Patrick White - Riders in the Chariot

Mrs Godbold was sitting on the edge of the chair, in that same shed which had started temporary and ended up permanent. Several of the children continued to cling to their mother, soothed by her physical presence, lulled on the waves of her reflective mind. Kate, however, was going about sturdily. She had rinsed the teapot, saving the leaves for their various useful purposes. With an iron spoon, she had given the corned breast an authoritative slap or two. Soon the scents and sighs were stealing out of pan and mouths, as fresh sticks crackled on sulky coals, and coaxed them back to participation. Eyes could not disguise the truth that the smell of imminent food is an intoxicating experience. Even Mrs Godbold, who had felt herself permanently rooted amongst the statuary of time, began to stir, to creak, to cough, all of it gently, for fear of disturbing those ribs which had copped most of her husband's wrath. She would have risen at any moment, to resume her wrestling, as a matter of course, with the many duties from which it was useless to believe one might ever really break free. When Else, her eldest, came in. Else Godbold often got home later of an evening now. Since it had been decided that her fate was secretarial, she had learnt to bash out a business letter, and would take on any other girl, for speed, if not for spelling. As for her shorthand, that was coming along, too: she accepted dictation with disdain, and sometimes even succeeded in reading her results. In her business capacity, she caught the bus for Barranugli every morning at 8:15, in pink, or blue, with accessories of plastic, and a cut lunch. Else had begun to do her lips, as other business young ladies did. Cleverly balanced on her heels, she could make her skirt and petticoats sway, in a time which might have provoked, if it had sounded less austere. Else Godbold was ever so impressive, provided her younger sisters were not around. Now, when she had banged the shed door, because that was the only way to shut it, and kicked off her shoes, because she always felt happier without, she went up close to her mother, and said, "Mum, I ought to tell you, I just seen Dad." Her breath was burning, not to say dramatic. "Ah," replied the mother, slowly, not altogether rousing herself. For Mrs Godbold never tired of examining her eldest, and now that the lipstick was all but eaten off, and Else looking warm, yet dewy, the woman saw the hedges rise again in front of her, in which were all the small secret flowers, and bright berries, with over them the loads of blossom, or pretty fruit. "Yes"-she cleared her throat to continue-"your dad went out not so very long ago." "And is drunk as sin," hissed Else, "already!" Because in Godbolds' shed, it would have been silly, everybody knew, to mince matters at all. Mrs Godbold compressed her nostrils in a certain way she had. "He was coming from Fixer Jensen's." The messenger refused to relent. "He will likely be catching the bus," suggested Mrs God-bold. "Your father was not in the best of tempers. He will almost certain make for the city. Oh, dear! And in his work things, too!" "Not him!" said Else, and now she did hesitate, for one who had learnt that time is not to waste. She did go red, and incline a little, as if she would have touched their mother. "Not him!" she repeated. "Dad," she said, "was making for Khalils'!" Then Else began quite suddenly to cry. So natural a noise, it sounded worse, and that such a secretarial young lady should act like any little girl. Mrs Godbold had to get up, no longer so careful of her ribs. "To Khalils'," she said. "From Fixer Jensen's." The youngest of the children understood their father had fallen from a low level to perhaps the very depths of the pit. And Else heaving and sobbing like that, hot and red, in her business dress. Several others saw fit to join her. But they did not know how to share her shame. "Let me see now," said the mother, really rather confused, when she could least afford to be. "You will attend to the mutton, Kate. And don't forget there's cabbage to warm. Else! Else! This house is too small for having the hysterics in. Grace, keep an eye on Baby. Whatever is she doing with that nasty-looking nail?" Although it was warm, even sultry, Mrs Godbold put on her coat, for decency's sake, and for moral support, her black, better hat. To everybody, her preparations appeared most awful. "I am going out now," she announced, "and may be a little while. I want you girls to behave, as you can, I know. Else! Else! You will see to it, won't you, when you have pulled yourself together?" Else made some sort of sound out of her blurry face. Before their mother was gone. Mrs Godbold went up the hill towards the road, along the track which all of them had helped to wear deep. A blunderer by nature, she was fair game for blackberry bushes, but would tear free, to blunder on, because she was meant to get there, by pushing the darkness down if