Patrick White - The Vivisector

‘Where are you going, Hurtle?’ Maman called.

But he wasn’t prepared to answer, and nobody would prevent him going.

After collecting what he needed he went upstairs to his own room. It took him not much above an hour to do what he had to. Then he switched off the light and lay in the dark shivering with exhaustion, excitement, fright.

She came, of course, as he expected, dreaded.

‘What are you doing, darling? You’re not unhappy, are you? Not thinking morbid thoughts, I hope? I don’t want my boy to grow up morbid.’

‘I’m not your boy.’ He made it sound as cold as he could.

She was feeling round the darkness for him.

‘Hurtle?’

He punched out, and hit something soft.

‘Then I shan’t feel sorry for you! Not a bit,’ she said very dry and angry. ‘You’re a cold, cruel, nasty little boy at heart.’

As though to illustrate her change of mind she went and wrenched at the switch beside the door. They were both wincing in the sudden light. Then he watched her get the horrors.

‘You abominable child!’ she almost screamed. ‘Where did you get the paint?’

‘In the toolshed.’

Still lying on the bed, he couldn’t resist taking a look at what he had done.

‘And red paint! If we had paint in the toolshed, I can’t think why it was red. Black — yes, I can remember. But what use can we have had for red? I wonder if your father knew. Nobody,’ she said, ‘ever knows or cares. I am the one who has to think — to bear the brunt. We shall have to get the wall repapered.’

She was so vexed she flung out her arm and knocked off the silver lustre jug. Against the carpet it looked like so many pieces of looking-glass. At least the jug had been empty: no flowers since the day of his arrival.

But he was too far off from Maman’s rage. As he lay looking at the wall he almost wasn’t listening to her. It was as though he lay at one end of a tunnel looking at his painting-drawing at the other: its brilliance was increased by distance.

Until now, there hadn’t been time to appreciate what his desire had driven him to do: his body, his thoughts had been too much worked upon. Now he wondered why he had done it as he had, when he meant to show poor black ‘Jack’ Shewcroft jumping off the roof, and here he was sprawling in the coal dust, like the coalheaver from Foveaux Street, the blood running out of his cut throat, through his veins, and from his heart, which was like a little fountain squirting from his chest. That was the way the idea had worked out.

Maman must have calmed down. ‘You knew, then,’ she said, ‘all the time — that Mr Shewcroft had taken his life.’

No, he only guessed — but because he knew. If she only knew, what he had painted on the wall was the least of what he knew.

‘I could do another,’ he said, ‘in another few days — a better one.’

He was still shivering with the horror of it. He hadn’t had the courage to remember too closely ‘Jack’ Shewcroft’s face with the blackheads and scarred skin.

‘I don’t know what your father will say. He’ll probably give you a sound beating.’

He listened to her swishing, crying, but angrily, down the passage. He really didn’t care whether Harry Courtney obeyed her orders and came to beat him. For the moment at least, he wasn’t frightened. He was still too exhausted by what had turned out to be, not a game of his own imagination, but a wrestling match with someone stronger; so he lay drowsily looking at the painting on the wall, particularly those places where he could see he had gone wrong. He had been led astray by the brilliance of the live red; whereas ‘Jack’ Shewcroft’s suicide should have been black black.

Presently he heard Harry Courtney let himself in. He heard her go quickly and talk to him fairly loudly, though not yet loud enough, in the hall.

Then he heard her raise her voice, practically shout: ‘Oh, but you must! As a discipline. For his own good.’

When Harry, his father who wasn’t, came into the room, he was looking stern but apologetic, and carrying that riding crop. Harry hardly dared look at the painting on the wall for remembering what she had sent him to do.

‘They — your mother—’ he began. ‘I can see for myself,’ he tried again, ‘how destructive you’ve been — Hurtle — and when boys are destructive, there’s only one — one cure — they have to be punished pretty severely.’

He was looking very big and bulgy. He no longer belonged to his English suit. The sleeve had rucked up along one of the arms, leaving a hairy wrist. Hurtle was fascinated by the twitching of the leather loop at the end of the bone-handled crop.

‘Get up, Hurtle.’

Hurtle didn’t, couldn’t. Legs wouldn’t work. Of course he was afraid, too, while hypnotized by Harry Courtney’s face.

For Harry had raised the crop. Like a big heavy old hairy woman, he slashed. Beard and all, his cheeks were flopping with fright. Hurtle felt the painful cuts, while Harry, you could tell from his eyes and mouth, was suffering them.

After he had slashed how many times he dropped the crop. He sat down trembling on the edge of the bed, looking at his large, clasped hands. What if you began to blubber? That might finish Harry. So you continued staring at him as hard as you could. Perhaps that was worse.

Outside, the rain had stopped. The swollen shapes of trees, hardly the same which could lash themselves to heights of spectacular fury, stood glooming in the half-light before moonrise.

In their own bright electric world he would have liked to crawl closer to his pretended father, at least to get the feel of his sleeve: or better, to be alone and cry, looking out at the darkness from which the moon would presently create a garden.

Harry said: ‘Next Thursday, Hurtle, I’ve got to go to Mumbelong. I promised to take you, I think. Well, it’s time I kept my promise, isn’t it?’ Towards the end he raised his voice, and showed his teeth, which were very good; they never had anything wrong with them.

Hurtle made a few noises. Father was looking at him. Father made those little noises in his throat to signify that nothing unpleasant had happened, had it? There is a certain sensation of barely melted chocolate, and this was it.

That night Maman gave him a real chocolate before he went to bed, before she had her dinner. She was sitting in the mauve octagonal room where she wrote the letters: ‘to salve my conscience’. She was wearing what she called a simple dinner frock, with a frosting of beads which rustled on her upper arms.

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘you don’t know how much you hurt me — in doing what you did.’

He was seriously interested. He saw there were real tears in her eyes.

That was when she gave him the chocolate.

Maman said, because tonight she felt the need to explain away: ‘I have been writing to a number of influential people asking them to support the movement for prevention of cruelty to animals. That is, in the wider sense. Because my particular interest is the prevention of vivisection. I wonder if you can understand, darling. Because hardly anyone in this country seems aware of what is going on. I’ve heard the most hair-raising, heart-rending stories of animals being sacrificed to science — living animals cut up — in experiments.’

She was looking at him, or beyond him, or again, at him.

‘Shrieking, tortured dogs. I’ve heard they punch them in the vocal chords to silence them.’

He was looking at Maman. She was so moved, he could smell the scent of her emotion above the scent. He could hear the rustling of the bead frosting on her sleeves.

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘my children — you and Rhoda — will never grow up cruel — if I can help it.’