Patrick White - Happy Valley

It’s late.

He got out and started to put on his shirt.

Why didn’t we before, Oliver? she said.

It wasn’t the right moment.

It was a long time.

Of course it was a long time. But you don’t regret it? he said.

No, she said. That is, regret what? What were you saying, Oliver?

Nothing, he said. Go to sleep.

Her voice, sleep-sheathed in the darkness, fell back on to the pillow.

I’m tired, she said. The sitting-room, did we put out the light?

Then she was asleep, or almost, her arms moved as he bent, were a pressure of recognition as he bent down to her face. He would leave her now, without any feeling of regret, for he would come again, always come, she would be here, she would expect him, they would expect each other, not in words, but in waiting. There was no need to say you will come again, it was a necessity that you should.

Like waking to sleeping, he felt, when he stood outside on the porch. There were stars through the intermittent rain, and a cool breeze, and soon the rain would stop altogether. I have been asleep, he said. It is like waking. And I must remain awake, or at least conscious, conscious in one person of the whole. The others are asleep, perhaps will never wake. You go up on to a high hill and look down at them asleep. If you could go down among the sleepers and open their eyes, touching them with your hand, and hear their sigh as they turned, the sighing of people who slowly waken. Hilda stirring in sleep. I had forgotten Hilda. Of course. He began to fill his pipe. I ought to feel sorry, but there is no regret, which is perhaps a perversion of the moral sense, if finding yourself is a perversion, because this is what I have done. He lit his pipe, light fanned on his face, then the bud of light on his pipe’s bowl. The world makes its demand, I shall run away from myself because of Hilda, I shall close my eyes. This is the world. This is Happy Valley. This is also not the world. I stand here, and it is cool, the stars are cool, and the rain which will soon stop. It is a long time since I have really been conscious of these things, felt their significance, conscious of the many rivers, the Delta of the Nile, water flowing into one water from the North Sea to the Pacific, no longer constrained by maps, and the people walking with upturned faces, looking for something that they do not find in themselves, always with faces upturned. I must remain conscious of these, he said. This is the world. There is a mystery of unity about the world, that ignores itself, finding its expression in cleavage and pain, the not-world that demands I shall run away from myself, that I too shall be a creature of cleavage and pain walking with my eyes closed.

He walked down the hill. I am being apocalyptic, or just plain romantic, he said. He went along and he did not think of much, he was tired, physically tired, but his mind was without qualm, rested on its certainty. The glow of his pipe went down the hill alone.

On the 29th of May Charles II rode into London with a pealing of bells, read Willy Schmidt. Rodney Halliday picked a stopping of blotting-paper out of a hole in the desk. It made his tooth ache, that hole, where the chocolate got in, and going to Moorang made it ache worse, the drill, as breath swept down announcing onions for lunch. Dr Grey had a wart on his face. Mother said, your teeth, Rodney dear, are a kind of investment, your grandfather could crack nuts with his when he was seventy-five, so you must tell Mother if you think a hole, yes, Mother, he said, but the drill touched, squirmed, was hot behind the knees. Willy Schmidt’s voice was limp and nasal, announcing a peal of bells, though without conviction, it was after lunch, and the air was brown with flies. Miss Purves rang the bell for morning break. That was a peal of bells, for ten minutes’ freedom, or sometimes not even that, and Charles II had how many years after he got the Roundheads out. Andy Everett was a Roundhead. Cromwell had a wart on his face. They made the fountains run with wine to show that freedom, like the peace procession, when Father had gone to the War, said Mother, and she wasn’t married to Father yet, he was very young, and then there was the Armistice and Mother knew that Father would come back, and everyone in the streets, and confetti and lights, and Mother began to cry because she knew she would marry Father now, there were fireworks at night. The Restoration. They sent round the plate for two Sundays to restore the place behind the altar where Everetts’ mare kicked a hole in the wall. Cromwell broke the glass. Andy Everett threw stones and they stung on your legs, sometimes ploughed up the skin. Mother sat on your bed after prayers, don’t mind, Rodney, she said, because soon we shall go away from here, and Sydney will be a peal of bells, where you go as a boarder, Father drive us down in the car. Rodney Halliday drove into Sydney with a pealing of bells. St Mary’s was a Catholic church, you did not go inside, they were always dressed in black. Mother wore a paste pin, that was something to look like diamonds, that Father brought back, at St James where George was christened, and they went to Leura for their honeymoon. George was born, they said come and see your brother, it smelt of powder and cotton-wool, and you didn’t want to see, didn’t, take me away, you said, to Mother lying in bed, she was under a mosquito net. Parliament had voted the King, read Willy Schmidt. That was Charles the Second, Charles 2. Father said to Professor Birkett, I’ve got two boys, Professor, the funny thing is it doesn’t make you feel any different at all. In the encyclopaedia Charles II had Nell Gwynn, but not in the history book, that was Willy Schmidt’s voice reading to the class. Willy Schmidt did not know that, or Margaret Quong, the day she came along the road and he was watching the bull over the fence, and Nell Gwynn had something to do with soldiers that were too old to do anything else. Father was thirty-seven. Mother said, go for Father, Rodney, he’s wanted out at Ferndale at once, poor Mrs Anderson’s broken her leg, he’s just gone up the street, she said, and there was a hawker in the street, that Syrian whose dog had mange, and the penknives, your Dad’s just gone up the street, Mrs Everett said, she had a clothes-peg in her mouth, he’s gone up towards Miss Browne’s, she said, and going to Miss Browne’s did not want, knock at the door, I’ll come at once, he said, and she had cool hands.

Three o’clock was a drone in the schoolroom from so many voices in an undertone in a wooden receptacle, with “Willy Schmidt’s voice pitched in a higher key, a solo instrument above the orchestration of sigh and whisper, the loud percussion of Molly Abbott’s pencil-box falling bang on the floor. Ernest Moriarty closed his eyes against the glare of three o’clock, unavoidable though the drone, and it was better to make them read, avoid the necessity of explanation, drawing up words through the swollen channel of the voice. The little veins on Ernest Moriarty’s eyelids were sharply red. He held his hand in a shade above his eyes, looking down at a page of the book.

That’ll do, he said, when the paragraph sounded at an end. Next Gracie Philipps, please.

Rodney Halliday moistened a pellet of blotting-paper and stuffed it back inside the hole. Dr Grey had a nurse who mixed the stuff, she offered it on a piece of glass, he rammed it in, it was over, you felt pleased. The clock jerked, had cool hands. Nell Gwynn was a concubine, like in the Bible, only a good concubine with old soldiers, there were good and bad, it was difficult to know. I’ll come at once, he said. But you needn’t go, Rodney, she said. Yes, he said. He felt shy. There were big squares on her dress as she held out her hand, the stuff cool, and Father said, well good-bye, Alys, Mother called her Miss Browne, and you called her that when you were still too young to call her anything else. Father whistled going downhill. Father made you shy. If you had music lessons, only it was cissie to have music lessons, Father said it wasn’t, but what would Andy Everett say, what would Miss Browne, Margaret Quong said Miss Browne was the loveliest person she knew. Her arms were cool as she opened the front door.