Patrick White - Happy Valley

It’s late, said Father. You ought to be.

Yes, he said.

Standing there in the passage, could not stay, or stand, because Father would not understand.

Yes, he said. I thought I’d say good-night.

Father’s kiss was rough, like tweed, the suit you touched and wanted to stay, say you knew out there in the yard. But tweed was no longer protection after this. You went down the passage biting your lip, it was a long way from the lamplight and Father closing the door.

Oliver went into the middle of the room. He stood with his head bent, wondered, what was I doing before, he asked. The drawers were open on his activity, the papers scattered, and the diary with the pages torn, he held the pages of a diary in his hand. Then Rodney came to the door. Good night, Father, he said. Tearing pages from a diary, the lamp caught the leaves, grew brown, months, weeks, coiling into smoke, this was the past, as if contained in the pages of a diary and easily destroyed. Then Rodney came to the door. Rodney was also the past. This is all going, Oliver said. He tore up a bundle of papers. He slammed a drawer. It went to savagely, with half its contents hanging out. The way you clung on to papers for no reason, or old emotions, cluttered yourself up with these and had not the courage to clear them out. Well, he said, this is the clearance now, now I can start to breathe, now I am standing before the future, there is no reason for the past. Rodney is also the past. There is no reason, he said. There is no reason. His face halted in the glass. If you could see your conscience, he wondered, what form would it take? That smooth, stethoscopic Jesuit. He began to laugh. He found himself thinking of broad beans.

Round the walls the photographs, their expressions growing mat and yellow underneath the glass, stared with their customary stare, the always-with-you look of old family photographs. This was one evening in many, except for the litter on the floor and a certain emotional disorder perhaps. It might have happened any time, on any evening just as this, packing the bag before a case and going out. He would only take a bag. He didn’t want anything else, nothing connected with leaves lying brown against the fender, these belonged to somebody else. He was washing his hands at the basin. He saw hands fold round each other, unfold. It was like this. The hands. He saw the water, the soap, and the towel hanging on the rail. Then his hands fumbled in the towel, he must go, he felt, at once, quickly. The photographs stared down with a sort of faded surprise. He was moving in jerks, must go, must get outside before the mechanism broke. The spring strained that controlled the mechanical washing of hands.

In the hall he tore the tab of his overcoat. The house was quiet. Looked down stupidly at the coat, the torn tab, at Hilda saying, Oliver, you can’t go about with your clothes like that, would say that people would wonder how, would Hilda look a needle say. Because Hilda was conscience, that dark phrase in undertone when Rodney came to the door, recurred, till you wanted to put your head on your hand, lean forward with the weight and pray for the strings to lift up the head, it was by Sibelius, Birkett said, you waited for the strings, for some clarity of tone, not this phrase that ebbed, your whole being flowed backwards into the past, into the throats and the far baying of the horns. Then you saw the programme creak against the floorboards, escape in one flutter, when you had not the power, or the careless sweep of paper, even when the chairs moved, were still there, locked in a past moment that withstood hands and the flowers. But this was music, was ten years that the mind dragged back. This, he said, is dead. Heavy with his coat he opened the door, saw the stars, there was frost upon the step. It was more than opening the door. He did not think back. The frost was brittle underfoot.

Rodney, lying in bed, heard Oliver go. It was like any other night, a case, and Father going out, you heard the car start from the garage after the scrape of the garage door. Mother moved in her room and coughed. But he had to sit up in bed, he had to sit up in the dark, as if it would do any good, because sitting up was dark. Somewhere water dripped on zinc. It was no dream this, that Mother’s hand smoothed sitting on the bed when you woke up, whether Father took the car or not, was still a long way off. He had never felt like this. Slipping away, slipping away, the foot met more than darkness drawn from the sheets as it moved, the blur burr of a car, then breath.

Waiting, waiting for what, Happy Valley waiting in the dark, is the question without answer. There is no collaboration between human curiosity and the attitude of inanimate things, least of all in the dark, when the answer to the question in the dark might prove a momentary, if not the ultimate solution. So there is no choice but to fall asleep, as Rodney Halliday falls asleep, crumpled up against the wall. There is always this advantage in sleep, you cannot feel you are cheated, until of course the moment of waking, and that is a long way off. So Rodney Halliday sleeps, and his face is once more ten years old. So Walter Quong stirs in the grass at the side of the road and his world is non-dimensional, escaping the nettle’s touch. His dream is unimportant, except as a dream.

Alys Browne sat with her bag in the sitting-room. She waited. She heard the car coming up the hill. All this that I am leaving, she felt, has fulfilled its importance, there is no sorrow attached to discarding objects that are no longer necessary, it is right that I should touch nothing, that I should simply walk out. She thought a bit about Mrs Stopford-Champernowne, the wind blew through the grass in the Park, and on Sunday afternoon the Salvation Army played, she thought a bit about the convent and the face of Sister Mary and over the wall the violet sparks from trams, all this was a dream, she felt, and Hilda Halliday. Then her mind stopped short. She got up. She wanted to walk about. It is wrong to dream, she said, Oliver is reality. She found herself clenching her hands. I want to live, she said, I have a right to this as much as Hilda Halliday, I shall not be possessed by this half-life, this dream, or is it a dream, or is it a dream, or is Oliver a dream. Oliver is coming up the hill. We are going away somewhere, only somewhere, there are no labels, and here we shall live. This is right.

Alys, Oliver said, it was his voice outside.

It was right, his voice said, as she turned down the lamp, turned it right down, and it was dark, she could see no longer the Alys Browne, part of books and pictures accumulated in a room, an apology for life, or the lack of it. Happy Valley is asleep, she felt, I am no longer part of Happy Valley, this poor dream, this substitute for reality.

Alys? Oliver called.

Yes, she said. I’m coming.

She stood alone in the darkened room, the shreds of past emotions slipping away. There is nothing I regret, she said, there is nothing I, not even Hilda Halliday. These are part of sleep.

They heard it going round and round. Two figures detached by fear were large in candlelight. There was no connection now between Hagan and Vic, for the moment not even the connection of a voice. Fear was a personal preoccupation. While feet trailed round the sitting-room.

Hagan felt his heart bump, then go on its normal way. It made him snort. It wasn’t as if you were afraid, it wasn’t that that gave you a bit of a start to hear. It made him angry to think anyone thought him afraid.

How do you like that? he said, and his voice came with a snort. That’s old Who’s-this back. Makes a cove look funny, he said.

Vic sat on the bed. She did not speak. The sheet streamed floorwards from her breasts. She held it to her breasts, that escaped, hung yellow and static in the candlelight. He was speaking what she did not hear, she felt, she heard the feet.