The Solid Mandala Read online

  Whenever it happened Waldo could only allow himself to feel irritated as opposed to annoyed.

  “Get along, then!” he used to say. “I’ve got to concentrate.”

  As Arthur continued hanging round.

  “All right” — he could be so reasonable — “I am rather clumsy, aren’t I? I do barge around and knock things over. But sometimes those things are standing in my way.”

  Waldo frowned, and stared at the paper. When Arthur went out of the room he wouldn’t have any excuse left.

  “I’ll go, then,” Arthur promised sweetly. “I hope you think of something interesting.”

  Other people continued to reduce Waldo’s intentions and make them appear foolishly capricious, if not downright idiotic. They did not grasp the extent of his need to express some thing. Otherwise how could he truly say: I exist. The prospect of remaining a nonentity like the school teachers or his parents made him sweat behind the knees.

  Perhaps it was through his, you could not say wilfully abnormal, behaviour that other people in the end got wind of his secret intentions. His mother, for instance. She herself would put on a kind of milky smile, and walk softly, as though he were sick or something. Then in his presence she began to make mention of “Waldo’s writing”, but so discreetly that for a long time no caller dared infringe on her discretion.

  Finally Mother foolishly said: “One day, Waldo, you must tell me about your Writing.”

  It was too much.

  If no comment was made by Dad, the reader in the family, who sat there in painful attitudes, pushing his bad leg in yet some other direction, re-reading Religio Medici, Sesame and Lilies, and then Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs by the Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, which the other day he had picked up cheap — if Dad seemed unaware behind his eyebrows and his sucked moustache that anything unusual was going on, it was because their father, Waldo was suddenly convinced, had failed to be a writer.

  To the end of his life Waldo cultivated his gift for distinguishing failures. With the exception of Johnny Haynes, about whom he couldn’t make up his mind, he was particularly sensitive to those failures who had been dumped in the long grass at what was called Sarsaparilla. Sars-per-illa! Had a history in the early days, they told you. Then, apparently, history drew in her horns. There was Allwrights’ store, and the post-office stuck in the side of Mrs Purves’s house. There were the cow cockies and market gardeners. There were the homes of the aged, the eccentric, the labourers, the rich, though the last hardly counted, existing only spasmodically on kept lawns, amongst their shrubs, in varnished dogcarts, or, in Mrs Musto’s case, behind the wind-screen of a motor car. It was really the grass that had control at Sarsaparilla, deep and steaming masses of it, lolling yellow and enervated by the end of summer. As for the roads, with the exception of the highway, they almost all petered out, first in dust, then in paddock, with dollops of brown cow manure — or grey spinners — and the brittle spires of seeded thistles.

  When his thoughts grew too much for him, too blurred, or too entangled, his mind a choked labyrinth without a saving thread, Waldo Brown would stalk along the country roads, exchanging his own blurred world for that other, dusty, external, but no more actual one, in which he continued hoping to discover a distinct form, some object he hadn’t noticed before, while Arthur kicking up the dust behind — it was impossible to escape Arthur unless Arthur himself chose to escape — conducted his monologue, if not dialogue with dust or sun, peewee or green-sprouted cow-turd. Like injustice, the dust always recurred to daze, unless from a sudden mushroom of it, Mrs Musto’s chariot unwound, honking by her orders to warn pedestrians of her coming.

  Stubbens, her chauffeur, did not like honking.

  “But if you’ve got one,” she used to insist.

  Everything was geared to Mrs Musto’s orders.

  “You boys care for a lift?” she would call when she had pulled Stubbens up. “By ghost, isn’t it hot, eh? Hot enough to burn the parson’s nose!”

  Because she was so rich — Fairy Flour — it was accepted that Mrs Musto should speak so authentically. Her chauffeur Stubbens never turned a hair.

  When you had wrenched the door open — Stubbens didn’t open doors for boys — and climbed pulling Arthur, somehow, up, it was coolly awful to sit beside Mrs Musto in her motor overwhelmed by her appurtenances: the green veil, which did not prevent her adding to her freckles, the too collapsible parasol, the alpaca cape, prayer-book, and smelling-salts, on longer journeys, it was said — though Waldo had never travelled far enough in Mrs Musto’s company — cold plum pudding and a bottle of port-wine.

