Riders in the Chariot (11 page)

"None of all this," said Mrs Jolley at last, "is what I am used to. I have always moved in different circles."

Miss Hare believed it, but also feared.

"Mrs Flack agrees," said Mrs Jolley, "that I have been faced with things recently which I cannot be expected to understand or accept."

"Mrs Flack?"

"Mrs Flack is a friend," said Mrs Jolley, and let fall a veil of sugar from her sifter. "A lady," she said, "that I met on the bus. And again, outside the church. The widow," she added, "of a tiler, who fell off the roof while contracted at Barranugli, years ago."

"I have never heard of Mrs Flack."

"Different circumstances," continued Mrs Jolley, with dignity, if not scorn. "Mrs Flack resides in Mildred Street, in a home of her own, with every amenity. Seeing as her husband, the tiler, had the trade connections that he had, they were able to fix things real nice. Oh, and I almost forgot to tell: Mrs Flack's father was a wealthy store proprietor, who saw to it, naturally, that his daughter was left comfortable."

"Naturally," Miss Hare agreed.

Expected to evoke for herself the apparition of Mrs Flack, her mind would not venture so far. And there the name rested, unspoken and mysterious.

Indeed, Mrs Jolley, too, became a mystery now. She would appear in doorways, or from behind dividing curtains, and cough, but very carefully, at certain times. She carried her eyes downcast. Or she would raise them. And look. And Mrs Jolley's eyes were blue.

"I was looking for the ashtrays," Mrs Jolley would explain. "All my girls are smokers, of course. And the trays need emptying."

Then she would retire. She was most discreet now, and silent.

Again she would appear.

"Do you need anything?" Mrs Jolley would ask, or breathe.

What can one possibly need? Miss Hare used to wonder.

"No," she would have to confess.

She would go on sitting in her favourite chair, which was old, but real.

"Some people are given to one thing, and some another," Mrs Jolley would say, and finger. "Now,
we
_ have the Genoa velvets in all our lounges. But Mrs Flack--the lady I was telling you of--she goes for
petty point
_."

But Mrs Flack would at once withdraw.

"Do you need anything?" Mrs Jolley would repeat.

Miss Hare's face fumbled after some acceptable desire.

"No," she would have to admit, ashamed.

Then, on one occasion, Mrs Jolley announced, "I had a letter."

She had followed her employer out to the terrace. It was almost evening. Great cloudy tumbrils were lumbering across the bumpy sky towards a crimson doom.

"I did not see your letter," Miss Hare replied.

Mrs Jolley scarcely hesitated.

"Oh," she said, "it was at the P. O. All my correspondence is always directed to the P. O. A matter of policy, you might say."

Miss Hare was observing the progress of a beetle across the mouth of a silted urn. She would have much preferred not to be disturbed.

"It was a letter from Mrs Apps," Mrs Jolley pursued. "That is Merle, the eldest. Merle has a particular weakness for her mum, perhaps because she was delicate as a kiddy. But struck lucky later on. With a hubby who denies her nothing--within reason, of course, and the demands of his career. Mr Apps--his long service will soon be due--is an executive official at the Customs. I will not say well-thought-of. Indispensable is nearer the mark. So it is not uncommon for Merle to hobnob with the high-ups of the Service, and entertain them to a buffy at her home.
Croaky de poison
_. Chipperlarters. All that. With perhaps a substantial dish of, say, chicken à la king. I never believe in blowing my own horn, but Merle does things that lovely. Yes. Her buffy has been written up, not once but several times."

Miss Hare observed her beetle.

"Now Merle writes," the housekeeper continued, "and does not, well, exactly
say
_, because Merle is never one to
say
_, but lets it be understood she is not at all satisfied with the steps her mum has taken to lead an independent life, since their father passed on, like that, so tragically."

Mrs Jolley watched Miss Hare.

"Of course I did not tell her half. Because Merle would have created. But you will realize the position it has put me in. Seeing as I am a person that always sympathizes with the misfortunes of others."

Mrs Jolley watched Miss Hare. The wind had started up, and the housekeeper did not like it in the open. She was one who would walk very quickly along a road, and hope to reach the shops.

"Everybody is unfortunate, if you can recognize it," said Miss Hare, helping her beetle. "But there are usually compensations for misfortune."

