Patrick White - Riders in the Chariot

Mrs Noonan was a stranger in her own house, which had belonged, in fact, to her mother-in-law, which caused her to go softly in her rag hat, and coast along the walls in anticipation of strictures, smiling. She had no friends, but two acquaintances, a carrier and his wife, whom she could seldom bear to disturb. But drank a great deal of tea on her own. And loved her hens. And set store by the presence of a lodger, a decent sort of man, whom she did not see. And was puzzled at last, on running a duster along the landing wainscot, to detect an unorthodox smell coming from under the door of the room that she let. It was so peculiar, not to say nasty, she did at last venture to call, "_Eh, mis-ter__?" And to knock once or twice. To rattle the knob of the locked door, though diffidently, because she could never bring herself to consider the rented room any longer part of Mother's house, let alone her own. "Mister! Mister!" She rattled, and smiled, cocking an ear. "Anything wrong? It is me-Mrs Noonan. "It is Mrs Noonan," she repeated, but fainter. Perhaps that was to reassure herself, but she was not really convinced by the sound of her own name, and went away wondering whether she dare disturb her acquaintances, the carrier and his wife. On deciding not, she put on a better hat, and some shoes, and went to a house several blocks away, where she had noticed from a brass plate that a doctor had set up. The young doctor, who was reading a detective story, and scratching himself through his flies, was bored on being disturbed, but also relieved to be asked for advice, since an unpleasantness at the butcher's over credit. "What sort of smell?" the doctor asked. Mrs Noonan flickered her eyelids. "I dunno, Doctor," she said, and smiled. "A sort of peculiar smell like." She breathed more freely when he fetched his bag, and felt important as they walked along the street, not quite abreast, but near enough to signify that they were temporarily connected. It was still hot, and they trod with difficulty through the pavement of heavy yellow sunlight, which had assisted Dubbo in the painting of his picture. "Had he been depressed?" the doctor asked. "Ah, no," she answered. "Not that you could say. Quiet, though. He was always quiet." "Sick?" "Well." She hesitated. Then, when she had considered, she burst out in amazement, "Yes! Sick! I reckon that dark feller was real sick. And that is what it could be. He could of died!" Her own voice abandoned her to a terrible loneliness in the middle of the street, because the doctor was above a human being. They went on, and she tried to think of her hens, now that that decent blackfellow was gone. When they reached the room door, the doctor asked for a key, but as there was no duplicate, he did not suggest anything else; he burst the papery thing open. They went in on the draught, rather too quickly, and at once were pushed back by the stench. The doctor made a noise, and opened the window. "How long since you saw him?" "Could be three days," Mrs Noonan answered, from behind her handkerchief, and smiled. Dubbo was lying on the bed. He was twisted round, but natural-looking, more like some animal, some bird that had experienced the necessity of dying. There was a good deal of blood, though, on the pillow, on his hands, although it had dried by then, with the result that he could have been lying in the midst of a papier-mâche joke. The doctor was carrying out a distasteful examination. "Is he dead?" Mrs Noonan was asking. "Eh, Doctor? Is he dead? "He is dead," she replied, for herself. "Probably a tubercular haemorrhage," mumbled the doctor. He breathed harder to indicate his disapproval. "Ah," said Mrs Noonan. Then she caught sight of the oil paintings, and was flabbergasted. "What do you make of these, Doctor?" she asked, and laughed, or choked behind her handkerchief. The doctor glanced over his shoulder, but only to frown formally. He certainly had no intention of looking. When he had finished, and given all necessary instructions to that inconsiderable object the landlady, and banged the street door shut, Mrs Noonan prepared to go in search of her acquaintances, the carrier and his wife. But she did look once more at the body of the dead man, and the house was less than ever hers. The body of Alf Dubbo was quickly and easily disposed of. He had left money enough-it was found in a condensed-milk tin-so that the funeral expenses were settled, the landlady was paid, and everybody satisfied. The dead man's spirit was more of a problem: the oil paintings became a source of embarrassment to Mrs Noonan. Finally, the helpful carrier advised her to put them in an auction, and for a remuneration carried them there, where they fetched a few shillings, and caused a certain ribaldry. Mrs Noonan was relieved when it was done, but sometimes wondered what became of the paintings. Not even the auctioneers could have told her that, for their books were lost soon after in a fire. Anyway, the paintings disappeared, and, if not destroyed when they ceased to give the buyers a laugh, have still to be discovered.

