Free Happy Valley by Patrick White

agents of pain. Even though you know you’re mad, that they cannot feel, it is some relief to your feelings to increase that pain by venting them on the feelingless. It is desperate but necessary. So you kick the chair, so you bang your head against the wall. And it was in much this spirit that Rodney Halliday burst from Andy Everett’s arms and gave Arthur Ball a crack on the mouth and Willy Schmidt a kick on the shins. But then he was afraid. At once. It is only a momentary and stupid respite to attack the agents of pain.
    I’ll break your bloody neck, roared Arthur Ball.
    And Rodney Halliday knew that, metaphorically speaking, his bloody neck was as good as broken, knew he was lying on the ground with Andy Everett sitting on his chest and his ears singing from repeated clouts. There was a bell that rang erratically in his head. What have you done to your coat, all that mud, his mother said. He did not cry. There was no breath in his body. Or breath had curdled. There was a hard kernel of petrified breath that would not come out, and the bell ringing.
    Better leave ’im. There’s the bell, said Arthur Ball, a thread of blood trickling from his lip.
    Andy continued to deal monotonous clouts.
    That’ll teach you, he said.
    Then he got up grinning slowly, slowly wiping hishands. The small knot unravelled itself, the threads trailing across the yard, Andy and Arthur and Willy, their heads turned back, their faces still intent on reluctantly relinquished pleasure in the form of Rodney stretched still on his back.
    P’raps something’s up, said Willy nervously at the door, but after all it was Andy’s fault, it wasn’t him, he hadn’t wanted to.
    Then Rodney got up. Andy grinned. The three of them went inside.
    It was over, Rodney Halliday said. He would go inside and do arithmetic. But it was over for the day. He tried to brush the mud from his coat. He was aching. He was bleeding. He was also free. And he would go home for lunch and read that book on Columbus till it was time for afternoon school. There was no break in the afternoon. He used to run home as fast as he could. Sometimes they chased him and threw stones. But he could really run very fast. And now there was a feeling of exhaustion and of triumph, almost like leaving the dentist’s in at Moorang, only Mother was not there to buy him an ice-cream. Instead he would go inside and wrestle with sums.
    They did not look when he went in. They bent their heads over exercise books. Only some of the girls had a look. Emily Schmidt tittered behind her hand, because it was Rodney Halliday. She whispered to Margaret Quong. But Margaret Quong leant over her book, doing a leaf design in the margin, not looking up. And Rodney sat down. It was arithmetic. One of his knuckles had lost some skin.
    If A and B are given a bag of one hundred and eightyapples, said Mr Moriarty, writing it up on the board. And A eats two a day, and B eats three, and after a fortnight they are joined by C, who eats seven, how long will it be before they’ve emptied the bag?
    He spoke in a dry, precise voice, like chalk dust falling. Or he paused and you heard a wheeze that Willy Schmidt could imitate, though of course not loud enough for the old cow to hear. The chalk squealed on the board. Margaret Quong writhed and drew down her head, like a tortoise, into her jumper neck. One hundred and eighty apples, breathed Willy Schmidt. Somebody had upset the ink. Somebody made a smell. The stove crackled. The clock said a quarter past.
    The school at Happy Valley was built like the rest of the town, with a purpose, and not for beauty. It was also built without regard for time, that had already made considerable incursions on its body, softening its joists, weakening its joints, blanching its colour, and scoring its face with cracks. The school was squat and completely drab. It lay on its square of bare yard with the two lavatories at the end, one for Girls and one for Boys, and almost seemed to totter a