  When they were seated Mrs Musto would give her usual command: “Wind ’er up, Stubbens” — and to the objects of her kindness, as Stubbens wound and wound: “Hold yer ribs, boys, or he’ll crack a couple for yer!”

  She loved perpetual motion, and clergymen, and presents — to give rather than receive, though one so rich as Mrs Musto naturally received a lot. She loved to eat rich food, surrounded by those who condescended to call her their friend, after which she would drop off in the middle of a sentence to revive burping in the middle of another. Music was her grandest passion, which did not prevent her snoring through it, but she could always be relied upon to applaud generously at the end. And sometimes she would organize tennis parties for those she referred to as the “youngsters”. Youngsters, Mrs Musto used to say, are my investment against old age.

  Mrs Brown once remarked she hoped the market would not let Mrs Musto down.

  But somehow Mother did not altogether care for Mrs Musto, who had “known about the Browns” in the beginning. She could not bear Mrs Musto’s kindness.

  “Oh, but she is so kind!” Mother used to sigh. “One can’t deny it. I will not hear a word against the poor thing, though she is — one must face it — what I call a soloist.”

  Certainly Mrs Musto loved to talk. In fact, talk was another of her grand passions.

  “What are mouths given us for? Yairs, I know — food. Lovely, too. Within everybody’s reach in a country like Australia. Give me a good lump of corned beef, with a nice slice of yellow fat, and a boiled onion. Ooh, scrumptious! There are, of course, other things besides. But never forget one in remembering the other. As I said to the Archbishop, it doesn’t pay, never ever, not even an evangelical, to neglect the flesh altogether. The Archbishop was of my opinion. But She — She — She’s not only a poor doer, she’s clearly starving ’erself to make sure of a comfy passage to the other side. As I didn’t hesitate to tell ’er. But as I was saying — what was I saying? Conversation is the prime purpose this little slit was given us for — to communicate in words. We are told: in the beginning was the Word. Which sort of proves, don’t it?”

  She had a snub nose you could look right up.

  “In the beginning was what word?” Arthur asked, seated on that beaded stool, looking up Mrs Musto’s nose.

  “Why,” she said, “the Word of God!”

  “Oh,” said Arthur. “God.”

  He might have started to argue, or at least to wonder aloud, but fortunately stopped short, lowering his thick eyelids as if to prevent others calculating the distance to which he had withdrawn.

  Mother was holding her head on one side, smiling at something, not necessarily Mrs Musto. She had also turned slightly red. Waldo knew he was the only one of those present who understood the reason why, which made him contemptuous of other people’s stupidity, and proud of his alliance with Mother. He might even have admitted his father to their circle of enlightenment if Dad had walked in.

  As it was too early, Waldo continued looking at Mother. He hadn’t quite the courage to laugh, but even so, felt delightfully unencumbered and superior.

  All told, Ma Musto wasn’t such a bad stick. The timid protested that she bullied them. Certainly she bullied her men of God into preaching what she wished to hear. Nobody remembered her husband, or knew whether she had ordered him out of existence so that she might enjoy a breezy widowhood. On
the other hand Mrs Musto was bullied by her maids and the chauffeur Stubbens who wouldn’t honk.

  Stubbens had been a coachman, or groom, and the leggings moulded to his thick calves suggested horses still. He was an invariably surly man, who refused to hear visitors’ requests, and those of his mistress only on their becoming commands. He had trouble in breathing through one of his nostrils, which forced him to dilate it from time to time, which gave the impression that Stubbens was smelling a permanently bad smell. In spite of his shortcomings, ladies, the more forward ones, complimented Mrs Musto on her personable chauffeur. He was, too, in some way. His broad hands, resting on the wheel, had thickish fingers, the skin of which ended surprisingly cleanly round the nails.

  “He was too long running with the horses to adapt himself to progress,” his mistress would explain, not always out of earshot, sometimes adding: “Though Stubbens will tell yer the trouble is he’s been too long runnin’ me.”

  That the chauffeur did run Mrs Musto Waldo discovered by witnessing.

