Patrick White - Happy Valley

Nobody thought. The three women in the inner room paused with their napkins and stared out. The drover wiped his nose on the back of his hand.

He cleared the fence, said Hagan, taking a drink, and started on a five-mile lick. But he hadn’t got me beat. Not me. I haven’t had a horse that could beat me yet. I just gave that colt his head and let him do what he liked.

Wonder ’e ain’t doin’ it yet, said the drover, slamming down his glass.

Doing what?

You ought to know, said the drover, shifting his whip. You’re tellin’ the story. It isn’t me.

Now look here, if you think…

There ain’t no cause to get nasty, gentlemen, said the publican, leaning over the bar. His lips flapped in on his gums. For he only wore his teeth on Sunday afternoons.

Who’s getting nasty? said Hagan.

You ought to be able to tell us that. Don’t let that one beat you, the drover said.

The old man simpered into his beer.

If you think I’m a liar…

You’re a touchy one, sighed the drover. You’ll be telling a bloke ’e’s got ’is ’and on your watch-chain next.

This was what you got for telling a story to a snakeface, and you couldn’t argue with a snake, you broke its back without waiting to ask what it thought. You told a story and you knew it was a story, or a lie, or a story, but you didn’t tell a man it was a lie because it was a story. But those mean snake eyes, he’d like to push its face, and she’d see he was pretty strong, like the time he bashed that shearer up at Werris Creek, she’d like to see, standing there with a bit too much on view, and white, with that sort of fur around the neck. He wanted to hit somebody, something. He wanted to land out, show that it wasn’t being drunk, because anyway it wasn’t drunk, and eating at seven o’clock, she said was time to beckon him past the clock, to look, to eat, looking at the clock to see if a traveller or what.

Keep it friendly, gentlemen, said the publican.

That’s right, Bill, said the drover. We’re all pals, ain’t we? Bloody pals. ’Ere you, Mr Horsebreaker, what are you goin’ to have on me?

I’ll have the same, said Hagan.

You couldn’t refuse the offer of a drink.

It was a lovely horse.

You bet it was, said the drover.

Yes. A lovely horse.

Even if he hadn’t ridden, not that horse, he had ridden a horse, and here they were leaning with their arms on the bar, their elbows touching, and it was better now, a familiar glow in the bottles, the publican’s face filled out into a plumper curve. There was a clatter of plates from the kitchen inside as the publican’s wife piled them up, and the two girls hung their cloths to dry by the stove. The drover was telling about the time he was caught in the snow above Kambala with a mob of sheep, it was early snow, he was bringing them down from summer pasturage, but the snow caught them and the sheep died, and once two men had died in a drift at the same place, and someone saw one of the men about five years after, only it wasn’t the man, it was something like him, moving about among the trees, or perhaps it was only a grey tree. Then Hagan told the one about how he swam the Barwon in flood. And the one about the girl and the motor-bike. They all laughed, the old man very high up, so that you wondered a bit. But they were all friends.

I’ll have to be getting along, said Hagan. They’re sending a truck from Glen Marsh.

He patted the drover on the back. He wanted to lie down on the floor and let the drover walk over him, they could all walk over him, he loved them all. But instead he had to go to Glen Marsh. He always had to move on just as the geography of a place began to get familiar, and altogether it was very sad.

I’ll be seein’ you, the drover said, returning the pat on the back. He was going down to Tharwa in the afternoon, he came from there, he would not come back for a year or two, but you said things like that.

So long, Barney, said Hagan. So long, Bill.

Then he went out into the slush. The rain dribbled down, dribbled down, and the ruts coming up to meet, because you were drunk, because Furlow said, and damn Furlow, money or not, to sober up on the way. He felt just that, splash splash the mud. She waved her hands, they always did, though only as a formality, and you went straight ahead, if you saw a blonde hand waving out of a window-pane. But he did not see her. The windows were blank. A feeble hen had come round to the front and was picking at a garden bed. Dead. The house was dead. There was no sign.

A brand-new Ford came bumping along the street, swerved, cast up a spray of watery mud on Hagan’s overcoat. The yellowish, cheerful face of a Chinaman looked out from the steering wheel, tried to frown, but smiled. The car bumped over the ruts and down the hill.

Hagan swore. To be run over by a bloody Chow right in the middle of the street. It made him angry again. He scraped off some of the mud with his fingers and flicked it back on to the road. He looked at his fingers stupidly. They were thick and hard, with a mist of reddish hairs on the back. He would like to feel that Chinaman’s jaw. He would like to finger a paste brooch or to probe beyond swan’s-down into a region that was mysteriously pink. But instead he continued uncertainly down the hill, and when he reached the store there was the truck waiting to take him out to Glen Marsh.

They stood about in a little aimless group behind the urinal. There was Andy Everett, and Willy Schmidt, and Arthur Ball, besides Rodney Halliday. Willy Schmidt was chewing a liquorice strap from Quongs’, so that his ordinarily wellformed pink, if insipid, mouth had become a blue-black smear.

’Ere, said Willy suddenly, you can ‘ave a piece of this ’ere strap, Andy. I’ll give you ’alf if you like.

Andy Everett was throwing stones at the corrugated iron of the urinal wall. The stones went bang, bang, and plumped down into the mud.

I don’t want your strap, Andy Everett said. I’d’ve taken a bit if I wanted to, but I don’t like lickerish strap.

He continued to throw stones.

Of course ’e’d’ve taken a bit, laughed Arthur Ball. An’ so ’ud I.

Willy Schmidt went very red.

Rodney Halliday stood apart, he was with them, but just a little way off, kicking a hole in the ground. It gave him a queer, horrible thrill to hear Andy Everett speak like that, to hear the omnipotent smack of the stones, and to wonder what would happen next. They always went behind the urinal in the break. Rodney watched the face of the clock, knew it would happen in so many minutes now, the hands turning, the heart. Then they would go down to the bottom of the yard. His heart fell. He hated Andy Everett and Arthur Ball. Willy Schmidt he just despised, sucking liquorice there, with the strap dangling from his mouth. Willy Schmidt, like Rodney himself, merely hovered on the edge.

Andy had stopped throwing stones.

Rodney still looked at the ground. He wished that he had not followed them down the yard. It would be so easy to go and play with the girls. He lay in bed at night and said, I shan’t go with Andy Everett any more. But he went. Once he woke from a dream of Andy pulling out his teeth, that were as big as logs, and he lit the candle, and his face was yellow in the candlelight looking over at the mirror at the other side of the room, his face dancing in reflection and wet with tears. The silence was a ticking clock, substance a great shadow that bent down over the bed, the form of Andy Everett past and present and inevitably future.

Look at Green-face there, said Andy Everett.

It was dull behind the urinal. There was nothing to do. He felt a sudden contempt for Rodney Halliday. You could see it coming on his square red face. Rodney saw it. His stomach quailed.