Voss

by Patrick White

  The same evening, when Mr Bonner returned early, as was his habit now, into the house of roses, it happened that his niece was first to meet him, as she passed through the hall on some errand to the pantry. After kissing her at the required moment, for in matters of affection the merchant was something of a ritualist, he did remark:

  ‘News has come at last from the expedition, today, by the Newcastle packet. They are arrived at Sanderson’s. Or were at his place. They will have left by now for the Downs.

  ‘So that is that,’ he added, disparagingly, or so it sounded.

  The truth was: anything that intruded on the daily round, even events anticipated, or news long hoped for, embittered Mr Bonner.

  ‘And all is well?’ Laura asked.

  ‘All are in good heart,’ corrected her uncle. ‘Though it is early days yet, to be sure. Living off the fat of the land.’

  How glad he was to be in his own home, and there was no prospect of his having to suffer.

  The feet of the young woman were passing on the stone floor of the hall. They made a cool, impersonal sound.

  ‘Oh, and Laura, there is a letter that has come with mine. It is in the same hand, of Mr Voss. You had better have it.’

  ‘A letter,’ she repeated, but without surprise, and took it before going on her way.

  When she had done what she had intended, Laura Trevelyan went straight up to her room, which, although open to her aunt and her cousin, already contained so much of her secret life, she was not afraid of adding to it. So, after she had sat down and broken the lumpy seal, she unfolded the paper, and began to read rapidly.

  That evening, over dessert, when they were discussing the news that had been received, Mrs Bonner asked:

  ‘Would you say, from his letter, that Mr Voss appears satisfied at last with the way his affairs are progressing?’

  Mrs Bonner would almost dare a person to be dissatisfied, provided it was not herself.

  ‘Yes,’ said her husband, as though he were intending no. ‘I gather he is displeased at the inclusion of Judd, more than ever now that he has met him and can find no reason for objecting.’

  ‘What sort of a man is Judd?’ asked Mrs Bonner.

  ‘A very quiet, a very reasonable man, I gather from Sanderson. And lion-hearted. Of great courage and physical strength.’

  ‘Then, it is the lion in him that Mr Voss is objecting to,’ said Belle, who was bored at this, and would become a silly little girl for her own entertainment.

  Her hands, that she held above the finger-bowl, dripped inelegantly with the juice of early peaches.

  ‘For perhaps the lion will gobble him up,’ she giggled. ‘But, poor lion, I could wish him better than bones and black hair.’

  ‘Belle!’ Her mother frowned.

  And a girl, almost married, who could not learn to eat a peach!

  Mr Bonner moved his mouth as if he had a peachstone in it.

  ‘That could be,’ he said, approving, and would himself have spread a net to assist the lion. ‘But what impression,’ he continued, ‘did Laura’s letter give?’

  ‘Laura’s letter?’ asked Mrs Bonner and Belle.

  ‘Yes,’ said the merchant. ‘Mr Voss was kind enough to write to Laura by the same packet. Did you not share the news, Laura?’

  The young woman moved her plate slightly, on which were the downy skins of peaches, almost bloody in that light.

  ‘Yes, I did receive a letter,’ she answered. ‘It was just a short note. Written in friendship. It contains civilities rather than positive news. It did not occur to me to share anything of so little general interest.’

  To Mrs Bonner it was peculiar.

  To Belle it was something into which animal instinct would burrow at leisure.

  But Mr Bonner thought that he detected in his niece signs of unusual dismay, and wondered whether he ought to hurt her, both for her own, and the common safety. Besides acting as a corrective, domestic cruelty could be a mild and pleasing form of sport.

  Immediately after this, they pushed back their chairs and went into another room.

  And the days swelled with that sensuous beauty which was already inherent in them. I did, of course, know, Laura Trevelyan decided, but remained nevertheless bewildered. By the heavy heads of roses that stunned the intruder beneath trellises. By the scent of ripe peaches, throbbing in long leaves, and falling; they were too heavy, too ripe. Feet treading through the wiry grass were trampling flesh, it seemed, but exquisitely complaisant, perfumed with peach.

