Patrick White: The Vivisector

The girls remained a mystery. He would have liked to imagine the grand mansion in which they lived, and Mrs Courtney in particular, but couldn’t. A muslin veil hung between them.

He felt so helpless he began playing with himself. He was playing with himself in Mr Olliphant’s study when Mrs Olliphant came in. She had the sniffles.

Mr Olliphant was sick. They prayed for him in church on Sundays. Mrs Burt said the poor soul’s bones were crumbling away. He was replaced by that Mr Ruffles, who was enthusiastic, but not much more educated, it seemed, than everybody else.

For some while it wasn’t known what to do with Hurt. ‘Better put ’im in the Infants.’ Mumma wouldn’t come at it yet.

One morning, it was a Monday, she began brushing at his hair, although he knew how to do it himself. She said: ‘Put on your cap, dear. I’m gunner take you down to Courtneys’ with me. Provided you behave good. You know how to be good, don’t you? Some of the girls are very refined, and wouldn’t put up with a bold little boy.’

He didn’t say anything, but stuck his cap on. She gave him a wet kiss.

She took him by the hand, and they walked through the streets, quickly at first, then slower because of the baby inside her. Mumma was humming out of tune. He was able to withdraw his hand.

‘This is my proudest day,’ she said. ‘They won’t believe what I tell them. Or if you show them a likeness they won’t no more than half look. They’re so taken up with their own ideas, you’ve gotter show them the real thing.’

‘I don’t want to be shown.’ There was a nail eating into his toe.

‘Some of those maids,’ she said, ‘don’t even listen to what you tell them about the weather.’ Then she began to advise: ‘You won’t go round in front, will you? Or into the toolshed. Or bush house. Or spoil Mr Thompson’s tuberous begonias? I dare say May, who’s a good soul underneath, will dish you up something nice for dinner.’

In spite of the baby inside, Mumma jumped a puddle. She was so excited at their outing.

He continued walking with his own thoughts, apart from Mumma, down through the street where the better houses began. He touched the leaves of some of the glossy bushes to find out whether they felt as fleshly as they looked. Some of the flowers had a scent of ladies’ powder. Birds rose and fell in the air like the notes of music out of the piano shops in Surry Hills.

When they reached the gate on which was painted

SUNNINGDALE

Tradesmen’s Entrance

Mumma took his hand again. Going down the steps she was not so much leading as leaning on him. He could hear her breathing.

‘You won’t do anything, Hurtle,’ she breathed, ‘to make me ashamed. You’re what I’ve been trying to tell them about.’

He could feel his face swelling with shame.

‘You’re what Pa and me knows we aren’t,’ Mumma mumbled lower than before.

He would have liked to shake her off, but with all there was to look at, he forgot to try.

Everything at Courtneys’ had a look of new. Even the banana tree. The dead leaves must have been picked off; the live ones might have been varnished. The rubbish bins shone like silver. The banana tree was swelling and fruiting, very purple. He was reminded of his own paler one. Then of Pa’s wrinkled-looking, ugly old cock.

The girls, who were drinking their early tea, woke up quickly on seeing Mrs Duffield’s surprise. One old tortoise and an upright person with no front exchanged glances of disapproval. A thick woman, who had shaved her chin, giggled and giggled.

The tortoise licked her lips, and said: ‘Madam never allowed children.’

The upright person crooked her finger in agreement.

‘Is this the boy, Duffles? Well, I never! He’s gorgeouser than the photo even!’ This from a girl with a mole above her lips, who was all for kissing, but he didn’t want it.

‘I’m Lizzie,’ she crowed at him. She was wearing a stiff, shiny collar. He could smell her, though not unclean, inside her starched, lilac dress.

The girls’ dining-hall was full of the glare of waxed linoleum: a yellow brown.

A woman heaved in her chair at the head of the table and looked back at the newspaper: it was yesterday’s. She was what really mattered. And him. She was of a muddy brown colour, her eyelids thick, purple at the edges. The eyes were dull but interesting, with little specks of yellow in the whites.

Mrs Duffield said: ‘He’ll be no trouble, May. Hurtle’ull play in the yard. He’s a quiet, sensible boy.’

She was gasping, though, as she supped the hot tea Delia the bristle-chinned girl had poured. Then she smiled, quirking up the corners of her mouth. He hadn’t seen Mumma like this before.

‘And what does His Lordship fancy?’ Lizzie gave him a scone in which the melted butter had set again in lovely dobs.

Lizzie was their friend.

Then May put away her paper, and heaved herself up from the head of the table. She buttered the corner of a loaf, and spread it with thickest, purple jam. ‘This is what boys like.’ She gave it to him.

May seemed like a woman who wouldn’t often speak: she was too important. Now as she went about her business, she was bulging out above her stays, under her brown dress, but no one would have drawn her attention to it.

‘Cut some bread and butter for “inside”, and cut it thin, Delia,’ she ordered the bristly woman. ‘Can’t be too thin. They like to blow off their trays.’

May herself had begun throwing kidneys about by the handful in the kitchen. The kidneys made a soft plop. One or two she squinted at very close, and chucked into a bin.

Mumma explained, though there wasn’t any need: ‘That lady’s the cook. If you speak to her, you’d better call her Mrs Noble.’

After the rest of the girls had sat there a while longer, controlling their wind, and grumbling about conditions, they went to their work in other parts of the house, and Mumma took him with her to the laundry, where she lit the copper and filled the tubs. He didn’t know how he would pass the morning. He looked inside the toolshed, and stuck a horsehair from the shoulder of an old coat into a fly’s arse. It was rather a large, striped fly, which flew bumbling up a window-pane. In the bush house he broke a tuberous begonia, and had to scuff it into the bark in which the fleshy plants were growing. Then he threw a stone at a thin tabby in a red collar.

But he couldn’t think what to do.

On and off Mumma came out, and pegged wet clothes on the line. On and off he went into the laundry, into the wood-smoke from the copper, and there was Mumma scrabbling at the clothes in the blue water, her skin shrivelled to a whiter white. Although Lizzie and Delia at early tea had spoken about slavery, Mumma looked happier at Courtneys’ than he had ever seen her.

Some time after eleven o’clock tea, before what the girls referred to as ‘luncheon’, Lizzie came to Mumma and said: ‘Come on, Duffles, I’m going to take you on a private tour of the millioneers’ nest.’

Mumma kept flicking the water off her wrists back into the tub, she had got so nervous. ‘Oh Lizzie, do you think we ought? She might catch us at it.’ You could see though, Mumma wished for nothing so much as to see the inside of the grand house.

Lizzie said: ‘She’ll be late back. I know. She’s gone to Madame Deseeray to try on a new gown that’s arrived.’ She took hold of Mumma by the wet wrist, and began to pull.

Nobody had mentioned him, but he saw to it he wasn’t left: the door covered with green felt, which shut out the noise of the kitchen from the rest of the house, puffed shut behind the three of them.

Mumma remained so nervous she could only hobble weakly in her old shoes in Lizzie’s tracks. She was further embarrassed at sight of the upright person, whose name was Edith, cleaning silver in her pantry in a pair of gloves.