Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

Walking in Mrs Hunter’s garden she tore off a leaf, or two, sucked one, dropped the other, before taking refuge in the sleeves of her fluffy cardigan. She hid her hands. She wondered how much longer she would be able to hide the shape of her body from practised eyes, or whether the solicitor’s wife had already got the message.

The nurse watched old Mrs Wyburd leave the house and pass through the garden on her way to the street, so busy with her own thoughts she was not noticing anything around her. Even so, Flora Manhood slightly smoothed the skirt over her stomach. Then she folded her fluffy pink arms above her fallen breasts.

The gate squeaked. Mrs Wyburd had gone.

Over the indistinct garden the sky was clear and watery with one torn-out cotton wool cloud piled high above the racecourse and the convents. Flora Manhood touched her face; that too, had swollen: its white, turnip skin. She would have allowed a mere stranger (not quite true) to kiss away her independence if that had been possible.

Then the tingle tinkle of the little bell: it was the relic summoning you to a duty, of which Mary de Santis would have made a devotion.

Sister Manhood walked very firmly up the swirling, not to say dangerous path (Mrs Hunter liked to tell how two people had broken their legs) towards her non-devotional duty. Her arms were hanging perfectly indifferent inside the cardy. When that wasn’t her at all. If only she could have felt cold and indifferent Col Pardoe might never have happened; Sir Basil bloody Hunter would not have entered into it.

The garden at dusk encouraged in Flora Manhood’s mind too much that was distinctly irretrievable: speckles on birds’ eggs wotcher do with the muck Snow when you’ve sucked it out? why you spit it dogs with dots above their eyes freckles on an old woman’s lids moles in the angle of a man’s arm teeth Flo what’s got into you? you don’t understand only books and MAHLER not that what you love you want to eat oh Coll-urnn.

Lottie Lippmann was standing in the darkening hall looking like a small rat come out of a creek bank.

‘What is it, Floradora? Are you sick?’

Flora Manhood said, ‘I got a bit of a bellyache.’ Though Lottie was solid gold, and had been around, she was too pure to confide in.

‘She’s been ringing for you,’ Mrs Lippmann said.

‘You’re telling me ! Couldn’t you have answered — Lot?’

‘I am preparing myself. She expects me later,’ Mrs Lippmann said.

The nurse realized that the housekeeper, who at first sight in the dusk, and through the shutter of her own disturbed thoughts, had suggested some small wary animal, was excessively calm and in some way resplendent. Though still wearing an old woollen kitchen-stained shift and her comfortable felt slippers, she had dressed her hair smoother than ever before; the roots were visibly straining at the straight white parting even by that light, the eyes more luminous for the dim hall and state of anticipation.

‘Later I shall come to her,’ Mrs Lippmann repeated through naturally dark lips, lowering oiled eyelids on a confidence she was not at liberty to share, though the nurse probably guessed.

It was too spooky for Flora Manhood. She went upstairs. In passing the bathroom she felt a nausea rise in her, and went in to give way to it. She stood looking into the lavatory bowl in an attitude of penitence; but nothing came. Nothing would be made easy. Except that the nausea passed. And Lottie must have taken the tea things she was glad to see on going into the patient’s room.

The remains of a voice succeeded at last in detaching itself from where it was stuck. ‘I want you to make up my face, Sister Manhood.’

Her own name sounded repellent to the nurse, who snapped back, ‘That’s just what you wouldn’t have when there was some reason for doing it.’

‘Mrs Wyburd mightn’t have understood.’

If there were any implication that Flora Manhood might be included in the hierarchy of those who understood, it was wasted on her: she was too distressed by her own condition. She was plain cranky in fact, and in no mood for games.

She jerked at the cord of the bedside lamp, and when the light flew out, Mrs Hunter did not preach her usual sermon about who pays the bills. This evening the old thing meekly waited, already holding her face to receive.

Because of the mood she was in, Sister Manhood slammed around a bit before bringing the vanity case and dumping it hard on the bedside table. Mrs Hunter did not comment. Though the gristle was taut in her throat, her face smiled for grace about to descend.

Tonight as she smeared and moulded the cheeks with cream Flora Manhood did not even ask what her client was going for. Nor did Mrs Hunter suggest; she submitted. It could not have occurred to her, in her trance, that an apostasy might have taken place.

Certainly the custodian of the sacred image had never felt less religiously inclined. What if she did a real hatchet job for once? So she dusted, and pasted on, the shimmering greens of all fiends; the idol’s brutal mouth would scarcely overflow after she had contained its crimson with a thick wall of black; if steely lids sharpened the swords those eyes could flash in their most vindictive moments, at least their victims would go down laughing.

Flora Manhood was laughing for her own art.

‘Is it all right?’ Mrs Hunter inquired. ‘She is going to dance for me presently.’

‘It would send you if you could see!’ Sister Manhood grinned. ‘You’ll both give a performance tonight.’

When she had wrapped the body in what used to be a robe of rose brocade, and seated it in the chrome chair, Sister Manhood shivered, as though the lift were rising, and the masks waiting for more than the patient at the end of the aseptic corridor.

To remember and fetch the wig was some distraction. She found herself bringing the green one, which Mrs Hunter had worn only once, and never asked for again. (Though I can’t see it Sister I don’t feel it comes off — as an idea. Tonight it did.)

When she had arranged the lifeless hair, Sister Manhood patted it as nonchalantly as she could. ‘Flowing free!’

Acceptant in every department, Mrs Hunter smiled and said, ‘That is what I visualized;’ then remembered, ‘But my jewels, Nurse! Have you forgotten?’ Anxiety almost produced a hiccup.

Whether she had or not, the girl brought the case. As the jewels were loaded on her, Mrs Hunter appeared to appreciate their shuddering collisions. ‘How we enjoyed suffering!’ she giggled at one point.

The two great emeralds Sister Manhood had screwed to her ears were clubbing her cheeks before settling down. If it had not been for support from the chrome chair-back, an emerald stomacher might have dragged her down into a horizontal position, or lethal pin pierced her to the heart.

Sister Manhood had, in fact, pricked the skin in bridging the eroded cleavage; but as you saw it, the old biddy was too far gone with vanity and age to feel.

The nurse lightly wiped away a drop of blood from a superficial wound; even when she dabbed the place with alcohol, neither fumes nor pain seemed to reach the actual Elizabeth Hunter.

Instead her breath gathered to ask, ‘Have you given me my star? My sapphire?’

‘But your fingers must be just about paralysed with rings. And the sapphire won’t go. Not with what I’ve already put.’ The artist in Flora Manhood was offended.

‘It must!’ Mrs Hunter insisted.

They both began scrabbling through the velvet trays. When it came to jewels, Mrs Hunter’s fingers were more agile than her nurse’s.

‘It isn’t here!’ Sister Manhood shouted louder than her patient’s deafness required.

‘My star! Could it have fallen on the floor? I gave you one, didn’t I? the pink — but only the pink, Dorothy.’