The Tree of Man

by Patrick White

  ‘But ugly furniture can be most interesting,’ she went on, she smiled. ‘It has reality.’

  ‘Are you interested in everything?’ asked Thelma irritably.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Fisher. ‘One must be interested, otherwise one would be bored.’

  Mrs Forsdyke, who was made breathless by uninterrupted contact with her admirable friend, said that in spite of orders she would slip into the kitchen to investigate the situation. Her own nonentity pursued her down the passage. She was most unhappy since she had confessed her mother.

  Who was at the table with that mixing bowl, the stripey one. She was rather floury.

  Amy Parker did not speak.

  She mixed the scones.

  Breathing.

  All that short time she had been alone in her own kitchen she had been gathering the brilliant fragments of her visitor, because these fell in showers, of words, and enamels, but in her doughiness she could not cope, she bumped against wood, which at its most noticeable had the dull polish of years. Once she knocked the sifter off, and it went clattering. She picked it up. Her skirt had got hitched somehow at the hem on to some garment on the inside. Yet, at times, preferably of an evening, on that side of the house where the old camellia bushes stood, her mind would flow quite subtly, backwards and forwards, revisiting obscure caves, or in the present, solving some problem for her husband if he should call out. She would stand there biting the young petals of camellias, and would have recognized poetry if she had heard it.

  ‘I do not know what she will expect,’ she said to her daughter, whom she had noticed.

  ‘I told you we expect no trouble to be taken,’ said the unhappy Thelma.

  ‘Still,’ said her mother, ‘it is human to expect. Have you known this lady long?’

  ‘Yes. That is to say, for a few months. That is quite long. People come and go.’

  ‘Here we know people for a lifetime,’ Amy Parker said.

  ‘In my life’, said Thelma, ‘it is different.’

  But Amy Parker considered her visitor. At this moment, what would she be looking at, in that room? Sitting, and sitting. The blinds were half down. It was greenish in there. Some people are perfectly still when left alone. They close their eyelids. But this one would take on a fresh shape. And what would her shape finally be, if not a light and a tinkling?

  The old woman, who was putting her hand in the oven to feel, had forgotten her daughter was standing there. She did forget people now, unless necessary to thought or pictures.

  ‘I do not know’, she said, ‘what people are up to in a lot of jewellery. They cannot see it. I would like to have some in a box, and look at it, and put it away. It would be my jewellery then. It would be gorgeous. But such a brooch stuck on the front.’

  ‘You would be admired for it. Mrs Fisher is admired for her jewellery,’ said Thelma helplessly, who dared not wear jewellery herself, in case it should be lost or stolen.

  But Amy Parker was angry. ‘Pffh,’ she said.

  She was angry for her admiration and her longing. She had not known many things. She would not know a chandelier, and had escaped drunkenness.

  Mrs Fisher, on the other hand, who sat but did not wait, it was enough to sit in that room, which seemed to create for her the pocket into which she had desired to get, had known many things. She had started by knowing men. She had liked the horsy men, the strong-looking ones that smell of cigars and brilliantine, until she had begun to suspect the body is weak. After some consideration and rejections, she had married a rich draper, who also collected furniture, and little rare objects, and paintings of vegetables. He was rather wistful, she regretted, but nothing could be done, it was his way. Mrs Fisher continued to know men. She had slept with a scientist or two. She could listen to theories. She had known a musician and would discuss Bach with care. Conversation is imperative if gaps are to be filled, and old age, it is the last gap but one. So Mrs Fisher had learned. Now she would converse quite brilliantly, in diamonds, on the terrace of her house, at night, binding her guests to her with words, and frowning as she brushed aside the moths and the tendrils of jasmine that strayed into her elaborate face. Some men, foreign ones, still kissed her hand. But she would return to words. Or to the young men with Byronic heads. She was at her best in amusing relationships with artistic young men whose demands were decorative. As they hung about her in an esoteric group, and she fed them with their own wit, the young men would threaten to break at the hips. The old thing. They simply adored her.

