Patrick White - Happy Valley

Ernest stood, no more than stand, his hands hung down, watched her hands irritated by a needle and thread. Vic, he wanted to say, Vic. He heard the postman knock again and letters on the hall linoleum, stooped again in the hall to pick them up, re-enacted what was painful many times. Then his braces snapped. Give them to me, she said. There were some bills and a circular. He put the other in an album in the sitting-room. He put it out of sight. Walking through the hall, the lozenges of light were yellow-green, pale and empty the linoleum squares where letters might not have fallen, only the rattle of the postman’s footsteps, and he had put it in the album in the sitting-room. The thread wove in and out the ink, words that said without date or signature or compromise, I don’t want to intrude, said ink, only there are some things somebody ought to know that everyone knows and Mr Moriarty it’s like this your wife far be it that I want to intrude have you ever opened your eyes to see even if it is painful but then it always is for the good of the town and your position if nothing else that Hagan and your wife that Hagan and your wife will forgive me for wishing you well.

You do look a sight in those pants, said Vic. Here are your braces. Now you can put on your trousers and cover them up.

Thank you, he said. Thank you, Vic.

Now what’s the matter with you? You’re not going to have one of those attacks?

No, he said.

Because I don’t want to have your pleasure spoiled. And you say you get some pleasure from stamps. I should think you’d better stay in there the night. There’s no use busting yourself, she said, getting back God knows when. We’ve got to think of your health.

Yes, he said.

Brushing out her hair, Vic had dimples in her back, where the shoulder-blades met above the camisole. I want you to meet my wife, he said to Berenger, whom Vic did not like because he had a harelip, and Moriarty’s wife they said, or Mrs Moriarty that clerk when they signed the register, she said, Ernest, can’t I sign mine, I love writing my name. He felt bones, flesh, and a little breath, thought he would fall perhaps, though as if it had nothing to do with him, he had nothing to do with himself any more. He went back to the postman, to the floor, and going into the sitting-room. It was in that album, only he didn’t want to look. Hagan said, leave her to me, as taking up her coat he held it out for Vic, holding the coat and Vic, poor Ernest, she said, I don’t like to leave, only you know what it’s like if you come in all this cold. Hagan said, Hagan said, Hagan said the pictures. Hagan said, your wife will forgive me for wishing you well. Ernest, putting on his trousers, bent down and looked at the floor, wished he could fall. But the effort was not his, he was doing this without effort, putting on the trousers was not his arm.

Gertie! called Vic, clucking her tongue. We haven’t forgotten those eggs, even if you have. What I have to put up with, she said. It’s a wonder I keep my patience at all.

He went into the sitting-room.

Ernest! she called. I’ll put your pyjamas in the bag. You can take a room at the Crown. I didn’t sleep a wink, she said, and I’m not going to lose to-night.

Gertie Ansell brought him an egg, sulking, she had not washed her eyes, and stove-black on her hands.

No, he said. No. I don’t want the egg.

She looked at him in surprise. Then she went out of the room leaving the egg behind.

Ernest Moriarty sat staring at an egg. The letter said, forgive me Hagan for wishing you well said take your pyjamas said just another case of anonymous adultery tapping her knee and laughing at a joke. This was Vic then, or not Vic, could not be Vic. He wanted to say this is not you, Vic, that the letter said. He wanted to say this. He sat in the chair groping at no word that came heard her voice singing in the next room, and the rattle of a tray as she shifted it off the bed. When he said, Vic, I want to tell you, in Daisy’s front room, all right, Ernest, she said, I know just how you feel, so just you take your time and he did not know what to say, when Vic held his hand, he could not see from his glasses, only Hagan and that gold tooth, and a smile, or Vic’s smile that was Hagan’s smile over on the music stool. Not this, he said, not this, taking up the spoon. He felt something come in his throat. He took up the spoon and beat the egg. It went chip chip chip chip, like that. Hagan laughed. Because it stank, the room was stinking like an egg.

Vic! he screamed. Vic!

She came tumbling into the room in her dressing-gown, it was half off, those big flowers, and her face looked a little afraid.

What on earth’s bitten you now?

She began to frown, was no longer afraid, as she looked at him trembling in the chair. He knew he was trembling. He had no strength to say.

