Patrick White - Happy Valley

It’s time you went to bed, she said.

George began to cry again.

Mother’s very tired, she said.

I’m not tired, screamed George.

Oh dear, sighed Hilda Halliday. Her feet felt cold.

Oliver said they ought to light a fire. The forks clattered coldly on the plates as they ate their meal.

There’s going to be a frost, he said. We’re getting on for winter, you know.

Her feet felt cold.

Yes, she said. But the fire isn’t laid. We’ll have to leave it for to-night.

In his pocket the letter that Garthwaite had written lay warm, should tell her this that she was waiting to be told, that they would go away, but not yet, he could not tell her, go away yet. He hated himself. Hilda’s face was hollow and tired as she turned up the wick of the lamp, the softness of the light hardening the contour of her face. It made him want to give way to pity, but pity was suicide. If I start pitying Hilda, that is to kill myself, he felt, the person that Alys has made, that is me, and now I must sacrifice it, I must pity Hilda, must go away. So he sat there hating himself.

Yes, she said. But it’ll be warm up there.

What? he said.

In Queensland.

She was breathing rather fast, he saw. His hands tightened on the knife and fork.

We don’t know yet, he said.

You haven’t had a letter?

No.

As if she knew, she knew he had the letter he was hiding from her.

You didn’t get a letter yesterday? she asked.

Why all this cross-questioning?

No, Oliver, she said, and her voice went softer, and he thought she was going to cry. No, I shouldn’t, she said.

She looked away. He hated himself.

We’ll go in time, he said.

The way you clung on, tightened up in opposition to Hilda, made yourself, as if there could be no reason for going, and Rodney and Hilda just incidental, or…He pushed back his plate.

What’s the matter? he said.

I don’t feel very well, said Hilda.

Her face was pale and bony in the circle of light, flushed on the bones, or perhaps it was the light. The lids of her eyes were heavy with shadow. She drooped.

Hilda, dear. Wait just a little longer, he said.

He stood behind her chair, felt her tremble as he touched her shoulders that were frail. If not as frail as the will, because you were weak, clinging on like this, there was no other word for it.

Why? she said, leadenly.

It fell into silence that there was no need for either of them to break. They knew the reason for silence. Then she began to cough, leaning with her elbows on the table and putting up her handkerchief.

Hiding from him something, this, that he knew, he knew it as she knew what she would not say, say to Alys, we are going away, Alys, because Hilda is very ill, she has been ill for a long time, or I am ill, the will, that is no will, sometimes it breaks or you give it to someone else, as I have given myself to you, and you have made me into something superior to myself, but which I must throw away, because of the world I must throw away because Hilda is the world, poor, sick, and there is no forsaking it.

I wish I were dead, Hilda said. Oh yes, I do. There’s no use your opening your mouth to contradict me. I know it’s best. We all know it’s best. Then you could make something of your life. You and the boys. I’m only a drag.

There was a grey, hammering tone about her voice. He did not want to listen to it. But he was held there by necessity. He had to listen. And he would protest against her saying what she knew he knew to be true.

Then she began to cough again. She turned away. She put her handkerchief up against her mouth to stifle the coughing. He could not bear to see her cough.

Hilda, darling, he said, you mustn’t talk like this.

He knew it sounded trite. He put his arm round her shoulder to try to atone for it. But she got up and went away, and he was touching air. There was a flush of red on her handkerchief. She went out of the room, still coughing, trying to hide the blood from him as she had done once before.

And it was no good. It would be better if she died. Just as she said. And Alys was up there, he loved her, he wanted her, there was something strong and productive about loving Alys. Loving Alys was not just existing, it made him believe in something more.

It began to grow hot in the cold room. His thoughts were hot, his head. Flapping its soft, plushy wings, that moth beat up against the lamp, pressing out of a dark sea towards a yellow island of light. Alys stood in a circle of light, the wave bent, the shore crumbled musically. What time was it by candlelight, she said, when the wax fell on her arm. He put his hand to his forehead, holding it there in a fist. He could not think clearly. He must not think like this, because he was undergoing some kind of moral disintegration. It was a matter of time and Happy Valley, their subtle corrosion of the will. It was wrong to love Alys. It was rotten and disintegrating, his love for her, and he was making her part of his own moral collapse. As Hilda saw, who was will to escape, unswerving in this. She also loved him.

That gramophone playing down the road dissolved. A still, soft playing, the stillness playing like insects, or a moth. He must go away. They must all go away. He went into the dispensary to write to Garthwaite, to say that in August he would be ready to leave.

A quarter, you said?

Yes, he said, a quarter, please.

He leaned up against the counter, steadying himself, she could hear him breathe, she could see his hand holding on to the counter’s polished edge, she could see the bones and a meandering of veins. The peppermints rattled into the scales. The brass shone against the darkness of the shop, focussing the eyes, and she was glad, because she did not want to look up.

It’ll soon be the races, he said. It ought to be good for trade.

We always do well in Race Week, she said.

His voice was tired. She did not, could not look up as she watched for the weight of the peppermints on the scales. She felt a sudden tingling of hate, a smarting. The peppermints fused in a white coagulated lump, then resolved slowly with the waning of emotion, and she put them into a paper bag, specially stamped at Moorang with an ARTHUR QUONG.

Thanks, Miss Quong, he said. We all have our little weaknesses.

She smiled, not so much at him as at the shining scales. Then he was going out. She looked up and saw the back of Ernest Moriarty stooped in the square of light. He was putting the bag of peppermints into the pocket of his coat. He was bent and a little tired. But his physical appearance made no impression on her, intent on this sudden emotional spasm that came up out of her body after weeks of almost indifference. She saw Ernest Moriarty going down the steps. She hated him. He went on down the street towards the school, walking slowly to save his breath. She could not pity. She stood still behind the counter and felt her hatred ebb slowly away, leaving no print on her small immaculate life.

Amy Quong’s emotional life seldom came so close to the surface. Love or hate lurked, or stirred with a vague motion in the more secret depths. She was not intentionally secretive. She was not actually passionless. Emotion was just a mental state that she did not actively reveal, that anyone would sense instinctively, anyone at all close, like Arthur or Margaret, who were intimately linked up with the emotional life of Amy Quong. Arthur sensed it, in their humdrum, almost inarticulate intercourse, when she called him in from the stable through the smell of pollard and the quaking of heavy Muscovy ducks, when they sat on the verandah of a summer evening, or went leisurely over the stock. Margaret too was conscious of a subtle emotional link, felt it as their heads bent by lamplight making up the books, felt it on the evening when she cried close against Amy’s shoulder, at once both tender and hard, with its offer of intimacy and protection peculiarly expressed. Because there was a core of hardness in Army, as in most people who are self-sufficient. She could close up. She was a piece of stone. And there is no pity in stone.