Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

The solicitor and the nurse had launched into a duet on weather themes.

‘A lovely evening, Sister, after the heat of the day.’

‘Yes, Mr Wyburd — rain, though — a storm: I caught sight of lightning from the bus stop.’

The banality of the interweaving voices exorcised any mystery the night might have had, though the actor realized that he himself had contributed to this exorcism. He knew too much, alas. As he stood gloomily watching, a greenish sheet twitched for a moment against the cyclorama, making him listen for a rumble of zinc thunder from the wings.

The thunder missed its cue, and the nurse left them, climbing the terraces towards bedpans and thermometers.

‘All these nurses and other characters must be eating up a fortune.’ Sir Basil made it sound like a practical approach, when he knew himself to be the least practical of men.

‘I don’t think the cost need worry your mother, even if she lives to a hundred.’

‘Hmmm!’

‘And ought to be allowed — at her age — to choose what she most enjoys.’

‘But does she enjoy? She seems to me full of grumbles.’

‘That is part of her enjoyment.’

‘Anyway we must talk, old Wyburd. I have a plan: a practical one.’

The solicitor took out his car keys as though to protect himself from any possibility of conspiracy by night; jingling his keys in retreat he went only so far as to admit, ‘Yes, indeed. There will be plenty to discuss — for your sister and ourselves.’

He who had taken off from London Airport in the fever of a conspiratorial plan might have sweated it out of his system as the solicitor drove away. When he had thought himself ready for piercing the heart of the matter with a ruthless blade, he might, he feared, fall back on brandishing the theatrical counterfeit of a weapon. A lot would depend on Dorothy: had she been taught, tempered by, her mistakes? Most people aren’t: an accumulation of failures either drives them inward or leads them to compassion for others; neither condition fits them to be partners in crime.

Weaving back along the serpentine path which climbed towards the house, he found himself snatching the ribbons of leaves from native shrubs and inhaling their scent to the depths of his lungs: to restore his own toughness perhaps? at the same time bashing senselessly at the heavy panicles of overhanging blossom, like a boy expressing helplessness confused by spite.

Something had happened to blunt his intention by filling him with his present malaise. If he hadn’t committed a blunder of the kind which those who are jealous of you — wives, for instance, and certain actors, and crypto-friends — chalk up as a major crime, his age and a veneer of dignity made of this too recent incident a pretty squalid minor mistake.

Yes, Bangkok: thunder in the ears; a stickiness inside your unsuitable clothes; the bright, unquenchable inefficiency of the gentle Thai airport officials; the equally unquenchable English hostess holding her chin high to boost her frustrated efficiency as the scrambled voice announced a four-hour delay, for repairs of such an esoteric nature no layman would have asked for further explanation.

He wouldn’t, anyway, although it had been written, there is nobody like Hunter for doing his homework. Given a part which interested him, yes, he would ferret out the last refinement of lust in a Bosola, say, or just to show them, wrap up a homosexual bread-carter in all the oblique motivation required by the Royal Court. What concerned him now was how to keep himself company in the four-hour wilderness; none of the faces of his fellow passengers would have helped populate a ten-minute interval. The Scotch had been doctored. He sat on his stool, sideways to the bar, not entirely unaware of his own predicament as reflected in the peach-tinted mirrors: that of a vessel waiting to be filled. Had he always been empty, and not realized? God knows, actors can be! But not yourself: not with the press cuttings, the knighthood, memories of occasions when words and emotions fermented inside you, seethed upwards through the throat in a delirium to which you might have succumbed if you had been without the skill to direct it through the darkness at the many-faced monster. Hardly heard the applause sometimes; if there wasn’t any, then you heard; that, and ruder sounds, were mostly on the road; a few occasions in the West End, for bad plays and mediocre support (politeness can also be daunting).

