Patrick White - Happy Valley

Hagan brushed past Mr Belper, that heap of troubled mackintosh, on his way downstairs. He did not stop to speak to Belper, had seen that hat on its way down, and a face. Hagan hurried after a face. He would perhaps have called out, only in this case you couldn’t, a bit of class. So instead he jostled, and what did he think he was at, they said, unimpressed by the contortions of a man trying to be recognized. A face turned in the rain. It looked past Hagan’s head, resting casually not on Hagan, those eyes, looking for what in the rain. It made you want to swear. He bumped out of the crowd and went into the bar.

Walter Quong was giggling. He was already rather drunk.

Hello, Hagan, said Walter, quaking like a gin-something that he held in a yellow hand.

A double Scotch, Hagan said.

Then I said, said Walter Quong, it isn’t far to the cemetery. Oh, she said, you’re telling me. Nettles sting. It was the Sunday after they buried old Mrs Falconer. She was covered with dead flowers.

Walter sighed. There was a bubble on his mouth.

Hagan drank his whisky. It had the limp, watered flavour of the whisky you get in country bars, not worth spitting out even. He felt, like the whisky, kind of flat, clenched the glass that did not, would not break, splinter into the hand. He wanted to break her. She danced round, and you put your arm round her waist, she was that small, and bent back, the sort of face that came just a certain distance and said that Mother was going home. She looked past, you might have been air, or something she didn’t want to touch, even if last night you could have sworn, against your face, and Mrs Moriarty’s gone, she said. He had forgotten Vic, was whisky standing too long in the glass, was time to throw out and go sober, you wouldn’t get drunk on vinegar.

Furlow’s mare’s in form, said the barman.

Furlow? he said. Not a chance.

He slammed down his glass.

Too full of tricks, he said.

She looked past his face in the rain. He wanted to lam that girl.

Arthur’s won the Cup, said Walter Quong.

The Cup? said the barman. Listen to Walter. The Cup hasn’t been run.

Walter’s mouth plunged on a glass.

Oh well, he said, Arthur’s going to win the Cup. She was covered with dead flowers.

Hagan was feeling wild. To listen to a randy, drunken Chow made you feel — white. He went outside.

Oh, said Vic Moriarty, it’s you!

She sauntered over to Oswald Spink and began to inquire the odds. Because that will fix you, she said. And Sir Galahad, Mr Spink, she said, no, I’m not taken by the name. Looked back to see if Clem, if Clem had stood. She could feel the water soaking through her shoes. Didn’t it make you cry, the races, when back turned said nothing, and you wanted to say you didn’t mean it, really, Clem, whether the horses went out or stuck in the mud or what, because who cared if a horse. Vic Moriarty crumpled ten shillings in her hand. I’ve got to get hold of him, she said, listen, I’ll say, honest, Clem, you don’t know what it means, and he’s going to Moorang, just to-night, because then I won’t care any more. Vic Moriarty’s face was crumbling under its beauty hints.

Even money Interview, they called.

The horses were going out. That glint is steel is eye turned is his first race Stevie Everett and shirt sticks to the skin the orange conjunction with green where the barrier stirs a nerve and Furlow’s mare with all that weight treads mud said Interview the paper said balancing a cloud on flagpole feels his stirrups stretch to what depth to what underneath whether muscle or air or Quong’s colt keeps the store the awful twisters these Chows in a country of possibilities and ideals at 2 or 5 to 1 the collar sticks on a lozenge from shouting from stretching the neck to see the starter’s two-day importance lead into place a bridle when the balloon goes up.

They shuddered in a bunch against the barrier, then streamed out, that long trajectory of colour against an indifferent landscape, the muscle whipped by rain, by the sudden emotional compact of breath and wind. They urged into the wind and the flat, grey with trees. The colour broke fiercely on the grey. It whipped round the bend. The horses coiled back in a long elastic thread. You could hear their hoofs dulled by the mud. You could hear the approach of frantic breath. You could almost hear a flash of colour breaking through a clump of trees. And the crowd leant over the fence, drawing the horses on with their hands, so many puppets on so many strings, of which the jockeys, balled up on their saddles, had no ultimate control.

Arthur Quong held on to the fence. Upright, he did not breathe with the crowd, was something apart, or part of the colt, could feel his muscles, touched in the stable, stretch out, watched that coloured bead move on the string and fuse with the one ahead. He felt the wind. Hoofs dealt mud on his face. Hoofs ebbed in a wave of sound. Interview was done, they said, with the mud, with the weight. They swirled out on the second round. Arthur Quong fixed his eyes ahead, felt a singing singing, as he waited, felt himself smiling, tapping his foot, as he waited, as he clung to the fence. He had stopped breathing. Because this was no longer Arthur Quong, was out there threading through the trees one green and orange bead. That colt of Arthur Quong’s, they said, was leading, they said. Did not hear this, but the whinging of breath. They eased up slower along the landscape. He felt a kind of long lassitude, almost closed his eyes, if it were not for the motion of air that pressed open lids. The ears heard the approach. Stevie Everett’s face was pale against the neck of a bay colt. Arthur Quong dropped his shoulders. The wind died.

A Chow! somebody shrugged. It’s the day. No horse could carry weight in all that mud.

Mr Belper tore up two more tickets. Who would have thought that the Cup, that Arthur Quong…

Almost touched Vic Moriarty, Arthur leading in the winner, she looked up, saw the nostrils blown out pink, and a horse was going past, and vaguely she knew the Cup was over. She looked down, she had a ticket in her hands, Sir Galahad, she had asked for only so that she could turn, turned and was no one but backs closing. She let the ticket fall from her hands. I got to see him, she said. She pushed past Mrs Everett, who had a newspaper over her head because of the rain. She went round the corner of the stand by the urinal. She went along the line of stalls. I got to see him, she said. She heard her feet plopping in the mud. It went on jabbing in her head, one idea, I got to see, I don’t care, but I got to see. He was standing at the back of the bookies’ pitch lighting a cigarette.

Clem, she said. Clem. I’ve been looking for you every-where.

I haven’t been so many places, he said.

Don’t get wild, Clem, she said. I didn’t mean it.

Mean what?

Giving you the go-by like I did.

He caught in his breath. She was mauling his arm. Vic Moriarty making a scene, when as if he would have given a damn whether she thought what she thought he thought. He looked hard at his cigarette. A drop of rain became smoke on its point.

Did you? he said.

Yes, I thought.

Well, I didn’t. Now let go my arm.

She wanted to cry.

Clem, she said, don’t be hard.

Sidney Furlow walked past. Her hair was plastered at the sides against her face, that did not see, was cold eyes with the lids half dropped. He could have run after her, twisted her round, and said. He did not know what he would have said. He looked down.

Damn you, he said. Let go my arm.

She began to whimper, the rain on her lips. Sidney Furlow got into a car. He wanted to run, stop, stop, firing its exhaust. And Vic was holding on to his arm. God, what a sight. The car moved slowly out.