The Tree of Man

by Patrick White

  She was going about amongst her plants most days, touching them, and expecting signs of still life. Or looking out at life led outside, in the distance, at young people knotted together at the hands, at the flat faces of strangers, from which everything had been extracted, right down to the thoughts and teeth. She would look out at her husband too, going about, and try to draw him in, out of his pristine ways, calling, ‘You should come in here a while, and take it easy, Stan. It is good here in the sun, amongst the plants.’

  Then the dark-skinned woman would sit and listen in explosive silence.

  ‘But it is good here too,’ her husband said. ‘I can’t be sitting. I’ve got to fossick about while the light lasts.’

  He did too, squinting and smiling.

  The old fleshy woman, who also knew best, sat and breathed amongst the plants. She sat in an old cane chair, which creaked beneath her. The chair had been unravelling for many years, but it was comfortable. The red sun lay in her lap, and there were moments when, identifying herself with those plants which she had around her and which she loved best, she was content.

  Two visits were paid to Mrs Parker about this time. One was upsetting and one exhilarating, but she would examine both incidents for years, for some aspect she had forgotten. Then she would see them in a brilliant light, the features distinct and illuminated, the hard or funny words printed plainly, as if on grey cardboard, she did actually see them as she sat amongst her still plants.

  The first of those visitors was a man, who came along the path in a brown hat with the bloom still on it. His head was down, so that she did not see yet, but heard the sounds of a man, of money, and leather, and a cleared throat. She heard words too in the man’s voice, for he came talking with a little boy, who was all radiance, a fat, rosy little boy, jumping, and running backwards, and pulling buds off as he passed. The little boy was not necessarily on the same visit as the man. He happened to be there, as children will, and was continuing to see, and do, to live his life. But the man was preoccupied. He was too conscious of his own presence there, though he pushed back the sharp oleanders casually enough with his hands, and was making that blurry conversation with the boy.

  The still woman continued to sit amongst her plants, waiting to see what would happen, and whether she would know what to do. Her heart was knocking already for the man. For whoever it was. Strangers at close quarters would assume monstrous proportions. So that she waited fearfully for him to raise his head.

  He did, shaking the fuchsias. The man, then, was Ray.

  Before he saw, she looked at this flash man that she had loved. Her lips were open. He was flash all right, like some commercial.

  ‘Why, hello, Mum,’ said Ray. ‘Didn’t see yer there.’

  His voice exploding. His foot grated back, as if he had trodden on something, some bird or cat.

  Amy Parker looked amongst her plants.

  ‘I sit here sometimes’, she said, ‘in the afternoon. To get the sun.’

  The little boy had come forward to look at a person with whom he did not expect to exchange words any more than he would have with plant or stone.

  ‘That’s the idea,’ said Ray, who, in humouring this old woman, would perhaps turn into a big, soft child. ‘Winter sunshine, eh?’

  ‘I didn’t expect to see you,’ said the mother, from inside her clothes. ‘What have you come here for?’

  ‘Ah, come off it, Mum,’ said Ray, who was still attempting to be friendly in the manner of big flashy men, laughing, and sure of himself. Then he remembered. ‘Why do I always have to be after something with you people? Can’t I just arrive and hang around? I wanted to come out here and look at the place again. I been thinking about it. That’s all’

  But she was putty-coloured, looking along the dark leaves of plants.

  He would talk, though.

  ‘I wouldn’t’uv recognized the place,’ he said, conscious of his suit. ‘You’ve let yourself get overgrown. It’ll push you out, Mum. What then, eh? Remember the swallows’ nests? I got the eggs one year and blew them with a glass tube, and kept them in a cardboard box on cotton wool. Till they broke. They broke,’ he said. ‘Remember?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  Whether she did or not. She raised her head slightly.

  Then the man spat into the undergrowth of fuchsias.

  He was collapsed and bilious-looking. Memories in some circumstances are a crime.

  Like a commercial, she said, resenting it. She would not let herself think about it, except perhaps later, in private. I will not think about Ray, or anyone else, she said. So she sat there.

