Happy Valley (17 page)

On the 29th of May Charles II rode into London with a pealing of bells, read Willy Schmidt. Rodney Halliday picked a stopping of blotting-paper out of a hole in the desk. It made his tooth ache, that hole, where the chocolate got in, and going to Moorang made it ache worse, the drill, as breath swept down announcing onions for lunch. Dr Grey had a wart on his face. Mother said, your teeth, Rodney dear, are a kind of investment, your grandfather could crack nuts with his when he was seventy-five, so you must tell Mother if you think a hole, yes, Mother, he said, but the drill touched, squirmed, was hot behind the knees. Willy Schmidt’s voice was limp and nasal, announcing a peal of bells, though without conviction, it was after lunch, and the air was brown with flies. Miss Purves rang the bell for morning break. That was a peal of bells, for ten minutes’ freedom, or sometimes not even that, and Charles II had
how many years after he got the Roundheads out. Andy Everett was a Roundhead. Cromwell had a wart on his face. They made the fountains run with wine to show that freedom, like the peace procession, when Father had gone to the War, said Mother, and she wasn’t married to Father yet, he was very young, and then there was the Armistice and Mother knew that Father would come back, and everyone in the streets, and confetti and lights, and Mother began to cry because she knew she would marry Father now, there were fireworks at night. The Restoration. They sent round the plate for two Sundays to restore the place behind the altar where Everetts’ mare kicked a hole in the wall. Cromwell broke the glass. Andy Everett threw stones and they stung on your legs, sometimes ploughed up the skin. Mother sat on your bed after prayers, don’t mind, Rodney, she said, because soon we shall go away from here, and Sydney will be a peal of bells, where you go as a boarder, Father drive us down in the car. Rodney Halliday drove into Sydney with a pealing of bells. St Mary’s was a Catholic church, you did not go inside, they were always dressed in black. Mother wore a paste pin, that was something to look like diamonds, that Father brought back, at St James where George was christened, and they went to Leura for their honeymoon. George was born, they said come and see your brother, it smelt of powder and cotton-wool, and you didn’t want to see, didn’t, take me away, you said, to Mother lying in bed, she was under a mosquito net. Parliament had voted the King, read Willy Schmidt. That was Charles the Second, Charles 2. Father said to Professor Birkett, I’ve got two boys, Professor, the funny thing is it doesn’t make you
feel any different at all. In the encyclopaedia Charles II had Nell Gwynn, but not in the history book, that was Willy Schmidt’s voice reading to the class. Willy Schmidt did not know that, or Margaret Quong, the day she came along the road and he was watching the bull over the fence, and Nell Gwynn had something to do with soldiers that were too old to do anything else. Father was thirty-seven. Mother said, go for Father, Rodney, he’s wanted out at Ferndale at once, poor Mrs Anderson’s broken her leg, he’s just gone up the street, she said, and there was a hawker in the street, that Syrian whose dog had mange, and the penknives, your Dad’s just gone up the street, Mrs Everett said, she had a clothes-peg in her mouth, he’s gone up towards Miss Browne’s, she said, and going to Miss Browne’s did not want, knock at the door, I’ll come at once, he said, and she had cool hands.

Three o’clock was a drone in the schoolroom from so many voices in an undertone in a wooden receptacle, with “Willy Schmidt’s voice pitched in a higher key, a solo instrument above the orchestration of sigh and whisper, the loud percussion of Molly Abbott’s pencil-box falling bang on the floor. Ernest Moriarty closed his eyes against the glare of three o’clock, unavoidable though the drone, and it was better to make them read, avoid the necessity of explanation, drawing up words through the swollen channel of the voice. The little veins on Ernest Moriarty’s eyelids were sharply red. He held his hand in a shade above his eyes, looking down at a page of the book.

That’ll do, he said, when the paragraph sounded at an end. Next Gracie Philipps, please.

Rodney Halliday moistened a pellet of blotting-paper and stuffed it back inside the hole. Dr Grey had a nurse who mixed the stuff, she offered it on a piece of glass, he rammed it in, it was over, you felt pleased. The clock jerked, had cool hands. Nell Gwynn was a concubine, like in the Bible, only a good concubine with old soldiers, there were good and bad, it was difficult to know. I’ll come at once, he said. But you needn’t go, Rodney, she said. Yes, he said. He felt shy. There were big squares on her dress as she held out her hand, the stuff cool, and Father said, well good-bye, Alys, Mother called her Miss Browne, and you called her that when you were still too young to call her anything else. Father whistled going downhill. Father made you shy. If you had music lessons, only it was cissie to have music lessons, Father said it wasn’t, but what would Andy Everett say, what would Miss Browne, Margaret Quong said Miss Browne was the loveliest person she knew. Her arms were cool as she opened the front door.

