Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

She was by now more humiliated by her own ill temper than by what had been only questionable insolence in the passport official.

It might have been worse at the customs if she had not clenched her jaws, after deciding to answer any questions as briefly and coldly as she knew how: French economy in fact.

The surly youth in an official’s uniform who began stirring up the two bags packed by herself with such practical ingenuity, immediately put her to the test. Again, in rummaging through the case in which she carried her make-up, her tissues and so forth, as well as a few jewels, he provoked, but failed to draw her; not even when running his hands through the jewels with a cynical air of estimating their value. (They were certainly an impressive lot: some, gently lustrous, others, by the grubby airport light, imperiously brilliant. Her spoils. If she had not been so well-informed in the details of Hubert’s private life, she might have lost the battle for the jewels; but cette créature vulgaire, cette infecte Australienne simply knew too much for her former belle-mère, the old Princesse Etienne, to launch a successful offensive.

At least the customs official’s lack of respect was not expressed in words; she might not have borne it otherwise. Silently she hid her gall as he silently poured a few of her sleeping pills into his hand; and when he left his fingerprints on her books, as he scuffed up the pages, always ferretting, almost breaking the spine of her precious Chartreuse de Parme.

He only opened his mouth to mumble, while sticking a plastic strip on her violated luggage, ‘Bet you get a good read out of some of these French books of yours.’

For a moment she regretted insisting that nobody should meet her, and that she had avoided travelling by the line she thought Basil most likely to choose. All she could do now was ignore, lower her discreetly smeared eyelids, dust down the coat she was carrying (her rather mature Persian lamb) and stalk behind the barrow on which her bags were being wheeled away. The briefest glance at her own reflection ought to restore her confidence if it were to falter. As it did. And her impeccable reflection let her down.

Dorothy Hunter’s misfortune was to feel at her most French in Australia, her most Australian in France. Sometimes she wished she had been born a Finn: she might not have felt so strongly about it. She had only met a couple of Finns; but Australians — here they were, teeming around her, the older men like mattresses from which the hair was bursting out, or those younger, more disturbing ones, hipless, and over-articulated; the women, either in loud summary shifts, apparently with nothing underneath, or else imprisoned in a rigid armature of lace, shrieked at one another monotonously out of unhealed wounds. Some of the women looked as though they would expect to die in hats.

The Princesse de Lascabanes pushed her way between the bodies, using her hands united in an attitude of prayer inside the lumped-up coat she was carrying. Protected by this fur buckler, Madame de Lascabanes shoved on, to arrive beside the queue of infiltrating taxis, where she overtipped (one of the principles of ‘poverty’) the unsuspecting, decent man her porter — or whatever he was: she had all but forgotten her native language.

As she entered the cab she was on the verge of crying; in fact she did drop a tear or two after bumping her head and giving the address, ‘The Queen Victoria Club.’

After very little correspondence the princess had been elected an honorary member of this irreproachable institution to which she now intended to drive. Go to Mother’s later in the day, after resting. She was too écoeurée at the moment to risk being dragged under by the emotional demands of a domineering old woman. Carried along an impersonal expressway from the airport she would not allow herself to think of Mother, least of all ‘Mummy’. Were you really rapace as your belle-mère had insisted? Were you a SNOB? as every second Australian seemed to accuse: the bursting mattresses, the hipless Gary Coopers of your youth, not forgetting the fe-males, blue-glaring out of their wounded leather.

Dorothy Hunter might have had a good cry if, on opening the wrong bag, she could have found her tissues. I have never managed to escape being this thing Myself.

Instead she addressed the driver’s neck, ‘ Voyez—’ coughing for her lapse, ‘I’ve changed my mind. Take me to Moreton Drive, will you?’ adding, strangely, superfluously, ‘To my mother’s house.’

The driver did not seem to find it odd, ‘Been away long?’

‘Oh, years— years !’ She heard a wheeze from deep down in her reply; and coughed again.

But felt fulfilled: it was like the sensation of settling yourself inside a cotton frock, between licks at an ice-cream horn, while voices droned on about weather, the wool clip, and the come-and-go of relatives.

‘Dear dear! Aren’t we unfortunate? These terrible accidents!’ Sister Badgery had hurried to the bedside to disengage her patient from a too emotional embrace; intent on professional duties, her least concern was a princess.

While Mrs Hunter, curled on her side in something like a foetal position, was grinning up at her daughter. ‘Don’t worry, Dorothy. It’s not as bad as you might imagine. There’s the macintosh.’ Relief drifted over her face as the water spread inside her bed: for the moment she would not have to think of what to talk about to this stranger; better disgraced by the body than by the mind.

She sighed and said, ‘You’ll have to go into the nursery, Kate, play with the dolls — though mine aren’t as good as yours;’ then listened cunningly for the sound of Kate’s boots tapping across the boards.

Kate Nutley was altogether too simple. Betty Salkeld had never cared for her friend, any more than for Kate’s glacé buttonboots; the Nutleys were wealthier than the Salkelds.

Dorothy Hunter was rent as the nurse dragged the sheet back too quickly and her own babyhood was exposed. Its smell of pitiful flannel and the painful prickling of a rash invaded her far more ruthlessly than the memory of that adult ordeal: the trek through a chain of icy salons to the cabinets at Lunegarde; the door which wouldn’t open at first and which wouldn’t shut on the screech of urine, while the belle-mère snored, and Oncle Amédée slit the night and the newspapers with his scissors, cutting out reports of incidents which might be interpreted as Communist conspiracy.

Confused by this collision between her still passive babyhood and some of the most painful steps she had taken in what remained a gawky-schoolgirl marriage, she was relieved to hear a man’s voice. ‘We’d better leave them to it. I dare say they’ll fetch you when everything’s in order.’ She had forgotten the solicitor.

Arnold Wyburd led her out along the passage towards the landing. He was the sort of person you take for granted: a nice bore; so reasonable and honest there is no need to be on your guard against him. She felt remorseful for never having sent a New Year card to the one who had managed their affairs all these years. He appeared dry enough not to look for sentimental attentions from a client. Or so she hoped.

On the other hand, he had known her as her other self: Dorothy Hunter.

He was so kind she might have been recovering from an illness. ‘I expect you’ll want to potter about the house — quietly — by yourself.’

The Princesse de Lascabanes was restored to health, when it should have been Dorothy Hunter.

‘Yes,’ she replied, returning his kindness with a kind smile. ‘Isn’t it ridiculous of me — I’m dying to see my old room!’ She settled her pearls with a practised hand. ‘I believe rooms actually mean more to me than people.’ That was not entirely true, and she hoped it had not sounded shocking to somebody as good as the solicitor.