Patrick White - The Vivisector

‘I thought so,’ said Mr Courtney. ‘You smell like horses.’

There was a long stain of liquid manure, they saw, on Rhoda’s dress.

Harry Courtney had got up. First he began scuffing his hair with the tips of his fingers, to work in the pomade. Then he wiped the palms of his hands on his already glistening beard.

Rhoda tried sticking her head in his groin, but he pulled quickly away.

‘Where are you dining?’ she asked.

She was more interested in the box in which he kept his shirt studs and cuff-links. She took up a jewel and sucked it as though it had been a lolly.

‘With the Egerton-Crawleys,’ her father told her.

Rhoda almost swallowed the ruby in showing her disgust.

Miss Keep the lady’s-maid knocked at the door and asked with awful seriousness: ‘Madam is wondering whether the children are coming to talk to her. She can be seen now.’

At once Rhoda became very tired. She slid into an armchair, and began rubbing her cheek against the cover. She looked frail and pale. The moles on her skin stood out more than ever, and the manure stain looked longer, browner.

‘Ladies don’t cross their legs,’ Miss Keep advised.

Rhoda seemed to prefer her father, though he didn’t encourage it; while Hurtle suddenly experienced a burst of agreeable powerlessness. He was drawn towards the form of the small, withered lady’s-maid, or rather, beyond her. Silly-headed, he followed her out to where Mrs Courtney was expecting him.

She appeared fully dressed, but called: ‘I’m not quite ready, darling. Just putting the finishing touches.’

Because she was so pleased, she spoke in her most accomplished voice. She was holding in her hand a looking-glass, which she cleverly slanted this way and that, so as everyone, herself included, could admire her hair from all angles. Bands of gold, coming together above her forehead in an enormous big blister of a pearl, prevented the hair from falling down. Her dress could have been ice if it had been standing on its own, but long cloudy trailers, fastened to the edges of her nakedness, melted the ice into moonlight instead. She was all in white, the big pearl lolling on her forehead, the diamonds jostling one another.

‘Do you think I’ll pass?’

He was too stupefied to answer her.

Even that made her laugh. ‘Nobody can call you a flirt!’

She was not in kissing form, he could see, because she was afraid of her clothes getting crushed, but she gave him a quick peck with pointed lips.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you. For a treat. Because you might be feeling — lonely.’

She opened two big wardrobes in which her dresses were hanging. They looked surprisingly dead beside the live one she was wearing. But fascinating.

‘Don’t be afraid to touch, darling,’ she coaxed and cooed, ‘if it will give you pleasure.’

She put out a soft hand, the wrist above it rippling with blue-white diamonds, and drew him towards one of the wardrobes. He let himself be guided, doubtingly.

In fact Mrs Courtney did something unexpected and very strange. She suddenly moved her hand to the nape of his neck, and shoved his head in amongst the limp dresses. The sensation was at first one of blinding, then of a delicious suffocation as his face was swallowed by the scented silky darkness, through which Mrs Courtney’s voice continued somewhere rustling.

He pulled out on becoming not exactly frightened, but because he might have overbalanced.

‘Wasn’t it nice?’ She was so amused at what she had done. She kept on looking at him, to see whether she had succeeded in getting him drunk. Her teeth looked as though they were against him.

He felt ashamed, but it was some compensation to know you could see inside the faces of people who fail to get behind your own.

Mrs Courtney looked away.

‘Have you noticed his eyes?’ she asked Keep; and almost at once: ‘Darling, it’s time! Where is Rhoda? Go and find her,’ she ordered, and it grated. ‘I know she doesn’t love her mother. I shan’t force her. But shall continue doing my duty.’

She was twitching and quivering with an injustice in much the same way as Rhoda herself.

As he went out he heard Mrs Courtney — their mother — lower her voice for her maid, and say: ‘Were you surprised at what I did? Children are like puppies, you know. And a new puppy can be attached to his owner by teaching him to recognize the owner’s scent. Or so I’m told.’

Miss Keep didn’t reply, but made a kind of dry noise, or else she was still blowing powder into a pair of madam’s long white gloves.

He ought to have liked Miss Gibbons more, seeing as neither of them belonged to Courtneys, whatever Courtneys themselves might think. Miss Gibbons was so gently pleasant, especially in her grey Sunday dress. Grey, he supposed, was as close as she could get to colourless. He couldn’t forgive her this feeble fear of drunkenness. Everything about Sybil Gibbons was feeble and gentle. She asked to be teased, or downright tortured, not by what you said but what you didn’t say, and most of all in the pleasant but colourless lessons she gave. She taught the subjects like History, Geography, and English — to him and Rhoda. Mr Shewcroft coached him alone in Latin and Mathematics, and Madame Parmentier came for French. On all these occasions he would refresh himself by staring out the window into the garden, or deeper, into himself.

He heard Miss Gibbons tell Mrs Courtney: ‘I should hate to accuse him of laziness. He is what I would call indolent. Or his mind is set on other things.’ Good old Sybil Gibbons: she wasn’t such a bad stick.

Harry Courtney had explained in the beginning: ‘We’ve talked it over, old man — your mother and I — and we think you’d be happiest — at least for a while — doing your lessons at home.’ He sounded so serious and kind. ‘Until you settle down — learn our ways—’ he cleared his throat—‘and the language we speak. Then to some good boarding school. To toughen up,’ he ended with a rasping, bearded laugh.

‘Your mother and I’; you would certainly have to learn the language. In the beginning, in fact, there were expressions which troubled everyone.

It was evening not long after he had come to live there. It was shortly before bedtime, and the three of them — Rhoda had a temperature — were seated in the little mauve octagonal room where Mrs Courtney answered letters and considered the serious problems of life.

‘There’s the question of what you should call us,’ she suddenly began.

It was making her excited, or embarrassed. She popped a chocolate into her mouth. He knew by the shape it must be the lovely liquid kind. If she didn’t take care it would trickle out of the corner of her moth. Or else it was this excitement she was having to control.

‘Father,’ she said, ‘is satisfied you should call him “Father”. “Dad” I don’t like at all. It can sound — not common — but blunt. ’

‘“Father” it is,’ Mr Courtney repeated uneasily.

Hurtle couldn’t believe in it, but hoped they wouldn’t read it on his face.

As for Mrs Courtney she had almost finished her chocolate before coming to the difficult part. She looked at the box, but hesitated; perhaps she thought it would spoil her dinner.

‘Now, in my case,’ she said, glancing at her front for a spot she might have made with the liqueur, ‘it’s a more difficult matter—’ she swallowed down—‘because “Mother” would sound far too severe, and “Mummy”, I think, is not for boys. I have an idea, though. I hope you’ll think it’s a good one.’ She looked away, smiling like a girl. ‘I’ve been thinking you might call me “Maman”. That’s the French. It’s so pretty. And will sound different.’