Everyone saw it coming, but that did not lessen the small shock when the initial phone call came, followed by the formal letter with its proffered regrets and the terminology of rationalisation, which is another word for rationing. Rationing is something Bernard just remembered from the Second World War and after, when he was still a small kid. Rationing meant regulations and queues and going without. Sugar rationing was what he remembered, and the time he was almost scalped by his mother because of the experiment he and Beverley-over-the-road had been doing with home-made lollies. The lollies were a failure, the sugar was wasted – he still remembered his mother scraping crunchy remnants off the kitchen floor and swearing, actually swearing. Beverley was barred from the kitchen.
He had spent a great deal of his time rationing, if you think of it. Rationing, not rationalising. There was that period in secondary school when he undertook a long regime of rationing the aniseed balls. He cannot remember why, now, aniseed balls so obsessed him, but he collected them in their hundreds. He stored them under his bed in old Vegemite bottles. And he rationed them out to himself, one at a time, no more than three a day. There were only two of his friends who were ever allowed one aniseed ball from his store. They were Bill and Kenneth, and they swapped precious Malay States stamps for them. Even then Bernard was a sort of Banker. When his father took him to the Commonwealth the first time. he was fascinated by the Tellers, doling out coins and paper money.
Why aniseed balls? That’s too far back even to worry himself with. It was a phase. Like the later decision to ration the number of times a year he allowed himself to go to the pictures. A year. Not a month or a week: even then he had a sense for the breath-span, as it were, of financial accountability.
Later, it was not really surprising that he rationed the number of hours his own kids were allowed to watch TV. Even last year he had noted – or Jean had drawn it to his attention – that instinctively he had rationed the number of minutes he permitted himself to read the morning newspaper. She had timed him. At five past eight, after the ABC news, until 14 minutes past eight. Bernard scanned the news like clockwork. Even if he had not reached past page three he would fold the paper (four squares) and give one of his little hrrrrmphs, and reach for the car keys. His official day had begun.
What on earth would he do once he had been forced into retirement? The prospect now stared him in the face and had done so since that friendly phone call. He had thought to avoid all the tension and pressure of competition and wrangling for position when he had volunteered to manage the Cunningham branch. He had no ambitions for Head Office or even one of the larger centres. Cunningham was a small town but when he moved there it was one of the quiet little money earners. A number of small but profitable mines had their offices in the town, and there were the woollen mills and the butter factory, whose brand name was known throughout South East Queensland. The rich alluvial flats were first recognized by the explorer Logan, and most of the farmers in the district now had contracts with Heinz. A tidy little town, and the small but flourishing shopping centre reflected that. The year Bernard came in to manage the Commercial Bank of Australia, Cunningham was named Tidy Town of the Year.
After the Bank of New South Wales takeover Bernard retained his position, and his unwillingness to move was acknowledged. The Branch maintained strong business, and because the CBA was in there first, it had local loyalties. Not even the Commonwealth had taken a foothold, and the Wales had always been only a sub agency. Well, that takeover was a ‘rationalisation’ if you like, but despite the name change all the old customers agreed it was only a surface thing. Old Fred Morrow had bought up six large chequebooks so that he could continue using the old Bank name – Commercial, the proper name – in perpetuity. Or at least until he worked his way through them, which they both calculated would be four years. Good old Fred.
Bernard was one of the ones who had lobbied against the name change to Westpac. Perhaps that had been, secretly, when all the rot started and the Inspectors grew less accommodating. But he had kept his ear to the ground and he was darned sure that Westpac would never stick. He lost the Ward account to the Commonwealth in the first month. Then all the Schinkler family accounts, the whole 18 of them. In a small town, that hurts.
But nobody was to know the stranglehold of ‘rationalisation’, which had now come to mean, in the district, today, simply the drain to Head Office, down to the City. It had begun almost imperceptibly, perhaps because all the mines closed down one by one. Pit mining had become uneconomical and the State Government was giving concessions to open cut operations and their Japanese contracts. Then who would have believed the woollen mills would ever close? They had been exporting good quality stuff to markets around the world, it was boasted, though their domestic blanket brand was the stuff of their existence. Nobody foresaw the rise of the doona. Or the cutting of trade tariffs. That was the first nail in the coffin. Even the two real estate agents began to feel the pinch then.
A too depressing story. Bernard had survived it all, and some of the recent foreclosures had really distressed him. How could he face old Terry Maloney at the bowls club any more? He gave up competition bowling. He nearly gave up Rotary. When the Commonwealth closed down he did resign from the Business and Professionals. It had become a hollow farce, hardly enough for Whiteheads Café to bother with the catering. When Jean started to complain about the empty shopfronts he felt almost personally accused. He spent hours in his backyard vegetable patch. Getting his fingers into the soil soothed him, it had become his obsession. Though he rationed himself. After work, 5.30 to 6.30. Then he showered and was ready for the 7 o’clock news which was always depressing.
Bernard was not, normally, a gloomy man. His long success in the bank had been, he was certain, because he had a deep cheery voice and he laughed a lot. He heard all the jokes circulating and delighted in passing them on as if he had just invented them himself. He had been often asked to give a speech at christenings and weddings and engagement parties because everyone knew he could keep them giggling and they would begin to relax. Secretly, he remembered some of those events and the long rows of weathered faces stuck with their own glooms, and sometimes it had been a bit of an effort, but when he did get them giggling and loosening up it was its own reward. He had felt his power and, being Bernard, he had rationed it wisely, not allowing himself to be carried away with his success.
He was known as a modest man, an ordinary bloke; but one who could tell a joke, even a clean one, and the women adored him.
It was not surprising, then, that he found himself out in the vegetable patch, the memory of the official notification still gripping his throat. He would tell his wife later. Jean didn’t need to know just yet. She was talking about the trip to Port Douglas and somehow he didn’t have the heart. Later, later.
the art is inside
