Waldo shuddered.
He used to feel relieved starting for the Library while the greeny-yellow light reflected off the arching grass was still too weak to paralyze. He was glad of his job on the catalogue. At least Dad had retired, and buses had replaced the train which used to run between Sarsaparilla and Barranugli, so Waldo could give himself to the more pneumatic bus, and reflect bitterly on his relationship with his father. His mother too. She who might have conceived him in more appropriate circumstances must expect to share the blame.
On several occasions, when she was old and preparing to die, Waldo tempted his mother by asking:
“Why did you marry Dad?”
Her teeth were giving her difficulty, and she would not always answer at first.
“Because, I suppose,” she once replied, managing her old and complicated teeth, “we were members of the Fabian Society. And your father was a good man. Oh, yes, I loved him. I loved him. The way one does.”
She was determined not to be caught out.
But Dad. In that dark street. With the Baptist chapel at one end.
After he retired, Dad would sometimes recall, in the spasmodic phrasing which came with the asthma, his escape by way of Intellectual Enlightenment, and the voyage to Australia, from what had threatened to become a permanence in black and brown, but in the telling, he would grow darker rather than enlightened, his breathing thicker, clogged with the recurring suspicion that he might be chained still. Waldo was not sure, but had an idea his father had turned against him because he, of all the gang, had escaped.
Dad would look at him and say: “Anyway, Waldo, you have had the opportunity — I gave it to you at the start.” (As if he had, but that was what the poor devil liked to think.) “Nothing ought to hold you back. Although, I admit, your brother will be a handicap.”
You could see that behind the words their father was really hoping his son Waldo might be re-captured, to remain chained to the rest of them. Waldo had to have a quiet laugh. As if he were the one a shingle short! He wouldn’t stay chained to Arthur, or anyone else. He was only marking time, and would create the work of art he was intended to create, perhaps even out of that impasto of nonconformist guilt from which Dad had never struggled free and was so desperately longing to unload on someone else. The irony of it would be that Dad should inspire something memorable, something perfect. But first Waldo must cultivate detachment.
In the meantime it amused him to see his colleagues at the Library remain unconscious of what was hatching. Unquenchable mediocrities, their only experience of genius was on paper.
Not the least subtle and satisfying moments of his life at that period were those of his return to Sarsaparilla, by exhausted summer light, or breath-taking winter dark, his thought so lucid, so pointed, so independent, he could have started — if he had had a pencil and notebook, which he never had — there and then at the Barranugli bus stop to rough out something really important.
It came as a shock on such an evening when the voices of two men cut in.
He knew the men by sight, one of them a Council employee, a fellow called Holmes, of bad reputation, generally pretty far gone in drink, the other a stooge to his companion of the moment.
Holmes was saying: “Sawney bugger!” He laughed without mirth. “Now don’t tell me Bill Poulter isn’t a sawney. Because I know. Know why ’e went sick last week?”
“No. Why?” his companion asked because it was expected of him.
“It’s ’is missus. ’Is missus is leading ’im by the nose.”
“Go on!” said the other, smaller, beadier, perking up. “A fine class of woman if it’s the one I think.”
“I dunno which you think,” Holmes continued, “but I could do with a slice of Bill Poulter’s missus meself. Not that she’d come at me. Seems to got pretty funny ideas.”
“Ah?” His companion was again only formally interested.
The man Holmes, rocking on his heels, had lowered his chin to resist the intensity of an experience.
“Seen ’er making through the scrub with that bluey nut Arthur Brown.”
“Go on!” said the other, soaring to astonishment.
“Even in the street. Seen ’er ’olding ’im by the hand.”
The little beady person had whipped his head around, the better to visualize a situation, or actually to watch it happening on the screen of Holmes’s face.
“Mind you,” said Holmes, “for all they say, that Arthur Brown, I don’t think, could do more harm than a cut cat.”
The little one nearly peed himself.
“You can’t be all that sure,” he said, “the knife ’as done its job. Sometimes they slip up on it, eh?”
