And at once he was received by his other world: of silence and beauty. He touched the shiny porcelain shells. He stood looking up through the chandelier, holding his face almost flat, for the light to trickle and collect on it. The glass fruit tinkled slightly, the whole forest swaying, because of a draught from an open window.
He was himself again.
Now he could go on towards other private memories of the house. He could hear a pen scratching in the distance as his feet slid on the mossy carpet.
‘Who is it?’ the voice called. ‘Is it you, darling?’ The pen was silent. ‘Rhoda?’ the voice rose.
He reached the doorway. Mrs Courtney was seated at her desk with a tray beside her. While writing she must have been drinking what smelled of chocolate, out of an enormous gold-rimmed cup. She began to clutch her bosom, of which she was showing rather a lot. She wasn’t properly dressed yet.
‘Who—?’ she began, angrily frowning. Then she calmed down. ‘Oh—you’re the boy—the laundress’ boy.’ Still frowning, but lazily, she asked: ‘What do they call you, dear?
He told her his name, but he saw she didn’t take it in. He was only a child: he didn’t matter.
A mild sunlight made her hair look even looser than it was. Her gown had collected, loose and creamy, round her chair. The big blue velvet bows softly drooped. Above the cup, making up its mind, hung a bee attracted to the chocolate: it made you feel drowsy.
Mrs Courtney lowered her eyes. ‘One of my sleepless nights,’ she explained. ‘I’m not usually so late. I lead a very busy life.’
If she had been caught out she wasn’t going to apologize: this was a lady getting ready to enjoy a chat.
‘Sit down,’ she ordered. ‘Or how can I feel comfortable?’
The eyes, when she raised them, were bluer than before. She cocked her head, and smiled so sweetly at him, you wouldn’t have thought she had the advantage: he might have been a man.
Then, when she felt she had looked too long, even at a child, she sank her mouth rather greedily in the cup of chocolate. She showed no signs of asking whether they could bring him some. But he didn’t need it: he was full of the scent from Mrs Courtney’s cup.
‘Aren’t you going to entertain me?’ she laughed rather high.
It would have put him off if he hadn’t fortunately noticed the photo of Rhoda on her desk. It was framed in gold, with golden branches wreathed round the picture, the branches flowering with blistered pearls.
He took the photo. ‘It’s a good likeness,’ he said in his best voice.
‘You haven’t met her, have you?’ Mrs Courtney didn’t want her chat spoilt.
‘Just now,’ he said, covering the frame with his hands so that he only saw the picture. ‘You did right to only take her head.’
‘Why?’ Mrs Courtney gasped, but it could have been because she had jogged her cup of chocolate.
‘Well, the back. You wouldn’t want to see the back. The head is the best part of her.’
‘It’s only a slight curvature,’ Rhoda’s mother spluttered. ‘It can be corrected.’
‘You can see her skin is the kind of white that goes with red hair.’ He was still holding the photographed head framed in his two hands.
‘Red? I wouldn’t call it red.’ It was once more a laughing matter. ‘I like to think of it as “strawberry”.’
He put the likeness back on the desk. Red or pink, Rhoda had the smell of red people.
‘What a quaint fellow you are! What did you say your name was?’
“Hurtle Duffield.’
‘How did you learn to speak as you do?’ Because all this while he had been speaking bookish.
‘From Mr Olliphant.’
‘Oh, that’s splendid!’ She laughed. ‘And who is Mr Olliphant? ’
‘The rector. Only he’s gone. He’s sick.’
She rearranged Rhoda’s likeness. ‘You’re lucky to have been taken up by a clergyman. Even if he’s left you in the lurch.’
She was becoming very serious, locking her hands together in front of her on the desk. As she learned forward her lovely eyes began to bulge.
‘The ethical side of life is so important,’ she told him. ‘Even when I am run off my feet—my husband says I undertake too much—I only have to remind myself of that. Nothing will make me neglect the charities I have taken up. Lonely seamen, for instance. And girls who—who have fallen by the wayside.’