Rodney looked across at Margaret Quong. She was looking across. Their glances clung for a moment in the wilderness of bent heads. Then they looked away quickly, both, as if they had encountered a mutually intimate thought.

Margaret Quong scribbled on the edge of the page. There were scribblings all round the edge of the page, flowers that opened for no reason, a ship embarking into the print. To-day is a music lesson, she said. I have not practised, I don’t care, and why should I practise, anyway, why play, go up there or stay away, play away the stay away. Her pencil furrowed the paper with a black line, inscribed
an A.B. on the face of a shield, shaded it, reduced it to black. She felt sick inside. It wasn’t the heat. Mother said, you’re looking yellow you want a pill. She wanted to cry. She went into the shed at the bottom of the yard and lay down on the hessian and cried. The hessian was rough on her face, it smelt of dogs, because this was where Bonnie had had her pups that Rodney Halliday came to see. But she did not care, she put her face down on the hessian and cried. It was wet when she stopped. It made her feel lighter to cry. She lay there with the hessian crumpled up in her hand, and there was nothing more to come, she was empty, she lay there like a shell. Rodney could not help it, did not know, had given her a shell. She wished she was at the bottom of the sea, if only you could wish, or a miracle like in the Bible, or that conjuror at the Show. It said something in the Bible about the sins of the fathers, were Rodney’s sins, should hate Rodney, was wrong, because Rodney does not know. Mother said, I’ll take you to the doctor if you don’t sit down and eat your food, all this nonsense over good food, and who do you think you are, I could tell you that, my girl. He sat in the chair as she played a Beethoven sonata badly because he was there. He had his name outside on a brass plate, and some letters. Miss Browne had a plate without the letters. A
LYS
B
ROWNE
, P
IANOFORTE.
She said, I almost went to California once, would you have come, Margaret, just the two of us together, we would have started a new life, two would have made things easier. Saying prayers for Miss Browne she took out a snapshot, kissed, that day on the hill as they picked harebells which she had in the box with the ivory rose, she kissed the snapshot and it was Miss Browne,
holding harebells with a blurred hand. She had only kissed her once. He looked past her into the sitting-room, looking over her head, to see if Miss Browne was not there, and said, well, give her a message, will you, scarcely noticed her as he went away. Mother said, I’ll take you to the doctor and he’ll change your tune, my girl. She went out into the yard and was sick behind the block. Rodney said, my father’s very clever, he knows Latin and Greek, he can play the piano too. The day she went up to the window they were playing a duet. He laughed, he said she was falling behind. Margaret dear, said Miss Browne, I’ll make you a dress for your birthday, we’ll go into Moorang and choose the stuff. She could feel her eyes beginning to swell, in her pocket Rodney’s shell clenched. Rodney had had his hair cut and his ears stuck out, not like his father’s grey hair playing a duet. She liked to play with Rodney. They made boats out of paper and sailed them in the creek.

