Happy Valley Read Free Page A

like that, and Dr Halliday did not listen to her. He would be getting on down to Happy Valley. He would be there in time for lunch, leaving the publican’s wife to Mrs Steele. She would soon be about again. She was strong as a cow. Only the child was dead. So he went past the old woman, standing there as leisurely as a chorus fromEuripides, and out into the passage, where the publican sat on a deal chair smoking the frayed remains of a cigarette. He would have to say something to the publican.
    Well, he said, I’m sorry, Chalker. We’ve done all we can. I’m sorry it’s turned out like this.
    The publican jumped to his feet and came forward, bending a little, nervously. He was relieved now that it was all over, even if not particularly moved, because he hadn’t really stopped to think about the child. Only his wife. The possibility of reproduction only moved dimly at the back of his mind. Sometimes it moved farther into the foreground, and he thought, well, a kid would show you there was nothing wrong, and afterwards it could lend a hand in the bar, give Rita a chance of laying up. So when he sidled nervously to the doctor there was a propitiatory smile on his flabby face.
    Better luck next time, eh, doctor? he said.
    Then he laughed. It was a wheezy, semi-coagulated noise. Halliday found it rather unpleasant. He refused to encourage Chalker’s relief and asked if he could wash his hands. There was yellow soap in the kitchen sink. Chalker hovered, talked, coughed. He was a big man, perpetually in his slippers, with yellowish whites to his eyes. A stream of soft platitude fell about Halliday as he washed his hands, as he accepted a whisky in the bar, as he refused an offer of bacon and eggs. No, he’d be getting down. His wife.
    All right, doctor, said Chalker, unlatching the front door. If there’s ever anything I can do. You never can tell, eh? You never can tell.
    Tell what? How these people talked, just anotherminute, as if they were afraid that this was the last human contact they would make. Halliday bent down in the tunnel of snow to fasten on his skis. And it might be up here, so quiet in the snow, a long, slow, seeping quiet. Chalker clung to the door. Literally clung. He was afraid of something slipping away, smiling feebly, and trying to make a joke. Halliday straightened up.
    Good-bye, Chalker, he said.
    So long, doctor. God, it’s cold, ain’t it? Freeze the snot on your nose.
    He was shivering. Halliday was conscious of his own brutality as he felt his way along the tunnel and out towards the light. But he could not stop. He did not know what to say, and the man was not so much worse off than anyone else, if it came to that. Up here at Kambala or down at Happy Valley was a choice of evils. Only here the isolation was physical. That was why Chalker shivered like an unwanted dog.
    At the end of the tunnel the valley widened out into a long sweep of snow. He slid off on his skis, his bag, fastened with a cord, bumping against his back. How the air cut. It shaved the flesh off your face. It made you feel lean, leaner, almost non-existent, as you arrived with a rush at the bottom of the slope. He was a little out of breath, for physically he was thirty-four. But it did not feel like that, feel like anything. He was sixteen, that night on the ferry in Sydney when he knew he could do anything, and Professor Birkett had said there was something in his poems that was not just adolescence, and he would be a writer, he would write poems and plays, particularly a play with some kindof metaphysical theme, only the trouble was to find the theme. A crow flew out of a tree with a half-hearted caw. He had not found the theme. He was now thirty-four. Hilda said she thought it was a lovely poem, she hoped he would write one for her, one she could feel was her very own, he must call it To H.G., though she knew he must wait to be inspired. She had grey eyes that were full of sympathy as they sat on that seat in the