Sidney Furlow was nineteen. She had been two years at finishing school in Sydney, at Miss Cortine’s. She had not learnt very much, but it was not part of Miss Cortine’s curriculum to teach. Only to mould my girls, Mrs Furlow, to prepare them for life. Miss Cortine prepared her girls for life with a course of tea-pouring and polite adultery. Consequently most of them were considered a very good match. They did not sulk, like Sidney, they said pretty things to young men who came to take them to dances, and cuddled up very prettily when they were expected to. Perhaps if you leave her another year, Miss Cortine said.
She was damned if she would stay another year. She wanted to go home. So she went home and it was all a bloody bore, and Sydney was a bloody bore, and reading Mallarmé after lunch. Je me crois seule en ma monotone patrie, Hérodiade au clair regard. Her arms were very brown and thin. She stretched them over her head, catching the bed-rail over her head, and feeling a strange lassitude that crept along under her skin. Her breasts stood up, thin and abrupt under her dress. Her hair spread out over the pillow in little snaky tongues.
Oh hell, she said, jerking herself up. She wanted to cry. O charme dernier. She jumped off the bed and went and sat at the dressing-table, looking at herself fiercely in the glass. He had wanted to touch her at that dance, putting his hand. She stroked her breast sulkily, between her breasts that were warm and firm, it made her smile. And she told him to go to hell, it made her laugh because he looked so surprised, sitting there on that battleship where orders were always obeyed. Only she hadn’t, she had put back her head and laughed. Helen said she had a laugh like a piece of wire, and that thin mouth — well, it was thin, she supposed.
She took up a lipstick from the dressing-table and began to work on her mouth, pressing it down hard on her lips, as hard as she could. Her mouth looked like a wound. She took up the eye-shade and blurred the lids, sitting with her eyes almost closed to watch the effect of that blue blur, and her mouth, and her dress falling down on to the point of a breast. She laughed, or at least a little contemptuous snort came out of her nose. Oui! je le sens. She was like a whore.
Sidney, called Mrs Furlow from the other side of the door, haven’t you gone for your ride?
Yes, I’ve gone.
There’s no need to be rude, complained Mrs Furlow from her side of the door.
She was going away. You could hear her feet protesting down the passage. She had gone.
And now what, said Sidney, or her breath said now what, as she took up a paper tissue and rubbed the lids of her eyes. She put her head down on the dressing-table and began to cry. She had no control over it. It was like the flicking of a piece of wire.
Stan, dear! Stan! Where are you? called Mrs Furlow.
Then she reached the verandah and saw him with a beaker in his hand measuring the rain that had fallen into the gauge during the night. Oh, there you are, she said. The new man’s come. You’d better go into the office and see him. I told him to wait in there.
Mr Furlow held up the beaker, half closing his eyes to read the number of points.
He’s a very large man, said Mrs Furlow rather pensively, but without any accent of approval, for she thought he was rather uncouth, in fact definitely common, though she did not know why she had expected the overseer to be anything else. He would probably be a good worker, she felt, which meant he knew about sheep, which meant in the long run that Mrs Furlow would take many delightful trips to Sydney, on the strength of the overseer’s knowledge of sheep. This had always been Mrs Furlow’s attitude to overseers. They were a race of golden geese that you encouraged enough to ensure a profitable return, but avoided killing by an overdose of attention.
You’d better go in and see him, she said. You must have measured that drop of rain.
Mr Furlow had measured the rain, although he was staring still at the scale of points. It was a gesture of postponement. He stood holding the beaker between himself and the necessity of going to interview the new man. Actually, he would say he had to think things out, he was now expected to say impressive things as the owner of Glen Marsh, but Mr Furlow never thought, he relied on a process of slow filtration and trusted to providence to give the mechanism a jog. The process of filtration was still in a state of doubtful progress when, mastering an incipient belch, he went into the office and found Hagan sitting there.
Good day, said Mr Furlow, cautiously closing the door.
He tried to look solemn and businesslike as he sat down in his chair. He tried to find something to say.
You’ve been having a drop of rain, said Hagan.
Yes. A nice drop of rain.
Hagan sat there holding his hat. He had sobered up.
Nice mob of ewes up on the hill, he said.
Yes. A nice mob of ewes.
Merinoes?
Eh? said Mr Furlow. Oh, yes. Merinoes.
He sighed and folded his hands on his paunch.
I’m trying a Lincoln cross, he said.
He felt he had made a contribution to the conversation. He was satisfied.
Mutton? asked Hagan.
Yes.
A dopey old fool, you could see that, and the money rolling into his pocket, it beat you the way it happened, just for sitting there, it made you feel sore, working for a soft old bladder and trying your luck at a ballot and never doing any good, you hadn’t any luck, it seemed to be fixed in a ballot who was to draw the land, but you were as good as any of them if it came down to brass tacks, only you hadn’t a chance. Hagan shifted in his chair. The silence was getting him down. He beat a tune with his fingers on a typewriter lid. Then he realized what he was doing and stopped.
Mr Furlow cleared his throat.
Well, he said, that’s about all I’ve got to say. If you go on round to the back the groom’ll show you where to go. We can talk things over to-morrow. We can take a ride round the place. I hope you’ll be comfortable, he said.
Then he opened the door.
I’ll be all right, Hagan said.
Out in the passage there was a woman, it was Mrs Furlow, beating against a door.
Sidney, I insist! she called. I insist that you go out!
She stood there in the passage, her voice pretty high with anger, knocking away on the door. Hagan went along the passage towards the back. She did not seem to notice him. She was too busy banging on the door, hitting it with her rings. You could see well enough who ran the place, not that old coot talking about his Lincoln cross. She was making the devil of a row on that door.
Oh, for God’s sake, cried another voice, and it was harsh, it sounded as if it would tear. You treat me like a blasted child!