Holden's Performance by Murray Bail Page B

fresh. It represented a factual way of looking at things, structured on words and distance. At Vern's place Holden asked hundreds of questions. He enjoyed listening. He acquired word knowledge there. With his other friend, McBee, the friend of his mother, it was different. For hours on end they barely exchanged a word. Alongside him, Holden simply observed. He traced the logic of metals and engines, learned to appreciate the physical nature of things. It was knowledge based on equations and appearances, all within arm's reach. In this way two men who had never met competed for Holden's attention.
    Holden had told his uncle all about their boarder, and his expanding business. ‘I've heard on the grapevine about him,’ Vern nodded.
    This didn't surprise Holden.
    Up there in the house his uncle always heard news before anyone else. Proof sheets from the next morning's, or even the next week's, Advertiser lay draped over chairs and fluttered on tables. To prove a point Vern often read something aloud, pausing to mark corrections. From the aerial and shadowy nature of proofs Vern strived to establish clarity. ‘What do you make of this? Fancy that. So the British have nationalised their coal mines?’ Or, ‘Here's interesting news. Did you know there are now 311 million people in India?’ Bradman retained the Ashes for Australia, and Joe Louis flattened another dumb opponent. Some of this news locked in type hadn't happened yet. No wonder his uncle knew everything.
    On 5 February, 1947, Holden must have been among the first to hear the terrific news that gave the rest of the country (the following day) a surge of relief and national pride. Graziers, their bankers and brokers, and the average Joe in the street, lowered their newspapers in wonder: images of swirling dust and bleached ribcages receded, and with it went the vague undercurrent of perpetual foreboding.
    â€˜I've told you how rain works,’ was how his uncle broke the story. ‘Now listen to this…’
    Two brainy local scientists had been researching techniques of cloud-seeding. Their aim: to ‘stimulate’ clouds. What is a cloud? Tiny droplets of suspended water. In order to fall these have to freeze. Then in the lower altitudes they melt back again into ‘rain’. Several methods had been tried, with little success. On 5 February, over the lime wooden town of Oberon west of Sydney, the team struck pay-dirt. From a specially converted Liberator bomber they poured the bags of dry ice onto likely looking broken cumuli. ‘I've told you all about cumuli.’ In thirty minutes flat it erupted into a larger higher cloud which rained for two and a half hours solid. Local flooding was reported, although ten miles from the town was dry as a bone.
    â€˜There was so much trickling water,’ reported one of the rain scientists with a solemn grin, ‘I had to keep ducking down to the lavatory.’
    The accompanying photograph had them standing at ease in front of the victorious propellers, both wearing—appropriately—sheepskin and leather jackets. They deserved a medal: this discovery could transform the yellow-red surface of the entire country.
    â€˜It's always good to have good news,’ Vern sighed. ‘There's never enough of it.’
    â€˜Did you say a Liberator? Let me see a sec.’
    Holden studied the page-proof.
    â€˜I know that plane. Ha ha. I've sat in the cockpit. Guess where it came from?’
    He couldn't stop shaking his head.
    Because, partly, it was strange experiencing the transformation of an intimate object into a printed image ready for the rest of the world to share.
    On slightly deflated tyres Holden left, gathering speed down Magill Road the way mercury rolls clumsily along a table. With the wind still in his hair he entered the kitchen and straightaway began nodding knowingly at McBee.
    â€˜What's eating him?’
    â€˜So, that's where the Liberator went? You