necessary. And dark it was by now. Once she slithered, and the long, green smell told her of cow-pats. Once she plunged her foot right up to the ankle in a rusty tin. Empty bottles cannoned off one another, while all the time that soft, yet prickly darkness was flicking in her face the names of Fixer Jensen and Mollie Khalil, with the result that the victim's knees were trembly as the stars. If she had lived less retired, she might have been less alarmed, but here she had undertaken an expedition to the dark side of the moon. Fixer Jensen was a joke, of course, even amongst those inhabitants sure enough of their own virtue to enjoy a paddle in the shallows of vice. "Better see Fixer," they used to say, and laugh, anywhere around Sarsa-parilla, if it was a matter of short-notice booze, or commodities that had disappeared, or some horse that had become a cert almost too late in the day. Fixer could fix anything, after picking his nose for a while, and denying his gifts. Who would not overlook a certain unloveliness of behaviour in one who served the community, and supported the crippled kiddies besides, and bred canaries for love? Yet there were a few humourless blobs and wowsers who failed to appreciate that obliging and, all in all, respectable cheat. Why, they asked, did the law not take steps to ensure that Jensen toed the line? Those persons could only have been ignorant or imbecile as well, for it was commonly known that two councillors, at least, accepted Fixer's services. Moreover, Mrs McFaggott, wife of the constable himself, was dependent on him for a ready bottle, and she, poor soul, without her grog, could not have turned a blind eye to the constable's activities. It was obvious, then, that Fixer Jensen's position was both necessary and legal, and that he would continue to oblige those who found themselves in a hole. Nuns had been seen arriving with ports, and little girls with dolls' prams, at Fixer Jensen's place, while almost any evening, after work, and before wives might claim their rights, the sound of manly voices, twined in jolly, extrovert song, could be heard blurting through the vines which helped to hold that bachelor establishment up. Most of this Mrs Godbold knew, by hearsay, if not experience, and now visualized a mess of husband, songful and soulful, bitter and generous at once, as ready to lay his head on a bosom as bash it open on a stone. She would have endured all this, and more, if only she could have caught him by the shirt as he stumbled glassy from Fixer Jensen's, but after Else's recent report, Tom had gone frying further fish, of rather a different kind. Mrs Godbold was almost tripped by her own thoughts at the corner of Alice Avenue, but kept her balance, and went on, turning her wedding-ring round and round, to achieve an assurance which hesitated to develop. She even whimpered a little to herself, something she would never have done by daylight, or in public. Only, in the streets of Sarsaparilla at night, she was less a wife and mother than a humour in a dark hat. In which state she arrived at Khalils'. And found, unexpectedly, discretion. If a piece of the gate did fall off as she opened it, that is always liable to happen, and if the house itself had dissolved, the windows remained an inextinguishable yellow, only partially eclipsed by a variety of materials: crimson plush, check horserug, brown holland, even, it seemed, a pair of old cotton drawers, that the owners had stretched, for privacy like. All was quiet, though, at Khalils'. So that when the visitor knocked, the sound of her knuckles rang out, and she sank a little lower in her shoes. Slippers approached, however, rather annoyed. "Waddaya want there?" called a voice through a tear in the screen door. "I am Mrs Godbold," the darkness answered. "And I have come for my husband. Who must be here." "Oh," said the voice-it was a woman's. "Mrs Godbold." Then there was a long pause, in which breathing and mosquitoes were heard, and someone was waiting for someone else to act. "Mrs Godbold," said the woman at last, through the tear. "Waddaya wanta come 'ere for!" "I came here for my husband," the visitor persisted. It was so simple. But the door was whining and creating. "No one," said the woman, "never came for their husband. Never." She was distressed, it seemed, by some infringement of etiquette. She did not know what to do, so the door creaked, and her slippers shifted grittily. "You are Mrs Khalil?" Mrs Godbold asked. "Yes," said the woman, after a pause. The sticky scent of jasmine hung low, touching strangers. Loving cats pressed against the skirt. "Aohh," protested Mrs Khalil, "whydya wanna go an' do this?" She could have been a decent sort. She was swinging the door, and her cats were at least fed. "You better come in," she said, "Mrs Godbold. I dunno watta do with yer. But come in. It's no faulta mine. Nobody never done this ter me before." Mrs Godbold coughed, because she did not know what to answer, and followed the