The Vivisector (8 page)

As they walked on, he couldn’t help blubbering. He kept it very low, though Lena’s presence made it sound louder.

‘What was it?’ she asked, now more interested than hurt.

‘The sovrun Mrs Courtney gave me.’ He had never ought to carry it around take it to school his secret yet most solid belonging.

Lena was laughing her plaits off. ‘A sov-run! Why ever should Mrs Courtney give a boy like you a sov-run? I’ll ask Mumma as soon as I get home.’

‘Mumma doesn’t know.’

‘Course she doesn’t! It’s a fib! You’re the biggest dirty fibber!’

Lena felt so superior she forgot her shin, she forgot the chamber she had broke. At least she marched on ahead.

Losing the sovereign reminded him he had lost Mrs Courtney as well. As term continued, he asked Mumma: ‘Did you see Her?’

Mumma was off-colour. ‘Why should I see Her? I’m the laundress—the washerwoman.’

But on a brighter day she couldn’t wait to tell: ‘What do you think? Mrs Courtney sent for all us girls because she’s going to a masked ball. She thought we might like to see her fancy costume. Oh, it was a dream! And a black mask.’

‘What was her costume?’

‘I don’t know. Something French. Some lady who was friends with a king.’

Mumma was in heaven, but it made him sulky.

‘Why is she going to wear a mask?’

‘Because no one will recognize her that way.’

‘I’d recognize Mrs Courtney.’

‘Ah, you’re too clever!’ Mumma laughed quite like Lena.

‘Didn’t she ask about me?’ It rushed out in a stream of warm bubbles.

‘Did she ask about you? For Heaven’s sake! Why should a busy lady remember a little boy she never saw more than once?’

Twice, if Mumma knew, and the second time was the important one.

His hopes were low as he and Lena continued going to the rotten old school. He couldn’t believe he was related to Lena any more than Lena could believe it. What made their relationship more embarrassing was that they moved him up, after a consultation between Miss Adams and Mr Boothroyd the head, into Lena’s class. He was in many ways so advanced. In the higher class some of the boys were so big and backward you would have said they were men. Some of the girls were big already inside their blouses. He never tired of looking at the blouses of the older girls. It amazed him to think they would one day contain something as ugly and shapeless as Mumma’s old titty-bottles.

Sometimes the older girls would catch him staring at them. They would redden, and put their heads together, and snicker, and whisper. Then they would look straight ahead, as if he had never been there. It was all because of some trouble he got into. During his short stay in Miss Adams’s class the girl with the fringe made up to him. He stole a liquorice strap from Mrs Maloney’s to give to Dolly Burgess because he was in love with the shape of her forehead below the flossy fringe. They shared the strap, chewing on it from opposite ends, and meeting at last in the middle. Through the blast of liquorice, that soft, milky, girl’s smell came in gentler gusts.

All this happened about the time Mumma had the new baby. There was such a pandemonium at home, he would climb the pepper tree to think about Dolly in absolute private; while everybody came and went: Mrs Burt lending a hand; Mumma wondering how soon she could carry on with the washing and ironing, they couldn’t afford for her not to; and Lena burnt the scrag end.

He got to like school: to wait for the break, to be with Dolly and watch the light tangle with her fringe. She had a dimple. She had rather pop eyes, but blue. She was an only child, the daughter of a watchmaker. For that reason she was always neatly and noticeably dressed. Her pants had points of lace on them. He asked Dolly to show him her girl’s thing: it was still only a naked wrinkle. When he touched, she began at once to gobble and choke: eyes popping. She had been sucking aniseed balls. She ran bellowing away. Because he was afraid, he would have liked not to think about it, but the scent of aniseed kept coming back. He didn’t know why he had asked Dolly to show, when he knew enough from Lena and their own girls, not to say Mumma. He put away his boy’s one, which Dolly had been too frightened to touch in return.

Because Dolly told her mother, who went to Mumma, and Mr Burgess told Mr Boothroyd, the business caused him a lot of trouble. Pa got out a strap, but was too worked up to use it. Old Beetle Boothroyd sent for Hurtle Duffield, and gave him several cuts with a stick; only pride in his tingling hand prevented him crying. Not long after that he was moved up into Lena’s class, where, said Mr Boothroyd, it would take him all his time to keep up.

