Caravan Story Read online

  It isn’t possible to stop him now, or even divert him from his course. He has taken a chair out of the shed—an old ‘70s style armchair with brown foam cushions and curved wooden arms—and set it in front of me. Sometimes he sits on the front edge of this chair, sometimes he sinks back into it. The minister, he is saying, who, he adds, my wife thought the world of, was, he continues, involved in some scandal that to be honest I’m still not clear on. But anyway, this minister whose name was Stevens was transferred to another parish and another minister whose name was Simmons was appointed to replace him. But this Simmons had been in the job only about a year when a scandal broke over his head too. This time the details were all over the city papers—it involved the young football team he was coaching. Well, after Simmons left, which he inevitably did, the church took stock and thought it might be best to try and stay out of this town for a while. The church was closed, but the church people in the city kept me on so I could look after it, mow the lawns and clean the gutters and so on. That went on for about a year, I was pulling good money, coming down here most days and spending a few hours about the place, with the other advantage being, of course, that although she had no-one to administer the sacrament my wife could still worship every day if she liked—she had the whole place to herself. But neither of us thought this would go on forever, and, sure enough, one day a letter arrived from the church organisation in the city saying the arrangement had to stop. The church was put on the market and sold to a city couple who I still haven’t met—apparently they’re going to do it up. But luckily for me the church people kept the church hall and kept me on to look after it. At the time the church was sold there were a few local groups using it so it was earning a bit of money for them but of course it was never enough. Don’t worry that some of these groups had been using this hall since the day it was built. It’s all about money, that’s all everything’s about now: money, money, money. So when your woman Polly came along and made some inquiries and offered to pay rent on it five days a week for twice the amount the other groups were paying, well, yes, my job was assured, but at the same time there was another slice of town life taken away from us. The Tai Chi ladies still come in on a Tuesday evening but everyone else has gone elsewhere or disbanded.

  It’s actually hot out here now, stinking hot, the caretaker is sitting in the shade from the shed but I have the sun full on me. He’s talking so much and so personally that I feel I can’t move without upsetting him in some way. I can feel my face getting sunburnt, can feel the sweat on my brow, my upper lip, the folds of my neck, my arms, my crotch, my legs. I’m holding my hand above my eyes and squinting but I still can’t see him properly. He’s really venting his spleen now, I can’t listen to it all, he’s accusing us of all sorts of things, of ‘taking over’ the town, of ‘trampling’ on their traditional way of life; I want to respond somehow—I feel helpless, useless—I want to tell him it’s not our fault, that we’re victims too, we’re all victims, we’re all trash, we’re all getting thrown out of somewhere to be unwelcomed somewhere else, that if I could return everything to how it used to be I would—Don’t you think I’ve asked questions about all this, I want to say: don’t you think I think this is all wrong? Is it only you who’s been inconvenienced, isn’t it hard on everyone?—but I can’t get a word in edgeways and then I hear footsteps in the hall.

  They’re back. Lunch is nearly over. I’ve done nothing but listen to the caretaker. He’s heard the footsteps too and is on his feet now, putting the chair away. I watch him fumbling with the door of the shed and I suddenly feel a great sympathy go out to him. We’re rubbish, it’s true, over-educated trash, picked up and dumped here onto his old way of life. I see him trying to drag the shed door back across the concrete, hear the scrape, see where the seam of his pants is parting and I want to kill us all, every last one of us, I want to remove us all and all our petty concerns and every last trace of our over-inflated egos not only from his life but the planet.

  Two dim sims with sauce, she says, and she hands me a small brown paper bag. The caretaker brushes past—he’s going; I listen with one ear turned towards the inside of the hall but he says nothing to Andrew or anyone else and now she is talking to me. Did you do anything? she asks, in a low voice. Did I do what? I say. Anything, she says. I smile. Please, I say, and I put one of the dim sims in my mouth. It’s the first thing I’ve eaten since yesterday’s dinner—I bite off half in one go. It’s an intense, intensely pleasurable sensation: the slight crunch of the crust then the thick glutinous pepper-flavoured filling. I finish the first, lick some of the soy sauce from my fingers, and bite into the second. We start back again in ten minutes, she says, and she goes back into the hall.

