Patrick White - Happy Valley

He went and touched her face with his hand, pushing back a strand of hair.

All right, he said. We’ll see. We’ll all have to get out of this.

He thought she recoiled.

I didn’t mean…I only meant Rodney ought to have a chance.

It hasn’t started again?

I’m all right, she said, lowering her eyes. Only sometimes I don’t feel very well. Only a little cough. It’ll be better when the summer comes.

He held her hand. There ought to be so much that two people could say. He was fond of her. There ought to be so much. But they were like strangers standing on the railway station waiting for the train to go. You were always waiting for something that you did not say, that perhaps after all you could not say. But you felt you ought.

Now look here, he said, sitting on the table edge and starting to be matter-of-fact. There’s a man up in Queensland Birkett knows. He wants to exchange his practice for something in the south. You’ll be better there. And we can leave Rodney in Sydney on the way.

She was very still. But he could feel her relief, the gratitude inside her, because they would go away, Hilda receiving one more chance to put out her hand towards certainty.

I didn’t mean, she mumbled. I only thought that Rodney…

I’ll write to Birkett to-night, he said. Ask him to get in touch with this friend of his.

It would be better in Queensland. It would be warm, said Hilda slowly, slowly beginning to clear away the things.

She was tranquil now. He seemed to have stopped the quivering of some little nerve that whipped her into a ceaseless running to and fro. But she looked tired clearing away the things.

You ought to lie down, said Hilda, because she was like that, she had to transfer her own sensations and emotions to those she came in contact with.

He kissed her on the back of the neck, very lightly conscious of the scent of her neck which he knew so well, the scent and shape, sitting on a seat in the Botanical Gardens, when he thought he knew everything. And now he knew nothing, or at least he did not know Hilda, nothing more than the scent and shape.

He opened his mouth to say — what? Something that he would not say. So he went away along the passage to the dispensary, where he would lie down. He was tired. And later on she would bring him tea. Out in the yard George played with a cartload of stones, and Happy Valley stretched away back in grey sweeps, the child playing in the foreground unconscious of what had been arranged. He would write to Birkett to-night. And Happy Valley stretched away, greyly sweeping, the curve of telephone poles. He was standing in the window at the head of that great unconscious plain, how very grey, putting a hand to his beard, he must shave, he must sleep, he must leave Happy Valley to-night, to-morrow, sleeping for an hour or two on the hair sofa in the dispensary, it would take a month or two at least to drag up the roots and deliver safely on a towel that red child and she said hurt. He had been rather short. The way she held her wrist. She said Miss Browne. He would go up there in the evening and see, because he had not meant to be rude.

Mrs Furlow tried the door. It was locked.

Sidney, dear! she called. Sid-ney!

Yes?

What are you doing, dear?

Nothing, Mother.

Mrs Furlow stood by the door, one hand raised in perplexity to her mouth.

Hadn’t you better go out and get some air?

I can’t go out in the wet.

It isn’t raining now. You ought to take some exercise.

Silence made Mrs Furlow frown. She bent her head to the door and frowned.

You ought to go for a ride, she said. I’ll tell Charlie to saddle your horse.

Then she went away. She was passably content. She had arranged that Sidney should go for a ride.

Mrs Furlow’s habitual expression was one of puzzlement, because frankly her daughter puzzled her, and her chief preoccupation was her daughter. She used to say, when I was a girl I didn’t do this or that, but it was a statement that did not help matters at all. I do my best, she said, which meant that she made arrangements. She made many arrangements. She had arranged that Sidney should marry a young man called Kemble, an Englishman, who was A.D.C. at Government House. The young man did not know. But Mrs Furlow did, and that was half the battle. Mr Furlow only grunted and left her alone to do her best. Mr Furlow was very equable, and his daughter loved him. Sidney is passionately fond of her father, Mrs Furlow said, this without any bitterness, or as if she had resolved to make the best of a galling situation by suggesting that Sidney’s passion was a flower fostered by her own hands. For Mrs Furlow’s consolation was her own capability, whether as a president of charities or as the disposer of other people’s affections.

Sidney puzzled her, but did not otherwise upset her comfortable confidence. Mentally, Mrs Furlow always wore a tiara. She had an actual tiara too, which she kept put away in a velvet case, and wore on state occasions for dinner at Government House or the Lord Mayor’s Ball. And she looked very fine in her tiara, was a fine figure of a woman, in fact, with her head held up and her chin only just beginning to go. When she swept into a room in an excessive number of pearls everyone said, MY DEAR, which, if overheard, Mrs Furlow always interpreted to her own advantage. This because she held an innate belief in her own importance as a public figure. She liked to pick up the Herald and read a description of her dress. She had also a private passion for the Prince of Wales.

But Sidney was difficult, she said, moping away in her room and reading a book. Now when I was a girl. Not that Mrs Furlow didn’t read books herself, she paid a country member’s subscription to Dymock’s library, and received a parcel now and again, Hugh Walpole and travel books, though what she liked best was a travel book with a plot. But Sidney moping in a room. She had not paid for her to go to a finishing school in town just to mope in her room. So that is one reason why she had just been to knock at the door. It would do her good to ride across the flat. It would do her complexion good. One had to think of the dances, and Race Week, and Roger Kemble, the A.D.C.

I’ve told them to saddle Sidney’s horse, said Mrs Furlow, going into the office where her husband sat.

Mr Furlow grunted. He always sat in the office to allow his lunch to digest. And he was reading Saturday’s Herald because Monday’s had not arrived, and because he always had to have a newspaper in his hand. He peered at the fat stock prices, which he had read several times before, but which, to Mr Furlow, appeared inexhaustible.

I don’t know what to do with Sidney, Mrs Furlow said.

Her husband grunted.

She’ll be all right, he said. Leave her alone.

But something ought to be done. She has no interests. Perhaps if I let her arrange the flowers. Yes, that will be something. Sidney shall always arrange the flowers.

Then she went out to write to a Mrs Blandford, not that she had anything to write, but it was soothing to cover a clean sheet of paper with words. Like Mrs Furlow herself, Mrs Blandford was a Pioneer. That is to say, their people had immigrated at an impressively distant date, not in suspicious circumstances of course, though an obscure relative of Mrs Furlow’s had indeed married a man of convict descent. Mrs Furlow tried to forget this. She did not think that Mrs Blandford knew. Anyway, they were both Pioneers, and that, like a tiara and a close connection with Government House, was a considerable asset.

If only Sidney would be reasonable, said Mrs Furlow. She was pretty, but she was a stick, the way she sat at dances and did not give young men a chance. Now if it had been Mrs Furlow herself. Roger Kemble had a handsome face. It was pink and faintly embarrassed. So very English, Mrs Furlow said, which was almost the highest compliment she could pay. The highest, in point of fact, was: so like the Prince of Wales. But Roger Kemble was not quite like that, though in every respect fitted to marry her daughter. Marriage was the sole, the desirable end. To be able to say: Mrs Roger Kemble, Sidney Furlow that was. Mrs Furlow’s letters to Mrs Blandford were full of such remarks, once she got past the weather and was able to settle down.