Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

Dear Mrs Hunter,

I am writing this letter against the wishes of one of those concerned, and realizing that what I have to say may be unforgivably distasteful to a second person …

She flipped over the page to see that it was from Dr Treweek of Gogong, an unattractive elderly man with dandruff on his coat collar, and a habit of breaking wind regardless of who was present. What Dr Treweek had to say would undoubtedly be distasteful; at least she was on her guard against it.

… Briefly, I have to inform you that Bill is suffering from cancer of the liver, and is unlikely to last many months. This was established on a recent visit to a specialist in Sydney, of which you are unaware, as your husband’s chief concern in life is not to cause, others distress. I have strongly advised him to let me arrange for his admission to a hospital in the city, but his present intention is to see his illness out at ‘Kudjeri’. Even with a nurse in attendance, and at present he refuses to have one, this will create difficulties, as perhaps you can imagine. The housekeeper is in a state of nerves, and may easily pack her traps rather than accept responsibility for an incurable invalid. There you have the situation. Whether you are conscious of your husband’s selflessness, any more than his stubbornness, I cannot tell, but as you are his wife it is up to you to make several important decisions. (Sorry if you can’t forgive me for throwing such an unexpected bomb!)

Yrs truly

ROBERT TREWEEK

As it burst around her, distorting the view of the park, tingling in pins and needles down her limbs, and with particular violence in the freshly manicured hands with which she held the offensive letter (how had he dared underline the ‘wife’!) she couldn’t easily, perhaps never, forgive Robert Treweek. In the first surge of her rage and horror she almost went so far as to hold him responsible for Alfred’s condition. At the mercy of a country physician! The physician no doubt would draw attention to the patient’s neglect of himself (through selflessness, desire not to cause distress, etc.) to disguise his own ignorance and negligence.

So at first she could not weep, for anger, and because the charming filigree of her life had been hammered without warning into an ugly, patternless entanglement.

Till she did begin to cry. She could only remember Alfred’s hurt, never the joyful, expressions of his face. Not their affection for each other, only her ill-natured dismissal of some of his more tender advances. Lying on her unshared bed, the freedom of which she had so often told herself she enjoyed, she tried to recover her normal capacity for making up her mind. Unable to do so, she was glad of Dr Treweek’s image, to match her rage against the explosion of his bomb.

Then, as the afternoon advanced, she exorcised her grief simply by letting it pour out. It seemed as though nothing would remain of herself, who had failed to recognize this gentle man her husband.

As light as unlikely probably as painful as a shark’s egg the old not body rather the flimsy soul is whirled around sometimes spat out anus-upward (souls have an anus they are never allowed to forget it) never separated from the brown the sometimes tinted spawn of snapshots the withered navel string still stuck to what it aspires to yes at last to be if the the past the dream life will allow.

Suddenly Mrs Hunter was leaving for ‘Kudjeri’. Herself packed the crocodile dressing-case (tearing one of her nails on a hasp) as well as a larger bag, for what kind of visit she did not stop to think, only that she had to go. Nor could she give the maids any indication how long she would be away from home; she would ask Mr Wyburd to pay them weekly if she continued absent. She did not send for Lennox — it was late — but rang for a taxi to drive her to the station.

Throughout the train journey she sat pressed into her corner of the empty compartment. She felt cramped with cold, while unable to make the effort to raise a half-lowered window. The upholstery smelt of tunnels and night. She saw she had forgotten her gloves, and that the hands Miss Thormber had admired that morning were wearing a superfluity of rings.

It was again morning, though still only the dead of it, when she arrived at Gogong, at the Imperial Hotel. While she tried to rouse someone, she became increasingly aware of her own superfluousness. On the other hand, Hagerty the publican, as soon as he had recovered from his first annoyance, was impressed by the arrival of Mrs Hunter, of all people. He offered to run her out, there and then, to ‘Kudjeri’. She said she would take a room at the hotel, and hire a car in the morning: she didn’t want to upset her husband’s housekeeper by fetching her down in her nightdress.

The remainder of those white hours trickled like sand under her eyelids as she lay between the rough sheets and tried to accept the small part she played in existence. A cock, a dog, and the moon were the major characters, it seemed. Till a cockatoo, evidently left uncovered, united its screeches with the crowing and barking. A man was cursing as he first muffled, then silenced, the cockatoo. Slippers slopped across the yard. There was the sound of somebody making water against stone.

She may have slept an instant. And did not really wake till the hire-car was approaching ‘Kudjeri’, her husband’s property, never hers, though for some years her automaton had run his house and given orders for the rearing of his children. If she belonged at all in the district, it was from living as a little girl at Salkelds’ rundown place. So she did belong: as inevitably as the brown river flowing beneath willows, as her own blood running through her veins. So she had to respond at last to these hidden jewels of hills. The same sun, re-discovering fire in dew and rock, was drawing tears and bedazzled acceptance from frozen eyes.

Too soon the car was crunching on the drive, bruising the laurels, swirling round the oval rose-bed in front of the house. Alfred had come out and was standing at the foot of the veranda steps, as though by appointment. At least he did not appear surprised, only so much thinner, smaller, than she remembered. She had to stoop, she found, to embrace her husband. This, and the hire-car man’s abrupt departure, gave their relationship a special significance: they must have looked like lovers locked in one of the conventional attitudes of passion; whereas she knew by her own diffidence, and the response of her frail ‘lover’, each of them only wanted to comfort the other’s spirit. Whether they would be given time or grace, remained to be seen.

Alfred said, ‘It’s the best month of the year at “Kudjeri”;’ as though this were her first visit.

‘Oh, there’ll be all the months, if you let me stay.’

As a man he was trying to pick up the larger of the two bags, and found he no longer could. Instead of going into the house, leaving the luggage to the groom, as would have happened normally, they began struggling, panting, for possession of the handle, converting a minor into a major issue; they needed to. By the time she had got control they were saved: Alfred must have decided he would not degrade himself morally by carrying the smaller dressing-case; she would lug the larger bag up the steps if it tore her side open.

Opening still on special feast days for Sister de Santis to put her hand in and touch the remains even that most unregenerate non-nun Sister Flora Pudenda is reconciled to a relic only it is not mine it is Alfred’s whose liver is recommended worship remember any stench is sanctity the odour of each time a panful I lie again if I’m lucky in the arms of my DEAR LORD whose strength increases as he weakens I the guilty I will never be eaten away never purged because sin won’t come out in the bedpan like what the walls call shit I like Kleenex best Sister it’s softer and some nuns are heavy handed send for St Mary de Kleenex funny how the sinless overlook the stains understand the insufferable sins which can’t escape or perhaps no one is sinless otherwise how would the night nurse get through her nights.