Patrick White - The Vivisector

Supposing they had done away with him holus-bolus into the basement? Supposing he had died and not yet ascended? His material limbs returned coldly and he slowly walked over what was only parquet.

Honeysett, the Extrovert in Chief, was approaching: chubbier than ever. ‘Thought you’d caught us out, did you? Thought we’d given you away?’ Honeysett laughed so loud the place might have belonged to him.

He took you by the elbow; he was behaving, not as though you were the attendants’ pathetic, scuffy dog, but an elderly brittle humourless child.

‘There’s some of you — I hope it’ll please — amongst the Recent Acquisitions.’

They were again in the entrance hall, where the two Ancients turned their backs.

There was no need to draw his attention to what must have been the whole of his ‘Rocks’ series (including that painful fleshy one), his ‘Electric City’, his ‘Marriage of Light’: in fact, Olivia Davenport’s collection.

‘Is Nance — is Olivia dead? ’ In challenging Honeysett to tell him what he didn’t wish to hear, he could feel the spit jump out of his own mouth.

Honeysett received it without flinching. ‘Not dead. She’s living in Rome.’

The plaque confirmed that the paintings were a gift, not a bequest: by ‘Mrs. Olivia Hollingrake’.

Honeysett partly explained: ‘She’s gone back to her maiden name. Don’t ask my why.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

Honeysett was the last person who’d know. He’d like to ask Boo herself one or two questions. Have to think of them, though.

He stuck his nose almost on the surface of ‘Electric City’. ‘Have they been mucking about with it?’

‘Not that I’m aware.’ Honeysett at last sounded cold.

‘Something has happened in the top left corner.’ Or had he been a too impulsive, ignorant young man?

‘Wonder why she gave them away?’

‘She didn’t tell us. It was done through solicitors.’

‘Can’t have cared for them. I always suspected Boo. Anyone who starts telling you about their deep understanding of your work is a bit suspect.’

He wished Honeysett would leave him: he wanted to do things to the paintings which might have looked immodest to an extrovert outsider.

Honeysett seemed to take the hint in spite of his extrovert temperament: he was moving mumbling smiling towards some mission of official urgency.

It was good to be alone with the paintings.

Already on the bus he had wanted to touch something he had achieved in paint. Now he could run his fingers over the surfaces: saliva running, he realized, out of his mouth; he tried to snap it up, but it wouldn’t be caught. Didn’t matter. In the almost deserted gallery.

Some of the colours were blinding him: ‘Marriage of Light’ for instance.

‘A major work!’ He looked round to share his discovery, but of course Honeysett had gone.

Nobody there now.

He began to touch the jagged ‘Rocks’. And the more painful fleshier ones. Nance Lightwood? Lightburn? by any name, her spirit rose out of the glazed past, together with a whiff of body.

He looked round again to catch a possible intruder: schoolgirls are never able to disguise what they know; they have to giggle.

But nobody was there. Only himself. Filling with mucus and tears. He was so grateful for any vision of himself which wasn’t that of the old mangy dog. The murderer was more acceptable. Almost.

Of course — he remembered now why he had set out, not to wallow, but to buy the heart. Rhoda saying: Poor Ruffles my beloved my only affectionate cat Hurtle is sick not a tooth in his head but likes to mumble on something tasty not if you don’t want to but would you when you go out look and buy us a nice heart sheep’s if I cut it up fine I think Ruffles might fancy it.

So it was Ruffles, not himself. So he had come out with Rhoda’s horrible plastic bag; nobody could deny Rhoda his sister brought out the best in him.

On leaving the gallery he would have forgotten the bag if the attendant, his smile grown extra sentimental for the blue plastic lace, hadn’t handed it to him. He took it, and went out. Something ominous seemed to be preparing, against the railings, amongst the columns, at the entrance. The pair of Ancients turned, and began approaching: the skinny woman in her best crow’s black a little in advance; the scaly man shambling after in nubbly pepper-and-salt synthetic tweed. Behind them sheets of light were quivering.

All three of the figures at the entrance suddenly became paralysed.

Till the woman began, after wetting her dried-out-leather lips: ‘Don’t you recognize me — Hurt? hurtle?’ On the second attempt, it came hurtling out.

He stood holding Rhoda’s blue plastic bag against his belly: to protect himself from the knife-thrust.

‘I’m your sister — don’t you know? I’m Lena. The eldest.’

He held Rhoda’s bag, a plastic shield, against Lena’s accusations.

‘We come up from Tralga for a week or two. It’s been easier since the kids was married. This is my husband, Hurtle — Ernie Cobbold.’

Ernie Cobbold held out his hand, scabbed by the stones, the frosts, the wire fences of Tralga: the palm felt of hardened tar.

‘None of the kids with us,’ Lena persisted in her thin, recollected, girl’s voice. ‘We got four kids. Thirteen grandchildren by now.’ She lowered her head: she was wearing a red hat with her black; she licked her beige lips, and smiled. ‘We’re expectin’ the first of the great -grandchildren.’

She hung her head as though it were too heavy; nor could her husband help her in the situation: he was no more than the monolith who had got her with their sculpture of stone children.

The plastic bag dangling empty against your belly, you tried to count up the paintings, to show Lena what you had got, but couldn’t do it quickly enough. And probably forget a couple.

‘We looked at your paintings. Yairs.’ Lena remembered to smile kindly.

Ernie Cobbold probably hadn’t seen them at all. His eyes were too puzzled: rims red and sagging; they needed stitching.

Lena said: ‘Of course we seen about you, Hurtle, in the papers. Oh, yairs! But didn’t wanter interfere. Our dear Mumma, she read about you — talked about you. She said she’d stick to the agreement. Never to interfere. Pa died years ago, Mumma only recently.’

He said: ‘Oh?’ Must remember why he had brought Rhoda’s bag.

‘Yes,’ said Lena, ‘don’t you remember — don’t you see the likeness, Hurt? As I remember, we was so alike as kiddies.’

‘Wa — were we?’ The blue plastic bag shuddered. ‘Better write to my solicitors.’ He pushed past Ernie Cobbold: you could almost smell the scourings; in Lena’s case, it was watery homemade plum jam.

His heart was rent: when he had to keep himself whole for some further, still undisclosed, purpose; painting could be the least of it, though at heart it was all.

Revived by the paintings he had seen and touched, he was able to make quite an athletic getaway. He cut down Cathedral Street, then into William, to be with life. He was enjoying the kind of walk only good health and a temporary absence of responsibility can ensure. If his clothes and skin were melting together, that was because the day was blazing higher. At least his sweat was cold.

He had disliked Lena as a kid. How can you be expected to love someone just because you had blood in common? If he had been tempted to let himself get bogged down in her emotion on the gallery steps, it was from the sudden shock of finding the past transformed from a conveniently vague abstraction into a persistent, tearful old woman. It was a very definite shock; he might succumb even now.

But it wasn’t skinny Lena, or Mumma who stuck to the agreement, or the Adam’s apple in Pa’s throat, which made him want to give way; there could be something else he was beginning to remember. To want. Really nothing to cry about. Something probably nobody had, if they stopped to think, and that was why most of them took the trouble not to: emptiness of mind is less disturbing than the soul’s absence.