No, she said. No! You dirty brute!
As if the snake had not been killed by that raised stick. She could hardly find her breath. She took hold of her crop and hit him across the face, across his mouth, with a sharp hiss the crop falling, her breath, with all her strength, before
she ran towards the backing horse, took and mounted him, gashed him with her spurs. She did not care if he threw her, trampled her into the ground, this at least was clean.
Hagan stood watching her or not watching, he did not know, watching some act of woman on horse, a circus turn. His mouth was numb. He put up his hand to his mouth. He found he was standing with an open mouth. He felt he must shake his head that stupor clogged, holding air in his arms, this brief moment gone. Now she would go home and tell the old man perhaps. He did not care. He was touching her again, those small breasts tightly held inside the riding-coat.
The wind is wind is water wind or water white in pockets of the eyes was once a sheep before time froze the plover call alew aloo atingle is the wire that white voice across the plain on thistle thorn the wind pricks face the licked fire the wind flame tossing out distance on a reel.
She spurred the horse on across the flat, along the riverbank, where the tussocks cut past the horse’s fetlocks and the air was clear with the cries of plover. She crouched against the colt’s neck, feeling his coarse mane against her hand. There was no viciousness in him now, he carried her without protest, he almost seemed to associate himself with the inner purpose that drove her across the flat. She must get away, she said, she must get away, not so much from him as from herself. She began to cry stupidly. It came out of her mouth, broken, without a shape, and like most sounds that are uncontrolled, a little frightening to hear. The horse quickened. She heard herself blubber, broken by the wind, listened as if to somebody else, and it might have been, she had no control over herself. She put up a hand and held
the fist in her mouth, biting into her fingers to stop herself. Because something had happened that was something dirty and she had wanted something dirty to happen all the time she had ridden past Hagan hoping not to happen because she was afraid hated herself and Roger Kemble she said take me away only not that I can’t because as you see I am dirty I have always been am crying from my mouth his mouth pressed and feeling him that dead snake if only you could kill a longing for dead thoughts you have killed and buried that resurrect themselves and become tangible thought his back and I wanted to touch. The horse carried her through the wind, was wind, was power. She had got it now. She had forgotten the horse. She cried more quietly, the necessity for crying was almost extinct. And that big brute, hit him over the mouth, she had, and the way he looked she was stronger, even if he had killed the snake, killed him who had killed the snake. He had looked afraid, perhaps thinking, she will go home and tell the old man. She drew the horse down to a walk. I have him, she said, I can go into the office and say, Father, that brute, or I can say nothing, he will wait for me to say, I shall look at him waiting, both of us waiting. She felt stronger and controlled.
During the summer you looked at things with your eyes half closed, and the landscape was almost impressionist, colour and forms broken by the heat. But with the recession of the hot weather a line no longer wavered, was unequivocal. That sweep of the hill behind the town that had shimmered all summer was now static, classical, had the firmness of a Poussin in the afternoon. Late in the afternoon the sky, clarified by the early frosts, was a suave enamel blue. Autumn waited for winter with no storm of transition, only a peaceful air of anticipation was abroad to mark the change, this pause between two dominant seasons. You hardly took autumn into account. So little happened, apart from the steadying of outline and molten colour cooling off.
