The Solid Mandala (30 page)

Mr Allwright, who didn't say an awful lot, drove them in the buggy, and pointed out to Mother the convenience of
their
road. It was already theirs. It was already called Terminus, because of being close to the station, practically planned, in fact, for Dad.

As they drove down Terminus Road they passed a ruined house standing amongst fruit trees which had been allowed to go wild.

“What is that?” Waldo asked.

“Ah,” said Mr Allwright, “there's a story attached to that.”

“What story?” Arthur could hear Waldo insisting.

“Ah,” said Mr Allwright, “something for a winter evening. Too long for now, and we're nearly there.”

Arthur knew this meant Mr Allwright wasn't willing to tell, just as he knew Waldo was put out.

“If you don't tell it now,” Waldo said, “how do I know you won't have forgotten it?”

Arthur laughed. He was enjoying himself.

“It doesn't matter, Mr Allwright,” he said. “If you don't tell, my brother will make the story up.”

Mr Allwright flicked his whip, and turned to Dad.

“Young fullers,” he pronounced the “fell-” to rhyme with “gull”, “young fullers,” he said, “are a bit too sharp. Too much imagination could get them into trouble.”

But Dad who was already living down Terminus Road did not answer. He had stuck out his jaw. He had taken off his billycock hat. He sat showing the mark where the leather band had eaten into his forehead, and for quite some time he had forgotten to shift his bad leg.

So that before very long they were living really and truly on the land they bought from Allwrights down Terminus Road. First, of course, there was the house to build, and they used to come out from Barranugli on Sundays to supervise the building by Mr Haynes and a couple of men, and Arthur would play with a big randy dog belonging to one of the labourers.

Arthur loved the classical façade of the brown weatherboard house. He learned there was something about the Classical which Dad called “sacrosanct — in a manner of speaking.”

After Waldo had pestered him enough, and fetched the book, Dad would read them the Greek Myths. While pausing every few weeks to remind them: none of this is real, none of this is true. Whatever he meant by that. In the strong sunlight of Sunday mornings, or the more fruitful evenings seen through leaves, Arthur could not even care. He loved Demeter for her fulness, for her ripe apples, he loved Athene for her understanding.

There was an occasion when Dad put down the book and said: “Sometimes I wonder, Arthur, whether you listen to any of this. Waldo can make an intelligent comment. But you! I've begun to ask myself if there's any character, any incident, that appeals to Arthur in any way.”

Arthur couldn't answer Dad, or not in full.

“Tiresias,” he said, to keep him quiet.

“Why on earth Tiresias?” asked Dad.

And Waldo had begun to stare.

But it was too difficult to explain to their father even if Arthur had wanted to. He could not explain the diversity of what he partly understood. He was too lazy. It was too long. Nor would
his family understand. How could he tell them of his dreams, for instance, except as something to laugh about. They would laugh to be told how shocked he was for Tiresias when Zeus took away his sight at the age of seven
— seven —
for telling people things they shouldn't know. So Arthur kept quiet. He was only surprised they didn't notice how obviously his heart was beating when Zeus rewarded Tiresias with the gift of prophecy and a life seven times as long as the lives of ordinary men. Then there was that other bit, about being changed into a woman, if only for a short time. Time enough, though, to know he wasn't all that different.

So when Waldo stared at Arthur stupid Arthur, who couldn't answer Dad's question, Arthur simply plaited his too-pliable fingers, and sat looking down.

Brown Brown Arthur Brown?
he heard them at school, but the other side of his own more interesting thoughts. He heard the voice of Mr Hetherington who, after a little, realized, and did not keep him in.

The headmaster was Mr Heyward, with whom at first there was a spot of trouble. It was not so much over the green Junior Scripture Books which Mr Hetherington doled out. You didn't need to bother with those. You could look at other things beyond the page. The trouble began over the half-hour segregation, when the clergyman, the ministers came.