“Yer might be right,” Holmes answered. “And a woman like that, married to such a sawney bastard, she wouldn’t wait for ’em to put the acid on ’er.”
Then he looked round, and stopped, not because he noticed, let alone recognized Waldo Brown, but because his story was finished except in his thoughts.
All the way in the Sarsaparilla bus Waldo could have thrown up. And at tea. He pushed his knife and fork to the side. The pickled onions had never smelt more metallic.
Later on, he decided to have it out with Arthur, though he couldn’t think how he would put it.
Arthur was in the kitchen mixing dough for a batch of bread. His shoulders rounded over the bowl. His hair alight. The tatters of dough with which his hands were hung made them look dreadful — webbed, or leprous.
Then it all came out of Waldo, not in vomit, but in words.
“I want to talk to you,” he gasped. “This woman, this Mrs Poulter business, if you knew what you were up to, but it’s us, it’s us too, ought to be considered, if you did you wouldn’t traipse through the scrub, or in the street, the street, holding hands with Mrs Poulter!”
Arthur had never looked emptier. His face was as clear as spring-water.
“She takes my hand,” he said, “if I’m having difficulty. If I can’t keep up, for instance. If I tire.”
The bread, which was his vocation, had begun to grow difficult. The long, stringy dough was knotting at the ends of his fingers.
“Then,” he added, “Mrs Poulter is my friend.”
Waldo laughed out loud through the sweat which was bouncing off his face.
“Oh yes!” he laughed. “So they’re saying! That’s the point. Whatever the truth, that’s beside it. Don’t you see? And you’re degrading us! Even if you’re too thickwitted to be hurt by what other people think and say.”
When suddenly the bread grew simpler. Arthur had freed his fingers.
“Mrs Poulter,” he said, “says we mustn’t go together any more. Her husband got offended.”
If you could believe that people were so simple, and Waldo couldn’t quite, but hoped. Dignity is too hard won, and lost too easily.
“Well, if you’ve decided it like that, between yourselves,” he said, “I congratulate you, Arthur.”
It made him feel like Arthur’s elder brother, which in fact he had become.
While Arthur’s overgrown-boy’s face was consoled by this simple arrangement. He went on simply to fill the greased tins with dough.
Not long after, Waldo overheard in the bus that Mrs Feinstein had died. It was a shock to him, not because he had felt particularly close to Mrs Feinstein, but the unexpectedness of her death found him abominably unprepared. (He would have felt equally put out if Mrs Feinstein, if anyone, Arthur even, opened the bedroom door without warning and caught him in a state of nakedness examining a secret.) At first he felt he didn’t want to overhear any more of the rumour the bus was throwing out at him. Then he decided to listen, and perhaps turn it to practical account.
To be precise, Mrs Feinstein had died several weeks ago, the informant was continuing, and old Feinstein and the daughter had now come to sort out their things before disposing of the house, it was only understandable, what would a man a widower want with one house in the city and another at Sarsaparilla.
The bus ran on.
Waldo was relieved Arthur hadn’t found out about Mrs Feinstein’s death. He couldn’t have. He would have announced it immediately.
So Waldo kept quiet. He would have to write, he supposed, although, when you came to consider, he had barely known the woman. Even so, Waldo composed several letters, none of which was suitable, one being too literary, another too matter of fact, almost bordering on the banal, a third, though addressed to the father, suggested by its tone that it was intended for the daughter.
So Waldo decided to walk over to O’Halloran Road quietly one week-end. It was a Sunday, as it turned out, which made his decision more discreet, formal in a way. As he walked, it even began to appear momentous. Could it be that this was one of the crucial points in his life? His mouth grew dry at the idea. He had, if he wanted to be truthful with himself, thought vaguely, though only vaguely, once or twice, that in the end he might decide to marry Dulcie Feinstein. Now her mother’s death was helping a decision crystallize by introducing a certain emotional compulsion and inevitability. It was obvious they had both been waiting for some such occasion to drop their defences and accept an arrangement which could only turn out best for themselves.
