Read Online The Hanging Garden by Patrick White - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Patrick White
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again!’
‘No, the moon,’ she corrected him firmly, as though the pneuma were her private property.
‘Sometimes,’ she conceded, ‘if you pray hard enough—if you want badly —you can be drawn up inside it.’
‘Were you—in this dream?’
‘Yes.’ She lay listening to her dishonest heart.
‘And what about me?’
‘Oh, you weren’t in it—in any way—in the dream. I don’t see why you should have been.’
They had restored the distance between them.
‘Sometimes when the Blitz was on I used to draw the black-out curtains. I thought if I could see the bombs falling I’d know the best way to escape. But you never saw. Only the moon.’
The moon’s blue, gelatinous face with the forms of those milky twins inside it.
Before falling asleep, before the act of levitation took place, they drifted together again, their unprotesting skins, inside the steamy envelope of Bulpit sheets.
* * *
Mrs Lockhart has driven up in this old brown dislocated car, maltreated by the kicks, the shoving, the protests of too many boys’ feet and bodies. She has come to investigate the niece and take her to school. Perhaps a more difficult situation than any Mrs Lockhart has ever managed, though she is used to difficult situations, what with Harold and the boys. Harold doesn’t drive. He takes the ferry to the Department. He has always considered his not driving a superior accomplishment. He refers to ‘Alison’s car’, which would have made it hers even if she hadn’t wanted it. Actually she has always wanted it. It is more her home than the equally maltreated, ricketty, weatherboard house in which they live.
Now she sits in her more personal, mobile home at the Bulpit’s gate, pausing a moment in an inevitably active life, before making an actively distasteful move. If it were not for this she could have been enjoying her freedom, under a blue sky, in a blaze of winter sunshine. She has with her everything she most needs (her supply of cigarettes and tissues) and no appendages (of course she loves the boys, she is less sure of Harold—yes, she is very very uncertain that she should have fallen into such a trap as marriage with Harold). And now Gerry’s child, Ally sighs. She swivels her dented, sunburnt nose. She sweeps the ash out of her cleavage (one bitch of a friend suggests she ought to see a dermatologist about this blackhead) and starts clambering out of the Chev. Can you be starting an early arthritis? Give Harold additional grounds for playing the absentee husband.
‘Oh yes, Mrs Lockhart, the little lass is waiting for you.’
The dreadful Bulpit has assembled her charge early, only too glad to unload her on other unwilling hands. She is standing in the lounge room, picking at the arm of one of Mrs Bulpit’s seedy chairs.
‘Here’s your auntie, love.’
The Bulpit ducks out too willingly.
The child does not look up. She continues picking. She is neater than anything Alison has ever envisaged. Alison experiences a spasm of revulsion from the contradictory details of Geraldine’s complex life. The fact that they are sisters has always amazed her. This dark child is the most amazing fact of all.
‘Well, Ireen…’
Should they kiss? At least Gerry was never a kisser. Never even seen her kiss a man. And the child obviously doesn’t want to be mauled by a gratuitous aunt.
Better sit down a moment or two for decency’s sake. Plunk on the Bulpit springs.
‘I expect you find it all very strange…’
‘esss.’
Oh Lord the lighter’s given out. These bloody wartime flints. Lord—without my cigs. ‘Do you think you could ask Mrs Bulpit for a box of matches?’
‘esss.’
She trots out. The neat, the pretty are usually cunning—the type Harold takes up with. At least he saw the red light, without even meeting Ireen, and refused to have her at the house. Blamed it on the boys.
When it’s Gerry really. Always was. Harold hadn’t turned up by then. But always. At the dances.
‘No, the moon,’ she corrected him firmly, as though the pneuma were her private property.
‘Sometimes,’ she conceded, ‘if you pray hard enough—if you want badly —you can be drawn up inside it.’
‘Were you—in this dream?’
‘Yes.’ She lay listening to her dishonest heart.
‘And what about me?’
‘Oh, you weren’t in it—in any way—in the dream. I don’t see why you should have been.’
They had restored the distance between them.
‘Sometimes when the Blitz was on I used to draw the black-out curtains. I thought if I could see the bombs falling I’d know the best way to escape. But you never saw. Only the moon.’
The moon’s blue, gelatinous face with the forms of those milky twins inside it.
Before falling asleep, before the act of levitation took place, they drifted together again, their unprotesting skins, inside the steamy envelope of Bulpit sheets.
* * *
Mrs Lockhart has driven up in this old brown dislocated car, maltreated by the kicks, the shoving, the protests of too many boys’ feet and bodies. She has come to investigate the niece and take her to school. Perhaps a more difficult situation than any Mrs Lockhart has ever managed, though she is used to difficult situations, what with Harold and the boys. Harold doesn’t drive. He takes the ferry to the Department. He has always considered his not driving a superior accomplishment. He refers to ‘Alison’s car’, which would have made it hers even if she hadn’t wanted it. Actually she has always wanted it. It is more her home than the equally maltreated, ricketty, weatherboard house in which they live.
Now she sits in her more personal, mobile home at the Bulpit’s gate, pausing a moment in an inevitably active life, before making an actively distasteful move. If it were not for this she could have been enjoying her freedom, under a blue sky, in a blaze of winter sunshine. She has with her everything she most needs (her supply of cigarettes and tissues) and no appendages (of course she loves the boys, she is less sure of Harold—yes, she is very very uncertain that she should have fallen into such a trap as marriage with Harold). And now Gerry’s child, Ally sighs. She swivels her dented, sunburnt nose. She sweeps the ash out of her cleavage (one bitch of a friend suggests she ought to see a dermatologist about this blackhead) and starts clambering out of the Chev. Can you be starting an early arthritis? Give Harold additional grounds for playing the absentee husband.
‘Oh yes, Mrs Lockhart, the little lass is waiting for you.’
The dreadful Bulpit has assembled her charge early, only too glad to unload her on other unwilling hands. She is standing in the lounge room, picking at the arm of one of Mrs Bulpit’s seedy chairs.
‘Here’s your auntie, love.’
The Bulpit ducks out too willingly.
The child does not look up. She continues picking. She is neater than anything Alison has ever envisaged. Alison experiences a spasm of revulsion from the contradictory details of Geraldine’s complex life. The fact that they are sisters has always amazed her. This dark child is the most amazing fact of all.
‘Well, Ireen…’
Should they kiss? At least Gerry was never a kisser. Never even seen her kiss a man. And the child obviously doesn’t want to be mauled by a gratuitous aunt.
Better sit down a moment or two for decency’s sake. Plunk on the Bulpit springs.
‘I expect you find it all very strange…’
‘esss.’
Oh Lord the lighter’s given out. These bloody wartime flints. Lord—without my cigs. ‘Do you think you could ask Mrs Bulpit for a box of matches?’
‘esss.’
She trots out. The neat, the pretty are usually cunning—the type Harold takes up with. At least he saw the red light, without even meeting Ireen, and refused to have her at the house. Blamed it on the boys.
When it’s Gerry really. Always was. Harold hadn’t turned up by then. But always. At the dances.
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