  ‘I thought I would be able to talk to you,’ he said, as if the boy had not been present. ‘But I can’t.’

  ‘Oh, we have talked,’ she said.’ Often.’

  More often than in fact. She wiped her lips.

  ‘I didn’t bring you anything,’ he said.

  Though he almost had. A big box of chocolates with a pink satin bow. Handing things, you can make better excuses for yourself.

  Now he was standing without presents, at a loss.

  Bugger it, he said, I have never murdered anyone. Then what are we coming to, what are we coming to? All around, the place was snoozing in a fragile light of winter, the doves, those clay birds, rocking on their feet. It was escaping him. The light was too brittle here.

  The old woman had been looking for some time at the little boy, who was peering through the windows of the house to see what there was inside.

  ‘That’s the boy,’ said Ray now.

  ‘What boy?’ asked the mother.

  ‘Lola’s kid.’

  ‘Who is Lola?’ she asked, though she knew.

  Ray was telling her.

  The grandmother was looking at the little boy, or at the back of his head, which was burning.

  ‘Come ’ere, sonny,’ said Ray. ‘Come an show yourself to your grandmother.’

  The boy came forward. He was looking up at the old woman. He was very beautiful now. But he was watching something that made him afraid.

  ‘This one is not mine,’ said the old woman. ‘The other boy is mine. The real one.’

  ‘This is a fine healthy boy,’ said the man.

  ‘Healthy or not,’ said the old woman, getting up.

  She went inside.

  ‘You had better go, Ray,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to see you. Or the boy. I have to get your father’s tea.’

  Closing the brown door.

  ‘This is my son,’ shouted Ray Parker. ‘He’s the dead spit of me!’

  For that reason she would have kissed him, but had run from it, and was trembling the other side of the door. She must love the other one, and did truly, though rather pale, the one to whom she had given the heirloom of glass. So she was trembling.

  After he had listened to his mother’s breathing for some time, and cursed her, the man left the door.

  ‘Come on then,’ he said to the boy.

  In their best clothes they went slowly down to the dam, which was on the edge of what remained of Parkers’ property. These people who had come looked foolish there, but they loitered while the man thought. The boy, who had listened a great deal, was thoughtful too on that afternoon.

  ‘Who is the other boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Look,’ said his father. ‘See if you can beat me at making the stones skip.’

  The man picked up a flat stone.

  ‘How?’ asked the boy.

  ‘On the water,’ said Ray Parker.

  And the stone he threw slashed the brown surface of the dam, and skimmed, and slashed. His performance had professional grace but left him panting. His breath was stale too.

  The boy, who had been frowning at the water, lit up, took hand-fuls of stones, greedily, and when he had made a pile began to imitate his father. Except that his stones plopped. But he continued to throw, even seeing success when it was not. Laughing as a stone sank. Saying, ‘That was nearly better than you, Dad.’

  ‘You
go on,’ said the father. ‘You’ll get real good if you keep at it.’

  Poor devil, he felt.

  Then the flash, pursy man, who was still breathless, as well as thoughtful, sat down for a bit, while Lola’s kid continued to throw the stones.

  Here the shapes of tree and fence were so unequivocal that Ray Parker felt blurred. He had reached the stage at which you realize that you have nothing. The man in the strange landscape was frightened by its aloofness. The pale and lovely sky eluded him. The coppery tufts of winter grass, that he had mooned amongst as a boy, stood still. There is nothing here, he said, pulling at a blade of grass with his brown teeth.

  Then his mind began to rootle round, out of that cold place, into the world that he had made do, as being of some sense and substance. Lola would be getting up about this time after the headache. They would eat a steak or couple of chops, he liked the fat, he liked the smell of meat when it rose above the gas, and reached out farther, even to the top of the stairs. He liked the smell of the evening paper, all evening smells, as this lit up, round the bend and down the tramlines, spluttering with violet sparks, and unwinding in long, in endless strips of hot rubber. Only sometimes, at late evening, when the bones return to the face, and the senses are stunned, she had a desperate smell of small rooms and hot sheets. The grey face of evening looms up then. The ash has fallen. It is this bloody headache coming on again, she says, but I will be all right with a couple of aspros. How the bed groans under a grey thigh. The oysters have stood the hell of a long while.

