Emily Schmidt walked with Gladys Rudd, letting her smell the handkerchief.
Are you coming up this evening, Emily? asked Margaret Quong.
No, said Emily.
Why ever not?
Because.
Emily Schmidt compressed her lips. She had a face that
was small and pale and concentratedly vicious under her pale slender curls.
My Mumma said I’m not to go to Quongs’.
So did mine, agreed Gladys Rudd.
All right, said Margaret.
Her voice was very resigned. She began to walk on ahead, looking down at her feet. Behind her Gladys and Emily began to giggle. They began to sing high up in voices nasally intense, and remarkably alike:
My Mumma said I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood.
If I did she said she would…
Margaret walked on quickly bending her head. She did not listen. She tried to avoid unpleasantness. She did not ask for reasons, because reasons were unpleasant, and she knew already, vaguely underneath, that it was Father that made Emily giggle and compress her lips. It was that time about the Everett girl, and Mrs Everett going to court, and Mother had gone to court, and there was that time in at Moorang when they ran Father in for doing something you did not think about.
She hung her head and walked along. She was thin and straight, with her hair cut straight in a fringe over the eyes that were more oblique than Amy’s even, or Arthur’s, or Walter’s eyes. Chinese eyes, said Ethel Quong with very definite bitterness. Ethel Quong was Walter’s wife, and before she had married Walter, before Margaret was born, she had been a housemaid at Government House. How
Ethel married Walter Quong will keep till later on. It is sufficient to know that she is bitter about it, and that when she looked at Margaret she often said, your sins will always find you out. Only she did not think it was fair that she should pay for her sins on her own, she always insisted that Margaret should share the debt.
And that is why Margaret had acquired the habit of looking down and closing her ears to unpleasantness. She did not hear what Emily and Gladys sang. She would go back to dinner at home, and she did not care, and Father would come in from the garage wearing overalls and make a lot of pleasant jokes. She found it difficult to connect Father in overalls with the things you did not think about and which made Mother bitter, because she had married a Chinaman, Walter Quong. It was too much to unravel, all this. And on the whole she was happy, helping Aunt Amy at the store, or going for a music lesson at Miss Browne’s. Only sometimes, walking home, she felt unhappy. There was a lot inside her that got churned up.
There was a dull, mysterious moan in the telephone wires.
Rodney Halliday no longer ran. He had passed the road that led to Andy Everett’s and Willy Schmidt’s. He felt larger now. He began to whistle. Stooping down, he pulled up his socks and glanced back down the road to see the others straggle along in little groups, preceded by Margaret Quong. He liked being alone. Only sometimes he didn’t, and then he thought about it a bit, and then he preferred to be alone.
He looked from side to side of the road. The air was
very sharp. In one of the paddocks a bull was serving a cow. He looked, and he looked away. He remembered the time— he was a good bit younger—when the dogs came into the yard, and his mother went red and shooed them away, and he had cried because she would not let them play. Mother said, later you’ll understand. And later he did. And it made you look sideways at the bull out of the corner of your eye. But of course you understood. A bull and a cow. He stopped at the side of the road and had a proper look. He would have liked to stay there by the fence and see it happen again. He jingled some pennies in his trouser pocket, and a shell he always carried about. But somebody was coming and perhaps they had seen him look. It was Margaret Quong, walking along the side of the road. If Margaret Quong had seen, as she must, then he felt ashamed. But she looked down at the ground.
They both continued to walk along.
He took a look at Margaret, at that funny black hair like a doll’s, and the eyes. He saw that she was almost crying, and that made him embarrassed too, because he didn’t know what to do, or say, or if he should do nothing, or what. But Margaret did not speak. It made him uncomfortable to see her cry.
Margaret, he said.
Yes?
She did not look over from her side of the road.
Look, he said.
What?
She turned her head, biting her cheek inside. She was like that picture in the encyclopaedia.
I’ll give you that, he said.
What is it?
It’s a shell.
They began to walk in the centre of the road. He held the shell in the palm of his hand. It was pink, of curious shape, folding like the bud of a flower with brown spots on the underneath. Margaret put out her finger and touched the shell.
It’s pretty, she said.
When we lived in Sydney, he said, there was a French woman used to come to teach me French. She gave me the shell. She said it came from the bottom of the sea.
Really? said Margaret. How did she know?
I don’t know. That’s what she said.
It’s pretty all the same.