  I stand in the backyard and eat the second dim sim. I hold the bag close to my nose so as to let the salty aroma of the soy sauce drift up into my nostrils. I hear a plane flying high above—high, high above—and suddenly I don’t care about anything. I’ve been too polite, too accommodating, have not told people what I really think. It’s as if we’re all involved in some great conspiracy of self-delusion. I bite the dim sim again. Whole perfectly formed sentences flash through my head—perfect, perfect sentences—and all I can think of is the caravan, the paper, the pen, the blinds drawn, the muffled sounds outside, the blowfly buzzing at the window. In the time it has taken to think these thoughts whole paragraphs, now pages, have trooped their way into my head. I lick my fingers. I take the last piece of dim sim and put it in my mouth.

  In the hall the last of the chairs are being brought into the circle. People are finishing their chocolate bars and screwing up the wrappers or drinking the last of their cans of drink. Andrew is congratulating everyone on the morning’s work, they’ve sharpened the focus since yesterday, some of the segues are working better, there’s a stronger commitment to each moment. Someone suggests they might now reduce the number of props and Andrew takes this on board. She says (she’s sitting directly opposite me and her effort to impress me—or not impress me—produces a strange new body language in her) that she feels there are still big structural problems in the second half. Andrew agrees, and turns to me. How did you see it, Wayne? he asks.

  Long were the days that Ernest Fairweather and his wife worked in that rough clearing, carving out the first beginnings of what was to become the suburb of Laburnum. In steps, by degrees, the hard brown scrub folded back before them, unrolling itself into green. A fine pillar of white smoke rose from the chimney of their rough slab hut and in the cool late afternoons May could be seen sitting outside on the wooden stool, working the udder of their cow, while Ernest lifted up a bundle of chopped wood, stopped, sniffed the air, creased his eyes, listened, then turned and went inside.

  Wayne? Andrew is talking again. I look down at my notes. I’ve taken a few notes, I say, looking at them: but really, overall, I think it’s going very well. I look up. Everyone is looking at me. I shift in my chair. Then it comes to me. Very clearly. In great detail. In fact, I hear myself saying, if you want me to be perfectly honest I think you’ve made a mistake in inviting me here today. It is actually a demonstration of bad faith, of a lack of confidence in the work you are doing. You don’t need a writer; in fact, to have a writer somehow take control of what you are doing, to give it shape or structure, as you say, would undermine what should be the basis of the work. Spontaneity, improvisation, play. These are the things that distinguish all great theatre and particularly the bouffon. It would be utterly criminal of me to apply some writerly structure to something that should remain fluid and unpredictable, something whose source, whose truth, should flow solely from the actors and their instincts, responding sincerely to each moment, unrestrained and free.

  I have heard myself say all this, as if listening to someone at the far end of a lecture hall, and now I am listening to the silence that follows. The only face that is not registering deep seriousness is hers: it’s hard to read her expression, somewhere between pitying and derogatory, but I know that she knows that
all I want is to sit in our caravan and watch the afternoon breeze blow the cheap lace curtain back in rolling little waves. Well, says Andrew, that’s honest. That’s how I intended it, I say. Does anyone have any questions? he says. They don’t. Someone moves their chair and the scraping sound echoes through the hall.