  Or she closed her eyes, and they rode northward together between the small hills, some green and soft, with the feathers of young corn ruffled on their sides, others hard and blue as sapphires. As the two visionaries rode, their teeth were shining and flashing, for their faces, anonymous with love, were turned, naturally, towards each other, and they did, from time to time, catch such irrelevantly personal glimpses. What they were saying had not yet been translated out of the air, the rustling of corn, and the resilient cries of birds. As they rode on, all metal was twining together, of stirrup-irons, for instance, and the bits in the mouths of their horses. Leather was not the least potent of the scents of their journey, and at evening the head would sink down into the pillow of the warm, wet saddle. The hands of the blind had polished the pommels to the silkiness of ivory.

  This was a period of great happiness for Laura Trevelyan, her only known happiness, it seemed. Of course, the other side of her eyelids, there were many possibilities waiting to harm her. If she would open. But she did not.

  Except to write. She realized that she had not written the letter.

  She sat down one afternoon at her desk. The shutters were closed. Even here was the season’s prevailing scent, of live roses, and the rustling ones, and cloves. She began to write. It was easier than she had expected, as if she had acquired virtuosity in an art. So the chips of marble mounted, as the words were carved out, deep, and final.

  When she had dried the paper in its own breeze, and folded, and sealed it, she cried a little, and felt the better for it. She lay on her bed for some time, behind the shutters, in the green afternoon, until the woman came, and asked:

  ‘Are you not coming down, miss? There are some calls. It has been the wife of Justice Smart, and now it is Mrs Pringle, with Miss Una, in a pale pink bonnet.’

  Then the girl, who in the past had barely suffered her maid to touch her, on account of a physical aversion such contact invariably caused, suddenly reached out and put her arms round the waist of the swelling woman, and buried her face in the apron, in the sleeping child, to express what emotion it was difficult to tell.

  ‘Ah, miss!’ hissed Rose Portion, more in horror over the unorthodoxy of it, than for the stab she experienced in her belly.

  Later they would both be glad, but now the girl, realizing she had just done something awkward and strange, jumped up from the bed and began to change into a better dress.

  It was Una Pringle, who, seated in the drawing-room on a little, tight-buttoned, slippery chair, first caught sight of Laura through the doorway as she was descending the hall stairs. Down, down, down. Through that, and every subsequent afternoon, of which, it was obvious, she would be the mistress. Una Pringle stopped breathing. She had always hated Laura Trevelyan, and would now hate her more than ever.

  8

  BY now the tall grass was almost dry, so that there issued from it a sharper sighing when the wind blew. The wind bent the grass into tawny waves, on the crests of which floated the last survivors of flowers, and shrivelled and were sucked under by the swell. All day the horses and the cattle swam through this grass sea. Their barrels rolled and gurgled. All night the beasts were glutting themselves on dew and grass, but in the dreams of men the waves of grass and the waves of sleep were soon one. Dogs curled in pockets of the grass, shivered and bristled as they floated on their own dreams.

  It was the dogs that first confirmed the German’s opinion that they must be in the vicinity of Jildra. On a certain even
ing, as the expedition continued to advance, the dogs had begun to whine, and gulp, and lift their legs repeatedly. Their muzzles had grown leaner, the eyes were bulging from their skulls, when, with very little further warning, suddenly foreign tails, then the bodies of foreign dogs were emerging from the grass. Thus having come together, the two parties of animals were stalking round and round, in stiff, shocked silence, awaiting some sign.

  The members of the expedition had shaded their eyes with their hands, as an extension to the already broad brims of their hats, and eventually one of them, Mr Judd it was, remarked that he could see a man approaching on horseback above the waving grass. Other eyes were soon focused on this figure, who came on through the red light, firmly clamped by the thighs to the body of his strong, chestnut horse. As he advanced, erect, moving in the saddle just enough to emphasize the arrogance of ownership, it was disclosed that the man himself was of a reddish, chestnut colour, intensified by the evening sun.

  There he was, at last, reining in. The suspicious horse snorted.

  ‘Boyle is my name,’ announced the man, on thick lips, holding out a hand that did not waver.

  ‘Of Jildra,’ added Voss.

  ‘That is correct.’

