Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

As Sister Manhood returned from the nurses’ room with the pad, Mrs Hunter was making her solicitor recite, ‘… Marjorie four, Heather three.’

‘Surely there were more? For years the talk was all of babies. Some of them must have died, then?’

‘Yes, some of them died; some miscarried. They don’t count, I should have thought.’

Sister Manhood was pretty sure she was right: the ‘document’ would be a will, and Arnold Wyburd would influence it.

For a moment Mrs Hunter’s attention was distracted by matters more important than life and death: her fingers were flittering over the topmost sheet of the writing-pad her nurse had fetched. She was feeling for concrete evidence.

‘What’s this?’ The fingers almost gouged out the upper edge of the paper. ‘This isn’t it. Not important enough — Nurse. A common pad ! Go down to the study — to Alfred’s desk — the embossed paper from Sands.’

Old snob.

‘I want it done properly,’ Mrs Hunter insisted.

When Sister Manhood trailed back with a wad of the super parchment, old Betty was explaining, ‘… people think if it isn’t in writing, it’s stealing.’

Mrs Hunter’s hearing was good enough for her to fall silent after that, and the solicitor of course was too discreet to show he knew she had been talking at all.

Flora Manhood would have liked to cry, not only for the unnecessary journey she had been forced to make, but also because these inhuman beings were letting her see the outsider they thought her.

‘I was explaining’, Mrs Hunter took up the thread again, ‘that you are going to marry a man you don’t value enough.’

‘Marry? What man, I’d like to know?’ Sister Manhood exploded.

Elizabeth Hunter went off into what might once have convinced as laughter. ‘Come on, Arnold. Did you bring him a pen, Sister? And ink?’

Now it was the solicitor who was pleased to explain: he had his Parker, a present from the staff on his seventieth.

‘But who can the fellow be? Who I don’t intend to marry?’ Sister Manhood raged.

‘Write something, Arnold — in your beautiful hand, which I hope you haven’t lost — put something like, “I hereby confirm that I give my pink sapphire to Florrie …” Is it Florrie? “… Manhood — to celebrate her engagement …” Or do you think “betrothal” sounds less suburban? her — her …? But that is beside the point. What it all amounts to is her— marriage with …’ Mrs Hunter started coughing, so her nurse was able to occupy herself offering a glass of barley water.

When the coughing fit had passed, Flora Manhood announced, ‘I am not going to be conned into marrying any man — however important. Anyway, you don’t know what was behind it. You’re mad’, she said, ‘to get any such idea. I won’t! And you can keep your ring!’ She would bring it back from Vidlers’ tomorrow, and better if Sir Basil was here: she would show the pair of them, mother and son, how little a pink sapphire impressed her.

‘But we must mention the man’s name, Mrs Hunter.’ The solicitor paused, suitably grave above his presentation pen.

‘How do I know?’ Mrs Hunter grumbled. ‘I can’t remember names any more. But liked his voice. Once when he brought the prescript — the medcins!’ She smiled the taste of words down. ‘I liked the feel of his skin. I don’t know why they brought him up to my room. Perhaps I asked for him. I have always liked men around me.’

Sister Manhood stood the glass so abruptly it chinked with the crystal jug. She removed herself so quickly these cold old devils probably didn’t even notice; though you were the reason for the game they were playing, its only object to cause distress.

Well, she would take her child to anywhere — to buggery — or Adelaide — throw the ring out of the bus window, rear her poor bastard with the love she already felt for him, and hope he would not end up murdering her with a hammer for forcing life on him.

Mrs Hunter said, ‘That should pacify her. Give it to me, Arnold.’ He did, and she put what she remembered as her signature, slashed across the paper, after which he witnessed it in his deliberate hand.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘another matter. Bring me the jewel case. Well,’ she said, ‘it’s where it’s always been — over on that what-not I’ve had to put up with because it was a present from Emily.’

He fetched the case. She sprang the catch, and her fingers went to it, verifying. ‘Oh, that! Ugly! Now this — this is what — I’ve often thought of — of giving Lal Wyburd.’ She collected herself immediately. ‘Your wife, Arnold.’

Turquoises were clustered at intervals along the chain she was drawing out.

‘Very simple, as you see. We were poor farmers. (My father died of mortgages.) This chain of my mother’s I was wearing when the storm struck. Otherwise it would have gone the way of everything else.’ The voice was reduced to such an introspective key, the solicitor might have lost track if it had not been suddenly raised to a pitch of blatancy which suggested Elizabeth Hunter had manned her battering ram. ‘Do you think Lal will care for anything so unimportant? People expect you to hand out something showy when they’ve decided you’re sitting on treasures. So she may be hurt — by the insignificance — of this little chain. When one doesn’t set out — deliberately — to ruffle these sensitive souls. If she doesn’t like it, at least she can wear it on family occasions.’ The mouth rasped shut.

‘Yes.’ He was tired. ‘She will like it.’ His eyelids were the heaviest part of him.

He was no master of disguises: he could not have watched the condescension with which their benefactress would have received thanks for her gift to his wife; so he simply put the chain in his pocket.

She had sunk back, gummy-eyed and thoughtful, before remembering, ‘Have you got the paper? To give that nurse?’

‘Yes, I have it, I have it,’ he nattered.

She was grinning at him from the pillows. One of her non-breasts had worked free of the nightdress. As he put the jewel case back where it belonged, his discomfiture was laced with a spirt of horror. He stumbled on his way out of the room.

‘Sister Manhood?’ He knocked on the door shut between them.

She took so long to open, he had begun to wonder whether she would, but she did, and he told her, ‘Here’s Mrs Hunter’s statement. Which you wanted,’ he added, to hold her partly responsible.

‘I didn’t want it! Because I don’t want her bloody ring!’

She took the paper, if only because this old man, the older for being Mrs Hunter’s solicitor, had withdrawn so deep into his thoughts he might continue standing at the door.

‘Mr Wyburd,’ she said in a burst of exasperation with herself and desperation over almost everybody else, ‘you are the one who must reason with them — a legal man and their father’s friend.’

‘Mrs Hunter is the one who will decide,’ Mr Wyburd hoped.

He went away.

Faced with the remainder of the afternoon Sister Manhood engaged in the most elaborate succession of activities she could invent: she opened windows which were closed, and closed those which she found open; she fetched a duster and dusted ledges and corners Mrs Cush had conveniently left to occupy a nurse; she generally tidied the already tidy. In doing so, she was forced to ignore Mrs Hunter’s official declaration, which she had shoved for the time being under the pin cushion on the nurses’ dressing-table; why, she couldn’t think, when she meant to tear it up.

Nor would she have known whether a tinkled summons by her patient’s hand-bell was a godsend or an evil omen.

When she went in, Mrs Hunter ungummed her voice. ‘I want to use the seat, Sister.’