He meant business
He was an older man
At an age when complacent men retire
if they're not ambitious and determined like him.
He was big,
doctors would call him obese,
detractors would call him fat.
I just thought him big.... strong, powerful, with latent authority.
He was dressed in a Norfolk jacket of Harris tweed,
with an RSL badge in the lapel and a tweed trilby hat.
I met him in the main warehouse of the transport company that he owned.
He had started with one truck.
The warehouse was red brick, with a galvanised iron roof.
The front walls were ivy covered
and huge pink and white peace roses grew in the freshly turned red earth that
exuded the pungent smell of horse manure.
The town was like a piece of Victorian England, the warehouse impressed me as being like a great hall on the edge of the desert.
The air was dry.
" The air of the desert was good," he said,
"machines lasted indefinitely in that sort of air.
I had come to the warehouse to leave my wife's sculpture....
... The Semantic See Saw.... to be taken to an exhibition.
It was placed at the end of a long line of art.
"What do you think of Art?", he asked.
I considered and replied.
"I don't know"
"I've looked at these", he expounded, and his arm swept to include the sculptures.
"and I think some are good and some are bad,
and I know what I like!"
He puffed up his chest as he said this.
His Rolls Royce was parked there.
Silver and charcoal grey with red dust on the underside of the fenders and
covering the double R on the hub caps,
but the silver lady gleamed aggressively
behind an imposing black steel
bull bar he had attached to the front.
The bull bar was like a steel gate.
"What do you think of my car?", he asked.
"It's impressive" I said, admiring the leather upholstery and walnut facia.
He nodded and told me...
" I put the bull bar on for the roos and the cattle,
they run on the roads at night,
when I drive across the desert,
those roos look like old men in grey raincoats
when they hide in the scrub at night.
I didn't want them putting a dent
in the grill when they died,
but when I hit them with the bars
they bounce ten feet in the air
and they're dead before they hit the ground.
It's a good car to cross the desert at night.
I can do 200ks in two hours, and all I can hear is the ticking
of the clock.
I wanted to turn it into a ute but
the Rolls people wouldn't hear of it.
I said nothing.
He continued;
" You know what I like most about this car....
I like going to the football in it."
I thought of the lean men jumping
with their arms outstretched in their
striped guernseys at the football ground
with its red brick pavilions and huge Moreton Bay figs.
on the edge of the desert.
"Yes, I like going to the football", He said,
"and everyones lined up waiting to get a car park,
one, two hundred cars or more,
and the gatekeeper sees the Rolls
and he waves me past,
and I drive right past them
without waiting
I drive past slowly
and I see their looks of anger,
and frustration, and spite.
"You bastard!" they mouth from inside their cars
and they lift one or more fingers or even
an arm in a gesture of contempt.
"I like that"
He looked smug as he said this.
I looked out of the huge open sliding doors of the warehouse,
and in my mind's eye I saw grey steel wool clouds gather above that
ersatz English town on the edge of the desert in Australia.
No comments:
Post a Comment