George McDowell said, returning in a flash and a spin to a boy with a leather schoolbag monogrammed TMCD with a red-hot piece of wire, riding a pony to a one-room coastal school, a drawing illustrating all the people of the Empire by children in different colours and national dress, all smiling, toothily, the enterprising spirit of the Anglo-Saxon race. ‘At my school, you see, we had two Terence McDowells, and I being the younger had to use my second name. As so often happens, it stuck.'

He never quite overcame that bewilderment and displace ment of having met, so early in his life, among such a small group, someone of the same name.

‘Why have you changed your signature now? And what about the bank and so on?' Thelma asked unsurely.

‘For emphasis,' he said. ‘It has more oomph.'

He had wanted to change his name to T. George since 1923, when he attended the St Louis Rotary Convention, an event which charged his life with zeal
and which had begun him on his realisation of his System for Success. But only now, some many years later, did he feel established enough in the town to, well, ‘get away with it'.

‘T. George McDowell,' his wife said in a low voice. ‘T. George McDowell.'

‘It will help, I think,' T. George said, ‘especially in my dealings with the city and when we travel.'

‘Does it change our names too, Daddy?' asked the younger.

‘I expect the locals will give you a bit of good-natured fun about it.'

‘I suppose so. I took it down to the printery today to have the new letterhead set up. Backhouse said it looked ‘Americanised'.'

Backhouse saying that pleased him, although one didn't know about Backhouse. Backhouse held himself off, was inclined to make remarks which meant more to himself than to the person addressed.

‘Yes, it does,' his wife said, saying T. George McDowell over in a low voice, as if trying to recognise the name.

‘I've noticed in Rotary that many of the Rotarians from the city have adopted the use of their initial.'

He masticated a mouthful of food. The family waited for him to go on.

As if they were waiting for yet further explanation.

‘It makes you stand out from the herd. That is the theory of it. In business,' he said, beginning what sounded like a speech, ‘it pays to have something
which catches the eye—makes them remember you next time.'

He patted his mouth with the white serviette, leaving a beetroot stain.

‘A lot of the fun that is poked is at those who dare to be different. It is a way of getting people back into the common lot. There is nothing most like better than to pull a person back,' he told the girls and Thelma.

‘The lowest common denominator,' his wife agreed.

‘I see where Australia is producing its own tacks and wireless valves,' he said, opening the newspaper, changing the subject modestly.

‘Don't read at the table, dear. It's a bad example for the girls.'

Pouring the tea from the traymobile, Thelma said, ‘I expect at the long weekend we'll have quite an exodus from the city coming through.'

‘Boiled radiators and punctured tyres. Should sell plenty of drinks. We'll be working back to build up stocks.'

‘It's such a messy way of spending a weekend. Nowhere to wash properly.'

‘Can we go camping, Mummy?'

‘When you become a girl guide and learn to camp properly,' Thelma replied, ‘that is more than half the trouble. They come from the city and have not been trained to camp.'

‘Harry Fox is grumbling that the tourists camp in his paddocks. But some of the more tourist-minded in the Chamber want the farmers to let them camp.'

He found he had picked up the newspaper again and Thelma took it away putting it out of reach, and then said to the girls, ‘You must not talk to strangers.'

‘I gave a young fellow a lift today.'

‘Oh yes.'

‘He was dressed in black. I asked him about it and he told me it was a German-style uniform. It was a black uniform which he got while in Germany himself. Black shirt, black trousers, black leather knee-boots. You couldn't miss him. He stood out beside the road.'

‘Was he German?'

‘No, Australian.'

‘I don't know what to think of that business over there.'

‘All you can say is that he's getting the place into shape. But he cannot last. Dictators do not last. No man who doesn't smile can last long in any public position. I never have seen a photograph of Adolf Hitler smiling.'

He had once, at a sideshow in 1919, been tempted by a gypsy to be hypnotised but could not submerge himself. He wanted to go and be hypnotised but could not hand his will over to another. He stood fixed in the sawdust outside the sideshow tent as she coaxed him, staring straight into his eyes, there in the crowd, saying, ‘Come on, young man, venture into the dark beyond, you will become my slave.'

He'd felt sickly weak, drawn, but wouldn't give his feet the instruction to go. His mind said no, but his whole physical yearning was to go and give himself over to her.

