Patrick White - The Solid Mandala

“What isn’t true?”

He saw her raise her head, her neck stiffen.

“Oh, all that!” said Arthur Brown, spinning a cow-turd. “About virgins. About Him,” he said.

“Don’t tell me,” said Mrs Poulter, as prim as Waldo, “that you don’t believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ?”

“Don’t know all that much about Him.”

For the moment he cared less for her.

“How do you know, anyway?”

“It’s what everyone has always known,” she said. Then, looking at the toes of her shoes as they advanced, she said very softly: “I couldn’t exist without Our Lord.”

“Could He exist without you ?” It seemed reasonable enough to enquire.

But she might not have heard.

“Mother says Christians are all the time gloating over the blood.”

“Don’t you believe they crucified Our Lord?” she said looking at him angrily.

He had begun to feel exhausted.

“I reckon they’d crucify a man,” he said. “Yes,” he agreed, trundling slower. “From what you read. And what we know. Christians,” he said, “are cruel.”

“ They were not Christians,” Mrs Poulter said. “Men are cruel.”

There was a wind starting. A raw sun was sawing at them. They had gone too far.

“Here!” he called. “How long is this walk gunna last?”

He reached out for her hand, and she allowed him to take it.

“You’re surely not tired?” she said, but he could tell she was not giving it thought. “A big man like you!”

There wasn’t any malice in it. She continued speaking very gently.

“Fancy,” she said, almost for herself, “if you was my kid, Arthur. I wonder whether you’d like it.”

“Yes,” he answered.

He would have liked it for the pleasure it would have given her, and because nobody could have objected any more to his being with her.

“When are we going for another walk, Mrs Poulter?” he asked, and lagged to put a weight on her hand.

“We haven’t finished this one yet.”

But suddenly they had. They had taken a short cut neither of them had suspected, and there they were, plunging down on Terminus Road.

“Well now,” she said, “here we are home without any of the trouble!”

“Yes,” he said, gloomily.

That night he dreamed he was licking the wounds, like a dog. He wondered whether he had been doing right, to lick up non-existent blood. Fortunately Waldo, who was sleeping, need never know. He had reached out and touched him to make sure. He reached out to feel for the mandala, his own special, on top of the po cupboard, but heard it roll, scamper out of reach. It would have involved too much to retrieve it, so he lay there miserably conscious of the distance between his desire and perfect satisfaction.

Even the walks with Mrs Poulter were not all that satisfactory, because it was only natural to talk, and you kept on coming up against a wall, if not religion, something else.

“Did you never ever have any children, Mrs Poulter?” he asked.

“No,” she answered.

From where he was walking, as mostly, a little behind, he thought it sounded sulkily.

“Do you mind?”

“Oh,” she said, “life isn’t just children. I’ve got my husband.”

“Does he like you?”

“What a funny thing to ask!”

“Well,” he said, “you always wonder what a person likes.”

This time it was a holiday, and she was not wearing her church dress, something clean though, and cottony. He liked to watch it moving close to her full, but still quite firm body. It suprised him to realize Mrs Poulter was younger than himself, nor did he altogether want it. He preferred it when he could forget about ages, when Mrs Poulter could grow into the larger-sized wise woman she really was, telling of cures for illnesses.

“This isn’t half a slope,” Mrs Poulter complained, grunting.

“It’s that all right!” he agreed, and giggled.

But suddenly they had climbed out, panting and dazzled.

“Oh, look!” she called, pointing.

“That’s a wheel-tree,” said Arthur.

He could tell because Mrs Musto had shown him one. Still panting, he stood smiling, proud of the treeful of fiery wheels.

And under the tree was standing the Chinese woman, whom he often remembered afterwards. They stood looking at one another. Then the Chinese woman, so little connected with them or their other surroundings, turned, it seemed resentfully, and went behind some poultry sheds. There was no great reason why he should remember her, except as part of the dazzle of the afternoon. For that reason he did.

Soon afterwards they plunged on down into the blackberries, and were grabbing the enamelled berries by the handful to drop into Mrs Poulter’s little can, and scoffing them besides, till their faces were inked over.

“What a sight you are, Arthur!” Mrs Poulter sounded quite pleased.

“Speak for yourself!” He pointed, and laughed.

It suited her, and the shadow from her hat. Her face might have been mysteriously tattooed.

Afterwards they sat down on the grass, in a bay formed by the blackberry bushes. Their few bits of luggage were spread around. It was peculiarly their ground once they had staked their claim. It was so well protected Mrs Poulter, after glancing round once or twice, announced rather nicely:

“I tell you what, Arthur, I’m going to take down my hair, and nobody will see or think it strange.”

It was sensible enough, he thought, because you couldn’t hardly count himself. Besides, he had watched Mrs Poulter washing her hair in the kero tin, in the days when she was living in the iron hut.

“There!” she said, when she was sitting in her long hair.

He loved watching her as she sat inside her shiny tent. He half closed his eyes, out of pleasure, and against the sun, and from then on all that was spoken and acted was as inescapable as conviction and dreams.

Shaking the veil of hair from where it hung across her face, Mrs Poulter said:

“Sometimes I used to think I’d go into service, proper like. In some big house in the city. Where the lady did a lot of entertaining. All the ladies in fashionable gowns covered with jewellery. And I’d be going round, handing the eatables, or changing the glasses, with nobody taking any notice or wondering what I was thinking. Then, while I was offering the vegetables at table, there would be one man of some importance, a bank manager, say, or a doctor, who would look up into my face and realize I was different. I’d be waiting for him when he came to fetch his coat, and we’d walk off together to catch the tram.”

Arthur listened, who was grinning with the glare and the mass of jewellery.

Mrs Poulter said: “It’s funny I went on having that sort of ideas long after I’d married Bill.” She paused, then she did not ask, but said: “It isn’t wrong to think about what will never happen. I love Bill,” Mrs Poulter said.

Arthur loved Mrs Poulter. He loved her jewellery.

He said: “Will you let me touch your hair, Mrs Poulter, just to feel?”

She looked round, not at him, but over her shoulder.

“It’s a funny sort of thing to do,” she said, “but you can if you like.”

So he crawled just so close that he could put out his hand and stroke the tips of her shiny hair. Warmed by the sun, it seemed to be leading a life of its own, like some kind of sleepy animal.

Till in his turn Arthur suddenly realized what was intended of him.

“I’m going to dance for you, Mrs Poulter,” he said. “I’m going to dance a mandala.”

He knew she was preparing to laugh, but wouldn’t, because she had grown fond of him.

“The mandala?” she said, soberly enough. “I never heard of a dance called that. Not any of the modern ones.”