  I spend the rest of the afternoon watching them work. I’m just an audience member now, I can do them no harm, but all afternoon I sense a tension between us. I’ve become the most powerful kind of critic—the one who doesn’t care. All their words and actions are performed under the intense indifference of my gaze. The less I study what they’re doing—the more I look up distractedly at the ceiling, at the window, at the old pictures of Christ on the wall—the more likely they are to drop a line, fumble a prop, miss a cue. This goes on all afternoon. Eventually, at five o’clock, the things are packed away, the doors are locked and we all pile back into the Transit van. Everyone is seated just as before. It’s not hard to read the silence. Then someone says something (I don’t catch what it is) and it’s as if, like the actors they are, they had all been waiting for a cue. Everyone starts laughing and talking too loudly; witticisms are exchanged, funny voices put on. There is no place for me in all of this and they know it. They are paying me back, I think, they are saying: We don’t need you and your comments. They are free again, just like before. I fix a smiling, indulgent look on my face and stare out the window.

  When we arrive back at the oval, dinner is being prepared. The old routine, I think. We’ve come back, like little homing pigeons or dogs; we could have run but we haven’t. I’d forgotten we were free, completely forgotten, just like that, and now here we are, back again. There is no point in me pretending to know what to do with the props or costumes or what else I might do to feel part of the company, I’m no longer part of the company, I’ve left the company—they know that and so do I. I move away, jump the boundary fence and start to make my way back to my caravan. The sun is low and the light has started to turn. Long shadows streak themselves across the oval, between them vivid patches of yellow sun. A small circle of drummers are playing together under a tree on the rise just around from the scoreboard; the sound drifts out across the camp and lends to it an exotic, faraway feel. By the changing shed wall I can see the painters and their henna-haired supervisor packing away the day’s work. Some children are playing cricket on the bare patch of ground between the dinner tables and my caravan; I throw their ball back and walk on. It’s the end of the day. What did I do? I joined the actors and went into town. I can still see them now, walking around the oval towards the changing shed where they will store their things for the night. They stop to admire the painters’ mural and to talk to them about it. There’s a whole scene going on over there now, perhaps a very important scene, perhaps they are planning the design for some lavish theatre production? I’ve let all that go—was that a mistake? I am walking across the dusty oval to my caravan. The sky is impossibly huge. I want to go along with things, I don’t want to make trouble, I want to fit snugly in the hole that’s been dug for me. Were I to stand in the street outside our half-demolished house again and were Polly to open the door to our caravan and gesture for us to step inside, I want again to step willingly inside. I want to say: Yes, I’m coming. I want to feel the sway and the rhythm of the road. I want to go where I’m taken.

  When I reach the door of my caravan the first thing I notice is that the main door is open and against the flywire door a blowfly is insanely buzzing. I open the door and shoo it out. There’s a different smell inside. Is someone there? I ask. Yes, says a voice. It’s Elizabeth Jolley, the old woman who twice threw the ball to me in the story game. She’s sitting up on the top bunk in her pale blue pyjamas with a notepad propped up on her knees. She looks down at me over her reading glasses and gives me a—what is it?—a motherly smile. I’m sorry, she says, it wasn’t my decision. An empty plastic pocket, not mine, is on the table. The floral-patterned overnight bag is lying on the floor beside the bunk. I’m happy to sleep up the top, she says.

  I’m about to speak, but now Polly is on the step behind me. There’s something different about her. This is Gwen, she says. Gwen is going to be staying with you for a while. Polly steps up into the caravan; I step back towards the sink. She can read my face, she knows what I am thinking. The old woman has gathered a blanket up to her neck. At this stage the arrangement is only temporary, says Polly, we have taken delivery today of some new people and until the tents I’ve ordered arrive I’m afraid we are all going to have to make a few sacrifices. My understanding is that you and your partner—I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten her name—will both be in town most days now working on your performance and won’t be using your caravan anyway so I’m sure you can put up with a guest for a little while, or until the tents arrive at least. Gwen won’t take up much room, as you can see. (In fact, yes, I did see, because the old woman, perched up there in the corner of the top bunk, looked like nothing less than a sparrow on a branch, ruffling its feathers, preparing to sleep.) I’ve spoken to your partner just now and she has no problem with it; it’s not my business to pry into your domestic arrangements but I understand that it shouldn’t disrupt things too much in the short to medium term. (Does she mean what I think she means, is she flattening her stomach and putting an outstretched hand on it, just below her breasts, for a reason?—and now all of a sudden she is leaning over towards me, very close, her back turned deliberately towards the old woman, speaking in a half whisper…) Please, she says, you don’t know how difficult all this is for me; I know you have strong views but all I’m asking is that you be a little patient, I’m doing the best I can. We’re looking very closely at each other. Polly, I say, leaning even closer still: I’m sorry, but the trouble is, you see, you’ve gone and arranged all this but now I’m not sure if the thing with the actors is going to work out and, well, it looks like I might not be going into town during the days after all and if that’s the case then the situation here becomes very difficult for me.