slippers of her new acquaintance, slit slat slit slat, down a passage, into a yellow light and some confusion. "There we are, anyways," Mrs Khalil said, and smiled, showing a gold tooth. Mollie Khalil was not a bad sort at all. If she was Irish, whose fault was that? And such a long way back. There were those at Sarsaparilla who called her a loose woman, and those could have been right. But an honest woman, too. Doing her job like anyone else. Lived _de facto__ with a Syrian until the bugger shoved off, when she simply turned to, and set up whoring in a quiet way, in a small home behind the fire-station. She was no longer for the men herself, preferring comfort and a glass of gin. Besides, her girls, Lurleen and Janis, were both of an age, and there was a lady would come from Auburn, to help out when necessary. "We might as well be comfortable," Mrs Khalil now said. "Us women!" She laughed. "Take off your hat, dear, if you feel like it." But Mrs Godbold did not. Mrs Khalil was wearing a loose, imaginative gown, in which her flesh swam free, as she moved about what was evidently her kitchen. She said, "This is my youngest kid, Janis, Mrs Godbold." She touched her child's rather frizzy hair as if it had been something else, growing on its own. Janis was having a read of what her mother would have called a Book. She did not look up, but stuck out her jaw, and frowned. She was sitting in her shift. Her bare toes were still wriggly, like a little girl's. "Siddown, dear," said Mrs Khalil to her visitor, and moved something private from a chair. In a far corner there was a gentleman still to be explained, "This is Mr Hoggett," she said. "He is waiting." Mr Hoggett did not know what to say, but made a noise in the region of the singlet which contained his upper part. Mrs Godbold sat down upon an upright chair. Her errand of love remained somehow imperative, though by now she knew it could not be explained. Janis was turning the pages of her Book with a thumb which she licked scornfully. She was black, but not so black as not to know what she was worth. "Ackcherly," said Mrs Khalil, staring dreamy at the vision which represented her younger child, "we was having a sorta discussion when you come around and knocked. I said death is like anythin' else. It is wotcha care to make it, like. It is howya go orff. But Mr Hoggett and Janis still had to voice an opinion." Mr Hoggett had not bargained for anything of this. He turned his head sideways. He scratched his navel through the singlet. "Mr Hoggett's wife died," Mrs Khalil said, and smiled a kind of dreamy smile. " 'Ere! Cut it out!" Mr Hoggett had to protect his rights. "I didn't come 'ere for this. A man can stay at 'ome and listen to the wireless." He looked around, accusing, and what was most unfair, at Mrs Godbold, who was innocent. Then the bawd began to turn nasty. She struck several matches, but they broke. "I toldya, didn't I? I couldn'ta made it plainer. Janis is bespoke. Some men make me wanta reach!" But she got the cigarette alight at last. She began to breathe up smoke and to move about inside her clothes. Mr Hoggett, who was pretty big, simply sat, in his singlet, expressing himself with his belly. He might have expanded further if Mrs Khalil's kitchen had not filled up already, with dishes, and baskets, and piles of women's underclothes, and cats, and an old gas stove with a glass face and mutton fat inside. "Excuse us, dear, if business will raise its head," Mrs Khalil apologized to Mrs Godbold. The latter smiled, because she felt she ought. But the expression did not fit her face. It drifted there, out of someone else's situation. The chair on which she sat was so upright, the flesh itself could not upholster it. Or, at least, she must see to that. At the same time, there was a great deal she did not understand. It left her looking rather sad. "I could wait outside," presently she said. For her intentions, if they had ever formed, had finally grown paralysed. "Oh dear, no!" protested Mrs Khalil. "The night air does no one any good." So Mrs Godbold's statue was not moved from off its chair, and just as she was puzzled by her own position, the sculptor's purpose remained obscure to the beholder. In the kitchen's fearful fug, forms had swelled. For one thing, Mr Hoggett had expended a good deal of emotion. Now, when he suddenly laughed, right the way up his gums, it was perhaps entitlement. He slapped his opulent thigh, and looked across at Janis, and asked, "Havin' a nice read, love?" "Nao," said Jam's. She had done her nails some time ago, and the stuff was flaking off. What she read, following it with a finger, was obviously of grave substance. "There!" she cried. "Mumma, I toldya! Thursday is no good. We are under the influence of Saturn. See?" She slammed the Book together then. "Oh, gee!" she said. She went and threw the window up, so that she let in the moon and a scent of jasmine. A white, sticky stream of night came pouring in, together with a grey cat of great