The Solid Mandala Read online

  “It was all because of the old essay,” Arthur was keeping on, “that Johnny Haynes thought was silly. Because the bloke couldn’t have collected the blood. See? Not in the basin. The kids he was murdering would have been kicking too hard. But I liked it, Waldo — the idea. Waldo? Those black old trees — they’re black all right — and perhaps there was a possum scratching in the chimney.”

  Waldo decided not to listen to any further dill’s drivel.

  And soon other things had begun to happen.

  That evening after tea he slipped round quietly hearing Mr Haynes had come. Arthur was down with Jewel for something, taking a cabbage leaf, or filling the water-bucket. While Mr Haynes was standing on the front veranda, under the classical pediment he had built.

  “I warn yer, Mr Brown,” Mr Haynes was saying, and his usually jolly chins were compressed, “you’ll have to restrain him. Yer don’t realize a big lump of a boy like that can turn violent. In his condition. It’s hard, I know, for the parents to see.”

  “I’ll see when there’s anything to see,” said Dad.

  “But Arthur is the gentlest creature,” Mother was trying to persuade.

  “I didn’t bring along my boy’s lip to show.” Mr Haynes was turning nasty now. “His mother is too upset. But I warn yer.”

  “Thank you, Mr Haynes,” said Dad. “You already have.”

  Mother was protesting with her tongue. She had fastened her long hands together like people did in church.

  “Next thing he’ll be peering in at windows. Frightening women. Jumping on girls. That’s what happens before parents’ll admit they’ve got a loopy boy at home.”

  Dad was sitting on the old day-bed. He could have been hit over the head.

  “Mr Haynes,” said Mother finally, “parents realize more than you, apparently, believe.”

  So Mr Haynes was ashamed, and turned grumbling down the path.

  “What is it?” asked Arthur, who had come up suddenly through the grass.

  His thick white nostrils scented something.

  “Nothing, darling,” Mother said. “There’s that bowl of cream waiting to be churned.”

  While Waldo, who was the cause of it all, had shrivelled up. If it came to that, in moments of exposure, his common state was one of runtish misery. He longed for Mother’s hand to reach out and touch some part of him which perhaps could never be touched.

  So he went away into what they called the Side Garden, which the grass had already reclaimed. While Dad continued sitting, as though considering the problem Arthur was becoming. As though Arthur was only Dad’s problem. When Arthur was Waldo’s club foot. As Waldo limped, over the uneven ground, through the sea of grass and submerged roses.

  That night Arthur tried to drag him back behind the almost visible line beyond which knowledge could not help.

  “What is it, Waldo?” Arthur golloped. “What were they talking about?”

  Arthur was taking, had taken him in his arms, was overwhelming him with some need.

  “Nothing,” said Waldo.

  He should have struggled, but couldn’t any more. The most he could do was pinch the wick, squeeze out the flickery candle-flame.

  “We don’t mind, do we, Waldo?”

  The stench of pinched-out candle was cauterizing Waldo’s nostrils. But he did not mind all that much. He was dragged back into what he knew for best and certain. Their flesh was flickering quivering together in that other darkness, which resisted all demands and judgments.

  Waldo suspected early on they could not expect more of their father. He was too pathetic. Dad had not recovered from the evening of Mr Haynes’s accusation, though he went about trying to show he had, Waldo realized later. “George Brown” as he referred to their father when he had learnt to tolerate him, clung to his principles, or illusions, but did not succeed in impressing himself.

  Once Waldo had come across the parents sitting at that deal table they had dragged out into the shade of the plum tree. (Waldo was of the age where his pants would no longer button at the knees — “the leggy stage,” Mother called it.) The light falling on his mother and father through the branches had jaundiced them. They cringed slightly for they were not, in fact, protected, as they had really been hoping and expecting.

  “Well,” said Dad, “we have each other.”

  Waldo at first resented what he heard. It was as though he, and less immediately Arthur, had been cast off.

  “Oh, yes,” answered Mother. “We have each other. We needn’t regret.”