  ‘Dad,’ said the little boy, beginning to grizzle and pull, ‘why don’t we go home? I’m hungry. Da-ad?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said the father. ‘Howdyer like a nice piece of fish?’

  He began to get himself out of an unnatural position, in which he had grown stiff. He spat, and dented his hat with the edge of his hand, preparing himself for some fresh phase, or the old one warmed up.

  ‘Fish?’ said the boy. ‘Where’s fish? There ain’t no fish out here.’ ‘Well, we’ll find some on the way,’ said Ray Parker. ‘Somewhere.’

  They had begun to walk along the road that led back to Durilgai, walking in their polished yellow shoes.

  ‘I’m ti-erred,’ dragged the little boy.

  ‘You better come or you won’t get no fish,’ said the father to his own shoes.

  ‘Fish! I don’t want fish. I’m ti-erred,’ grizzled Lola’s kid.

  Amy Parker watched this progress from a golden window, but the room was dark inside, and filled by a clock. Shall I go out? she said, they are slow. The dust was slow, the slow clock ticking in her blood. But as the man and boy mounted higher in her throat, she still stood. And that boy with Ray’s mouth, kissing the face of the marble clock, or sleeping. She still stood. Then Ray had really gone, or darkness come, and something was burning on the stove.

  When she thought over this incident, amongst her tended plants, on still winter afternoons, wondering whether she had done right, she would drive at different conclusions, invariably, on different afternoons.

  The second visit that Amy Parker received that winter was of a different nature altogether. It did not rend, though it disturbed. It was unexpected, and Amy Parker no longer liked that, unless she played the unexpected turn herself. Even to be caught out by her own face unexpectedly in mirrors she did not care for. Am I like that? she asked, and would then try to remember how she had been, but this was always indistinct.

  Anyway, Thelma came down, drove down in the afternoon, and this was usual.

  Thelma came in and said, ‘How are you, Mum dear?’

  As if she were expecting her mother to be sick.

  ‘I am all right, thank you,’ said the old woman, and began to sharpen.

  Thelma was dressed well. Thelma’s dress was never noticed, it was rich but too discreet. Now it was her mother looking, though, who saw that Thelma was dressed extra well.

  ‘I have brought a friend’, said Thelma Forsdyke, ‘who is most anxious to meet you.’

  This is a most dishonest friend, the old woman felt.

  ‘What friend?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘It is a lady,’ said Mrs Forsdyke. ‘It is my friend Mrs Fisher.’

  A dishonest lady, this was worse. And the old woman began to get up, out of the deep chair in which, unwisely, she had been sitting. To get up would have been terrible, if it had not been imperative. And so she heaved.

  ‘There, you need not worry,’ the daughter said, and would have had her mother in a strait jacket, she liked people under control, then to be authoritative and kind.

  ‘I have brought a box of little cakes. There need be no fuss,’ she said.

  ‘In my house,’ said Amy Parker, ‘I will have to make a batch of scones. Do you think the pumpkin ones, or does she like them plain?’

  ‘I am sure I do not know,’ said Thelma Forsdyke. ‘It is unnecessary.’

  ‘But she is your friend.’

  ‘Friendship is not fed on scones, Mother. We have interests in common.’

  It was puzzling. It was evident also that Mrs Fisher was approaching, at leisure, though with confidence.

  ‘Am I to come in?’ she asked.

  She did.

  Mrs Fisher was quite old then, or not so old perhaps, it was not possible to tell. She was not young, though.

  ‘Mrs Parker, we have disturbed you,’ she said with a deliberate smile. ‘You hate the unexpected, I can see. I do too. In small matters anyway. But if there is to be a genuine eruption, with clouds of smoke and sheets of flame, let it erupt unexpectedly. That can be exhilarating.’

