Patrick White - Happy Valley

On the edge of the verandah sat Margaret Quong, leaning against a post, and her legs hung down into the flower-bed underneath. She sat there playing with a shell, holding it in her hands, looking at it, not at Alys Browne, as her feet stirred poppy and marigold. Oh dear, thought Alys, that child, then he is not here, and isn’t she thin, those long legs.

Hello, Margaret, she said. I could drop.

She went and sat down on the edge of the verandah beside the child. She rested her head on Margaret’s shoulder and closed her eyes. Margaret stopped playing with the shell. Down the slope Schmidts’ cows were arriving to be milked, walking heavy with shadow into the curve of the hill.

It isn’t your lesson, is it? said Alys.

No, said Margaret. I just came.

She spoke very softly. She sat stiffly and still, holding with her shoulder the burden of Alys’s head. There was something pained and almost Gothic in the angle of her body, like a figure in a niche embodying pleasure and pain.

Have you been here long? asked Alys.

About half an hour.

So he had not come, for she would have said. Alys got up and went inside. Margaret followed her in. This silent child, and if he were to come.

I’ve been down at Belpers’, she said.

Oh.

Yes. Mrs Belper is having a dress.

She must look round the room, she felt, but not without an attempt to disguise, because Margaret might see a note, where of course there was none, or had blown away perhaps if a wind, was no wind. And why was she looking at her, this child, knowing, if only she would say, the way that children usually know and say, but Margaret different in this, her face closed up.

Why, what’s the matter, Margaret? she said.

Nothing.

You look so strange.

Margaret Quong turned away. She began to kick the floor with her heel.

The doctor was here, Margaret said.

Alys put down her hat. Yes? She wanted to say, yes, what else, tell me what else at once, and she looked at her hand that was trembling on the brim of her hat.

He was, was he? she said, and it was not her voice at all.

Margaret was very still.

And what did he want? said Alys.

Nothing. He didn’t say.

She began to arrange things, things there was no need to arrange, because Margaret looking, and yet would know. She looked at Margaret, that sullen stare that was almost tears.

I’m going now, said Margaret. I’ll come to-morrow for my lesson, she said.

Then she went very quickly, and Alys could see her marching quickly down the path through the tarnish of the late afternoon. She had wanted to say to Margaret before she left, to say what? She even called out through the door, Margaret! Margaret! to a figure that was almost distance. But anyway if Margaret turned she really had nothing to say, or so much, so much that she could not say, to Margaret whose face was heavy with tears. She felt a bit ashamed too. I am to blame for this, she said, or is one to blame, is it just that one is part of a movement for which one is not responsible, a note joined to other notes to complete a bar, and these repeated in a pattern forming part of the general scheme. She hoped it was like this. She did not like to think she was responsible, the way Margaret looked, and she was fond of Margaret who could not see that this was different, when he came to the house and she played him Schumann, as she and Margaret played, only the whole tempo was different then, and there were moments experienced with Margaret that always must remain separate, if she could tell her that.

She shook back her hair. She went and lay on the sofa, on her back. Her throat was white in the shadow. I must think it out, she said, how I can tell her this, the silly child. She lay there with the very best intentions, knowing she would not think of Margaret, but let the mind follow its own curve, and she smiled because she knew this, like coming up the road, only now she did not check herself, she smiled.

Mrs Furlow hovered in the passage. She had hovered, both mentally and physically, for the best part of a week. Her life was on tenterhooks. Nobody can say, she remarked to her husband more than once in that memorable week, nobody can say I haven’t done everything I can, it only remains for Sidney to do the rest. Whether Sidney would was a different matter, but it afforded Mrs Furlow some satisfaction to cherish a mental image of herself as the pelican offering its blood, and at the same time there was the possibility of an improvement on the fable if the precious nourishment were refused. Because you never knew what Sidney would do. It is supremely trying, she wrote to Mrs Blandford, Sidney is quite incomprehensible. Once she used to put original, but the credit of giving birth to originality is exhausted by degrees as this quality develops its resourcefulness. So originality was now a trial.

Mrs Furlow sighed when she thought of herself as a girl. She had been what is known as a Lovely Girl, and not altogether devoid of originality herself, though she knew just how far this might hinder an economic and social success. Whereas Sidney was quite devoid of a sense of obligations. Life, for Mrs Furlow, was a series of obligations, to her class, to her daughter, to her friends, and more especially to herself. There was something revolutionary for Mrs Furlow in her daughter’s attitude, as if at any moment she might pitch a bomb into the elaborate edifice that it had taken a lifetime to build. So you cannot be surprised if she waited on tenterhooks, sometimes catching her breath, sometimes punctured with relief as the structure still remained. And now Sidney’s engagement to Roger Kemble, which would provide through marriage the topmost pinnacle, swayed in mid-air on the crane of Sidney’s wilfulness, dangled, threatened to drop.

Mrs Furlow decided not to recognize this possibility at all. She had fixed a smile on her face that was a badge of future success. My son-in-law, Roger Kemble, she would write to Mrs Blandford. The bride left for England in a mink coat and a tiny hat well off the face, the honeymoon will be spent, the Sydney Morning Herald would announce. But now she hovered in the passage, waiting, while Roger put on his riding-boots, he looked so handsome, so English in boots, and Sidney did something in her room, one hoped not sulk, before what must be the crowning spasm of a week of agony. To-morrow he would go away, back to viceregal duties at Government House, thought Mrs Furlow not without a twinge. She looked at her watch. She had ordered the horses for three o’clock, time for lunch to digest, and all that, and the day was mercifully not so hot, as she looked out of the verandah door, almost willing a decrease in the temperature.

Roger Kemble came out of his room, in the boots, and a shirt that was open at the neck. It was a blue shirt. It made him look very pink. Mrs Furlow hoped that his skin would not peel, sending him out in the hot sun, but as it was all in a good cause she decided she might be excused.

Ah, there you are, Roger! she said, a little too precipitately, as if he had just come out of a conjurer’s basket and not from his bedroom door.

I see you’re staging a heat-wave for the Last Ride, he said.

Whatever he meant by that. She could see a suggestion of perspiration on his skin. A slight suggestion of perspiration was very attractive, she thought.

Isn’t it hot! she said. Shall we go and look at the thermometer?

A thermometer’s never much help, do you think?

No. No! I thought…Sidney! Hurry up, dear. Roger’s waiting, you know.

They stood there awkwardly. If he knew how much she felt for him, if she could put out her hand and say to him, there, Roger, we both know how it feels, we’re inexorably linked, it might help quite a lot. But instead they stood awkwardly waiting for Sidney, and she found herself wondering about his moustache, if it went that way of its own accord or if he stood in front of the mirror every morning and twisted it up. She could not imagine Roger Kemble twisting his moustache. He was so gentle. A fair moustache. Or a blond moustache was perhaps the term. On the whole she preferred a blond moustache.