Patrick White - Voss

These papers contained the thoughts of which the whites wished to be rid, explained the traveller, by inspiration: the sad thoughts, the bad, the thoughts that were too heavy, or in any way hurtful. These came out through the white man’s writing-stick, down upon paper, and were sent away.

Away, away, the crowd began to menace and call.

The old man folded the papers. With the solemnity of one who has interpreted a mystery, he tore them into little pieces.

How they fluttered.

The women were screaming, and escaping from the white man’s bad thoughts.

Some of the men were laughing.

Only Dugald was sad and still, as the pieces of paper fluttered round him and settled on the grass, like a mob of cockatoos.

Then the men took their weapons, and the women their nets, and their dillybags, and children, and they all trooped away to the north, where at that season of the year there was much wild life and a plentiful supply of yams. The old man went with them, of course, because they were his people, and they were going in that direction. They went walking through the good grass, and the present absorbed them utterly.

MRS BONNER had come out in a rash, due to the particularly humid summer, or to the shortage of green vegetables at Sydney (neither would she be robbed), or sometimes she would attribute her physical distress — privately, in case any of her family should laugh — attribute it to the impossible situation in which she had been placed by the pregnancy of her servant, Rose Portion. For Rose was still with them, very heavy, very shameful. Mrs Bonner would refer to her maid’s condition as Rose’s illness . It was intolerable, as was her own helplessness.

‘I understood,’ said Mrs Bonner to her friend, Mrs Pringle, ‘that there was this institution of Mrs Lauderdale’s for fallen women, but I find, on making inquiries, it is not for those who exhibit, shall we say, material proof of having fallen.’

Mrs Bonner dabbed her lip.

‘I really do not know what to suggest,’ sighed Mrs Pringle, who was herself legitimately pregnant, and who could take no serious interest in a convict woman’s fall.

‘In a normal family,’ complained Mrs Bonner, ‘responsibility for such matters would not be left entirely on one’s hands.’

‘Oh, but Mrs Bonner, no family is normal ,’ Mrs Pringle cried.

‘Is it not?’

This did not comfort as it should have.

‘Children are little animals that begin to think by thinking of themselves. A spaniel is more satisfactory.’

Mrs Bonner looked shocked.

‘I will not deny that children are dear little things,’ conceded Mrs Pringle, who had a lot of them.

‘Nobody would expect a tender child to offer mature advice,’ Mrs Bonner pursued, ‘but a husband should and does think.’

‘A husband does think,’ Mrs Pringle agreed, ‘but that, again, is a different kind of thinking. I believe, between ourselves, Mrs Bonner, that these machines of which all the talk is at Home would never have been invented, if men were not in sympathy , so to speak, to a great extent . I believe that many men, even respectable ones, are themselves machines .’

‘Really, Mrs Pringle?’ Mrs Bonner exclaimed. ‘I would not suspect Mr Bonner of this, though he does not think my way; nor will he offer suggestions.’

Mrs Bonner was again unhappy.

‘It is I who must bear the burden of Rose.’

Ah, Rose, Rose, always Rose, sighed Mrs Pringle. Mrs Bonner had become quite tedious.

‘We must think of something for the wretched soul,’ said the kind friend, and hoped with that to close the subject.

Mrs Bonner, who was a tidy woman, would have turned her maid into the street and learnt to think no more about it, if her family might not have reminded her. In the circumstances, she did not dare, and the question of Rose’s future continued nagging at her martyred mind.

One afternoon of deepest summer, when a brickfielder was blowing, and the hideous native trees were fiendish, and the air had turned brown, Mrs Bonner developed a migraine, and became positively hysterical. She flung herself too hard upon that upright sofa in the drawing-room, on which it was her habit to arrange people to listen to music, and was sobbing between gusts of eau de Cologne.

‘But what is it, Aunt Emmy?’ asked her niece, who had swirled in.

They were alone on that afternoon, except for the heavy Rose, since Belle had been driven to the Lending Library, and Mr Bonner was not yet returned from the establishment in George Street, and Cassie and Edith had started, unwisely, on a picnic with acquaintances while the gale was still threatening.

‘What is it?’ Laura asked, and was smacking the backs of her aunt’s hands.

‘I do not know,’ Mrs Bonner replied.

For, it was everything.

‘It is nothing,’ she choked. ‘It is the dust. It is those dreadful trees, which I can only wish all cut down.’

Waves of resentment surged through Mrs Bonner.

‘It is that Rose,’ she cried, as wind struck its greatest blow hitherto, and sashes rattled. ‘For whom we must all suffer. And cannot receive, in our own home, except our most intimate acquaintance. Because of Rose. And Belle, I am ashamed, must see this everlasting Rose. To say nothing of the young girl in the kitchen, to whom it is an example that could well influence her whole life.’

‘There, Aunt,’ said Laura Trevelyan, and produced her own green smelling-bottle.

‘Then it is Rose,’ she added.

‘I will not deny I am distracted,’ Mrs Bonner sobbed, but drier.

The younger woman had sat down, and, after she had reconciled her watered silk to the rather awkward little chair, announced with a composure that might have been rehearsed.

‘I think, Aunt, that I have a plan.’

Mrs Bonner sniffed so sharp that her nostrils were cut by hartshorn.

‘Ah, dear Laura,’ she gasped. ‘I knew you would.’ And coughed. ‘I believe you have had one all the time, and for some reason that I do not understand, chose to be naughty.’

The young woman was very grave, yet calm, on her wave of grey silk that she was smoothing and coaxing.

I do not understand Laura, Mrs Bonner remembered, not without apprehension.

‘What is your plan?’ she asked.

The young woman was taking her time. She was quite pregnant with some idea waiting to be born. She would not be hurt by any precipitate behaviour of others. She was shielding herself.

And so, she lowered the lids of her mild, yet watchful eyes. At the same time, her engrossed expression did allow her to smile, a smile of great sweetness. Aunt Emmy had to admit: Laura’s face has melted.

Laura said:

‘It is a plan, and it is not a plan. At least, it is the beginning of one, which will grow if circumstances permit.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Bonner, who had hoped for a strong box in which to lock her annoyances. ‘It is not a secret plan, I hope?’

‘It is so simple that I am afraid you may not call it a plan at all.’

‘Tell me,’ Mrs Bonner begged.

‘I cannot tell you, except the beginning of it, because the end has still to come. But, for a start, I have brought Rose down from the attic into the spare room.’

‘Into the best room!’ Mrs Bonner hissed.

‘She will stay there quietly. I will take her all her meals on a tray. It will be a matter of a few days, by Rose’s calculations. I have engaged a midwife, of good reputation, from inquiries I have made, who lives in a cottage in Woolloomooloo, and whose name, you must appreciate it, is Mrs Child.’

‘In the best room!’ Mrs Bonner cried.

‘What is all this?’ asked the merchant, who had come in.