  “And our conscience is intact. We got out. No one can say it wasn’t for the best.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Mother. “They were intolerable. Beastly! What else could one expect from people so warped by tradition? My family!”

  Although he was standing outside the blast, Waldo shivered.

  “Sitting in their pews,” she said, “Sunday after Sunday. Keeping in with God and society. Then going home to sharpen their knives for the week.”

  She laughed one of those laughs, and looked down to see what it was, and crushed the little green plums which were grating under her feet.

  “We are free, at least,” said Dad, “here.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Mother.

  “Give the children a chance.”

  “The children.”

  She put her hand over her husband’s. She was so preoccupied, it seemed there would be nobody but Arthur left for Waldo.

  Then George Brown their father, a wizened man with a limp, got up and went in to stoke the stove for Mother as he usually did before tea. There were times when Waldo loved their father, he really did. He would have liked to, anyway, and often the intention is acceptable.

  About the same period those Miss Dallimores called.

  First Mother received the letter, so small, so that you didn’t have to write too much, and scented, ever so slightly scented. Waldo realized later on that the Dallimores were specialists in what is done.

  Mother said she would bake some scones, and perhaps a few of her rock-cakes.

  “Ooh, yeees!” said Arthur. “The rock-cakes, Mum!”

  He liked the sugar-crystals on them.

  When the boys returned from school the Dallimores were already seated. Their hats were almost more important than themselves. Like their letter, the Dallimores were slightly scented.

  “Have you got a cestrum?” Arthur asked.

  “I beg your pardon?” Miss Dallimore replied.

  “A cestrum. A kind of bush that smells at night. We’ve got one outside our bedroom window.”

  Waldo could have kicked Arthur, but Miss Dallimore only thought it a quaint remark.

  “Old-fashioned,” her sister improved on it, but faintly.

  For the most part Miss Dorothy Dallimore wiggled her ankle instead of speaking, and helped underline what her sister had to say. It was Miss Dallimore — Miss Lilian — who did the talking. Her dress had little holes in it, which bees began to investigate, till she brushed them away. Angrily, Waldo suspected.

  “It is a most curious coincidence,” Miss Dallimore said, and her sister Dorothy supported her in muffled tone, “that we should be paying this visit to Sarsaparilla just when we receive the letter from your cousin.”

  “Most,” said Mother, “considering Mollie is not the best of correspondents.”

  “But sends the drafts at Christmas. Doesn’t she, Mum? Eh? She never forgets that,” said Arthur.

  “Oh, we adored Mrs Thourault!”

  Miss Dallimore almost gargled with the name, and Miss Dorothy agreed in undertone, watching her own ankle, which she wiggled worse than ever.

  “Even as a little girl,” said Mother, “Mollie was the soul of kindness.”

  “I bought the pen-knife, didn’t I, Mum?” Arthur said. “Last time. With my share of the draft.”

  “Oh dear, Arthur, you’re tilting the table!”

  It was the little ricketty wicker-and-bamboo one they had brought out from the living room.

  “Won
’t you,” she said, “fetch us another plate of cakes?” Then Mother looked shy, for her. “That is, if Miss Dallimore or her sister would care for another cake.”

  The Miss Dallimores agreed they adored rock-cakes. They also found Arthur so amusing.

  Waldo did not believe it for a moment. He himself was disgusted. If it had been possible he would have taken the two Miss Dallimores, leading them away from the house in which his family lived, while telling them something of interest, preferably about himself, he would have to decide what.

  “I am sure Mrs Thourault will be quite excited to have us report on you all,” said Miss Dallimore, who, unlike Cousin Mollie might have been taught her kindness.

  “She speaks so warmly of you,” Miss Dorothy added, and seemed surprised at herself for having got it in.

  “I do wonder whether Mrs Musto will see her way to visiting Tallboys. We did give her the address. We should so love her to meet Mrs Thourault. That would forge yet another link.”

  Miss Dallimore’s sister giggled her pleasure. For Mrs Musto was the lady in whose house at Sarsaparilla the Dallimores were spending the few months of her trip to Europe. Waldo knew all about it, and was bored at last, he realized, by people.

