Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

‘That day I went with your father to see Mrs — Mrs Hewlett. She was living at — Wilberforce? Yes, there was a river which used to flood, but the Hewletts were on higher ground. Your father was drinking his cocktail, when a bird flew and settled on his shoulder. It was a — a—what was it, Dorothy?’

‘A canary?’ The princess had seated herself in a lopsided chair the nurse had drawn up for her.

‘I don’t know. I ought to remember. Today I can’t. I almost can. Yesterday we had cabbage, and it was nasty: she had put something in it — cumm — coomm?’

‘I don’t know, Mummy. Tell me about the bird, though. Was it a songbird?’ The daughter had leant forward, neck anxiously stretched, herself an expectant swan; she wanted their reunion to be a success.

‘Oh — you know— of course — it was a love bird!’

The Princesse de Lascabanes exposed her teeth in a giggle, becoming the schoolgirl who was never long absent from her.

The nurse suggested sotto voce, ‘May I tempt you to a drop of this?’ At the same time she was pouring something opaque out of a glass jug. ‘It’s so refreshing. It’s your mother’s favourite: barley water.’

‘Thank you, Nurse.’

‘You know I don’t. You force it on me,’ the patient protested.

‘Thank you. Yes, Sister, I’d adore a glass of barley water. Tell me, Mummy, about Mrs Hewlett’s lovebird.’

‘That’s what I’m telling. It settled on Alfred’s shoulder — climbed down his arm — on to a finger of the hand which was disengaged — and up again. I can see it distinctly.’ Mrs Hunter was in fact looking straight ahead, intently, into and through the misted glass. ‘Mrs Hewlett was so afraid for her bird she had a gardener stationed outside the window with a gun.’

‘Really? Whatever for?’

‘You won’t let me tell you. She was afraid the bird might fly out the window into the orchard — and that a cat might be waiting in the long grass — to pounce.’

‘Now who would have thought — a gardener with a gun! Can’t have done too much gardening, waiting for cats to pounce on the boodgy. Can he, Miss Dorothy— mad-dam?

Dorothy sipped her barley water. Nobody really expected her to give an opinion, just as they will ask, but don’t expect, an opinion from a child. This, and the cool innocent stuff she was drinking, made the princess feel fulfilled rather than bored.

‘All the same it’s a most unusual story,’ Sister Badgery allowed.

While Mrs Hunter drifted on another plane, outside her skull probably, where vision cleared, above the orchard grass.

‘Mrs Hewlett loved her lovebird. That’s why she went to such trouble. And was a bit jealous, I think — the bird flirting like that with Alfred.’

‘And what happened, Mother? Did the bird fly out the window?’

‘No.’ The eyes staring, thoughts exploring even deeper into the past. ‘Not on that occasion. They say it did at some — oh, later date.’

‘I bet it gave Mrs Hewlett an anxious time. Did they manage to catch it, Mrs Hunter? Or did the cat?’

‘No. I believe the gardener shot the bird.’

‘ohhhh!’

‘Oh, ma -darm ! Look — let me take it: you’re spilling your barley water.’

‘I can’t — I won’t believe it, Mother. Do you, really?’

‘They found his body on the river bank — the blood still fresh in his neck feathers.’

Mrs Hunter thought she no longer believed in the situation herself, though Dorothy apparently did: she was appropriating the death of Mrs Hewlett’s lovebird as something she might have prevented personally; that is the way all good myths are born.

Dorothy had sat forward again. ‘But was the gardener— mad ?

‘Who knows? Was the Russian lover mad who murdered Lilian Nutley in Manchuria or — wherever?’

Dorothy saw Sister Badgery had pursed up her lips till they were an only slightly pinker protuberance on her otherwise flat, colourless face; at the same time the veil was flicked so purposefully it suggested an attempt at semaphore. ‘We’re expecting Dr Gidley — only as a precaution — in the unusual circumstances,’ she managed finally to whisper.

The person she was addressing suddenly felt most unhappy, neither the Princesse de Lascabanes, nor yet Dorothy Hunter: no more than a visitor on a chair. If she could at least have remembered Dr Gidley from out of the legion of retainers, he might have given her a sense of belonging; but she couldn’t.

Mother had not heard, or had chosen to overlook her nurse’s remark. ‘Tell me about something, Dorothy — but something. Everybody flying here and there; I want to be brought news.’

Dorothy tried, but could not for the life of her think.

‘That mother-in-law of yours — is she alive?’

‘No, she — died. I wrote you about it.’

‘I thought she was probably dead.’

‘She suffered from bronchitis.’

‘She hadn’t the will to live.’

‘Not everybody has, or there would be too many of us.’

‘And that other woman — the one with the goitre — Eulalie?’

‘She died too. I told you.’ Madame de Lascabanes turned in extremis to her mother’s nurse. ‘That was my English aunt-by-marriage. At least, she was French, but married an Englishman who left her for the Côte d’Azur.’

Sister Badgery was entranced. ‘My husband was an Englishman — a tea planter from Ceylon. We passed through Paris, once only, on our honeymoon to the Old Country. Gordon was a public-school man — Brighton College in Sussex. D’you know it?’

The princess didn’t. Sister Badgery couldn’t believe: such a well-known school.

‘Sister Badgery, isn’t it time Mrs Lippmann gave you your tea — or whatever you take — Madeira. There’s an excellent Madeira in the sideboard; Alfred developed a taste for it.’

‘You know I never touch a drop of anything strong.’

‘I want to talk to my daughter — Mrs Hunter — privately,’ Mrs Hunter said.

She knew from the sound of the knife-edged skirt that she had offended her nurse. That made two presents she would have to give: Mrs Wyburd and Mrs Badgery.

When the nurse had closed the door the princess felt imprisoned, not only in the room, but in her own body. In her state of foreboding she reached out for the glass of barley water Sister Badgery had removed, and tried to find comfort in sips of that mawkish stuff. She could see herself in one of the looking-glasses with which her blind mother still kept herself surrounded. If the princess had not been so terrified of what the next moment could hold, she might have noticed that her own eyes were deep and lustrous: beautiful in fact; but in the circumstances her mind could only flutter through imagined eventualities.

Actually Mrs Hunter was enjoying the luxury of being alone and perfectly silent with somebody she loved. (They did love each other, didn’t they? You could never be sure about other people; sometimes you found they had hated you all their lives.) This state of perfect stillness was not unlike what she enjoyed in her relationship with Sister de Santis, though in essence it was different; with the night nurse she was frequently united in a worship of something too vast and selfless to describe even if your mind had been completely compos whatever it is. This other state of unity in perfect stillness, which she hoped she was beginning to enjoy with Dorothy, she had experienced finally with Alfred when she returned to ‘Kudjeri’ to nurse him in his last illness. There were moments when their minds were folded into each other without any trace of the cross-hatching of wilfulness or desire to possess. Yet at the same time all the comfort of touch was present in their absorption. At least that was the way you had felt, and believed, or hoped for the same in someone else.