Rodney put it into her hand. Then they walked along a bit. The mud splashed up on Margaret’s stockings. She began to wipe her nose.
Her name was Madame Jacquet, Rodney said.
Margaret looked down at Madame Jacquet’s shell.
When I’m twelve I’m going to go to a proper school, said Rodney. Father says I shall be a boarder. I’ll only come home for the holidays. But now I’m only nine. I’ll have to learn Latin as well as French. Because I’m going to be a doctor. You have to know Latin for the prescriptions, I suppose.
It was good to talk to Margaret Quong, and there was a lot he wanted to tell her, about what he liked and what he didn’t. He wanted her to know. But now they had come to the turn, and she stood waiting to say good-bye.
Thank you for the shell, said Margaret Quong.
That’s all right, he said. It wasn’t much use to me.
She began to walk on, uncertainly, up in the direction of her father’s garage, where a truck had stopped for a fill at the pump. Her black woollen stockings were dotted with yellow mud. He would have to go in to lunch.
Rodney! called Margaret Quong. You can come one evening and see our litter of pups. Only if you want to, she said.
Then she went on up the hill clutching Madame Jacquet’s shell.
Somebody leaves you alone in a strange room, in a house you have scarcely been in before, and this is the surest way of feeling detached from all possible sequence of events. You are no longer part of the whole, to which in your saner moments you like to think you belong. You wait in the strange room and this is another life. You try to reconstruct this other life from the objects you see in the room, and it is all on another plane, a little monstrous, and you even think in an undertone in case it should be heard.
Well, Alys Browne was feeling something like this as she waited alone in the doctor’s room. There was no fire, and this intensified the feeling of detachment, making the objects sharper in outline, distinctly part of a life that was not her own. She sat for a bit in a leather chair holding her cut hand in her lap, feeling cold and forgotten, especially the hand, and the chair, there is nothing so calculated to
make you feel forgotten as somebody else’s leather chair in a fireless room. Then she got tired of sitting. She walked about. The woman who helped was sorting out linen in the wash-house across the yard. Alys could see her from the window, and a toy cart filled with stones lying in the middle of the yard. But there was not much to see from the window other than this.
So she went and sat in the chair again. It was still a little warm from her body the time before. The air perhaps was a little bit warmer too. And on the mantelpiece there were photographs of two little boys, one of them sitting on the floor with some bricks, looking very absorbed, and the other a few years older, standing with his ears sticking out. The elder boy was Rodney; she knew him by sight, they said good morning or good afternoon whenever they passed in the street, and she liked the way his ears stuck out. Only he was rather pale out of a photograph. And there was Mrs Halliday too, sitting on the doctor’s desk with an air of having only a moment to spare, she must jump up, the photographer mustn’t mind.
She remembered when the Hallidays came, about a year ago. She supposed that she ought to call, but she didn’t call, and she said she would call later on, and then the intention lapsed. Mrs Belper called. She said that the scones were stale, and Mrs Halliday—well, there was no atmosphere in the Hallidays’ home, and Mrs Halliday such a stick, though you could see the poor woman was ill, but you must have atmosphere in a home. By atmosphere Mrs Belper meant dogs, and pokerwork candlesticks, and people dropping in and out.
Mrs Halliday sat nervously in her frame. Alys felt sorry for the doctor’s wife. She began to be more at home crossing her legs in the leather chair, for even a railway waiting-room will slowly fit itself into your scheme if you are forced to stay in it long enough. She looked at the black rug with the hole that something had burnt, falling out of the fire, or a cigarette. There were pipes on the mantelpiece. There were books, medical books, Urn Burial, a volume of poems by Donne, and a book on Kant. She had read about Kant. She was rather impressed. And perhaps the doctor would have read Turgeniev, or Anna Karenina. But you did not talk about things like that, you came for something out of the dispensary, and then you went away again, because Dr Halliday did not encourage you to talk. He said good morning in the street. Otherwise you did not exist. His eyes were very cold. They were blue, she thought, or grey, she could not be sure. He was going grey. And now they were starting to have lunch, she could hear the plates, but the doctor had not come, or had come, and Mrs Halliday…
Then somebody opened the door.
Hello, said Rodney, looking in.
He looked a little surprised. He stood awkwardly by the door. Then he went outside again, finding nothing further to say.
He wanted to get the book and read about Columbus after lunch, but with that Miss Browne sitting there, he would go away, he could wait, he did not want to talk to Miss Browne, talk to anyone, Margaret Quong, he was glad he had given the shell, and now he could go up to Quong’s garage and have a look at the pups. He went along the
passage to the dining-room.
