Happy Valley flickers up into excitement when the autumn race meeting comes round, kindled by a sort of self-importance and craving for display that you feel a week or two before the arrival of these two days, the Friday and the Saturday, not to mention Friday night when they hold the dance at the School of Arts, or as the bills have it, the Grand Race Week Ball. The posters are yellow, done by the local press, you see them cracked on a paling fence, or the smaller ones at Quongs’ and in Hills’ Tea Shop window, a rendezvous for flies, and washed paler by a yellow autumn sun. It makes you feel good to stand and look at the posters and think of the excitement of which they are the advance publicity. You can feel a hum blowing up in the wires between Moorang and Kambala, and Happy Valley and Glen Marsh, but centring in Happy Valley, you can also feel that. Stung to activity by the tingling of the wires, this
is no longer so detached, as the press stutters at the office of the Happy Valley Star, as the girls sew the buttons on their gloves or a different flower on last year’s dress, as the horses arrive in floats from Moorang in their yellow bandages and rugs, and the tempo is brisker in the main street.
By Friday they are all in town, and you can’t get a room at the pub or scarcely lean an elbow on the bar for all the people that have come, the cockie farmers, the Kambala Chows, that little man with the broken nails and the cap, or broken-voiced bookies and their clerks, and the vaguer faces without purpose that peer from a corner over a dark glass of stout. In the smoke the remarks drift, on form, on the rainfall, on the wool clip, and somebody says that somebody said that Winapot was a cert. Dogs bristle in the street, a yellow bitch with her lip drawn under the dusty wing of a car. Somebody says it’ll rain, or it won’t, Saturday at least, because every third year it rains, and in 1928 Mitchell the bookmaker skidded on the Moorang road and they found his body under the car, you couldn’t recognize his face. Looks in the glass and wonders if the green organdie, the pursed mouth censorious, if anyone can remember the year before, which a press would make as good as new, if only, if only. Dab a little here for certainty. Vic Moriarty examines her perm. Gertie Ansell squeezes a spot. And thought toys with a possibility of the fabulous, all the things you have put away for the best part of a year, twenty more pounds towards the mortgage, or that boy from the baker’s in at Moorang, or the less specifically defined hopes that spring up out of the unconscious and flutter through the fever of two significant days.
It was like this then. Calmer on Friday, though working up towards Friday night when they opened the School of Arts, when the darkness got a bit reckless, that saxophone carving its way through the wall, and the ferns panting from their paper-swaddled pots, with a quivering of trifle, and whose giggle protesting against what. Music launched out, struck back deviously, got beneath the senses, and you danced, you danced, even if it got a bit too hot, and what was heat on Friday night, the light flare falling on a face in sweat, the floor glazed by the motion of feet, when you danced on that long and undulating skein that ravelled out of the accordion.
Chuffy Chambers plays so good, the girls said as they danced past, those crumpled flowers in taffeta who glanced up between his legs towards a smile that was Chuffy Chambers playing his accordion. Chuffy Chambers liked to play. He felt warm against the holy medals he wore next to his skin, felt important with smiles and the variations wrung from accordion stops. He could play all night on a glass of beer, or give way to the saxophone, the piano, and the drums, and just smile at the moving blur of sound. Only that boiled shirt said, walking up the hill to the pictures, chuffs along behind the girls, made the shame, the spittle come in his mouth, and a sudden creeping away down the lane, saw he was with her again wearing a blue dress, she had a sort of hoop in her hair covered with white flowers. The incubator rattled, asked his name, and Chuffy Chambers, he said, because he had never been called anything else, and what sort of a name, he said, till I get down. Hagan in a boiled shirt made Chuffy Chambers’s pleasure
recede. He looked down at his finger-joints jerking over the accordion stops.
The air was intricate with conversation. A door swung, that glass panel reflecting the back of Mrs Furlow, who wore only sufficient pearls to show what her position was.
This is like old times, Vic Moriarty said, her face warm against Hagan’s shirt, a little too warm, it had moulded a saucer right in the centre of that complaining starch. Da da da-da-da-DAR, sang Vic softly against the shirt. We used to go out to the Palais, she said. Daisy and Fred and a boy I knew called Harry Jacobs. He was a buyer at Foy’s. You should just see Harry dance a waltz, you’ve no i…What’s the matter, love? You’re as quiet as a church.
