Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

Dorothy Hunter suddenly realized somebody had mistimed an entrance. She frowned ferociously, not at a star actor, but at her tiresome brother.

Anne Macrory did not care: hugging the colander, she continued, ‘… that was after our first child. Until then, Rory wasn’t accepted. Could you blame them? Only a stockman.’

‘We were told the overseer.’ Dorothy remained engrossed in the patterns she had made with cutlery: however exact, she might improve on them.

‘Never an overseer.’ Anne spoke with a candour she must have developed in facing the crises of life, at the same time exploring her skirt where it was sopped with cabbage water. ‘Or only after they decided they’d better accept the whole situation. When he’d got me pregnant for the second time.’

Dorothy glanced at the children. Either they did not understand, or knew it all by heart.

Basil plumped down at the table, to wait for the meal in this play to which he didn’t belong. Dorothy, it seemed, had wormed her way in with the management: considering her lack of talent, nothing else could explain their acceptance. Well, he would go on waiting, protecting his eyes from the crude lighting, and hope that his Swiss wristwatch and signet ring would not discredit him further by being so blatantly out of keeping.

Anne Macrory continued, her voice pitched clear and high, like a girl’s. ‘Then Daddy came good. He bought us “Kudjeri”.’ Anne and Rory had moved from ‘Kirkcaldy’: ‘Kirkcaldy’ was Anne’s myth, her ‘Kudjeri’. ‘Of course I love “Kudjeri”. But it isn’t the same. You’ll appreciate that, I’m sure.’

Dorothy said yes she did; though pudding spoons were more important since she had discovered them. ‘You can’t have been here so long,’ she said, polishing one of the spoons on her apron. ‘None of your children looks very old, though there seems quite a number of them.’

I’ve been here a lifetime. You’d believe it if the children were yours.’

‘I never asked to be a child,’ said the girl who was cleaning out the brown dregs of dripping.

Her mother shushed her. ‘Robert is sixteen. He’s the eldest. He’s away. Yes, it must be fifteen years since we took over “Kudjeri”.’

Now it was Dorothy’s lifetime which did not add up. ‘But what happened here in between — between your coming and my father’s death?’

‘Surely you know better than I? Your mother put in managers, didn’t she? Though she didn’t like to come here, she tried to keep it, I think, for sentimental reasons. Didn’t your father love the place?’

‘I expect he did.’ Dorothy blushed. ‘I don’t know. One was out of touch, living in Europe.’ She looked to Basil, hoping he would either know, or else share her ignorance.

‘Oh, yes — vaguely. Yes — I knew.’ When he hadn’t a clue.

What he did know for certain was that he would like to get the mutton over: food would fill a gap. He would probably never discover the point in time at which he had taken the wrong turn. It might have helped if he could have spoken some lines from one of the parts he had played, but his memory had become a blank.

Nor did Macrory improve matters by coming in with a whiskey bottle a quarter full. ‘Would you care for a drop, perhaps?’ He seemed to defer the moment of addressing the princess by name.

Dorothy took pride in refusing.

Macrory poured for Hunter and himself. ‘My wife is a saint. She doesn’t drink.’

‘The best saints were the greatest drunks,’ Mrs Macrory snapped, and tipped the colander of flopping cabbage into a brown-chipped tureen.

‘How do you mean, Anne?’

But she wouldn’t answer her husband. She went on scraping the colander with a big iron spoon so as not to waste any of the cabbage.

Macrory laughed. ‘My wife is educated,’ he complained; he was already half gone, on whiskey taken in advance to avoid wasting the stuff on guests.

‘I’m educated, aren’t I?’ asked the girl who had been at the dripping; her fat cheeks aglow with it.

She came smoodging up at her father, and he answered, but gently, ‘Yes, Mog;’ and kissed her. ‘Yes.’

He improved a little; and his wife put on a better face. ‘Rory’s tired by evening,’ she explained. ‘The work’s exhausting.’ She brushed against her husband in passing.

When other children had been called or sent for, and all were seated, the father began to decimate the mutton, the mother to dole out the pale cabbage as well as some grey-complexioned potatoes.

Speaking through a mouthful, casting up his eyes, corrugating his parti-coloured forehead, the host asked of the actor bloke, ‘Tough, isn’t it?’ hopefully.

Sir Basil smiled. ‘You must give me time to get my teeth round it.’

‘It has the authentic flavour. Delicious.’ Dorothy despised the words she had chosen, but did want to contribute something.

‘You can only call it tough — to tell the truth.’ Macrory looked at his wife; he wanted to hurt somebody, and in doing so, himself.

‘But it’s not bad, Dad.’ One of his boys, who did not understand, was trying to help him.

‘To you it isn’t.’ The father sighed; he was considerate of his children.

They were all eating the gristly meat, some of them genuinely loving it, others persuading themselves. The Hunters looked at each other with unforced tenderness.

‘Will anyone have some more?’ Anne was enunciating again so bright and clear she might have been fresh from ‘Kirkcaldy’.

This would be the test. Some of the children accepted; the guests declined with sugared smiles.

Macrory could relax again.

Now it was Anne who carved the mutton. ‘And what about Rory?’

Cocking his head, lowering his eyelids, his lashes so thick they looked as though they were gummed together, or fringed with flies, he agreed delicately to accept another help of mutton.

Anne brought it. Again she brushed against him; while arranging the plate, she leaned over his shoulder lower than she need have. The Macrorys tended still to communicate by touch; words were the dangerous weapons some malicious daemon from time to time put into their mouths.

During the pudding a child began wilting and moaning. I’m sick of spotted dog, Mum!’

‘Eat it up! When I was a little girl at “Kirkcaldy” spotted dog was my favourite pudding. Certainly the spotted dog was lighter. I don’t pretend to be a cook. But you can’t say it isn’t wholesome. We had a professional cook at “Kirkcaldy”.’

‘At “Kirkcaldy”! At “Kirkcaldy”!’ The husband bowed his head. ‘Everything was lighter, sweeter — better class. Only the fences were the same. Barbed wire never changes.’

Anne was not going to be caught. ‘Isn’t it a weakness everybody suffers from to some extent?’ She looked from Dorothy to Basil, who smilingly agreed not to disagree.

Rory was addressing his knuckles, white except where one of them was scabbed. ‘Any “Kirkcaldy” I knew was only ever from the wrong entrance.’ He rinsed his mouth with what remained of the whiskey, and left them.

His wife murmured, ‘Rory’s tired.’ She was at her gauntest, her saddest, the social worker whose job has got the better of her.

The Princesse de Lascabanes suggested that everyone was tired: her revenant certainly felt exhausted.

‘Oh, but I must show you!’ Anne revived. ‘Rory had the idea of turning your father’s study into a private sitting-room. So that you can escape from children — and think your own thoughts.’ She had got up. ‘I believe he’s lit a fire. Come and see.’

The Hunters followed her warily. It was obvious that Anne wished to rehabilitate a delinquent husband. But what sort of ambush had the husband prepared? Or did he reason that your own thoughts in Father’s room would be dynamite enough?