Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

And now it is Christmas Day …

After he had risen and breakfasted, Garnet Roxburgh sent warning through Mrs Brennan that they would be driven to church in the carriage. Mrs Roxburgh relayed the information to her husband in what may have sounded an apathetic tone.

‘Isn’t it what we have done all our lives in accordance with what is expected of us?’ Austin Roxburgh asked of his wife.

She replied, ‘Yes.’

‘Then I ask you — whatever you may feel — to prepare yourself as soon as possible — so that Garnet’s friends may not take offence.’

Mrs Roxburgh obeyed.

The carriage, a large, open affair, not inelegant for the country, was drawn up beside the wicket-gate. Their host looked morose and livery, but did the honours by the ladies in handing them up to the middle seat. The two husbands sat facing their wives, backs to the coachman.

Mrs Aspinall was so busy accommodating her sleeves and expressing fears for her feather hat in an open carriage, she had no eyes for Garnet Roxburgh. His sister-in-law could not resist glancing his way, but once, whereupon he climbed up, and seated himself out of view of the ladies.

Those of the assigned men who were of the Protestant faith had been sent off in advance to walk the two or three miles to the church, while those who were beyond the pale she had noticed loitering in the yard with the barely concealed expression of anticipated carousal on their Irish mugs. On the other hand, the two women standing in the porch, watching the gentry depart, might have been remembering the last occasion they had received the wafer on their tongues: their faces were so altered in shape by melancholy sentiments.

Nothing happened on the journey except that Mrs Aspinall’s hat almost blew off as they crossed the bridge.

Arrived at the church, Garnet Roxburgh, seemingly a warden, left them to attend to his duties. The congregation eyed his companions, particularly the relatives from Home. When they entered the commodious, though rather cold and forbidding church, the assigned population was already seated at the rear. Mr Garnet Roxburgh’s party was ushered to the most prominent pews, an arrangement which Mrs Aspinall accepted with evident satisfaction, but this being Christmas Day, their company was unavoidably split, the doctor and his wife squeezed into the front row, immediately in front of the Austin Roxburghs, beside whom, between the aisle and Mrs Austin’s right, a place was reserved presumably for Garnet. Mrs Aspinall made a considerable show of devotion, kneeling in rapt prayer, her plumed hat inclined above suppliant hands. So Mrs Roxburgh observed, who could not give herself to prayer this morning; her only thought was whether she dare suggest to her husband that they change places.

There was little in this austere temple to provoke those who look upon decoration as an incitement to sin and Popery, nor inspire others of shy sensibility who need signposts before they can venture along the paths of private mysticism. The only aesthetic stimulus to worship was provided by the lilies and roses bunched too tight and too upright in a pair of narrow-necked brass vases, one at each end of the communion table, and round the central arch a riband on which was inscribed in letters of gold, HOLY HOLY HOLY LORD GOD OF HOSTS.

While Mrs Roxburgh was pondering why the text should not be altogether to her taste, her brother-in-law came and took his place beside her. She thought he might have smiled at her, but was busy making more room for him by moving closer to her husband. Even so, Garnet Roxburgh tended to overflow against her. As he leaned forward in prayer, she could hear the cloth stretched to cracking across his shoulders, and when he eased himself back in his seat, she felt his thigh pressed inescapably into her skirt.

Mrs Roxburgh glanced at her husband, who sat staring straight ahead with characteristic gravity, waiting for the service to begin. Although hardly a man of implicit faith, respect for his mother and his dedication to ipse Pater had induced him to pay lip-service to the Christian religion. His wife was not to guess where faith ended and principle took over, but knowing her own limits and her husband’s trusting nature, she would have liked to squeeze his hand, to demonstrate that they were the solid core in a largely incomprehensible world.

The service at All Saints was conducted with a fervour only convincing in that the season was Christmas. The ‘prisoners’ at the rear belted out the psalms and hymns as if they could not have done other than give of their best and heartiest. As the hosts swept onward against the foe, Mrs Roxburgh was again disturbed by her reluctance to accept the text on the riband garlanding the archway ahead. Yet there was no reason to complain when she belonged on the winning side.

It was in this frame of mind that she grew over-conscious of Garnet Roxburgh’s voice, a not-unpleasing baritone. He might have been singing for her alone, whereas on Christmas Eve, she realized, he had not sung a note for the lively Maggie Aspinall. Mrs Roxburgh became distracted, vague, lost her place, which her brother-in-law found for her. His hand still had a scab on it from repairing the log fence the day they rode out together. Perhaps she would become indisposed, but it might not help; Garnet would surely carry her out.

In fact it was Mrs Aspinall who staged the indisposition during the last hymn but one, and that did not help either, because her husband who was a doctor supported her as far as the porch. Mrs Roxburgh wondered whether she should follow, and lend her friend the moral support which only a woman can give another (at the same time it would remove her from the pressure of Garnet Roxburgh’s thigh) but she failed unhappily to extricate herself.

At all events, it came to an end, not only the quavered sermon, but the turkey (one of the whites they had slaughtered for the occasion) and the martyrdom of Holly who all but dropped the dish on which she was bearing Mrs Brennan’s fiery pudding (‘it’ll singe the last of me eyelashes off’) and the roistering in the barn across the yard (somebody fell and the doctor was sent for). Her pale moon unusually flushed in its familiar wrack of grey-white cloud, Mrs Brennan made a brief appearance in a doorway, but must have thought better of her intention, for she drifted into obscurity.

Mrs Roxburgh wrote in her journal with what was only to some extent satisfaction and restored equanimity:

29 Dec 1835

The Aspinalls have been gone these two days. We are again plunged in monotony and peace. I do not complane, nor that the days are droning ones. If we are to continue in Van Diemen’s Land, for what purpose even Mr R. can no longer see, I would not have it spring too many untoward surprises.

Mrs A. repeated that she wished I wld pay her a long visit, and I agreed that nothing wld please me better than to leave the brothers to recall their youth. Thus we parted on a note of ‘friendliness’ and no expectations of each other.

Mr R. and the doctor seem to have formed one of those friendships which fate and geography prevent maturing. They must content themselves with the wealth of useful facts they have exchanged in a short time.

As for Garnet R., I wld say he does not regret the Aspinalls’ departure, if it was not for the scene on Christmas Eve which I overheard, and only yesterday a discovery I made through forgetfulness on the part of G. It was like this. Intending to write a line to Mrs Daintrey, I found I was short of letter-paper, nor could Mr R. help me out. My brother-in-law, who was present, joined in with, ‘You will find paper, Ellen, in the box on my desk.’ I went to avail myself of this offer. The box mentioned was a beautiful one I had already noticed, made from cedar, inlaid with panels of tortoiseshell, brass handles to the little drawers, the whole bound in a framework of the same metal. I opened the box and found a plentiful supply of paper and anything else I might have needed in the way of writing materials. Only on helping myself did I notice something which had no use in letter-writing: a small bow in pink ribbon such as might have trimmed a lady’s dress! I found myself smelling this trumpery object, like I was a dog, but could not detect a distinct perfume, only a faint scent of the woman’s body it had helped set off.