Patrick White - Voss

‘Strawberries,’ he said, dutifully.

‘Strawberries, certainly. But also a bitter draught. At least, I am told it is bitter by those who know. A young woman who was acquainted with your German. How intimately, those who are close to her refuse to admit. But it is common knowledge that they were conducting a correspondence.’

‘This is capital, Effie!’ shouted the Colonel, at last forgetful of the furniture.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Effie. ‘Capital. Then I shall claim my reward.’

And did.

Just then, one of the three old servants who had waited on Mrs de Courcy for years came to announce the arrival of the first guests. The mistress was unperturbed, since old Margery, although still able to function so admirably at her duties, was almost deaf and blind, as well as unsurprised.

‘Let us go down, then,’ said the hostess to Colonel Hebden, not without glancing moist-eyed at herself in a convenient glass, ‘let us go down and allow the worthy people to demolish what remains.

‘The young woman, by the way,’ she thought to add, ‘is under the impression that it is you who have sent for her.’

‘If it were I, not you, the situation could be embarrassing.’

‘I do not doubt that, in either event.’

As he followed his cousin, the Colonel was busily lowering his head to avoid cracking it upon the lintels, and in consequence did not attempt to prolong the conversation.

Guests were arriving all the time. The more established among them stood about between the flower-beds, on the springy lawns, and examined with an exaggerated interest the magnificent shrubs for which Mrs de Courcy’s garden was famed, while others pretended not to eye the tea-tables, which had been set up beneath the natural canopy of a weeping elm. Except for an enormous silver urn, ornamented with shells, wreaths, and mythical figures in a variety of positions, the load of these tables was protected from flies and eyes by nets, so weighted with festoons of little crystal beads that the valleys were green with mystery and the snowy peaks thrillingly exposed. While some of her guests were indulging in the ecstasies of soul that such a garden usually provokes, and others wondered whether they were correctly buttoned or whether to recognize the Joneses, Mrs de Courcy regarded everything as inevitably humorous, weaving in and out, in her expensive dress, refusing to countenance a segregation of the sexes, ladies who would talk bonnets and preserves, or gentlemen who must discuss wool and weather. Such was the skill of the hostess, everyone was soon daringly mixed, and in no time had she organized a game of croquet for the completely inarticulate.

‘I cannot bear it if we are a mallet short. Perhaps Mr Rankin will look in the little summer-house behind the tea trees. I see that he is the practical one.’

Young girls fell to neighing.

With her experience behind her, and a cool southerly breeze, the hostess could not help but succeed. Simple people, worthy tradesmen and their wives, and sheep-and-bullocky gentlemen from the country, were prevented by their very simplicity from wondering whether Mrs de Courcy might be considered fast, whereas those others who were of the same worldly category as herself were always far too busily engaged to notice. She was accepted, then, through ignorance and by collusion, and should have been satisfied. Yet she would sometimes halt within the frame of the conventions, like some imperious lily and, while eyes admired her for her beads and spangles, know that she would have preferred the summer’s coup de grâce .

‘Almost everybody as obedient as one would wish.’ She frowned at the Colonel.

‘My dear Effie,’ he laughed, ‘if I am a disappointment to you, it is because I am in some way deficient. You must learn to accept the deficiencies of human beings.’

‘There, at least, is your surprise,’ his cousin revealed, giving the most exquisitely tragic inflexions to flat words.

‘Why, Mary!’ boomed the Colonel, and had to embrace the vision of his niece.

The latter had forgotten that agreeable smell peculiar to her uncles, her father, and all acceptable men, and was, in consequence, taken aback. In her embarrassment and pleasure, she was warning him about her good hat.

‘What! Grown so old?’ protested Colonel Hebden.

‘And Miss Trevelyan, who has so kindly accompanied Mary from her school.’

Now he did notice the person in the grey dress, whom Mrs de Courcy had summed up — wrongly — at a glance. The Colonel, who was accustomed to walk carefully on approaching nests and waterholes, so as not to break sticks and cause alarm, proceeded to question his niece quite professionally on her scholastic achievements. He would ignore the schoolmistress for the time being.

Laura Trevelyan was perfectly at home in the environment to which she was no longer expected to belong. There were few by now who recognized her. New arrivals in the Colony, of whom invariably there seemed to be a preponderance, were unaware of her origins, and those who were safely established had too little thought for anything but their own success to point to an insignificant failure. This judgement of the world was received by Laura without shame. Indeed, she had discovered many compensations, for now that she was completely detached, she saw more deeply and more truthfully, and often loved what she saw, whether inanimate objects, such as a laborious plateful of pink meringues, or, in the case of human beings, a young wife striving with feverish elegance to disguise the presence of her unborn child.

This young woman, arranging stole, gloves, and a little, fringed parasol, did approach the schoolmistress with some defiance, and remark:

‘Why, Laura, fancy meeting you. Mamma understood from Mrs Bonner that you had renounced the world.’

‘Why, Una,’ Laura replied, ‘if Mrs Pringle understood that I had entered an enclosed order, that was misunderstanding indeed.’

Then the two friends stood and laughed together. If Mrs McAllister laughed too long, it was because she had always disliked Laura, and Laura had lost in the game of life. Now was the moment for Una to produce her husband, which Una did, as further evidence of her triumph; whereupon Laura recognized the eligible grazier of the picnic at Point Piper. So what more remained for Una Pringle to achieve? Unless the days upon days upon days.

‘How happy you must be at Camden,’ Laura said.

‘Oh, yes,’ Una was forced to admit. ‘Although there are still a great many alterations to be made. It is one of those houses. And the white ant, I do believe, is in every sash.’

Una’s orange giant stood with his fists upon his hips, and grinned. His teeth were broad, and wide-set, which fascinated Laura.

‘And lonely,’ continued Una McAllister, closely examining Laura Trevelyan. ‘You would not believe it could be lonely at Camden.’

Una’s husband almost split his excellent coat.

‘You will soon have the baby,’ Laura consoled.

Una flushed, and mentioned strawberries.

So her husband followed, with the patience of a man accustomed to coax a mob of sheep through a gateway.

After that, Laura Trevelyan remained standing, in her grey dress, in the midst of the company, and it appeared as though, for once, Mrs de Courcy had failed, it could have been deliberately, until Colonel Hebden approached, on his long and rather proppy legs, and announced without preamble:

‘Miss Trevelyan, I would be most interested to have a few words with you on a certain subject, if you would spare me ten minutes.’

Knowing that he was to be her torturer, Laura Trevelyan had not looked at Colonel Hebden until now. His face was kind, although its remaining so would perhaps depend on whether he attained his object.