Patrick White - The Vivisector

Then Lena, who looked as if she had a fever, she was so determined to appear awake — Lena asked: ‘Won’t he ever come back to see us?’

It was such a loaded question, Mumma for once left Pa to answer.

‘Not in the contract,’ he mumbled on his bit of pencil; since the evening he got shickered Pa was an even quieter man.

Then somebody, it must have been Will, started a long, high moan. Several others joined in, like dogs.

‘’Ere! It’s time you was in bed, all you kids!’ Mumma had stamped with the iron on the stand, and at once she and Lena were pummelling, pushing, carrying out the younger children.

Because you weren’t young, you hung around, but there wasn’t anything to say to Pa.

When Mumma came back she took a fresh iron from the stove, and began to press with all her weight along a seam. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed him. Or perhaps it was her way of making him hang around: soon she would say something which would explain all of everything for ever.

Then she said: ‘Didn’t you hear —Hurtle? Or does your ears want washin’ out?’ She stamped the iron extra hard.

Was she going to kiss him? She wasn’t. He must have ‘bloodied’ her worse than any of the others; or she could still smell the bottom she had wiped. She continued ironing, smoothing softer, afraid she might singe somebody’s good clothes.

So he held it tight in his throat, and went.

It was a white night. All their hens were drooping white along the boughs, the boughs whitened by shit and light. Through the shit smells, musty of hen, moist-sweet of horse, he went inside the shed, Bonnie lifting a velvet lip, whinnying and shifting weight.

He burned his fingers lighting their candle. Sleep had flattened Will, white too, like uncooked dough, but the yellow light fell across the cracked plaster of the wall, from which you had never succeeded in rubbing the more private thoughts, or ‘drorings’, or in making room for more. There would never be room enough for everything.

Now he stood for a while drawing on the patch of candlelight, himself only flickering at first then more dreamily flowing, his head at the angle from which he saw and thought best. He was drawing Mumma’s hollow body, with the new baby sprouting in it like one of the Chinese beans the Chow had given them at Christmas. Over all the chandelier. The Eye too: what Mumma called ‘the Mad Eye — it looks right through you’. Aiming its arrows the bow-shaped eye was at the same time the target, or bull’s-eye.

There was so much, everything you knew, to include.

Then Will began to stir plop awake. ‘What you doing, Hurt?’

At least you didn’t ever need to try explaining to Will: perhaps that was how Mumma had felt just now.

Well there was drawing. He made a dash or two at Mrs Birdie Courtney’s chandelier that wasn’t between hollowing out Mumma’s body he would have liked to creep inside to sleep tighter in warm wet love and white drool of hens if she would have opened to him she wouldn’t.

The morning was a sparkling one. The varnished woodwork of the buggy in which he sat showed him how far from best his best clothes looked. Not that he was worried by it. Mr Courtney seemed far more worried.

Though they had announced in the beginning: ‘We shall send for the little boy on Friday,’ Mr Courtney himself had come, and alone. He was wearing a tweed cap, and a suit which looked new but probably wasn’t.

As they drove away, down the rutted street, against the glare, Mr Courtney asked: ‘Would you like to take the reins, old man?’

Remembering another occasion when he had refused, Hurtle said he wouldn’t.

His last sight of the faces at the gate had been so painful he decided to shut it out of his mind, to keep his own misery at the greatest possible distance. It was easier in the glittering present. The wheels of the varnished buggy were thrashing into the light, the horse’s tail swished with light, while Mr Courtney’s frizzy beard smelled as good as it shone.

They went a while in silence through the Surry Hills. Hurtle pointed. ‘Those are the piano shops.’

Mr Courtney replied: ‘Oh?’

There was no music at that hour.

When they got to Taylor Square there were the pawnbrokers’.

Hurtle said: ‘Once or twice my father had to take the ring to one of those shops. But he always got it back.’

Mr Courtney was surprised, or shocked. ‘A ring, you say?’ He tried not to sound inquisitive.

Then Hurtle took out the paper in which the ring was wrapped. ‘This is my family’s ring. My father gave it to me when I left. He said I ought to have it.’

Mr Courtney looked more than ever puzzled and shocked though he too was wearing a ring. After taking a look, he seemed to turn away slightly. He gave the horse a cut with the whip it didn’t deserve, while the ring was being wrapped again.

Mr Courtney said, in what began as a mumble: ‘I hope you’ll be happy with us — Hurtle — feel you’re one of the family.’ He cleared his throat, and added for value: ‘We’re a very happy family.’

They were plunging down towards Rushcutters, into the richer streets. The horse’s hoofs clopped faster on its own ground. Mr Courtney and Hurtle were bounced against each other, an experience each seemed to enjoy.

Mr Courtney was grinning as he put on the brake. ‘I hope you’ll call me “Father”,’ he said.

The brake restored a certain stiffness.

‘That’s what your mother would like,’ Mr Courtney said, as if he felt in need of support.

Hurtle was not yet ready to commit himself: it was too funny and strange, and desirable, or sad.

Hey drove in through the stone gateway, over the raked gravel, past the clipped privets and a bunya bunya the gardener had failed to tidy. It was his first experience of Courtney’s front entrance. Mr Thompson came round to carry the box Mumma had found for his few things. The box was a dusty green from lying under a bed at Cox Street, with straps so stiff they would hardly buckle. On seeing the box, Mr Thompson looked surlier than ever.

Then Edith came, her thin neck dull and yellow inside the starched collar. She put on a look as though you and your things would probably need fumigating. He hated Edith. He must think of a way of showing her.

Inside the porch he might have started crying if it hadn’t been for Mr Courtney’s hand on his shoulder blades. The hand made you want to giggle instead because you could feel the guiding hand, strong and hairy as you remembered, gently trembling, as though Mr Courtney himself was frightened. If you didn’t laugh it was because you owed it to decent old Harry Courtney not to.

Mrs Courtney came and kissed. It was not as good a kiss as usual, less scented, too bumpy, nervous or apologetic like Mr Courtney’s hand.

At once she suggested: ‘Come and we’ll look at your room.’

Mr Thompson had gone ahead carrying the box on his shoulder. The shirt, rucked up under his braces, looked rather dirty for so grand a house. Mr Courtney, your father who wasn’t, slipped away as though he really was.

The room to which Mrs Courtney led, if not exactly large, was very large for one person. The walls, so solid, so white and untouched, had something suspicious-looking about them.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Feeling the walls.’ If he had been free he would have liked to cover them with great curves of bird-flight.

‘What an idea!’

She began to laugh as though she wouldn’t get over it, staring at him in such a way he felt he must be looking very odd, in this foreign room which would never be his.

At home in Cox Street there was too much noise, too many children, for anyone to try guessing at your private thoughts. If he spoke to Mrs Courtney now, it was only to protect these thoughts. ‘Who is that?’ he asked, though he wasn’t particularly interested in knowing.