He was an individualist. A student of electricity and magnetism even then, a scientifically minded person and would not give himself over to hocus-pocus.

About the German thing, he saw the appeal of the torchlight and the singing and the wearing of national uniforms and leather knee-boots. It would be good for a country to march and sing together in a surge of unity. As opposed to all the political backbiting and squabbling. But no he was an individualist.

He had stared at the man in black uniform but found that he was not a Nazi but an adventurer, and his nervous curiosity about the Nazis was then deflated. One heard so much.

‘Was he pleasant?'

‘A little strange.'

The man in the black uniform told him stories of midnight raids and the searching of Jewish women. Of the German secret police who made women strip, forced the women to be their whores, to clean and polish their boots with their mouths, lips and then to crouch naked and polish them with their pubic region.

‘Hadn't you better leave for the meeting?' Thelma reminded him.

‘Yes,' he murmured and told the girls to help their mother.

He would try out the new name on those at the meeting, although he didn't feel in the mood to have his leg pulled.

He remembered that the child was expected and before he left, after putting on the armour of his best
suit, he went to the kitchen and kissed his wife again on the cheek.

‘I almost forgot—I'm glad about the planned child.'

His wife smiled, pleasantly, and said, ‘It had gone completely out of my mind for the time being.'

Backward North Coast tenant farmer to tractor salesman: When you boys can make a tractor that can have a foal to take its place when it's worn out, then I'll be interested.

 

Salesman: Ah, but the tractor doesn't eat when it's not working.

In 1929 George McDowell went to the Highlands for a weekend to examine his life and to try to get the cafés to start taking bottled soft drinks. Married one year, his cordial factory was making a profit, but other problems, however, hovered. He had not really mastered shyness, for instance, although his Powers of Concentration had improved, he thought.

Apart from questions of personality and philosophy of life, there was the world. The economic crisis looming, though few seemed to believe it, and the implications of electricity now that the town supply had been switched on, though most ignored that too, except to debate whether the street lights should stay on all night or be turned off at midnight.

His cordial factory was linked to the town electricity, one of the first. His trouble was not electricity but the town water. It needed triple filtration. Competition from Nowra or the city could hurt him, especially if they extended the rail past Nowra. But he did not fear competition, he reminded himself. He believed that when it came to foodstuffs, people would buy only from someone they knew. His living presence on the coast was a guarantee.

His car boiled and while waiting for it to cool, he
sat on the running-board, made a cup of tea from the boiling radiator, and ate Thelma's tomato sandwiches.

When he reached the town, the guest-house, Wychwoode, seemed oddly quiet.

At the sound of the car, James Coffey, owner, in plus-fours, war-limp, came down to get the bags, his cigar plugged in his mouth. George always thought to himself that the cigar in Coffey's mouth always promised more than was there.

‘Wonderful to see you, George. Bad news though—but, anyhow, how are you?—domestic staff, would you believe it, are on a strike. On a strike.'

Coffey took both bags. ‘Here let me—that's what a guest house is all about.'

Strike?

George didn't feel right that the older man should carry his bags, but he took it as a tribute to his rising in the business world so young.

‘Do?' said Coffey. ‘What can I do? Nothing.' Coffey made it sound like action and decision.

George remained impassive towards his fellow business man as they climbed the stairs and said nothing suggesting endorsement of Coffey's inaction. He had learned only recently that an impassive appearance could be used to lead the other person to say more, to go further than they wanted, to reveal—usually their weakness. Coffey went on mumbling about there being nothing that could be done. He did not like Coffey's sense of defeat.

Cigar or not.

The guest-house had electricity, but although the main light in his room worked, the bed lamp did not. Typical. George carried his own globe because hotels used weak globes to save money.

 

George braked the Chev too severely and stalled it, so impatient was his movement, so determined was he to sustain his impulse. To get things moving.

People who rely on inertia, he believed, are easy prey to a man of action. A person who made a move, took action, stood a high chance of success. There were so few who did. Most people waited for things to happen
to
them.

Mrs K, the housekeeper at Wychwoode, sat in her tidy house with her hands crossed tidily on her lap.

‘You can't strike against your own town. That's what you're doing. A place of work is like the family—pride and loyalty are owed,' he told her, pacing about her living-room.

‘We have,' she said, shortly and hopelessly.

