Free Happy Valley by Patrick White Page A

bit when the wind came down from the mountains and struck its side. A corner of the corrugated-iron roof flapped in the wind. It ought to be seen to, Mr Moriarty said, but as nobody saw to it, a basin continued to stand in the corner of the larger schoolroom to catch the water that fell inside.
    In the smaller room sat the younger children with a pupil-teacher, a young Miss Purves, who suffered from chronic catarrh and chilblains on the feet. Altogether her time was pretty well taken up in straying from her noseto her feet, with dabbing and scratching, and rolling her handkerchief into a smaller ball or hanging it out to air on the desk. She had another handkerchief stuck through an armlet, as a kind of reserve, but this she seldom used. She just used to dab and scratch, or rest her receding chin on a cold hand.
    The big children were dealt with by Ernest Moriarty in the larger and more imposing room, that smelt of a coke stove and clotting ink and settled chalk. When it rained you could hear the water dripping down into the enamel basin from the roof that nobody came to see about. But the room was not so lugubrious, in spite of Mr Moriarty sitting in his overcoat and scarf, for the sake of his asthma, he would have said, sitting there correcting exercises with his bluish hands. It was not so lugubrious. There were maps of Asia and Africa, and a larger one of Australia over the desk. And you could lean on your elbow when you were bored and wander up the Ganges or wonder about Irkutsk. There was also a stuffed fox in a case, and some jars of spirit containing various snakes. And somebody sometimes brought some flowers.
    Rodney Halliday sighed. A and B and C. Sharing apples with Andy Everett and Arthur Ball. He experienced a mild shiver of recollected discomfiture, from contact with Andy’s body that smelt of cows. And he could not do sums. If you leant on your elbow and waited till it died, you were lost in the Indian Ocean’s turquoise glaze, you jogged across a saffron steppe east of the Caspian Sea, and the plain of India was a field of blood. But his knuckle no longer hurt. It was numbed from paying tribute to A, B, and C. He suckedhis knuckle. His breath was a silver cloud, in spite of the restless coke stove his breath sailed out silverly into the Yellow Sea, beyond this the god’s face in the encyclopaedia, and a bearded cinnamon-tree, and a god squatting on a kind of plant, like Margaret Quong. He looked across at Margaret Quong, who sat, not on a lotus, but on a bench doing sums, and she was good at sums, she was the best, she was thirteen, and she helped her aunt make up the books at the store. He would like to play with Margaret Quong. She had a soft voice. But she was thirteen, and he was only nine. She was also a girl. So he had to go down with Andy and Arthur and Willy behind the lavatory, and you knew, and you knew. But you did not think of that. You turned over a page in the mind till A, B, and C were facing you. It was better like that.
    It was better like that, said Ernest Moriarty, correcting an essay by R. Dormer on the Cow and Her Relationship with Man. She kept on saying, it’ll kill you, Ernest, and look at the screw, it’s shameful the way, and a man with all those years of service, and if you got that job up on the North Shore we could easily keep a maid. The Cow is a useful animal. She gives us meat, milk, and menewer. In the evening the Cow went slowly home and they milked her dry. She was content. He was content, of course he was content. He had his stamps. He was secretary to the Moorang Philatelists’ Society. Only Vic, sitting in the front room, said that the sofa was wearing out. She was still very pretty, like those evenings in Marrickville when they licked stamps together and he touched her hand. And then he could not restrain himself, and he had to go home, andperhaps the people in the tram knew why he was wheezing, and it was uncomfortable to walk. The Cow has an udder with four tits. I