Patrick White - The Solid Mandala

“I have a feeling,” Mrs Allwright was saying, “that the Browns are on our hands for always. Mind you,” she said, “I have nothing against the English in general, the decent, church-going ones who you wouldn’t mind sitting down at table with. But these !”

“These are human beings, Ivy,” Mr Allwright said.

“Human beings,” said Mrs Allwright, “are all very well.”

Then Arthur declared himself.

“Mrs Allwright,” he called, chipping on the counter with the sixpence, “I don’t want to interrupt, but have come for humbugs if you’ve got them.”

Mrs Allwright came out from behind. She was that red. She was wearing a little watch which you could pull out to the end of its chain, to tell the time conveniently.

“Not humbugs,” she said, as though she wouldn’t have had them on the place. “Not humbugs, but bull’s-eyes. They’re the same.”

“They aren’t really,” said Arthur, “but I’ll take the bull’s eyes. I never really cared for bull’s-eyes.”

Mrs Allwright began to weigh them out.

“Why,” she said, “what a trick you are!”

“How would you feel, Mrs Allwright,” Arthur asked, “sucking a bull’s eye?”

While Mrs Allwright was twisting the corners of the paper bag.

“Come along,” she said. “I haven’t time for argument.”

“You wouldn’t feel good,” said Arthur, taking the paper bag and the change.

Mrs Allwright didn’t answer, she only breathed.

“That’s a pretty nice watch,” Arthur said, to sweeten her. “Will you let me pull the chain?”

But Mrs Allwright said: “I would of thought, Arthur, your mother would of taught you that ladies don’t appreciate bold behaviour in little boys.”

So Arthur Brown realized that Mrs Allwright did not like him. It did not disturb him, however, nor that she should continue to dislike. It was Mr Allwright who mattered.

On a later occasion going to the store for some article of less importance, Arthur looked through what must have been the storekeeper’s bedroom window, and there was Mr Allwright down on his knees in a blaze of yellow furniture. Arthur was fascinated, if not actually frightened, by his friend’s face sunk on his chest, by the hands which he held out in front of him, pressed straining together as stiff as boards. It puzzled Arthur a lot.

“Mrs Allwright,” he said at the counter, “I saw Mr Allwright down on his knees.”

Mrs Allwright blushed and pursed up her mouth.

“He is praying to his Maker,” she said, as though that explained everything.

“His maker?”

He liked the idea, though, of the wooden man, freshly carved, and sweet-smelling.

“To the Lord Almighty.”

As Mrs Allwright elaborated, she very discreetly lowered her eyes.

If Arthur did not altogether understand, the wooden man began to put on flesh.

And then Mr Allwright himself came.

“Well, young fuller,” he said, which continued to fascinate Arthur. “I bet you’ve found out something else since yesterday.”

But Arthur had grown shy, for some power which Mr Allwright possessed.

Then the grocer rummaged in the calico bag in which he kept the change from when he went round delivering.

“Did you ever see a lead florin?”

Arthur couldn’t touch it enough.

“Was it made ?” he asked.

“It was made, all right,” said the grocer. “A brum two-bob — like anything else.”

Then he took the hammer and struck the coin into a disc of blurred metal.

“That’ll cost you a whole two bob!” Arthur was enjoying it.

While Mrs Allwright stood wincing, as though suffering it in her own flesh.

“Somebody,” she said, “always has to pay the bagpipes.”

Though she made pretty sure, as a rule, that she would not be somebody.

Arthur eventually added Mr Allwright to what he knew as truest: to grain in wood, to bread broken roughly open, to cowpats, neatly, freshly dropped. If he did not add Mrs Allwright it was because she did not fit into that same world of objects, she never became distinct, she was all ideas, plots, and tempers. In myth or life, he never ever took to Hera.

Johnny Haynes, the boy at school, asked if Browns were really pagans as was said. Arthur didn’t know what they were.

When Johnny found that Arthur Brown could solve mathematical problems, Arthur was in some demand, and began earning the glass taws.

Arthur the dill, and Waldo the dope, Johnny Haynes used to say-sing. Nothing could have hurt Arthur. Arthur only feared for Waldo.

At least they allowed Waldo to go down behind the dunnies with them. They did not suggest that Arthur. They did not want One-Ball Brown.

He was different, then, in several ways. But did not mind since he had his marbles.

However many marbles Arthur had — there were always those which got lost, and some he traded for other things — he considered four his permanencies. There were the speckled gold and the cloudy blue. There was the whorl of green and crimson circlets. There was the taw with a knot at the centre, which made him consider palming it off, until, on looking long and close, he discovered the knot was the whole point.

Of all these jewels or touchstones, talismans or sweethearts, Arthur Brown got to love the knotted one best, and for staring at it, and rubbing at it, should have seen his face inside. After he had given two, in appreciation, or recognition, the flawed or knotted marble became more than ever his preoccupation. But he was ready to give it, too, if he were asked. Because this rather confusing oddity was really not his own. His seemed more the coil of green and crimson circlets.

Waldo the twin used to scoff at the marbles.

“Who’d want to lug round a handful of silly old marbles!”

“You would not,” said Arthur, undisturbed.

“You’ll bust your pocket, and lose your old marbles. What’ll you do then?”

“Nothing,” said Arthur. “I shan’t lose them.”

But he went cold knowing that he might. He knew, too, that Waldo hoped he would.

Waldo who loved kissing. No, rather, he liked to be kissed, and forget that it had ever happened. Coming in from school Arthur had caught him kissing the mirror.

“Fancy kissing a looking-glass!”

“I never did!” said Waldo, the moment already buried in his face.

But they would lie together, and the dark bed was all kindness, all tenderness towards them, the pillowed darkness all feathers. Skin was never so velvety by day. Eyelashes plait together in darkness. As Venus said, in the old book Arthur came across years later: I generate light, and darkness is not of my nature; there is therefore nothing better or more venerable than the conjunction of myself with my brother.

But darkness could descend by daylight in one black solid slab.

“Don’t speak to me!” Waldo would shout, as they sat dragging socks over toe-nails, and Arthur had forgotten how to lace up his own boots.

It was the kind of moment when Arthur sensed he would have to protect his brother, who was too clever by half, who read essays aloud in class, who liked books, and who was said to be their mother’s darling. Because of it all, Waldo needed defending from himself and others. It was all very well to hang on to your brother’s hand because Waldo was accepted by the tight world, of tidiness and quick answers, of punctuality and unbreakable rules. Even Johnny Haynes and the boys who went behind the dunnies to show what they’d got, accepted Waldo by fits and starts, because they were deceived, from some angles, into seeing him as another of themselves. But poor Waldo was so different, and so frail.

Arthur could never take time off like his brother reading books. He would never have been able to protect Waldo if he, too, had so exposed and weakened himself. Arthur could only afford to look up a book on the sly. In time, he thought, he might, perhaps, just begin to understand.