  Sometimes, though, the mathematics, the mechanics, of admiration became too much for Mrs Fisher. Once in an arcade, to which they had gone to choose some little cakes, of a kind that had not yet been discovered by anybody else, she had escaped from her friend Mrs Forsdyke while she was turned in contemplation of the cakes, and quickly Mrs Fisher had run on brittle legs, inside the glass caterpillar of the long arcade, through pale yellow light, as if she had had something to protect. For some time the two friends had made a joke of the occasion on which Mrs Fisher had wandered and got lost, shopping.

  Now abandoned in the roomful of furniture, she remembered this incident, and whole reels of other scenes in which her legs were working. I wish I could remember clearly, she said, but am I honest enough? She sat, and closed her eyes, and frowned, which gave her a black look above the nose. Trying to remember herself as a girl, but all she could see was a satin dress, with beads, were they? yes, she was always well trimmed. Trying to remember her first glimpse of life, because there is a first glimpse, to which experience cannot add, except confusion. So now confusion blurred her vision. Nor could she hear her voice. Although at some period she had said innocent, blundering things, which had even explained.

  When the scones were brought in, and some cups with pansies on them, and a plated teapot that had got a dent on one side, Mrs Fisher opened her eyes quickly, so that they flashed out into the room, and she began to turn on her pivot, and to radiate generally, like some imperious searchlight.

  ‘Mrs Parker,’ she flashed, ‘I have sat in your room, which is perfect, by the way, and learned you off by heart. I know you intimately.’

  ‘Then you know more than me,’ said Mrs Parker, who was glad she had the plates to do things with, and did.

  ‘Persuade your mother, Christine, that I am sincere by nature,’ commanded the glinting Mrs Fisher.

  ‘Christine?’

  Amy Parker looked up. All of a sudden, what was this?

  But Thelma blushed. It had been a secret from her mother naturally, as little girls will keep secrets, it is their pastime. Letters, and pressed flowers, and names. This name was in no way shameful, except when revealed mercilessly to those it had been hidden from. She kept it for those friends, or acquaintances rather, who had inherited the senior title too suddenly, and of whom she lived in terror, lest they should break the relationship for some reason or other. So she offered them ‘Christine’ as an earnest of closer intimacies. Besides, she loathed ‘Thelma’ more than anything else that had been inflicted on her. The naked self can be most loathsome.

  ‘It is a name,’ said the thin Mrs Forsdyke, coughing it off, ‘a name that some of my friends know me by.’

  ‘Oh?’ said the mother, dipping her voice.

  But Thelma was Thelma.

  Poor Thelly. The old woman sat there, herself reddening, smiling for strange occurrences, the butter running between her fingers from good scones. Silly girl, she said. Then she licked her fingers, and enjoyed doing so.

  Between bites, for which they bared their teeth artistically, the two visitors had begun to discuss Mabel, who was married to some sort of lord. Mabel, the old woman had begun to gather, was poor in spite of motorcars.

  ‘Because he treats her to per-fect hell,’ Mrs Fisher said.

  ‘But it is a lovely place,’ suggested Mrs Forsdyke cautiously.

  Not knowing Mabel, her shots were timid, even perilous, but she loved to play the anxious game.

  ‘Oh, the place,’ sa
id Mrs Fisher. ‘We drove down to see them last time we were over. Poor Mabel would have been hurt. The place is – well, what you would expect. All oak and staircases. If you like oak.’

  Mrs Forsdyke, who had thought she did, made a suitably dismal noise.

  ‘But now they are at Antibes,’ she said.

  In fact, she had read.

  ‘At Antibes,’ Mrs Fisher intoned. ‘At the Pigeon Bleu. Oh yes, poor Mabel has written, one of her famous letters. They read like a bus timetable. They are sweet. Anyway, there the poor things are. At the Pigeon Bleu,’ she screamed. ‘It is madness. In winter the Pigeon Bleu is divine. So primitive. But in summer, as we all know, it stinks.’

  Mrs Forsdyke had contracted. She could never emulate her friend. She would never know.

  In her misery she began to think about her husband. Why the Forsdykes had never been to Europe was something for which no satisfactory reason could be given. But they had not. So that Thelma Forsdyke had been put in many a false position, or conversational ambush, through which she came shakily.

  ‘Of course,’ she said now. ‘In summer the South of France does smell. Give me some bracing beach of clean sand. It is my English blood, I suppose.’