If it had not been for his own thoughts, and reading his grandmother’s Bible at home, life in the more advanced class would have been as intolerable as it was down amongst the pothooks. At high summer, the light lay brassy on the streets. On the way to school, the balls blazed over the pawnbrokers’ in Taylor Square. Returning, there was sometimes a faint tinkling of tried-out music in the piano shops of Surry Hills if he parted company from Lena and wandered round that way. He did not understand music, but the idea of it refreshed him, as the coloured notes trickled from the darkened shops into the light of day. He would arrive home pacified.

 

Mumma had started taking in washing again while still weak from the lying in. She had started going down to Courtney’s; along with her bundle of necessaries, she lugged the new baby. May very kindly let her lay him in a clothes-basket in the servants’ hall while she was at her work. That way she could go in and feed him when he needed to be fed. Once she stood the basket in the sun beside the cannas in Courtneys’ yard, but soon took fright, thinking how Miss Rhoda’s cat might jump out and eat him. She had heard of such things. For the first time the baby began to seem real. You could imagine Mrs Courtney looking in the basket when she came out to give orders to the cook. The thought made you bite the inside of your cheek.

When it was at last holidays he decided he would go down to Courtneys’ whatever Mumma might say. So he fetched his cap and hung around. He was determined.

She came out carrying the baby bundle. ‘What do you think you’re up to?’ She stuck out her chin.

‘I can help you, can’t I? I can carry your things.’

Mumma looked less opposed.

‘If we don’t make a habit of it. You could get spoilt, my boy—very easy.’

As they started out he took the cloth bundle. Mumma and he were both happy, he could feel. At this hour the streets were empty except for a few tradesmen and carters. The baby had become a thing again, in spite of being known already by name. They had decided to call him Septimus.

‘Sep! Septo! Septer-mus!’ The morning made you sing, bumping the bundle in time against your knee; while Mumma kept looking to see whether there was any of those early lazy flies on the baby’s face.

‘D’you think we’ll have a Decimus?’

‘What’s that?’ she asked, suspicious.

‘That means “the Tenth”.’

She turned her face away. ‘If God and your father is so unkind.’

After that they walked rather flat slommacky down the hill, where maids had come out from the better houses to chat together shaking dusters, or sulk alone as they polished the brass.

At one point Mumma recovered and, looking at him, said: ‘Your hair, your complexion’s a lovely colour, Hurtle.’ And smiled. ‘My colour, when I was a girl.’

He couldn’t believe Mumma’s lumpy old damp hair had ever been any colour at all. He couldn’t believe in his own hair. But in that case, how could Mrs Courtney believe in him?

Poor Mumma, he loved her. Because her hands were holding their new baby he hung on to her skirt for a while.

It was a long morning: he couldn’t decide what to do. Lizzie told Mumma: ‘The old cat’s out to luncheon with Mrs Hollingrake. ’ Mumma wasn’t interested.

At dinner he scoffed down a big dish of mutton and gravy. And sweet potato. There was lemon sago, but by then his pins and needles wouldn’t allow him to enjoy it.

After dinner Mumma sat in a corner to feed the baby, while Edith and Miss Keep ran away quick so they wouldn’t see. Certainly Sep knew what he was up to, his red fingers working on the veined tittybottle, like some sort of caterpillars trying to hold on a pale fruit.

Mumma brought the basket into the yard, into the sun. ‘Seeing as you’re here, you can make yerself useful. You can watch your little brother.’ She was still afraid of Rhoda’s cat.

Even if the baby got eaten he would have to see the chandelier—and Mrs Courtney Mrs Courtney.

Oh the afternoon and the splotched cannas Mr Thompson came and went smelling of old man and manure.

But the sucking sound from the green, furry door immediately swallowed up any previous distress, and he was thrown forward into their cool silent house. He ran higgledy stupid for fear he might not find her, past the chandelier without even looking up, into the mauve room. There he pulled up short. A clock was ticking in the emptiness.

It must have been his lucky day, for he began to hear the gravel, the wheels, the door opening without Edith, the stillness of the house disturbed by certain stiff sounds. Of a skirt? A swishing through their house. A sort of singing.

