Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

‘Considering how uncomplicated Alfred was, it is surprising he never seemed surprised at anything that happened,’ Mrs Hunter said. ‘The Bullivants, Dorothy — will you be seeing the Bullivants?’

‘Why should I?’

‘But Cherry was your great friend. And the Bullivants took you to Paris that — that time — Daddy decided to send you. He had such faith in Charles and Violet — a reliable wing to protect you in foreign parts.’

‘Are you blaming the Bullivants?’

‘I’m not blaming anybody.’

‘I’m relieved. It’s only I who was to blame.’

Mrs Hunter thought she detected a masochistic tone of voice; she wondered whether she might take advantage of it.

‘Well, I expect you’ll see Cherry. She’s married to a nice man. So I’m told — I haven’t seen him: a stockbroker or something. They live up the North Shore. That can’t be helped. Cherry’s happy.’

An ambulance was screeching down Anzac Parade, or was it a fire engine? Madame de Lascabanes had not yet learnt to distinguish between the different Sydney emergencies.

‘Dorothy, dear, I’ve been trying to understand why you shouldn’t settle down in this house. Comfort each other. An excellent cook. Of course I had to take her in hand — pass on what I know — Mrs Lippmann. Have you met my housekeeper?’ Dorothy was palpitating.

‘In your old room. Practically as you left it. One has to respect what other people are — essentially — even when they try to destroy themselves. But I offer you your room — your latchkey — financial security — if only you will realize that badly heated Paris apartment is — so — so pernicious.’

Dorothy de Lascabanes had flown to her mother’s bedside to pronounce an ultimatum, a brutal one if necessary, and here she was, her head literally so heavy she had to support it with her hands. ‘I don’t know, Mummy!’ she muttered from behind her wrists.

‘Think it over, darling. Nothing can be decided in— you know I would never let you want — and for that reason.’

They had lapsed. Both of them. The princess might have been sunk in a lake of mercury, but Mrs Hunter was probably born of that substance.

‘Tell me, Dorothy — because you haven’t told me — about your flight from Paris. Was the weather?’

In Madame de Lascabanes’s experience most old people were deeply involved with the weather: an involvement which expressed itself superficially in a lament for rheumatics and colds, whereas on another level the hostile natural elements were charged with supernatural terrors, even if these were rationally laughed away or curtained off behind an apparently thick skin.

So it was no surprise when Mrs Hunter inquired almost fearfully, ‘Was it rough ?

‘No. That is, it wasn’t most of the way. Except for one patch over the Bay of Bengal. Yes. Then it was.’

Again Madame de Lascabanes found herself guarding with one hand her pearls, with the other her coiffure. She need not be ashamed, of course, because Mother could not see. In any case the old thing was lost in what appeared a state of exhilarated anticipation rather than fear.

‘It became so bumpy, so terribly rough, I was frightened more than I have ever been. I got beyond the stage of thinking how late the storm would make us in Sydney. I went on to visions of crashing in the sea. When a man sitting beside me gave me a sort of courage.’

‘How?’ Mrs Hunter had closed her eyes again; her question was followed by one of those waking snores; after which her mouth remained open as though expecting to receive some life-restoring draught.

‘Simply by what he told me,’ the princess replied, her private smile breaking up her face into something related to beauty.

‘What?’ Mrs Hunter snored back inexorably.

Madame de Lascabanes had been congratulating herself that none of the polyglot passengers surrounding her wished to tell their life stories. The sounds of flight made by the laborious machine gave cover, she liked to think, to her own more obsessive thoughts. On the whole, when travelling, she preferred anonymous company, till on this occasion the storm they entered whipped her nerves to screeching point.

Once or twice before now she had glanced, no more than formally, hardly out of interest, at the elderly man beside her on the aisle: neither French, nor English, she guessed; White Russian? the profile was not sufficiently irregular or blurred; too self-contained, probably materialistic. When, to kill time, her neighbour started ruffling the leaves of his passport, again she glanced — not exactly inquisitive — perhaps also to kill time. He was a Dutchman, she saw on the page.

This was to some extent a consolation: at least to her Australian soul steeped in the ethos of the white, the clean; though her French self grew bored and snooty. It was only after the storm took hold of them in earnest, and fear united the disparate halves of her entity, that she truly began to appreciate the Dutchman’s presence.

Physically square set, his body was hard, she knew from lurching against his shoulder. The hands too, were square, hard-looking, and although no longer youthful, suggested a supple strength. At the same time she sensed an uncommon spirit, one probably prepared to overstep the physical limits most others submit to. He had something austere, monastic about him, nothing of the conventionally regimented ecclesiastic such as her mother-in-law used to collect; rather, you saw in the Dutchman some soul-ravaged, freethinking pastor.

While she was letting her thoughts wander, persuaded that his elderliness permitted her the freedom of her fantasies, the passengers were suddenly thrown as high as their safety-belts allowed.

‘Ah, comme j’ai peur! ’ The Princesse de Lascabanes moaned and smiled, still half to herself.

‘You are not frightened?’ the Dutchman asked in round, correct English.

‘Well, not really — or just a little,’ Dorothy de Lascabanes replied, to be on the side of virtue; and after she had recovered a fundamentally Anglo-Saxon tone, ‘I’m only afraid we shall be late’; she coughed because her eyes were smarting.

‘It is probably a typhoon,’ the Dutchman composed for his new acquaintance.

‘Surely not!’ she answered as coldly as she could. ‘It couldn’t possibly reach us up here — or could it? I know nothing of the habits of typhoons.’

‘My experience is only of the sea.’

She did not know why hearing this should have given her so much pleasure, but she breathed more deeply, and observed his hand with fresh interest.

In the beginning he had inclined his head towards her shoulder, till discovering the angle and distance from which their voices might reach each other. Not once, even after establishing rapport, did the Dutchman turn to look at his neighbour. They were so private, at the same time so formal, Dorothy was reminded of the confessional, use of which was one of the more positive privileges she had acquired on marrying Hubert de Lascabanes. For a moment she was tempted to pour out she didn’t know what — no, everything, to this convenient ‘priest’, till persuaded by his manner that he might not have learnt any of the comforting formulas.

She was only partly wrong, though.

‘Some years ago I was at sea — master of a freighter,’ the Dutchman was telling in his matter-of-fact, stubbornly enunciating voice, ‘when a typhoon struck us, almost fatally. For several hours we were thrown and battered — till suddenly calm fell — the calmest calm I have ever experienced at sea. God had willed us to enter the eye — you know about it? the still centre of the storm — where we lay at rest — surrounded by hundreds of seabirds, also resting on the water.’