Happy Valley (31 page)

Not any more now, she said.

She watched him gather his breath.

I like the sound of the place, she said.

What?

The place that Father’s going to buy. I shall breed shorthorns, she said.

And sheep?

His voice vague.

Oh yes, and sheep. But I’m more interested in cattle, she said. It’s going to be fun having a place.

He wanted to kiss her. She saw his face preoccupied, groping, moving towards. She opened the stable door.

Mother and I are sorting things, she said.

The daughter of Mr and Mrs Stanley Furlow of Glen Marsh will leave with her husband for their honeymoon in Java before taking up residence near Scone. He watched her go across the yard, feeling she had not told him what he must do next.

Mrs Furlow had ceased to write to Mrs Blandford. Since the night of the 23rd she had forgotten to put any cream on her face before getting into bed.

Rodney went down to the store. They were going away soon. He beat the wire fence with a stick, heard a humming in the wires, stopped to listen to it running down the hill. Though perhaps the telephone wires overhead, perhaps these, he thought. But it did not matter very much, because Mother said, dear me, Rodney, how you’ve grown, we can give these shirts to Mrs Schmidt, held up a shirt to see. It was the telephone wire after all, and not the fence. He looked up at the telephone lines, followed them past a knot of birds that sat frail and bunched in the wind, followed them down the plain, his eyes picking out their progress through the tussocks, always the black line. The telephone wires were fastened to the outside world. Time and Happy Valley had given this a legendary tinge, and the telephone murmuring of far events was nothing short of oracular. Until said Mother, what do you think, we’re going, Rodney,
in a voice that suggested more than Moorang and the dentist or a picnic in Kambala on Sunday afternoon. The line of the horizon moved in Hilda Halliday’s voice, moving to embrace. He felt her hair. And Mother sometimes cried. It’s nothing, Rodney, she said, because now we are going away, we shall leave you in Sydney to go to school, we shall buy you some new clothes, these will do for the Schmidts. He felt the nearness of a voice. They were very close, he and Mother, in the silence of unfolding shirts. They looked out of the window, before it became dark, and watched the line of hills slowly dissolve. Rodney Halliday drove into Sydney in a peal of bells. She put her hand on his shoulder and told him he might light the lamp.

It made him want to sing now, often he felt he must sing, or make a noise without words because these did not matter, or the words in telephone wires. Going down to Quongs’ he struck at the fence with his stick, listened to it burr, opened his mouth and sang into the wind. He wished he could play a trumpet, or like Chuffy Chambers, the accordion. The Moriartys were dead. There had been a trial. You walked past the house where they had lived, and your heart beat pretty fast, at night you wanted to run. There had been a murder. If you said it at night the shadows were big on the wall, making you sit up in bed and listen for a voice. A voice in the next room was life, was not walking in the yard telling yourself that death, some day you would die, but not now said the voice, as you slipped back against the pillow and fastened your eyes on the candle flame.

Rodney Halliday’s preoccupation with the idea of death was no more than spasmodic because—well, they
were going away. This was a release from the immanent shadow on the wall, the group behind the urinal, all those fears that Happy Valley implied. These would not exist in that vague but soothing state the future, somewhere behind the hills, and to which the telephone wires were mentally attached. He went on down the hill. His mind was absorbed, not in the moment, the corner of the street, the flapping of a piece of iron on Everetts’ roof, but in a series of barely defined events that time and Rodney Halliday would form out of a fresh material.

Good evening, Rodney, said Miss Quong.

She sat in the store behind the counter, crocheting a collar for a dress. She smiled. He felt the warmth in the smile of Amy Quong.

I’ve come to see Margaret, Miss Quong, he said.

Margaret! she called. She’s out at the back, Rodney, she said. You can go through the back room.

He liked Miss Quong’s voice, like her smile that was round and soft, when you came in from school to buy some bull’s-eyes, some marbles, or else a liquorice strap. He halted behind the counter and said:

We’re going away, Miss Quong.

Yes, she said. I heard.

Her hand was busy with the crochet hook. It did not stop. It played out silk into a stitch, the weaving motion, in and out, that took no account of the departure of the Hallidays. The boards of the floor were old and rough. They had lain there many years, under the feet of old Quong who had sold laces in the mining camp, of Arthur and Amy, and Margaret, the boards were a fixture, they had the stolidity
of old unpolished wood. Rodney did not know what he waited for. Only he was fascinated by the motion of Amy’s crochet hook. He felt a little bit sick in his stomach. They were going away, he had said. Farther and farther as the silk streamed, as the car. You came in from school, out of the frost, sat on a stool by the bacon machine. It was warm and safe.

