Patrick White: The Hanging Garden

Scuttle then.

Looking back from where you have dropped on your knees on something sharp it no longer matters worse blood could not be drawn the sisters have arrived at the window and stand looking out a fright or at least suspicion has shut them up for the present they stand in the wreckage of their principles there is nothing they can see exactly except looking down the rubble of an old flowerpot their faces quivering like a pulp of drying snails. Almost as though they have been caught out like children.

The Lockhart glances at her wrist. ‘Mustn’t forget this boat you have to catch.’ It is a relief to remember there is something she can do, where she can be of use, after straying into the prickly thicket of principles.

Mamma receives less comfort. ‘… yes, the boat…’ She ought to feel released, perhaps she will when they draw up the gangway, but standing at the window, her ideals are still squirming for the trampling they have undergone in what she sees as this rough neglected Australian garden. She says screwing up her face, ‘I must say good-bye to my poor child. I could not bear to have her come to the boat. That would be too heartrending.’

The Lockhart tears a fresh pack from the cellophane binding it to the carton. ‘I don’t doubt…’ she turns a laugh into a cough, swivelling the end of a scaly nose.

Mamma says, ‘It is only a temporary separation. When we have won, Eirene will come … join in building a better Greece…’

They turn back into the house, two sisters united over practical details, like stuffing a suitcase with what has almost been forgotten, and fastening the hasps.

Mamma’s voice is choked at first. When it is next heard, agape now, she is standing on the rotten back steps. She clears her throat and the voice floats out as clear as that of a singer in opera. ‘Eirene? We must say good-bye darling. Mamma cannot miss her boat.’

The Lockhart one has gone up the path to start the car.

Mamma continues, her voice like a descending scale of feathers floating down through the tangle of trees, as you lie with your face in rotting leaves, so warm and smoky they may be at the point of kindling. A red centipede is crawling over your bare arm. A black beetle scratches at your cheek as it tries to climb.

Presently the guardian’s voice. ‘… too upset I expect, Madame Sklavos. Poor little soul.’ She blunders about a bit, because it is her duty, barely leaving the path once she has run her face into a great spider’s web ‘… urrh … nasty! Poison a person…’

‘Sensitive child … don’t you worry, madam, every care will be taken of her. Mamma and the woman are struggling up the path towards the snorting car carrying Mamma’s heavy suitcase. Mamma soon leaves it to the one whose services will be paid for.

Soon there will be the garden alone. If only you could take the form of this red thread of a centipede or beetle that might have crawled out of the dregs of an inkwell to claw and scratch and burrow and hide amongst what is not just rottenness but change to change. To become part of this thick infested garden so swallowed up where Mamma suffers. You could no longer want either house or garden for your own. Only to burrow. Only this other enemy would come, and crush the beetle out of you. Crush you as a girl too, if you did not resist.

As you get up on your uncomfortable heels, the garden which is yours, in your nostrils and under your nails, glooms and shimmers with whatever is to happen. The gate squeals — is it Gilbert Horsfall, socks around his ankles, the battered case with very little joggling round inside it, returning to dispute your ownership?

Ready yourself to kick him in the shins when the pins and needles have died like so many insects in what are still your legs.

* * *

Mrs Bulpit had given up clambering up and down the paths and steps of a garden she would not have wanted to own, if it hadn’t gone with the house Reg bought.

‘When you’ve stopped being contrary, young lady,’ she called at her last gasp, ‘you can show yourself and we’ll come to terms.’

She went inside banging the door with the hole in the mosquito wire.

Presently the boy came out, chewing on a hunk of bread. He was carrying a second, holding it at a distance from him. Though the evening had started cooling off, the fat from this second slice of bread had begun to melt, he could feel it messing up his fingers as the dripping from the hunk he was tucking into had smeared his mouth, fattening his lips, making them lazy and content.

If he didn’t find her, he could eat hers as well, so he meandered on, not particularly looking, at moments forgetting the mission Ma Bulpit had sent him on. Then he caught sight of this Irene Sklavos standing below him at the sea wall, which was where he would have least liked to find her. He was looking down on that straight white parting as she scraped the gulls’ white scribble from the wall.

‘Hi,’ he mumped, but not loud enough, he really didn’t want to find her.

She went on scraping, and he went on, his thick-soled school shoes growing heavier as he dragged them along the gritty path to show his indifference, and yet not loud enough for her to hear. If only he would never reach her. What ever would he say to this foreign girl if he did?

As he made the last elbow in the downward path, brushing up against the guava tree to remain unseen till the moment they must face each other, he turned in the direction of the city, and that evening dazzle of sun and water. There was no postponing it. She jerked round to see who had caught her out — or was she catching him? Her eyes were still screwed up in her face, either dazzled, or disgusted.

‘She sent you this,’ he mumbled.

‘What is it?’

‘Bread and dripping.’

She took hold of it at last as though it might have been a dog’s turd you were handing her.

Squinting at it. ‘I never ate anything like this.’ Smelling, touching the stuff with the tip of her tongue, biting in.

‘Aah — po po po!’ Spitting, but not throwing it away.

‘… love it…’ Chewing his last rag of crust he made the act look as ugly as he could. ‘If you don’t want it you can give it here.’

She became more screwed up than ever, and disgusted or something, before glancing back over her shoulder at the fire in the west. ‘My mother’s sailing.’

‘Didn’t go to see her off.’

‘I wouldn’t be here if I had, would I?’

He felt himself grow so hot and red she could only notice. He hated her for the weakness she provoked. She must be one of those, not girls, he hadn’t known enough of them, but like grown-up people, fathers, teachers, who go out of their way to make you look stupid — when you weren’t — or were you? He swallowed down the last of the mush his crust had become.

‘I wouldn’t go. I didn’t want to.’ She suddenly began biting into the bread and dripping.

‘I’d go along any time to watch a ship sail.’

‘You wouldn’t understand, even if I told you.’ The bread was making knots in her throat as it went down. She looked to him like that emu in the zoo, a skinny black emu.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re too clever by half. Anybody can see that.’

She might have been going to cry only the bread and dripping had stopped her mouth up. She was settling down. She was wiping her fingers on the stone wall. A stillness they were sharing made him feel more friendly towards her.

Again she was looking out, across the water, but not in the direction of the blazing city.

‘Where I live,’ she said very slowly, ‘there’s an island with a volcano on it and a temple. You can see the island across the gulf.’

‘What, a real volcano?’

‘Of course, but dead for centuries though no volcano’s ever extinct — it’s only waiting,’ she blubbed or shouted, ‘for the next time.’