Patrick White - The Solid Mandala

She had a snub nose you could look right up.

“In the beginning was what word?” Arthur asked, seated on that beaded stool, looking up Mrs Musto’s nose.

“Why,” she said, “the Word of God!”

“Oh,” said Arthur. “God.”

He might have started to argue, or at least to wonder aloud, but fortunately stopped short, lowering his thick eyelids as if to prevent others calculating the distance to which he had withdrawn.

Mother was holding her head on one side, smiling at something, not necessarily Mrs Musto. She had also turned slightly red. Waldo knew he was the only one of those present who understood the reason why, which made him contemptuous of other people’s stupidity, and proud of his alliance with Mother. He might even have admitted his father to their circle of enlightenment if Dad had walked in.

As it was too early, Waldo continued looking at Mother. He hadn’t quite the courage to laugh, but even so, felt delightfully unencumbered and superior.

All told, Ma Musto wasn’t such a bad stick. The timid protested that she bullied them. Certainly she bullied her men of God into preaching what she wished to hear. Nobody remembered her husband, or knew whether she had ordered him out of existence so that she might enjoy a breezy widowhood. On the other hand Mrs Musto was bullied by her maids and the chauffeur Stubbens who wouldn’t honk.

Stubbens had been a coachman, or groom, and the leggings moulded to his thick calves suggested horses still. He was an invariably surly man, who refused to hear visitors’ requests, and those of his mistress only on their becoming commands. He had trouble in breathing through one of his nostrils, which forced him to dilate it from time to time, which gave the impression that Stubbens was smelling a permanently bad smell. In spite of his shortcomings, ladies, the more forward ones, complimented Mrs Musto on her personable chauffeur. He was, too, in some way. His broad hands, resting on the wheel, had thickish fingers, the skin of which ended surprisingly cleanly round the nails.

“He was too long running with the horses to adapt himself to progress,” his mistress would explain, not always out of earshot, sometimes adding: “Though Stubbens will tell yer the trouble is he’s been too long runnin’ me .”

That the chauffeur did run Mrs Musto Waldo discovered by witnessing.

Mrs Musto had just dismissed that boy — the brighter of the two Browns — who had come with a note of thanks from his mother. Waldo was winding crunching round the gravel drive, when Stubbens came out of the house to where Mrs Musto had continued standing, under a cedar, on her perfect lawn. Stubbens was carrying a cardigan. He was wearing the leggings of his office, but for the first time, Waldo saw him without his cap, in his own crisp, startlingly silver, hair. He was certainly improved by hair.

But Mrs Musto had grown used to it, or seemed in no mood to be startled.

“Southerly’s come,” Stubbens announced.

“Oh,” she said, keeping her heavy back turned, tossing her head peevishly, more like a girl. “It isn’t cold ,” she complained.

“Well, I brought yer woolly,” said Stubbens. “So put it on!”

And Mrs Musto did. She shrugged herself into the sleeves, without letting him touch her, though.

Mrs Musto would come out shrugging off the advice or accusations of her servants on the occasions when she entertained. There were the big shivoos with celebrities from Sydney, many of whom had forgotten they had met the hostess, there were the afternoons for local talent, and there were what she herself particularly enjoyed, her parties for “youngsters”, to one of which Waldo Brown was asked, only one and not another, not that Mrs Musto was fickle, she just had to press on. In any case, what was done was done, whether Mrs Musto realized or not, or Waldo himself, except later and in his sleep. (Awake, he only used to wonder whether Mrs M. would leave him a hundred pounds in her will.)

Anyway, Waldo was grateful she had issued the invitation with what appeared like thought and care. That was to say: in the holidays, on an afternoon during the week. Though on the morning of the day he didn’t know exactly what attitude to take.

“Oh, I shan’t worry ,” said Arthur. “I’ve got my job, haven’t I? Mr Allwright depends on me.”

“Yes,” said Waldo.

“We have stock-taking,” Arthur added ostentatiously.

Then, just before leaving for the store, he came up with something which was on his mind and spat it out, wet: “Tell Mrs Musto I’m concentrating on words. The Word. But also words that are just words. There’s so many kinds. You could make necklaces. Big chunks of words, for instance, and the shiny, polished ones. God ,” he said, and the spit spattered on Waldo’s face, “is a kind of sort of rock crystal.”

Waldo was disgusted by his brother’s convulsed face and extravagant, not to say idiotic, ideas.

Although this started him off badly, as he approached down Mrs Musto’s winding drive of raked gravel he realized worse was in store for him. He could hear quite plainly the felted sound of tennis balls as they were struck thudding back and forth. The gathering of “youngsters”, judging by its numbers, was fully assembled on Mrs Musto’s lawns. There was positively a smell of tennis. The four elect performers, each older than himself, it seemed to Waldo, were also far more adept, more graceful, if not better born, at least wealthier. Young men reaching overhead with their rackets revealed their glorious ribs through transparent shirts. Delicious girls, in pearls of perspiration, appeared to have been at it all their lives as they controlled their skirts in running to dish up a ball.

Waldo was appalled.

He plodded farther, over the rocks of gravel, in the pants he had pressed under the mattress the night before, and the Barranugli High hat-band, from which Mother had tried to sponge the sweat-mark. He knew that he was poor, pimply, stupid, and if not ragged, definitely frayed.

Mrs Musto came. She was all in white. She smelled of white.

She said: “Waldo, I’m glad you came. I was beginning to be afraid yer’d found something better. This is Waldo,” she announced, “Waldo Brown.”

It sounded dreadful.

Several of the initiated youths and maidens compressed their faces in little set expressions of acceptance, as they had been taught.

Then Mrs Musto took him aside, and said: “Look, Waldo, we’re all only having fun. I’ve got a racket for yer inside. It’s pretty good, but mightn’t be good enough. You’ll have to think it over. You look nice. Oh, dear,” she complained, stepping back, “we’re upsetting the eatables! Whatever will Louie say!”

For during her diplomacy she had knocked a meringue off a trestle table, and had just crushed it with her blancoed toe.

Waldo hoped to withdraw, and did finally, to a less obvious position, behind a grazier of at least twenty, discussing rams with two young ladies worthy of his attention.

“But wool is so important,” said one.

“Yes, I realize. But I’d be terrified,” the other said, “of rams. I mean, they’re sort of curlier, they’re less direct than bulls.”

Then all three exploded into fruit cup and understanding.

Waldo hated their aggressive white. He envied them the language they spoke. Their eyes grew filmy observing over their shoulders somebody they had not known from childhood.

He went away.

Under the cedars a peacock, perhaps enamelled for the occasion, appeared more approachable, putting up its tail as though to oblige. The thrilling, quivering tail had eyes for Waldo alone. He tried to touch the bird, but it, too, slipped expertly out of reach.