Patrick White - Happy Valley

But I expect you’ll come back, said Amy Quong.

Yes, he said. Perhaps.

Though not with conviction. He did not feel this. I shall come back, said Rodney, I shall marry Margaret Quong, anyway, perhaps. The intention lay cold.

He met Margaret on the back steps, in the yard the quarking of heavy Muscovy ducks and the sound of Arthur Quong who was grooming the colt.

Hello, Margaret, he said. I thought I’d come, I thought I’d…

They stood about in the yard. There did not seem to be very much to say.

Margaret Quong hummed to herself, thinking this is Rodney, I like Rodney, but really what can you say, Rodney is very young. She had all the composure of one who had just put up her hair, only she had no hair to put up. But the feeling was there all the same, something secret and complete. It was different now. Because Margaret had taken things into her hands. Mother, she said, they were drying the dishes after dinner, and Ethel Quong’s bitterness fell with a dull sting into the water in the sink, Mother, I’m going to live at the store, just like that, before she hung the dishcloth over the stove. Anyone’d think, said Ethel Quong, forgetting her past regrets in a moment like this, that I wasn’t your mother, that I don’t count, but I’m not one to be bandied about, you can put that idea right away, Walter, what do you think of this, did you ever hear the like! Ethel’s grievance beat on her husband, but did not penetrate. He went out of the kitchen and crawled under the car, squinted up at the axle where the grease, where Gertie Ansell said, I’m not the kind of girl to go joy-riding round in cars, but perhaps for half an hour if you promise to make it that. The kettle hissed in the kitchen like the voice of Ethel Quong. Margaret put on her hat.

She went to live at the store. She would leave school and help Aunt Amy with the books. On washing days, when the sheets were heavy with grievance in the yard, she helped her mother iron, and the words of Ethel Quong evaporated in a thin and bitter steam, they did not touch Margaret, they never had. After all I’ve done, said Ethel, after all I’ve been through, and your father, and the shame, they picked him up in the street again on Saturday night, who’d’ve ever thought at Government House, I’ve got those Stills to blame for a lot, and now Mrs Ansell says she’ll have the police. Was smoothed out by the steady pressure of the iron. Here are the handkerchiefs, Margaret said.

The circumference of Margaret’s life was closed, except where it touched on Arthur’s and Amy’s, fusing unconsciously with these. But the box was untouched now in the drawer, with the harebells, the photograph of Alys Browne, and Madame Jacquet’s shell. This was over now, like crying in the shed upon the heap of hessian, feeling the texture of hessian, biting your hand against the tears. I shall die, you said, I shall die. You lay against the ground and waited for this, before it was two o’clock, the light choking the crack beneath the door, sound stifled by the sun. It was hot in the shed. The skin of your cheeks was tightened with dried tears. You were still alive. At the store they opened a tin of herrings for tea. The glass was a little ashamed. Those Moriartys, Aunt Amy said, as the tea plopped, brown, or red as it caught the lamp, you could have them in court, said Aunt Amy, before they’d pay.

But now the Moriartys were dead, the house closed before the next tenant, the photographers had gone. Margaret did not think much about the death of Moriarty and his wife, after the first stupor, that is, when the known face is removed, leaving a gap in the habitual pattern of one’s life, because this is inevitable, but the Moriartys were of no greater purport in the life of Margaret Quong. Even Moriarty, that face connected with a ruler and sudden fear that descended as you held your arms above your head, waiting for the pain of which Moriarty for the moment was an active instrument. Felt on your arms the blows that were not from Moriarty, no physical pain, but the accumulation of misery that spilt itself in tears as you lay on the hessian in the shed. This was the significance of Moriarty in Margaret Quong’s life.

But you cried no more. Moriarty was dead. On Sunday you heard the bells first from the Roman Catholic, then from the Protestant church. Aunt Amy went to Mass. On the verandah waiting, it was Sunday, that was almost perpetual now, though you sat on a bench at school with Emily Schmidt and Gladys Rudd and another hand wrote with chalk, he’s ever so good-looking, said Emily Schmidt, he’s boarding with Mrs Ball, and, Margaret, don’t you think, that was a question or a breath of Parma violet as Emily Schmidt bent. Margaret Quong watched the meandering of chalk. Soon it will be over, she said, soon I shall leave school. Heard the deferential voice of Emily Schmidt you can come up on Sunday, Emily said, no longer a favour when now you had stopped caring whether Sunday or the Schmidts, when you would go back to the store and it was always Sunday afternoon.

Something had happened to Margaret Quong. They could sense it, Emily Schmidt and Gladys Rudd, a sort of superiority that would not be imposed upon. Something had gradually taken place, evolving out of experience, that you did not notice at the time, not until you felt that Margaret Quong was invulnerable. Voices no longer sang going up the road, My mother said I never should, because really Margaret Quong, she wasn’t such a bad sort, only she was queer, a Chow, and you couldn’t get very far. But Margaret Quong kept her distance, as if her defence were hardly won.

Moriarty was dead. Hallidays were going away. She felt nothing so positive as exultation, not even the negative emotion of ordinary satisfaction. Because these two events no longer had any bearing on her life. She went past the fence where the brass plate said ALYS BROWNE, PIANOFORTE, or she went up and said, Miss Browne, I shan’t be taking lessons any more, because I really haven’t time, I am going to help at the store. A face was like a photograph, put away in a drawer, having some meaning in the context of the past, but very little when removed from this. The room was bare of emotions where you sat and talked, where the music on the piano, open at another page, did not point back towards two heads bending by lamplight above the keys, before a knock swept the sonata into a volume of confused sound. I played very badly, thought Margaret Quong, I shall not play any more, even if the Hallidays go away, there is no point in any of this, or touching a hand that is now only a hand.

They were standing in the yard, Rodney and Margaret Quong. The tin clattered with the bran mash that Arthur was feeding to his colt. Rodney played with his knife. He could feel the reserve of Margaret, a deepening of the light, of the noises in the silence of the yard.

Let’s play at something, he said.

What do you want to play? she asked, out of the distance her voice.

She was taller than he, bony and composed. She made him feel very young.

Poor Rodney, she said, going away or coming to play, as the paper fluttered down, white, the aeroplanes from the girders in the garage roof that you caught in your arms, held, settling in the dark. There was a shell, her name was Madame Jacquet he said, it came from the bottom of the sea, which is a very long way off. It lay on the floor of the ocean in a fluttering of weeds, or in a box upstairs untouched.

Yes, she said quickly. What shall we play?

Oh, he said, nothing. I just thought.

That it would be easier to play either aeroplanes or houses than to stand, because Margaret just stood, was sort of different, and anyway you would go away whether Margaret Quong, when you said you would marry, stayed, and Sydney was a long way from the bacon machine rasping and the frost, when you came inside it was warm, she said, would you like a glass of milk, only that was the summer, the milk cold, before Mrs Worthington died, and the Moriartys, and Margaret did not know that to die. He looked up. She was tall. She had folded her bony arms, and leant against the door like the women you saw along the street leaning against their doors and talking in the green gloom that the dahlias made. Only walking in the yard, it was night, and the smoke unravelled, and the stars, this was more than Margaret had realized. Margaret does not know this, Rodney felt, looked up with the compassion of one harbouring a secret experience.