The Tree of Man

by Patrick White

  It was obvious, with his mouth full of cheese, that he did not want to know.

  ‘Ray never ever mentioned you,’ said the woman dreamily, and without callousness.

  She was smoothing the boy’s live hair, that she could smell faintly, and was smiling.

  ‘This is your grandfather’, she said, ‘come to see us.’

  The old man wished that she had not.

  ‘Why?’ asked the boy.

  Nobody could answer that.

  The boy flicked his head, to free it.

  ‘I don’t want any grandfather,’ he said, suspecting all that was not food or pleasure, and particularly the unknown, which disturbed his confidence.

  ‘That is bold,’ said the mother in an unreproving voice.

  The old man accepted what he had deserved.

  ‘Come and let me brush your hair,’ said the mother to the boy, she was in love with that hair.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

  ‘Just a little bit,’ she begged, fetching a small brush with a handle. ‘Ah yes, come on, Ray.’

  So this one was Ray too.

  ‘No,’ said the boy. ‘That is a girl’s brush anyway.’

  ‘I cannot do anything with him,’ said the mother with desperate joy.

  After a bit the old man saw that he must leave her to her slavery. She was drunk with love and the smell of her child’s hair. So he prepared to go.

  As he went along the passage, which was dimmed further by old linoleum of a brown colour, the woman called Lola came running after him and said, ‘I cannot thank you.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘You have made me see things.’

  His eyes that looked at her were blinded by his own confusion.

  ‘This necessary slavery,’ she said, ‘if that is what you were trying to say.’

  As he went away, surprised that he could light anyone with his own darkness.

  But this is one of the extraordinary things.

  When Stan Parker got home, after undoing the little chain which they had put on the gate as a protection from cattle that strayed from the country lower down, he saw that Amy was sitting on the veranda, as she often did, but that she was disrupted. Would he be able to face it? he wondered as his feet went forward.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  Though he knew.

  As he went forward he saw that there was still a thin girl encased in this comfortable old woman, and was himself cut open by the poignance of it.

  ‘I thought I would keep it from you for a bit,’ he said. ‘That is all.’

  As going forward he put out his hands. He would never reach her.

  ‘It is all right,’ she said, daring him to touch her, because she was finished with crying. ‘I have been through all this before, many times, only a little different. But you don’t expect it when it comes.’

  When it came, Amy Parker had been sitting on the veranda in the clear day. A plant that she had watched for years had put on its flower for the first time. It was a jewel.

  Then she heard the chain. It was a fumbling of someone who was a stranger to it, who came in at last, bundling past those shrubs of oleanders, and straggly roses that catch at clothes, and will even tear strangers, making them annoyed.

  The stranger came on, who was no stranger, it appeared, finally, but Mrs O’Dowd, who was Mrs Parker’s friend of years.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs O’Dowd, ‘you are a nice sort of friend, if that is what you can be called, I am not at all sure.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Parker, ‘you leave things, and then the time is gone.’

  She doubted whether she was pleased.

  ‘Are you good?’ asked Mrs O’Dowd.

  ‘I am good,’ said Mrs Parker, who did not get up, it could have been her leg, nor offer anything whatsoever.

  Mrs O’Dowd had a melted look, it was now seen. Her fubsy flesh was to some extent gone, leaving the loose bags of skin. She was loose and yellow all right, but mobile. She would always be an active woman. Life possessed her untidily. It was fortunate for Mrs O’Dowd that life itself is hugger-mugger. And transient. Breaking into small pieces, of which her eyes were forever taking stock, and never seeing enough, most likely, they were restless, and black.

  ‘How is Mr O’Dowd then?’ Amy Parker asked, because she had to.’ I have not heard these years.’

  ‘He is bad,’ Mrs O’Dowd said, and, as facts are unalterable, was not distressed. ‘He is like that dog,’ she said.

  It was an old black dog, that was Stan’s dog, with a bad car and white eyes.

  ‘Poor bugger,’ said Mrs O’Dowd. ‘He has the double cattyract on both eyes. He is gettun around like a dog, you ought to see him, stickun his nose inter things, it would make you cry.’

