Free Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White Page B

with the core of rock she must acquire to match Mrs Jolley.
    "As if a bit of you went with him. And if you don't follow, too, it is because of a sense of duty to others. I once read in a horoscope"--here Mrs Jolley picked the cloth--"that my sense of duty is very, very highly developed."
    "I am not preventing you from following whoever you wish to follow," Miss Hare replied. "If that is what you mean."
    "You know that I was referring to my late hubby," said Mrs Jolley, "and you will not hurt my feelings, however hard you try."
    That face!
    "Oh, dear, it is breakfast," sighed Miss Hare.
    Mrs Jolley went off into laughter. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
    "I will not ask what you find so amusing," announced Miss Hare.
    "People are that funny!" Mrs Jolley laughed.
    Her throat had knots in it, almost a goitre, and farther down was the cleft upon which the eyes of her late husband, presumably, had rested, whether in approval or disgust.
    Miss Hare, who had finished her crispies, turned the plate upside down as usual.
    Mrs Jolley had stopped laughing. Very, very patiently she said, "You are a dirty girl. That is what you _ are!"
    And stood back to look.
    "A habit is a habit," said Miss Hare.
    "Dirty is dirty," replied her companion.
    "Mrs Jolley, two people cannot live together unless they respect each other's habits. That is something I have learnt by painful degrees in my relationships with birds and animals."
    "I am not a bird, or a animal," Mrs Jolley replied. "I am a--"
    "No. I know what you are. Please, do not tell me!" Miss Hare begged.
    "You do not know me," Mrs Jolley said, "any more than you don't know nothing at all."
    "No," Miss Hare agreed. "You are often right."
    "I know what I am," said Mrs Jolley, "and more's the pity. My late husband thought he knew, but didn't. He thought he knew. Oh, yes, he knew everything. He had taken night courses, and collected stamps. He was paying off a cyclopaedia, for years, in the oak cabinet, beside the settee."
    Quite suddenly Mrs Jolley began to cry.
    Miss Hare sat as still as she could, and watched.
    "All I did," Mrs Jolley cried, "was to make him a clean and comfortable home, and yet, that night when I handed him his cup of tea, you would of said I had committed a crime."
    Miss Hare watched. The kitchen at Xanadu was one of those big, old, black kitchens which swallow up, but Miss Hare was never swallowed. She was feeling very bright now.
    "Do you mean that your husband blamed you for his death?"
    Mrs Jolley almost choked.
    "You are that hard!" she protested. "And this house! You can hear your own thoughts ticking, along with the mouldy furniture. I will leave, of course. But, in the circumstances, not yet."
    Then she stopped. She seemed to have immediate control over her emotions, or almost anything, if she wished. Mrs Jolley was what Miss Hare supposed they called a practical woman.
    "There!" said Mrs Jolley. "Finished now!"
    And pursed her mouth up.
    But Miss Hare was not finished. Her train of thought, she feared, had only started. If she had not been so fascinated, she would have retreated from the presence of Mrs Jolley, who was responsible.
    "What you have just told, has made me remember something," she said. "Only one person ever blamed me for his death."
    "Who?"
    Mrs Jolley took possession of Miss Hare's disgusting, fascinating, down-turned plate.
    "My own father."
    "You have not spoken much about your dad," Mrs Jolley slowly realized.
    "There is so much to tell, and almost all of it painful," said Miss Hare.
    "But your own father."
    "A long time ago. He died most horribly. By drowning in a cistern."
    "Where?"
    "Out there. Across the yard. It collects the rain-water from the roof, and in those days was allowed to remain open. It was only closed later, on account of the mosquitoes."
    "And your father fell in?"
    "Oh, there are some people--I might as well say from the beginning--will tell you other things. My father was said to be unstable."
    "And you saw it?"
    "I