‘To strike against your employer is to say that he is a dishonest man.'

‘That's not what we're saying, Mr McDowell. I don't like going on a strike any more than the next person, and this is the very first and only time.'

She was outwardly firm, but George sensed her desire to be back at work, her misgivings, her unease amid an unfamiliar situation.

He played on her desire to be back doing what she knew.

He went on, ‘… why, grown people each sitting at home sulking. Working for each other is our sacred interchange. A town is a co-operative reliance on each other to do his job.'

His voice had strength and bluster which spurred him on as he heard himself. He did not know what he was saying all the time, but he knew when it was having effect.

He said things about goodness' sake, Mrs K, you have known James Coffey for how many years and the economic crisis and hard times.

After shaking her head during most of it, she did then get up resignedly and get her things.

‘What about the others?' she said with some trepidation. ‘I'm letting them down.'

‘I'll worry about the others.'

She said, no, she wasn't going, and sat down again, her things on the floor beside her.

George talked on, paced about. ‘We all live too close for us to be striking against each other. Striking is for those who don't know each other. The city.'

She got up again, sat down again, but at last moved towards the door.

‘Mind you,' she said, ‘I'm only going back to talk. I'll not do a touch of work until this is settled properly.'

Yes, yes.

Finally he got her into the car.

 

The cook said she'd put up with conditions long enough, and the cook at Bundanoon only worked
forty-four hours and no broken shifts.

‘Mrs K is out in the car and she's going back to work. She's willing to go back—to keep this in the family. Not to make wounds which might not heal.'

Agnes looked out the window to see for herself.

‘For heaven's sake, Agnes, you're the last person I would have thought needed looking after by people from the city. By some Union People you've never seen.'

‘I suppose if Mrs K is going back … but there'll have to be some immediate improvement.'

Yes, yes, yes.

 

Two down.

 

The others were easy. Mrs K and Agnes in the car did the trick. He blustered them and held the curtain of their front window to show them. His two prisoners-of-war.

‘Strike at Wychwoode! This is not the way country people settle things.'

‘But the Union Man over the telephone said to stay out until he got here.'

They'd actually telephoned the city.

‘Damn it, do we trust the voice on the telephone now more than those around us whom we know?'

The telephone made things happen too quickly.

Which one of them had the nerve to book a telephone trunk call to the city. That took some nerve.

‘Some things,' he told them, ‘are too important for the telephone.'

People got things wrong over the telephone because they were too nervous. Many letters answered themselves in a fortnight, he always said.

So they'd actually telephoned the city. Fancy that.

‘Who made the call?'

They didn't answer. He looked over his shoulder at them, huddled and glum. He looked at Agnes beside him. No reply. They weren't telling.

The boots, Old Simon, odd-jobman, cow-milker, wouldn't go back to work. He said he had made his decision and he didn't care what the others were doing and no young whipper-snapper was going to tell him what to do. He wouldn't rat on the union.

How had Coffey let things get so bad with his staff?

Whipper-snapper George gave up on Simon, shutting the weathered door of the weathered shack behind him, full of stuffed parrots and sea trunks. Beer bottles trimmed the edge of the dirt path.

He couldn't believe Simon would have made the trunk-line call to the city. He could not imagine Simon with a telephone in his hand.

He dragged the gate shut. Simon's tethered goat whinnyed at him.

In the car the others were sitting low, probably fearing that old Simon would come out and berate them.

He told them the white lie that Simon wasn't feeling well.

This seemed to hearten them. He sensed that Simon was the backbone of their little nonsense.

He got the Chev into gear and turned around, when
Simon came to the door and shouted, ‘You can all go to bloody hell—ratting on the union.'

He revved the car up to block out Simon's voice, waved with mock cheeriness, as if they were great old mates, and shouted back, ‘See you tomorrow—hope you're feeling better.' Being on the side nearest Simon, he hoped the others didn't catch what he'd cried out. If they did, they perhaps chose not to show it.

At full throttle the Chev jerked off down the rutted road.

 

Agnes was even singing as she prepared the evening meal and the others were all seemingly, at least, relieved to be back at work.

They knew how to do their job; they didn't know how to have a strike. No one liked doing unfamiliar things. He'd banked on that.

The few guests who'd stayed, fending for themselves, were relaxing now in the lounge. Coffey was effusive, expansive.