  Though she did not, she was used to it.

  Amy Parker did not want to witness pain beneath that tranquil sky of winter. She shifted in her chair.

  ‘I knew someone’, she said, ‘had a cataract on one eye. She had it lifted off.’

  ‘He will not undergo it,’ said Mrs O’Dowd. ‘Not at his age. Says he has the feel of things, an will not be seeun nothun fresh, so he says, this side of the cemetery.’

  She herself, of course, knew better, looking here and there.

  ‘That is a new little covered-in end of the veranda, Mrs Parker,’ Mrs O’Dowd then said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Parker, ’that is new. There is a lot that will be new. To you.’

  She held up her chin to Mrs O’Dowd, and would not show her too much. But her new-old friend, turning this way and that, in the black coat, with hair upon the collar where hair does fall, and the little brown hat that she could not have found but must have sprouted from the head, was ready to show, so it seemed, she was quite open, on the surface anyway.

  She laughed frankly, showing her gums, for she had put away her teeth years ago in a box. She said, ‘Why, that is the benefut of neglect, my dear. Leave a friend a year or two, and you will see what is new. You will see the old too, as it is. Ah dear,’ she laughed.

  And wiped a spot of spit off her chin.

  ‘You will see the changes down our way too. You will see the fuchsias all cut down. You can see the house. Fuchsias I always hated, to be frank, that will not hold their heads up, silly things. So I took the tommyhawk one wet day an I chopped them all down. “Well,” he says, “I can feel the light is comun in, an do you think we can stand it after all, an what will Mrs Parker say,” he says, “who was all for fuchsias.”’

  ‘I do not remember’, Amy Parker said, ‘particularly liking fuchsias, though of course they are nice.’

  And tremble under birds that stick their beaks in, their long black beaks.

  ‘He is white now,’ said Mrs O’Dowd. ‘An sometimes wambly. He is a carcass of a man. He does his little jobs, though. He will split a little pile of kindlun, beautifully, by touch.’

  She held her head up and licked her lips.

  So they were sitting again in the steam of summer, in the shade of fuchsias, Amy Parker saw. He was a black man with hair in his nostrils. She had not intended being with him ever alone, and had not, except once, and then had gone from him quickly, her skirt dragging through the fuchsias. He had not touched her, except on that one occasion, and then only with his eyes. So what was she frightened of? She was frightened rather of some disguise that would be worn later. He did come up the path, and he was wearing red. She was waiting for him there, and had intended to, she knew. He was burning. Leo, he said his name was. But he was the black one too, from whom she had run while still afraid, she could only face her guilt in a different colour.

  So Mrs O’Dowd was right, who said now, ‘Where is Mr Parker?’

  Nothing would come out in this place to greet an old friend.

  ‘He is gone to the city. On business,’ Mrs Parker said.

  ‘Ahhh,’ Mrs O’Dowd sighed. ‘The men can occupy themselves in that way. But he will be cut up, I can imagine, as men are, and will not show it.�
�

  For now she had come breathlessly to point. Her words blew like gentle feathers in a little wind. She was frightened too.

  ‘I have been commiseratun with him,’ Mrs O’Dowd said. ‘An with you too naturally, my dear. I say that, an it will sound foolish. An us friends.’

  So she traced a slow seam in that black which she had put on out of respect and decency. The mothballs now were striking Amy Parker as terribly cold. The mothballs, indeed, were shaking in the pockets of her friend and issuing in blasts.

  ‘What do you mean, Mrs O’Dowd?’ Amy Parker asked.

  Then for a moment her friend did regret that she had been too daring.

  ‘I do not understand,’ Amy Parker said.

  ‘Ah,’ Mrs O’Dowd gulped.

  I am letting out the cat with all claws sprung, she said, so be it, but am I strong?

  ‘I would not’uv spoke otherwise, only I thought that you would most certainly’uv heard.’

  ‘I have not heard.’ Amy Parker listened to her own loud, cold voice.

