Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

Once Dorothy de Lascabanes had slipped on the cobbles in the dark, on a patch of what she afterwards identified as blood, and grazed her knee. She bound the knee; she would not tell — not even when she was dying, probably, of blood poisoning.

There was a lot she hid, and her secretive air was sometimes mistaken for worldliness. Elle est admirable, vous savez — votre femme, said the aunts, cousins, and the few friends, equally glacial and exalted, who foregathered at Lunegarde. She soon realized to what extent she was admirable: that money may be overlooked provided there is enough of it; and that a talking dog offers temporary social distraction. Though a few of them liked to try out their English, the majority preferred her to risk her French, which remained bad enough to pass for amusing, eccentric, even chic, along with the exotic ‘Dor-rô-ti ’. She had, too, the gift for entertaining aged men, which most young girls fail to discover in themselves, and prettier, more assured women do not think of squandering. Mainly by listening and applying an invisible ointment, she revived in her ancients an illusion of youth. They appreciated what they saw as kindness, when she wasn’t kind, or not very. Protected by the armour of a happy marriage she might have snubbed the lot of them. Instead, after Hubert left her, she clumsily rejected the four or five creaking boars and arthritic tortoises from whom she might have chosen a lover if that had been her fancy.

The name she had acquired remained her compensation, as well as a recurring reflexion of the marriage in which she had failed to please. Most desolating were those evenings the belle-mère had envisaged for them: when Dor-rô-ti and Hubert wish to be alone. Herself in a state of sick tension, he with glittering eye and a mock flamboyance, they fled the little huggermugger salon the family used for comfort; while the belle-mère continued laying out her patience, Oncle Amédée pasting in his cuttings, Tante Eulalie (the Hon. Mrs Scrymgeour-Talbot: he deserted me my dear during the male menopause) devoting herself to astrological research, and Tante Daisy de Pougues to the sinuses which tortured her, but for which she lived. Every eye in the room was paying attention from beneath disinterested lids; doubtless after the door had closed the assembly would start listening instead, down reverberating corridors, through panelling in which more than the beetle ticked.

In their own quarters, a cupboard had been equipped as a kitchen. Le Butagaz, the old princess explained, est si commode — et vraiment pas cher. The will to succeed made a plausible cook of the bride, though on nights of dreadful anticipation her omelette truffée was inclined to stick; there was a manque de liaison about her sauces; there was the suicidal smell of Butagaz. While Hubert did not seem to care: tu es si gentille ma chère petite de te donner tant de peine. What should have been proof of her serious intentions he was only concerned with reducing to bed level: by lip flattery, by hand, by every dishonest means. Worse than his indifference his lechery: ton omelette bien baveuse m’inspire — this time Dorothy we shall do things more interestingly. When her most rigid submission was a torment, except in half languorous, half surprised, and wholly grateful retrospect. But to behave ‘interestingly’ was beyond her capacity: non Hubert je ne veux je ne peux pas.

Sometimes falling asleep her prince farted as though in disgust.

Perhaps she had never loved Hubert: that would explain everything; she had only almost drowned in admiration, for his title, his flesh tones, his insolent assurance, his French-ness, and the white sideburns rising to slicks of still black hair, in which the lights would begin to glow after he had drenched it with eau de Portugal and slashed rather than brushed it into shape.

Mon fils adore la chasse; if the old princess had dared her daughter-in-law to misinterpret, la Cousine Marie-Ange had taken it upon herself to keep his second wife informed. For there had been a first (nobody had hidden her: far from it) la pauvre Madeleine cette fille si douce qui est morte en couches on n’a pas pu sauver l’enfant non plus. (Classic interlude in the life of a man who happens actually to be your husband.) Hubert was desolated. (Why not? Why not?) The teeth of Marie-Ange, yellow-looking and brittle, still tasted her cousins grief: the more touching in that Hubert was by nature such a coureur de jupons — et pas difficile! The cousin had a laugh to match what she saw as the less savoury peccadilloes. But you understand Dor-rô-ti I only tell you out of frankness and — amitié. A woman can so much better hold her husband if she understands his mœurs.

Marie-Ange herself remained unmarried. The aigrette she wore in her perennial hat was shuddering with expectation the day she brought the Australian news of the American, une personne très commune née à Cincinnati le père a fait fortune dans le margarine. The cousin’s lips were shining, not with margarine, but the superior unctuousness of best Norman butter. Comme je vous plains ma pauvre amie. The hot black glove fingering your cold skin. Mais ça ne durera peut-être pas vous savez bien qu’Hubert a toujours eu besoin de distractions on a même raconté qu’il avait tâté des garçons. The cousin could hardly restrain her spit. Il paraît qu’il a eu une aventure avec un gondolier l’année passée …

Grinding her cheek into the soft unidentifiable fur (remember to ask Mother) Dorothy Hunter tried to invoke the Spirit of Games, who might have coached her, though too late, in holding a scabrous husband’s interest.

When somebody started knocking on her thoughts. ‘Mad-damm? Ma-darm?’ Must be that boiled nurse.

‘Yes?’ Her own voice depressed her in one syllable.

‘Mrs Hunter — madam — is ready to receive you in her room.’ The nurse sounded as though she must be smiling the other side of the closed door she was addressing so elaborately.

‘Tell her I’m coming. Thank you. I’ll be there. Thank you, Nurse.’ Or was it ‘Sister’?

Beyond the window of her girlhood a landscape was returning: under the skyline of convents and araucarias, a geometry of concrete and brick she could not remember ever having seen before. She stood a moment wondering whether it gave her further cause for resentment.

On closing the door of her refuge behind her, Dorothy Hunter followed the beaten track, along the landing, down the passage, to her mother’s bedroom. She was glad she had the de Lascabanes pearls for company. Faced with making any kind of rational comment, she could only hope for inspiration, which almost never came. In her best moments she did not act: necessity started working in her; but now a part she had learnt, after long and exacting rehearsal, possessed her as she entered the room, and she repeated automatically, ‘I must hand it to you, darling! Isn’t she miraculous, Sister?’ In the French tongue, it might have sounded more convincing.

For the mummy’s head balanced on the pillows, the structure of bones arranged beneath the sheet, denied the human miracle; though the spirit was preparing to tilt, the princess uneasily sensed.

‘Miraculous what?’

‘I think your daughter — Princess Dorothy — means: what a wonderful old lady we all find you.’

‘Wonderful old lady — ugh!’ Mrs Hunter ground her gums together. ‘Wonderful old bagpipes!’

‘What is it you said, darling?’ Dorothy trembled in making contact with this thing: her mother’s wrist.

Mrs Hunter had not decided how to reply to her poor her Dorothy daughter, when she was led — yes, positively led, in a direction she had not foreseen.