Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

‘Wouldn’t you like me to choose you a necklace seeing as it’s a great occasion?’

‘Not a necklace. Not before luncheon. Not for Dorothy.’

Sister Badgery accepted reproof. ‘Gordon gave me an amethyst pendant.’

‘Gordon?’

‘My husband. Don’t you remember me telling you?’

‘I ought to.’

‘Well, Gordon gave me this pendant. It’s in exquisite taste. I wear it still — only when I visit friends, or to the Nurses’ and Residents’ Ball.’

Though Mrs Hunter had never distinctly seen Sister Badgery’s neck, she imagined it thin, white, and well-soaped: fitting support for the amethyst pendant.

‘Perhaps I never told you—’ Sister Badgery was treading familiar ground, ‘I met Mr Badgery — Gordon — on my way to the Temple of the Tooth. I was visiting Ceylon for pleasure — between cases, that is. What did you say, dear? Mrs Hunter?’

Mrs Hunter was not coaxed into repeating, but they used to call them ‘the Fishing Fleet’: the Australian women who went up to cast their nets in Ceylon waters; instead she confessed to a weakness of her own. ‘For years I kept the children’s baby teeth in a bottle. Then one day, for some reason, I threw them out.’

‘I was telling you about my trip to Kandy. My friends’ car got a puncture, and a tea planter who happened to be passing fetched a native to do the necessary. The planter was Mr Badgery. He kindly invited us to take refreshments — which was how everything started. Shortly after, he retired from tea and followed me by P. & O. to Sydney.’

‘He died, didn’t he?’ As if you didn’t know; but his widow liked to be asked.

‘Yes, he died. But not before we were married. That was when he gave me the amethyst pendant.’

Mrs Hunter wondered momentarily whether she should give Mrs Badgery something from her jewel box; it was easier to give presents than to waste emotions you were storing up against some possible cataclysm: as time ran on you did not know what you might have to face.

‘What is this weird ring I’ve never seen before?’ Sister Badgery was asking. ‘The one on your right thumb.’

The old girl was lolling there, her smouldering fingers scarcely part of her, and on that thumb a nest of plaited gold surrounding what might have been a cross, but out of plumb; the whole effect was thoroughly heathen.

‘That is an Ethiopian ring,’ Mrs Hunter explained. ‘It’s the only thing ever sent me by my son — apart from letters asking for money.’

Sister Badgery sucked her teeth. ‘And Sir Basil a great man! That’s what the papers tell us.’

‘I suppose, when they’re not being great, great men are as weak as the insignificant ones.’

Because of a tone of perversity and sadness, Sister Badgery changed the subject. ‘I expect your daughter — Dorothy — has lots of exquisite jewels: a lady in her position.’

‘She came off badly when he left her — though she was the innocent one. Still, she did manage to extract a jewel or two from her husband’s atrocious family.’

Sister Badgery was delighted to hear of this material success. She brought a brush and began stroking her patient’s hair.

‘I don’t believe you know my daughter’s name.’

‘Well, “Dorothy”, isn’t it? I’m no good at those foreign names.’

‘I shall teach you,’ said Mrs Hunter, her lips inflating as though she were tasting a delicious food, her nostrils filling with what could have been a subtle perfume. ‘“ Princesse de Lascabanes”’ ; she laid on the French pretty thick for Sister Badgery’s benefit. ‘Let me hear you say it.’

The nurse obliged after a fashion. ‘But what shall I call her?’ the voice whined despairingly.

‘Nothing more elaborate than ‘“Madame”.’

‘“Mad-damm, mad-damm,”’ Sister Badgery breathed in imitation, and a more sonorous variant, ‘“Ma- darm !”’

Mrs Hunter sensed she had got her nurse under control, which was where she wanted her; she also suspected Sister Badgery would refer to ‘Princess Dorothy’ to please herself and impress her friends.

‘“Mad-damm, ma- darm ”!’ Happier for its new accomplishment the voice went clucking in and out the golden morning.

Mrs Hunter was so soothed by clocks and brandy it seemed unlikely that anybody would arrive; if they did, it might even be undesirable: her life was too closely charted.

‘Open mouth! Mrs Hunter?’ It was that Badgery again. ‘Whatever happens, we must take our temp, mustn’t we?’

What did they call it? Dettol? Cool, anyway. Sterilizing. Was it better this way: to be sterilized out of existence? I don’t mind dying, Dr Gidley, but I do expect my nurses to protect me against worse than death: such as the visitants you do not conjure up for yourself, worst of all the tender ones.

‘Shall I be strong enough, I wonder?’

Holding her patient’s wrist, Sister Badgery found it unnecessary to answer: the pulse was remarkably strong.

When they were both shocked, if not positively alarmed, by an interruption to their celebration.

The door opened.

‘Sister, can she be seen?’ It was Mr Wyburd in something too loud for a whisper and less than his usual grammar. ‘The princess has arrived. Her daughter.’

As if this were not enough, a second figure was pushing rustling past the one at the door: for Mrs Hunter it was sound perfume joy despair; whereas Sister Badgery saw a tall thin hatless woman, somewhere around fifty (to be on the kind side) her dress unsurprising except for its simplicity and the pearls bounding about around her neck, and on her bosom, as she half ran half staggered.

A princess shouldn’t run, the nurse recovered herself enough to disapprove; and she shouldn’t have a horse face.

But Dorothy floundered, imperviously, on. ‘O man Dieu, aidez-moi! ’ she gasped, before assuming another of her selves, or voices, to utter, ‘Mother!’ and lower, ‘Mum!’

Then, by act of special grace, a blind was drawn over the expression the intruder was wearing for this old mummy propped up in bed, a thermometer sticking out of its mouth; if life were present, it was the life generated by jewels with which the rigid claws were loaded.

The princess fell against the bed, groping through the scents of Dettol and baby powder, to embrace, deeper than her mother, her own childhood.

Rejecting the thermometer with her mouth — lucky it didn’t break off — Mrs Hunter was smiling, whether in bliss or fright it was difficult to tell.

Till she giggled through her flux of tears, ‘Too much excitement! I think I’ve wet myself.’

Madame de Lascabanes had felt her anxiety, together with a morbid craving for acceptance, turn to rage, as she endured the humiliations of the airport.

The man said, looking through her passport, ‘“Princess Dorothy de Lascabanes”, eh? French subject. Born at Gogong, Australie. Waddayerknow!’

The princess glared back along the ridge of her white nose. Her rather flat breasts were heaving beneath the uncomplicated little dress she had chosen for the journey: her faithful old Chanel; how would she manage when it wore out?

‘What business is it of yours where I was born?’ The unaccustomed language was making her spit.

‘Only reading what’s in the passport.’

‘I should have thought my birthplace beside the point — in the circumstances.’ The rustiness of her English made it sound ruder, which was what she had intended after all.

‘That’s what comes of offerun friendship. But we won’t hold it against yer, lady. Welcome to yer native land!’ The man laughed, and handed back the passport.

‘I’ll report,’ she began; but to whom? and for what?