  Many thoughts are playing across Polly’s face now—and not all of them to do with the topic at hand. It’s like there is a row of thoughts in her head waiting to be processed and that the one dealing with me and my inability to work with the actors must now make its way patiently to the front of the queue. But you have to go into town, she says. But I can’t, I say. I stuck my neck out for you, she says. I know that, I say, but it hasn’t worked out. This is ridiculous! she says, you’re all acting like children! That’s because you treat us like children, I say. She looks over her shoulder at Elizabeth Jolley to see if she’s listening—of course she is, but with a look that says: I’m not. All right, whispers Polly, leaning close: if that’s the way it is, you’re going to just have to work it out between yourselves—but I’m warning you now, the tents might not arrive tomorrow, or for that matter the day after, the tents might not arrive for a month; Gwen needs somewhere to stay, and in the meantime this is where she is staying.

  I don’t know if my look lets Polly know that I accept what she has said because I know I’m not looking at her the right way. When I’m not looking at her lips—very red, almost bloodied, and moving in an invertebrate animal kind of way—I’m trying self-consciously not to look at the rest of her and am instead looking past her through the flywire door to the oval, the neighbouring caravans and the low-down strip of candescent sky. Yes, I say—and as an afterthought—I’m sorry the actors thing didn’t work out. We lock eyes: time stands still. I know you went out of your way, I say, I know you’ve done everything you can, we really are dependent on you now, we’re in your care, we’re all useless without you, that’s why you’ve taken us in, and now the obligation is on us to do something useful in return. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen Polly smile—really smile, I mean. But now she smiles. Good, she says. She steps out of the van. The flywire door squeaks and slams.

  I’m sorry, says Elizabeth Jolley. It’s no trouble, I say. She puts aside her notebook and clips the pen to
the cover. (She must have brought her own notebook: why didn’t I think of that?) I’m sorry to hear your business with the actors didn’t work out, she says, that’s a great pity. It is, I say, sitting down at the table: but perhaps it was doomed from the start. In what way? she asks.

  It’s a little while before I realise what is happening, that I am engaging in a conversation with this old woman on our bunk, but by the time I do I feel powerless to stop it. Well, in the first place, I say, because we shouldn’t mix work and play. What do you mean? she asks. My partner is an actor, I say, and even though we ourselves feel perfectly comfortable about working together I think the others in the group tend to project a level of meaning onto the relationship that perhaps isn’t there. That’s unfortunate, she says. But the main thing, I say, is that the role of the writer is so badly defined. In what way? she asks. Well, don’t you think that when we put things down into words we lock them down in some way, I say, give them permanence? Isn’t that the main reason we do what we do? But the act of performance, I continue, this has nothing to do with being in a fixed spot, doing or saying a fixed thing; a performance is the brush of a butterfly’s wing against the sand, it is impermanent, that’s what defines it. The idea of giving what should ideally be an improvised performance some kind of structure, or worse, a script, is a bit like telling an abstract expressionist painter to become an architect. I’m sorry, she says, I didn’t follow all that. She is leaning over looking down the aisle between the bunks at me. I look up at her, looking down at me—I can’t save it now, it’s become a conversation, there’s no point trying to resist. I get up from the table and lean against the sink.