Patrick White - The Vivisector

But his painting was coming along, together with two new versions of it. As the meeting with his patroness approached, the act of painting became a duel between Mrs Davenport and Rhoda Courtney. Rhoda’s pointed mask wore at times an expression of malicious cunning; while at her obdurate worst, he would bring on her rival, at least her swashbuckling figure, for he hadn’t solved the problem of Mrs Davenport’s face.

Early on the day of his social engagement he thought he wouldn’t go. Rhoda was parading such an air of tenderly rapt dedication to her oracles, she could have won; in fact at that instant he was so well pleased with what he had done, he caught himself standing back, his mouth furled in a juicy funnel as though to suck up the milky tones of Rhoda Courtney’s sickly flesh. He left off as he began to dribble.

Shortly after he decided after all to appear at Mrs Davenport’s. Opposed to Rhoda’s iron will was his own desire to preen. (During lunch he had gone so far as to make an idealized drawing of himself on the back of an unopened letter.) So now he nipped along the bathroom and put a match to the geyser. The brown stain on the bottom of the bath didn’t encourage total immersion: instead he washed his neck, his feet, his armpits, and his crutch.

Unlike his face, his body was still unravaged, and he would dress it well, in a suit by Benson (late of Holly & Edwards, New Bond Street). The back, he realized from the glass, was a masterpiece of cutting.

A dash of Cologne on a handkerchief, in which he sank his face: he should have heard his spurs jingle; but he was at once depressed by the weight of everything imaginable.

He went down down, the depth and length of his house, it was never far enough in a crisis, out to the wreck of what had been Miss Gilderthorp’s conservatory. It was in almost every event the least effective antidote to melancholy. This afternoon a jaundiced light had blundered in through the vaulting of deathless aspidistra, the tracery of asparagus fern, to splinter into fragments of many-coloured glass and rustling, empty chrysalides on the tessellated floor. From outside there was a scent of runt apples rotting in the arrow-grass at the roots of the privets.

He backed out of the conservatory, carefully shutting the door on what he must preserve for some use still to be decided.

A survivor-parlourmaid, tough as an aspidistra, heavy with powder instead of dust, opened the door of Mrs Davenport’s large house. Of a period no longer fashionable, the house had been made desirable by wealth. There were glimpses of tame sea through clumps of bamboo and strelitzia, but a bed of salvia burning too fiercely spoiled to some extent the jade-and-tussore effects of the bamboo.

‘Mr — Duffield? Oh, yes, Mr Duffield!’ The parlourmaid gave him her whiskery smile. ‘Madam will be so pleased.’

She led him over floors of long, dull-red, beautifully waxed timber, explaining that her mistress was upstairs changing. The size of the house, and the clatter of their feet alternating with a stealthy padding as they trekked across islands of Bokharan rugs, seemed to force the maid into collusion with the guest.

In the smaller room into which she introduced him, three ladies were unexpectedly seated, two of them discussing their friends while the third listened, brightly erect.

When the maid presented the new arrival, murmuring something which approximated to a name, the two chatterers were silenced. Out of the embarrassment caused by the surprise entrance, the prettiest lady inquired in the jolly voice you put on for your friends’ servants, especially if the friends are rich: ‘How are your feet treating you, Emily?’

Emily replied: ‘No better, Mrs Halliday. My feet will be the death of me,’ and hobbled out.

The silence was not lightened by the commingled perfumes of synthetic flowers, not even by the more aseptic scent of gin. He sat down in what had become a waiting-room. Each of the ladies, in her way, appeared to be estimating his possibilities. There was a Miro on one wall, a Léger? yes, but a bad one, on another. Very white and austere, the walls.

‘Don’t you drink?’ Mrs Halliday suddenly ear-splittingly asked, making a great play with a decanter and her bracelets. ‘So good for you!’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘but not now,’ his voice sounding hoarse.

He might have to use his wits.

The third and hitherto silent lady braced herself to make a contribution. ‘Mr Trotter — my husband — never touches alcohol before sundown. It’s a matter of principle.’

‘Good for him!’ said the military-looking one in her peaked cap and studded belt. ‘But not for me, Mrs Trotter,’ she added, and took up a copy of Vogue; it returned them all to the waiting-room.

A wave had begun to rise in Mrs Trotter, from out of her bust, flooding her neck, and reaching the roots of her naturally carroty hair, till her face and throat looked completely covered with a claret birthmark.

Mrs Halliday averted her eyes. ‘What’s that wretched Olivia up to?’ She parted her jewellery in search of a watch.

‘Changing, we were told,’ the military lady reminded them. ‘If you ask me, she bloody well forgot she was expecting us.’

‘Mrs Davenport’s so terribly busy.’ Mrs Trotter might have been defending herself. ‘She’s promised to help me with the crèche . She’s promised me a cheque. Only she’s almost run off her feet.’

The military one guffawed.

‘Truly, Mrs Horsfall!’ Mrs Trotter protested. ‘Don’t be unfair! ’

But Mrs Horsfall continued guffawing into the pages she was looking at. ‘Here’s Maggie Purser going as Emma Hamilton!’

‘Don’t slay me!’ Mrs Halliday was wearing a hat with a latticed brim through which she liked to use her eyes. ‘At least it’ll come natural.’ She was turning this way and that, and frowning through her pastrywork. ‘Why does Olivia allow her gardener to plant salvia of all things? It’s so ghastly — I mean — so municipal — and hidjus.’

The salvia beyond the window did appear an unchivalrous mistake beside the cooler flowers of Mrs Halliday’s person, to say nothing of the austere room, with its few dispersed, but perfect objects.

‘I’m mad about Mrs Davenport,’ Mrs Trotter clumsily confessed.

Mrs Horsfall sat turning the pages. ‘I’m going through a sort of depressive phase.’

‘Oh, neoh, Jo darling! Mrs Halliday tried to assist. ‘All you need is a change of something.’

Mrs Horsfall closed the glossy pages and let the magazine fall plunk on the pearl-shell table. ‘Charitable, Moira, this afternoon. ’ She sat back, grinning and basking.

By moments they became aware of the man sitting amongst them. Mrs Trotter almost apologized once, but didn’t dare in the circumstances.

Instead she asked, and again she was plastered with the claret birthmark: ‘Do you think Mrs Davenport’s unhappy — all alone — since Mr Davenport died?’

Mrs Horsfall said: ‘Guy’s death was an immense relief. Guy Davenport would have made any woman’s life hell.’

‘I understand—’ Mrs Trotter had difficulty bringing it out—‘he died very tragically.’

Mrs Horsfall took aim at Mrs Trotter. ‘He was walking on the roof of a train. He was decapitated,’ she said, ‘by a tunnel.’

Mrs Trotter made a sincere though wrong sound, while opening her handbag to look for help.

‘I wonder Olivia didn’t sue the L.M.S.,’ Mrs Horsfall continued. ‘Anyone else would have.’

‘Oh, but surely darling — walking on the roof of their train?’ Mrs Halliday pointed out.

‘Why not? Olivia would have looked divine in court. She could get away with anything. But she didn’t need to.’