Well, she said, what a way to carry on! Anyone’d think you didn’t know there was such a thing as a phoney egg.

It stinks, he said.

He could feel the glasses tremble on his nose.

Would you like me to go and talk to the hen? It wasn’t me that laid the egg.

She took it away then. Her dressing-gown opened up as she bent down and took up the egg. He wanted to put his head on the table and close his eyes, he wanted to stop his heart.

Ernest Moriarty sat in the sitting-room all the morning. It was Saturday.

I put your notes in the case, she said, poking in her head. Now you’re not still sulking about that egg?

People started going down the street to the races, wearing their best clothes.

She put in her head and said:

Do you want any lunch before I go? There’s a nice piece of cold pork. But you’ll have to hurry up, she said. You don’t want to miss that truck.

No, he said.

He sat there. He heard her heels going down the path. I am going to Moorang, he said, she said the key under the mat, and not to miss the truck. He got up, felt along the wall, because it was time, it was time to take the case, his notes and his pyjamas, she said.

Vic Moriarty hung over the fence and watched the horses sidle out. Voices picked the winner, invited to a drink, and little Bernard Schmidt dropped his toffee-apple in the mud. The poor kid and how he cried. His nose ran down his cheek. Sound swallowed up, ran along the fence to the grand-stand, or splintered into rain, the hissing of rain on canvas. The flag laboured on its pole. Vic Moriarty looked back over her shoulder, a ten-shilling note crumpled in her hand, and wondered if Spider Boy, if Hagan, stuck up there in the stand perhaps or holding an umbrella for someone to make a bet, the way some people can skite. But wait, she said, wait. She did not know for what exactly, and that was what made her sore, and the water coming through her shoes. The world was very unjust.

Over at the stalls Arthur Quong rubbed the hocks of the bay colt, his hands running brown and nervous along the skin that sensed his touch, he could feel the skin moving with his hands. What price Arthur’s colt, they said. But Arthur smiled. The horse seemed fretful in what was not the brownish gloom of the stable at the back of Quongs’ yard. He kicked at the earth floor with his hoof. He picked at Arthur’s sleeve and worried it gently with his teeth. All right, all right, Arthur said, not exactly to the horse, as the sigh of the crowd following the second race, from the stand or the fence, penetrated through rain and stopped short at Arthur Quong. Like the children playing down the street, looking at Arthur and stopping short. Perhaps it was his eyes, those white circles, that enclosed not only the iris, but the whole secret being of Arthur Quong. The colt whinnied into the rain, where a kind of depreciating mumble announced the finish of the second race.

Mr Belper watched his economic assurance flutter with the fragments of two torn cards, Comeagain and Rosabelle, down from the stand. Though after all the second race was only the second race, was not the Cup, was Interview was still a cert. Mr Belper’s first chin rested on the red flap of the one immediately below. His eye, no less bilious than the night before, fixed itself on the reminder of Comeagain and Rosabelle, now lying in the mud. Mind you, Mr Belper often liked to say, punting at a country meeting, then allowing a pause for a change of key and the attention of his audience, punting at a country meeting, he would say, is nothing but a fool’s game. This did not, however, prevent Mr Belper from playing the fool. He sat on the stand now and a sickly little tune came trickling out from between his teeth. Because what was a fiver here and there. Cissie said, you’ve got a liver, Joe, gave him something out of a glass. He wanted to think this. He went into Moorang and they talked about the Crisis as if it were some new kind of disease. Only the trouble was you couldn’t take anything out of a glass. You said that Things Would Pick Up, or the Tide was on the Turn, or even Every Cloud, not that this was much of a comfort. The fact was that Mr Belper, in spite of his taste for generalization, those evenings at Moriartys’ when he talked with gusto on natural resources and the canalization of energy, found that Brighter Slogans were no longer in his line. He sat and stuck out his lower lip. Joe, said his wife, you give me the creeps, we’re All in the Same Boat, she said. But how well, or in which boat, was something Mrs Belper did not know. He had not mentioned Deucar Steel or Newcastle Incorporated Coal and Iron. It was this that made her husband poke out his lip and stare at the fragments of a bookie’s card.