  But Mrs Fisher had closed. She was too angry for more. Besides, her mouth was temporarily gone. When she had put it back, and touched her hair, which had begun life as red and was finishing it redder, she said carefully and kindly, ‘None of this is very interesting for poor Mrs Parker.’

  The old woman could not decently protest that this was not so, and consequently became restless, looking from one to the other of the sterile women with whom she was sitting. The one was her daughter, and could be dismissed as known, according to accepted standards, if not in fact. The second woman, though, was aggravating to Mrs Parker, as dreams do aggravate, that will not come right up and surface on the morning after. Here was this bright dream then, that tantalized with smiles, and tales, and sudden kindnesses, but would not stay still to be examined for the secret meaning of it.

  Mrs Parker shifted in her hot chair and said, ‘I am glad that you and Thelma should have so much in common, friends and all that, to talk about.’

  ‘Though you also most probably know the person we have been discussing,’ said Mrs Fisher considerately. ‘Mabel Armstrong that was. They lived in this district. Their property was Glastonbury.’

  Mrs Fisher had tired with this disclosure. She was looking for her gloves, and was now glad of her fur to rub against. She was impermanent in the ugly room.

  ‘Of course I knew Armstrongs,’ said Mrs Parker with superiority, because the immediate district and the past were her preserves. ‘Mr Armstrong was the one I knew best. But I would see the girls about, and talk with them.’

  ‘It was a handsome house,’ said Mrs Fisher, whose voice had cracked.

  She was examining her skinny legs on which the stockings were a pretence.

  ‘It has pretty nearly tumbled down,’ said Amy Parker brutally.

  She could feel her lips peeled back, plum-coloured, in her full and still rather sensual face.

  ‘Through neglect. You should see it,’ she said, because this woman had put herself in her power. ‘There are vines there that are taking it by the handful. The roots of the trees are opening the floors.’

  And, in passing, she herself was giving it a shake.

  ‘It is sad,’ said Thelma, getting up, and realizing again she had not enjoyed herself, she never did, except in controllable anticipation. ‘And such a rich property. Mrs Fisher used to stay there as a girl. Didn’t you, Madeleine?’

  Madeleine was rising from the ashes.

  Amy Parker drew her breath in very quickly through her teeth.

  ‘Ahhh,’ she said.’ It was you then. Madeleine!’

  Mrs Fisher, who had got to her feet without assistance, adopted one of those positions for which she was famous and said, ‘Why? Did we meet?’

  ‘No,’ said Amy Parker. ‘Not exactly. You were riding a horse along the roads. A black horse. You had a habit, it was a dark green, I think, anyway dark.’

  ‘I did have a habit of bottle green,’ said Mrs Fisher with feverish amusement. ‘It was very smart. I rode a great deal everywhere. I was often invited to stay at country properties. But I cannot say I remember your roads in particular. One cannot remember everything, Mrs Parker, in life.’

  ‘I can,’ said Amy Parker, whose eyes were shining. ‘I think I can.’

  ‘What a terrible affliction,’ protested Mrs Fisher.

  As Amy Parker stood up, she had been slowed by memory, and this also gave her stature.

  ‘Do you remember the fires then?’ she asked triumphantly. ‘The bush fires? And the burning house?’

  The two women were tingling with a fire music that had been invoked.

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Fisher said.

  Amy Parker would have continued to flame, she had not been that warm since youth, but the other woman preferred not, afraid that she would be burned right up.

  ‘It was exhilarating in its way,’ she said, shaking it off. ‘You know I was nearly lost forever in the fire. Only someone brought me out.’

  ‘I think I can just remember the fire at Glastonbury. I was quite small,’ said Thelma Forsdyke.

  ‘You should be kinder than to reveal the fact,’ laughed Mrs Fisher as they went out on compulsion.

  Amy Parker, who followed them in slippers, she had not had time to substitute her shoes, remembered the ugly girl whose hair had been singed off.

  Altogether she could not dissolve too completely the lovely effigy of Madeleine that had been hers. So poetry that has been used up must go out of the system. It must be got rid of, as bile, if necessary.

  ‘It was over there somewhere,’ said Mrs Fisher on the step, hesitating on the brink of the cold garden. ‘Can we see it from here?

  Her back was older than her front.

  ‘Not now,’ said Thelma. ‘The trees have grown up.’