As he walked along the roadside, thoughtfully decapitating the weeds, Waldo went over the ways in which he would benefit by marriage with Dulcie. On the financial side they might have to skimp a bit at first, because he would refuse to touch anything Dulcie brought with her until he had proved himself as a husband. Nobody would be in a position to say theirs was not an idealistic marriage. The ring — they would decide on something in the semiprecious line, of course, though he would not suggest an opal, as some women were foolish enough to believe opals bring bad luck. Then, the home. Undoubtedly he would benefit by having a home of his own. A bed to himself. And the meals Dulcie would prepare, rather dainty, foreign-tasting dishes, more digestible, more imaginative and spontaneously conceived. Because food to Mother was something you couldn’t avoid, and which she had always offered with a sigh. But it was his work, his real work, which would benefit most. The atmosphere in which to evolve a style. The novel of psychological relationships in a family, based on his own experience, for truth, illuminated by what his imagination would infuse. One of the first things he intended to do was buy a filing cabinet to instal in his study.
It was all so exhilarating. He wondered whether Dulcie would affect surprise. More than probably. He doubted whether any woman, faced with that particular situation, ever came out of it completely honest.
When he arrived at the house Waldo was surprised to find it didn’t look any different. He had feared it might be wearing an oppressive air. As it wasn’t he felt relieved, though he couldn’t help wondering a bit about the Feinsteins. They had seemed very fond of the old girl.
He went up, and into the long room in which his relationship with the family had grown. Now there was a smell of dust, of furniture disturbed, of new, glaring packing-cases. Waldo almost protected his eyes. And heard his breath snore backwards down his throat on discovering his brother Arthur seated with Dulcie on the sofa. They were facing each other, their knees touching. Waldo couldn’t help noticing Dulcie’s, because her skirt was drawn up higher than usual, exposing the coarse calves which filled her black stockings. For at least she wore mourning.
Dulcie and Arthur looked round, out of some intimate, not to say secret, situation in which they had been discovered.
Dulcie couldn’t help laughing, which made her look, you couldn’t say pretty, but healthy.
“Poor Waldo has seen a ghost!”
Arthur too laughed a bit.
“He got a shock because it’s me.”
It was certainly a shock. Arthur was wearing a coat besides, which he almost never did, and his hair was darkened to a deep chestnut by the watering it had undergone.
“Anyway,” he said, “I’m going now, because I’ve done what I came for. I still have a lot of messages to run, and you like to have Dulcie to yourself. Waldo,” he told her, “is just about the jealousest thing you’ll find.”
Waldo could get nothing out but a mumbling, “I I I,” at the same time propping himself against one of Feinsteins’ obscenely physical chairs.
But Arthur and Dulcie were again ignoring him.
“Arthur, dear,” Dulcie was saying, “thank you again. I am so touched.”
She was looking into her hand. She could hardly express herself, it appeared, as she sat on the sofa, in her black dress, turning her face at last towards Arthur. Although her mother had died, Dulcie’s was not a mourning face. Her expression, rather, attempted to offer joy to those she addressed. Her eyes shone, no longer like those of a suppliant spaniel, but a woman, Waldo feared, of some experience and certainty.
“You can tell if you like,” Arthur said. “Otherwise people may feel hurt.”
“I shall have to make up my mind,” Dulcie answered.
She was offering her face almost as though for a kiss. Waldo forced himself to concentrate on the ugly shadow of Dulcie’s encroaching moustache.
“For the moment,” she was saying, “I’d like to keep it as something between ourselves.”
“That’s up to you,” said Arthur.
He was trying to imitate a man giving his permission, but had to finish it off with a boy’s wriggle of his fat neck. After that, he left.
Waldo was embarrassed, not only by the situation, but by the shambles of a room, the clutter of old newspapers, and the packing-cases which Dulcie, apparently, had been filling dutifully with ornaments and books.