‘Why have they fallen by the wayside?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘the city is full of vice, and human nature is weak. But we can’t merely accept, Hurtle. We must help others help themselves.’
He understood better now, but didn’t know you could do anything about human nature: of the people he knew, one half called the other half hopeless.
Mrs Courtney was carrying on. ‘Then there’s the question of cruelty to animals. It’s heart-rending,’ she moaned and rubbed at a spot of chocolate she had spilt below her creamy bosom, ‘what I’ve seen with my own eyes. I’m at present organizing a ball to raise funds for the Society. Harry—my husband—tells me I’m mad to become involved with another committee. But how can one avoid it? When one’s conscience becomes involved.’
Her rings were shining fiercely in the sunlight, while the blue eyes had begun to blur.
‘My husband is away in the country—at one of our properties, ’ she went on. ‘He has to visit them regularly to see what the managers are up to. I decided early—on our honeymoon, in fact—I couldn’t live in the country. I mean, I couldn’t endure the idleness, when there is so much in life to tackle. Harry says I get nowhere for attempting too much.’ She looked at a little jewelled watch hanging from her by a gold chain. ‘But he’s cynical. I adore him. I’m so nervous while he’s away on these long visits.’
She was looking older, for a lady anyway. Real ladies on the whole looked younger.
‘How I’ve been running on! Tell me about your brothers and sisters,’ she ordered, to try to cheer herself up.
‘They’re just kids. Oh, one of them’s a bit simple. That’s Will. We sleep in the same bed.’ He suspected he had forgotten to use Mr Olliphant’s voice.
‘How delicious!’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s sad. But you’re a most handsome fellow.’ She came up close and began ruffling his hair: he felt dizzy from the smell of her dress, and her too, underneath. ‘Harry will love you,’ she said. ‘He loves a manly, forthright boy.’
But he didn’t think he wanted to be loved by Mr Courtney. Pa didn’t love: he only put up with you.
And Mrs Courtney had begun again to feel nervous. Her dress moved away with her. She began dabbing her lips with her handkerchief rolled into a ball. She went and pulled the bell.
When the parlourmaid came, she said in an altered, mistressy voice: ‘Find Miss Rhoda, Edith. She hasn’t been near me this morning. I’m afraid she may be over-exerting herself.’
After Edith had gone, Mrs Courtney explained to him, again as though he was a grown-up man, or just because she had to pull out the plug: ‘Nurse is a kind old thing, but not a good influence. She should bring me the child before I get up. Poor Rhoda! On top of everything else, she’s highly strung. She has a cat. Which Nurse allows her to take to bed. It could give her asthma. Or something.’
In her excitement she had taken his head and was holding it to her side. ‘How your mother must love you,’ she said.
He was so shocked he pulled away. She didn’t seem to notice.
‘Didn’t you ever have another? Besides this Rhoda,’ he mumbled.
‘Oh, yes—no! Impossible!’
She stood knotting her rings against her flowing gown. She looked for the first time awkward: her mouth was pulled into an ugly shape; her hair was old. But he could remember what he had seen and felt.
Quite suddenly Rhoda had come in. She tended to move sideways. Of course the poor thing had her affliction to hide. He looked at her with disgust.
Rhoda turned her head away.
‘Have yo
u forgotten all about your mother, darling?’ Mrs Courtney inquired with rash courage.
Rhoda didn’t answer. She touched a flower on the carpet with her toe. Mrs Courtney held her breath watching Rhoda make the flower real.
The mother broke the spell. ‘Did you do your board exercises? Did you? I know it’s unpleasant, but it’s for your own good. Did Nurse see that you lay on the board?’
Rhoda made some watery sounds. Her head trembled on her frail neck.
‘You see,’ Mrs Courtney told the air, ‘it’s time we engaged the governess.’
Again she pulled the bell. Edith came, quicker and thinner.
‘Send Nurse,’ the mistress commanded.
Rhoda started a high crying, exposing through her stretched mouth her rather small, transparent teeth.
‘I’m not the one to blame, darling,’ her mother explained. ‘We must only carry out what Dr Marshall ordered. Oh, dear! Darling! Can you have got it into your head Mummy doesn’t love you! My darling darling Rhoda!’
