Patrick White: The Vivisector

It was Sunday, and Mumma had gone next door with Lena and the little ones. Under the pepper tree in the yard Pa was sorting, counting, the empty bottles he would sell back: the bottles going clink clink as Pa stuck them on the stack. The fowls were fluffing in the dust and sun: that crook-neck white pullet Mumma said she would hit on the head if only she had the courage to; but she hadn’t. (It was Mumma who killed the fowls when any of them got so old you could only eat them.) So the white crook-neck thing, white too about the wattles, stood around grabbing what and whenever it could, but sort of sideways.

‘Why’re the others pecking at it, Pa?’

‘Because they don’t like the look of it. Because it’s different.’

Oh the long heavy Sunday with Pa’s old empty bottles. There was an old stove behind the wash-house he had bought, he said, as a speculation. The rust came off in flakes, which you tasted to see, because there was nothing else to do.

‘How long you gunner be, Pa, before we have a look at the box?’

Pa didn’t answer. He was too taken up with his business of the empty bottles. It was Mumma, anyway, who did the talking. Pa was a quiet man.

So you could only wait, and kick the rusty old hulking stove, and wait for Pa to take down the box which he almost always did of a Sunday if Mumma and the others weren’t there. When he had done his last sum of empty bottles, and carved the muck out of his pipe, and rammed in a few fresh crumbs of tobacco, and lit up, then, after a draw or two, he was ready to fetch down the box from where he kept it, out of reach, amongst the tins of soft soap, the bottles of liniment and turps and the needles he mended the harness with.

Of course you knew all about all of what Pa kept in the box, but that made the things more important, and going over them one by one. Not that there wasn’t a lot of uninteresting stuff as well: old family papers, particularly deeds.

‘What are deeds, Pa?’

But Pa didn’t want to explain, only that he had never been the better off for any blooming piece of paper.

So you didn’t bother. They were less interesting than the hair of dead people. There was the locket with the hair of Pa’s sister Clara, who died on the voyage out, and was buried at sea. There were the photographs. There was the photograph of Grannie Duffield in a cap: her hands spread out against her skirt showed off the rings she was wearing. Her hollow eyes had never known you.

‘When did she die?’ As if you didn’t know; but this was the Sunday game you played.

‘Six months after landing at Sydney. She died of the consumption, ’ Pa said, sucking on his pipe.

‘And you were left with Granpa.’

Pa didn’t answer, but sucked his pipe.

‘Did you like her?’

‘Course I liked ’er. Wasn’t she me mother?’

‘She looks funny.’

‘How funny?’

‘Sort of different.’

‘Your grandmother was a lady. A clergyman’s daughter,’ Pa added, sucking on his pipe: peugh, it smelled!

‘Is Mumma a lady? And Mrs Burt?’

‘Course they’re ladies! What else would they be?’ Pa sucked so hard his Adam’s apple grew red and angry.

Granpa Duffield was a more, perhaps the most, interesting subject. He had a big nose, sharp along the edge, like a chopper. (Mumma used to say: ‘You can tell by yer grandfather’s nose he was born a haristercrat.’) And large, rather shiny eyes. His hair was beautifully arranged, at least for the photograph, in an old fashion. On the back of the photograph someone had written in brown ink: ‘Hertel Vivian Warboys Duffield’.

‘That’s my name’—dreamily — as though they both didn’t know. ‘Why amn’t I “Vivian Warboys” as well?’

Pa puffed. Then he said: ‘One name’s enough for a boy to carry around in Australia.’

It was a good enough explanation. Of course everybody knew by now, everybody in Cox Street, but any stranger who didn’t, laughed. ‘“Hurtle”? What sort of a name is that?’ And it made you start what Mumma called sulking, because you couldn’t go on for ever explaining to every stranger that came: ‘“Hurtle” was the name of a foreign woman that married into my granpa’s family. Only it was “H-e-r-t-e-l”, not “H-u-r-t-l-e”. When I was christened the parson got the spelling wrong.’

All these mysteries were contained in the box. And the ring. The ring had a sort of bird on it, sticking out its tongue. The bird was cut off short, below the neck. What was left, looked as though it was resting on a dish.

‘That was your grandfather’s ring. The police sergeant gave it to me when I went out to Ashfield to identify the body.’

‘After Granpa fell off the mule.’

‘Yairs. He died of a seizure on the Parramatta Road.’

‘What’s a seizure?’

Pa didn’t answer at first. ‘Yer blood gets seized.’

Grandpa Duffield looked more awful than before, with his arranged hair and watery eyes. You couldn’t look long enough.

‘What was he doing on the mule?’

‘Cor, Hurt, I told yer often enough! ’E borrowed the mule ter ride to the center of Australia. It was ’is dream.’ After that Pa’s pipe didn’t stop spitting.

‘What happened to the mule?’

‘I told yer! It disappeared. An’ I never stopped payin’ it off to the owner for a long time after.’

They sat sharing the mysteries of their family. There wasn’t much else to do of a Sunday. Except slip the ring with the tongued bird on and off your biggest finger. Pa smoking, and pretending not to look.

But as soon as Mumma squeezed through the gap in the fence, with Lena, Edgar, Will, Winnie and Flo, Pa closed the box. Secrets weren’t for everyone. Mumma started telling all she had heard next door, with the kids stuffing on Mrs Burt’s cold puftaloons; Mumma used to say Mrs B. was a good soul who never ever would believe other people had enough to eat.

Although they told you you must love others, you couldn’t always, not when they were all smeary. Mumma was Mumma. And Will was different, who shared the bed; Will was hopeless.

Mumma said: ‘I could flop down, but have everything to do. Can’t you kids make yourselves scarce?’

Pa had gone into the harness room to replace the box. Bonnie was whinnying from her stall. All the fowls, the cats, had scattered on seeing the kids return.

Lena called: ‘Come on, Hurt, what do you say if we have a game of hoppy down at Abrams’s entrance?’ That was where the ground was level; there were no ruts like in the middle of the street.

He couldn’t stand Lena in particular. She was four years older. There were the three miscarriages between, Mumma told Mrs Burt.

‘I don’t wanner play any hopscotch.’ He didn’t either. ‘Not with you. You’re not even lean. You’re the scrag end.’

Lena burst. She came up and donged him one with her skinny hand: Granma Duffield’s without the rings; it had the string of a leather strap.

He didn’t care, though. He kicked her thin shins, and she went off pretending not to cry because she was an older girl.

Oh the Sunday evenings.

Mumma said she ought to get the tea, but was going to sit for a few minutes at least. Which she did. In that old unravelled cane chair. On the veranda looking over Cox Street.

All the while the kids were screaming playing ball skipping Florrie had dropped the rest of her puftaloon in the dust the voice of their niminy-piminy Lena had united with Elsie Abrams’s on the hopscotch court on the hard level ground at the livery stables entrance.

He hung around Mumma, waiting for her to settle, and she didn’t roust on him. In fact he could feel she liked it, in the heavy evening light, with the three or four big leaning sunflowers, their petals gone floppy from the day’s heat.