Patrick White - Happy Valley

Shut up, said Andy Everett. You’ll have the old cow awake.

I’m goin’ home, said Arthur Ball.

Go on! You’re not, said Willy Schmidt.

Ain’t I just. Just you see.

Arthur Ball got slowly up.

I’m goin’ home, he said.

Betcha not game, Andy Everett said.

Yes, I am. I’m goin’ home.

An orange rolled across the floor, rested by the table leg.

Hey, said Andy Everett. There goes my orange across the floor.

That’s my orange, said Arthur Ball. You know it’s my orange, he said.

Emily Schmidt giggled. She kicked the orange under a desk.

Oo-er! sniggered Gladys Rudd, as the orange settled under her feet. She kicked it at Rodney Halliday.

Rodney Halliday picked it up.

It’s my orange, he said.

His lips were white with audacity. A time came when you did not care, that big coot Andy Everett, all hunched up with his red knees, and Margaret Quong turning to look. That’s what David felt perhaps. And the stone hit him between the eyes, he was how many cubits, with David standing over him dead.

Andy Everett’s round head bristled with slighted omnipotence.

I’ll show you whose orange it is, he said.

Rodney Halliday threw. He did not care. He threw the orange at Andy’s face. It hit the mouth with a stupid thud. It fell. It rolled roundly nonchalant and settled by Margaret Quong.

I’ll give you what! Andy Everett gasped.

Emily Schmidt gave a little shriek.

Ernest Moriarty stirred. As they hit that stump shrieked out it was his name she had not forgotten looking back or whose name he thought Ernest could not tell or Clem as she clung against that stump his back sticking through his side and you couldn’t ride fast with one hand she had and blood and that dust half blood clogging feet stuck shouting at you eyes as you stood in eyes of children turned up hate and began to scream those screaming eyes like a dream like a dream take off your coat and it is not a dream scream advance and touch her she is not dead yet on forward out of this scream.

It hit the mouth with a stupid thud. It fell. It rolled roundly nonchalant and settled by Margaret Quong.

I’ll give you what! Andy Everett gasped.

Emily Schmidt gave a little shriek.

Vic, murmured Moriarty. Vic.

The eye glazed with sleep fastened on a reality, this orange rolling across the floor. Eyes stared at eye. They were staring, action arrested, as they sat twisted in seats, or hand raised, but everywhere a semblance of fear, of hate.

Vic, he whispered again.

Crashing against that stump. They might have been frozen as they looked at him.

What is it? he said. He got up on his feet, put his hand on the chair as he swayed. What is it? Stare at me, he said. Go on!

They recoiled from his voice. It was a strange voice. It made them afraid. Heads bent over books to disguise fear. They crouched.

Yes, he shouted. We know where we stand. There’s no use beating about the bush.

He took up a ruler and beat on the desk. The way she looked back her face distorted, you knew it was a dream or not a dream, or all this, the stubborn faces fastened over a history book. He began to choke. Clinging to Hagan’s back.

Yes, he shouted. It’s all very well.

They seemed to crouch lower, were afraid now, of something that they did not understand. What has happened, the pulse asked, in the throat, what is the matter, the heart beat in soft, rubbery thuds.

He was going to have an attack. He felt old, sick. He was getting old sitting at a desk in Happy Valley. He wrote to the Board, which was officially unmoved. It was all very well, like walking up a shelving beach that rolled back, each pebble a step, or a dream, or a dream. She would say, what is the matter, Ernest, and he would say, nothing, could not tell her it was a dream. Oh God, and what was going home and going home. To-morrow was going home. To-morrow was to-morrow was Shakespeare was. The trees were dead, those grey trees at the turn, and the wind clattering in a dead branch, sitting at a desk a dead branch tapping on the desk tap tap. That orange on the floor. Now they were afraid. The orange lay still. He would make them more afraid. Beating on the desk a ruler beat looked at the hand saw the centimetre beat.

Do you think it’s any pleasure to me? he gasped, going down among the benches, his breath torn, a screech from his chest. Do you think it isn’t misery for every one concerned? You or me, it’s all the same thing. We all know where we stand.

Sitting on that bike with her skirt drawn up over her knees, his hand. His breath was a moan as he slashed, with the ruler slashed, slashed, did not care, make them afraid. Margaret Quong crouched over the desk, held her hands to her head. Emily Schmidt sidled away. The blows were falling on Margaret Quong. The edge of the ruler cut into her wrists. She sat crouched down protecting her head.

There was a silence of fear in the room. Waiting. Things began to integrate again, the other side of his spectacles that were no longer blurred, the room taking its habitual shape, brown and banal as it always was. It was no other afternoon, in fact. Just an afternoon. Only he felt sick, was spent now, standing there with a ruler in his hand. He went back to his table. He arranged the exercise books. He had to hang on to the edge of the table because his breathing was bad.

Margaret Quong crouched still, feeling not so much physical pain as fear, and a welling of disconnected sorrow, the way an emotion fastens itself to a pretext that is not, properly speaking, its own. Emily Schmidt’s face was white with momentary sympathy. She felt the pain of the blows that might have been hers. She turned towards Margaret a white face. But the others looked at their books. Margaret’s look was a blank page, from wondering why this, she could not understand, or why it went on inside her the voice dulled by a bull’s-eye in the cheek, beating, beating time, or why were you born, why this. She sat with her arms pressed into her neck. Alys Browne, she had written in the margin of the history book. It would have been easier if there had been the two of us, she said, as they walked up the hill, arm round waist, entwined, because when two were one it was easier. Margaret Quong’s arm was numb with reflected pain.

Later on they went home, as they did any other afternoon, though quieter first at the door, then gathering in a tumult as they got outside, a little eddy of passion in the dust. Ernest Moriarty sat on at the table in the empty room in company with the clock. The room was empty. He could not think. His head was empty. He would go home up the hill, when his breathing grew easier, past the turn where those dead trees stood and clattered in the wind. The day they came Vic said, so this is Happy Valley, she said, I don’t know why you’ve brought me here. He sat at the table and clenched his hands till they went knuckle-white.

Sidney Furlow walked beneath the plum-trees on her own. He had written to her, she had the letter in her hand, and she knew what it was about, that it would be like the others, so she had not opened it. The plum-trees were thin and black-boughed. They only bore fruit about once every three years. They were very old. But when there was blossom on the boughs you forgot their age, you put up your face against the cool, drooping boughs. She held the letter in her hand, unopened. It might have been a bill, a debt, as if she owed Roger Kemble something that she could not pay. Her face was sullen under the trees. She leant her head against a black trunk and felt the roughness of the bark. How long is this going on, she said, and what good is it going to do, whether I write to him or not, say I meant what I said, or say nothing at all. As if I had the power to make him happy, depending on me, something depending on me. The power. To hold his letter in her hand gave her a sense of power, and tearing them up, and the one she had poked into the incinerator, watching it curl brown, had quickened her pulse a little, though not very much. It was a pretty negative emotion that arose out of being able to control the life of Roger Kemble. She did not want this. People on the whole were pretty negative. The nice people you met at races and dances, whose niceness was about the only reason for their being, and consequently niceness had become an all-time job. But it left a pappy taste in your mouth, like coconut milk, and once you had tried it you didn’t want to again. Only, only a sometimes hankering not to be Sidney Furlow at least, though standing outside would hate perhaps the you discarded, probably discover something as futile as niceness, something just as negative underneath.