Then she was standing in the doorway: her hat almost reached across it, prickling and sparkling with quills.

‘Why,’ she called, ‘I know you!’ She laughed. ‘You’re Hurtle Duffield.’

She came on. And stooped. And kissed him. She smelled of scent, and wine, and something more. She was staring at him.

She said, like Mumma: ‘Your hair, your complexion’s a lovely colour.’ She added: ‘Enviable.’

She laughed with pleasure looking at herself in the glass. ‘Do you like my hat?’

‘Yes.’

The hat floated as he had seen the boats on water when Pa took him down to the bay.

‘You’re not very talkative,’ she said. ‘You must learn to pay compliments.’

She didn’t seem in need of them, cocking her head at her own reflection in the glass. But she left off, and went up close, and bared her teeth at it.

‘It was such a very boring luncheon,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’ve come to distract me, Hurtle.’

Every time she said his name it bonged on his eardrums.

She was taking the pins out of her hat, taking off the hat itself, rooting in her hair where it had got squashed, stirring it up with the points of the big-knobbed hatpins.

‘What’s those?’ he asked, wanting to touch the knobs.

‘Those are turquoise.’ She let him hold one of the pins and look at the gold, turquoise-studded shield. ‘Blue’s my favourite colour. It’s so flattering, don’t you think?’

He’d never thought about it except as a colour.

‘They were given me by my husband.’ She spoke the word as though sucking a lolly. ‘For an anniversary.’

When she caught him looking at her she gave a little cough, and her face came down again to cover her thoughts. Some people, particular those in trams, didn’t like you looking at them.

So he said quickly: ‘This room’s an octagon, isn’t it?’

‘Fancy! How did you know?’

‘It’s got eight sides, hasn’t it?’

Although he was distracting her as she had commanded she seemed only vaguely interested. There was that likeness of Rhoda on her desk. There was a second photo he hadn’t noticed, in a silver frame, of a gentleman with thick whiskers beginning to turn grey. He had a large, rather beefy nose.

‘Is that your husband?’ He touched the nose.

‘Yes. It is.’ She sounded very kind and satisfied.

‘He looks strong for a gentleman.’

She gave, not a bit like her usual laugh, more of a hoot. ‘I’ll tell him that! He’ll enjoy your opinion.’ She had put down the hat, and came at him, her dress sounding like a scythe through grass. ‘I could eat you up!’

And seemed to be going to try. Bending down, she drew him against her so close, so tight, he could feel the bones in her stays, and her own soft body above. He was looking right inside the little pocket, between where the skin was shadowy, or yellower.

She went: ‘Mm! Mmmm! Mphh!’

But he wasn’t in the mood for kissing. ‘Your jewellery’s pricking me,’ he said, and got away.

There was a book lying open on the desk, and to distract her again, he read out the title: ‘
The Sor—rows—of—Sat—an.
Is it any good?’

‘Oh, light,’ she answered lightly. ‘Very light.’ She closed it up and put it in a drawer. ‘Did that clergyman teach you to read as well?’

‘I read. But I’m at school now, where they learn you to forget what you know.’

‘Oh, but you must have books!’

She shot at the door of Mr Courtney’s study where you were supposed never to have been before.

‘Look! Books! Some of them are almost too valuable to read. But my husband might break the rule for such a studious boy. If he takes a fancy to you. We’ll have to see.’

There could have been a pendulum swinging inside him. He could have been standing a foot above the crimson carpet as the scent of the leather worked on him.

‘What are they about?’ he asked and made it sound calm.

‘Voyages. Explorations. By men whose appetite for suffering wasn’t satisfied at home. They had to come in search of it in Australia.’

By now he could have done without her. He would have liked to be alone with his thoughts. Through the window there was a small tree whose greenish-white papery flowers were crumbling worlds of light and bees.

There was a painting, too, in a space between the bookcases.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a painting by a Frenchman called Boudin,’ she explained. ‘We brought it back with us from Europe.’

If she hadn’t been there he could have climbed up to feel the smoothness of the paint.

‘It’s worth a lot of money,’ Mrs Courtney said rather dreamily; while he was advancing, dreamier, towards the group of dressy ladies huddled halfway between the flat sea and the bathing-machines.