Mrs Everett said to Mrs Ansell said to Mrs Schmidt look now look putting her cheek and it isn’t a shearers’ ball but what could you expect from a woman that keeps open house.
A yellow moon rose above ferns, was Walter Quong as he watched her by the door standing there, her mouth tight, and fingering a diamond bracelet, but didn’t talk to Lithgow, who was telling her how much polo he played, her face only melted into a yawn. She was thin and hungrylooking. She came up to the garage, didn’t let fall a word, only how many gallons she wanted, and then the money into his hand, her red nails on the palm of his hand. Walter Quong sighed. He shuffled the money in his pocket and waned behind a bank of ferns.
Mrs Ansell said to Mrs Ball said to Mrs Schmidt she looked a sight about the eyes and what was she up to Miss Sidney Furlow with her dress cut down the richer you were
the lower it got but you wouldn’t want her on a plate that little piece hard as a nail.
Am I? he said.
Yes, she said. As quiet as a church.
Hagan began to hum. Got on his nerves all that clatterclatch about a boy called Harry What’s-his-Name, an Ikey Mo or something of the sort dancing a waltz, as if it was of any interest, and that was what you got from women, they never knew what would be of interest to a man, he sold or bought she said, women’s underclothes she said, and got a bit flabby about the arms, said she was what age, just like a woman, cover up her age with lies, always had to cover something, or her face was thick, or say, oh no, you’ll tickle me. Vic Moriarty pressed up against his shirt. The hall was a quivering of ferns, the paper looped back, the reds and blues that Mrs Belper had pinned up, she had such taste, and now vibrated with the music, the red and blue festoons. Hagan’s shirt let out a sigh. Vic was all right, but, he said. Was a good sort. Was…
What are you thinking about? she asked.
It wouldn’t be good for baby, he said.
She giggled up into his face. She wanted to say something, wanted to say, how I love you, Clem, how you love me, don’t you, only of course that Everett girl going by, and anyway you knew, or did you, how much did you really know?
Old Furlow talking to Mrs Belper, did not take his eyes off the floor, pressed his hands upon sciatica. Hagan avoided Furlow. He made him feel uncomfortable, even if she had not told, and she can’t have told, because all those
weeks, and Furlow said, put the lambs in the lucerne or drench those wethers for worm, did not say as you expected what the devil, Hagan, look at him out of those froggy eyes, what’s all this about that Sidney told me, well it was like this. Sidney Furlow, he said. Giving her a man’s name, and a diamond bracelet, and diamonds in her hair, showing off all she’d got, and a bit more, looked at you as you went past, but wouldn’t shrivel you up, and that was what made her feel sore, if you asked her to dance, if you asked…Hagan felt Vic Moriarty growing soggy in his arms, a lump. She stood by the door in that green dress, or silver, a sort of silver-green. She did not dance. Somebody talked about polo. Hagan felt a bit small. She made you feel small. But he wanted, he wanted, he wanted to go down to the basement and get a drink. The way that red mouth looked into his eyes.
Between dances the random remarks the breath recovered sifted gently where music had been and the band wiping its mouth that laugh coiling out whipped up and fell back exhausted as if it had taken fright at the paper shades gasped shall we go out or stand on steps that circle of children no more than faces inquiring or a whisper or a silence as feet crunch down the road into distance they are tuning up that long roll of a drum which says keeping a beat with a glove beat smells of camphor and hair escaping casually from control.
Alys Browne said that she would not come, had come, wished that she had not come, though come or stay was immaterial, was the same preoccupation. I shall not look, she said, in a certain direction in case, till all directions
became heavy with danger, a face detaching itself from its surroundings, just this and nothing more. How easy it was to say in the numbness of a moment, yes, you must go away, you must not come here any more, it will be simpler like this, until you go. All this time, she felt, I have been waiting for this one occasion to watch a face, and this only a few weeks, which are a fraction of what is going to be, and am I strong enough. Sitting at home, it is easy enough to say I am self-sufficient, to contradict the glass.