Everyone has had their failures: John, Edith, poor old Donald. (Donald would have had a damn sight more if he had allowed himself to think about them; or perhaps he used to. Anyway, dead now, and you mustn’t muck about with the dead: least of all, dead actors. A wonder nobody had thought about that for a dressing-room superstition.)

You only couldn’t prevent mirrors mucking about with empty disintegrating faces. At least before crumbling they acquire a kind of patina; and emptiness is not emptiness when it serves a purpose. Many of the greatest have been empty. How else could they have filled with those necessary flashes of inspiration, the surge of words, emotion, if they had been a bunch of intellectuals stuffed with theories and ‘taste’? Or Shiela (not Sheila) Sturges, the cerebral actress to bury other contenders. What’s eating you now Shiely? Those intense, protruding, all but goitrous eyes. I’m having a terrible time Basil with my self. Always knotting herself tighter. Some critic had committed the crime of telling Shiela she was the ‘second Meggie Albanesi’. Unlike Meggie, Shiela hadn’t died, except mentally, daily, in her efforts to work things out, and in trying to coax inside her head a dead woman she hadn’t seen, couldn’t even imagine, only cerebrate on the theme of. For God’s sake you’re late Shiela. What’s got into you this morning? Here we are half an hour in rehearsal! That was after you had separated, physically at least — for a long time Shiela continued to expect her professional perks — after Imogen was born. I’m late Basil because I had to get off the bus — and rub earth into my hands. I felt it might help me understand this woman — this peasant; how she mashed what she considered the more virtuous words. Poor Shiela: still having fits of cerebration when the grog allowed her; so you gathered from Imogen on her duty visits.

This is Imogen (pause) my daughter. What else could you tell actors about an actor’s daughter who was a hospital almoner or something? They would have laughed, oh really? how original, darling. I mean — so warm — helping people. In any case, as old pros, the whole bang lot of them would be able to fill in the gaps in the story: Shiela Sturges and Basil Hunter — he divorced her before the title; she never enjoyed her ladyhood, only the booze and L. C. Bottomley — hee hee!

L. C. Bottomley, a reliable character actor and boring man (he played cricket) was always ready to give you a hand with your traps between station and digs, run out and buy you the evening paper, paid a bill or two on occasions and let you forget about it. A thin Bottomley; and Imogen a big, thick-ankled girl throwing back God knows where. Daddy darling I want you to know that in any kind of fix — regardless of everything — and my living with Mother — you can rely on me. She must have inherited that from the Bottomleys.

It was a sad script if you were forced to study it:

THE ACTORS. Imogen — such a lovely name.

SHIELA (dead serious as usual). I hoped it might help her grow up steadfast.

BASIL HUNTER picks up his Number 9 and works steadfastly on his face.

There are the born actors: no amount of Cremine will wholly remove their make-up; and there are the Bottomleys: clerks, salesmen, and schoolmasters gone in the wrong direction. There are also the Hunters in a special class of their own. Most of him derived from Betty Salkeld, an ingénue stationed behind the willows at the bend in the river to see who was clopping over the bridge, and Elizabeth Hunter, a grande dame descending the stairs. Mother was always on the stairs, in an inexhaustible wardrobe, white for preference, and the smile which charmed innocent men, grateful spinsters, seldom other wives, or servants, or children. That for sure was where he got his — gift; let other people use the more pretentious word. He had almost nothing of Alfred in him. For God’s sake, he would forget about Dad for years on end, then regret it; but what was there to remember? The rams for which he was famous within a circle of limited radius. They ‘erected’ a monument to Alfred (‘Bill’) Hunter of ‘Kudjeri’ in the main street at Gogong. The traffic parts at the point where this insignificant man is permanently stood, in wrinkled bronze trousers, and waistcoat carefully buttoned on a barrel chest, unexpected in anyone so short and mild. The Council had invited Athol Shreve the politician to unveil Alfred Hunter’s statue; Mother hadn’t been present, but sent a cutting from a grey-paged country newspaper.