Patrick White: The Hanging Garden

It is too much.

‘I don’t know what I am. I don’t want anyone to— take me up . I only want to be left alone — to be myself — when I find out what that is.’

Ally is embarrassed by turning on emotion in somebody else. But she asked for it.

‘How you exaggerate, Ireen. I do hope you won’t blow your top like this at “Ambleside”, and disgrace us all.’

Embarrassment gets rid of Alison. So at least you are alone, to think your own thoughts, if not to discover what you are.

The aunt can be heard driving off safe in her scungy old car, with its cigarettes and box of travelling tissues.

* * *

Alison had driven you up to the interview with Miss Hammersley. If you were accepted the ‘principal’ (Alison’s unexpected word) had made it clear she was doing it as a favour and because you were an ‘interesting proposition’. The waiting list for ‘Ambleside’ was long; parents of the best professional and grazier families put their girls down years ahead.

‘So I hope you’ll do your stuff and impress the old cow,’ says Ally without great expectations in her voice.

She has parked the vehicle out of sight of the school buildings. She has got herself up for the occasion in more than the usual lipstick, her bois de rose , and a pair of black glacé shoes which make her limp.

As she limps ahead she mutters panting, ‘Punctuality gives me the gripes, but on some occasions it pays off…’

The hem of the bois de rose is hanging. It would be unkind to tell her. Your relationship is very close this morning.

It is hard to decide which is the more melancholy, a humming school or a deserted one. A superior maid tries to make us feel inferior and does, because we are disturbing the holidays. ‘Miss Hammersley has gone swimming,’ she says, ‘but will be back soon.’

She shows us into the head’s study and leaves us to its silence, our breathing, and our fears.

It is a mellow room, paintings, books — more than you have seen since coming to Australia. Photographs of men in uniform, British to the last hair of their moustaches. Less mellow the school groups — of ‘Ambleside’ girls squeezed up together, with assorted teachers, and a nurse in a cap.

‘That’s matron,’ says Ally. ‘She’s been here for years, doling out the castor oil. You’ll miss that because you’re only day.’

There’s a group of girl cricketers. In the centre an elderly lady in trousers, exhibiting a bit.

‘That’s old Jinney in her favourite rôle.’ My aunt can’t resist a giggle. ‘I’ll laugh outright, darl, if you become a cricket star.’

Just then the maid returns, to investigate the noise, and find out whether you are lifting some of the ornaments.

She adjusts the blinds ‘… summer fades fabrics…’ she hisses, to make her appearance look less blatant. ‘Miss Hammersley will be here soon,’ she assures, with a sideways look at this somewhat unorthodox candidate.

Almost immediately Miss Hammersley is.

She is still slightly moist from her dip. Her hair has this damp frizz. Obviously Jinney doesn’t give a damn for hair. She is in a skirt today, askew round her bottom. Her large gold-rimmed spectacles radiate the superior virtues of the pure-bred Anglo-Saxon upper class. Actually, as a Pom, Jinney Hammersley has it over the pure-bred Anglo-Saxon Australians, who probably would not have it otherwise. Even Ally, for all her contempt, wears a slight cringe — along with the cracked glacé shoes and the bois de rose hem which has escaped its stitches.

She is on about her niece adapting herself to life in Australia. You suspect that Ally, if you hadn’t been there, would have liked to represent you as a kind of Greek tragedy. But since you are present it isn’t possible. And the Hammersley is determined to make it a jollier than jolly occasion.

She apologises for her ‘swimming togs’, wet and sandy, which she slings round the knob of a chair.

‘At least they smell of the sea,’ her glowing face splits as though for a discovery. ‘You, Irene,’ she pronounces the name English style as Harold does, ‘should appreciate that. Thalassa, Thalassa …’ cupping her chin and rather a dreamy smile, as she leans on this imposing desk.

You can’t help laughing. It sprays around you. And Alison’s horror reaching out towards her Greek tragedy of a niece, to protest, to protect us. If only Gil. Gil could have handled such a situation.

But the Hammersley has a forgiving smile. She does not appear to notice, or perhaps decides to interpret mirth as hysteria. She starts bringing out the snaps — Delphi, Olympia, Dodona, the Parthenon … ‘my tour of the ancient sites…’ and speaks some more of her hoi polloi English Greek. As she leans over you, the waves of Thalassa battle against a dew of armpits.

‘I don’t expect they introduced you to cricket’ she walks springily around as though making for the crease, ‘in our beloved Hellas,’ she says, ‘unless of course you have connections with Corfu. The British have left their stamp on Corfu.’

Seated again at her splendid desk, she promises ‘We’ll try you out. Cricket plays an important part — because, you see, at Ambleside we aim to function as a Team.’ She lowers her chin, making it three, ‘I don’t encourage specific girls, however gifted, to hog the show.’

Brief pause.

‘Scholastically,’ she booms, switching on her great round spectacles so that they flood the aunt with an electric glow and cause acute anxiety, ‘the curriculum aims at turning out girls with a broad humanistic view of life, through history, literature, the visual arts as well as encouraging the domestic virtues through a grounding in needlework and baking. Comprehensive in fact.’

Again Miss Hammersley pauses to contemplate her effects.

While the unfortunate Mrs Lockhart produces from a crumpled envelope a report on the candidate Irene Sklavos by her recent head Mr Warren Harbord.

Miss Hammersley’s outstretched arm, the scales of sea salt still trembling on its down, receives the document with appropriate benevolence. The spectacles are directed at it. The hand taps, the throat is cleared before tautening, the mouth is pursed, and the cheeks rather than the lips smile.

‘Irene is an individualist, it seems — according to Mr. Warren? Harbord. Well, we shall see. I expect she will correct our Greek.’

Mrs Lockhart quails. ‘Ireen is a very biddable girl’ she offers her superior out of another country.

But the principal has no time for the guardian aunt. Again elbowing the desk her spectacles are focused on what could at last be the ideal pupil inside the unpromising material.

Never were you subjected, all at the same instant, to battery by cricket balls, blinding by the flicker of leafed dictionaries, soothed by the scent of slightly scorched Australian sponge helped from hot baking tins. You can only lower your eyes against Miss Hammersley’s dreamy inspection, and hope for the best.

We are shown out by the snooty maid, while the principal remains behind, arranging paper-knives and blotters on her desk. Eating into a little finger is a ring with a dark green stone blotched as though with blood.

* * *

Several days later, Ally says with a mixture of relief and contempt, ‘Waddaya know. The old girl’s accepted you, Ireen. You must have something.’

Harold didn’t say anything.

Date?

Don’t know why I have started keeping this rotten old diary again. Always too dangerous on any count. Perhaps ‘Ambleside’ has given me courage — or wearing the key on a chain round my neck. Anyone interested enough could probably fiddle at the lock with a hairpin. But the older boys are so obsessed with turning themselves into super males their imagination is leaving them. Apart from eyeing me once or twice, Harold seems to have lost interest.