persistence. "Gee," said Janis, "I wish I could make somethink happen!" "That is somethink I would never dare wish for, " asserted her mother. And blew a trumpet of smoke from her nostrils. In the house behind, voices were laid together in the wooden boxes. They would rasp like sandpaper at times, or lie against one another like kid gloves. Mrs Godbold listened to the minutes. She held up her chin. In spite of the aggressively electric light, the side of her face closest to the window had been very faintly moon-washed. It was only just visible, one paler splash. Suddenly she bent down, for something to do, it could have been, and got possession of the smoky cat. She laid it along her cheek, and asked, "What are you after, eh?" So softly. But it was heard. Mrs Khalil nearly bust herself. She answered, "Love, I expect. Like anybody else." And Mrs Godbold had to see that this was true. That was perhaps the dreadful part. Now she really did understand, she thought, almost everything, and only prayed she would not be corrupted by her own knowledge. The chair creaked on which Mr Hoggett sat. He was very heavy. And hair bursting out of his body. "I would like to go away, somewhere on a train," Janis said, and turned quick. "Mumma," she said, "let me have me dress. Go on!" she coaxed. "I gotta go out. Anywheres." "You know what was agreed," the mother replied. The girl began to protest and twist. She was very pretty underneath her shift. In the dream in which she sat, and from which her marble must never be allowed to stir, Mrs Godbold could feel the drops of jasmine trickling down. She began, for protection, to think of her own home, or shed, and the white surface of the ironing-table, cleaner than moonlight, not to say more honest, with the bowl from which she sprinkled the clothes. She must pin her mind on all such flat surfaces and safe objects, not on her husband; he was the weakest side of her. So she fixed her eyes on the floor of Mrs Khalil's kitchen, on a harlequin lino, where much had been trodden in. The moon has touched her up, Mrs Khalil saw, and for a moment the bawd fell quite genuinely in love with that strong but innocent throat, although, mind you, she was sick of men and women, their hot breath, their double-talk, their slack bodies, and worst of all, their urgent ones. She liked best to lay around with the Sunday papers, a cat against her kidneys. Mrs Godbold paddled her hand in the grey cat's very nearly contented fur. She no longer blamed her husband, altogether. She blamed herself for understanding. She might have left, indeed, if she had been able to withdraw her feet. But the moonlight lay in sticky pools, even where invisible, smelling of jasmine, and a man's stale body. Then there was such a to-do, the wooden house was all but knocked sideways, "Don't tell me!" cried Mrs Khalil. "It is that bloody abo again!" "Arrr, Mumma!" Janis had to draw the line at that. "Wot abo?" Mr Hoggett was quick to ask. As if they had not stalled on him enough. "The only one. Our pet one," moaned Mrs Khalil. "Send it orff, and it will turn up again like washin' day." "Arr, Mumma, no!" Janis could have had the belly-ache. "Is it 'im?" Mr Hoggett was fairly running sweat. But nobody listened to that gentleman now. For the screen door was screaming painfully. The boards of the violated house were groaning and recoiling. He came in. He had a purple bruise where he had fallen on his yellow forehead, somewhere or other. He could not use his body by now, but was directed by a superior will. "You dirty, drunken bastard!" shouted Mrs Khalil. "Didn't I tellya we was not accepting any further visits?" He stood, and a smile possessed him. The bawd would have liked to deliver a piece on blacks, but remembered dimly she had been married to one in all but writing. "This is no visit. This is a mission," announced the abo. So surprisingly that Mrs Godbold looked up. She had been half determined to keep her eyes fixed firmly on the lino, in case she might have to witness an indignity which she would not be strong enough to prevent. "A mission?" shouted Mrs Khalil. "Wot sorta mission, I would liketa know?" "A mission of love," replied the abo. And began to laugh happily. "Love!" cried Mrs Khalil. "You got ideas in yer head. I'm tellin' you! This is a decent place. No love for blacks!" Janis had grown giggly. She was biting the red stuff off of her nails, and scratching herself. The black continued to laugh for a little, because he had not yet run down, and because laughter disposed him to resist the roomful of fluctuating furniture. Then he became grave. He said, "Okay, Mrs Khalil. I will sing and dance for you instead. "If you will allow me," he added, very reasonable. "And even if you cut up rough. Because I am compelled to." Many of the words were borrowed, but those could have been the cheaper ones. A certain gravely cultivated tone and assembly of educated phrases were what, it seemed, came natural to him. Even as he rocked, even as his