Patrick White - The Solid Mandala

For Arthur the orange disc had not moved noticeably since he began his upward climb. It was the accompaniment which confused, by its increase in complexity: the groaning, and tinkling, and splintering of invisible icebergs.

But he realized he should be talking to his friend.

So he said: “By Tuesday I’ll have plenty to tell. We’ll walk about the grounds together. That’s how time passes. In little attentions.”

Somewhere it had to happen, and at this point Sergeant Foyle led out his charge into a more normal air. The sergeant glanced back once — well, to nod, it was the only sociable thing he could do, and the old girl was still standing in the doorway, arms crossed, holding herself together by handfuls, from under the armpits. The sergeant turned, and went on, to avoid looking any longer at her mouth.

Later in the afternoon, after she had patted her cheeks with Cyclax, like they told you, and drunk a cup of strong tea, and switched on the telly, though not the sound, the flicker of pictures which she didn’t have to look at, Mrs Poulter got control of herself. She did the things which needed doing. She threw a handful to the hens, she milked the cow, she stood the milk. Then she saw about Bill’s tea.

When Bill came in, from looking at a boar out Schofields way, she could hear him stamping off the mud. He was still spry except when he stopped to think about himself.

“What’s the news, Mother?” he asked.

It was his usual question, and that evening she would have to think a bit. Though of course you could always tell about the grub in the cabbage, or the double-yolkers. By news Bill never meant news. News could make Bill lay around without his teeth imagining an ulcer. He would turn pale at any suggestion of the knife.

“Eh?” he asked. “Don’t tell me nothun catastrophic ’s happened?”

It was one of the words he had picked up and particularly favoured.

“No,” she said. “Nothing I can think of.”

It would all trickle out in time. For Bill’s temporary good she felt it would not be a kindness to announce: Waldo Brown is dead or worse killed several days the dogs eating him which the sergeant or young Kentwell shot and Arthur off his head gone with the sergeant Arthur who never hurt a fly Waldo can only of died of spite like a boil must burst at last with pus and nothing can touch Arthur nothing can touch me not the part of us that matters not if they tear our fingernails off.

“Saw old Dun,” said Bill. “Had to fetch the doctor to his missus.”

“Oh?” she said.

“Threw a sort of fit.”

It made Bill laugh.

“Mrs Dun, I believe,” Mrs Poulter said, “is not very strong.”

When she put his tea in front of him, Bill sat a moment, elbows cocked, hands laid on the knife and fork, looking down at the contents of his plate. He had always been suspicious.

“That’s a real nice loin chop,” she said, to encourage. “The other one isn’t so presentable. But perhaps it will eat better than it looks. I think it’s something Mr Finlayson threw in for luck.”

Then she turned, to do the expected things, before re-entering her actual sphere of life.

1She jumped into the sea.

2He noticed it and saved her.

3I have saved money to buy a present for my sister.