Michael is carrying his school bag over his shoulder on his walk home. His usual way does not require him to cross the railway line — there are really two suburbs — his side of the railway line and the other side, east and west. And whenever he crosses the railway line he feels, for that time, out of his territory. But this afternoon he has been distracted by the sight of Webster’s factory.
This whole block, this acre of open ground bordered by the railway line and the two main streets of the suburb has always been vacant, flat ground, for as long as he can remember. But during the last few months it has taken on the appearance of a battlefield. Not that Michael has ever seen one.
The machines from Webster’s factory have been tipped out into the open. All of them. And the mystery of the factory, the mystery of what goes on inside, is now in plain view for everyone to see. Webster’s was the first factory in the suburb. It takes up a whole block. A long, red brick building with the name Webster in high metal lettering at the front as if it were a department store and not a factory. The owner of the factory is simply known in the area as Webster. Nothing more. He is not referred to by his other names because no one seems to know them. Nor is he referred to as Mr Webster. He is simply Webster of Webster’s factory. He is his factory. His factory is him. And so — to the people of the suburb, those employed in his factory — he is simply Webster. The way, it occurs to Michael, that you would talk about Larwood or Jardine. Their surnames are enough and no one thinks to place a Christian name or a Mr before Webster. It is a name written in metal at the front of the factory. Nothing else is required.
Mulling over this Michael wanders through the rows of discarded machines in the paddock. Already rusted by the spring rain, but with the smell of oil hanging about them from the days when they pressed scrap metal into spare engine parts, these machines have a military look. Like tanks and cannons from jungle battles that might just as easily have been fought on the golf course, for the war in this suburb is never far away. Every day, to and from school, he passes the house of Hacker Paine. Hacker Paine, who never returned from the war quite right, who is often to be found on the golf course on summer nights, patrolling the undergrowth for the remnants of an Imperial Japanese Army that had surrendered years before but which is forever invading his sleep. Hacker Paine — teacher, war hero — whose shoulders spanned the Grade Five doorway, whose medals jangled in the corridors of the school every Anzac Day, whose only daughter lost her head when her sports car ran under a semi-trailer parked on the dark highway out beyond the suburb on the hill called Pretty Sally — Hacker Paine is never at rest. And the war that he brought back with him is never far away in this suburb.
It is late afternoon and the rust that covers the machines is the same bright orange as the sun that now coats the corrugated iron of the factory roof. Levers and plunges and giant hammers that crush and flatten are all around him in shadow and light. Giant wheels with metal teeth have rusted into place where they last stopped. These levers and hammers could crush limbs with the same indifference that they crushed sheet metal. And those giant wheels with metal teeth could chew up fingers and hands in a flash if you were unlucky enough to get your hands in the way — and it occurs to Michael as he stares at the machines that hands and limbs would surely have been crushed and chewed up by these things.
He comes to a large pressing machine which is near the back of the factory and must have been protected from the rain because it’s not cloaked in rust and the smell of lubricating oil is still strong. It looks like it still works. Looks as if it were used just yesterday, as if it could be used right now. The metal is blue and shiny and greased — ready. Michael looks about the block, from the rows of piled metal to the red brick wall of the factory, and sees nobody.
He steps up to the platform where a machine worker would, until recently, have stood all day, repeating the same actions over and over again. With his bowling arm he reaches out for the handle that controls the wheel, that turns the wheel, that lowers the hammer that does the crushing. He pauses before deciding to set the thing in motion — then turns the handle. It moves easily, like the wheel of a small bicycle, and at once all the other parts of the machine that he hadn’t even noticed until now snap into operation. The whole apparatus responds to his fingertips, as wheels with blue metal teeth turn more wheels and the hammer suddenly drops and crushes non-existent scrap and Michael jumps back as if he has set off a bomb. He looks about but not even the birds in the trees along the street have stirred. It must surely have been so thunderous that the whole neighbourhood heard. But no one has. So, with nobody about and nobody looking on, he steps back up to the machine and sets the whole thing in motion again. The hammer springs into place and Michael notices a metal can on the ground next to the machine. It is a strong looking can, more like a container, one that once housed tea or biscuits. He picks it up, wondering what impact the hammer would have, curious to know just what this hammer can do if given something to crush.