Rodney, called Mrs Halliday, where is George? Look at your coat! What have you done to yourself? Look at that mud!
Which was just what he knew she would say.
I fell down in the yard, he said.
Oh dear, she said, the way you ruin your clothes! Go and find George.
He’s coming, he said, sitting down.
Whether he was or not, he was hungry, even if cold mutton, he hated that. He took an onion out of the jar. Mother was standing there carving the joint.
I wish your father would come, said Mother, slicing a piece of fat. George! she called. Where is George? Rodney, you
never
help. Put those onions down at once.
All right, said Rodney. George’ll come.
He sat back and scratched his head. He wished he had someone older, like Margaret Quong, and the pups, but George was young, playing about in the backyard with a cart, or falling down and hurting himself.
There is great indignity attached to having a brother younger than yourself.
Mother! called George. I can’t, I can’t open the door.
Rodney, said Mother, can’t you see my hands are full? Can’t you open the door for George?
Oh, all right, he said. If only you would give me time.
But they drove him about. He would not take long over his lunch. He would get that book and read it alone in his room. Perhaps he would be an explorer, not a doctor after all. But perhaps there was nothing left to explore.
George was fat, and uncertain on his feet. He nearly fell over when Rodney opened the door.
Don’t fall over, said Rodney.
I didn’t!
Don’t tease him, said Mother. Georgie, darling, look at your nose! Be a man and give it a wipe.
I don’t want to wipe my nose.
It’ll fall in your food, Rodney said.
Don’t be disgusting! Mother said. Come here to Mother and let her wipe.
George was crying. He always cried.
Oh dear, coughed Mrs Halliday, what a pair of children I have!
She sat down to mutton and pickled onions, coughing still, even after a mouthful of water she coughed. She rested her elbows on the table, looking as if she wondered whether she had time to eat. Because that sheet that Mrs Woodhouse tore, and darning wool, there was no feed for the fowls, Oliver come, or Rodney call in at the store, his coat all mud like that, and the sick hen with the scaly eyes, Oliver take a gun, but a long way off, holding ears.
Hilda Halliday pushed back her plate of mutton and pickles and sat with one elbow on the table holding a hand to her chest. The thought of sickness, even in a hen, always made her put her hand to her chest.
Eat it up now, George. There’s a good boy, she said. Mother isn’t hungry. But you eat yours.
Hilda Halliday was almost forty. Oliver was thirtyfour. But they were happy, she said. Sitting on the seat in the Botanical Gardens, in the warm smell of Moreton Bay
figs, he said he would write a poem. She was wearing a yellow hat that made her look slightly pale. And of course Rodney was pale, he took after her, not Oliver, and it was not anaemia as everyone said. Fancy falling down on his back.
You didn’t hurt yourself, dear? she asked.
Why?
Falling down on your back.
No, said Rodney.
He would make a paper aeroplane and climb up into the girders at the garage at Quong’s and let it come floating down. Margaret would stand underneath. Walter Quong gave him petrol for his lighter, which he only kept to see the flame, for of course he did not smoke.
You must be careful, Hilda said.
Oliver said it too, and that Dr Bridgeman they called in about her cough, but she had not wanted to tell Oliver, and Bridgeman advised the country, somewhere bracing, it would be all right, nothing to worry, only she must have plenty of air. Air. Hilda Halliday sat at the table and took in a good breath of air. It would be all right. And Oliver was pleased, the way she had soon picked up. Only sometimes at night she began to cough, stifled a cough so that Oliver would not wake. Sometimes at night she thought what she would not think, that Happy Valley, if only they could go to Queensland perhaps or somewhere warm, she was afraid, only it was for the boys, not for herself. She could not afford to become a drag. Oliver really must shoot that hen limping about in the yard.
Rodney, she said, you’ve hurt your hand.
He was sailing in the Yellow Sea. He had forgotten his hand. Now it came back.
Yes, he said, sullenly. I hit Arthur Ball on the face.
Then you were fighting. I thought as much. You didn’t fall down on your back. I don’t like to think that you tell untruths.
He thought it sounded silly to call it an untruth when it was a straight-out lie. He bit his lip and frowned.
Oh well, he said.
No. I like to think I can believe what you say.
