Factory 19 by Dennis Glover

Author:Dennis Glover
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Books Pty. Ltd.

11

We were riding a wave of international success, and it seemed like nothing could go wrong. It felt as if 1948 would go on and on, stringing out, maybe forever, the sense of wonder and hope that great year offered humankind. It was as though we could remain eighteen forever and enjoy the freedoms and promise of adulthood without its inevitable pains and disappointments.

When I look back, I see there were hints of the changes that were to come. They seemed just small things at the time, and, being only human, we overlooked their significance. Would responding differently have saved us? In this, I was as much to blame as anyone.

There is one incident that only seems noteworthy in retrospect, and encapsulates well this shifting mood. I was passing the door of a neighbouring apartment one evening after dinner when the occupant, whom I knew was a single mother, called me over to discuss something. It may have been a mice plague or a faulty doorbell – I don’t fully recall. While she was speaking, she noticed me looking over her shoulder, distracted by the scene behind her. There was something unusual about it, though it took me a moment or two to fully register what. Her thirteen-year-old daughter, who I saw regularly playing hopscotch and elastics with her friends on the footpath outside, was sitting on the couch listening to an iPod. I could clearly see the white earphone cords and hear the tinny emanations of some syrupy, overproduced pop song. Although there were, strictly speaking, no laws against digital devices in Factory 19 at that time, it was universally understood that using them was prohibited.

‘Put that away,’ her mother yelled at her. ‘Kids, Mr Richey. You know what they’re like. Please don’t tell anyone. Please.’

It seemed like an overreaction. I knew such minor infractions never worried D.F., but she was so upset that I felt the need to console her. ‘Believe me, Mrs Bolsano, Factory 19 has far bigger things to worry about than your daughter’s music-listening habits. Consider it forgotten.’

The incident went straight from my mind and stayed out of it – until a meeting of the Factory 19 Committee a few weeks later. Even then, I probably didn’t make the connection fully.

I haven’t described the workings of the committee so far, because until now politics had played no part in our story. D.F. and Bobbie had left decisions about governance to the future, after the factory had settled into a pattern of viable production. Quite logically and sensibly, they wanted our political arrangements to reflect the new economic conditions they had created – the assumption being that a factory model would lead inevitably to some reasonably stable form of social democracy. The few day-to-day problems of governance that did arise were left to Bobbie in her role as Bobbietown mayor and to a four-person committee, which consisted of D.F., Bobbie, Penelope and me. Our critics (Art of course among them) later suggested that this model of self-appointed leadership would inevitably lead to dictatorship, but D.

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