thick tongue tripped over a word here and there, as his fiery breath threatened to burn him up, or he righted himself on the furniture, his eyes were fixed obsessively on some distant standard of honesty and precision. He would never quite lose sight of that-he made it clear-and it was what infuriated some of his audience most. Mr Hoggett, for instance, while affecting the greatest disgust, both for a moral situation, and for the obvious signs of vomit on the abo's pants, was most enraged by a tone of voice, and words that he himself would never have dared use. "Where did 'e learn it, eh?" he asked. "This one beats the band. So much play-actin', and dawg!" The black man, who was conscientiously preparing the attitude and frame of mind necessary for his act, paused enough to answer, in a voice that was as long, and straight, and sober as a stick, "I owe everything to the Reverend Timothy Cal-deron, and his sister, Mrs Pask." "Waddaya know!" exploded Mrs Khalil. She could not help but laugh, although she had decided on no account to do so. The blackfellow, who had at last succeeded in reconciling attitude with balance, now began to sing: "Hi digger, hi digger, My uncle is bigger Than my father, But not as big as Friday night. Friday is the big shivoo, When the swells begin to swell, And poor Mother has her doubts. Hi digger, hi digger, The moon has a trigger, Which shoots the buggers down, Whether they want to be hit, Or to pro-cras-tin-ate…" "Go easy!" interrupted Mrs Khalil. "I don't allow language in my place. Not from clients. If I'm forced ter use a word meself, it's because I got nowhere else ter go." "Why don't they lock 'im up?" Mr Hoggett complained. "Why?" asked Mrs Khalil, and answered it easy. "Cos the constable 'imself is in the front room, as always, with my Lurleen." By this time the black, who had started in a lazy, loving way, only lolling and lurching, as he sowed seed gently with his hands, or took out his heart to present to the different members of the audience, had begun to grow congested. He was darkening over, purpling even. His sandshoes began to beat a faster time. Short, stabbing gestures were aimed, not at another, but inward, rather, at his own breast. He stamped, and sang faster: "Hi digger, hi digger, Nail it! Nail it! Nail the difference till it bleeds! It's the difference, it's the difference That will bleed the best. Poppies are red, and Crimson Ramb-lers, But men are reddest When they bleed. Let 'em! Let 'em! Le-ehtt…" So he sang, and stamped, and stamped on a cat or two, which yowled in their turn. Baskets fell, of lingerie, which the sun had hardened into slabs of salt fish. As the abo jumped and raised hell, Mollie Khalil appeared to have started jumping too, or at least her breasts were boiling inside the floral gown. "Catch 'old of 'im, willya, please! Someone! Mr Hoggett, be a gentleman!" She had revived herself somewhat, with something, to cope with a situation, and now was holding her side hair, so that the sleeves had fallen back, from rather moister, black-and-whitest armpits. "Not me!" said her client, though. "I came 'ere for a purpose. Not for a bloody rough-'ouse." "But the constable!" she had to plead. "He will disturb the constable." "Okay for Daisy…" sang the abo. He was stamping mad. And cutting wood. Or breaking sticks. "Okay for Mrs McWhirter…" the abo sang, and stamped."… and Constable O'Fickle, And Brighta Lamps, To see with, To see see see, And be with…." Just then Lurleen came in. At one moment, where the shambles of sound fell back, leaving a gulf to be filled, her bare feet were heard squelching over lino. Lurleen was a good bit riper than her sister. She suggested bananas turning black. She was rather messed up. She had the bruised-eyelid look, and some rather dirty pink ribbons just succeeded in keeping the slip attached to her sonsy shoulders. "I have had it!" she said. "That man has one single thought." "Waddaya expect? Latin thrown in?" "No, but conversation. There's some tell about their wives. That's the best kind. You can put the screw on them." "Did he pay?" the bawd asked. "Don't tell me! He said to chalk it up!" she said. "I am hungry. What is in the fridge, Mum?" Lurleen asked, but did not bother about an answer. She went to the fridge and began to eat a sausage, which cold and fat had mottled blue. "I gotta get Mantovani," she said, and started twiddling the knob. "Gee, not Mantovani!" Janis hoped. She herself felt the necessity to writhe, and was threatened instead with sticking-plaster. Lurleen twiddled the knob. Except for a couple of bruises, she was really honey-coloured. But now somebody was coming in. "Waddaya know, Fixer?" Mr Hoggett laughed. He was enjoying it at last. The little one had decided to plaster herself against his ribs. Inside his cotton singlet, his belly was jumping to answer her. "The sun rose over the woolshed, The coolabahs stood in a row. My mother sat in the cow-paddock, And heard the Reverend come…." the abo recited; he no