But I expect you’ll come back, said Amy Quong.

Yes, he said. Perhaps.

Though not with conviction. He did not feel this. I shall come back, said Rodney, I shall marry Margaret Quong, anyway, perhaps. The intention lay cold.

He met Margaret on the back steps, in the yard the quarking of heavy Muscovy ducks and the sound of Arthur Quong who was grooming the colt.

Hello, Margaret, he said. I thought I’d come, I thought I’d…

They stood about in the yard. There did not seem to be very much to say.

Margaret Quong hummed to herself, thinking this is Rodney, I like Rodney, but really what can you say, Rodney is very young. She had all the composure of one who had just put up her hair, only she had no hair to put up. But the feeling was there all the same, something secret and complete. It was different now. Because Margaret had taken things into her hands. Mother, she said, they were drying the dishes after dinner, and Ethel Quong’s bitterness fell with a dull sting into the water in the sink, Mother, I’m going to live at the store, just like that, before she hung the dishcloth over the stove. Anyone’d think, said Ethel Quong,
forgetting her past regrets in a moment like this, that I wasn’t your mother, that I don’t count, but I’m not one to be bandied about, you can put that idea right away, Walter, what do you think of this, did you ever hear the like! Ethel’s grievance beat on her husband, but did not penetrate. He went out of the kitchen and crawled under the car, squinted up at the axle where the grease, where Gertie Ansell said, I’m not the kind of girl to go joy-riding round in cars, but perhaps for half an hour if you promise to make it that. The kettle hissed in the kitchen like the voice of Ethel Quong. Margaret put on her hat.

She went to live at the store. She would leave school and help Aunt Amy with the books. On washing days, when the sheets were heavy with grievance in the yard, she helped her mother iron, and the words of Ethel Quong evaporated in a thin and bitter steam, they did not touch Margaret, they never had. After all I’ve done, said Ethel, after all I’ve been through, and your father, and the shame, they picked him up in the street again on Saturday night, who’d’ve ever thought at Government House, I’ve got those Stills to blame for a lot, and now Mrs Ansell says she’ll have the police. Was smoothed out by the steady pressure of the iron. Here are the handkerchiefs, Margaret said.

The circumference of Margaret’s life was closed, except where it touched on Arthur’s and Amy’s, fusing unconsciously with these. But the box was untouched now in the drawer, with the harebells, the photograph of Alys Browne, and Madame Jacquet’s shell. This was over now, like crying in the shed upon the heap of hessian, feeling the texture of hessian, biting your hand against the tears. I shall
die, you said, I shall die. You lay against the ground and waited for this, before it was two o’clock, the light choking the crack beneath the door, sound stifled by the sun. It was hot in the shed. The skin of your cheeks was tightened with dried tears. You were still alive. At the store they opened a tin of herrings for tea. The glass was a little ashamed. Those Moriartys, Aunt Amy said, as the tea plopped, brown, or red as it caught the lamp, you could have them in court, said Aunt Amy, before they’d pay.

But now the Moriartys were dead, the house closed before the next tenant, the photographers had gone. Margaret did not think much about the death of Moriarty and his wife, after the first stupor, that is, when the known face is removed, leaving a gap in the habitual pattern of one’s life, because this is inevitable, but the Moriartys were of no greater purport in the life of Margaret Quong. Even Moriarty, that face connected with a ruler and sudden fear that descended as you held your arms above your head, waiting for the pain of which Moriarty for the moment was an active instrument. Felt on your arms the blows that were not from Moriarty, no physical pain, but the accumulation of misery that spilt itself in tears as you lay on the hessian in the shed. This was the significance of Moriarty in Margaret Quong’s life.

But you cried no more. Moriarty was dead. On Sunday you heard the bells first from the Roman Catholic, then from the Protestant church. Aunt Amy went to Mass. On the verandah waiting, it was Sunday, that was almost perpetual now, though you sat on a bench at school with Emily Schmidt and Gladys Rudd and another hand wrote
with chalk, he’s ever so good-looking, said Emily Schmidt, he’s boarding with Mrs Ball, and, Margaret, don’t you think, that was a question or a breath of Parma violet as Emily Schmidt bent. Margaret Quong watched the meandering of chalk. Soon it will be over, she said, soon I shall leave school. Heard the deferential voice of Emily Schmidt you can come up on Sunday, Emily said, no longer a favour when now you had stopped caring whether Sunday or the Schmidts, when you would go back to the store and it was always Sunday afternoon.