  Mrs Musto had just dismissed that boy — the brighter of the two Browns — who had come with a note of thanks from his mother. Waldo was winding crunching round the gravel drive, when Stubbens came out of the house to where Mrs Musto had continued standing, under a cedar, on her perfect lawn. Stubbens was carrying a cardigan. He was wearing the leggings of his office, but for the first time, Waldo saw him without his cap, in his own crisp, startlingly silver, hair. He was certainly improved by hair.

  But Mrs Musto had grown used to it, or seemed in no mood to be startled.

  “Southerly’s come,” Stubbens announced.

  “Oh,” she said, keeping her heavy back turned, tossing her head peevishly, more like a girl. “It isn’t cold,” she complained.

  “Well, I brought yer woolly,” said Stubbens. “So put it on!”

  And Mrs Musto did. She shrugged herself into the sleeves, without letting him touch her, though.

  Mrs Musto would come out shrugging off the advice or accusations of her servants on the occasions when she entertained. There were the big shivoos with celebrities from Sydney, many of whom had forgotten they had met the hostess, there were the afternoons for local talent, and there were what she herself particularly enjoyed, her parties for “youngsters”, to one of which Waldo Brown was asked, only one and not another, not that Mrs Musto was fickle, she just had to press on. In any case, what was done was done, whether Mrs Musto realized or not, or Waldo himself, except later and in his sleep. (Awake, he only used to wonder whether Mrs M. would leave him a hundred pounds in her will.)

  Anyway, Waldo was grateful she had issued the invitation with what appeared like thought and care. That was to say: in the holidays, on an afternoon during the week. Though on the morning of the day he didn’t know exactly what attitude to take.

  “Oh, I shan’t worry,” said Arthur. “I’ve got my job, haven’t I? Mr Allwright depends on me.”

  “Yes,” said Waldo.

  “We have stock-taking,” Arthur added ostentatiously.

  Then, just before leaving for the store, he came up with something which was on his mind and spat it out, wet: “Tell Mrs Musto I’m concentrating on words. The Word. But also words that are just words. There’s so many kinds. You could make necklaces. Big chunks of words, for instance, and the shiny, polished ones. God,” he said, and the spit spattered on Waldo’s face, “is a kind of sort of rock crystal.”

  Waldo was disgusted by his brother’s convulsed face and extravagant, not to say idiotic, ideas.

  Although this started him off badly, as he approached down Mrs Musto’s winding drive of raked gravel he realized worse was in store for him. He could hear quite plainly the felted sound of tennis balls as they were struck thudding back and forth. The gathering of “youngsters”, judging by its numbers, was fully assembled on Mrs Musto’s lawns. There was positively a smell of tennis. The four elect performers, each older than himself, it seemed to Waldo, were also far more adept, more graceful, if not better born, at least wealthier. Young men reaching overhead with their rackets revealed their glorious ribs through transparent shirts. Delicious girls, in pearls of perspiration, appeared to have been at it all their lives as they controlled their skirts in running to dish up a ball.

  Waldo was appalled.

  He plodded farther, over the rocks of gravel, in the pants he had pressed under the mattress the night before, and the Barranugli High hat-band, from which Mother had tried to sponge the sweat-mark. He knew that he was poor, pimply, stupid, and if not ragged, definitely frayed.

  Mrs Musto came. She was all in white. She smelled of white.

  She said: “Waldo, I’m glad you came. I was beginning to be afraid yer’d found something better. This is Waldo,” she announced, “Waldo Brown.”

  It sounded dreadful.

  Several of the initiated youths and maidens compressed their faces in little set expressions of acceptance, as they had been taught.

  Then Mrs Musto took him aside, and said: “Look, Waldo, we’re all only having fun. I’ve got a racket for yer inside. It’s pretty good, but mightn’t be good enough. You’ll have to think it over. You look nice. Oh, dear,” she complained, stepping back, “we’re upsetting the eatables! Whatever will Louie say!”

  For during her diplomacy she had knocked a meringue off a trestle table, and had just crushed it with her blancoed toe.

