Patrick White - Happy Valley

She knew she must resist the inertia of this house. She wanted to protest. It surged up inside her with a slow beat, from room to room as she walked about. She looked down at her waist and saw her hands clenched. So I shall go to California, she said, the wave beat, was a wave, the turning of wheels, slipped oily in the night through the shrill steam and the halt with cold voices calling the time, but the wheels must move, the wave, the little islands, those pointers towards release as the water flowed. And now she could listen to the rain, its small significance. She would go to California. It burst out in a strong, glistening theme that she could grasp, like a leit-motif returned from out of the beating of the drums, that she had heard first in the drawing-room at Mrs Stopford-Champernowne’s, wondered, then as it became submerged forgot, until walking in this still house she caught on to it again.

Her face returned an expression in the glass that was triumph and something else, it made her turn away. In the drawing-room at Mrs Stopford-Champernowne’s a young man sat with chocolates, from a bank, would she come to Vaucluse Sunday or the pictures Saturday night? There was wistaria at Vaucluse. She yawned, because this was unimportant, though her face grave, as a girl it was almost always grave, and expectant, though without much faith in expectancy, as if nothing would happen, eating a chocolate or reading pamphlets from a shipping office, even if she went across the sea, because what was this. A Java sparrow in its cage was cracking seed, discarding, and the intention slipped, there was no need, not now, for California, this little frail theme like the cracking of seed. This was not her face in the drawing-room, now in the glass, or was, and the returned theme, was larger, this glistening cable that she touched, gathering importance and momentum as it rushed out, she must seize it, this was its purpose, she felt, looking in the glass.

So in the morning she put on her hat and her gloves. She would go to the Belpers’. She heard the cool morning sounds, smoothed her gloves, experienced the round tranquillity that sometimes follows a decision made. Because now it was settled. The house lay behind her on the hill, like a shell discarded overnight, walking up and down in the dark she had cast it off.

Mr Belper, I’ve come to talk business, she said. I want to ask you about my shares.

Mr Belper, looking down, wondered how deep a teacup, how red the rose. Mrs Belper’s stomach rumbled danger. Well, she thought, and Alys too, this is not so good, because Mrs Belper, inside her casing of corset and superfluous flesh, was fundamentally a Good Sort. Even Mrs Furlow had granted her that.

That’s funny, said Mrs Belper. We were just talking about shares.

Yes, said Mr Belper. Yes.

Clinked his spoon and looked to his wife for some telepathic miracle. The way you reach out, straining to catch it in its flight, catch at nothing and coil back. Mr Belper returned to a state of deflation after his moment or two of grace as that rather impetuous male.

Because I want to sell, said Alys. I want to go to America.

America! Mr Belper said. A fine country, Alys, to be sure. A country of opportunity.

Not without a glance of, you see, Cissie, where I am, and this is all you can expect, this is what I am, but what now?

Mrs Belper poured tea in a fine, compassionate stream. It was gratifying to sense your power, though not to know you were powerless at the same time. Mr Belper stirred his cup. The veins were swollen on the back of his hand.

Alys, she said, do you mind very much?

What, Mrs Belper? Mind what?

As if now, sitting with your hands in your lap, you would mind what Mrs Belper was trying to suggest. As if all emotion had drained away leaving a dry receptacle. There were cherries in the cake.

Because Joe has some bad news. Tell her, Joe.

Mr Belper’s eyes clung to his wife’s wavering glance.

Yes, Alys, he said, it’s bad. The Salvage Bay is bust.

Alys Browne sat in the Belpers’ sitting-room, the Belper faces faintly red, heard this without moving her hands. She did not feel the need to move, or say, or say…Because this exchange of environment, he said, is only an exchange, or California, it is like this.

Oh, she said. I only thought, thought I might go. It wasn’t very important, she said.

She had wanted to feel the ship move, to move with it, into distance, away. This was wrong perhaps, only an exchange of environment, this would make no difference, was what Oliver’s letter had said.

We’re all in the same boat, murmured Mrs Belper, you heard the murmur of her voice borrowing her husband’s phrase. We were going to Manly for the summer, she said. Joe’s sister has a cottage there. That’s Fran. And the children, it’s nice for the children to be by the sea. Because Sydney’s very trying in the heat. Fran’s just had her appendix out.

Mrs Belper’s voice pursued its stream of narrative. When anyone died Mrs Belper always believed in not keeping to the point. She was not really insensitive. She just believed in sweeping you on, no matter where, but on, pointing to the incidents that swirled past, till you were out of the danger zone. She pinned her faith to narrative. In fact, Mrs Belper’s own life was an endless stream of narrative, of more or less connected fact. Alys Browne, listening to her talk, thought that she understood Mrs Belper better than before, saw her pitching on this stream that she had wanted for herself, going to California, making her life narrative. But to furnish your life with incident was no ultimate escape, except for a Mrs Belper perhaps. She had never moved in the current of Mrs Belper’s stream, a pool rather, and you looked down, aware of the reflected images, frightening sometimes, but never distorted by the slurring of a stream. It was better like this, the truth of the undistorted images. There is nothing to fear, she said, even in contemplation of the depths.

Mr Belper was talking about time, and the way things picked up, all of which was irrelevant.

Well, said Alys Browne, and she laughed drily, I’m sorry for us all.

Because it was the sort of thing you said.

Poor Alys, said Mrs Belper.

Going home, Alys Browne felt calm and detached. She trod on a frozen puddle and heard it crack. I wanted to escape, she said, this, after all, is California, its true significance. Understanding, you felt no pain in your body, that ice did not touch, in your mind that was a fortress against pain, and Happy Valley, and because of this you lived. She began to think about Oliver, who was a moment in the past, but also present and future. I shall not live altogether in the past, she said. This is still alive. This is interminable. This is what I wanted to deny in taking the boat. She saw nettles powdered with frost. They stood up sharp and fragile beside the road. People were going about their work, the faces that she passed, the faces hurrying, as she walked slowly home. I shall not hurry, she said, I shall shape time with what I have already got.

Packing up and going away, that box in the passage, the overcoat that won’t go in, the rime of newspaper on the edge of the hall, the echo of voices calling from room to room, whether in tears, or just the even stream of an officiating voice, is not without its nostalgia and regrets. Oliver Halliday straightened up. You felt them, these last moments that were without a clock, only the dusty shadow of a clock projected on to the wallpaper. In spite of yourself you felt this, and it made you smile, not without bitterness, at this instance of the fox his hole. The sun was watery on the floor. It sifted over the boards and the bough of a tree that waved in substance in the yard. In the empty house sound was swollen out of all proportion to its significance: the maundering of George perched on his island of luggage in the hall, the rasp of Rodney’s knife as he carved his initials on the kitchen door. R.H. wavering to commemorate, though without the date, because this was too difficult, and you had to take care, falter on the H as you looked round to see, Mother said it was vulgar to carve initials on trees.