She had been back now what seemed a long time, it might have been six years, or was it seven? Nothing had happened to her. She felt she was just the same, though of course she wasn’t. There had in fact been a young man in Sydney, a young man in a bank, who brought her chocolates, but she had never cared for chocolates, and there was nothing in the young man to make her start to like them better. There was nothing in that, she said. And, after all, falling in love was a secondary process. She might still go to California. She had sold her paddocks up near Kambala and had given the money to Mr Belper to invest. There were no dividends yet, but when there were she might go to California. But why California? It suddenly struck her like that. And she did not know. Perhaps that was a secondary process too. Perhaps she did not want to go away, or wanting to go away had got itself into her head as a substitute for something else. Sometimes she stopped to think about that, but she could not discover a satisfactory answer. Satisfactory answers are generally scarce.
In the meantime there was plenty to do. Before the dances she made dresses for the girls. They came up to see her, bringing their patterns, and she generally helped them to decide whether it was to be taffeta or something else. She also did most of the sewing for Mrs Furlow at Glen Marsh. Mrs Furlow drove herself in, perhaps with Sidney, bringing anything she wanted done. And it was a kind of royal progress, Mrs Furlow’s visit, because she was the wife of the richest man in the neighbourhood. But Sidney Furlow, who was her daughter, usually sat in the car. She had a very red mouth and had been to a finishing school.
If I were Sidney Furlow, Alys sometimes said. Then she stopped. Sometimes you want to go on being yourself, if only for very inadequate reasons, as if you know you will suddenly turn into a direction that is inevitable and you only have to wait. So she continued to sew and give music lessons. She could not play very well, but well enough. And sometimes she played for her own pleasure, she played Schumann, and after that Chopin, and then Beethoven with anxiety. But she liked Schumann best, because he made her feel slightly melancholy, and she just went on and on into a mental twilight and a finale of original chords.
She read too. She had started some of the Russians, Anna Karenina, and Turgeniev, but Tennyson sounded funny now, she could not read him any more. She liked to sit down at tea, and take off her shoes, and read a chapter of Anna Karenina, though sometimes she found it a bit of an effort and lapsed to the Windsor Magazine. Tolstoi was interesting though. She had spilt some tea on the seventysecond page. It gave the book a comfortable, intimate appearance, and she liked it better after that, as if she had always had it with her and had read it several times.
This was Alys Browne. She had got up early on the morning that Dr Halliday delivered the publican’s wife, that Hagan came to Happy Valley in the truck, and that Mrs Moriarty had been visited by Amy Quong. She did not know why she got up early, but she pushed back the bedclothes and got up. There was snow on the ground. And later in the morning it began to rain. It will rain and rain, and I shall not go out, and to-morrow perhaps it will rain, she said, and I am perfectly happy, why, she said.
It was then that she cut her hand. She was slicing some onions in the kitchen for lunch, and the knife went down on her finger into the flesh. And she looked at the blood as it ran from her finger and soaked into the cracks in the wood. That just goes to show, she said, and knew at once that it sounded stupid, that she must do something, because her finger, and the blood. She wrapped her hand in a handkerchief. The rain was coming down on the roof, it made a noise on the corrugated iron. She was holding her hand in the handkerchief, staring stupidly out at the rain. This was the spirit of independence, cutting your finger on a wet day, and everything went out of you as you felt the blood through the handkerchief. They said if you tied a tourniquet, if you had some string, if you held it under the tap, the cold water would congeal. The rain kept coming down as she held her finger under the tap, in spouts, the rain, the waterspouts. And the string was loose. She couldn’t tie it with one hand. Perhaps I am affected, she said, playing Schumann and pretending to like Anna Karenina more than the Windsor Magazine, though I like it quite a lot. But if I were not affected I could tie a piece of string, or stand blood, and I can’t stand blood, the way Mrs Everett when she tore her leg.
It was nearly lunch-time, she saw. But she did not want any lunch. She thought she would like to cry. But it’s never much good crying on your own. That hill up there was grey, with a feathering of grey grass. In the spring it was green. She went up and lay on the hill in spring, that was a long way off, it was not spring, everything was a long way off.
Then she saw that the bleeding had stopped. I have been a fool, she said, as she wrapped up her hand again, but there was nobody here to see, that is one of the consolations of living alone. There was a pool of darkish blood on the table-top. But I don’t like blood, or iodine, I ought to have iodine, to keep it in the house.
So altogether she felt very much alone. The fire in the sitting-room was almost out. It was exhausted, she was exhausted, she felt. She would go down to the doctor’s and get him to bind up her hand, even if Mrs Halliday was cross to see her arrive in the middle of lunch. She would go down in spite of that. She would walk perhaps through the dining-room, disturbing them at their lunch, and she would be glad to see them sitting there, because it was good to look at faces after you had cut your hand, after you had discovered you were not as self-supporting as you thought. So she put on her coat and she went down the hill, holding her hand inside the flap of her coat. She walked in the rain without minding. It did not seem very relevant, or the mud, if only she could get to the doctor’s house and see them sitting at their lunch. Passing people in the street you did not think, walking without a hat, and that man in a hat looking at your face.
When she got to the Hallidays’ Mrs Halliday came to the door. She was having a busy morning, she let you know. Her hair told you as much.
The doctor isn’t here, Mrs Halliday said. He’s up at Kambala. To see a case. He’s been there all night.
That was not helpful, to say the least.
But he ought to be back soon. He can’t be away much longer. If you would like to wait.
I’ll wait a little, Alys said.
Mrs Halliday took her into the doctor’s room.
There, she said.
Then she left her. It was Monday morning. There was such a lot to do.
5
The truck drew up in front of the store. A face peered out, stared, retreated with the information that this was a stranger, a man in an overcoat.
It must be the man for Furlows’, said Amy Quong. She put down a bottle of olive oil and went outside to see for herself.
Hagan was fishing in a trouser pocket for his fare. It was hard to get inside, under the overcoat. The wind cut into his face making it red. A drop on the end of his nose hung distinct and luminous.
You the man for Furlows’? asked Amy Quong.
Yes, he said.
This was one of the Chows, a squat little thing with a yellow-brown face, standing there like a schoolmistress, not all Chinese perhaps, but very like that schoolmistress in Muswellbrook.
They’re sending a truck, she said, but it isn’t here. The road’s bad from Glen Marsh in weather like this.
That’s a fine look-out for me, he said.