Patrick White - The Vivisector

Mr Courtney stirred up the pages of the book. ‘There! Try again. I’m surprised at the way you read.’ And again you felt the firm but fleshy hand encouraging the middle of your back.

Birdie said nothing. The mood of religiousness had passed. Although the Courtneys were so well dressed, you could imagine them, like Mumma and Pa, without their clothes, talking it over on the rattling bed.

They were waiting for you to read, though. Or at least Mr Courtney was. He wore a smile as he trimmed a fresh cigar.

So you read the words you found:

Captain Walton has given me a puppy, have called it — Efford. .? after the dear sweet place where first I came acquainted with my Alicia, my virtuous wife. Captain Meredith ordered one of the corporals to flog with a rope Elizabeth Dudgeon for being impertinent to Captain Meredith, the corporal did not play with her, but laid it home, which I was very glad to see, then ordered her to be tied to the pump, she had been long fishing for it, which she has at last got, until her heart’s content. .

‘Oh, this is too much!’

Though you realized Mrs Courtney was fidgeting all through this second bit, you didn’t leave off till she called out. She had jumped up and was looking feverish and beautiful. Perhaps it was her anger which prevented the tears from spilling.

‘Sorry, Alfreda,’ Mr Courtney apologized jokingly. ‘An accident again! We’re magnets for the worst parts.’

‘Books don’t open by accident,’ Mrs Courtney said. ‘They open where they’ve been read most. I’ll never forgive myself,’ she continued very quickly, ‘if we’ve damaged this poor innocent — by accident.’

At this moment you could have truthfully fallen in love with Alfreda Courtney, though you didn’t need her pity. Grown-up people were more innocent than they thought themselves.

‘Half of cruelty,’ she was telling herself, ‘is thoughtless.’

He tingled wonderfully as she ruffled his hair, till he realized she might have been stroking air, her eyes vague with other thoughts.

Suddenly she compressed her lips and announced: ‘I must find Rhoda.’

That made Mr Courtney angry. ‘Jove’s sake, she isn’t lost — or not yet! She’s out with Nurse.’

But Mrs Courtney was already fussing across the room, her clothes creating their particular sound and scent. You could only hate the hump-backed girl who was taking her mother away from you.

Mrs Courtney was breathing hard. ‘Nurse, indeed! Dorrie Fox has told me about a young person — a governess — of respectable family — who is most unhappy — lonely with some horrid people at Muswellbrook. This Miss Gibbons could be the answer,’ Mrs Courtney decided as she floated out.

Mr Courtney was much angrier by now, but smiled at you through his beard. ‘The damn book,’ he said, and shoved it back hard in its place on the shelf.

You remembered: ‘I was flogged once at school, but not as bad as that.’

Mr Courtney was interested. ‘What did you do to earn it?’

Because you didn’t want to tell you tried to look sort of frightened.

Mr Courtney put an arm around your shoulders. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

‘What?’

If your voice didn’t sound interested, it was because, on turning your cheek, partly to avoid the pricking of the hairy coat sleeve, you saw on Mr Courtney’s little finger, a ring. It was of the same kind as the family ring Pa kept in the cigar box. So you had this in common. You couldn’t have told Mr Courtney, because he wouldn’t have believed. You rubbed your cheek instead, just a little, against the coat, because you had been brought that much closer. You could fall in love with both the Courtneys.

Mr Courtney was explaining: ‘Something that might interest you, Hurtle. See if I can find it.’

Hurtle was now alone, and glad. He couldn’t understand all that about loneliness and the governess at Muswellbrook. He had wanted to be alone more than anything so that he could explore the Frenchman’s oil painting. So he got a chair, and stood on it. His heart was knocking, more than it had for Mrs Courtney. To touch the smooth, touchable paint.

By reaching up, his fingers slithered over the ladies’ full, old-fashioned skirts, trembled on the bathing-machines, and plunged towards the sea. He was sweating as his fingers arrived at the wet sand and pale water. He would have liked to lick the tempting paint, but the picture was hung beyond reach of his tongue. He could only stand on the leather-bottomed chair pulling his tongue in and out in an imitation of licking.

He heard a tittering behind his back. He turned round. He must certainly have looked a fool.

Her thin mouth was twitching and spitting as she laughed: her hair pink rather than red. She had that little, thin flower-stalk of a neck, its absolute whiteness becoming greenish where the shadow fell, and all over, a sprinkling of tiny moles, with the big birthmark the colour of milk chocolate on one side. He couldn’t see the hump as he remembered: it was turned from him. She looked only a sickly girl, probably not much younger than himself. The worst part was: she had seen him giving himself away in front of the painting.

If she had been a girl at school he would have shown her a good smack in the face, but in the Courtneys’ house, he sensed, you fought with words and moods. Because his instincts for this weren’t yet strong enough, he was still at a serious disadvantage as Rhoda went hee-hee-hee, and rocked on the toes of her little thin-skinned pumps.

She stopped laughing. ‘I knew you were coming today.’

‘How?’

‘They were getting ready for you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re a boy. And Mummy thinks you’re so delightful. You can read better for your age than most grown-up educated people. You’re a prodigy. Mummy wants to discover a genius.’

Rhoda tried to make all her accusations sing, and did. ‘Your mother is the laundress. That makes you all the more of a genius. ’ She almost hiccupped with success.

She made him feel sick sad. Worse still, as he was putting back the chair in the first place from which it had come, the loose sole of his boot doubled up between his foot and the carpet, and she noticed him stumble.

‘Fancy letting you go out in a pair of boots that need mending!’

She made him remember that his clothes were darned, and that he had a patch on the seat of his pants. But he was stronger than Rhoda Humpback Courtney. He was the stronger by his mother’s tubs of blued water and her mauve, white-crinkled hands.

‘You’re a little turd,’ he said.

She couldn’t think of better than that: she could only come very close to him, her small face swelling with hate.

‘Does your mother like you?’ he asked as coldly as he was able.

‘Of course she does!’ she said with a grand conviction; but added in her own voice: ‘She whipped me with the riding crop. With the bone handle.’

‘What for?’

‘Because I didn’t lie on the board. Dr Marshall says it’s going to improve my back. But I can’t lie there all the time.’

They were united for a moment by truth and silence. Outside the big windows the blue bay curved, the big soot-dark trees were pressing in on them. He would have liked to draw Rhoda. He knew how he would paint her, if only he had the paints. He could feel in his fingers the sticky pink which would convey her frizzed-out, girl’s hair.

But Mr Courtney came back with a little gun. It was brand-new, you could see. A toy, or a boy’s gun. Inside his beard and English suit, Mr Courtney — Harry — was acting as excited as a boy who had found it.

‘Jove, Hurtle,’ he said, ‘isn’t it a beauty?’

Rhoda turned away, prepared for them to ignore her. She didn’t look at all put out, as though she wasn’t interested in boys or guns, and knew she could get her own back any time she liked.