Mrs Courtney herself had begun to whimper like a little child, her lovely face crumpling into an old rag. She looked as though she was about to creep on all fours, to make herself long and thin like some animal children were tormenting.
It was then that Rhoda spat. It gummed itself to her mother’s face. One end of the spit was swinging.
He would have liked to do something for both of them, but only his mind worked: his limbs were stuck, his heart was pumping.
Nurse came, a stout woman, with a white belt dividing her figure in two. She immediately began mewing for her little girl. The belt had a butterfly for a buckle.
‘Come away, Rhoda!’ mewed the nurse. ‘A rest is what you need. I’ll give you a liquorice-all-sorts, shall I?’
‘The cat! How can you allow the cat?’ Mrs Courtney howled.
‘But she loves it!’ The nurse purpled up.
When Rhoda and the nurse had gone, and Mrs Courtney had wiped her face with her handkerchief, she said: ‘So distressing. What will you think of us? We’re not at all like this, you know.’
She went to her desk, and started rummaging in a little bag made of gold chain. ‘Here!’ she said. ‘I want you to take this, Hurtle, and share it with your brothers and sisters. And remember that nobody is good all the time, however hard they try to be.’
He got such a surprise he almost dropped the sovereign he found she had put in his hand.
‘As if I were an animal!’ She had begun to whimper again. ‘But no animal suffers worse than a human being.’ She blew her nose on the now soggy handkerchief.
Because she was in such a state, sighing, and rumpling the papers on her desk, and looking at her face in the glass, he didn’t think Mrs Courtney would mind if he slipped away. Nor did she. She didn’t seem to notice it.
He hurried back through the house, silent except for the Chinese vases rocking on their black stands, and twittering in the chandelier.
Mumma was ropeable. Some wet sheets she was trying to peg to the line were cracking like whips. First they clung to each other, or Mumma, then they sailed open in the wind.
While she fought, she complained: ‘Arr now, Hurtle, didn’t I tell you to play around the yard? I been all around—round to the stables—and out in front.’ A wet sheet hit her in the face. ‘Where did you get to, you naughty boy?’
‘I went exploring.’ To quieten her, he began helping her nicely with the sheets.
He didn’t think he would mention the sovereign or anything of what had happened.
That night Pa asked, as he pushed the stew around his plate: ‘What sort of a day did you have at the famous Courtneys’?’
‘The same,’ she answered.
She was in low spirits, it seemed. The stew looked grey because probably she had been too tired or too hurried to brown it; while you were still full of the jangle of crystal music and the warm-chocolate scent of Mrs Courtney’s room.
When they decided he should go to school, and he was admitted to the Infants, all his hopes appeared to close.
‘But I’m not an infant!’
‘Poor kid! You can’t help laughing,’ said Mrs Burt over the palings.
At least his parents were too upset to join in their neighbour’s amusement, and Lena too important from several years’ experience. Though it wasn’t far, Pa was driving them to school in the cart, making an occasion of it. The lurching over ruts before they reached the metal threw the three of them against one another.
‘Are you frightened?’ Lena could have been hoping for it.
‘No,’ he said, although he was.
A wind from the right quarter carried the smell of the nearby zoo. He remembered how the keeper had allowed him to ride on the elephant’s head; he remembered the lion with the stream of yellow diarrhoea.
‘I bet you are!’ Lena harped.
He pinched a hold of her skinny arm, so that she squealed unaccountably loud.
‘Hold yer tongue, Lene,’ said Pa, who was in his usual serious mood.
‘But he’s afraid and won’t admit it! He’s pinching me!’
‘Hurtle ain’t afraid. He’s a man,’ said Pa.
It made Hurtle more afraid, not so much of a lot of school-kids he didn’t know, and anyway he was stronger than most: he was afraid of some shapelessness smelling of lions and elephants. Lena sat snivelling and blinking as if herself was going to be the target; whereas you knew that everything large enough, frightening enough, like death for instance, was being saved up for you.