  It appeared as if Mrs Fisher was going to make the effort to stand on tiptoe, as if her muscles were still good, but Mrs Forsdyke put a hand beneath her elbow, and she thought better of it.

  Thelma Forsdyke had grown quite bland. She could love those who depended on her, inheriting strength from weakness.

  Under that sky, which was of a lilac where it had not drained away, the women were drifting along the path of old bricks, that moss had grown on in little cushions of dark velvet. Except for a few liquid birds, the garden was silent as the women. On the one hand, these were people who were leaving, who had not realized themselves fully, but would perhaps, if time would stand. On the other hand, there was the person who remained, who could not give up even the uneasiness of company, she had formed a habit in that short time.

  Presently an old man came from another part of the garden, stooping beneath boughs, and parting the twigs of bushes. He wore blue trousers that were wrinkled at the ankles, altogether his clothes were slack and comfortable, his face wrinkled, orange in that light. The leathery old man came on across the damp soil. From the earth on which he trod a damp smell arose, but good.

  Amy Parker craned her neck. Her eyebrows glistened. These were still curiously full and dark.

  ‘This is my husband,’ she said.

  Thelma kissed the old man when he came, for she always made the most of his being her father, and Mrs Fisher gave him her glove. They were all standing in a faint glow of golden light. Stan Parker would not look at the strange woman, it seemed, blaming it on the glare from the setting sun.

  ‘Where were you?’ asked his wife, angrily smiling.

  ‘Down there,’ he said, blinking sightlessly at the sun.

  Obviously it was his intention to avoid details.

  ‘I was burning off a few bits of rubbish.’

  There was, in fact, a slight smoke rising, and smell of it, and a few pale tongues flickering from behind twigs.

  ‘My husband is a great one for lighting fires,’ said Amy Parker. ‘It is a habi
t of most men, I think, to stand around a fire and look into it, once they have got it going.’

  She would have liked to find fault with this, but, remembering her husband in his strength, she did not. So they stood together in the presence of the stranger. They were together. This man is as much as I am ever likely to know, she said.

  ‘It is a lovely smell,’ said Mrs Fisher genuinely. ‘A smell of winter. Here it is lovely, everywhere. There is no end to it.’

  ‘Do you keep bees?’ she asked, turning quickly to the old man.

  The drowning ball of the sun and the little leaping tongues of flame played upon them a tender gold.

  ‘No,’ said Stan Parker. ‘I never even thought about it, to tell you the truth.’

  He did look at the woman once, because it was strange, her asking him. He looked into her crumbling face, of which the eyes were still practised.

  ‘I would like to have kept bees,’ said Mrs Fisher. ‘It is incongruous, I know. But I would have liked to go out, and open the hives, and look inside at the bees clinging there. I know that they would not have harmed me, even if they had swarmed on my wrists. I have no fear of them. Such a lovely, dark, living gold. But now it is too late.’

  What is all this going on? asked Amy Parker. Too great a play of gold fire tormented her. There was no reason to suppose, however, that Stan had seen the woman for the glare, or heard her voice for the murmuring of bees.

  He was smiling, though.

  ‘They are a great deal of work,’ he said, ‘and get diseases, and die.’

  ‘Then you are one of those men,’ said Mrs Fisher.

  Though what she was thinking of him it was difficult to tell.

  Thelma Forsdyke had begun to put her collar up. She said, ‘We shall all catch our deaths, standing here in this damp air.’

  In the voice she kept for people who had departed from her. It had an accusing sweetness.

  After that she took her friend away, afraid that in the end their visit might have been a success and she had not shared in it. Mrs Fisher sat smiling through the window of the car, and should have called out something, something memorable for leaving, as was her custom, but she could not. Her dry face was fixed there under her hat. It was remarkable that the bees should have come into her head with such passion, as they quite definitely had, they were not an affectation as they should have been. Now the terrible nostalgia of lost possibilities was gnawing at her as she looked in amazement at the square wooden house in which the parents of her friend lived. All solutions had eluded her. Once in the deal dressing-table of an empty room, of a maid she had dismissed, she had come across a book of dreams, and had looked through it quickly hungrily, her pearls dangling on the yellow paper. She was looking for a meaning. Then she had laughed and torn up the shoddy thing, glad that she had not been seen by those who hated or respected her.