Mrs Jolley drew in her breath. She hated it on the horrid terrace, the wind tweaking her hair-net, and the smell of night threatening her.

"At a nominal wage," she protested, "it is hard lines if a lady should have to look for compensations."

"How people can talk!" Miss Hare exclaimed, not without admiration. "My parents would be at it by the hour. But one could sit quite comfortably inside their words. In a kind of tent. Do you know? When it rains."

"Your parents, poor souls!" Mrs Jolley could not resist.

So that Miss Hare was cut. She removed her finger from the beetle, which ultimately she could not assist.

"Why must you keep harping on my parents?"

The marbled sky was heartrending, if also adamant, its layers of mauve and rose veined by now with black and indigo. The moon was the pale fossil of a moth.

"Who brought them up?" Mrs Jolley laughed against the rather nasty wind. "I have always had consideration for Somebody's feelings, particularly since Somebody witnessed such a very peculiar death."

Miss Hare was almost turned to stone, amongst the neglected urns and the Diana--_Scuola Canova__--whose hand had been broken off at the wrist.

"Will you, please, leave me?" she asked.

"That is what I have been trying to convey," insisted Mrs Jolley. "No person can be put upon indefinitely. And I have been invited," she said, "or it has been suggested by a friend, who suffers from indifferent health, that I should keep her company."

Miss Hare was gulping like a brown frog. It was not the eventuality that appalled, so much as the method of disclosure, and the shock.

"Then, if you really intend," she mumbled.

Mrs Jolley could have devoured one whom she suspected of a weakness.

"It is not as if you wasn't independent before," she reminded, and smiled. "We could hardly call ourselves Australians--could we?--if we was not independent. There is none of my girls as is not able, at a pinch, to mend a fuse, paint the home, or tackle jobs of carpentry."

Mrs Jolley had assumed that monumental stance of somebody with whom it is impossible to argue.

"Perhaps," Miss Hare answered.

When all was said, she would remain a sandy little girl. Her smiles would weave like shallow water over pebbles.

"So," sighed Mrs Jolley, "there it is. I cannot say any more. Nothing stands still, and we must go along too."

Then she drew in her breath, as if she were restraining wind.

Or else she could suddenly have been afraid.

"Do let go of me, please!" she said, rather loud, but still controlled.

"Miss Hare!" she said, louder. "You are hurting my wrists!"

But Miss Hare, for her part, could not resist the black gusts of darkness that were bearing down on her, and if she did not know the satisfaction of recognizing Mrs Jolley's fear, it was because she became engulfed in her own; she was removed from herself, at least temporarily, at that point.

As for Mrs Jolley, night had closed on her like a vise, leaving her just freedom enough to wrestle with the serpents of her conscience. So the two women were thrashing it out on the gritty terrace. The wind, or something, had torn the housekeeper's hair-net, and she hissed, or cried, from between her phosphorescent teeth.

Several afternoons a week, after putting on her gloves, and hat with eye-veil, Mrs Jolley would not exactly go, she would
proceed
_, rather, to her friend's residence at Sarsaparilla. Up the hill and into the street, it was not far, but far enough to turn a walk into a mission. How much solider a pavement sounded. Mrs Jolley would stamp and kick until she felt satis-fled. The mere sight of a bus passing through a built-up area restored a person's circulation, as rounds of beef and honeycombs of tripe fed the spirit, and ironmongery touched the heart. So Mrs Jolley would continue on her way, under the lophostemons, as far as Mildred Street. Five minutes from the Cash-and-Carry, with doctor handy on the corner, it was a most desirable address. So Mrs Jolley would proceed, smiling at the ladies in the windows of their brick homes. She might correct the position of a seam or two. Then she would be ready to arrive.

If Mrs Flack's brick looked best of all, her tiles better, brighter-glazed, it was perhaps because of her late husband's connections with the trade. There KARMA stood, the name done in baked enamel. Considering the delicate state of her health, the owner risked too much for neatness, though certainly she paid an elderly man a few shillings to mow the grass, and had almost succeeded in encouraging an older one to do the same for less. On Thursdays, besides, a strong woman coped with any stooping or lifting, but that arrangement might possibly be discontinued. Depending on developments.

Mrs Jolley loved the latch at Mrs Flack's. She loved the rustic picket gate. She loved the hedge of Orange Triumph. To run her glove along the surface of Mrs Flack's brick home gave her shivers. The sound of its convenience swept her head over heels into the caverns of envy.

