Patrick White - Happy Valley

Now, he said, are you satisfied? Now that you’ve had your scene?

I didn’t want to make a scene.

No, he said. You couldn’t help yourself.

But last night, and to-day, I wanted to say, Clem, I had to, you’ll tell me when it’s finished, Clem, you won’t walk out, you can’t.

Words in a whimper made her lips swell plumped out face and wet in the cracks. A mouth said Mrs Moriarty’s gone. He wanted to press on a mouth his mouth not this plumped out for a song.

Ernest’s gone to Moorang, she said.

She watched him, anxious to suggest, or seize the expression in his eyes. Her voice halted for this.

We can’t stand here like a couple of fools. You’d better do something about your face.

His voice at least was flat.

But Ernest, she said. You will, Clem?

She stood and waited.

Yes, he said. We’ll see.

Would go perhaps because nowhere else, and you could not wring a neck that wasn’t there to wring, and Vic what a sight was still nothing wrong, if only he got that out of his head and could not feel her dance.

The crowd, its stare glazed, its emotions spent, trampled cards underfoot, the Cup was run, the day without expectation after this. They wandered without much purpose waiting for another race. It was over, or as good as over. Thought hung limp like a flag on its pole. It was over for another year, they said, all that had happened and that had not happened, the money lost and the hat worn. But they waited without animation, for some last-minute frenzy perhaps, for some sign that it wasn’t time to go home. Because going home is acceptance of the ultimate defeat.

I took my girl to the races, sang Walter Quong.

He was lurching about behind the stand, trying to catch the rain.

Being alone made her feel a bit afraid. That zooming of a moth over-life-size on the wall, or two moths, shadow and substance, had also the implication of dead things, a moth or a bird, that she could not bear to touch. When Tiny died she could not touch him, lying in a shawl, though I love all dogs, she said, and when you think of the affection of a dog, but before it goes stiff of course. Ernest took Tiny by the hind-leg, she cried to see her poor pet, he was almost a whippet, hang stiff like a flying fox, in the Museum with Ernest, who said that the flying fox was a curse, with the rabbit, the prickly pear, and the briar, and none of them aboriginal except the flying fox perhaps. Though Ernest liked Tiny. Oh dear, my poor Tiny, she said, I wish we could have had a child, because Tiny dead makes you feel there is nothing else left. Ernest said yes. He shuffled in his slippers and coughed. She had embroidered slippers from a pattern, two pairs, but the first hadn’t come off, so it shows my industry, she said, that I didn’t give in on one. Ernest called it application.

He had forgotten to take his slippers to Moorang, they lay under a chair, she saw, because Gertie had forgotten to move, Gertie always forgot. It made her sort of guilty looking at the slippers. She looked away. She thought of a flying fox. They hung upside down from the fruit-trees, or brushed through trees, and squealed. The zooming of a moth made her twist her hands. If he comes as he said, she said, I shall hear him coming up the path, if he comes. The slippers made her feel guilty. She took them from under the chair and threw them into a cupboard, where they made a softish thud. Perhaps I’m fonder of Ernest, she felt, hearing the slippers thud, fonder than I, at least after standing in the rain, and you couldn’t move his arm, only touch his arm, and that was what Ernest would not understand, what made you want to hold on to Clem, when he touched you in the bed. That’s lust, Ernest would have said, all right, she said, it’s lust that makes you wait for feet coming up the path. Like the Bible, and Daisy giggled at the curate reading the lesson, that big brass eagle standing on balls, and she said at the bazaar the ice-cream slipped down her throat when he touched. She wished she had lit the fire.

Vic sat twisting her hands. There would be a frost, an injustice when you woke up, alone, or perhaps Clem would stay. A moth hitting the wall made her shudder into herself. She had to think of that flying fox. Or a bat, they said, landing on your hair, made you bald. She picked a leaf off the cyclamen. It was withered, brown, it rustled in her hand. She used to play a piece called Autumn Leaves when she was at Marrickville, a descriptive piece she bought in a music pavilion at the Show, that she played with feeling, and Daisy said it made you feel the autumn leaves, it made you sad. But the cyclamen sat up straight with sap, its pink ears shivering, the way that plant behaved. She saw her face in the bowl. She patted her hair, her perm not quite, and Clem you could see by the way he looked, but what could you expect in the rain. And that girl.

Vic Moriarty clenched her hands. She went and leant against the mantelpiece, pressing herself against the mantelpiece, where glass was cold on her forehead. It was Ernest’s clock. Go on, she said, go on, tick tick, I can’t help it, she said, you egg, tick tick. The way there are certain things that open wounds, any wounds, such a thing was Ernest’s clock. She saw that girl get into the car, as if she could help notice when the number-plate drove off and he said, all right, we’ll see, relaxed. You might be a bundle waiting, without feeling, for the train. On her hands her face was hot.

When he came he threw down his hat. It stirred her up to hear the hat.

Coming to your funeral, I suppose, she said.

That’s right, he said. Without the flowers.

He began to kick the fender with his toe. Some soot fell down the chimney, on to the paper fan in the grate where Gertie should have lit the fire.

You’re doing me an honour, she said, having it in my house.

Oh dry up, Vic.

Or perhaps you’re having two.

He looked at her. His eyes made her cold.

Hagan kicked the fender with his foot, wanted to kick through or take with his hands, the way you pressed a sheep and the bleat came out, those white lashes on their eyes. Killing a sheep, or time with Vic, was the same, a bleat. And you killed a sheep, it meant nothing, or chops for breakfast, or…Why the hell couldn’t she stand still? She was talking about the Last Time, even if it was this she said. It was something he had heard before.

Even if you hate me, she said, you’ll always know I love you, Clem.

She fiddled about with the tablecloth. Her voice came out in lumps.

Well, we’ll let that be understood, he said. You needn’t rub it in.

Even when She, she said.

Who?

He shouted her pale, and looking like that.

No one.

Her voice fell in a whimper on the tablecloth, was plush.

Then he went and took her, she felt limp, it made him feel wild, wanted to shake, or kiss, was kissing a limp mass.

All right, he said. If it’s what you want.

His voice came against her teeth.

In the other room the candle flame was long on the wall the wax fell in slender silence, lay whitening in pools. He lay on the bed, his head against his arm, after a fashion satisfied. She smoothed his forehead, moist, with her hand. But he did not want to open his eyes and see Vic Moriarty, white and passive like a pool of wax. As if the flame had burnt down. She was a flame that danced with her face against his cheek. You could not touch, put out a hand but could not touch. Or stop as the car moved out, was steel and touching steel was cold, resistant. It made you hot and cold to think, so you closed your eyes, felt the hand of Vic Moriarty, of no one else.

It bewildered Hagan to think. It was a fresh experience. Sidney was a hard name. He resented his bewilderment.