Happy Valley by Patrick White Page B

had burnt, falling out of the fire, or a cigarette. There were pipes on the mantelpiece. There were books, medical books, Urn Burial, a volume of poems by Donne, and a book on Kant. She had read about Kant. She was rather impressed. And perhaps the doctor would have read Turgeniev, or Anna Karenina. But you did not talk about things like that, you came for something out of the dispensary, and then you went away again, because Dr Halliday did not encourage you to talk. He said good morning in the street. Otherwise you did not exist. His eyes were very cold. They were blue, she thought, or grey, she could not be sure. He was going grey. And now they were starting to have lunch, she could hear the plates, but the doctor had not come, or had come, and Mrs Halliday…
    Then somebody opened the door.
    Hello, said Rodney, looking in.
    He looked a little surprised. He stood awkwardly by the door. Then he went outside again, finding nothing further to say.
    He wanted to get the book and read about Columbus after lunch, but with that Miss Browne sitting there, he would go away, he could wait, he did not want to talk to Miss Browne, talk to anyone, Margaret Quong, he was glad he had given the shell, and now he could go up to Quong’s garage and have a look at the pups. He went along thepassage to the dining-room.
    Rodney, called Mrs Halliday, where is George? Look at your coat! What have you done to yourself? Look at that mud!
    Which was just what he knew she would say.
    I fell down in the yard, he said.
    Oh dear, she said, the way you ruin your clothes! Go and find George.
    He’s coming, he said, sitting down.
    Whether he was or not, he was hungry, even if cold mutton, he hated that. He took an onion out of the jar. Mother was standing there carving the joint.
    I wish your father would come, said Mother, slicing a piece of fat. George! she called. Where is George? Rodney, you
never
help. Put those onions down at once.
    All right, said Rodney. George’ll come.
    He sat back and scratched his head. He wished he had someone older, like Margaret Quong, and the pups, but George was young, playing about in the backyard with a cart, or falling down and hurting himself.
    There is great indignity attached to having a brother younger than yourself.
    Mother! called George. I can’t, I can’t open the door.
    Rodney, said Mother, can’t you see my hands are full? Can’t you open the door for George?
    Oh, all right, he said. If only you would give me time.
    But they drove him about. He would not take long over his lunch. He would get that book and read it alone in his room. Perhaps he would be an explorer, not a doctor after all. But perhaps there was nothing left to explore.
    George was fat, and uncertain on his feet. He nearly fell over when Rodney opened the door.
    Don’t fall over, said Rodney.
    I didn’t!
    Don’t tease him, said Mother. Georgie, darling, look at your nose! Be a man and give it a wipe.
    I don’t want to wipe my nose.
    It’ll fall in your food, Rodney said.
    Don’t be disgusting! Mother said. Come here to Mother and let her wipe.
    George was crying. He always cried.
    Oh dear, coughed Mrs Halliday, what a pair of children I have!
    She sat down to mutton and pickled onions, coughing still, even after a mouthful of water she coughed. She rested her elbows on the table, looking as if she wondered whether she had time to eat. Because that sheet that Mrs Woodhouse tore, and darning wool, there was no feed for the fowls, Oliver come, or Rodney call in at the store, his coat all mud like that, and the sick hen with the scaly eyes, Oliver take a gun, but a long way off, holding ears.
    Hilda Halliday pushed back her plate of mutton and pickles and sat with one elbow on the table holding a hand to her chest. The thought of sickness, even in a hen, always made her put her hand to her chest.
    Eat it up now, George. There’s a good boy, she said. Mother isn’t hungry. But you eat yours.
    Hilda Halliday was almost forty. Oliver was