The diagrams, sketches and plans have acquired bricks, mortar and wood. The old mansion, built in the 1860s by one of the city’s founders, has now been given a second life. Sheds and a garage have been built, bushes and flowers and trees have been planted, which, along with the plane trees and the oaks that were already there, will become a private wood. Gravel paths have been scooped out of the earth and a six-foot-high wall, which encompasses the two-acre property, has just been completed. It is all exactly as envisaged by Webster years before. A world unto itself. With its forest, its mansion and its defining walls it is the medieval castle Webster always imagined as Webster’s world.
It is a late spring Sunday afternoon. Webster has been strolling along the network of paths that thread through his grounds. He has strolled through sunshine and shadow, listened to the birds hidden in the leaves of the bushes and trees calling to one another, and observed the windows and the rooftop tiles glittering in the Sunday sun. Even the overarching blue sky is now his square of the heavens.
But to call his walk a stroll is not quite accurate. A stroll is the walk of the contented. As is an amble. There is not necessarily a destination in mind when strolling. No anticipated point of arrival. One is simply strolling, immersed in birdsong, sunshine and shadow. Webster, on the other hand, throughout most of the morning, has been aware of an unaccountable restlessness. A dissatisfaction with all this ambling, as though there ought to be a destination. Something at the end of it all. And he can’t imagine what. And so when a brilliantly coloured bird, deep blues and greens, flies across his field of vision, he wonders for a moment why he can’t, as some do, simply stop and draw pleasure from the sight of the bird before it springs from its branch and continues on its journey. Does a bird have a destination in mind? Probably. It certainly sprang from the branch as if it did. And he can’t conceive of a bird in mid-flight or in the midst of hunting and gathering pausing to reflect upon the sight of a human being standing in the grounds below. So why should he? No, nature is instinctively productive. Always has been. Foxes, rabbits and eagles don’t lounge about in the midday sun reflecting upon the change of seasons or the wonder of creation. No, they’re looking for something to kill and eat or materials with which to build a nest or whatnot. And so Webster is not strolling. Or ambling. His walk is accompanied by this unaccountable restlessness. A restlessness that he chooses to call the lack of a destination. But what could it be?
Webster’s world is complete. The architect’s plans, the sketches and diagrams have now become the reality through which he strolls, or would stroll if it were not for this restlessness that will not amble.
On the steps of the house he turns back and faces the grounds, surveying the gently swaying bushes and shrubs as if sensing an intruder. He shrugs his shoulders and goes inside.
Mrs Webster is in the lounge room with a novel. A large novel. She is the reader of the house and will happily sit in the armchair (as she will for most of this day) turning the pages. Webster likes books. He likes having them around. Like witty guests at a party. But he could never spend the afternoon with a book, which, as Mrs Webster frequently reminds him, makes him more of a browser than a reader. A description he is happy enough to accept.
She asks where he has been and he answers that he has been strolling, then inwardly corrects himself. He slumps into an armchair and picks up a newspaper magazine. It is one of those magazines that are, Webster imagines, made to be flicked through. Ideal for a browser. And so he flicks through it. It is, in fact, the magazine for which George is the editor, and as Webster flicks through its pages he pauses briefly at an article, an interview with an art-gallery owner who, it seems, is something of an institution in the art world. Then he turns the page and there it is.
Why it should strike such a chord is a puzzle. But he is drawn into a full-page advertisement for a sports car. A famous sports car. Even Webster, who knows little of such things, recognises this. It is black. Sleek. And although parked (in the grounds of some public park), it gives every impression of being impatient to move. To be set free. To ignite the eight cylinders that the wonders of the modern production process have given it, and spring upon the world. He stares at the advertisement but remains, nonetheless, puzzled at being drawn to it. For the Bentley, now parked in the driveway at the front of the house, has always been sufficient for his needs — a fitting vehicle for a factory owner.
But as he dwells upon the photograph he is increasingly aware of being drawn to a sense of movement. He glances out at the Bentley, visible through the lounge-room window, then back to the photograph and no longer calls that thing to which he is drawn ‘movement’. No, a glacier moves, as does a Bentley or a bishop on a chessboard. Rather, he now calls that thing to which he is drawn ‘speed’. And within a minute, possibly less, speed has entered his world. A minute before he was contemplating the gardens and the grounds and the stroll that was not a stroll, then he had turned the page of a magazine to find speed waiting, impatient to spring upon him. And as the day progresses, the notion will occur to him (and it will not go away) that his unaccountable feeling of restlessness might well be cast off behind the wheel of this sports car. Might well dissolve in the midst of speed. And that it is in speed, and speed alone, that he might discover the stillness that comes to others while strolling. That somewhere between the twin possibilities of accelerating into life or accelerating into death, he might cast off that feeling of restlessness that followed him around the grounds. A restlessness born of — yes, he nods as he stares at the magazine — boredom. A puzzling sense of boredom. Puzzling because Webster has never been bored in his life. There has always been too much to do. But it was there today, this restlessness born of boredom, as he toured the completed grounds of his world which had now acquired bricks and mortar and wood.
He drops the magazine onto the table beside the armchair and walks to the lounge-room window, surveying his domain. Mrs Webster has not moved. The room is calm and quiet. Webster is stationary. The very house itself is Sunday-still, but the bushes and shrubs of the grounds around it have been stirred by the intruder of speed, and with it, Webster’s world.