Something had happened to Margaret Quong. They could sense it, Emily Schmidt and Gladys Rudd, a sort of superiority that would not be imposed upon. Something had gradually taken place, evolving out of experience, that you did not notice at the time, not until you felt that Margaret Quong was invulnerable. Voices no longer sang going up the road, My mother said I never should, because really Margaret Quong, she wasn’t such a bad sort, only she was queer, a Chow, and you couldn’t get very far. But Margaret Quong kept her distance, as if her defence were hardly won.

Moriarty was dead. Hallidays were going away. She felt nothing so positive as exultation, not even the negative emotion of ordinary satisfaction. Because these two events no longer had any bearing on her life. She went past the fence where the brass plate said
ALYS BROWNE, PIANOFORTE,
or she went up and said, Miss Browne, I shan’t be taking lessons any more, because I really haven’t time, I am going to help at the store. A face was like a photograph, put away in a drawer, having some meaning in the context of
the past, but very little when removed from this. The room was bare of emotions where you sat and talked, where the music on the piano, open at another page, did not point back towards two heads bending by lamplight above the keys, before a knock swept the sonata into a volume of confused sound. I played very badly, thought Margaret Quong, I shall not play any more, even if the Hallidays go away, there is no point in any of this, or touching a hand that is now only a hand.

They were standing in the yard, Rodney and Margaret Quong. The tin clattered with the bran mash that Arthur was feeding to his colt. Rodney played with his knife. He could feel the reserve of Margaret, a deepening of the light, of the noises in the silence of the yard.

Let’s play at something, he said.

What do you want to play? she asked, out of the distance her voice.

She was taller than he, bony and composed. She made him feel very young.

Poor Rodney, she said, going away or coming to play, as the paper fluttered down, white, the aeroplanes from the girders in the garage roof that you caught in your arms, held, settling in the dark. There was a shell, her name was Madame Jacquet he said, it came from the bottom of the sea, which is a very long way off. It lay on the floor of the ocean in a fluttering of weeds, or in a box upstairs untouched.

Yes, she said quickly. What shall we play?

Oh, he said, nothing. I just thought.

That it would be easier to play either aeroplanes or houses than to stand, because Margaret just stood, was
sort of different, and anyway you would go away whether Margaret Quong, when you said you would marry, stayed, and Sydney was a long way from the bacon machine rasping and the frost, when you came inside it was warm, she said, would you like a glass of milk, only that was the summer, the milk cold, before Mrs Worthington died, and the Moriartys, and Margaret did not know that to die. He looked up. She was tall. She had folded her bony arms, and leant against the door like the women you saw along the street leaning against their doors and talking in the green gloom that the dahlias made. Only walking in the yard, it was night, and the smoke unravelled, and the stars, this was more than Margaret had realized. Margaret does not know this, Rodney felt, looked up with the compassion of one harbouring a secret experience.

I’ve still got the shell, Margaret said.

Oh, he said. I’d forgotten the shell.

Forgotten that Margaret or the shell, as the car streamed out, would stay, all this, and Andy Everett, the knife with the bone handle that Andy Everett broke, with which he played, cut his hand, and it bled and healed, so that after the itching you forgot, even that white scar, it was like a grub, don’t touch it, George, it’s a grub, just to see the face wrinkle up, it was only a joke, or Miss Browne said, doctor, look there isn’t even a scar. Broke off there as if. But even this was finished.

Margaret and Rodney stood in the gathering dark, conscious for the moment perhaps of a mutual thought. Looking at a face you knew. They had never spoken of this that was silent like a white scar.

In Queensland there are pineapples, Rodney said. And sugar-cane. I shall go up there for the holidays. Father says it’s a long way. But I’ll be eleven soon.

He walked in the gloom of sugar-cane, the heat, and the murmuring of flies. At eleven o’clock the sun was a shining disc in the sky. Columbus, a word, tumbled on the tongue, lumbered in the Gulf of Mexico, where the sun. He would be an explorer perhaps, touching like Columbus on a new world. He would do things while Margaret Quong stood in a doorway with folded arms. He could no longer see her face.