Patrick White - Happy Valley

Don’t fall over, said Rodney.

I didn’t!

Don’t tease him, said Mother. Georgie, darling, look at your nose! Be a man and give it a wipe.

I don’t want to wipe my nose.

It’ll fall in your food, Rodney said.

Don’t be disgusting! Mother said. Come here to Mother and let her wipe.

George was crying. He always cried.

Oh dear, coughed Mrs Halliday, what a pair of children I have!

She sat down to mutton and pickled onions, coughing still, even after a mouthful of water she coughed. She rested her elbows on the table, looking as if she wondered whether she had time to eat. Because that sheet that Mrs Woodhouse tore, and darning wool, there was no feed for the fowls, Oliver come, or Rodney call in at the store, his coat all mud like that, and the sick hen with the scaly eyes, Oliver take a gun, but a long way off, holding ears.

Hilda Halliday pushed back her plate of mutton and pickles and sat with one elbow on the table holding a hand to her chest. The thought of sickness, even in a hen, always made her put her hand to her chest.

Eat it up now, George. There’s a good boy, she said. Mother isn’t hungry. But you eat yours.

Hilda Halliday was almost forty. Oliver was thirtyfour. But they were happy, she said. Sitting on the seat in the Botanical Gardens, in the warm smell of Moreton Bay figs, he said he would write a poem. She was wearing a yellow hat that made her look slightly pale. And of course Rodney was pale, he took after her, not Oliver, and it was not anaemia as everyone said. Fancy falling down on his back.

You didn’t hurt yourself, dear? she asked.

Why?

Falling down on your back.

No, said Rodney.

He would make a paper aeroplane and climb up into the girders at the garage at Quong’s and let it come floating down. Margaret would stand underneath. Walter Quong gave him petrol for his lighter, which he only kept to see the flame, for of course he did not smoke.

You must be careful, Hilda said.

Oliver said it too, and that Dr Bridgeman they called in about her cough, but she had not wanted to tell Oliver, and Bridgeman advised the country, somewhere bracing, it would be all right, nothing to worry, only she must have plenty of air. Air. Hilda Halliday sat at the table and took in a good breath of air. It would be all right. And Oliver was pleased, the way she had soon picked up. Only sometimes at night she began to cough, stifled a cough so that Oliver would not wake. Sometimes at night she thought what she would not think, that Happy Valley, if only they could go to Queensland perhaps or somewhere warm, she was afraid, only it was for the boys, not for herself. She could not afford to become a drag. Oliver really must shoot that hen limping about in the yard.

Rodney, she said, you’ve hurt your hand.

He was sailing in the Yellow Sea. He had forgotten his hand. Now it came back.

Yes, he said, sullenly. I hit Arthur Ball on the face.

Then you were fighting. I thought as much. You didn’t fall down on your back. I don’t like to think that you tell untruths.

He thought it sounded silly to call it an untruth when it was a straight-out lie. He bit his lip and frowned.

Oh well, he said.

No. I like to think I can believe what you say.

It was all coming back, Andy Everett, that big cow smelling of cows, and perhaps lice, with a bullet-head, bending over your bed in a dream and twisting your arm behind the lavatory at school, and going to a boarding school Father said, away from Andy Everett, if you could go, or go to your room, and it wasn’t any good trying not to think because it only came again, was no use, was again and again.

Rodney, darling, you mustn’t cry. You’re much too big to cry, she said.

But that made him cry. He hated it all. She looked at him and made it worse. He would go to her. He would go back to school. He went and put his face against her neck and cried.

There, there, she said, patting his back with her hand.

George opened his mouth. He sat, fat and surprised, with his spoon raised and a piece of potato tumbling out of his mouth.

There, said Mother. You’ll soon be going to another school. There’ll be lots of nicer little boys.

Her neck was soft, and feeling her hair against his face he whimpered softly into her hair, wanting to stay or have her come in at night when he woke, like bronchitis, with a candle, and he felt better, there were no shadows on the wall, smoothing his hair and sitting on the bed.

What’s Rodney done? said George.

Nothing. Rodney’s done nothing. Eat up your lunch.

Rodney’s crying, said George, beginning to cry.

Oh dear, she said. Which of them did it, Rodney?

No one.

He blew his nose. He felt silly. He’d go away to his room.

Don’t you want any pudding? she said.

No. I don’t want any more. I’m going to go play in my room.

Seeing him go, she turned to George.

Now there’s nothing wrong. Rodney’s upset. Who wants some apple pudding? she said.

Apple pudding, sighed George.

She put her hand to her chest. She must speak to Oliver about the boys. Rodney had bronchitis that last winter in Sydney. He said the shutter banged and woke him up. He looked like Oliver sitting up in bed, as the troopship, and she stood on the wharf with Aunt Jane, and they said the War would be over soon and it was. The country doctor’s wife showing patients to the waiting-room, only they hadn’t a waiting-room. She must tell Oliver about Miss Browne. About her cough. She must not think about it, because it made her cough, she could not eat apple pudding, but cough, and a handkerchief.

Mother’s coughing, said George.

Hilda Halliday recovered her breath. It left her uncertain. You did not know what to do next. There was nothing you could put your hand on with any certainty, except marrying Oliver, she had waited and he came back and he brought her a scarf from Paris and a paste pin. When they were married she wore the scarf. She felt safer being married to Oliver. They were very happy, she said. Six years did not make any difference, because their interests were the same, and she appreciated him, she had ideals, and she wanted to help him, if he would let her, and anyway there was a lot she could do, and he sat in his chair and told her about the patients at night. That is why it would be so terrible if anything happened. She must be careful of her health.

Oliver Halliday came into the dining-room. He was tired. His face was shadowed with the first stages of a beard.

Well, here you are at last, said Hilda.

He bent and kissed her. His face was very cold.

Yes, he sighed, here I am at last.

Father’s back, said George, dropping an apple ring on the floor.

Hilda began to carve the mutton.

You look tired, she said. How is the poor woman?

She’s all right.

And the child?

No.

She wrinkled her face in sympathy over the mutton. She would not penetrate any farther, not before George, asking about the child that…If it had been Rodney or George. She thought she would have died when George, and that poor woman up at the hotel. She was intimately connected with the publican’s wife by a link of pain.

Here’s your lunch. You must be hungry, she said.

He was hungry, and his muscles ached from the skis and his fall, wrenching his toes like that, as he sat down on the chair. But he was back, he was home. The dining-room table was a round mahogany pond with the sauce-boat pushing whitely into port. You sat and ate. Just to eat mutton was good, Hilda sitting there with folded arms, but pale as if she had not slept. She smiled, or at least she moved her face in the way that she always did when she caught him looking at her. It was a sign of intimacy and encouragement, or a symbol of what either of these ought to be. He was fond of her, that was what made it difficult, desperately difficult, when you were fond of a person and tried to grope behind the fondness and bring out something else. There is something so passive and taken-for-granted about the state of being fond. And he did not think he had ever been anything else.