Dad wrote Mr Heyward a note:

Mr Heyward sent a reply:

Then Dad thought of a tremendous joke:

The Brothers Brown were pestered no more, but allowed to moon about the yard. Waldo kept a book hidden on him. But Arthur used to play with the marbles he had earned. Arthur in particular longed for the half-hour segregation. Which did seem to set them apart. It got round Sarsaparilla there was something queer about the Browns, over and above one of them a real dill. It did not worry Arthur. Dill in the engravings looked like fennel, which grew increasingly wild down most of the side roads at Sarsaparilla.

Of course Mrs Allwright, so well placed at the store she always heard about everything, had suspected in the beginning there was something wrong with the Browns, though from goodness of heart, on their coming out Sundays to supervise (I ask you!) Mr Haynes, she had provided a cold tomato, a wet leaf of lettuce, and a slice of beef, with sometimes perhaps a hard-boiled egg as an extra.

Mrs Allwright said: “Fred, I knew you were acting unwise selling land to such as them.
My
land, too, though I don't propose to harp on
that
.”

Land was one of the several reasons Mrs Allwright was superior to her husband, Arthur learned in time. But now he had just come into the store to buy humbugs with one of the sixpences Mr Mackenzie the manager had given.

“I have a feeling,” Mrs Allwright was saying, “that the Browns are on our hands for always. Mind you,” she said, “I have nothing against the English in general, the decent, church-going ones who
you wouldn't mind sitting down at table with. But
these
!”

“These are human beings, Ivy,” Mr Allwright said.

“Human beings,” said Mrs Allwright, “are all very well.”

Then Arthur declared himself.

“Mrs Allwright,” he called, chipping on the counter with the sixpence, “I don't want to interrupt, but have come for humbugs if you've got them.”

Mrs Allwright came out from behind. She was that red. She was wearing a little watch which you could pull out to the end of its chain, to tell the time conveniently.

“Not humbugs,” she said, as though she wouldn't have had them on the place. “Not humbugs, but bull's-eyes. They're the same.”

“They aren't really,” said Arthur, “but I'll take the bull's eyes. I never really cared for bull's-eyes.”

Mrs Allwright began to weigh them out.

“Why,” she said, “what a trick you are!”

“How would you feel, Mrs Allwright,” Arthur asked, “sucking a bull's eye?”

While Mrs Allwright was twisting the corners of the paper bag.

“Come along,” she said. “I haven't time for argument.”

“You wouldn't feel good,” said Arthur, taking the paper bag and the change.

Mrs Allwright didn't answer, she only breathed.

“That's a pretty nice watch,” Arthur said, to sweeten her. “Will you let me pull the chain?”

But Mrs Allwright said: “I would of thought, Arthur, your mother would of taught you that ladies don't appreciate bold behaviour in little boys.”

So Arthur Brown realized that Mrs Allwright did not like him. It did not disturb him, however, nor that she should continue to dislike. It was Mr Allwright who mattered.

On a later occasion going to the store for some article of less importance, Arthur looked through what must have been the storekeeper's bedroom window, and there was Mr Allwright down on his knees in a blaze of yellow furniture. Arthur was fascinated, if not actually frightened, by his friend's face sunk on his chest, by
the hands which he held out in front of him, pressed straining together as stiff as boards. It puzzled Arthur a lot.

“Mrs Allwright,” he said at the counter, “I saw Mr Allwright down on his knees.”

Mrs Allwright blushed and pursed up her mouth.

“He is praying to his Maker,” she said, as though that explained everything.

“His maker?”

He liked the idea, though, of the wooden man, freshly carved, and sweet-smelling.

“To the Lord Almighty.”

As Mrs Allwright elaborated, she very discreetly lowered her eyes.

If Arthur did not altogether understand, the wooden man began to put on flesh.

And then Mr Allwright himself came.

“Well, young fuller,” he said, which continued to fascinate Arthur. “I bet you've found out something else since yesterday.”