  ‘Then, dear me,’ said Mrs O’Dowd, looking in that bag which would not shut, and which she carried on occasions of importance, to pay the rates, to funerals, and to such like, and in which she found finally the piece of paper she had kept, for no reason, she had read and learned the sentences, except that she was not brave, she was not enough, to say, and so she gave the piece of paper.

  ‘There,’ she said.

  And Amy Parker, who had known in an instant of split sky, read also that her son was dead.

  She was sitting there alone.

  Ray, she said, I told you, I told you. Though what she had told she did not well know.

  Then her love came out in a great burst, she was kissing him, and cried.

  Till the neighbour woman, who was watching what she had achieved, through no personal malice but a little grudge, began herself to feel sad, the sadness of life was on her in her brown hat.

  So she frowned, and had begun to sweat, before the real moisture came. Her pores were glistening as she said, ‘It is us women that will allus pay. Remember that, Mrs Parker, when you take on, we are all of us in the same boat. Ah dear, it is terrible,’ she said.

  And cried. She could gush with anyone once she had begun.

  But Amy Parker was alone.

  A great hollow of cold was about her, of the dark garden, of cold scents, which were violets at that time of year, with water in them. The blurry violets were all around. She would pick them sometimes, and tie them with a thread, and put them in a little china shoe that he would take when empty, he liked to take it in his bed, to sleep with it. Sleep should compensate but does not. All the sleepers she had watched were gone the instant of waking.

  The pale sky was stretched tight.

  I should do something, said Amy Parker, but what? There was nothing, of course, to do.

  ‘Have you a drop, perhaps, in the house, of something?’ Mrs O’Dowd asked.

  Mrs Parker had not.

  ‘Ah dear, the poor souls,’ Mrs O’Dowd cried.

  And as they mourned they did to some extent melt together. The two girls were again warm and close. Their pockets were interchangeable, for handkerchiefs and kindnesses. Their thoughts and hair strayed together. Only when they were exhausted did the two sleek girls shrink back into old and floury women, and remember where they were.

  They blew their noses then. The neighbour woman was noisier, because she had been crying for her friend, just as Amy Parker was quiet, because the grief was hers.

  ‘Now you will count on me, Mrs Parker,’ Mrs O’Dowd said. ‘For anythun. I would throw a little bit of grain to the hens, if you was willun.’

  ‘The hens,’ said Amy Parker. ‘It does not matter. There is Mr O’Dowd, besides, who will be wondering.’

  ‘Oh, him,’ said Mrs O’Dowd. ‘He has learned that impatience will not alter things. He has been made reasonable, poor bugger, who never was.’

  Then when she had gathered herself and was for going off, it did seem by that light of sad friendship and in the gloom of plants that her act had been virtuous. She touched her friend and said, ‘You will come to see me, Mrs Parker, when you are feelun better, like, an we will talk about old times. An have a laugh, I daresay. I have some little duckluns as will do you good to see.’

  She would have begun again to cry for her own kindness, as well as for her friend’s eyes, but went away in haste and respect.

  And Amy Parker said, ‘Yes. I will come. Some day. And have a cup.’

  When she had lived in its entirety the event that was still occurring. But that would be a matter of time.

  So she was still sitting, an old and heavy woman with her legs apart, when Stan came in, and from her distance she saw that he had suffered, and that she would not be able to help.

  ‘What else are we intended to do if we have failed in this?’ asked the old man, who had been creased by his journey.

  His skull was hollow-looking.

  ‘It is so late,’ he said.

  Then she stirred, and shivered, choosing stupidity.

  ‘There will be a frost,’ she said deliberately. ‘And I have not attended to the fire.’

  ‘At our age,’ he pursued. ‘With nothing to show.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ said his wife, pulling down her sleeves, of the coarse stuff of ropes. ‘It is all above me. I do not understand a thing.’

  ‘But we must try to, Amy.’

  ‘What good will it do? Provided that we live our lives.’

  ‘But is is not intended to be easy. Even now.’

  ‘I don’t understand you, Stan,’ she said, quickly putting her hands to her mouth.

