Patrick White - The Vivisector

He tried out on his teeth a ribbon or two of knife-flavoured lettuce. ‘You never thought to mention Kathy Volkov.’

Rhoda was sucking on half a naked withered tomato. How sly, he wondered, were the eyes behind their lowered blinds?

‘Why should it have occurred to me? We all lead our own lives,’ she protested. ‘Mrs Volkov is my friend. I wasn’t aware Kathy was yours. She’s a child — and an artist in her own right.’

Rhoda, he saw, had developed the mouth of a governess. One drooping shoulder, and all her movements as she rearranged the plate and laid together her knife and fork, were the motions of self-righteousness disguised as humility.

He remembered: ‘That fur coat we discussed — I must buy it for you. We’ll go in the morning,’ he said too forcefully. ‘You’ll have to be specially fitted.’ He couldn’t help it sounding cold.

Rhoda was looking at her empty plate. ‘But I don’t want it. Expensive presents are in every way an embarrassment. Besides, ’ she smiled, and raised her eyes, ‘fur coats are one of the traditional bribes women are offered by men.’

‘Aren’t I your brother?’

She didn’t answer, but got up, to move virtuously around in the strait asbestos kitchen. She was in a tidying mood; if untidiness hadn’t already existed, she would have invented it.

He was so exasperated he took another swig of brandy.

‘How did you come to meet Mrs Volkov?’ He couldn’t leave it alone, or disguise his impatience: waiting for her answer he started swinging a leg, youthful, but desperately so.

‘How?’ she repeated, sweeping invisible crumbs. ‘We first met — as far as I can remember — when I was living over by The Gash. I think I met her with Mrs Cutbush. Bernice Cutbush is a friend of Mrs Volkov’s.’

‘Cutbush! The grocer? Is Cutbush also Mrs Volkov’s friend?’ His swinging leg, which had felt comparatively limber, and lithe, and youthful in spite of his irritation, was immediately petrified.

‘I can’t say Mr Cutbush has ever been Mrs Volkov’s friend. That wouldn’t be possible.’

‘How not possible?’

‘Not according to her moral code. Mrs Volkov is very strict, though I’m sure — well, I know Mr Cutbush was present on some occasions — it couldn’t have been otherwise — in his own house. Mrs Volkov was sorry for Mrs Cutbush. You might say they have disappointments in common. Mrs Volkov’s husband ran away; Mr Cutbush stayed at home, but might have run. This, I believe, is why the two women were drawn together. Mrs. Volkov would walk over to Gidley Street: she used to be a great walker, and walking’s cheaper. Sometimes she’d take Kathy with her.’

‘Is Mr Cutbush known to Kathy?’

‘He could hardly help being. When she grew older, she’d sometimes lend a hand in the shop, only Saturdays of course. Of course, it was only a sort of joke — an entertainment for the child — though he used to pay her a shilling or two.’

‘But a man of that character!’

Rhoda gave a short laugh. Her rather prominent teeth glistened. Although she had lived close to life, her affliction had kept her aloof from it. Like a statue, her marble was prone to breakage only. ‘Kathy could hardly come to harm with a man like Cecil Cutbush. He’s a man’s man.’ Again she laughed, quite naturally. ‘Or boy’s.’

He just prevented the bottle from toppling.

‘Poor Cutbush was almost caught out once: he got off by the skin of his teeth. It was a horrid pimply boy, too.’

‘What sort of age?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Of an age by which vice has had time to develop. Twelve, perhaps — or thirteen. This boy, luckily for Cutbush, was well known as a liar — though Cutbush himself is what you would call a compulsive liar — respected as a man of business, however — and churchwarden. He had to resign from the council after the scandal.’

He could visualize the Cutbush circle: the two women drinking tea, the grocer’s tearful wife and the Scot whose virtue was probably her vice, holland blinds half-drawn against a heat they intensified; it collected round the brown teapot and the cut-glass stand with its enormous floured scones. Miss Courtney the lodger had been allowed in because she was small enough to stimulate the charitable aspirations of her two companions. They put up with the stench of horse-flesh which, frankly, used to nauseate Mrs Cutbush almost as much as her husband did. Because he too lived in the house, he couldn’t very well be kept out, but sat sucking his moustache after his cup of tea. Cecil’s shiny serge thighs were what nauseated Bernice most of all. And Kathy? Kathy will be holding the fort: Mrs Volkov glowed with the virtue of having produced a child, whether by husband, or mere, casual male. The grocer’s phlegmy voice confirmed that Kathy was a girl with a head on her shoulders; while the blowflies settled on the turned butter melting out of their scone feast.

Kathy amongst the canisters, under the lowering bacon-flitch, her throat reflecting the kaleidoscopic labels on the tins she popped into paper bags, could still have been immaculate. But for how long? with her boy’s bum and starfish breasts: only the pimples were missing; or perhaps they existed subcutaneously, along with the lies, the compulsive lies.

In the circumstances, his hands were almost throttling the brandy bottle. ‘I wonder you can enjoy the company of liars, and buggers, and hysterics, and Scottish prigs.’

Rhoda seemed hypnotized by his blenched knuckles. ‘Aren’t they other human beings? Almost everybody carries a hump, not always visible, and not always of the same shape.’

‘But that child — I wonder how much she understands?’ If he could have burnt Rhoda open with the blow-lamp he was becoming, he would have done so: to find out what she was keeping locked away from him.

She only said, and that slowly: ‘ You should know, Hurtle.’

‘How — I?’

‘You were a child, weren’t you? I think, perhaps, in many ways, you are still; otherwise you wouldn’t see the truth as you do: too large, and too hectic.’

Shortly after, she finished her imaginary tidying and shut herself up with her cats. He went to the back door, and chucked out the empty bottle, which exploded somewhere in the dark yard.

At least he had his work, however closely he was threatened by human vice, his sister Rhoda, the approach of old age and the behaviour of those who only bought his paintings to flog. There were the paintings; but fortunately there was also painting: the physical act which rejuvenated and purified when he and nameless others were at their most corrupt. Of course it was a miserable refuge too — oh God, yes, when he cared to admit it: he was an old man, turning his back and distorting truth to get at an effect, which he did, he knew, better than anybody else — well, almost anybody. But there were the days when he himself was operated on, half-drunk sometimes, shitting himself with agony, when out of the tortures of knife and mind, he was suddenly carried, without choice, on the wings of his exhaustion, to the point of intellectual and — dare he begin to say it? — spiritual self-justification.

Anyway, he painted.

During the days which followed Kathy Volkov’s necessary but forgettable visit, he drew constantly and furiously. He did many drawings for what he could see was becoming his ‘Girl at Piano’. Out of numerous false starts and the vulgar gloss of a concert grand, the old upright piano grew, the sloping line of the inclined case almost parallel to the straight line of the young girl’s back, her thick plait, the candlesticks empty except for the solid drifts of wax and encrustations of verdigris. As he saw it, any light must flow from a suggestion of the girl’s face.