How long, how long have you been at Happy Valley? he said.
She shrugged her shoulders.
A long time. Quite a long time.
He had spent a long time diagnosing the disturbances in people’s bodies, that now had become bodies or a source of behaviour. I have got pretty smug, he said. He sat with the bull’s-eye in his cheek trying to think of something to say, but in the end he would most likely go away, admitting he was a failure, say, it is so much easier to be professional.
I used to play a bit once, he said. I used to play Bach.
Oh, she said. Bach.
She looked at him sitting there. He was rather absurd with that bull’s-eye in his mouth. He was not so formidable and going grey.
I think Beethoven means more to me. More, more feeling, she said. And depth.
But perhaps he would see through that too. She blushed. Seeing or not, he had gone across to the piano and was looking through the music lying there.
But you also play Schumann, he said.
Why not?
She had said it before, as she said it knowing, also that it meant nothing, or acted as a defence.
I mean, why shouldn’t I play Schumann? Because I like him. We can’t keep to the heights, she said.
God forbid!
He sat down and began to play something from the Kinderszenen. There was a kind of sweet enervation about the music of Schumann, just going on and on, and it was easy to succumb, as she probably succumbed, sitting up here alone and playing Schumann to herself. Hilda sat in the Botanical Gardens on an iron seat. He bent over and touched her cheek. He said he would write a poem. There was a gentle titillation of the senses in the morning sun, in Schumann’s music. How soft you went if you gave yourself a chance. His hands became still on the keys, his shoulders bowed. She was watching him.
Why don’t you go on? she said.
Not now.
Man must cater for his imperfections.
He looked at her and smiled. She was smiling. She was standing by the fireplace, and her body had lost its rigidity, and he was looking into her, at a core that he had not noticed as she winced in the dispensary and pitied herself.
We all say lots of silly things, he said. I ought to be getting home.
He had come to look at her hand. He was the doctor manipulating a bandage. Hilda would send out the bill.
There’s one thing I’ve sometimes wondered, he said. Why are you “Alys” Browne?
I think I wanted to be different, she said, and she was surprised, because her voice did not falter, because she did not want to look down. She looked at him and said:
That’s the only reason, I suppose.
It’s a pretty honest reply.
You don’t leave many loopholes, she said.
When he had gone she sat down, she was upright, she was firmer, something had happened to her, she felt. As if her body, and perhaps her mind, had suddenly grown taut as he touched her hand, tightened the bandage, touching some nerve that had always hung slack. What is it, she said, and why am I sitting like this, waiting, like sitting with pamphlets in my lap about California, and then not going, I never went, there was no significance in it at all, and what am I waiting for? It was one of those questions you could not answer. And why California now? she said. I don’t want to think. She went into the bedroom and lay on the bed in the dark, against cold sheets, and promptly thought harder than before, or the mind wandered in its fashion, like Schumann, and she asked herself if Vronsky or Karenin, if either of these was parallel. But that was no good. She lay on her back looking upwards into the dark. Then she began to realize how cold she was.
Where have you been, Oliver? said Hilda.
I went up to see Miss Browne. To look at her hand.
Hilda yawned.
It’s late, she said. Rodney’s been having a dream. It’s that school. He’s unhappy there.
Oliver went into the dispensary. He did not light the lamp. He stood there in the dark. Then he wondered why he had gone into the dispensary, there was something, but of course it was Birkett, and Hilda was sitting outside waiting for him to write. Rodney lay in bed afraid. Rodney was his son. He would write and they would go away, his wife and two children, the situation enforced by their going away. That was a reality, not playing Schumann in a mauve dress. Hilda and the children were all that he had ever wanted, he said, he wanted no more than affection, they were fond, they were happy, and he would write to Birkett. There was still a flavour of peppermint in his mouth. She was after all a human being, very silly perhaps, but looking at her he was glad she was silly and that underneath the silliness there was a core, an “Alice” Browne. But it was quite irrelevant, this. Only it made you a little surprised to discover a human being. You got out of touch. And Rodney was his son, was a human being, was more than a biological fact. He must try to remember that. He must not go off at a tangent into a world of his own, until a face pointed to the possibility of human beings.
He lit the lamp and sat down to write to Birkett. He would not think about a face that was in no way remarkable. Only that she had leant against the fireplace and looking into her face had been to look into an avenue that made him feel suddenly unfulfilled and cold.
10
Mr Belper had just said that Australia was the country of the future, he said it as if it were a fact that had not struck anyone before, the discovery was his. He sat there in his chair, a kind of Captain Cook of platitude, only the natives made no stir, Moriarty was almost asleep, his wife was a plaintive yawn. Mr Belper loved to talk about things in a general way, things like natural resources, the national physique, and the canalization of surplus energy. Moriarty half woke up and drew his attention to the irrigation area round Mildura, but Belper coughed, and pretended he had not heard, anyway Moriarty was half asleep. Mrs Moriarty dug her finger-nails into the sofa and yawned. She was past the stage of putting up a hand. And take industry, Mr Belper said, now that new industries were opening up, which by the way reminded him of the Salvage Bay Pearl Fisheries and that was something he could recommend if Moriarty should think of a flutter, with 640,000 5s. shares issue at par, on application 1s. on allotment 4, a very attractive speculative enterprise that he could recommend to anyone, he was in touch with the company, was interested himself, and he’d bring along a prospectus and let Moriarty have a look, because he did not believe in pushing a man in a direction he didn’t want to go.
But what can a man do on a miserable screw like mine? Moriarty said, sitting up with a fretful wheeze.
His lips were thin and blue. There was a suggestion of dry mucous in the corners of his mouth.
Now if I could get that post up on the North Shore, he said. I write. I’ve written how many times.
Yes, said his wife, it’s a crying shame. And Ernest’s health. Look, Mr Belper, he writes and writes, and what does the Board do?
For Mrs Moriarty the attitude of the Board of Education was a case of personal animosity, and she was the martyr, living here in Happy Valley listening to Mr Belper talk, if only he would go away.
You might be a lot worse off, Mr Belper said, his voice very comfortable and rich with phlegm.