The Time We Have Taken (21 page)

T
he hand moves across the treated surface of the wall, sometimes slow, sometimes fast. But always moving. Mulligan, either reclining or standing on the scaffolding that he climbs each day up to his wall, seems to be both still and in a state of perpetual movement. As though he hasn’t a minute to lose. As though the wall will crumble and fall before he is finished. And so the hand is always moving; even when pausing in mid-air, hovering over the surface of the wall, there is minute movement, thumb and forefinger slowly twisting the brush this way and that, as if the hand itself were thinking. At moments like these, the mind of Mulligan is emptied. He has (he fancifully imagines afterwards) no more thought for what is happening than a farm animal munching
grass in a field. The moving hand is a thing unto itself.

The weeks, the months, the whole winter and spring have passed like this. In a trance. The jigsaw of faces and places on the wall all destined to come together into one whole picture, the nature of which only Mulligan knows. Only Mulligan has the studies of the public figures he is committing to the wall, only Mulligan has the sketches that reveal the full sweep of the picture. But even then, even to Mulligan, it seems that it is only this moving hand that really knows what is going on, and he, too, is a spectator, watching it, day by day, skimming across the treated surface of the wall, a thing unto itself, that seems to be moving, even when poised, thumb and forefinger slowly twisting the brush this way and that. Somewhere out there, on this mild spring morning, the Great Whitlam has come to Centenary Suburb. But this is of no concern to Mulligan and the hand that moves or does not move, according to its impulses.

Not that anybody actually sees either the hand or Mulligan at the end of it, for he works behind long drapes that fall from the top of the scaffolding to the floor. He arrives early in the morning and leaves late at night. Moreover, he barely emerges for lunch or breaks. Mulligan has found a world to which he can go each day. His own world. And he barely notices the one he shares with everybody else, or
acknowledges anyone else’s presence. Except when they come too close to his wall and his world, the one he will reveal to all of them when he chooses to let it go and open the drapes.

And those who walk past the shrouded wall, going in and out of the town hall offices — the mayor, the office clerks, Peter van Rijn and the various members of the Centenary Committee — have long since come to accept Mulligan’s terms. He possesses an authority that was, at first, difficult to explain. But he had it. Then the mayor looked up to the wall in late winter and acknowledged that at some stage the wall had, in his eyes and those of everyone else, become Mulligan’s wall. And the authority that they all accepted but found difficult to explain became recognisable as the kind of authority that someone has when they are speaking from their territory. Besides, in time, people had come to like the idea of a mystery in their midst. One that will reveal itself when the time comes. And the temptation to peek behind the wraps has been resisted, in the same way someone recognises but rejects the impulse to peek at the last page of a book.

What’s more, it has also been recognised for some that this Mulligan is one of those who, more than likely, possess a short fuse. The eyes tell you that an explosion is never far away, and that he doesn’t take kindly to people sticking their beaks into his business,
opening their mouths to offer either comment or criticism. And so that world he is bringing into being spreads in silent majesty, day by day, across the wall for which Mulligan was destined and which is now accepted as his.

The moving hand of Mulligan moves on. Oblivious of the world around it. A thing unto itself. And Mulligan, either reclining or standing on the scaffolding, is a spectator to the designs and whims of the moving hand. But he also recognises that the time is approaching when he will part company with his wall, when it will no longer be his wall, and he will have to pull the drapes aside and give it back to the crowd. So he savours every day that he still has this world to step into each morning, for walls like this have a once-in-a-lifetime look and part of him is already contemplating how he will fill his days when the wall is gone from him.

‘
T
ake me with you.’