  “I can’t tell you what it did to us,” Miss Dallimore continued, “our visit to such a” — here she was searching — “to such a historic English home.”

  Miss Dorothy, to show she was sharing the experience, gave what sounded like a moan.

  “Our only disappointment,” Miss Dallimore confessed, “was that Lord Tolfree himself didn’t put in an appearance. Was indisposed.”

  Mother blushed, and Waldo on hearing the name again felt the little twinge, of anxiety as much as pleasure. He returned to Miss Dallimore with greater interest. She was the colour of marmalade under her sugar hat.

  “A chill, I believe — wasn’t it, Dolly? — on his liver.”

  “Uncle Charlie’s liver,” said Mother, “was always playing up.”

  The Miss Dallimores appeared distressed, though the elder one quickly found a reason for brightening up.

  “In any case,” she said, “it has been so delightful to make the acquaintance of the Honourable Mrs Thourault’s cousin. In Sarsaparilla.”

  “The Hon-our-able Mrs Thou-rault!” Arthur repeated, or almost sang, pronouncing the II dreamily.

  “The only pity is,” said the persevering Miss Dallimore, “that Mr Brown should still be at his bank.”

  “It’s a long journey from Barranugli.”

  The skin between Mother’s eyes grew pinched as it did when she thought about Dad and the bank.

  “Oh yes, tiring!” Miss Dallimore agreed emphatically. “Australia is tiring. The distances are tiring.”

  “The Hon Mrs Thou-ou-rault!” Arthur sang, dreamier.

  Miss Dorothy giggled, but turned it nervously into a sigh, and sat waggling her ankle some more.

  “But perhaps,” Miss Dallimore revived again, “perhaps in time” — she was at her marmalady brightest — “they will give him Sydney, and then you will come to live among us!”

  It was obviouf’y the only place to live. But Mother looked down. Just as Waldo, and at last Arthur, were looking up, at Miss Dallimore’s idea. That Dad should be given Head Office.

  Mother did not speak. Arthur could have been about to start the hiccups. Never before, Waldo saw, had he been closer to his mother, to his brother. They were close enough to suffocate.

  Then Arthur hiccupped: “When are we going to the bank, Mum? It’s time we visited the bank again. Mr Mackenzie gives us humbugs. Mr Mackenzie has a stuffed fox.”

  “Why,” said Miss Dallimore, “what a very interesting and thoughtful person Mr Mackenzie must be.”

  She had got up. The two Miss Dallimores were on their feet. They were doing things to their clean-smelling gloves.

  “Why has your dress got holes in it?” Arthur hiccupped, looking rather too closely into the elder Miss Dallimore’s material.

  “That is part of the design, I expect!”

  Miss Dallimore laughed to make it sound braver as, followed by her sister, she tried to walk slowly down the path.

  Mother seemed to have forgotten the ricketty bamboo table, from which Arthur finished the rock-cakes, and from which only much later she began to sweep the crumbs. As Dad was coming through the gate.

  “Two women,” Mother told him. “Two ladies.”

  She showered the grass with sugary crumbs.

  “Ladies? What ladies?”

  “I mentioned them,” said Mother, “only this morning. The ones who have come to Mrs Musto’s.”

  “Tenants?”

  “They are doing a little caretaking — oh, but very genteel — while Mrs Musto is away.”

  The Miss Dallimores did not call again, and there was no reason to remember them — except when Arthur asked: “When will they give you Head Office, Dad?”

  “On their day of judgment,” their father answered.

  The Bank.

  It was a squat building, solid, the brown paint of which had blistered in the Barranugli sun. In the brownish-yellow glare Arthur always stood to burst a few of the paint blisters, and once had said, only for himself, in little higher than a whisper: “Diarrhoea.” Outside the bank it was so hot, so brown, everybody as Mother would call it “visibly perspiring”. Cool inside the building, though, and solemn. Several times when they were smaller Mother had taken them to Barranugli, shopping, and visiting at the bank. But had stopped, Waldo realized, because Dad no longer wanted it.