Sunday was still outwardly a long passage of tranquillity for Amy Quong. She lay on her bed after dinner, on the cotton counterpane, her eyes fixed half-way between
consciousness and sleep. The Virgin Mary was a vague blur, soothing, the pink and the white. And now the week was over. Voices down in the street mingled with the clanking of a bucket in the backyard. She looked at the Virgin Mary. She was outwardly content. They had bought a plot of land below Harkers’. They were going to sow potatoes there. Potatoes, said Ethel Quong, that’s all very well, that’s you Quongs all over, thinking what you’re going to get, but what about my child? Arthur said, Ethel, don’t you fuss, which was singularly unusual for Arthur Quong, committing himself to so many words. In Amy’s room, incense barely patterning the air, invaded the primness, the white and pink, and softened the crucifix of varnished oak. Her forehead was golden, polished wax. Mrs Ball said to Mrs Schmidt, I’d’ve give him in charge, if it’d been a child of mine. Exactly, said Mrs Quong, or tell the Inspector, or… Her arms were blue, Mrs Everett told Mrs Schmidt, you wouldn’t think that little runt, must have been off his head. Arthur would plough the land himself. He would borrow a horse from Schmidts. He’s a danger, said Mrs Schmidt, and what about us, what about Emily, don’t like sending her down to school. A bell pealed on the hill from the Protestant church. Voices locked and unlocked in the street. Walter said, and he laughed, his belly inside his overalls, said a man had to keep his end up and not even Margaret was a saint. Ethel said Walter always said the opposite just because he wanted to annoy, and she didn’t propose to stand around watching someone maltreat her child, because she
was
her child, both God and Walter knew, and she felt her responsibility, she couldn’t understand these Quongs.
Later in the afternoon Amy Quong went and sat on the verandah in front of the store. Her face was a smile for people passing in the street, was Miss Quong, a symbol of respect, rocking in her chair with her feet not touching the floor. In the street a stagnation of Sunday with its silence of weatherboard, the long shadows on the road, gradually licking up the light, like the cat on the porch opposite licking at her paw with pink, voluptuous tongue. Occasionally people passed by, the unsubstantial Sunday forms, stirring the silence furtively. There were some of Rudds and some of Andersons and some of Maconagheys. Amy Quong smiled at them all. There was also Schmidts’ youngest little girl. She was very fair and pink. Unlike Margaret, thought Amy, who felt herself sort of attracted to the pink and fair. But Margaret was a Quong. The day she went to see Ethel after Margaret was born she was glad the child was a Quong, though of course she could not have been anything else, what ever Ethel might have planned. Amy Quong rocked in her chair, nodding at the passers-by. Quongs had been at Happy Valley longer than most of these. The store that was built by old Quong squatted in its dirty crackle-pink, impervious to paint. Margaret was the granddaughter of old Quong. Coming one evening into the store, she cried on Amy’s shoulder, she would not speak, she put her arms round her aunt’s neck, and Amy experienced that almost demonstrative emotion that Margaret or Arthur sometimes stirred. Margaret’s arms were a black-blue. He had hit her with the ruler, Margaret said. Good evening, Mr Turner, smiled Amy Quong, and the rockers of the chair made a crunching sound on the verandah floor. Ethel said she’d
prosecute the man, the brute, and that wife of his was little better than a Sydney tart. Amy trembling over Margaret’s head. She and Arthur and Margaret who were Quongs, not so much Walter, and Ethel had only married in. A lustre bowl caught the light, twisted a face in tears. Amy smoothed Margaret’s hair with her soft and almost boneless hand. What will it do, said Amy, sitting in the back room with Ethel, what will it do, she said, writing, or telling the Inspector, not very much, no, Ethel, we’ll see, we’ll wait a little, she said. Ethel grumbled. She went home. She never liked to be found at the store. The shadows got lower on the street. Amy sat with her hands in her lap, twisted them into a ball against the cold.
Dr Halliday drove down the hill out of the direction of Kambala, where he had spent the day. In the garden in front of Everetts’ old Mrs Everett in her Sunday black nudged Mrs Ansell and winked. The lids of her eyes were a scaly red. I took Dorcas into Moorang, to Dr Burton, Mrs Ansell said, wouldn’t trust that Halliday, not with any girl of mine, not if I was in the room meself. Halliday’s car drove past contained in its own intimate hum. Oliver and Rodney sat in front complete in their own intimate thoughts. There were rifles in the car. Come on, Rodney, Oliver had said, we’ll take out the rifles, we’ll go on up to Kambala for the day, ask your mother for some sandwiches, and don’t make it mutton again. Yes, Father, Rodney said. He lay on his stomach on the verandah, he was reading Antony and Cleopatra, the battles, and he could not unravel, but did not want to go to Kambala, was sure of that, to shoot rabbits with Father, he bit his lip. It isn’t often we have a
day together, Father said. That made you feel shy. Driving up to Kambala was a long period of silence, of shyness, of searching for something to say and feeling a long way off, as Father sat at the wheel and you wished you were farther, on the verandah, or Egypt, and somewhere she put a pearl into a cup of vinegar and drank it right off.