Mrs Webster is contemplating this run of ratty spring days and how they show no sign of blowing over. It has been a week since that Whitlam of theirs visited the suburb, and she puts this run of windy days (which sprang up the same day) down to him. It’s all that hot air, she thinks. Then she eyes the sky and the estate gardens, stirred up by the winds, as if something more than just ratty weather were afoot. Rita’s words, at first, are lost in the wind and the distant drone of a passing plane. Then, as quickly as it erupted, the wind drops. The small plane passes. A mid-week silence descends upon everything. Mrs Webster’s eyes turn from the gardens and Rita’s eyes are upon her, wide and expectant. The double doors
of the garage are locked. She’s closed those doors forever. She knows as much as she needs to know, as much as she’ll ever know. But this woman’s stare is fixed, even unrelenting, and although she has silently vowed that she never again needs to take that drive, she feels, somehow, obligated. She is wondering why she should feel this obligation, because Rita is not close enough to be called a friend, nor, Mrs Webster suspects, will she ever be. But she has, Mrs Webster silently confesses, implicated this woman, drawn her into her life. She has told her the kinds of private things that you would tell a friend, and, in the absence of just such a friend, she chose to tell Rita. Perhaps in the hope that the acquaintanceship would grow, or perhaps out of mere selfishness, out of the sheer need to speak. Whatever, there is a residual feeling of having used this woman, that having implicated her in her life, having drawn her into it, she cannot snub her. And, perhaps, this also explains Rita’s long, direct stare. It is unapologetic. Uncompromising. As though, in some part of her, not consciously or deliberately reasoned, she has come to the conclusion that this much is owed her. This much is her due. For the service of having been the right ear at the right time, she has earned at least one request, and this is it.

Without a further word being spoken, without question or the need for explanation, Mrs Webster
nods, simultaneously responding to the urgency and need in Rita’s request, to a sense of doing what’s right, and to a faint, niggling sense of quitting herself of a debt that she needn’t have acquired.

With that, they stroll back to the house, quietly arranging the details of time and place, then part at the steps of the house as the wind springs up again, a sudden gust, a seasonal tantrum, scattering cloud across the sky and tossing fragments of the estate — leaves and buds — into the disturbed air.

The first thing Rita notices later that evening (a quiet Monday night, damp, cool and late enough for no one to be about) is the fit of the leather gloves on Mrs Webster’s hands. They are skin tight — almost a second skin — and black and shiny like the car itself. She slips them onto her fingers with the unselfconscious expertise of a jet-fighter pilot or a burglar. Rita is not sure which. But she looks upon Mrs Webster now as if gazing upon a highly trained killer or a master thief, and a slight smile passes across her features. Rita knows her movies. She has known her movies since she was a teenager — in those distant days before the word ‘teenager’ was even invented. And because she knows her movies, because she spent her youth immersed in them (much to the disapproval of her mother, who forever told her that the movies were all right but they
weren’t life), she now feels as though she is in one, and the movies
are
life, feels as though she has been transformed into one of those ordinary types who find themselves lifted out of their humdrum houses and swept up into a world of drama and incident. And the darkness of the Webster estate and the silence of the surrounding suburb all add to the feeling of having entered a new dispensation — the world at night. That dark, quiet place that is governed by rules different from those that prevail during the day. She can feel the beating of her heart (something she rarely stops to even think about, let alone feel) and her palms are moist. At first she is not sure if it is fear or excitement that she’s feeling, and then decides, noting that she has not felt the sharpness of fear or excitement for many years, that it is both. In short, she is alive. And, it seems at this moment, she could count the number of times in her life that she has felt this alive on one hand.

Mrs Webster’s hand, that of the trained killer or the master thief, turns the key in the ignition and the car leaps into life. Immediately, it settles into an inaudible hum. The shiny black hands of Mrs Webster (who does not speak) turn the wheel with the lightest of touches and guide the car quietly down the gravel driveway of the estate, the way, no doubt, Webster would have guided the beast whenever it beckoned him. As they ease out into the
suburb, the headlights part the night and they slowly, quietly, slip through the dark streets, down to one of the two main roads of the suburb, the same road that, apart from a slight dog-leg opposite St Matthew’s Church, gave Webster his long, straight, uninterrupted stretch of bitumen.

