Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White Page A

Hare. "One forgets."
    "I can never forget," Mrs Jolley claimed. "It is always with us, in the daily papers, not to mention the back yard."
    "I had forgotten," Miss Hare realized, "until you _ reminded me of it."
    "But," said Mrs Jolley, doing something dainty with a white of egg, "why doesn't she leave this husband?"
    "She considers it her duty to stay with him. Besides, she loves him."
    Miss Hare pronounced with difficulty that amazing word.
    "One day, on my way past, I shall give her a piece of advice."
    "You would not dare!" cried Miss Hare, protecting something breakable. "She is a very sensitive woman," she said.
    "Squeezing the water out of sheets!" retorted Mrs Jolley.
    Then Miss Hare suspected that her housekeeper might ultimately have everybody at her mercy.
    "Nobody who is a believer could fail to derive consolation from her faith," Mrs Jolley decided.
    "Few could fail to believe in Mrs Godbold," Miss Hare followed up.
    But feebler. Mrs Jolley had experience of words. Mrs Jolley had her family in a phalanx, her three daughters, and her sons-in-law, to say nothing of the incalculable kiddies.
    "None of all this," said Mrs Jolley at last, "is what I am used to. I have always moved in different circles."
    Miss Hare believed it, but also feared.
    "Mrs Flack agrees," said Mrs Jolley, "that I have been faced with things recently which I cannot be expected to understand or accept."
    "Mrs Flack?"
    "Mrs Flack is a friend," said Mrs Jolley, and let fall a veil of sugar from her sifter. "A lady," she said, "that I met on the bus. And again, outside the church. The widow," she added, "of a tiler, who fell off the roof while contracted at Barranugli, years ago."
    "I have never heard of Mrs Flack."
    "Different circumstances," continued Mrs Jolley, with dignity, if not scorn. "Mrs Flack resides in Mildred Street, in a home of her own, with every amenity. Seeing as her husband, the tiler, had the trade connections that he had, they were able to fix things real nice. Oh, and I almost forgot to tell: Mrs Flack's father was a wealthy store proprietor, who saw to it, naturally, that his daughter was left comfortable."
    "Naturally," Miss Hare agreed.
    Expected to evoke for herself the apparition of Mrs Flack, her mind would not venture so far. And there the name rested, unspoken and mysterious.
    Indeed, Mrs Jolley, too, became a mystery now. She would appear in doorways, or from behind dividing curtains, and cough, but very carefully, at certain times. She carried her eyes downcast. Or she would raise them. And look. And Mrs Jolley's eyes were blue.
    "I was looking for the ashtrays," Mrs Jolley would explain. "All my girls are smokers, of course. And the trays need emptying."
    Then she would retire. She was most discreet now, and silent.
    Again she would appear.
    "Do you need anything?" Mrs Jolley would ask, or breathe.
    What can one possibly need? Miss Hare used to wonder.
    "No," she would have to confess.
    She would go on sitting in her favourite chair, which was old, but real.
    "Some people are given to one thing, and some another," Mrs Jolley would say, and finger. "Now, we _ have the Genoa velvets in all our lounges. But Mrs Flack--the lady I was telling you of--she goes for petty point _."
    But Mrs Flack would at once withdraw.
    "Do you need anything?" Mrs Jolley would repeat.
    Miss Hare's face fumbled after some acceptable desire.
    "No," she would have to admit, ashamed.
    Then, on one occasion, Mrs Jolley announced, "I had a letter."
    She had followed her employer out to the terrace. It was almost evening. Great cloudy tumbrils were lumbering across the bumpy sky towards a crimson doom.
    "I did not see your letter," Miss Hare replied.
    Mrs Jolley scarcely hesitated.
    "Oh," she said, "it was at the P. O. All my correspondence is always directed to the P. O. A matter of policy, you might say."
    Miss Hare was observing the progress of a beetle across the mouth of a silted urn. She would have much preferred not to be disturbed.
    "It