What had Coffey done! Nothing.

He said to Coffey, ‘The only socialists I've ever known talk about work and the value of work but never do any.'

Pleased with himself for having got things going, exhilarated too with having come through a private Shyness Test, he allowed himself a rare glass of stout with Coffey. He had to screw himself up tight inside to approach people. To get out from inside himself took a lot of personal electricity.

‘The working people have a puny spirit which is a direct result of lack of self-confidence. They always have to be bolstered up by some agitator. Our task as business men is to offer them superior leadership,' he told Coffey.

‘This Tea Rooms Award …'

‘Every work-place has its own nature—an award never takes heed of that,' he told Coffey. ‘One set of conditions cannot be imposed on all. No two enterprises are alike. They're trying to make everyone wear the same clothes.'

Coffey nodded, drinking down a whole whisky. George didn't quite know if his words were wasted.

Coffey was no thinker.

‘There are two classes—those who are Self-movers and those who have to be coaxed, cajoled, and pushed to do their work.'

He stopped talking and looked into the empty stout glass. He had drunk that quickly! He refused another.

For heaven's sake, here he was, needing to cajole Coffey—a fellow business man.

Coffey was not quite up to the mark. The burned-out globe, that sort of thing. He played the big fellow about the town. Golfing and so on.

After tea they joined the guests around the pianola and a chap from Bega played the banjo. George excused himself early. Thank god, he thought, for wireless; it'll spare us the amateur musician.

He felt tired right out—a business man was up against it—one man against thousands. One man
against the power of the Unions. It was lonely and hard being a small business man. A Problem-solver. A Self-mover against all the obstacles of the world.

 

Next day, after calling on the two cafés and giving them a sample range of his cordials and some sales talking—although he'd promised Thelma he would take a complete rest—he returned to the guest-house and saw Coffey talking with a stranger in the downstairs hall.

It turned out to be the Union Man from the city, arrived on the midday train.

George noticed he wore riding-boots—from the city and he wore riding-boots.

From the look and sound of it, Coffey was taking a brow beating.

George joined them, standing hands on hips, eyes to the floor, listening to the Union Man with great impatience.

‘And you'll pay them for their holidays,' the Union Man said.

George had always found this outrageous. Why should he pay for another man's holiday?

George butted in, ‘Every business has to arrange its own affairs.'

‘And who the hell are you?'

George decided not to answer. The Union Man turned to Coffey and said, ‘Who is this person?'

‘This is George McDowell, a business friend.'

‘George McDowell—by god, I know about you—
you run some sort of damn soft-drink factory down the coast—my god, yes, I've heard all about you. You keep your nose out of this, McDowell.'

George was rather pleased that he was known, but did not have a clue for what reason he might be known.

‘I'm making this my business,' George heard himself say.

‘Look, McDowell, go back down the coast and back to your rot-gut lolly-water.'

In a second of fury George was about to say, ‘I'll take you to court for saying that', but remembered he was opposed to using the courts in man-to-man situations, and so, instead, he seized the Union Man by the scruff of the neck and seat of the trousers and tried to frog-march him out of the guest-house. They stumbled together into the slow sunlight of the afternoon.

The Union Man freed himself with a twist, caught more by surprise than by George.

Shouting at George, he said something about the Factory Act and being empowered and not to lay a finger.

Coffey limped quickly down the steps, upset, restrained George, muttering, ‘Trouble enough.'

George said, ‘You better not show yourself around my factory.'

The Union Man said that was just what he intended doing and thanked him for the idea.

They stood there in the street, opposed, and out of breath.

‘Please,' Coffey said, holding George's arm.

Delighted to his heart that he'd thrown the Union Man off the premises but urged away by Coffey, George went off, leaving Coffey in his own mess. Coffey lacked stomach.

George slapped his thigh with exhilaration as he went along the streets in no particular direction, reliving the incident.

Finally he went to the California Café and had a soda with plenty of chipped ice.

He said to Margoulis that freedom of enterprise, freedom to organise our own lives, would be finished if we let inspectors, city Union People and all the rest push us around.

Margoulis appeared not quite comprehending, nevertheless agreed, and went on wiping the glasses left by the Saturday matinée interval.

He took the opportunity to point out to Margoulis that with bottled drinks he wouldn't have to wash up the glasses.