longer felt inclined to sing, and had retreated far from the present room. "Arr, Mr Jensen," called the bawd, from the springs of a rusty lounge, where she had extended herself after further revival, "fix me this abo bloke," she invited, "and you are a better man than ever I thought!" But Fixer Jensen, who was tall, thin, putty-coloured, with his wrinkles pricked out in little black dots, stood and picked his nose as usual. He needed, of course, to get inspired. He looked at Mrs Godbold. Not that he knew her. But he had not expected exactly to meet a statue in a room. There one sat. Fixer said, "Waddaya got 'ere? A party?" Then he began to laugh. "It only needs the constable!" he laughed. Lurleen pouted. "The constable has gone home," she advised, and was stroking herself to the accompaniment of music, and revolving, in her pink slip. "Business good, eh?" Fixer asked. "Not since the Heyetalian cow set up," Mrs Khalil snapped. "Business got donged on the head." Suddenly the abo fell down. He lay on the harlequin lino. He was very quiet, and a little gusher of purple blood had spurted from his mouth. "That man is sick," said Mrs Khalil, from much farther than the droopy lounge. "I am not surprised!" laughed Fixer Jensen. "In such a house!" "Mr Jensen, _please__!" laughed the owner. "But he is pretty sick," she said, serious, because it could happen to herself-all the things she had read about; she began to push her breasts around. The abo lay on the harlequin lino. Mrs Godbold, who had been growing from just that spot for the hours of several years, produced a handkerchief which she had down the front of her dress, and stooped, and wiped the blood away. "You should go home," she said, altering her voice, although it was some time since she had used it. "Where do y ou live?" "Along the river at the parson's," he answered. But collected himself. "What do you mean? Now?" "Of course," she said, gently wiping, speaking for themselves alone. "Why, in Barranugli. I got a room with Mrs Noonan, at the end of Smith Street." "Are you comfortable?" she asked. "At home, I mean." As if he was a human being. He worked his head about on the lino. He could not answer. The music had stuck its sticky strips over all the other faces, as if they might break, without it, at any time. Some of them were sleepy. Some were soothed. Still, a hammer could have broken any of them. "What is your name?" Mrs Godbold asked. He did not seem to hear that. He was looking, it was difficult to say, whether at or beyond the gentle woman in the black hat. He held his arm across half his face, not to protect, rather, to see better. He said, "That is how I want it. The faces must be half turned away, but you still gotta understand what is in the part that is hidden. Now I think I see. I will get it all in time." In a voice so oblivious and convinced that Ruth Joyner was again sitting in the cathedral of her home town, watching the scaffolding of music as it was erected, herself taking part in the exquisitely complicated operation. Nor had she heard a voice issue with such certainty and authority out of any mouth since the strange gentleman referred to that same music. Now it was the abo on Mrs Khalil's floor. He was saying, she began again to hear, "When the frosts were over, the Reverend Calderon used to take us down along the river, and Mrs Pask would bring a basket. We used to picnic on the banks. But they would soon be wondering why they had come. I could see that all right. Mrs Pask would begin to remember daffodils. I could see through anything on those days in early spring. I used to roam around on my own when I got tired of sitting with the whites. I would look into holes in the earth. I would feel the real leaves again. Once I came across a nest of red hornets. Hahhh!" He laughed. "I soon shot off, like I had found wings myself! And seven red-hot needles in me!" When he had finished laughing, he added, "Funny I went and remembered that." "It was because you was happiest then," she suggested. "That is not what you remember clearest/' he insisted with some vehemence. "It is the other things." "I suppose _so__." Because she wished to encourage peace of mind, she accepted what she knew, for herself at least, to be only a half-truth. "Still," she offered, tentatively, "it is the winters I can remember best at Home. Because we children were happiest then. We were more dependent on one another. The other seasons we were running in all directions. Seeing and finding things for ourselves. In winter we held hands, and walked together along the hard roads. I can still hear them ringing." Her eyes shone. "Or we huddled up together, against the fire, to eat chestnuts, and tell tales. We loved one another most in winter. There was nothing to come between us." Such a commotion had broken out in the roomful of music and people. It was something to do with Mrs KhaliPs Janis, whom Mr Hoggett wanted bad. He was finally convinced that young flesh must be the only nostrum. But