Patrick White - The Vivisector

‘That is the portrait of an officer who came here, I believe, with the First Fleet.’

‘Was he a relative?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said, and the more vaguely, sighingly: ‘No.’

Almost at once she changed her tune and asked lightly, prettily: ‘I hope the room’s masculine enough?’

She was moving a little jug full of flowers backwards and forwards on the chest of drawers. The reflection on the polished surface of the chest was a bright ball following the little silvery jug.

‘What is it?’ he asked, fascinated by the jug.

‘Silver lustre. It’s rather rare and valuable, so you mustn’t be rough with it. I’m only leaving it here because I want you to like beautiful things.’

The skin round her eyes was darker than he had noticed it before, her smile more wrinkled, because of course she was old, as well as rare and valuable.

‘You’re not very talkative today,’ she complained. She was looking at herself in the mirror, making a mouth like a pullet’s arse the moment before it drops the egg.

If he was not talkative, it was because she asked things he felt stupid in answering.

‘Now I expect you’d like to unpack your belongings, while I have one or two duties to attend to.’ She rattled away very smoothly, and he wasn’t convinced by any of it. ‘Then we must show you the nursery, and the schoolroom where Miss Gibbons will give you your lessons — you and Rhoda.’

She patted him before she left, and he could tell that, now she had got him, she didn’t know what to do with him, but hoped the nursery, the schoolroom and Miss Gibbons would take care of him, or if all these failed, then Rhoda might solve the problem.

When she had gone he began, as she had suggested, to unpack his things, and found they no longer belonged to him. They were, in fact, taken away from him very soon. It would have been ridiculous, he saw, to mourn them, and in any case, there remained what they could never take away, whether he would have liked it or not.

He discovered there were periods when the Courtneys who had bought him would not expect his company, when it was like living in a different house, almost in a different part of the town. At mealtimes, for instance. In the centre of the nursery, a large, white, light, but rather cold room in spite of a fire behind the high fender, a round mahogany table of massive legs had been laid with the cleanest cloth he had ever seen. An ammoniac sensation spread from his nose up to his eyes as he remembered that Mumma must have laundered the cloth. He had no time for more than this sensation, for seeing Rhoda standing the other side of the table, fiddling with the laid cutlery and wondering what else she might do. It was the first time they had met since his coming to the house to live. Mrs Courtney had been too busy explaining all the rules, which were so many he hadn’t listened after a bit. Mr Courtney had shown him the lavatories he might use, and those were frightening: all that china and gurgling water; you hoped you wouldn’t shit on the seat.

While remaining silent, Rhoda began jabbing the cloth with a fork as though to draw attention to herself.

‘Guess what!’ he said, because she made him sick.

‘What?’ She was unable to resist the moves of the game.

‘You’re my sister.’

‘Urchhh! I’m not! ’ She flung down the fork, which bounced and clattered against a plate.

‘You must be,’ he said, ‘if they’re my father and mother.’

‘I’m not! They’re not!’

Her white skin had turned so red. Her pale blue eyes hated him.

Then she said: ‘You’re common.’

He had never heard such a zinging in his ears. He went round the flaming table. He had meant to punch her in the teeth, but she frightened his fist into a hand, which landed rubbery, though hard rubber, about where the birthmark the colour of milk chocolate was plastered on her neck.

Rhoda opened her mouth to scream, but no sounds came out. She was pale with rage, pain, fright; it was impossible to tell which; but he knew that he was frightened. The sickly little mole-covered thing might have died of the blow: she was so delicate, they said.

When suddenly her teeth had got hold of one of his hands. He was too shocked and pained to remember what to do.

‘You mustn’t bully me,’ she said, looking at him with those pale, swimming eyes. ‘I’m a sick girl.’

What he might have said done next he only half imagined she might have stuck the fork into him he was weak at moments.

Fortunately the door opened and Lizzie came in with a tray.

He would have liked to pour out on Lizzie how he had left Cox Street, and everything that had happened since, but he saw she was going to ignore the part of him she already knew.

‘Well, you children, I expect you’re feeling rather peckish,’ she said, lowering her eyelids, looking down her nose, and speaking with Mrs Courtney’s voice.

So he decided to play some of Lizzie’s game. ‘What’s those long green things?’ he asked; because they looked no more like real food than Lizzie’s voice was a real voice.

‘Why, that’s sparagus!’ His ignorance made her even more superior. ‘Some of what the ladies didn’t finish at madam’s luncheon yesterday.’

Rhoda was showing no signs of their recent shemozzle. ‘I’m not the least bit hungry,’ she said. ‘But Hurtle,’ she said, giving him one of her mother’s looks, ‘has been on a long drive.’

‘He’ll be able to satisfy his appetite,’ said Lizzie, ‘with all these good things ’ere.’

‘But She’s late! She’s always late, except when you want her to be.’

‘Don’t matter,’ Lizzie said. ‘That’s what the hot-dish’s for.’

She had unloaded a leaden-coloured, heavy-looking dish with a very noticeable underneath.

‘What is there?’ Rhoda dragged the cover off the dish; she had to know. ‘Brains? Brains! I hate old boiled brains!’

‘Miss Gibbons will decide about that,’ Lizzie said, and left.

It was very still.

When Rhoda looked at him it was almost an invitation to be her brother: she so much disliked brains and Miss Gibbons.

‘She came on Tuesday,’ she said. ‘She’s silly.’ Then she remembered, tightened her lips on the laughter her thought had roused, and came hurrying, skipping, or however it was she moved; he didn’t like to look too hard because Rhoda was a deformed person.

When she had arrived close to him, she told: ‘She had a photo on the dressing-table which makes her cry. I knocked it over.’

‘Did the glass break?’

‘No. But it made her cry.’

He was more interested in Rhoda: her face reminded him of the little quivering springs and things inside a clock he had once opened.

‘He’s a man,’ said Rhoda, ‘from somewhere — Cobar.’ She ducked her head, and giggled. ‘She’s so silly! She wears a big floppy bow on her blouse. A green bow!’

Suddenly she paused, and put on a religious face. ‘My mother says she’s terribly well educated. Her father’s a clergyman. They sent her to one of the best schools, and must have skimped to do it — or someone helped. Her name is Sybil. I saw it written in a book.’

He was tired of the governess: he was too hungry, and at the same time the brains looked so unpromising. He kept on remembering their white, boiled look with the network of pinkish-brown veins when Rhoda tore the lid off the dish. Sinking your teeth in Rhoda might very well feel like biting into soft white brains.

So although he continued looking at her, he was not particularly listening to what she had to tell.

Presently someone came in.

‘You are Hurtle,’ the person said. ‘I hope you will be happy. Are you hungry?’