Patrick White - Happy Valley

The novelty wearing thin, Antonio Lopez, fruiterer, felt his collar pinch, James Thripp, grazier, was conscious of Winterbottom’s breath. Was twelve o’clock, was that grey monotone the official voice stating that Moriarty was a mild man, sober in his habits and respected by authority. Was only seven minutes past. Yet Moriarty had been subject to fits of unaccountable anger, as parents of children attending the Happy Valley school were able to testify. There was, however, the evidence of William Chambers, not without a snort from Mr Filey, and of Gertrude Ansell to be taken into account.

Winterbottom knew that cove Hagan, that big skite lounging over the bar between stories and sometimes breaking a glass, knew how much to expect, whether Mrs Moriarty or not, had pinched the missus, she said, her behind, and now stood in a funk, you could see, as if he’d got something in his throat.

Clement Hagan, thirty-one, overseer at Glen Marsh, denied that he had been in Moriarty’s house on the night of the 23rd. Chuffy Chambers trembled, inarticulate on his bench. Well, Mr Hagan perhaps could give some idea of his whereabouts? The silence is a clock, is a cough, that foot rasping on the floor. Miss Emily Porter sneezed. Clement Hagan looked at air and said he was at Glen Marsh. And in support of that statement could Mr Hagan provide? Mr E. G. Filey swept with a rustle of papers through the silence and said that Mr Hagan could.

To read the case in the papers, which was without particular point for Eustace Wing at Narrabri, for Herbert Kennedy of Newcastle, or for Mrs Euphemia Richardson in Broken Hill, made Mr Furlow uncomfortably conscious of an element that all his life he had tried to avoid. For reality is not a parcel of the mind of such as Mr Furlow, who reads his paper ordinarily in the office after lunch, halfway between the furniture and sleep, finds that something has occurred in another hemisphere, finds that a fly, his face, his nothing, because by this time Mr Furlow is asleep. But now the news has a fresh and alarming significance, rounding a known face, and encroaching on Mr Furlow’s own exclusive territory. Because you had to see if, to read, then Miss Sidney Furlow was called, even if the stomach queasily protested against this reconstruction and the eye wanted to reject what it had seen.

Because Mr Furlow had gone into Moorang for the case. I can’t face it, Stan, Mrs Furlow said, with unusual access of affection that made her husband uncomfortable. Then Miss Sidney Furlow was called. You sat and looked at the floor, or a face, or the floor. Miss Furlow, said Mr Filey, with the unction of a conjurer about to introduce to his public the most infallible trick in his hitherto shaky repertoire. Mr Furlow, touching the seat, it was pine, you could feel the grain, heard the voice, the account for the whereabouts, the splinter prick, on the night of the 23rd, before the silence lifted up his face to look.

Yes, said Miss Furlow, I can. Stung the air, the faces raised, James Thripp and Stanley Merritt, because this was expectation, and Miss Furlow of Glen Marsh, and you waited for the breaking, the wood crack. Mr Furlow watched a wrist, without diamonds, tauten against a bag. Miss Sidney Furlow said that on the night of the 23rd, no equivocation in this, Hagan was in her room. The pencil frayed, Leonard Woodbridge of the Moorang Advocate already worked up mentally a good connection with Truth. And could Miss Furlow’s family vouch for the statement she had just made? Miss Emily Porter felt a tingle in her spine. And what did old Furlow over there, looking at the floor, say when the light went out? The jury sat up straight. In the circumstances, said Miss Furlow, no. Arnold Winterbottom bit his nails, because — well, well…Could Miss Furlow explain just a little more clearly perhaps? The splinter pricked in the hand, the voice, darling, I haven’t a bean, the face on shoulder was Sidney’s face. Hagan is my lover, Miss Furlow said, I can’t explain more clearly than that. Leonard Woodbridge, toying with possible headlines for Truth, decided on Wealthy Grazier’s Daughter Risks Fortune and Honour for Love. Slim, pale Sidney Furlow, popular member of Moorang and Sydney’s younger sets, spoke up courageously to defend her man. Mr Furlow’s hand relaxed on the bench. This is Sidney, he said.

In the street even if dinner was late was worth it and didn’t she have a nerve a girl a man could admire and what was that Chambers boy almost throwing a fit and anyway it was always established that Moriarty done it himself wrecking the room and all the police had it fixed only what the Chambers said was what you called a legal formality having Hagan in court a half-witted boy like that but what price Furlows now the Glen Marsh bloody Stud come on Gertie I was that scared you was brave she done up her face look if she hasn’t a cheek and what’ll happen now.

They drove back to Glen Marsh, Sidney and Mr Furlow. They did not speak.

Hearing her go about the house, Mr Furlow assured himself if was over, though reading papers you wondered if it was. Don’t be sick, darling, she said, it had to happen like this, and when we’re married we’ll go away. If not already gone, this strange person that he could not altogether connect with a figment perched on soda-fountain stools, that made up her face when she said I am now eighteen, or stood against the buff panelling, it was pine, in the Moorang court house when Miss Sidney Furlow was called, was reported in the papers, connection with the Happy Valley murder, it made Furlow pick up the paper again because things had always happened outside a certain radius, a strike in Sydney or a financial crisis or even beyond the seas, in Europe a war, which was safe, but never in Mr Furlow’s immediate environment that he defended with tradition, a bank balance, and so many acres of land, only these were no longer a defence, the papers indicated, and a firm step walking about the house, these were negative assets after this. Mr Furlow was without protection. Sitting in the office reading the papers, facts were no longer news, but swelled out into full dimensional forms, you could feel the immanence of these. Mr Furlow said, I am sixty-five.

Marched about the house that step linking room to room in a state of preparation. I shall be Sidney Hagan now, she said, in the glass her face that was slightly supercilious, because Hagan was my lover or husband or whatever you like. Whatever it was already consummated if not in fact, she felt this, the words spoken, felt it die down the room with all those faces above a bench, dropping into a silence the old emotions, almost as if his body had touched her in the court room in at Moorang, could she explain, she could, for the benefit of the law if not for herself.

Sidney Furlow did not try to explain to herself. She looked through drawers wondering what she would take. They would go to Java for their honeymoon. But her mind was apathetic where an explanation was concerned, much as if a fever had released the mind from a turning and twisting in hot sheets, the past year like a twist of clinging sheets that she had cast off, her body now accepted the future with tranquillity. And Hagan, loving Hagan? Her face was supercilious in the glass. This man was afraid in the box, on the night of the 23rd I was at Glen Marsh, he said, waiting, and she stepped up, Hagan in my room, she said. She saw his eyes.

Sidney Furlow went outside. A red cock, sad-combed, pecked at the hard ground in the yard, because it was a stiff winter and the earth did not thaw even in the middle of the day. She went across to the stables, where Hagan was saddling a horse. There was a scent of dung and the ammoniac stable smells. She watched him fasten a buckle against the belly of the horse.

Clem, she said.

Watched him turn.

Hello, he said, with the bewilderment of one not yet used to a situation that had formed without any effort of his.