They shot three rabbits. Then they ate their sandwiches in the shade. Rodney walled up a beetle in a tower of earth. Should they skin the rabbits, Oliver said. Rodney said he hated the feel of a rabbit that was skinned. Anyway, said Oliver, he was going to have a nap. He lay on his back in the shade with his hat tilted over his face, so that Rodney dared look at him, stretched on the ground, the way he sometimes looked at Father when he was asleep. The beetle dug its way out of a tower of crumbling earth. We shall be here all day, Rodney felt, I know that, but better at least if he sleeps, if I had brought a book, and perhaps I shall not be a doctor or even an explorer, I shall write books, only about what, that is where it gets hard, or about love, only you didn’t know, and books were mostly about love, there was always an Antony and Cleopatra, even in the Bible that sort of thing, a concubine, or perhaps you could write a travel book, like Columbus, about a voyage, where there needn’t be any love, if you had ever been for a voyage, but I shall go to Sydney soon. He looked at Oliver stretched out on the ground. A whip-bird called in the bush. We shall go to Sydney, Mother said. She sighed. But somehow there had to be love or it wasn’t a book, that is, a proper book, not those ones about Red Indians that were being put away for George, those were for children, and I am growing up,
I suppose I shall have to marry, perhaps Margaret Quong, only she is Chinese, but that might be sort of Cleopatra, I am Antony, and Father Antony, she was a concubine. He dug a little hole in the ground. He put the beetle inside and watched it try to climb out.
It was very dull. They shot two more rabbits when Oliver woke. But still it was very dull. And Oliver knew it was. But I went there yesterday, he said, I shall not go to-day, the way Mrs Belper said, well, well, doctor, you here again? So he could not go to-day. The rabbits dangled, limp, their heads dark with the clotted blood. Rodney yawned and decapitated a flower. I am here and not here, Oliver said, that is why it is dull, and he knows, or does he, what does Rodney, never speaking, he is my son, Hilda’s son, I have a duty towards him, have brought him up to shoot rabbits against his will. There is so much I want to say to Rodney, only I don’t altogether know what it is. He is Hilda’s son. Alys said, if I had a child I shouldn’t mind, because it would be your child, like Rodney, who doesn’t like me, I feel. Don’t pull back that safety catch, said Oliver’s voice, suddenly sharp. I’m not, murmured Rodney. He beheaded another flower. Alys’s child. But Alys would not have a child, that he did not want, to pin the moment of perfection and then look down and see it dead, he wanted it alive and volatile, which alone was perfection, not with a pin through its back, she must escape this, even when they said things, because it had come to that he knew, they were saying things about Miss Browne and Dr Halliday. It made him feel savage, the glance of a face in the street. They were making it something different. Only Hilda said nothing, was silent. But
you could feel a kind of silent opposition emanate from Hilda, which was only natural. She knew yesterday that the letter was from Garthwaite, that came with details of the Queensland practice, said he was willing to exchange, though not before August. That would be winter again. She came into the dispensary in winter with her hand. She was a patient. She had wrapped up her hand in a handkerchief, her mind in little artifices as a defence, and you peeled away, you probed, you knew her body and her mind, its perfections and imperfections. Before this you had not thought you could have loved someone for their imperfections, but somehow they made her more real. She was a core of reality in Happy Valley. And now they were beginning to hate, the people you passed, you could feel it. There is something relentless about the hatred induced by human contacts in a small town. At times it seems to have a kind of superhuman organization, like the passions in a Greek tragedy, but there is seldom any nobility about the passions of a small town, the undercurrent of hatred that had begun to flow about Alys Browne, or that poor wretch Moriarty. This had an unhealthy subterranean intensity. Which is what made these passions different also from the hatred between man and natural phenomena. You know how much to expect from fire or flood. You can’t say the same of your fellow-men outwardly united in a small community. A city is different again, almost a natural phenomenon. The individual may get hurt by the general trend of mass passion but he won’t be put on the table and deliberately slit open without any anaesthetic. Perhaps more acutely than anyone Hilda was conscious of this. Rodney must go to the city to