THEY HAD started to demolish Xanadu. A very short time after the wreckers went in, it seemed as though most of the secret life of the house had been exposed, and the stage set for a play of divine retribution; only the doors into the jagged rooms continued closed, the actors failed to make their entrance. Of course, the reason might have been that vengeance was fully inflicted, and the play finished, where wallpaper now twittered, and starlings plastered the cornices. Even so, people came down hopefully from Sarsaparilla to watch, to brace themselves against the impending scream of tragedy, to stroll amongst the grass while keeping a lookout for souvenirs, a jade bead perhaps, or coral claw, or the photographs that are washed up out of the yellow past. It was no more than a gleaning, because the furniture had been removed immediately it was decided to demolish and subdivide. Solicitors had presided. A young man turned up, in black, and a rustier, elderly individual. They had supervised the inventories, and were present at the arrival of the vans, on the authority of the legatee and relative, a Mr Cleugh, of the island of Jersey, U. K. All was arranged by correspondence, as the fortunate gentleman was too old to undertake the voyage-besides, he had done it once-and could have been interested only in the theory of wealth by now. So the malachite urns were removed at last from Xanadu, and the limping cedar, and the buhl table of brass hackles. Some of the inhabitants of Sarsaparilla claimed to have been informed that it all fetched a pretty penny, though there were others who heard that it went for a song. The strange part was that the old woman had thought to consult solicitors. She had, it appeared, called them in soon after the death of her mother, when some transparency of memory prompted her to dictate a will in favour of her cousin, Eustace. Not even those who invariably failed to understand motives could have interpreted the inheritance as a simple reversion, for Mary Hare was closer by blood to several Urquhart-Smiths. So, it seemed, Miss Hare had chosen. She who had lurked in the scrub, and frequently scuttled from the eyes of strangers, who had stood at a window holding the rag of a curtain over half her face, or drifted directionless through the corridors and rooms of her nominal home at Xanadu, she who was at most an animal, at least a leaf, had always chosen, people came to think, and had chosen for the last time, the night the Jew's house got burnt, to go away from Sarsaparilla, where she was never seen again. There had been a hue and cry, and speculation in the press, and two bodies offered, one from a river in the south of New South Wales, the second from the sea, off the Queensland coast. Neither corpse was recognizable. But it was decided by reasoning too devious to disentangle that Miss Hare was she who had stepped into the cold waters of the southern river, where trout had nibbled at her till the state of anonymity was reached. So it was published officially. But there were those who knew that that was not Miss Hare. Mrs Godbold knew. Several of the latter's daughters knew. Though the matter was never, never discussed amongst them, they knew that Miss Hare was somewhere closer, and would not leave those parts, perhaps in poor, crumpled, disintegrated flesh, but never more than temporarily in spirit. So the Godbolds would push the hair out of their eyes, and squint at the sun, and keep quiet, if ever the subject of Miss Hare's end crept into the conversation of the inhabitants of Sarsaparilla. It remained something of a mystery, while Xanadu itself was the broken comb from which the honey of mystery had soon all run. People listened for the next crump, from a distance, or approached close enough to enjoy the spectacle of the complicated copper bath-heater, although from that level they could not have caught sight of the tessellated Italian floor, from which time and Mrs Jolley had already half scattered the medallion depicting a black goat. Sometimes, in the absence of actors, the workmen would appear on one of the several planes of the deserted stage, and perform against the dead colours for the pleasure of the thin but enthusiastic audience. The spectators would enter right into the play, because all those workmen were regular blokes with whom they could have exchanged sentiments as well as words. Which made the act of desecration more violent and personal, adding to it, as it were, the destructive animus of banality. So the few ladies from Sarsaparilla, and handful of kiddies, and three or four stubbly pensioners, roared their heads off the morning the young chap-the wag of the bunch-stood on the landing at Xanadu with a bit of an old fan he had found, and there amongst the lazy sunlight which the trees allowed to filter onto the brown wallpaper and dustmarks, improvised a dance which celebrated the history of that place. How the young labourer became inspired enough to describe those great sweeping arcs with his moulted fan, nobody understood, nor did the artist himself realize that, for all its elasticity of grimace and swivelling impudence of bum, his creation was a creaking death dance. But the young man danced. For the audience, his lithe thighs introduced an obscenity of life into the dead house. The candid morning did not close down on his most outrageous pantomime. The people hooted, but in approval. Until at the end, suddenly, the tattered fan seemed to fly apart in the dancer's hand, the tufts of feathers blew upward in puffs of greyish-pink smoke, and the young man was left looking at a few sticks of tor-toiseshell. At once he began to feel embarrassed, and went off stage, careful to close the door upon his exit. The audience dispersed shyly.