  “But it’s their only little outing,” Mother had protested.

  “He’s big now, Anne. What if he got out of hand?” Waldo heard. “What if you couldn’t control him?”

  Waldo regretted they no longer visited the bank. His sense of importance suffered from the lapse. The bank itself was so reliable, permanent, with its smell of fresh paper money, and the neat young ladies in patent-leather sleeves, and Mr Mackenzie, who came out from behind the frosted glass.

  “So these are the boys,” said Mr Mackenzie the first time.

  “The twin boys,” Arthur corrected.

  Because people did not always realize, though in the case of Mr Mackenzie naturally he must have known.

  Even if he hadn’t he would not have shown any surprise. He was, it seemed, all right, in spite of the dandruff, and smelling like the bowl of an old treacly pipe.

  Mr Mackenzie took them up into the residence to show them to Mrs Mackenzie, who was an invalid, they said. She was in every other way uninteresting. But Mr Mackenzie produced the humbugs, slightly melted in their paper bag, and pointed out the fox in its place on the window-ledge of a landing. Teeth bared. Arthur got so excited on first acquaintance with the fox he almost embraced it, board and all — the red fox, not quite so red as Arthur, and softer. Arthur’s hair was what you could only call coarse until length and age softened it.

  Afterwards, sucking humbugs, they went back into the public bank, and stood in front of the cage in which Dad was counting money. Mother would smile to encourage him. But not the boys. It was too solemn a moment for the boys, the way Dad flicked the stiff notes, as though to tear the corners off, and writing down figures in pencil. Sometimes a group of young ladies would gather, to ask questions, and laugh, and flatter. Once a Miss Simpson had touched Arthur’s hair, and exclaimed: “Oh, but it’s such harsh stuff!” She had done it, though. Possibly she had won a dare.

  But Dad very seldom looked up, even when there weren’t any clients; he was so busy.

  It was, he thought, the occasion of their last visit to the bank as children, that Waldo noticed their father looking out from the cage in which he stood: the citron-coloured face, its seams nicked by the cut-throat with flecks of black, morning blood, the moustache, interesting to touch before it had grown raggedy. Their father’s eyes were brown, which Arthur had inherited. Their father’s stare was at that moment directed outward, and not. He had not yet developed his asthma, though might have t
hat morning in the tearing silence of the brown bank. Suddenly his shoulders hunched, to resist, it seemed, compression by the narrow cage, his eyes were more deeply concentrated on some invisible point. More distinctly even than the morning he found their father dead Waldo would remember the morning of their last visit to the bank.

  Afterwards in the racketty train which was taking them back to Sarsaparilla, Mother asked: “What is it, Waldo? What is it, dearest?”

  Unusual for her; she was by no means soft.

  But how could he tell her? And he knew, what was more, she was only asking to be told something she already knew. (In his crueller moments as a man, Waldo suspected their mother was not always able to resist a desire to probe their common wounds.)

  So he sat in the spidery local train and willed it to dislocate the vision of those normally liquid eyes set like glass inside the cage. For ever, it seemed, and ever.

  But the train did not co-operate, and it was only on walking up their garden path, when he trod on one of those brown slugs which had come out too soon in search of evening moisture, that Waldo was able to relieve his feelings. As he crushed the slug, his own despair writhed and shrivelled up.

  The old men weaving along the main street, the one stalking, the other stumping, had known their surroundings so long they could have taken them to bits, brick by brick, tile by tile, the new concrete kerbing, and Council-approved parapets. They would even have known how the bits should be put together again. The old men were still fascinated by what they knew, while often overwhelmed by it. For it was overwhelming, really. Take Woolworths. Though Arthur Brown loved Woolworths.

  “Can’t we go into Woolies, Waldo?”

  “It isn’t open yet.”

  Arthur liked to spend mornings in Woolworths costing the goods. Because of course things were marked up higher than should have been allowed. Often they told him not to be a nuisance, and sent him out. Once the manager had searched his pockets, and found the bus tickets, the rather grey handkerchief — Arthur’s laundry always came out grey — and the glass taws he carried around.