  ‘I am little enough to understand,’ said the old man.

  ‘When we have ourselves,’ said his wife, forcing back her unhappiness into her mouth. ‘The mysteries are not for us, Stan. Stan? Stan?’

  She could not bear him to escape her in a general greyness of speculation, so she began to draw him towards her, using some warmth of her own, almost as if she had been a younger woman, and when they had searched each other they began to see in the depths of their eyes that even their failures were necessary.

  So the old people recovered in time, except for a stiffness of their bones, these never did recover from the beating that they got. And the paddocks remained blurred. The winter cabbages that Stan Parker put would run together in a purple blur, till at his feet, then they would open up in true splendour, the metal leaves breaking open, offering their jewels of water on blue platters. She would come to him often amongst the cabbages. They were happy then, warming themselves on flat words and their nearness to each other.

  In this tranquil frame of mind Amy Parker did intend to pay a visit to her friend and neighbour, as had been spoken of, and promised. But did not go. She is all right, she said, wrinkling her face. And would, but did not, go. Her daughter Thelma had got her a little trap and pony, and she would drive about the countryside. It was a change. With an old green rug across her knees. The little horse went plop-plop, his hoofs and dung. So it would have been easy, too easy, to pay the visit to O’Dowds. But she did not. Though she was warm towards them. She could not put them quite out of her mind, they were of the moments of her life and would recur.

  Then it was Mrs O’Dowd who recurred in person, the other side of a year, it must have been, the frost was already on the ground, when there was Mrs O’Dowd again, walking against the fence as if she had been looking for sticks, and swinging a string bag.

  ‘Mrs Parker,’ said the neighbour woman in a low voice, that she made an immediate effort to raise. ‘We have forgotten each other, it seems. An it is a pity. Not to end as we begun.’

  ‘I am to blame,’ said Amy Parker humbly.

  On this motionless day she could take any blame. She was looking about from under her hand. All shapes were kind.

  ‘Truly,’ she said. ‘You know what it is. I have been meaning. And will still.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr
s O’Dowd, clearing her throat.

  She was swinging her little dillybag, in which was a packet of something from the shop.

  It did not seem likely that they would speak further just then. They were both of them looking on the ground at the stems of yellow grass.

  When Mrs O’Dowd, who was herself the colour of winter grass, wetted her lips and said, ‘I have been sick, you know.’

  Amy Parker sympathized. The sun was too benign to deny formal sympathy.

  ‘In bed?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs O’Dowd, swinging her bag, ‘what would I be doin in bed? I never did take to me bed, except nights, an sometimes of an afternoon, if that was his wish. So not now, thank you. Me feet will see me out, God willun, an if not.’

  ‘Then you are bad?’ Mrs Parker asked.

  They had come together on the grey fence.

  ‘I am bad,’ said Mrs O’Dowd.

  The little packet in her swinging bag poised and swung out. It fell. They watched it.

  ‘It is the cancer,’ said Mrs O’Dowd.

  They were watching that packet in the grass.

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Parker.

  Because her throat was full. It was the life protesting in her.

  ‘It is not possible,’ she said, ‘Mrs O’Dowd.’

  ‘It is,’ said Mrs O’Dowd, ‘it seems.’

  She was herself looking at things in doubt. And at the little packet, which was there, and which must now be picked up.

  ‘There will be some drug,’ said Mrs Parker as she stooped, ‘something that they have discovered.’

  They were both stooping. They were exchanging hands, that had the yellow wedding rings. They were bumping heads even, foolishly.

  When they were again erect, and Mrs O’Dowd had straightened her hat, and the packet was restored, she said, ‘They will not discover nothun for me. I am rotten with it. Now I know it is intended that way.’

  But Amy Parker continued to protest. ‘It is not,’ she said. ‘It cannot be.’

  Holding her own hands that had begun to tremble, for however much love and pity she did truly feel towards her friend, the experience of pain was also hers. She was aghast at her own unreliable relationship to life.

  ‘I will not die easy even so,’ Mrs O’Dowd now said. ‘I will give it a tussle. As it has allus been.’