Voss

Excerpts from Voss, chs. 3 and 4:

Men are necessary, but are they not also, perhaps, tedious? Una Pringle debated.

Una and Laura began to extricate themselves.

‘Woburn McAllister, the one who has been telling about the worms, is the owner of a property that many people consider the most valuable in New South Wales,’ Una remembered, and cheered up. ‘He must, by all accounts, be exceedingly rich.’

‘Oh,’ said Laura.

Sometimes her chin would take refuge in her neck; it could sink low enough, or so it felt. …

Laura listened to Voss’s feet following her shame in soft, sighing sand. Una did look round once, but only saw that German who was of no consequence.

‘And such a fine fellow. Quite unspoilt,’ said Una, who had listened a lot. ‘Of excellent disposition.’

‘I cannot bear so much excellence,’ Laura begged.

‘Why Laura, how funny you are,’ said Una.

But she did blush a little, before remembering that Laura was peculiar. There is nothing more odious than reserve, and Una knew very little of her friend. But for the fact that they were both girls, they would have been in every way dissimilar. Una realized that she always had disliked Laura, and would, she did not doubt, persist in that dislike, although there was every reason to believe they would remain friends.

‘You take it upon yourself to despise what is praiseworthy in order to appear different,’ protested the nettled Una. ‘I have noticed this before in people who are clever.’

‘Oh dear, you have humbled me,’ Laura Trevelyan answered simply.

‘But Miss Pringle is right to admire such an excellent marriage party as Mr McAllister,’ contributed Voss, drawing level.

Shock caused the two girls to drop their personal difference.

‘I was not thinking of him as exactly that,’ Una declared.

Although, in fact, she had been. Lies were not lies, however, if told in the defence of honour.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

‘I think that I can enter into the minds of most men,’ said the young woman [Laura], softly. ‘At times. An advantage we insect-women enjoy is that we have endless opportunity to indulge the imagination as we go backwards and forwards in the hive.’

‘And in my instance, what does your imagination find?’ [said Voss.]

He was laughing, of course, at the absurdity of that which he expected to be told. But he would have liked to hear practically anything.

‘Shall we go a little?’ he invited.

‘Walking in the darkness is full of dangers.’

‘It is not really dark. When you are accustomed to it.’

Which was true. The thick night was growing luminous. At least, it was possible almost to see, while remaining almost hidden.

The man and woman were walking over grass that was still kindly beneath their feet. Smooth, almost cold leaves soothed their faces and the backs of their hands.

‘These are the camellia bushes Uncle planted when he first came here as a young man,’ Laura Trevelyan said. ‘There are fifteen varieties, as well as sports. This one here is the largest,’ she said, shaking it as if it had been an inanimate object; it was so familiar to her, and now so necessary. ‘It is a white, but there is one branch that bears those marbled flowers, you know, like the edges of a ledger.’

‘Interesting,’ he said.

But it was an obscure reply, of a piece with the spongy darkness that surrounded them.

‘Then you are not going to answer my question?’ he asked.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘that silly claim I made! Although, to a certain extent, it is true.’

‘Tell me, then.’

‘Everyone is offended by the truth, and you will not be an exception.’

That it would take place, they both knew now.

Consequently, when she did speak, the sense of inevitability that they shared made her sound as if she were reading from a notebook, only this one was her head, in which her memorandum had been written, in invisible ink, that the night had breathed upon; and as she read, or spoke, it became obvious to both that she had begun to compile her record from the first moment of their becoming acquainted.

‘You are so vast and ugly,’ Laura Trevelyan was repeating the words; ‘I can imagine some desert, with rocks, rocks of prejudice, and, yes, even hatred. You are so isolated. That is why you are fascinated by the prospect of desert places, in which you will find your own situation taken for granted, or more than that, exalted. You sometimes scatter kind words or bits of poetry to people, who soon realize the extent of their illusion. Everything is for yourself. Human emotions, when you have them, are quite flattering to you. If those emotions strike sparks from others, that also is flattering. But most flattering, I think, when you experience it, is the hatred, or even the mere irritation of weaker characters.’

‘Do you hate me, perhaps?’ asked Voss, in darkness.

‘I am fascinated by you,’ laughed Laura Trevelyan, with such candour that her admission did not seem immodest. ‘You are my desert!’

Once or twice their arms brushed, and he was conscious of some extreme agitation or exhilaration in her.

‘I am glad that I do not need your good opinion,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Nobody’s opinion!’

He was surprised at the vehemence of feeling in this young girl. In such circumstances, repentance, he felt, might have been a luxury. But he did not propose to enjoy any such softness. Besides, faith in his own stature had not been destroyed.

He began to bite his nails in the darkness.