Mrs Khalil herself was of quite an opposite opinion. "Over my body!" she screamed. And could have been shaking it to show. "This ain't no concern of yours," Mr Hoggett was shouting. "Whose else, I'd liketa know?" Fixer Jensen, in his putty-coloured hat with the pulled-down brim, was laughing his head off. He could afford to; nobody had ever known Fixer run a temperature. But the little one was possessed by a far subtler kind of detachment. She suddenly sprang, like a cat, and stuck the point of her tongue in Mr Hoggett's ear. She was almost diabolical in her attitude to love matters. She would jump, and swerve, in her cat's games, and at a certain juncture, leaped on a chair, which collapsed rottenly under her. She became screaming mad then. Everybody was too well occupied to disturb the abo and the laundress, who kept to their island, not exactly watching, for they had their thoughts. "Are you a Christian?" Mrs Godbold asked quickly to get it over. Even so, she was mortified, knowing that the word did not represent what it was intended to. "No," he replied. "I was educated up to it. But gave it away. Pretty early on, in fact. When I found I could do better. I mean," he mumbled, "a man must make use of what he has. There is no point in putting on a pair of boots to walk to town, if you can do it better in your bare feet." She smiled at that. It was true, though, and of her own clumsy tongue, as opposed to her skill in passing the iron over the long strips of fresh, fuming, glistening sheets. "Yes." She smiled, once more beautiful; her skin was like fresh pudding-crust. But he coughed. Then she dabbed again with her handkerchief at the corner of his mouth. This, perhaps, was her work of art, her act of devotion. All the commotion of life, though, continued tumbling in their ears: the ladies protesting their dignity, the gentlemen calling for their rights. Doors were opening, too. So Mrs Godbold looked at the ball of her handkerchief. Soon, she realized, it would be her turn to bleed. A woman had come, or marched into the room. Her skin was the greyer for flesh-colour chenille, from which her arms hung down, with veins in them, and a wrist-watch on a brass chain. "I am shook right out," she announced. "I am gunna catch the bus." She was no longer distinctive in any way. She could have been a splinter, rather sharp. "There is Mr Hoggett," indicated the desperate bawd. "He has waited all this time." But the other was clearing her throat. "Tell 'im I got a cold. Tell 'im to stuff 'imself/' she said. She was the lady from Auburn, and was known as Mrs Johnno. Mrs Khalil near as anything threw a fit. All the blows she was fated to receive in rendering service to mankind. "Some women are that low," she complained, "you can't wonder at the men." And looked to Mrs Godbold for support. Which the latter could no longer give. She had stood up. She did smile, as if to acknowledge guilt in ignoring a request. But must hoard her resources carefully. The room had shrunk. For there was Tom now. Tom Godbold had followed in Mrs Johnno's tracks, and was offering the bawd a note in payment. His wife would have paid more, and torn off a pretty little brooch besides, if she had felt it might redeem. She would have taken him by the hand, and they would have run up the hill together, through the bush, over the breaking sticks, to reach the lights. Instead, when the note had been crumpled up and pocketed, Tom Godbold crossed over to his wife, and said, "You done a lot to show me up, Ruth, in our time, but you just about finished me this go." She was standing before him on her sleeping legs, in her clumsy hat and long, serviceable overcoat. Only a membrane was stretched between her feelings and exposure. He might have kicked her, as in the past, and it would have been a kindness. "Come on," he said. "I got what I wanted. You're the one that's missed out." As they left, the whores, it appeared, were finishing their business. The little one had disappeared. The window was blacker than before, whiter where the jasmine held the frame in its tender grip. Whether Mr Hoggett would allow himself to be appeased might never be known now. He was, at least, accepting refreshment from a bottle which had once contained something else. It made his breath come sharp and quick. While Mrs Khalil continued to deplore the contingencies of life, and Mrs Johnno's toenails created havoc in the tunnels of her stockings as her feet entered them. Godbolds were going out, and away. She followed him as a matter of course. The bush smelled of the leaves they bruised in stumbling. It had rained a little. It was fresh. When they stood beneath a lamp, in a half-made street, on the edge of Sarsaparilla, she saw that the flesh had quite shrivelled from Tom's skull. "I was wrong, Tom," she said. "I know. I _am__ wrong. There!" she said, and made a last attempt to convince him with her hand. "I will follow you to hell if need be." Tom Godbold did not wait to see whether he was strong