Patrick White - Happy Valley

There was a western on in the hall. It was pretty full, except for the more expensive seats at the back, which of course he would buy her, because that would show he meant to do her well, and you always got back your money’s worth, that time in Sydney at a revue, in a box, but there weren’t any boxes here. He bought the tickets from Amy Quong, like a brown owl in a box. They went on into the hall, full of darkness and the titanic exertions of figures on the screen. He took up his whip and it curled right round the ranger’s head, making a weal on his face. Vic Moriarty squealed. That was the trouble, she always entered into everything, Daisy said. They began to bundle into the expensive seats. The air was hot with cigarettes. She was sorry that no one could see, because of course the darkness, that the overseer from Glen Marsh was taking her in the most expensive seats. If Mrs Belper was there. She clung to her moment of superiority, getting down into her chair, and pushing her shoulder up against him when she had sat down, just as much as to say, we’ll watch it together, shan’t we, and he wasn’t at all averse.

Happy Valley bathed itself in a stream of excess-reality, as the great hoofs came out of the screen almost beating upon its face that, upturned, open-mouthed, demanded no answers to questions, only a statement of energy. He’s going to kill her, they said, or no, he can’t, that man behind the tree, that boy with the gun will shoot, oh, oh, yes. That boy with the gun who would populate the life of Mrs Schmidt for another week as she washed the separating machine, kneaded dough, or lay beneath her husband on a feather-bed. These figures would assume almost a normal, an everyday proportion of washing-board or butter-pat while maintaining their dream texture, that kept them apart in substance, and so ideal. Tie her on the horse and send her out across the desert till your mouth was dry as a cigarette, and those big prickly pears that tore her dress. Arthur Ball, biting his nails, wondered if Emily Schmidt, who was a good smell, that ball of a handkerchief that smelled so good, would faint tied to a horse, the day Gladys fainted in geography and they put her out on the porch, and under the prickly pear an old man sitting, a swaggy in rags, would take Emily down from the horse and dip her handkerchief in a water-can. Arthur Ball put out his knee and encountered the thigh of Emily Schmidt. The old man sponged her face with a handkerchief.

It’s interesting, said Vic, to think of all that desert. It must be Texas, she said.

For a moment she forgot it was not Ernest, and not an educational film that demanded the sort of remark you made to Ernest, who was so good, and that asthma. She sat up a bit straighter. She had not meant to do this. That night she could not get him to bed and he had to stay all night in his chair with three or four pillows behind. You can’t say I’m not a good wife to Ernest, she said, love Ernest, and this, God, you got to do something all the same, sit down there and listen to Belper talk about industry.

What’s up? said Hagan in the dark.

Nothing.

Thought there was something up.

No, she said.

She relaxed again. He put his arm round her. You had to do something, she said, whatever he did, not care, sitting in the dark and that music and your head, it must have been the drink, but you meant it like that, hell you cared what. She sighed, or his arm squeezed out the breath, as she leant against him, and his shoulder was rather hard.

Like it? he said.

Yes, she sighed. I love the pictures, don’t you?

He began kissing her neck. She put up her shoulder as a kind of protest that only held on to his face and she could feel his lips distended in the hollow she had made. There was plenty of her that, without the corset she had left off, flowed into his hand, like standing under a tree and having apples fall right into his hand, or melons, only melons didn’t grow on a tree except in a story, and what was that. She began to wriggle as the Indians rode down the gulch. Of course it was a gulch.

I can’t bear it, she squealed. I can’t bear Indians.

Would you like to step outside? he said.

Look at their knives!

You haven’t got to look, he said.

He twisted round her face. That was a bit of cheek, she felt, and perhaps not so dark that someone would not see. She felt his tongue on her mouth. You could not help it, she sighed. The darkness was heavy with arms. You could not help it, she sighed.

He’s going to get killed, she said weakly.

He said something between his teeth. The way some women carried it off, born with a sort of ventriloquist’s gift, would shout from behind the door to the grocer while, and most of them like that, and it was damned uncomfortable in this bloody seat that got you no closer, like an eiderdown, like two, bundled up into a ball, or cleft, and you thought you knew all about the eiderdown when suddenly you didn’t, and she wasn’t born yesterday, hanging on like that to your mouth, which she didn’t learn in school from a pair of spectacles, would soon be over, shooting them down right and left with his arm round a girl, shoot ’em down and they went over like ninepins, if you were lucky, in spite of leaning against your shoulder, it was a different matter near the equator, sailing into those Indians, help help, they cry, and the sheriff’s men, come here Mr Sheriff, have you in court and come over all innocent at the judge, in a circle ending with lights.

That was a lovely film, she sighed. I shall always remember that, she said.

All films are the same to me.

No doubt, she said.

She shrugged her shoulders, getting up, walking out. All the same. Going down the street she began to hum. I wonder when bluebirds are mating, she hummed. Her hips brushed up against him as they walked.

It’s going to rain, she said.

Let it, he said. I don’t care. Do you?

I don’t want to get wet.

They were all the same. Call the tune and leave you to whistle it. Oh no, mister, don’t touch me, brushing up against you like a cat.

You’re not going in yet? he said.

His voice sounded a bit hoarse.

Yes, she said.

She walked along and she felt that she had Poise.

You oughtn’t to go in yet, he said.

Down in the lane by Everetts’ he got her up against a paling fence, so that she could not get away, did not want to get away, as struggling, her arms went out, and her hands were going up and down his back as if they did not know where, did not want to settle. You would have thought he was strangling her, the way her breath came into his mouth. He pinned her up against the paling fence with his knee between her legs.

Now d’you want to go in? he said.

She hung on to him, her breath coming fast. Saying something incoherent, or perhaps nothing at all.

God, she said. We’re crazy, she said. In this lane.

Who in blazes cares about that?

I’m the schoolmaster’s wife, she said.

Then she began to extricate herself. He might have known. Saying this and that, she was.

You mustn’t think I’m like this, she said. Because I’m not.

Oh hell. What’s the use of talking?

You’re very impatient, she said.

What’ve I got to expect from that?

I said you’re very impatient.

He knew she was smiling at him, the way you do know when someone is smiling in the dark. Then she began to move away. He could hear her heels going over on the stones. He waited there for a bit, he was irritated, he was smiling, feeling sort of let down, before he went into the main street.

Vic Moriarty had got home, out of breath, to a siphon and glasses on the table that were a memorial to more than the pleasures tasted in the glass. Her bosom went up and down with ease, because she had left her corset off. But she didn’t feel giddy any more, had taken herself in hand, what could she have been thinking of, she said.