Patrick White - The Solid Mandala

“Oh dear,” Mother was beginning, she seemed afraid of something. “Do you think Mr Allwright is trustworthy? You know you are too trusting, George.”

“Any major move,” said Dad, “is a leap in the dark. And you, Mother, were the biggest leap of all.”

Mother kept quiet, as Arthur got to know, when Dad confused the issues.

Soon they all went out to Sarsaparilla on the train, to see the land and meet Mr Allwright, so that Mother would be convinced.

“But it’s so far , George!” she complained in the swaying train. “Imagine after a day at the bank!”

Because Dad did not answer and looked so grim they knew it was all going to happen. While the train strewed their laps with smuts.

Mr Allwright met them at the siding with a buggy. Arthur did not look at him closely, and years afterwards, trying to remember the first time he set eyes on his employer, wondered why the first occasion had left so little impression on him. Mr Allwright can never have been a particularly young-looking man. He was tall and fairly broad, oblong like a bar of chocolate. His full moustache, his thick glasses, his waistcoat over his shirtsleeves, all made you feel he was an honest man. Perhaps the reason you didn’t at first notice anyone so solid was that you knew he would still be there, he would keep till later. Anyway, Arthur hardly bothered to look, but was staring in all other directions, at Sarsaparilla, which lay glittering with early summer.

Mr Allwright, who didn’t say an awful lot, drove them in the buggy, and pointed out to Mother the convenience of their road. It was already theirs. It was already called Terminus, because of being close to the station, practically planned, in fact, for Dad.

As they drove down Terminus Road they passed a ruined house standing amongst fruit trees which had been allowed to go wild.

“What is that?” Waldo asked.

“Ah,” said Mr Allwright, “there’s a story attached to that.”

“What story?” Arthur could hear Waldo insisting.

“Ah,” said Mr Allwright, “something for a winter evening. Too long for now, and we’re nearly there.”

Arthur knew this meant Mr Allwright wasn’t willing to tell, just as he knew Waldo was put out.

“If you don’t tell it now,” Waldo said, “how do I know you won’t have forgotten it?”

Arthur laughed. He was enjoying himself.

“It doesn’t matter, Mr Allwright,” he said. “If you don’t tell, my brother will make the story up.”

Mr Allwright flicked his whip, and turned to Dad.

“Young fullers,” he pronounced the “fell-” to rhyme with “gull”, “young fullers,” he said, “are a bit too sharp. Too much imagination could get them into trouble.”

But Dad who was already living down Terminus Road did not answer. He had stuck out his jaw. He had taken off his billycock hat. He sat showing the mark where the leather band had eaten into his forehead, and for quite some time he had forgotten to shift his bad leg.

So that before very long they were living really and truly on the land they bought from Allwrights down Terminus Road. First, of course, there was the house to build, and they used to come out from Barranugli on Sundays to supervise the building by Mr Haynes and a couple of men, and Arthur would play with a big randy dog belonging to one of the labourers.

Arthur loved the classical façade of the brown weatherboard house. He learned there was something about the Classical which Dad called “sacrosanct — in a manner of speaking.”

After Waldo had pestered him enough, and fetched the book, Dad would read them the Greek Myths. While pausing every few weeks to remind them: none of this is real, none of this is true. Whatever he meant by that. In the strong sunlight of Sunday mornings, or the more fruitful evenings seen through leaves, Arthur could not even care. He loved Demeter for her fulness, for her ripe apples, he loved Athene for her understanding.

There was an occasion when Dad put down the book and said: “Sometimes I wonder, Arthur, whether you listen to any of this. Waldo can make an intelligent comment. But you! I’ve begun to ask myself if there’s any character, any incident, that appeals to Arthur in any way.”

Arthur couldn’t answer Dad, or not in full.

“Tiresias,” he said, to keep him quiet.

“Why on earth Tiresias?” asked Dad.

And Waldo had begun to stare.

But it was too difficult to explain to their father even if Arthur had wanted to. He could not explain the diversity of what he partly understood. He was too lazy. It was too long. Nor would his family understand. How could he tell them of his dreams, for instance, except as something to laugh about. They would laugh to be told how shocked he was for Tiresias when Zeus took away his sight at the age of seven — seven — for telling people things they shouldn’t know. So Arthur kept quiet. He was only surprised they didn’t notice how obviously his heart was beating when Zeus rewarded Tiresias with the gift of prophecy and a life seven times as long as the lives of ordinary men. Then there was that other bit, about being changed into a woman, if only for a short time. Time enough, though, to know he wasn’t all that different.

So when Waldo stared at Arthur stupid Arthur, who couldn’t answer Dad’s question, Arthur simply plaited his too-pliable fingers, and sat looking down.

Brown Brown Arthur Brown? he heard them at school, but the other side of his own more interesting thoughts. He heard the voice of Mr Hetherington who, after a little, realized, and did not keep him in.

The headmaster was Mr Heyward, with whom at first there was a spot of trouble. It was not so much over the green Junior Scripture Books which Mr Hetherington doled out. You didn’t need to bother with those. You could look at other things beyond the page. The trouble began over the half-hour segregation, when the clergyman, the ministers came.

Dad wrote Mr Heyward a note:

Dear Sir,

As my twin boys are convinced unbelievers I must request you to exempt them from religious instruction. I myself was born a Baptist, but thought better of it since.

Yours truly,

Geo. Brown.

Mr Heyward sent a reply:

My dear Mr Brown,

The problem is a simple one. All agnostics are classified automatically as C of E. You can rest assured the Rev. Webb-Stoner will not assault your boys’ convictions.

H. E. Heyward

(Principal.)

Then Dad thought of a tremendous joke:

Dear Mr Heyward,

What if I should reveal that a pair of Moslem boys are attending your very school?

G. Brown.

The Brothers Brown were pestered no more, but allowed to moon about the yard. Waldo kept a book hidden on him. But Arthur used to play with the marbles he had earned. Arthur in particular longed for the half-hour segregation. Which did seem to set them apart. It got round Sarsaparilla there was something queer about the Browns, over and above one of them a real dill. It did not worry Arthur. Dill in the engravings looked like fennel, which grew increasingly wild down most of the side roads at Sarsaparilla.

Of course Mrs Allwright, so well placed at the store she always heard about everything, had suspected in the beginning there was something wrong with the Browns, though from goodness of heart, on their coming out Sundays to supervise (I ask you!) Mr Haynes, she had provided a cold tomato, a wet leaf of lettuce, and a slice of beef, with sometimes perhaps a hard-boiled egg as an extra.

Mrs Allwright said: “Fred, I knew you were acting unwise selling land to such as them. My land, too, though I don’t propose to harp on that .”

Land was one of the several reasons Mrs Allwright was superior to her husband, Arthur learned in time. But now he had just come into the store to buy humbugs with one of the sixpences Mr Mackenzie the manager had given.