school. Rodney must be saved, she felt. And now this letter from Garthwaite, inviting them to go away, to leave Alys Browne. The silence had grown oppressive, the sharp call of the whip-bird, and the pressure of the grey leaves. Rodney sat down underneath a bush and yawned. Want to go home? Oliver said. He could see that Rodney was relieved to return, to return to what, to answering Garthwaite’s letter and Hilda’s glance, wondering if that letter, he did not tell her, and the day had been a failure, he was a failure in relationship with Rodney, in relationship with Hilda. Alys touched with her hand your face and the material present dropped away, was immaterial. You began to breathe in a far more significant world. A far more significant world was yourself, but was also Rodney, was also Hilda, even George floating boats in a tub in the yard, each their own significant world. Responsible for these. The moon dropping molten from the earth, its origin, to cool and revolve, distinct. Rodney sitting in the car on the way home is very remote, like the moon revolving in another air, but it should not be altogether like this, for moon and earth have their seasons of approach, only I perhaps have failed to accept the possibility of this, I have made no effort, and going up to Kambala to shoot rabbits is not an effort but a feeble admission of failure. Going home a failure too. We are going home.
“We are going home, said Rodney, that red tank up on the hill is almost home is a house and Father walking down the hill whistling those big squares on her dress and she said she was sick because Antony had gone because love in books seemed to make you sick and it was funny and why love and why Father.
They drove down out of the direction of Kambala, where they had been spending the day. In the garden in front of Everetts’ old Mrs Everett in her Sunday black nudged Mrs Ansell and winked. The lids of her eyes were a scaly red.
Will you let me down here? said Rodney. I think I’ll go up to Quongs’.
Oliver stopped the car.
Right, he said, and Rodney got out. Not such a bad day.
No, said Rodney. It’s been a good day.
He stood there a moment uncertain, looking past Oliver’s face. Then he turned and went up towards the garage, looking down and rather red. Oliver started the car. It slid forward comfortably, like a lie that masks an admission of failure, like Rodney going up to Quongs’, relieved.
Rodney went up to Quongs’ garage and hung about outside, because there was nobody in the garage and he never liked to go up to the house, the way Mrs Quong snapped. So he hung about and whistled a bit, and rattled a tin that was lying by the side of the road. He put some stones in the tin and rattled it aimlessly. But the street was still deserted, heavy with Sunday, for people had either gone down to stand at corners in the main street, or else were pressed into their kitchens, those Sunday groups, fitfully conversational and the faces vaguely melancholy that stare from the windows at the outside world. But at least it was better than shooting rabbits with Father and not knowing what to say. And Margaret might come out. He looked down the street stealthily. They laughed at him for playing
with Margaret Quong, called him Dolly Halliday and asked him what they played. This no longer made his face go red, as if by saturation in shame he had become immune, and playing with Margaret was a release, like reading a book, was not going down to school, was the antithesis of Andy Everett and stones.
After a while Margaret Quong came out. She was sucking a sweet in the side of her mouth. She walked down the garden path, and her arms dangled long and bony, and her legs had a sort of bony grace.