Patrick White - The Vivisector

The hot-water bottle made a slucking sound as she shifted it from the angle of her neck. Her breasts looked baggy inside the flannel. She was old and yellow, his mother, her face seamed.

‘Darling,’ she said, pushing back the quiff of hair from her boy’s forehead, ‘I know you’ll understand and help me.’ Her voice died away because of her sickness, her veined hand imploring him to recognize her helplessness.

Now it was he who could have vomited: he could have gone down retching howling holding on to the set folds of her old flannel disguise which didn’t; but at least if he was going to destroy her, it wouldn’t be in the way she expected.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘all right,’ like the mug he was, ‘I won’t say anything. I won’t be here.’

‘You — won’t — be?’

‘I joined up.’

‘Joined what?’

‘Enlisted.’

It was a lie he would have to live up to.

‘I’m leaving for camp. Perhaps this week. I’ll know tomorrow.’

‘I can’t believe it!’ She flung away the hot-water bottle, which cannoned off a corner of the chest of drawers. ‘After all we’ve done for you! All the thought! The love!’

The expense, too, went hurtling through his mind.

‘But something must — I’ll telephone—’ she never lost her faith in the telephone—‘somebody with influence. Because your father would never forgive me. At your age! You’re only a boy!’

‘I’m sixteen. Lots of them have gone at sixteen.’ He only couldn’t believe in himself.

‘You’re doing it to kill me.’

‘If you’re not killed in one way, you are in another.’

‘Ohhhh!’ Her voice mounted as she went out warming up her slack arms.

Well, he had broken the caul: it lay all sticky gelatinous around him; he was panting from the effort.

Rhoda was sleeping — what would she say?

The days which remained were out of season: they belonged to a state of timeless suspension, very still, very clear. Phrases of speech launched from a distance floated towards him like sound-bubbles. Doves’ plumage had the look of armour. When fright wasn’t tunnelling its way through his guts, he rose buoyantly on the thought that all his shortcomings would lie behind him in a few days; the derivative drawings, his share in Maman’s dishonesty, the goose-flesh which came when Rhoda touched him.

He said: ‘Thank God, I’ll soon be doing something.’

Rhoda and he were standing in the angle of the stone steps, looking down through the muzzy green of hydrangea scrub and custard-apple trees.

Rhoda mumped her doubts; then she said: ‘I wonder if you’ll be tough enough.’

‘You can be anything if you’ve got the will.’

His own daring made him shiver. He saw more clearly than ever how small Rhoda had remained, how downright deformed she was beside his swaying tower.

‘I would have been tough enough,’ she said. ‘They could saw both my legs off.’

‘It’s all very well to skite. They haven’t sawn off any part of you. You don’t know! ’ Because she might possibly have experienced something far more intense than he could guess, he tried to drag her with him to the surface.

But she began to cry quite openly. She took his hand, and seemed to be trying to work the skin off with her fingers.

‘Will you write to me, Hurt?’ she was asking and crying. ‘Will you? From the front?’

‘Oh, yairs! ’ he said to pacify her.

The word ‘front’ sounded so real he was scared stiff.

The young man beside the sea-wall stuffed into his mouth handfuls of the limp chips and encrusted fish he had bundled up in newspaper behind the management’s back. In the mild, light-smeared night, eating this greasy food became a delicious orgy: himself drifting; rubbing up against the stone wall; staring. The slow sea and the long tongues of oily light made half the feast: the silence too, after the clatter and yammer of the place where he worked. Languages you can’t understand give you a headache finally, and the chitter of knives and forks in grey water, in a greasy sink. At the caff-eye.

The young man continued to drift, forgetting and remembering. The sound of the grass reminded him it had always looked dead and white. He passed a bench in which one of his feet had caught, between the slats, when he was a little boy.

There were prawns too, in his parcel. He tore off the shells, and flipped these off his fingertips. The prawnflesh was beginning to turn, but he ate it.

The park was quieter than he could have believed. Since war ended, he often felt his life might last for ever, provided he didn’t die of starvation.

Hitting the waters of the bay, the prawnshells made a hollow sound. His mouth was hanging open, he realized; but he wasn’t crying: it was the sweat round his eyes from washing up the knives and forks, or some of the grease had rubbed off his fingers from the batter blanketing the cold fish.

He spat out a few fragments of shell. He ran his tongue round his mouth to get the most out of everything.

During the war his mother had written:

Dearest,

I still can’t believe you have done this to us. To run off and enlist when there wasn’t any real need! I had always imagined you to be more thoughtful, Hurtle. Your father and Rhoda felt the blow most keenly. For their own good I have refused to let them talk about it. As for myself, I am blessed with a resilience which helps me bear the disappointments in life.

We are otherwise in good health at home, your father seldom here, of course, for keeping an eye on the properties. Although I am physically exhausted, I expect I shall continue to hold the fort; too many others are dependent on me.

Rhoda has taken a snapshot with the Kodak we gave her for her birthday, and I am enclosing the picture — to show you, darling, I have not entirely gone to pieces!

Edith, whom you never liked, is knitting you a Balaclava, though that is supposed to be a surprise. Keep has become practically senile: she can no longer distinguish between a simple mid-afternoon frock and a grande toilette. What to do with her? I rack my brains. We can’t get rid of the old creature — I mean, of course, pension her off. She has been so long a member of the family she would only fret if separated from us, and not know how to occupy her time.

Ah, Time — if only I had as much again! I scarcely ever read, and fall asleep whenever I do. I run from one committee to the next. On Tuesday night there is a ball (costume) and proceeds to go to the Red Cross. Mrs Hollingrake is arranging a set. I don’t intend to tell you what I shall be going as, because I know you would tease me if I did.

I should mention that I have also started working for the Church. We have a new rector at St Michael’s. Mr Plumpton is a tower of strength — a Charterhouse man — such a beautiful delivery. He has lent me several books on which I must concentrate more deeply when I can find more time. I often wonder what they really mean by ‘meditation’, and if those who practise it, honestly do. Must ask Mr Plumpton for his opinion.

Darling, we must all sustain one another in these terrible days. Do you still pray, Hurtle? Of course I have no idea what you believe: I have no idea what anyone believes, and wouldn’t be so tasteless as to inquire. Everybody has his private needs, or possibly, strength, which is above need. I know that God will love me when I am old and uninteresting, and, I only pray, not hideous.

We are seeing something of a young man called Julian Boileau who is very sweet, very kind to poor little Rhoda. He would be in every way acceptable if it weren’t for our unfortunate ‘condition’. I think Rhoda understands, which makes the situation more tragic.