Patrick White - Happy Valley

The air was intricate with conversation. A door swung, that glass panel reflecting the back of Mrs Furlow, who wore only sufficient pearls to show what her position was.

This is like old times, Vic Moriarty said, her face warm against Hagan’s shirt, a little too warm, it had moulded a saucer right in the centre of that complaining starch. Da da da-da-da-DAR, sang Vic softly against the shirt. We used to go out to the Palais, she said. Daisy and Fred and a boy I knew called Harry Jacobs. He was a buyer at Foy’s. You should just see Harry dance a waltz, you’ve no i…What’s the matter, love? You’re as quiet as a church.

Mrs Everett said to Mrs Ansell said to Mrs Schmidt look now look putting her cheek and it isn’t a shearers’ ball but what could you expect from a woman that keeps open house.

A yellow moon rose above ferns, was Walter Quong as he watched her by the door standing there, her mouth tight, and fingering a diamond bracelet, but didn’t talk to Lithgow, who was telling her how much polo he played, her face only melted into a yawn. She was thin and hungrylooking. She came up to the garage, didn’t let fall a word, only how many gallons she wanted, and then the money into his hand, her red nails on the palm of his hand. Walter Quong sighed. He shuffled the money in his pocket and waned behind a bank of ferns.

Mrs Ansell said to Mrs Ball said to Mrs Schmidt she looked a sight about the eyes and what was she up to Miss Sidney Furlow with her dress cut down the richer you were the lower it got but you wouldn’t want her on a plate that little piece hard as a nail.

Am I? he said.

Yes, she said. As quiet as a church.

Hagan began to hum. Got on his nerves all that clatterclatch about a boy called Harry What’s-his-Name, an Ikey Mo or something of the sort dancing a waltz, as if it was of any interest, and that was what you got from women, they never knew what would be of interest to a man, he sold or bought she said, women’s underclothes she said, and got a bit flabby about the arms, said she was what age, just like a woman, cover up her age with lies, always had to cover something, or her face was thick, or say, oh no, you’ll tickle me. Vic Moriarty pressed up against his shirt. The hall was a quivering of ferns, the paper looped back, the reds and blues that Mrs Belper had pinned up, she had such taste, and now vibrated with the music, the red and blue festoons. Hagan’s shirt let out a sigh. Vic was all right, but, he said. Was a good sort. Was…

What are you thinking about? she asked.

It wouldn’t be good for baby, he said.

She giggled up into his face. She wanted to say something, wanted to say, how I love you, Clem, how you love me, don’t you, only of course that Everett girl going by, and anyway you knew, or did you, how much did you really know?

Old Furlow talking to Mrs Belper, did not take his eyes off the floor, pressed his hands upon sciatica. Hagan avoided Furlow. He made him feel uncomfortable, even if she had not told, and she can’t have told, because all those weeks, and Furlow said, put the lambs in the lucerne or drench those wethers for worm, did not say as you expected what the devil, Hagan, look at him out of those froggy eyes, what’s all this about that Sidney told me, well it was like this. Sidney Furlow, he said. Giving her a man’s name, and a diamond bracelet, and diamonds in her hair, showing off all she’d got, and a bit more, looked at you as you went past, but wouldn’t shrivel you up, and that was what made her feel sore, if you asked her to dance, if you asked…Hagan felt Vic Moriarty growing soggy in his arms, a lump. She stood by the door in that green dress, or silver, a sort of silver-green. She did not dance. Somebody talked about polo. Hagan felt a bit small. She made you feel small. But he wanted, he wanted, he wanted to go down to the basement and get a drink. The way that red mouth looked into his eyes.

Between dances the random remarks the breath recovered sifted gently where music had been and the band wiping its mouth that laugh coiling out whipped up and fell back exhausted as if it had taken fright at the paper shades gasped shall we go out or stand on steps that circle of children no more than faces inquiring or a whisper or a silence as feet crunch down the road into distance they are tuning up that long roll of a drum which says keeping a beat with a glove beat smells of camphor and hair escaping casually from control.

Alys Browne said that she would not come, had come, wished that she had not come, though come or stay was immaterial, was the same preoccupation. I shall not look, she said, in a certain direction in case, till all directions became heavy with danger, a face detaching itself from its surroundings, just this and nothing more. How easy it was to say in the numbness of a moment, yes, you must go away, you must not come here any more, it will be simpler like this, until you go. All this time, she felt, I have been waiting for this one occasion to watch a face, and this only a few weeks, which are a fraction of what is going to be, and am I strong enough. Sitting at home, it is easy enough to say I am self-sufficient, to contradict the glass.

Her hand encountered the thorn on a rose. Looked down, she saw the drops, not under glass, and red, these had not dried up, dried by the kisses beyond glass, these were flowing fresh, and would heal without relic. There is no relic of pain unless you want it, place it in the personal reliquary, awaiting the admiration of the constant adorer, self. The drum beat, drop by drop. It flowed on. It flowed on. Till time will begin to flow on, will not congeal in permanence. Tell yourself this, she said, tell yourself the music is not so banal that it will not flow, washing of the blood, in blood. It lay upon her finger eyeing her.

Why, Alys, said Mrs Belper, you’re spoiling that rose.

Yes? she said. It got crushed.

Watched the petals fall beneath somebody’s feet.

Such a pretty rose, Mrs Furlow said. Doesn’t the doctor look tired, poor man.

She spoke with the cruelty of innocence, Mrs Furlow on top of her wave. She bowed with the air of one, not stinting her benevolence, but conscious of its worth, while her hand wandered down her pearls, chaplet-wise, in gratitude for yet another social success.

Such fun, these country dances, she murmured to Mrs Belper. They always go with a swing.

Though Mrs Belper would understand, her cousin was secretary at Government House, would of course understand that a country dance was no more than a relaxation from the more ardent ritual of Mrs Furlow’s life. Mrs Belper, in the glow of being patronized, would have understood anything.

The head began to ache that heard twelve o’clock issue dimly out of the darkness and the Protestant church. It was cooler by the door. Oliver Halliday wiped his forehead and watched nothing in particular. Marking time at the training camp, the drum, before the streamers fell down into the sea and Hilda’s voice waved, said I don’t think I’ll go to the dance, Rodney has a cold, will keep warm in a thermos, in the dispensary, don’t forget when you get back, when the War stopped in Paris, and going into that church was to feel suddenly complete, like touching a face in the dark, like…He shifted his feet. They grated on the floor. These are the feet, he heard, he said, the opportunities you have not taken, that turn under the pillow with the closed hand, as turning over you reject again, and think, is to reject, is to think, and then the heart starts out on a one-two at the dancing class with powder in his gloves, pink, pink, pinking over, or red. Red. She must not crumble that rose. He wanted to shout, Don’t. He felt he would shout out something, and it would be that sensation of standing on your head in church, everyone thinking you mad, and you had to hold on to the pew to stop before you found it was a dream. He put up his hand to his head. He had to stop. He had to put up his hand against the well of music that would tumble if…He felt weak about the knees.