Patrick White: Happy Valley

Hilda held her hand to her chest, less as a safeguard than from habit.

I hope the plates will be safe, she said. I packed them in plenty of straw.

Oliver saw the road move, heard Hilda say the things that she always said, because this was Hilda, also a voice speaking in the dark, Oliver, I understand. Hilda has found something that I have yet to find, though perhaps I am closer, moving along this line of wires, you can hear their hum, the almost disclosed secret of telephone wires, the rock with its meaning hidden, the harsh contour of the hills. Rodney, George, and I, together, are for Hilda a defence against uncertainty, at the same time wrapped against breakage in the straw of her solicitude. Oliver looked at Hilda. He saw her smile, heard her voice say, we shall try, no longer expressed in words, but a glance. He looked back through the windscreen at the road. Trees moved in the gathering rain. A flux of moving things, like experience, fused, and Alys Browne, he felt, is part of me for all time, this is not altogether lost, it is still an intimate relationship that no violence can mortify. This is the part of man, to withstand through his relationships the ebb and flow of the seasons, the sullen hostility of rock, the anaesthesia of snow, all those passions that sweep down through negligence or design to consume and desolate, for through Hilda and Alys he can withstand, he is immune from all but the ultimate destruction of the inessential outer shell.

We shall be at Moorang in no time, said Hilda.

Yes, said Oliver. Quite soon.

Hilda, brushing against his shoulder, took her hand away from her chest.

The car furrowed the road, lapsed into distance and the moving rain.