It was all coming back, Andy Everett, that big cow smelling of cows, and perhaps lice, with a bullet-head, bending over your bed in a dream and twisting your arm behind the lavatory at school, and going to a boarding school Father said, away from Andy Everett, if you could go, or go to your room, and it wasn’t any good trying not to think because it only came again, was no use, was again and again.
Rodney, darling, you mustn’t cry. You’re much too big to cry, she said.
But that made him cry. He hated it all. She looked at him and made it worse. He would go to her. He would go back to school. He went and put his face against her neck and cried.
There, there, she said, patting his back with her hand.
George opened his mouth. He sat, fat and surprised, with his spoon raised and a piece of potato tumbling out of his mouth.
There, said Mother. You’ll soon be going to another school. There’ll be lots of nicer little boys.
Her neck was soft, and feeling her hair against his face he whimpered softly into her hair, wanting to stay or have her come in at night when he woke, like bronchitis, with a candle, and he felt better, there were no shadows on the wall, smoothing his hair and sitting on the bed.
What’s Rodney done? said George.
Nothing. Rodney’s done nothing. Eat up your lunch.
Rodney’s crying, said George, beginning to cry.
Oh dear, she said. Which of them did it, Rodney?
No one.
He blew his nose. He felt silly. He’d go away to his room.
Don’t you want any pudding? she said.
No. I don’t want any more. I’m going to go play in my room.
Seeing him go, she turned to George.
Now there’s nothing wrong. Rodney’s upset. Who wants some apple pudding? she said.
Apple pudding, sighed George.
She put her hand to her chest. She must speak to Oliver about the boys. Rodney had bronchitis that last winter in Sydney. He said the shutter banged and woke him up. He looked like Oliver sitting up in bed, as the troopship, and she stood on the wharf with Aunt Jane, and they said the War would be over soon and it was. The country doctor’s wife showing patients to the waiting-room, only they hadn’t a waiting-room. She must tell Oliver about Miss Browne. About her cough. She must not think about it, because it made her cough, she could not eat apple pudding, but cough, and a handkerchief.
Mother’s coughing, said George.
Hilda Halliday recovered her breath. It left her uncertain. You did not know what to do next. There was nothing you could put your hand on with any certainty, except marrying Oliver, she had waited and he came back and he brought her a scarf from Paris and a paste pin. When they were married she wore the scarf. She felt safer being married to Oliver. They were very happy, she said. Six years did not make any difference, because their interests were the same, and she appreciated him, she had ideals, and she wanted to help him, if he would let her, and anyway there was a lot she could do, and he sat in his chair and told her about the patients at night. That is why it would be so terrible if anything happened. She must be careful of her health.
Oliver Halliday came into the dining-room. He was tired. His face was shadowed with the first stages of a beard.
Well, here you are at last, said Hilda.
He bent and kissed her. His face was very cold.
Yes, he sighed, here I am at last.
Father’s back, said George, dropping an apple ring on the floor.
Hilda began to carve the mutton.
You look tired, she said. How is the poor woman?
She’s all right.
And the child?
No.
She wrinkled her face in sympathy over the mutton. She would not penetrate any farther, not before George, asking
about the child that…If it had been Rodney or George. She thought she would have died when George, and that poor woman up at the hotel. She was intimately connected with the publican’s wife by a link of pain.
Here’s your lunch. You must be hungry, she said.
He was hungry, and his muscles ached from the skis and his fall, wrenching his toes like that, as he sat down on the chair. But he was back, he was home. The dining-room table was a round mahogany pond with the sauce-boat pushing whitely into port. You sat and ate. Just to eat mutton was good, Hilda sitting there with folded arms, but pale as if she had not slept. She smiled, or at least she moved her face in the way that she always did when she caught him looking at her. It was a sign of intimacy and encouragement, or a symbol of what either of these ought to be. He was fond of her, that was what made it difficult, desperately difficult, when you were fond of a person and tried to grope behind the fondness and bring out something else. There is something so passive and taken-for-granted about the state of being fond. And he did not think he had ever been anything else.
Where’s Rodney? he asked, with an onion on his fork.
Poor Rodney, sighed Hilda. He’s…
Then she thought better.
He’s finished. He’s in his room.
Then why poor Rodney?
I don’t know. He seems to be out of sorts.
She would not tell him now. He was tired. But later she would speak to him about Rodney and the boarding-school, and the fowl feed, and the sick hen. She would not tell him about the sheet Mrs Woodhouse tore because he might be annoyed. Detail irritated Oliver.