‘Like to hold the reins, son?’
‘No.’
His hands might have trembled. He wondered what would happen if he pissed his pants. And did let go one little spurt. At once his fear took on a shape: if he had had a pencil in his hand he would have drawn Death trumpeting.
He felt better after that. Sometimes he looked at people to see whether they had guessed his more secret thoughts. But Lena was just a thin thing, a girl, while Pa continued driving the cart as though Death had never appeared, trampling alongside of them.
Poor Pa, when he let them down at the school, he sat for a moment with the whip drooping from his hand. Pa never kissed in saying goodbye, but the lines grew deeper, blacker round his mouth. Today you would have liked to touch them. You could often burst with love, but had never found the proper occasion.
The moment they arrived at school Lena became ever so important. She began giggling with some girls of her own age, who looked at the brother distantly, and did not propose to make his acquaintance. Nor was Lena prepared to risk too much on her relationship with Hurtle. She said very bossily: ‘I’ll take you to Miss Adams, then I must go with my own class.’ He had never heard her accent sound so thin and prim.
The Infants were taught in the basement of the school. The light, which was a yellow-green, floated down through barred windows just above ground level. The stone walls were cold to touch. Miss Adams was such a thin woman he began to wonder whether their Lena would become a teacher. He could see her in the same smocked blouse, with the same cold as Miss Adams had.
Now Lena simply handed over her brother, and shook her hair, and hurried away.
‘Hurtle Duffield,’ Miss Adams said. ‘That’s a comical name.’
Of course. He was used to it by now. He even said: ‘It rhymes with turtle.’
The kids who were standing near them laughed.
‘I see you have a sense of humour,’ said Miss Adams. ‘I hope you will keep it till recess, please, and not make jokes in class.’
She was too busy with her cold and commencement of school. She gave him and another boy copybooks to distribute: one where each child would sit.
All the while other kids kept trooping down. He saw a fair few from Cox Street, whom he knew because they had always been there. It made him sick looking at the other children, except a girl with fair, flossy fringe. There was a boy called Ossie Flood said he was going to bring one or two glassies for Hurt. You didn’t want his old marbles, but Ossie seeme
d to want to hang on.
During break Tom Sullivan from Cox Street started making up to Ossie, whispering and laughing behind his hand. Ossie would have liked to laugh back if his long dopy face had dared.
‘What was Tommo telling you?’
‘Nothing,’ said Os.
‘It was too long to be nothing. Go on, what was it?’
Ossie Flood’s skin turned green.
‘Tell, or I’ll kick you in the guts.’
This had always worked in Cox Street. And Ossie Flood began to tell. His biggest teeth were grooved and green. He told spitting excited frightened he said how Tommo Sullivan said Hurt Duffield was the son of a no-hope pommy bottle-o down their street, who carried around in an old cigar box a pedigree like he was a racehorse.
Going down the steps after break Hurtle got up against Tommo Sullivan to tell him he was the biggest turd ever dropped from an Irish arse. He banged Tommo’s head once or twice against the wall. Though Tommo was bigger, it came easy. Tommo actually began to cry. The stone walls made it sound worse, and you wondered whether you had caught the nits off Tommo’s head, though they kept his hair shorn off close.
Miss Adams told her class she was going to start them on pothooks already that first day. Some of the kids could hardly hold the pencil: it wobbled in their hands. One girl’s cheek was so full of tongue she looked as though she had a boil. Then Miss Adams encouraged them to join the pothooks by imagining they were making a little hooped fence. Hurtle was so shocked by her old pothooks he couldn’t make anything at all.
He would have sunk pretty low if he hadn’t suddenly remembered, and taken the pencil, and lost himself.
‘What are you doing, Hurtle Duffield?’ Miss Adams had smelt a rat.
Everyone looking.
‘Droring,’ he confessed, though it pained him to do so.
It pained Miss Adams equally. He had to take it up to her. The girl with the flossy fringe giggled.
‘What is it supposed to be?’ Miss Adams squinted and asked through her cold.
‘Death,’ he said, and heard his own voice.
The Vivisector Page 5