  Waldo hoped to withdraw, and did finally, to a less obvious position, behind a grazier of at least twenty, discussing rams with two young ladies worthy of his attention.

  “But wool is so important,” said one.

  “Yes, I realize. But I’d be terrified,” the other said, “of rams. I mean, they’re sort of curlier, they’re less direct than bulls.”

  Then all three exploded into fruit cup and understanding.

  Waldo hated their aggressive white. He envied them the language they spoke. Their eyes grew filmy observing over their shoulders somebody they had not known from childhood.

  He went away.

  Under the cedars a peacock, perhaps enamelled for the occasion, appeared more approachable, putting up its tail as though to oblige. The thrilling, quivering tail had eyes for Waldo alone. He tried to touch the bird, but it, too, slipped expertly out of reach.

  He had nothing then.

  He went and scorched himself with a glass of iced lemonade.

  Mrs Musto was marshalling her pawns.

  “Ronald and Dulcie, versus Dickie and Enid. There! I call that a match!”

  Whether they liked it or not they were going out for Mrs Musto’s satisfaction.

  Dulcie, it appeared, was expected to serve. Her arms were too thin, too pointed at the elbows. Too dark. She was wearing a pink pink dress.

  “Who is that?” one of the young ladies asked.

  Nobody exactly knew.

  Anyway, Dulcie managed to get the ball over the net. Back and forth forth and back went the felted fated ball.

  It was Dulcie’s in the end.

  Dulcie scooped it.

  How it soared its slow white rocket above the black cedars into taut sky returning into ball as it plummetted past the black cedars down. It hit the hard grass. And bounced. It hit Dulcie in her burnt face.

  “Who is it?” they asked one another. “In the pink dress?”

  No one knew, exactly.

  “Coconut ice,” suggested a future barrister of whom answers and jokes were expected.

  Everybody laughed.

  The game finished eventually.

  The girl Dulcie came off the court rubbing, washing her perspiring hands with a screwed-up handkerchief. She felt the need to detach herself from the others. Threw down the racket. Which probably only Waldo guessed was one of the instruments of torture Mrs Musto kept in the house. Dulcie’s fate confirmed his intention not to be made an exhibition of. By Mrs Musto or anyone else.

  Now that he had stopped being afraid he had begun to despise their hostess, along with her kindness, her riches, and her
choice of politely insulting guests. Poverty was the only virtue. The girl Dulcie was probably poor. In her pink, as opposed to white, dress. Not that he didn’t despise Dulcie as well. In his crusade of bitterness there was only room for one ardent pauper. The girl in pink, besides, was about his own age, and might handle too clumsily some of the truths he was anxious to establish.

  So he avoided Dulcie. Even when he was looking at her you couldn’t have told. Or only Dulcie could have.

  She appeared overheated. The uncontrolled tennis ball had plainly branded the side of her face. She was also plain. If not downright ugly. Waldo would have hated to touch her, for fear that she might stick to him, literally, not deliberately, but in spite of herself.

  Then why was Mrs Musto bringing Dulcie through the cool ranks of immaculate white initiates, who stood about her lawn sipping fruit cup and giggling through the fragments of meringue?

  Dulcie was equally mystified, but made some attempt at disguising it. Though she looked away, she was smiling, and breathing deep. Waldo noticed that her strong teeth formed a prow, as it were, in profile.

  “You two, Dulcie and Waldo, ought to find something in common. You are about the same age,” Mrs Musto said — she was as stupid as that. “Aren’t yer stoking up?” she asked, looking sideways at the trestles, believing, and in this she was wiser, that food would fill silences.

  So Mrs Musto went away.

  Dulcie took and dropped a meringue, which she picked up, dusting off the lawn-clippings. Waldo chose a sandwich, of very thin wet cucumber, because it was nearest to him. He put it in his mouth whole, it was so dainty, and did not notice it after that.

  They had nothing to say. Even if he had he would not have allowed himself, not to this ugly dark girl. If Arthur had been there he would have let Arthur bear the brunt of Dulcie. But they circulated a little, from necessity, and if nothing else, mere motion lubricated their stiffened minds.

  “Do you live here?” she asked at last.

  “Yes,” he said.