But Arthur had grown shy, for some power which Mr Allwright possessed.

Then the grocer rummaged in the calico bag in which he kept the change from when he went round delivering.

“Did you ever see a lead florin?”

Arthur couldn't touch it enough.

“Was it
made
?” he asked.

“It was made, all right,” said the grocer. “A brum two-bob — like anything else.”

Then he took the hammer and struck the coin into a disc of blurred metal.

“That'll cost you a whole two bob!” Arthur was enjoying it.

While Mrs Allwright stood wincing, as though suffering it in her own flesh.

“Somebody,” she said, “always has to pay the bagpipes.”

Though she made pretty sure, as a rule, that she would not be somebody.

Arthur eventually added Mr Allwright to what he knew as truest: to grain in wood, to bread broken roughly open, to cow
pats, neatly, freshly dropped. If he did not add Mrs Allwright it was because she did not fit into that same world of objects, she never became distinct, she was all ideas, plots, and tempers. In myth or life, he never ever took to Hera.

Johnny Haynes, the boy at school, asked if Browns were really pagans as was said. Arthur didn't know what they were.

When Johnny found that Arthur Brown could solve mathematical problems, Arthur was in some demand, and began earning the glass taws.

Arthur the dill, and Waldo the dope, Johnny Haynes used to say-sing. Nothing could have hurt Arthur. Arthur only feared for Waldo.

At least they allowed Waldo to go down behind the dunnies with them. They did not suggest that Arthur. They did not want One-Ball Brown.

He was different, then, in several ways. But did not mind since he had his marbles.

However many marbles Arthur had — there were always those which got lost, and some he traded for other things — he considered four his permanencies. There were the speckled gold and the cloudy blue. There was the whorl of green and crimson circlets. There was the taw with a knot at the centre, which made him consider palming it off, until, on looking long and close, he discovered the knot was the whole point.

Of all these jewels or touchstones, talismans or sweethearts, Arthur Brown got to love the knotted one best, and for staring at it, and rubbing at it, should have seen his face inside. After he had given two, in appreciation, or recognition, the flawed or knotted marble became more than ever his preoccupation. But he was ready to give it, too, if he were asked. Because this rather confusing oddity was really not his own. His seemed more the coil of green and crimson circlets.

Waldo the twin used to scoff at the marbles.

“Who'd want to lug round a handful of silly old marbles!”

“You would not,” said Arthur, undisturbed.

“You'll bust your pocket, and lose your old marbles. What'll you do then?”

“Nothing,” said Arthur. “I shan't lose them.”

But he went cold knowing that he might. He knew, too, that Waldo hoped he would.

Waldo who loved kissing. No, rather, he liked to be kissed, and forget that it had ever happened. Coming in from school Arthur had caught him kissing the mirror.

“Fancy kissing a looking-glass!”

“I never did!” said Waldo, the moment already buried in his face.

But they would lie together, and the dark bed was all kindness, all tenderness towards them, the pillowed darkness all feathers. Skin was never so velvety by day. Eyelashes plait together in darkness. As Venus said, in the old book Arthur came across years later: I generate light, and darkness is not of my nature; there is therefore nothing better or more venerable than the conjunction of myself with my brother.

But darkness could descend by daylight in one black solid slab.

“Don't speak to me!” Waldo would shout, as they sat dragging socks over toe-nails, and Arthur had forgotten how to lace up his own boots.

It was the kind of moment when Arthur sensed he would have to protect his brother, who was too clever by half, who read essays aloud in class, who liked books, and who was said to be their mother's darling. Because of it all, Waldo needed defending from himself and others. It was all very well to hang on to your brother's hand because Waldo was accepted by the tight world, of tidiness and quick answers, of punctuality and unbreakable rules. Even Johnny Haynes and the boys who went behind the dunnies to show what they'd got, accepted Waldo by fits and starts, because they were deceived, from some angles, into seeing him as another of themselves. But poor Waldo was so different, and so frail.