With the can in hand, he reaches his bowling arm out across the machine towards the spot where the hammer hits, leaves the can there, then hurriedly removes his hand. Wheels turn wheels, and the hammer pounds into the can and crushes it flat in an instant, then springs back into place awaiting further instructions. Michael retrieves the can from the machine. As he turns it in his fingers he realises that it has not been crushed flat, that the can was larger, wider than the hammer, that there is a rim all around it and what was once a can now resembles a small bowl. Or, and he reappraises his first impression, an ashtray. He has, he now decides, just manufactured an ashtray. The faded paint that covered the original can is still visible and the whole thing is good to look at. He can, with no difficulty, see it sitting on the coffee table in their lounge room and he decides on the spot that he will take it home and give it to his father as a gift.
Pleased with himself he doesn’t at first notice the back double doors of the factory open, but something catches his attention and he turns to see two men standing in the doorway. He slips the crushed can into his pocket and begins walking back along the row of discarded and rusted machines that eventually leads back out onto the road. He turns once. One of the men is short and square and compact — as if crushed into shape by Webster’s machines. The other is tall, his hair is grey at the sides, and his legs are planted on the factory floor as if having taken root there. He is wearing a dark brown suit and blowing smoke into the air as he laughs. Although he has never seen him, this — Michael knows — is Webster.
And in the instant that Michael turns, Webster looks up from his conversation and sees him making his way out — a kid, no doubt, who’s just been up to no good, like most of the kids in this suburb. But Webster does nothing, his eyes see Michael off his property, and he returns to his conversation with the short, squat man who looks to have been crushed into shape by one of his machines.
With his house calls completed, at the wheel of the Land Rover he has become famous for, Dr Peter Black waits for the lights at Webster’s corner, noting young Michael to his right, the boy’s school bag over his shoulder as he emerges from the factory. He knows Michael. He knows the whole family. More, he suspects, than the family knows itself. Vic already has a dodgy heart from the years of hard living and Black has told him time and again to give up the booze or the pills he takes will be useless. But the prospect of death does not bother the boy’s father, Black muses as Michael steps out onto the street. Most people fear the Distinguished Guest, but not Vic. He is, Black recognised from the very start, one of those who will live and die in the manner of their own choosing. And it doesn’t matter what you tell them. The physician in Black is appalled, the writer he might have become (still curled up inside him) is intrigued.
Black is a Jamesian doctor and it is often said that he bears a striking resemblance to the frog-faced transatlantic American whose complete works he has read over and again. At one stage during his studies literature almost took over, to the point that he nearly threw in medicine and a life in general practice, for the life of the famous literary doctors of the past. But in the end it was never a difficult decision and instead of the writer’s life he found himself a practice in a frontier suburb because no one else would go there and because the place needed a doctor. A suburb called, and the doctor in Black, not the writer, answered.
The Distinguished Guest. It is a phrase he delights in and uses often. It was with a shock that he went back to the source one night in the Oxford Book of Quotations and discovered that the great master had on his deathbed not referred to the imminent arrival of the Distinguished Guest, but the Distinguished Thing. Thing? It was not a word he would have imagined Mr James ever using. But he had and Black had got it wrong. Or, perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he had got it right and Mr James had got it wrong. Perhaps the writer in Black the doctor had rejected the word ‘thing’ in the same way that a body rejects a heart. Gazing through the dusty windscreen he contents himself that it was not so much a travesty as an improvement.
With the change of lights, taking in Michael’s bouncing lope and still simultaneously appalled at and intrigued with the nonchalance with which Vic treats the Distinguished Guest, Black continues on his way to his practice at the top of the main street; to his practice, and the life he has chosen, while Webster and one of his workers blow cigarette smoke into the blue, suburban sky.