into the city. While he was travelling south, the photographer and the journalist drove north of the city to Katherine’s tent, Katherine suffered their intrusion, the article appeared in the evening newspaper, a painter was stirred by the story,and a short time ago, while Vic stood in the street contemplating this new world they were all about to enter, and the mob and the life that might have been his, Skinner stood gazing upon Katherine’s light, comforted by the simple fact that it was there.
But Vic is unaware of any of this as he cycles back through the dark western suburbs of the city and down to the wharves, to the bayside suburb of Newport where he and Rita rent a small house. Even if he were aware of his connection to the day’s events, his part in the chain, he wouldn’t give it too much thought. Vic has other things on his mind. For it is not just the great world that is about to change. Vic’s world is about to change too.
In the night, all across the city, and out there in the greater world, young men become fathers. Possibly at this very moment. And they enter this world of fatherhood (Vic has been watching this world of fathers and their children more keenly lately) with a casual ease that he can’t comprehend. And this is because it has always been something that other people did. But now he is about to become one of those people, and he knows he will not step into that part with the casual, almost practised air of those who were surely born to be fathers because he knows he wasn’t born to be a father. He wasn’t even born to be married. But there you are, he tells himself. He is married, he is about to become a father and his small world is about to change utterly, just as the greater world out there is already becoming something else, something vastly different from the one everyone’s known up until now.
Father — the word sits well on other people. But the thought of anyone calling him ‘Dad’ is difficult to imagine. And this is because Vic has rarely used the word. Even as a child. He never knew his father. His father was never there and so words such as ‘Father’ and ‘Dad’ were never spoken because there was no one to speak them to. Unless, that is, in reference to somebody else’s father or dad. This is not because his father died tragically years before, succumbing to an unlikely accident, war or disease. No, his father simply didn’t think it was necessary to be present. Wasn’t sufficiently persuaded that there was reason enough to be there. In short, didn’t care. And so Vic learnt to live without a father, without using the words ‘Father’ and ‘Dad’, which is why they don’t come naturally to him. And he contemplates this, all the time knowing that his father is, more than likely, still alive. That he is not dead. That in all likelihood he is out there, doing something incidental like pouring a cup of tea right now. But Vic has never met his father and would not know him if he were to pass him on the street or sit beside him on a tram or in a train. He is convinced his father is still out there, somewhere in the Western District countryside, in a large house on a farm, indifferent to the fact of Vic existing in the world. For Vic’s mother was a domestic on his farm and was silly enough to get herself knocked up. Silly enough to give in to the feeling that somebody might care for her. Or — and late in life (for she was forty-one when she had Vic) — silly enough to give herself leave to take a chance, to live, and to havesomething to look back upon apart from work and a life of what the world calls spinsterhood. Silly enough to try. What did she expect, he hears this absent father’s voice asking her, what did she expect, after all, apart from the fifty quid he gave her? He already had a farmer’s wife and children, thank you very much. He needed neither another wife nor another child. That was an impossibility. She and he had had their time. Their time was
But Vic is unaware of any of this as he cycles back through the dark western suburbs of the city and down to the wharves, to the bayside suburb of Newport where he and Rita rent a small house. Even if he were aware of his connection to the day’s events, his part in the chain, he wouldn’t give it too much thought. Vic has other things on his mind. For it is not just the great world that is about to change. Vic’s world is about to change too.
In the night, all across the city, and out there in the greater world, young men become fathers. Possibly at this very moment. And they enter this world of fatherhood (Vic has been watching this world of fathers and their children more keenly lately) with a casual ease that he can’t comprehend. And this is because it has always been something that other people did. But now he is about to become one of those people, and he knows he will not step into that part with the casual, almost practised air of those who were surely born to be fathers because he knows he wasn’t born to be a father. He wasn’t even born to be married. But there you are, he tells himself. He is married, he is about to become a father and his small world is about to change utterly, just as the greater world out there is already becoming something else, something vastly different from the one everyone’s known up until now.
Father — the word sits well on other people. But the thought of anyone calling him ‘Dad’ is difficult to imagine. And this is because Vic has rarely used the word. Even as a child. He never knew his father. His father was never there and so words such as ‘Father’ and ‘Dad’ were never spoken because there was no one to speak them to. Unless, that is, in reference to somebody else’s father or dad. This is not because his father died tragically years before, succumbing to an unlikely accident, war or disease. No, his father simply didn’t think it was necessary to be present. Wasn’t sufficiently persuaded that there was reason enough to be there. In short, didn’t care. And so Vic learnt to live without a father, without using the words ‘Father’ and ‘Dad’, which is why they don’t come naturally to him. And he contemplates this, all the time knowing that his father is, more than likely, still alive. That he is not dead. That in all likelihood he is out there, doing something incidental like pouring a cup of tea right now. But Vic has never met his father and would not know him if he were to pass him on the street or sit beside him on a tram or in a train. He is convinced his father is still out there, somewhere in the Western District countryside, in a large house on a farm, indifferent to the fact of Vic existing in the world. For Vic’s mother was a domestic on his farm and was silly enough to get herself knocked up. Silly enough to give in to the feeling that somebody might care for her. Or — and late in life (for she was forty-one when she had Vic) — silly enough to give herself leave to take a chance, to live, and to havesomething to look back upon apart from work and a life of what the world calls spinsterhood. Silly enough to try. What did she expect, he hears this absent father’s voice asking her, what did she expect, after all, apart from the fifty quid he gave her? He already had a farmer’s wife and children, thank you very much. He needed neither another wife nor another child. That was an impossibility. She and he had had their time. Their time was
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