Ernest Moriarty’s lips were violet-blue. The sun lay hot on the chalk-dust, on the blotting-pad, on the earthenware bottle of ink with ink clotted at the top. He had not slept. He was tempted to sleep in the hot sun, letting his head fall down on to the warm blotting-pad, its white surface a field of sleep. The droning of children, of flies, was conducive to sleep. Sleep in the afternoon was a bitter taste in the mouth, and those warm dreams that swept up in a violent surge, the tower of white stone and the thick shadow that caught at your feet. He steadied himself on his elbow. He must not sleep. Children stare all those eyeballs all those stones in a catapult broke the wing and it lay there on the chalk gradually soaking in stamped on the ground a magpie
or she took it up in her hands as he put on a ring they said the glove Daisy said the squeaking boots as they knelt coming up the path Mr Hagan was a ranger in Nigeria or Mozambique those oranges exchanged near Gosford but the skin was scent a sample she said my eyes are running not what you think shall we jump jump with me to show it is bottomless my love it licks off if we fall the bells clap lap. He must not sleep. He would go home later to Vic. She would make him a cup of tea, That Hagan man said he knew a man who was cured by a herbalist. Wouldn’t that be splendid, Ernest, said Vic. Splendid for Vic he hoped, hoped more than himself, because what she went through, and only sometimes irritable, and went out to the pictures with—well, he was glad he could take her, the smoke always made him wheeze, and she must have some entertainment, she said. They went into Moorang Saturday night, there was a dance at the School of Arts, you should have been there, Ernest, she said, there were streamers and balloons, as if I could go dancing about, of course, she said, and he dances very well. He liked to see her enjoy herself, brighten up, if only she didn’t, but not Vic, was steady was Vic, was not that Mrs Caulfield who ran off with the man who delivered the milk, it was in the Sun, fancy, said Vic, lived a couple of doors away from our Daisy and Fred, a quiet little thing, had a kid too that she left, and off to Melbourne on a motor-bike, I don’t remember the man, was since my time, Daisy said she couldn’t understand, and the husband was a clerk, and ever such a pretty kid. Vic said she would have liked a child. Then she brought home that dog, Tiny she called it, that died. She cried a lot. Poor Vic. He would have liked
a child, would have been different your own, not a room full of hostile eyes, that were not children, were only eyes. Hagan told a story and winked his eye. It made you cough if you laughed. Hagan said, trust her to me, I’ll deliver her back without a crack. And what happened when they got to Melbourne on a motor-bike was difficult to say or perhaps didn’t care, but he was a clerk, had known a man Berenger before he was married, insurance, but you got out of touch with people when you married, Vic said he made her sick, that was because he had a harelip. Vic said there was no dignity in a motor-bike, you wouldn’t see her on a motor-bike. Hagan said perhaps a Daimler or a Rolls-Royce. She wanted a single-seater Ford, she wanted a pianola, and a backgammon set, and a perfume spray like Lucy Adelon advertised. Hagan said when his ship came home. He was a good chap. He was glad Hagan could take her about.

Now, he said, when Gracie Philipps had come to the end of the chapter, now you can go through that chapter again, taking notice of the dates. I’ll be asking questions by and by. Arthur, put that orange away.

They hung their heads in lethargy. The roof cracked with the heat. Reading a chapter of history again was to take out from under the desk a bag of acid-drops or a hank of rubber tape. Ernest Moriarty shaded his eyes with his hand, intent on his desk, as the pencil scored imaginary exercises, stopped, quavered as the lead broke. It was too hot too too that story about a motor-bike he told she said he had a sense of humour on a motor-bike the fumes blind in a funnel in your throat they know that at seventy miles strewn with bottles of milk down a slippery slide never
never and the trees are dumb the signpost Happy Valley seventy miles like a voice through the megaphone that sings Daisy Daisy it was Fred on a bicycle built passing that pianola linoleum rolls from feet slip roll Vic Vic in a serge suit Hagan pianarolla on a pillion on a get you at the five mile if…

Look, said Andy Everett.

They looked. Ernest Moriarty’s head was black with flies. Arthur Ball blew a raspberry. Somebody giggled.

Shut up, said Andy Everett. You’ll have the old cow awake.

I’m goin’ home, said Arthur Ball.

Go on! You’re not, said Willy Schmidt.

Ain’t I just. Just you see.

Arthur Ball got slowly up.

I’m goin’ home, he said.

Betcha not game, Andy Everett said.

Yes, I am. I’m goin’ home.

An orange rolled across the floor, rested by the table leg.

Hey, said Andy Everett. There goes my orange across the floor.

That’s my orange, said Arthur Ball. You know it’s my orange, he said.

Emily Schmidt giggled. She kicked the orange under a desk.

Oo-er! sniggered Gladys Rudd, as the orange settled under her feet. She kicked it at Rodney Halliday.

Rodney Halliday picked it up.

It’s my orange, he said.

His lips were white with audacity. A time came when you did not care, that big coot Andy Everett, all hunched up with his red knees, and Margaret Quong turning to look. That’s what David felt perhaps. And the stone hit him between the eyes, he was how many cubits, with David standing over him dead.

Andy Everett’s round head bristled with slighted omnipotence.

I’ll show you whose orange it is, he said.

Rodney Halliday threw. He did not care. He threw the orange at Andy’s face. It hit the mouth with a stupid thud. It fell. It rolled roundly nonchalant and settled by Margaret Quong.