Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

She’d teach Col.

Alix thought she had got hold of a breast, but what she caught was a handful of air; she almost fell over.

‘Oh, rurlly !’ Flora Manhood sang, ‘Don’t say it’s chops — my favourite cutt— of murr-heat !’ Then she went and sat down because the other two were so shickered it was no longer fun, toppling and giggling as they were from stored alcohol.

Only when the chops began to burn, and she smelt it, Snow brought them to the dinette. She had forgotten about potatoes, it seemed. The one she had peeled was turning brown on the draining surface beside the sink.

Snow said, ‘I always think it makes a chop tastier to eat it with the fingers — like in the outdoors.’

Alix agreed through her opening mouthful. She was less a lady with a chop. Some of the fat had drizzled down her saleswoman’s sateen. Her blue eyelids, hanging heavy like some old parrot’s, confessed their wrinkles.

The company sat mumbling its chops, Snow and Alix as part of a necessary exercise after gin, Flora because she was young and hungry.

When she had licked her fingers, and no pud seemed forthcoming, she asked, ‘What about the washing up?’ as though it was her most natural function: the people who take you for granted are the ones who put you against things.

Alix sniggered close to the bone she was tidying, while Snow pronounced through a shower of shredded mutton, ‘Never terday what yer can termorrer! Don’t yer remember that, Florrie, from Banana Land?’

Alix added, ‘It’s easier after the fat’s hardened.’

Flora snorted; she was so glad for what she was hearing, though melancholy in the end that these women should know better than Col. She noticed Snow’s nails, bitten to the quick, and Alix’s long, overhanging pearlshell ones; Col pared his nails to his broad blunt fingertips. (Though she would never have admitted, Flora Manhood was fascinated watching Col’s blunt fingers perform unexceptional acts.)

Snow was yawning now, which made her look like a money-box, while Alix was inclined to hide her yawns in crumpled smiles. Flora herself suddenly felt a dead weight descending on her, from Snow’s snorter no doubt, followed by the hot meat. Her homeless-ness struck her afresh, since she couldn’t face Vidlers’ convertible lounge, any more than Col’s possessive single. What she visualized, she dismissed almost at once, because it wasn’t warm of her: she saw Mrs Hunter’s great bed after the undertakers had been; she saw herself waking in its acres as the sun struck through the curtains, and Lottie Lippmann standing with breakfast on a tray.

Instead it was Snow Tunks saying, ‘Early bed for working girls.’

And old Alix grimacing and asking, ‘Is your cousin with us for the night?’

Since you had turned down the offer of a permanent lodging, perhaps Snow hadn’t contemplated that, but jerked or burped at the suggestion. ‘Nobody ever knew what Flora intends.’

Flora played for cautious. ‘I could doss down here,’ she said, ‘if it was convenient;’ patting the grease-stained cretonne.

The two friends looked at each other. ‘We wouldn’t expect that !’ Snow was sentimentally reproachful.

Then they entwined themselves around the third party, and bumped their way as far as a black gulf which shot into light and became a bedroom.

Snow said, ‘You can’t always find the time of a mornun not even to pull the bedclothes up,’ as she ruffled up the pillows and smoothed a sheet.

Alix giggled. ‘Most nursing sisters can’t see an unmade bed and resist making it,’ she regurgitated before falling over on the one that offered.

Flora mumbled she had always found it resistible.

They were all three getting out of their clothes: Snow, that white gollywog; Alix riding a bicycle out of her black sateen; Flora, on account of what she had observed, kept her bra and panties on. Snow must have got through life without taking a look at the glass, but Alix would have liked to hide bits of herself, only she hadn’t enough arms. Then they were pulling you down to be the ham in their sandwich. The two women flapping around, one white and the other black, reminded Flora of hens half paralysed by ticks.

After Snow had yanked the string which brought darkness down on them, the women became more frantic, and would have been united in a single aim if the drink hadn’t sided with Flora Manhood: the drowsy dark blurred the ambitions of the two friends as well as affecting their sense of direction.

Half strangled chewed nuzzled Flora recovered enough of her wits to know she did not belong to this community of seething flesh. She managed to defect and stumble by the light of the spitting fluorescence in the street, as far as the window and what she remembered as an armchair. She flopped, but first had to jettison a well-heeled shoe buried in the nest of anonymous garments in which she finally settled to enjoy her independence. By comparison it was delicious and unlimited.

Snow’s voice rose once out of the straining and muffled mumping on the bed. ‘Watch out, Someone! Florrie? Alix! Those flamun nails of yours! Watcher take me for — a joint?’

‘You know you always tole me, darl, I’m the most professional carver.’

‘Carla Who?’

The flickering fluorescence was developing other pictures on the inside of Flora Manhood’s eyelids.

‘Eh? What about Carla? It wasn’t that bloody buyer, then. It was Carla Abrams! Alix? Wasut?’

It will probably be a professional man a surgeon is more temperamental when you give away this private jazz dust down your ideals and go back to P.A. as theatre sister best for surgeons only counting the swabs puts the wind up you at times can’t concentrate on the surgeon for concentrating on the count Sir Sir Archibald Humphrey no Valentine never knew a Valentine except the ones Col sends a black Daimler Jags are too common for Lady Valentine Parr Parbury not sit close riding to Admiralty House by air to seminars at Kuala Lumpur Delhi San Francisco all university men medical diplomats Prince Philip has his eye on Lady Valentine Whatever in skinthin sheath of black leather yes the perfume is Shared Secret my husband adores it yes we are exhausted what with the seminars swab counting the many responsibilities of diction deportment French archaeology there really isn’t time except in the soundproof Daimler to discuss personal problems and for Sir Valentine to only very very occasionally put his hand under the rug.

Flora Manhood had to shift her dead arm. Her throat had dried. From ‘Miami Flats’ you could just see the fiery furnace blazing down Botany way. Those women on the bed must have reached a compromise the right side of sleep. They were all sighs as they were sucked under. Flora too.

Flora? Yes, Sir Basil. Not Sir Archibald Humphrey Valentine Whatever it’s Basil Hunter you’re after how could you have ever forgot remember quick the details you hardly had time for the peppersalt eyebrows meeting over what colour the biggest watch crocodile strap flattening hairs a vein suit you can tell the very best crumpled a bit up the back from sitting in a plane tie woven for winter everyone looks wrong who arrives out of the air don’t you remember your lines Flora you can’t neither lines nor anything important only the superfluous superficial that’s what I am a swab count never chilled worse than the expression in Basil Hunter’s eyes do you think I’ll learn the part Basil so bad an actress in bra and panties too Mother Hunter would have booed you off the stage if she wasn’t a lady as for Sir her son if I teach you the technique Flora the rest is in you coming at you bigger than the ad on a hoarding then bending down to part to look inside you for something no no you can’t they’re there all right all the children and none of them his pouring out and around he must recognize you are not the actress but acted on by all these children unlabelled uncounted warm and overpowering any reason you may find to offer.