And although the plan, the understanding, is to turn right at this point and drive to the new frontier out to the north of the suburb, where the excuse of a highway that runs through the thistle country can play host to speed the way the suburb once did, they don’t. When they reach the intersection, the car pauses and Mrs Webster hesitates, her gloved, black fingers drumming the wheel. Rita stares at her, not sure why on earth they’ve stopped. Then, as Mrs Webster’s head turns left, not right, she understands. And it is then that Mrs Webster glances at Rita and says, quite simply and in a tone that suggests she’d rather not be disappointed:

‘Well?’

Rita nods. And, as she does, she is not sure where the nod came from; whether she is deciding, or whether she has reached one of those points where events take over and you simply go with them. Mrs Webster acknowledges her response with the most minute arching of the eyebrow before turning her eyes back to the wheel, the windscreen and the intersection. And as the engine now rumbles with —
it seems to Rita — unimaginable power, she lightly touches her seatbelt as if any second now they might indeed blast off, and that pale spring moon hovering above St Matthew’s spire isn’t so far off at all.

At first, speed is everything she imagined it might be. The sudden explosion of energy, the kind of propulsion she associates with rocket ships. And, even though she has never been on an aeroplane, there is a distinct feeling of being on the verge of taking off, of leaving behind the bitumen, the suburb and that part of the earth upon which it sits.

But, just when she fully expects this to happen, something quite odd comes over her. A strange sense of not moving at all. Or, at least, moving in slow motion. Can speed do this? Like those snap responses and actions — jumping out of the way of a passing car, falling from a bicycle. They are, looking back, over in less than a second, but at the time seem to go on forever — every detail, every constituent moment of that split second unfolding itself in slow motion to the most minute scrutiny. Can speed do that? Like film that is shot so fast that it becomes slow motion. Or the spokes of a wheel moving at high speed, yet looking like they’re not moving at all. The noise of speed is all around her but at the centre it is silent. Mrs Webster is oblivious of her, lost utterly, given over exclusively to the task at hand. The cabin is still, the world at night glides by in easy
frames as the film, the spool of her life, accelerates to the point where speed meets its opposite, where past and present clash, collide and cascade around her into a wondrous slowness. And soon, soon, she is seeing the suburb in which she has lived nearly all her grown-up life as she has never seen it before.

The bells of St Matthew’s hang still and silent in the night. The party lights, blue and yellow, that permanently drape the cedar on the front lawn of the house opposite, dissolve into an emerald glow. In Rita’s street, which runs parallel to them, over the rooftops and square houses, the young Bruchner once more beats his dog through Saturday afternoons that never end. Joy Bruchner’s ashtray forever fills with the butts of her dreams, piling endlessly, as she reaches for a cigarette with her free, trembling hand even while extinguishing the previous one. She is both alive and long dead; stubbed her last butt, blown the last of her blue, filtered breath into the air. The dog is compost, yet forever howling. That was us, Rita murmurs. That was us.

A comet that never seems to be moving crawls across a long-lost summer sky at infinite speed, while Vic, Rita and Michael pause at a vacant paddock in the old street, in another life, before moving on. That was us. Mrs Barlow protests simultaneously to her husband and to the empty room she now occupies, alternatively screeching and sobbing, wretched with
the same complaints she has always been wretched with: the house is too small, the street is all wrong, and the suburb is stuck out on the edge of the world. Why, why, why did he ever drag her here? That was us. So too the sound of Desmond Barlow hacking his lungs out into a bucket day after day, to the accompaniment of Michael’s eternal bloody cricket ball ricocheting from fence post to fence post like a rifle shot. That, too, was us. And the house in which Rita lived out all these years (the house that they must surely now be passing) where everybody said things they never meant to say and heard things they were never meant to hear. That, too, was us. The house in which the married years, the mothering years, the working years, came and went, and which didn’t seem much at the time, she now, in this wondrous, unfolding slowness, sees as ‘us’, all of us. That lost tribe. At once exotic, strange and utterly familiar. Gone. Wiped away by time and speed.