  Her mouth was red.

  Thelma Forsdyke was unhappy over this scene. Doubts that she had had came back to her. To know that these had been justified gave her not the feeblest pleasure. She could have sacrificed her mother, but not her friend.

  ‘Will you sit down then,’ Amy Parker asked, ‘while I get us some tea?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Fisher. ‘Lots of lovely tea. One of the things I dare to admit. When I am on my own, which happens sometimes at my age, I always drink the pot dry.’

  Letting a nasty little piece of fur fall upon the floor beside her chair. The little piece of fur was, in fact, sable, but Mrs Fisher forgot this on policy.

  Not so Thelma, who ran to retrieve and brush the fur. Now she trembled for her friend’s daring, and her own lack of it. Mrs Fisher, of course, had been at the game a long time, and was richer than the rich, she could afford forgetfulness.

  ‘I will make some scones,’ said Amy Parker, who looked out no longer on her own room, but on to some stage, upon which electric actresses, speaking the foreign language of a play, were taking positions.

  Mrs Fisher coruscated.

  ‘Scones? Dare we?’ she asked of Mrs Forsdyke.

  But Thelma had forgotten the reply. She was two people in this room, in which she had played at ludo. She was confused.

  ‘Why?’ asked Mrs Parker. ‘Are you not allowed to eat scones?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Fisher, ‘it is one’s figure. It is always with one.’

  Her skin was dry. On one cheek, which tired at moments into a tic, there appeared to be a little patch of roughness, it was not sawdust, that was not possible, more likely a union of powder and down at some point of irritation. Mrs Fisher was taking no chances, though. She was withholding her blemish even from Mrs Forsdyke’s mother, by offering her good side, so that she was seen in brittle profile, like the parrot that she wore, an old, exquisite gold brooch, with flashes of enamel in the parrot tail, and a ruby for an eye, and a little chain of gold fettering an ankle to a golden perch.

  Now Mrs Parker, who had seen the brooch, came forward, as many children had, and said, ‘Oh dear, that is a lovely brooch. It is lovely.’

  Mrs Fisher lifted up her eyes. They were still limpid. Under the influence of admiration her skin would come alive. Her mouth had moistened. The machinery of charm was working. She smiled for Mrs Parker.

  ‘The
brooch? Yes,’ she said. ‘But to return to scones. I would truly love to eat, well, many, many of your scones.’

  Because she had learned that, in flirtation, the sex is immaterial.

  Amy Parker was afraid that such a fever might be contagious.

  ‘They are just scones, you know,’ she said, twisting her broad ring.

  Mrs Forsdyke laughed bitterly. ‘You will be Mother’s friend for life.’

  This chalky woman resented grace. She became thin, narrow at the shoulders, with long hands and impeccable feet. Any evidence of admiration earned by others was a bar. So she sat. Following her lips with her tongue. Her hair, which was putting out tendrils under her hat, that she had made unfashionable by wearing it, had grown powdery with age. Her skin had become milky, not unhealthy but nervous. She was not displeased with any of this.

  ‘Run along,’ she said runningly, ‘and make the scones. And I shall find the cups.’

  ‘I do not need any help,’ said Amy Parker. ‘Not with anything.’

  She had become angry about something, though she was not sure what.

  ‘Funny old thing,’ said Mrs. Forsdyke when her mother had gone.

  ‘Rather sweet,’ sighed Mrs Fisher, who had relaxed.

  She was looking around in someone else’s house.

  ‘And this house. It is a real room. It is fascinating to see that people do live. Darling, I am so grateful that you should have brought me.’

  Thelma Forsdyke winced. She was not at all glad.

  ‘It is a simple room,’ she said.

  ‘There is no such thing as simplicity,’ said Mrs Fisher.

  ‘I hated it at one time.’

  ‘Of course. What one is close to, one hates,’ said Mrs Fisher. She held her head on one side. She had her friend beneath a pin.