  No further civilities were expended on the meeting, but Mr Boyle turned his horse and proceeded to escort the party along the track he had made by his coming. The band of sweating horses, straight mules, lowing, heavy-headed cattle, and parched, tingling men went on towards Jildra. By the time the homestead was reached, the western sky was of a blood red. The foreground had almost foundered, through which ran the figures of a number of individuals, if they were not animated, black sticks, to receive the reins from the hands of the new arrivals. Smoke was ascending, and dust fom the broad road the animals had trampled, together with the vapours of night. All was confused, nor did the approaching unity of darkness promise great consolation.

  Mr Brendan Boyle was of that order of males who will destroy any distinction with which they have been born, because it accuses them, they feel, and they cannot bear the shame of it. In consequence, the station-owner had torn the boards off Homer to chock the leg of the table, and such other books as he had inherited, or even bought in idealistic youth, now provided material for spills, or could hope at best to be ignored, except by insects, dust, and mould. In his house, or shack of undaubed slab, that admitted day-and starlight in their turn, several pieces of smooth Irish silver stood cheek by jowl with pocked iron, the former dented somewhat savagely, in reprisal it seemed, for elegance. The dirt floor was littered with crumbs and crusts of bread. Birds and mice could always be relied upon to carry off a certain amount of this rubbish, but some lay there until it became petrified by time, or was ground to dust under the hard feet of those black women who satisfied the crude requirements of Brendan Boyle.

  ‘This is my mansion,’ indicated the latter, waving a lantern so that the room rocked, and the dimples which came when he spoke flickered on either side of his mouth. ‘I suggest that you, Mr Voss, and one or two others, peg your claims here on the floor, and allow me the pleasures of conversation, while the rest of the party enjoy the luxury of their own tents. There are plenty of blacks here, bustin’ themselves with meat and damper, who will lend a hand. Here, Jem, where the deuce,’ he grumbled, and shouted, and went outside, causing the whole neighbourhood of grass and trees frantically to rock in that same disturbed lantern-light.

  Voss and Palfreyman, who were left standing in the skeleton shack, in the smell of old, hard bread and that morning’s ash, did not regret that this was the last hospitality civilization would offer them.

  Later, when these two had shared with their host a lump of salt beef and some cold potatoes, which a pair of shrieking black women, naked as the night, had set on the table’s edge, he proceeded to make the conversation he craved, or rather, to disgorge out of his still handsome throat chunks of words, and opinions he was not used to confess to other men in all that vastness.

  ‘It is ten years now since I came to this something country,’ said Brendan Boyle, swilling the rum, to which he seemed addicted, from an ugly, iron pannikin. ‘I have done nicely,’ he said, fascinated by the eddies in his pot of rum, ‘as nicely as most people, and will do better; yet it is the apparent poverty of one’s surroundings that proves in the end to be the attraction. This is something that many refuse to understand. Nor will they accept that, to explore the depths of one’s own repulsive nature is more than irresistible – it is necessary.’

  He had opened the shirt on the hair of his chest, and had sat forward, and was holding his head in his hands, and was twitching with his mouth to release the words, or some personal daemon.

  ‘To peel down to the last layer,’ he yawned. ‘There is always another, and yet another, of more exquisite subtlety. Of course, every man has his own obsession. Yours would be, it seems, to overcome distance, but in much the same way, of deeper layers, of irresistible disaster. I can guarantee,’ he said, stabbing the table with two taut fingers, ‘that you will be given every opportunity of indulging yourself to the west of here. In stones and thorns. Why, anyone who is disposed can celebrate a high old Mass, I do promise, with the skull of a blackfeller and his own blood, in Central Australia.

  ‘High Harry!’ he laughed, more for himself, and added, in a sigh: ‘Ah, dear!’

  Palfreyman, who had been shifting about, thought that he would turn in, and Voss, who was growing increasingly glum, agreed that this could be a solution.

  ‘If that is the extent of your ambition,’ said Brendan Boyle, and spat upon the floor.

  His two guests got between their blankets, where they were, while himself was gone out on last errands.

  The anatomy of the house was such that, by night, it resembled a warped skeleton, so that, for a long time, Voss lay looking at the stars on the other side of that cage of bones.