‘Post-war’ we were, although we didn’t really know it at the time. And our children, our children who played and squabbled in these very streets barely days after the bulldozers had scraped them out of the sodden dirt and clay, our children became something called the ‘baby boom’ — you had to laugh at that one, all those booming babies — but we never knew that at the time. Things only get that neat afterwards. Things only get that neat when somebody who wasn’t
there looks back on your life and tells you what you were really doing, as apart from what you thought you were doing — just having a shot. Just having a shot at making things work and stuffing them up as usual. Just having a shot at being happy. Maybe not even happy, just happy enough. No, it wasn’t neat. Things only look neat when you look back, or when you weren’t there anyway, when you’ve got the distance (but not the days).

In the cabin of the car, in the midst of speed — Mrs Webster is utterly concentrated on the tasks at hand — Rita floats in slowness. Somewhere out there Vic is speaking words of love on a long-distant day. Wet kisses and wet words. And plans. Plans about the life they will live together, and which they have now lived — but which, in this wondrous slowness, is both done and waiting to be done again. As though, somewhere out there, this vast night of infinite possibility contains the chance of a miracle taking place — of finally getting it right. And what’s been done is undone, and done again anew. Properly, this time. She smiles, a slow peaceful smile.

The golf course, all deep greens and fairways and bouncing white balls, floats by in a dream. The words of love all spoken, the wet kisses all spent, Vic once again stumbles from the golf-course gate to the home where Rita waits, through the years she calls her married years, which were always spent waiting,
waiting for something she was always too tired to name. And Evie Doyle, opposite, even now, eyes it all through her venetians, although she’s long since gone to heaven only knows where. That, that was us.

Houses rise and fall, at one moment gleaming with the promise of new paint, at another reverting to the vacant blocks, to the paddocks of thistle they were before the builders came along and the bare wooden frames that became houses were erected. And the bright tail of a comet that came to stay one summer, years ago, once again labours across the sky at the speed of light. And, though it doesn’t seem to be moving at all, that inevitable evening strolling back from the station will always be there waiting for her when she will look up to the sky and discover that the comet is gone.

And it is then that the spell snaps and the world is rushing up to meet her. The end of the street is hurtling towards them. It occurs to her for the first time during the drive that it just might be dangerous. That their world is no longer wide, no longer young and can no longer accommodate this kind of speed. That the wrong car at the wrong time just might appear. Unluckily, in front of them. Anything could happen. They are, she concludes, being reckless. Simultaneous with this thought, a car, a bright yellow thing, appears out of nowhere, as if having dropped from the sky. Rita is, at the same time, aware of
lurching forward in her seat. They
are
being reckless, and silly. The car’s horn blares in the night, long and loud enough, it seems to Rita, to wake the whole neighbourhood. Mrs Webster’s foot falls on the brake and the car majestically slides into the T-intersection at the bottom of the street. The speed goes out of the night. Soon they are idling by the side of the street. Trembling. Alive. Having just travelled Webster’s road, where you could just as easily accelerate into death as into life.

Not long after, Mrs Webster pulls up at Rita’s house. Inside the cabin it is silent. The hum of the engine is barely audible. And because there is either too much to say or nothing left to say, they say nothing. So that was speed?

The sudden sound of Mrs Webster moving in the driver’s seat beside her brings Rita back. How long had she lingered with her thoughts? She has no idea. But, in Mrs Webster’s restless shuffling movement, there is the distinct communication that they have lingered long enough. There is a brief nod from her. Nothing more. A nod. A duty dispatched. No smile, no grin. And Rita once again reads the unspoken thoughts of Mrs Webster. No more, the nod says. No more. Come no further into my life. We have been reckless enough. All of this Rita understands. They are too far apart, as separate from each other as that part of the suburb that lies beyond the boundary of
the railway lines is from Rita’s house. They have been a comfort, they have been a help. No more, no less. But for this alone Rita returns Mrs Webster’s gesture, a slow, thoughtful nod of her own, with just enough gratitude in her eyes.