Patrick White - The Vivisector

Mumma was in heaven, but it made him sulky.

‘Why is she going to wear a mask?’

‘Because no one will recognize her that way.’

‘I’d recognize Mrs Courtney.’

‘Ah, you’re too clever!’ Mumma laughed quite like Lena.

‘Didn’t she ask about me?’ It rushed out in a stream of warm bubbles.

‘Did she ask about you? For Heaven’s sake! Why should a busy lady remember a little boy she never saw more than once?’

Twice, if Mumma knew, and the second time was the important one.

His hopes were low as he and Lena continued going to the rotten old school. He couldn’t believe he was related to Lena any more than Lena could believe it. What made their relationship more embarrassing was that they moved him up, after a consultation between Miss Adams and Mr Boothroyd the head, into Lena’s class. He was in many ways so advanced. In the higher class some of the boys were so big and backward you would have said they were men. Some of the girls were big already inside their blouses. He never tired of looking at the blouses of the older girls. It amazed him to think they would one day contain something as ugly and shapeless as Mumma’s old titty-bottles.

Sometimes the older girls would catch him staring at them. They would redden, and put their heads together, and snicker, and whisper. Then they would look straight ahead, as if he had never been there. It was all because of some trouble he got into. During his short stay in Miss Adams’s class the girl with the fringe made up to him. He stole a liquorice strap from Mrs Maloney’s to give to Dolly Burgess because he was in love with the shape of her forehead below the flossy fringe. They shared the strap, chewing on it from opposite ends, and meeting at last in the middle. Through the blast of liquorice, that soft, milky, girl’s smell came in gentler gusts.

All this happened about the time Mumma had the new baby. There was such a pandemonium at home, he would climb the pepper tree to think about Dolly in absolute private; while everybody came and went: Mrs Burt lending a hand; Mumma wondering how soon she could carry on with the washing and ironing, they couldn’t afford for her not to; and Lena burnt the scrag end.

He got to like school: to wait for the break, to be with Dolly and watch the light tangle with her fringe. She had a dimple. She had rather pop eyes, but blue. She was an only child, the daughter of a watchmaker. For that reason she was always neatly and noticeably dressed. Her pants had points of lace on them. He asked Dolly to show him her girl’s thing: it was still only a naked wrinkle. When he touched, she began at once to gobble and choke: eyes popping. She had been sucking aniseed balls. She ran bellowing away. Because he was afraid, he would have liked not to think about it, but the scent of aniseed kept coming back. He didn’t know why he had asked Dolly to show, when he knew enough from Lena and their own girls, not to say Mumma. He put away his boy’s one, which Dolly had been too frightened to touch in return.

Because Dolly told her mother, who went to Mumma, and Mr Burgess told Mr Boothroyd, the business caused him a lot of trouble. Pa got out a strap, but was too worked up to use it. Old Beetle Boothroyd sent for Hurtle Duffield, and gave him several cuts with a stick; only pride in his tingling hand prevented him crying. Not long after that he was moved up into Lena’s class, where, said Mr Boothroyd, it would take him all his time to keep up.

If it had not been for his own thoughts, and reading his grandmother’s Bible at home, life in the more advanced class would have been as intolerable as it was down amongst the pothooks. At high summer, the light lay brassy on the streets. On the way to school, the balls blazed over the pawnbrokers’ in Taylor Square. Returning, there was sometimes a faint tinkling of tried-out music in the piano shops of Surry Hills if he parted company from Lena and wandered round that way. He did not understand music, but the idea of it refreshed him, as the coloured notes trickled from the darkened shops into the light of day. He would arrive home pacified.

Mumma had started taking in washing again while still weak from the lying in. She had started going down to Courtney’s; along with her bundle of necessaries, she lugged the new baby. May very kindly let her lay him in a clothes-basket in the servants’ hall while she was at her work. That way she could go in and feed him when he needed to be fed. Once she stood the basket in the sun beside the cannas in Courtneys’ yard, but soon took fright, thinking how Miss Rhoda’s cat might jump out and eat him. She had heard of such things. For the first time the baby began to seem real. You could imagine Mrs Courtney looking in the basket when she came out to give orders to the cook. The thought made you bite the inside of your cheek.

When it was at last holidays he decided he would go down to Courtneys’ whatever Mumma might say. So he fetched his cap and hung around. He was determined.

She came out carrying the baby bundle. ‘What do you think you’re up to?’ She stuck out her chin.

‘I can help you, can’t I? I can carry your things.’

Mumma looked less opposed.

‘If we don’t make a habit of it. You could get spoilt, my boy — very easy.’

As they started out he took the cloth bundle. Mumma and he were both happy, he could feel. At this hour the streets were empty except for a few tradesmen and carters. The baby had become a thing again, in spite of being known already by name. They had decided to call him Septimus.

‘Sep! Septo! Septer-mus!’ The morning made you sing, bumping the bundle in time against your knee; while Mumma kept looking to see whether there was any of those early lazy flies on the baby’s face.

‘D’you think we’ll have a Decimus?’

‘What’s that?’ she asked, suspicious.

‘That means “the Tenth”.’

She turned her face away. ‘If God and your father is so unkind.’

After that they walked rather flat slommacky down the hill, where maids had come out from the better houses to chat together shaking dusters, or sulk alone as they polished the brass.

At one point Mumma recovered and, looking at him, said: ‘Your hair, your complexion’s a lovely colour, Hurtle.’ And smiled. ‘My colour, when I was a girl.’

He couldn’t believe Mumma’s lumpy old damp hair had ever been any colour at all. He couldn’t believe in his own hair. But in that case, how could Mrs Courtney believe in him?

Poor Mumma, he loved her. Because her hands were holding their new baby he hung on to her skirt for a while.

It was a long morning: he couldn’t decide what to do. Lizzie told Mumma: ‘The old cat’s out to luncheon with Mrs Hollingrake. ’ Mumma wasn’t interested.

At dinner he scoffed down a big dish of mutton and gravy. And sweet potato. There was lemon sago, but by then his pins and needles wouldn’t allow him to enjoy it.

After dinner Mumma sat in a corner to feed the baby, while Edith and Miss Keep ran away quick so they wouldn’t see. Certainly Sep knew what he was up to, his red fingers working on the veined tittybottle, like some sort of caterpillars trying to hold on a pale fruit.

Mumma brought the basket into the yard, into the sun. ‘Seeing as you’re here, you can make yerself useful. You can watch your little brother.’ She was still afraid of Rhoda’s cat.

Even if the baby got eaten he would have to see the chandelier — and Mrs Courtney Mrs Courtney.

Oh the afternoon and the splotched cannas Mr Thompson came and went smelling of old man and manure.

But the sucking sound from the green, furry door immediately swallowed up any previous distress, and he was thrown forward into their cool silent house. He ran higgledy stupid for fear he might not find her, past the chandelier without even looking up, into the mauve room. There he pulled up short. A clock was ticking in the emptiness.