  Meanwhile, Mr Boyle had returned to the room which he was pleased to refer to as the Bedchamber, beyond the chimneypiece, and which was the only other room of the house. He was blundering about a good deal, and making animal noises, and exploring the darkness for its distinctive grain. His bed, it seemed, was full of giggles.

  Palfreyman was already asleep, but Voss continued to stare at the restless stars until he was no longer able to identify himself.

  Next morning, when host and guest of honour were standing together upon the veranda, it was possible to compare the two men – at least their outward appearances, since their souls were temporarily gathered in. Now Brendan Boyle was reminiscent of the big, rude, red potatoes, the shapely ones, but hard, with the fine red dust coating them, which is akin to the patina the man had encouraged to coat those persistent traces of aristocracy. Where these lingered formally, as in the head and throat, of course he could not destroy them. There they were; it was both sickening and sad for him. But his hands, as he spoke, or on any occasion, waited, were stroking the accretion of red dust on the bare skin of his forearms. It could have afforded him some pleasure, but his eyes, which were of a cold, unchanging green, would not convey his feelings by daylight.

  At his host’s side, on the rudimentary veranda, which was all splinters, just as it had been split, stood the German, also in disguise. Blackened and yellowed by the sun, dried in the wind, he now resembled some root, of dark and esoteric purpose. Whereas the first man was composed of sensual forms, intended to be touched, flesh to be rubbed against flesh, it would not be presumed to use the second except in a moment of absolute necessity, and then with extreme caution. He stood there moistening his lips, and would have repudiated kinship with other men if it had been offered. In the presence of almost every one of his companions, and particularly in the company of Brendan Boyle, he was drawn closer to the landscape, the seldom motionless sea of grass, the twisted trees in grey and black, the sky ever increasing in its rage of blue; and of that landscape, always, he would become the centre.

  The two men were evidently expecting something or someone to appear. The
host was balancing on the veranda’s edge and, from annoyance at being made to wait, could very easily have toppled off. The delicate wobbling of his barely controlled body made him look ridiculous.

  ‘I cannot recommend these blacks as infallible guides and reliable companions,’ Mr Boyle was saying. ‘Like all aboriginals they will blow with the wind, or turn into lizards when they are bored with their existing shapes. But these two fellers do know the tribes and the country for a considerable distance to the west. Or so they tell a man. Standards of truth, of course, vary.’ Then, realizing, he added: ‘But you do not know their lingo. Dugald – that is the elder feller – has a little English. But you will not be able to make much of an exchange.’

  ‘In general,’ Voss replied, ‘it is necessary to communicate without knowledge of the language.’

  Then the two men were looking and laughing at each other insolently, their faces screwed up, their eyes splintering. Each would consider he had gained the point.

  Before they had recovered themselves, two blacks came round the corner of the house. Their bare feet made upon the earth only a slight, but very particular sound, which, to the German’s ears, at once established their ownership.

  ‘Well, now, since they have condescended,’ said Mr Boyle, who was not really of bad temper; if he raised his voice to a bellow, it was only because he was addressing blacks, and it made his meaning clear. ‘You, Dugald, you, Jackie,’ he said, ‘I tell you this Mr Voss go far places,’ waving his arm towards the west, ‘find new country, do good all of us, black and white feller. You stick to Mr Voss do you hear, even if you drop, you old beggar.’

  Then he laughed, and spoke to the men in a few phrases of their own tongue, in a very English accent, to which they listened with that same politeness with which they received intelligence in any shape or form.

  The elder native was most serious and formal. He was wearing what appeared to be a very old and floury swallowtail coat, but deficient in one tail. His black skin, which had been gathered by age into a net of finest grey wrinkles, was not tramelled further, except by a piece of bark-cloth, the colour of nature, in an appropriate place. A similar piece of cloth did cover his colleague a little; otherwise, the latter was naked, of a youthful, oily skin, and flattened features. This one, Jackie, was really quite young. He stood about with the delicacy of a young girl, looking away while absorbing all details, listening with his skin, and quivering his reactions. It was not possible to address him directly, nor would he answer, but through his mouthpiece, Dugald.