Patrick White - The Solid Mandala

Waldo did not believe it for a moment. He himself was disgusted. If it had been possible he would have taken the two Miss Dallimores, leading them away from the house in which his family lived, while telling them something of interest, preferably about himself, he would have to decide what.

“I am sure Mrs Thourault will be quite excited to have us report on you all,” said Miss Dallimore, who, unlike Cousin Mollie might have been taught her kindness.

“She speaks so warmly of you,” Miss Dorothy added, and seemed surprised at herself for having got it in.

“I do wonder whether Mrs Musto will see her way to visiting Tallboys. We did give her the address. We should so love her to meet Mrs Thourault. That would forge yet another link.”

Miss Dallimore’s sister giggled her pleasure. For Mrs Musto was the lady in whose house at Sarsaparilla the Dallimores were spending the few months of her trip to Europe. Waldo knew all about it, and was bored at last, he realized, by people.

“I can’t tell you what it did to us,” Miss Dallimore continued, “our visit to such a” — here she was searching — “to such a historic English home.”

Miss Dorothy, to show she was sharing the experience, gave what sounded like a moan.

“Our only disappointment,” Miss Dallimore confessed, “was that Lord Tolfree himself didn’t put in an appearance. Was indisposed.”

Mother blushed, and Waldo on hearing the name again felt the little twinge, of anxiety as much as pleasure. He returned to Miss Dallimore with greater interest. She was the colour of marmalade under her sugar hat.

“A chill, I believe — wasn’t it, Dolly? — on his liver.”

“Uncle Charlie’s liver,” said Mother, “was always playing up.”

The Miss Dallimores appeared distressed, though the elder one quickly found a reason for brightening up.

“In any case,” she said, “it has been so delightful to make the acquaintance of the Honourable Mrs Thourault’s cousin. In Sarsaparilla.”

“The Ho n-our-able Mrs Thou -rault!” Arthur repeated, or almost sang, pronouncing the II dreamily.

“The only pity is,” said the persevering Miss Dallimore, “that Mr Brown should still be at his bank.”

“It’s a long journey from Barranugli.”

The skin between Mother’s eyes grew pinched as it did when she thought about Dad and the bank.

“Oh yes, tiring! ” Miss Dallimore agreed emphatically. “Australia is tiring. The distances are tiring.”

“The Ho n Mrs Thou-ou- rault !” Arthur sang, dreamier.

Miss Dorothy giggled, but turned it nervously into a sigh, and sat waggling her ankle some more.

“But perhaps,” Miss Dallimore revived again, “perhaps in time” — she was at her marmalady brightest — “they will give him Sydney, and then you will come to live among us!”

It was obviouf’y the only place to live. But Mother looked down. Just as Waldo, and at last Arthur, were looking up, at Miss Dallimore’s idea. That Dad should be given Head Office.

Mother did not speak. Arthur could have been about to start the hiccups. Never before, Waldo saw, had he been closer to his mother, to his brother. They were close enough to suffocate.

Then Arthur hiccupped: “When are we going to the bank, Mum? It’s time we visited the bank again. Mr Mackenzie gives us humbugs. Mr Mackenzie has a stuffed fox.”

“Why,” said Miss Dallimore, “what a very interesting and thoughtful person Mr Mackenzie must be.”

She had got up. The two Miss Dallimores were on their feet. They were doing things to their clean-smelling gloves.

“Why has your dress got holes in it?” Arthur hiccupped, looking rather too closely into the elder Miss Dallimore’s material.

“That is part of the design, I expect!”

Miss Dallimore laughed to make it sound braver as, followed by her sister, she tried to walk slowly down the path.

Mother seemed to have forgotten the ricketty bamboo table, from which Arthur finished the rock-cakes, and from which only much later she began to sweep the crumbs. As Dad was coming through the gate.

“Two women,” Mother told him. “Two ladies.”

She showered the grass with sugary crumbs.

“Ladies? What ladies?”

“I mentioned them,” said Mother, “only this morning. The ones who have come to Mrs Musto’s.”

“Tenants?”

“They are doing a little caretaking — oh, but very genteel — while Mrs Musto is away.”

The Miss Dallimores did not call again, and there was no reason to remember them — except when Arthur asked: “When will they give you Head Office, Dad?”

“On their day of judgment,” their father answered.

The Bank.

It was a squat building, solid, the brown paint of which had blistered in the Barranugli sun. In the brownish-yellow glare Arthur always stood to burst a few of the paint blisters, and once had said, only for himself, in little higher than a whisper: “Diarrhoea.” Outside the bank it was so hot, so brown, everybody as Mother would call it “visibly perspiring”. Cool inside the building, though, and solemn. Several times when they were smaller Mother had taken them to Barranugli, shopping, and visiting at the bank. But had stopped, Waldo realized, because Dad no longer wanted it.

“But it’s their only little outing,” Mother had protested.

“He’s big now, Anne. What if he got out of hand?” Waldo heard. “What if you couldn’t control him?”

Waldo regretted they no longer visited the bank. His sense of importance suffered from the lapse. The bank itself was so reliable, permanent, with its smell of fresh paper money, and the neat young ladies in patent-leather sleeves, and Mr Mackenzie, who came out from behind the frosted glass.

“So these are the boys,” said Mr Mackenzie the first time.

“The twin boys,” Arthur corrected.

Because people did not always realize, though in the case of Mr Mackenzie naturally he must have known.

Even if he hadn’t he would not have shown any surprise. He was, it seemed, all right, in spite of the dandruff, and smelling like the bowl of an old treacly pipe.

Mr Mackenzie took them up into the residence to show them to Mrs Mackenzie, who was an invalid, they said. She was in every other way uninteresting. But Mr Mackenzie produced the humbugs, slightly melted in their paper bag, and pointed out the fox in its place on the window-ledge of a landing. Teeth bared. Arthur got so excited on first acquaintance with the fox he almost embraced it, board and all — the red fox, not quite so red as Arthur, and softer. Arthur’s hair was what you could only call coarse until length and age softened it.

Afterwards, sucking humbugs, they went back into the public bank, and stood in front of the cage in which Dad was counting money. Mother would smile to encourage him. But not the boys. It was too solemn a moment for the boys, the way Dad flicked the stiff notes, as though to tear the corners off, and writing down figures in pencil. Sometimes a group of young ladies would gather, to ask questions, and laugh, and flatter. Once a Miss Simpson had touched Arthur’s hair, and exclaimed: “Oh, but it’s such harsh stuff!” She had done it, though. Possibly she had won a dare.

But Dad very seldom looked up, even when there weren’t any clients; he was so busy.

It was, he thought, the occasion of their last visit to the bank as children, that Waldo noticed their father looking out from the cage in which he stood: the citron-coloured face, its seams nicked by the cut-throat with flecks of black, morning blood, the moustache, interesting to touch before it had grown raggedy. Their father’s eyes were brown, which Arthur had inherited. Their father’s stare was at that moment directed outward, and not. He had not yet developed his asthma, though might have that morning in the tearing silence of the brown bank. Suddenly his shoulders hunched, to resist, it seemed, compression by the narrow cage, his eyes were more deeply concentrated on some invisible point. More distinctly even than the morning he found their father dead Waldo would remember the morning of their last visit to the bank.