enough to suffer the full force of his wife's love. "You won't need to follow me no further," he said, and began to pick his way between the heaps of blue-metal. By his deliberate concentration, he appeared, if anything, less his own master. More remorseless than the influence of drink, age seemed also to have mounted on his shoulders, and to hold the reins. So his wife realized, as she watched, there was nothing more she could do for him, and that she herself must accept to be reduced by half. Several years later, summoned to assume the responsibility of kin, she recovered the token of her lost half. On that occasion they allowed her to sit beside a bed, and observe, beneath a thin blanket, stained by the piss and pus of other dying men, what, they told her, was Tom Godbold. Of the husband she had known before disease and indulgence carried him off, nothing lived without the assistance of memory. "No more than half an hour ago," the kind sister told. "After a boiled egg. He enjoyed his food up to the last. He spoke about you." The wife of the man who had just died did not dare inquire for details of those dying remarks. Besides, the sister was busy. She had looked out between the pleated screens at several giggly girls who were washing the bodies of the living far too lingeringly. The sister frowned, and wondered how she might dispose discreetly of the bereaved. Then did, without further ceremony. She could not endure to watch dereliction of duty. The widow who remained behind in her little cell of white screens was ever so well controlled. Or it could have been that she had not cared about her husband. In any case, when at last a glossy young probationer peeped in, the person was gone. She had given instructions, however, downstairs. Mrs Godbold left Tom embedded in the centre of the great square building which a recent coat of shiny paint caused to glimmer, appropriately, like a block of ice. She walked a little. The acid of light was poured at nightfall into the city, to eat redundant faces. Yet, she survived. She walked, in the kind of clothes which, early in life, people had grown to expect of her, which no one would ever notice, except in amusement or contempt, and which would only alter when they fitted her out finally. Mrs Godbold walked by the greenish light of early darkness. A single tram spat violet sparks into the tunnel of brown flannel. Barely clinging to its curve, its metal screeched anachronism. But it was only as she waited at a crossing, watching the stream churn past, that dismay overtook Mrs Godbold, and she began to cry. It seemed as if the group of figures huddled on the bank was ignored not so much by the traffic as by the strong, undeviating flood of time. There they waited, the pale souls, dipping a toe timidly, again retreating, secretly relieved to find their fellows caught in a similar situation, or worse, for here was one who could not conceal her suffering. The large woman was simply standing and crying, the tears running out at her eyes and down her pudding-coloured face. It was at first fascinating, but became disturbing to the other souls-in-waiting. They seldom enjoyed the luxury of watching the self-exposure of others. Yet, this was a crying in no way convulsed. Soft and steady, it streamed out of the holes of the anonymous woman's eyes. It was, it seemed, the pure abstraction of gentle grief. The truth of the matter was: Mrs Godbold's self was by now dead, so she could not cry for the part of her which lay in the keeping of the husband she had just left. She cried, rather, for the condition of men, for all those she had loved, burningly, or at a respectful distance, from her father, seated at his bench in his prison of flesh, and her own brood of puzzled little girls, for her former mistress, always clutching at the hem and finding it come away in her hand, for her fellow initiates, the madwoman and the Jew of Sarsaparilla, even for the blackfellow she had met at Mrs Khalil's, and then never again, unless by common agreement in her thoughts and dreams. She cried, finally, for the people beside her in the street, whose doubts she would never dissolve in words, but understood, perhaps, from those she had experienced. Then, suddenly, the people waiting at the crossing leaped forward in one surge, and Mrs Godbold was carried with them. How the others were hurrying to resume their always importunate lives. But the woman in the black hat drifted when she was not pushed. For the first moment in her life, and no doubt only briefly, she remained above and impervious to the stream of time. So she coasted along for a little after she had reached the opposite side. Although her tears were all run, her eyes still glittered in the distance of their sockets. Fingers of green and crimson neon grappled for possession of her ordinarily suety face, almost as if it had been a prize, and at moments the strife between light and darkness wrung out a royal purple, which drenched the slow figure in black.