Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

Discretion reigned in the dining-room, where six or seven powdered ladies lowered their eyelids over the roast chicken or stewed apple they were pretending not to masticate, while an ancient maid in stiff white led the honorary member to a table of her own, from which she was expected to impose. It had the effect of exposing Dorothy Hunter, alone with her cutlery and the tight arrangement of Queen Elizabeth rosebuds. She spread her hands on the cutlery as though she were going to strike a chord, and sat staring at the vacant air.

‘Poor Madge, she is so tahd,’ one of the ladies remarked now that the climate was restored.

‘Yes, she’s tahd,’ her companion agreed. ‘It’s the humidity. And Madge is over generous of her energy and time.’ Perhaps to quash any such impulse in herself, the second lady added a minimum of stuffing to her forkful of breast, with the merest smear of bread sauce.

It must have brought on recklessness in a third, in no way connected lady, who swallowed her mouthful of stewed apple and started coughing. She coughed and coughed. Intent on ignoring this indisposition, Dorothy Hunter was fascinated to see what could have been a bubble of syrup appear for an instant at each of the lady’s nostrils; and as instantly, each of the bubbles was sucked back.

Oh dear, if only Mummy were here ‘at the club’ to order for you! And what if you blew bubbles with your syrup, or dropped a dollop of bread sauce on the elderly maid’s spotless cuff?

Or if you screamed.

When the maid approached with the menu Dorothy barely glanced at what she could not have read; she remembered leaving her glasses in her room. ‘Do you know what I’d like better than anything — I mean, if it isn’t any trouble — if you have one — I’d like a nice, thick, mutton chop. And make it rather pink.’

‘Oh yes, milady — of course — I’ll see.’ The maid looked terrified; somewhere she must have heard about a curtsey, but hadn’t the courage for more than a bob.

The members raised their heads like so many disturbed cows.

The Princesse de Lascabanes had not succeeded in vindicating herself: between the inspiration and the command, or perhaps even farther back, after changing airlines at Bangkok, le mutton chop had shed its exotic implications. Dorothy Hunter was left to get by heart the mumbled syllables of her gaffe. It didn’t help to catch sight of herself in memory holding the chop over the embers on a sharpened stick, and to hear the even less articulate, but naturally sincere, voice of littlegirlhood, no Daddy it isn’t burnt only charred that’s when it’s scrummiest.

Though most of the members had left the room, a couple had lingered purposely to watch the maid serve the chop to Princess Thingumabob: one of those Hunters from Gogong if you please.

By now the princess had completely lost even the pretence of an appetite. In any case the meat, when brought, was too red, too fat: en effet écœurant ce chop australien; it would have warmed her late mother-in-law’s heart to know it.

When she had eaten a mouthful of tepid cress and drunk a glass of water, Dorothy pushed away the mutilated chop. ‘Thank you, nothing else.’ She smiled at the maid, while appealing to the woman with her eyes not to tell on her.

Coffee in the drawing-room could only have been a greater ordeal than dinner in the dining-room. There was the question of where to sit: not so far off that it might appear offensive, yet beyond hailing distance of any of the other inhabited islands. In the end she ran up the two flights to her bed, where her exhaustion promptly left her for the night. She passed this between dipping into La Chartreuse de Parme, which she knew too well, and remembering the motives for her return. In consequence, any of the homelier images were a comfort to the mind: for instance, her tube of French, soon alas to be expended, toothpaste, or a rather boring family solicitor. She shepherded in procession anything that might be considered safe, but was forced repeatedly to sit in judgment on herself.

Let’s face it: I’ve come back to coax a respectable sum of money out of an aged woman who happens also to be my mother, whom I do sincerely love at times, but have also hated (God, yes!) so perhaps it will be more pardonable, if coaxing fails, to bully the money out of her, most pardonable because she herself has been the greatest bully, and hateful remember hateful the visit to the island the jade sea grey jade is subtler than green if Mother hadn’t thought of it first there’s something so comically banal about these Pacific islands don’t you think Professor I mean the sea is just as jade as advertised the grey days a positive relief of subtler less expected jade Mother lighting candles to illuminate her conversation to profess herself on the over appealed-to professor whose name is EDVARD spelt with a V unlike Mother you would not pronounce it in his hearing any more than abuse a sacrament the white flakes of his skin the sun has shredded.

The half-sleepless princess drew her thighs up closer in her bed until she was all thighs and buttocks a knot of flesh or pile of bones under which the pea revolved.

Edvard with a V is telling of forests whether the rain forest of Brumby Island or spruces larches rowans of Norway has no importance. Ashes too. The wild horses racing at dusk along the beach sting your cheeks with flying sand horsehair whips. Not afraid Professor only that my ribs may batter their way through your side in this electric moment of locked hands clamped bodies.

Trust Mother to cook the fish the professor caught and lay it on a bed of wild fennel with all this chichi of native flowers round the edge of the dish the electric moment has galloped into the dark tossing its mane only hope Mother’s fish will taste of sand.

The princess, grinding around on her colossal ball-bearing of a pea, continued munching on her waking sleep. If neither coaxing nor bullying what if you should kill an old woman or mother what can money mean to the aged except as a reminder of triumphs no longer desirable or possible? It wouldn’t be killing, a shock, not murder. Definitely not. You can scarcely step on a cockroach for all your pus which spurts out.

Basil could: my genius of a brother of a famous actor why why has he come Mr Wyburd don’t tell but I know don’t I Basil and Dorothy = brother and sister = hunters lurking in the fuggy depths of Elizabeth Salkeld’s cave. When you could have stayed curled indefinitely in Mummy she pitched you out unarmed not Basil an actor is born with clubs instead of inhibitions your inhibitions can only have been inherited from Alfred a deformed statue at the point where the road forks the other side of Gogong his inscription at least speaks for him also the wrinkles in his waistcoat and trousers around around well the fork poor bill hunter DAD.

Yourself a father Mr Wyburd tell me won’t you about my father this newspaper cutting you so kindly sent to remind.

The princess stirred. She regretted the solicitor bored her so intensely when she had much to ask but fathers forgive we are told this one of practically the same height thickness fastidious habits as yourself untying the pink ribbon which holds your character your deeds together Arnold W as methodical as Edvard with the V will only profess when he has considered all the facts then when they are quite naked the solicitor is prepared to admit only a good man could have married Alfred’s wife.

Oh Father Father she wanted to cry for what he had suffered she was only consoled by the touch of milky legal silk his long old transparent testicles dangling trailing over her thighs.

The Princesse de Lascabanes was so shocked to see Mr Wyburd his shanks his blue veins his everything embossed on the darkness she sat up in bed and switched the light on: to be faced with her reflected self instead of a dream solicitor. Her breasts, leaner and longer than she would have cared to admit, looked askew inside the reflected nightie; her thin, naked lips were parted; she was scarcely less disgusted by reality than by the dream which had been foisted on her.