Her hand encountered the thorn on a rose. Looked down, she saw the drops, not under glass, and red, these had not dried up, dried by the kisses beyond glass, these were flowing fresh, and would heal without relic. There is no relic of pain unless you want it, place it in the personal reliquary, awaiting the admiration of the constant adorer, self. The drum beat, drop by drop. It flowed on. It flowed on. Till time will begin to flow on, will not congeal in permanence. Tell yourself this, she said, tell yourself the music is not so banal that it will not flow, washing of the blood, in blood. It lay upon her finger eyeing her.
Why, Alys, said Mrs Belper, you’re spoiling that rose.
Yes? she said. It got crushed.
Watched the petals fall beneath somebody’s feet.
Such a pretty rose, Mrs Furlow said. Doesn’t the doctor look tired, poor man.
She spoke with the cruelty of innocence, Mrs Furlow on top of her wave. She bowed with the air of one, not stinting her benevolence, but conscious of its worth, while her hand wandered down her pearls, chaplet-wise, in gratitude for yet another social success.
Such fun, these country dances, she murmured to Mrs Belper. They always go with a swing.
Though Mrs Belper would understand, her cousin was secretary at Government House, would of course understand that a country dance was no more than a relaxation from the more ardent ritual of Mrs Furlow’s life. Mrs Belper, in the glow of being patronized, would have understood anything.
The head began to ache that heard twelve o’clock issue dimly out of the darkness and the Protestant church. It was cooler by the door. Oliver Halliday wiped his forehead and watched nothing in particular. Marking time at the training camp, the drum, before the streamers fell down into the sea and Hilda’s voice waved, said I don’t think I’ll go to the dance, Rodney has a cold, will keep warm in a thermos, in the dispensary, don’t forget when you get back, when the War stopped in Paris, and going into that church was to feel suddenly complete, like touching a face in the dark, like…He shifted his feet. They grated on the floor. These are the feet, he heard, he said, the opportunities you have not taken, that turn under the pillow with the closed hand, as turning over you reject again, and think, is to reject, is to think, and then the heart starts out on a one-two at the dancing class with powder in his gloves, pink, pink, pinking over, or red. Red. She must not crumble that rose. He wanted to shout, Don’t. He felt he would shout out something, and it would be that sensation of standing on your head in church, everyone thinking you mad, and you had to hold on to the pew to stop before you found it was a dream. He put up his hand to his head. He had to stop.
He had to put up his hand against the well of music that would tumble if…He felt weak about the knees.
Go outside, she said. Into the air.
I’m all right.
Go outside.
She pushed her hand under his arm, and the stem of what had been a rose. She was leading him outside.
I thought we said…
Yes, she said. I know what we said.
He let her lead him, felt the relief of waking from a dream and reality cool upon his face.
I said it might be better if we didn’t see. Until we go.
Yes. But come outside.
Mrs Ball said to Mrs Everett said to Mrs Schmidt the doctor doesn’t look well and what’s she doing well well leading him out she knows the way you can see it isn’t the first time that somebody’s opened the door.
The music swirled in gusts, or in the intervals between the dances, the conversation, right through the body of the building that bent before the passage of sound, jostled out of its tranquillity. Because the School of Arts was seldom used, had grown dusty and complaisant with neglect, dozed the year through in cold or heat, and felt the darkness rub up softly against its scabby face. It was old. Built after the store, it had a medallion with a date over its portico that stamped it with a greater sense of permanence than the weatherboard dwelling-houses had. But there was something ironical about that date, as if somebody had thought the building would last, and now it must make an effort without very much wanting to. Still, it enjoyed a sort of
sleepy importance, even if seeming to doubt the virtue of permanence. It eyed the darkness yellowly and rumbled in the basement where the supper-tables were.
Amy Quong, polishing glasses with a cloth, watched Hagan getting his breath after a glass of beer. It was cool in the basement, the coolness of beer and ham and a concrete floor. Amy Quong’s hands were cool in the belly of a moist glass that caught her small rounded face and pinched it capriciously out of shape. Her cheeks were flushed, across the brown, perhaps from the music, or perhaps from something else, though she liked to listen to the music and the feet sliding overhead. Her glance drifted over Hagan and back to her own reflection in the glass. When anyone spoke to her she started up. Her eyes rounded with surprise behind her spectacles, as if she were coming back out of her private thoughts.