As for Mrs Flack herself, she would seldom greet her friend with more than: "Hmmmm!"

Or: "Well I never!"

Or, at most: "I did not look at the calendar, but might have known."

Yet Mrs Jolley understood the significance of it all. She might have been a cat, except that she was rubbing on the air.

Mrs Flack was sometimes described as having rather a yellow look, although, more accurately speaking, she was a medium shade of buff. For many years, she told, she had suffered from derangement of the bile. She was the victim of gallstones, too, and varicose veins, to say nothing of her Heart. She was wedded to her Heart, it might have seemed, if it had not been known she was a widow. Yet, in spite of such complications and allegiances, she would get about in a slow, definite way, and even when she had not been there, was remarkably well informed on everything that had happened. Indeed, it had been suggested by those few who were lacking in respect that Mrs Flack was omnipresent--under the beds, even, along with the fluff and the chamberpots. But most people had too much respect for her presence to question her authority. Her hats were too sober, her reports too factual. Where flippancy is absent, truth can only be inferred, and her teeth were broad and real enough to lend additional weight and awfulness to words.

Remarks collapsed on Mrs Jolley's lips in the presence of her friend.
Her friend
_. The word was quite alarming, if also magical. Mrs Flack would look up from lashing the Orange Triumphs with the jet from her plastic hose, or, seated in her own lounge, behind a prophetic steam of tea, would simply look, before pronouncing.

"That poor soul," she might begin, "who we both know--there is no need to mention names--how she has survived all these years on a slice of bread and dripping, and her relatives well-to-do, not to say downright wealthy. They did, for their own convenience, after the death of the mother, deliver her to an institution, but the person screamed and screamed, and clung to the railings with her two hands, so that they were forced to take her back. It only goes to show. I am always thankful that, in my case, there are no ties, no encumbrances, not even a mortgage on the home."

"Ah," Mrs Jolley had to protest, "I am a mother!"

Mrs Flack would pause, pick a burnt currant from a scone, and appear to accuse it terribly.

"I cannot claim any such experience," she would declare.

Then, after frowning, she would fall to laughing, but feebly--she was an invalid, it had to be remembered--through strips of pale lips.

Like cheese-straws at a huffy, Mrs Jolley would be reminded, and immediately regret her disrespect.

"I did not mean," she would hasten, dashing at a few crumbs. "That is to say, I did not intend to suggest." And then: "Are you truly quite alone?"

"Yes, dear." Mrs Flack would sigh.

At that moment something would happen, of such peculiar subtlety that it must have eluded the perception of all but those involved in the experience. The catalyst of sympathy seemed to destroy the envelopes of personality, leaving the two essential beings free to merge and float. Thought must have played little part in any state so passive, so directionless, yet it was difficult not to associate a mental process with silence of such a ruthless and pervasive kind. As they continued sitting, the two women would drench the room with the moth-colours of their one mind. Little sighs would break, scintillating, on the Wilton wall-to-wall. The sound of stomachs, rumbling liquidly, would sluice the already impeccable veneer. Glances rejected one another as obsolete aids to communication. This could have been the perfect communion of souls, if, at the same time, it had not suggested perfect collusion.

Mrs Jolley was usually the first to return. Certain images would refurnish the swept chamber of her mind. There was, for instance--she loved it best of all--the pastel blue plastic dressing-table set in Mrs Flack's second bedroom.

Mrs Jolley's face would grow quite hard and lined then, as if a pink-and-blue eiderdown had suffered petrifaction.

"Alone perhaps, but in a lovely home," she would be heard to murmur.

"Alone is not the same," Mrs Flack would usually reply.

And smile.

It was not all that sad. They both knew it was not sad. They understood that a dénouement might be reached in the drama of their wishes--if they so wished.

As tea and contentment increased understanding of each other, as well as confidence in their own powers, it was only to be expected that two ladies of discretion and taste should produce their knives and try them for sharpness on weaker mortals. Seated above the world on springs and
petty point
_, they could lift the lids and look right into the boxes in which moiled other men, crack open craniums as if they had been boiled eggs, read letters before they had been written, scent secrets that would become a source of fear to those concerned. Eventually the ladies would begin. Their methods would be steel, though their antiphon was always bronze.