“I’m sorry if I interrupted,” Waldo felt he ought to say.
He was glad he hadn’t composed a speech to suit his intention, because certainly he would have forgotten it.
“It was nothing,” said Dulcie, “nothing.”
It didn’t sound convincing, and she got up and emptied her hand into a little tortoiseshell box, which she took out of one of the half-packed cases, and which Waldo had noticed in a cabinet in the days of false permanence.
“What I came to say was really of no importance either.” Perhaps that was going too far. “I mean,” he said, “it is not of immediate importance, because Mrs Feinstein, and nothing I can say in sympathy will help,” he said, “either you, or your father. Or Mrs Feinstein.”
He was pleased with that, its humility.
Dulcie had begun to bite her lip. She was after all a loving daughter. Or was it a dutiful one? Waldo thought he might prefer a dutiful to a loving wife. It was not that he was cold, exactly, but would have to give so much time to his writing.
“Mother was unhappy towards the end,” Dulcie was saying. “Her aunts meant so much to her. She resented their being carried off. Then there was the matter of her conscience. But I can’t very well go into that. One’s conscience is one’s own affair.”
The word “affair” sounded ill-chosen. Otherwise he was impressed by her rational approach.
“How I agree!” he said quickly. “Nobody should meddle with another’s conscience.”
He looked at her to see what line he should take next. But Dulcie apparently wished to talk about herself.
“Everybody has been so kind,” she said. “Since it happened — that was too terrible to tell about — I haven’t felt unhappy. I never expected the death of somebody I loved could make me happy. But it has, Waldo. It seems to have made the living more accessible. Arthur, for instance,” Dulcie paused. “He was right, I see now, in suggesting I should tell others what he has done for me, given me. He brought me,” she paused again, “one of his glass marbles.”
Waldo was astonished, then horrified, at the strangeness of it.
“He calls them,” she was continuing.
But there Dulcie hesitated longer, as though she were not yet ready.
“Yes! Yes!” Waldo got it in quickly, so that she would understand, either that he knew, or that he didn’t want to be told. “Poor Arthur!”
He was in fact deeply r
elieved to discover Dulcie was such a compassionate girl. Her acceptance of Arthur, her interest in his brother, helped him to visualize himself in sickness. She was cool. She had a soothing, practical hand.
“I always wanted, Dulcie, to understand you,” Waldo said, “and today I believe I can. What I have found,” he stammered, “is exactly what I hoped to find.”
Dulcie was looking at him, obviously wanting to hear more. As a student of human nature, he knew that nobody, however modest, could resist being told something more about their character. Ladies, moreover, were the livelihood of fortune-tellers.
“Dear Dulcie,” he said, “my feelings for you are based on what you truly are. You are what I need, and I hope what I can offer will be what you feel you want. We have music and literature in common. Taste, I like to think. There can’t be religious differences, because each of us has seen the light. We expect nothing of life but what we can humanly make of it.”
If only the Feinsteins’ room hadn’t grown so still. He had begun to hear the silence. Dulcie in her black dress was at her very very stillest. She could perhaps be waiting to break out in some demonstration of love. Modesty no doubt had imposed restraint, until she could feel she had received the last inch of encouragement. Or had he offended? Was it about religion? Which was always and unexpectedly liable to raise its ugly head.
Then Dulcie, suddenly, was overflowing with what, in spite of faith in his own proposition, he had hoped to postpone hearing. He would have much preferred to see it in writing, because, after all, situations of such a nature could only be of the embarrassing sort.
She began shaking her head in what appeared a convulsion of passion. He was surprised at the strength of her hand, and wondered how he would manage her.
“Oh, Waldo, Waldo!” Dulcie was almost crying. “It never entered my head that anyone else could get hurt!”
Then she sat down again, bringing a crump out of the sofa, and the smell of dust, but it had to be remembered the Feinsteins had spent only part of their time at the house at Sarsaparilla.
The Solid Mandala Page 16