Patrick White: Happy Valley

I’ve still got the shell, Margaret said.

Oh, he said. I’d forgotten the shell.

Forgotten that Margaret or the shell, as the car streamed out, would stay, all this, and Andy Everett, the knife with the bone handle that Andy Everett broke, with which he played, cut his hand, and it bled and healed, so that after the itching you forgot, even that white scar, it was like a grub, don’t touch it, George, it’s a grub, just to see the face wrinkle up, it was only a joke, or Miss Browne said, doctor, look there isn’t even a scar. Broke off there as if. But even this was finished.

Margaret and Rodney stood in the gathering dark, conscious for the moment perhaps of a mutual thought. Looking at a face you knew. They had never spoken of this that was silent like a white scar.

In Queensland there are pineapples, Rodney said. And sugar-cane. I shall go up there for the holidays. Father says it’s a long way. But I’ll be eleven soon.

He walked in the gloom of sugar-cane, the heat, and the murmuring of flies. At eleven o’clock the sun was a shining disc in the sky. Columbus, a word, tumbled on the tongue, lumbered in the Gulf of Mexico, where the sun. He would be an explorer perhaps, touching like Columbus on a new world. He would do things while Margaret Quong stood in a doorway with folded arms. He could no longer see her face.

Mr Belper drew a fanfare from his nose.

The crux of the matter is we’re stony broke.

Which was at least a relief, to realize in words what had stuck for the past few weeks, with the collar tight like a halter round your neck. Now Mr Belper felt deflated, waiting on his wife’s silence, what Cissie would say, because Mr Belper, although refusing to admit any positive quality in woman, other than a prowess in the house, or more specifically in bed, secretly respected the oracular talents of his wife. Those talks they had at night, muffled by the pillow and proximity, were tinged for Mr Belper with an admittedly Delphic significance, even if he might cut them short with a shut up, Cissie, how you jaw, under the dictatorship of love or sleep.

But now all Mrs Belper could say was:

Oh dear, Joe. Oh dear, oh dear; and make a sucking noise with her plate.

Under the frill of a chair a fox-terrier snuffled heavily. The room with its garnishing of pokerwork, those silhouette shades that Mrs Belper had worked herself, the pouf in morocco leather, and the blue suite, all those attributes of a hitherto well-upholstered life could not disguise the frailty of walls or of the aspirations these contained.

Oh dear, Joe, Mrs Belper said. You shouldn’t’ve been so rash.

The miraculous behaviour of stocks and shares, if still no less miraculous, disturbed Mrs Belper’s confidence. She remembered how once, she was sixteen, it was at her aunt’s, she dropped a wedgwood sugar-bowl and watched the fragments scatter on the floor.

It’s the Crisis, her husband said.

Because often in the past platitude had helped him out of a conversational hole, was something to cling to at home or at the club, where the Crisis was answerable for much, it gave you a feeling of being not altogether to blame. He even ventured to glance at his wife. As Mrs Belper’s confidence ebbed Mr Belper felt his own return. You shouldn’t’ve been so rash, she said. Mr Belper, wiping his forehead, found some comfort in picturing himself as a rather impetuous male.

We’ll pull through somehow, Cissie, he said.

And who’d have thought that coal. Why, everyone burns coal.

But in a time of crisis, said Mr Belper, the courage that comes from words thrust his hands into his pockets and sent him stamping about the room, in a time of crisis, he said, even a commodity like coal.

How a commodity like coal behaved Mrs Belper did not hear, did not stop to ask herself what a commodity could be, like those terms he sometimes used and of which you made a mental note to look up after in the dictionary. Joe was clever, Mrs Belper said, intent on labelling all her possessions with some sort of satisfactory excuse. He talked about things being at par, he read a leader in the Herald, and told you what was happening to the franc. Even Mrs Furlow was impressed. But this is just why Mrs Belper quailed.

It’s only a matter of time, Mr Belper said, and as he assumed the upper hand the candlesticks joggled on the mantelpiece. Australia’s the country of the future. Australia’s bound to come out on top. Look at the interior, he said. I ask you. What a chance for development.

For even if his confidence returned Mr Belper felt it wiser to avoid his personal predicament. So he plunged inland. He clung for assurance to the tail of words. Mrs Belper’s corsets groaned.

And what about the Salvage Bay? she said.

Which was irritating to return. It made Mr Belper cough.

The Salvage Bay has gone into liquidation, he said.

He tried to jingle the money in his pocket, discovered only a two-shilling piece. Like a key dropped down your spine, for hiccoughs, she said. He felt the rim of this solitary coin, encountered its mute reminder, that nuzzled there in his pocket making him stick out his lip.

Always a chancy business, pearls.

Mrs Belper recollected a different story, told in bed if she remembered, or was it sleep, when pearls cannoned heavily in the corners of the room. She looked at her husband, at his red face, at poor Joe. With Mrs Belper superiority turned to compassion. A man was a fool perhaps, but — well, you couldn’t let him flounder, even a fool.

That was only a flutter, I expect.

Yes, agreed Mr Belper, grasping at the opportunity and closing his mind to the rest. We must have our little fling, Cissie. I ask you. After all.

Mrs Belper began to laugh. Because Joe looked such a fool, and as if she didn’t know, and he knew that she knew, and it was all so damn silly, even if Mary had to go, she could make a very good scone herself, they could live on potatoes if it came to that, and the way he talked about a corner in jute, all that mumbo jumbo that you swallowed as if…That was why Mrs Belper laughed.

Her husband looked offended and said:

I don’t think this is a time to laugh.

No, screamed Mrs Belper. No. Only it is so funny, Joe. You and me, and — come here, Trixie, on to Mother’s lap. What shall we do about Father? Eh?

Mr Belper traced the rim of his solitary two-shilling piece, a little shocked by the facile explosion of so many weeks of suspense.

Well, he said, if you can laugh…

Of course I can, heaved Mrs Belper. No one’s going to do me out of that. And what about a cup of tea? she said. I’m just as dry as dry.

It was on this particular morning that Alys Browne came down to see Mr Belper at the bank.

Well, Alys, you’re a stranger, Mrs Belper said. We were just going to have some tea. Weren’t we, Joe? Now what’s the matter? I thought we’d got it all off our chests. You aren’t proposing to mope?

No, said her husband quickly. No.

Then pull up a chair for Alys. The girl isn’t a ghost.

Alys Browne had put on her hat and gloves, because this was something in the nature of a formal visit, because at last she had come to the decision, she would go to California. Oliver loves me, she said, heard it in the house, her voice, walking up and down these past days, because she had to walk up and down. This is not chaos yet, she said. But outside the hills were grey, and the plain, they pressed in, just pressing quietly with a gentle, slow pressure, until her hands clenched, and she longed almost for some form of eruption rather than this grey, still pressure of the hills. Oliver loves me, she said, to reassure herself. Then there was a storm of rain, at night, beating on the iron roof, with the wind, a black chaos. I am alone in this house, she said. It was a statement almost without emotion, either self-pity or fear, that she heard come back in the beat of the rain. She watched the furniture, the passive droop of the tablecloth, she could feel herself watching for some move, that was not made, there was a final cessation of motion in the house, cowed by the beating of the rain.