Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

So she tried, physically, to shrug the sickness off, as the face of a television star on a hoarding, skin stretched, teeth bared in a ravenous imitation of youth, towered for the instant before dismissal.

‘Mais qu’est-ce qui vous prend? Vous êtes fou? ’ the passenger in the taxi screamed as she was shot against the roof.

Who was fou was immaterial: the driver, or the elderly pedestrian, his pace abnormally leisured, too uncertain in crossing, the face too white, the bags under the eyes too blue.

‘Is he ill? Drunk more likely!’ shouted the princess: the bump (what if her skull had been fractured?) together with the fright she had got, made her feel extra virtuous.

‘Some flaming metho artist!’ The driver himself had had a fright, his passenger screaming down his neck: bloody hysterical foreign woman.

Of them all, the drunken, sick, or possibly only aged man continued gently, unsteadily, on his undisturbed progress.

‘How can they?’ How dirty, smelly, frightening, so many old people are: the Princesse de Lascabanes felt more virtuous than ever.

While the driver remained appropriately incensed. ‘The Council sweeps the rubbish off the streets, and leaves the half of it behind! Eh?’

Dorothy Hunter’s sick sick not sickness only a malaise returned: herself potentially a murderess.

At Moreton Drive peace was pouring in a bland golden flood out of the park opposite. There were birds in Mother’s garden. Somebody had put out seed for them in a little terracotta dish suspended from the branch of a tree. Sparrows and finches were fluttering, flirting; a rain of seed scattered from the swaying dish. From the lawn at the foot of the tree, a flight of blue pigeons took off clattering, and away.

Oh dear, this is what I must keep in mind, at all times: the light, the movement of birds. Climbing the path, the princess knew she was giving herself a piece of hopeless advice: as if you can possess the moment of perfection; as if conception and death don’t take place simultaneously.

It wasn’t the housekeeper, it was that boiled nurse who answered the doorbell. ‘Isn’t this a priceless morning, mad- dahm ? Priceless,’ she repeated, evidently proud of her adjective. ‘Let’s hope it’s the end of the humidity. Your mother would be so relieved. The old backs do play up when there’s any humidity around.’ Sister Badgery oozed professional sympathy, not only for her patient, but for a caller she suspected of being, behind the voice and the fal-lals, a neurotic inexperienced girl.

Dorothy coughed drily; she didn’t think this was the nurse she would pump for information on the symptoms and whereabouts of cancer in women of a certain age. ‘I see you’ve been feeding the birds.’ A feeble comment, and the more annoying in that Sister Badgery was so obviously stupid.

‘That is Sister de Santis. She puts out seed for them before she goes off duty. It’s quite a little ceremony. Sister de Santis is so good.’ Though Sister Badgery’s gold-rimmed spectacles radiated approval, you couldn’t help feeling that any admiration she had for her colleague was strictly theoretical; just as ‘goodness’ was probably a theory, one that you were supposed to get sentimental about.

So Sister Badgery beamed, and stood aside for her patient’s daughter to enter.

‘Is my mother well ?’ Nervousness gave the question an exaggerated emphasis; it sounded ominous, Dorothy thought.

‘Never better. Mrs Hunter is unexpendable.’ Sister Badgery laughed so gaily leading the way upstairs; if her calves looked strained, her step was springy.

All of this helped increase a gloom gathering in the princess. ‘Such a ridiculously large house for one old woman to be bedridden in!’ She sighed. ‘I know from experience how unpractical. So much work for everyone involved.’

‘It isn’t work when your heart’s in it,’ Sister Badgery reminded rather breathily from over her shoulder. ‘And I think I’m safe in saying we’re all devoted to Mrs Hunter.’

‘That isn’t the point. The housekeeper alone must be run off her feet.’

‘Mrs Lippmann’s such a grateful soul — after all she’s been through — she wouldn’t begrudge her services. No, she wouldn’t begrudge.’ Sister Badgery never ran out of breath though she seemed permanently on the point of doing so. ‘And then she has the help of Mrs Cush — that’s the cleaning lady — two mornings a week. Though sometimes she doesn’t come. Today — if she comes — is Mrs Cush’s day. But Mrs Lippmann has gone to the dentist.’

One less to face, Dorothy Hunter was relieved to think; besides, her French self, overlooking the housekeeper’s Jewishness, disliked her automatically as a German.

‘Poor Mrs Cush! Her husband is an epileptic.’

Perhaps after all you could ask Sister Badgery, though prudently, about the cancer symptoms and the check-up.

But epilepsy !

Sister Badgery said, ‘I think today Mrs Cush more than likely won’t be coming — considering she isn’t here already, and the hire-car sent to Redfern to fetch her.’

‘Qu’est-ce que ce …? The hire -car?’

‘Yes. Mrs Hunter believes — in the goodness of her heart — the least she can do is send a car for poor Mrs Cush — what with the varicose veins and the epileptic husband.’

But is my mother mad? Madame de Lascabanes fortunately prevented herself exclaiming in her most disapproving voice: outside the bedroom door too. Instead she remarked weakly, ‘Epilepsy must be frightening — quite frightening,’ and touched her pearls.

Then Sister Badgery opened the door, and she was allowed into the sanctuary, where the shrunken head was still lying on the pillow as she and Hubert had seen it at Assisi. (That night he had been unusually kind, simply holding you in his arms, stroking, in no way sensually, but with that same reverence you were conscious of sharing earlier at the shrine.)

Mrs Hunter opened her eyes. ‘Leave us, Badgery,’ she commanded; ‘I want to talk — confidentially — to my daughter, the Princesse de Las — ca — banes?’

The nurse looked pained, but did as told.

Dorothy felt weak at the knees. For a moment she feared she might be forced down on them, but succeeded in staggering as far as the bedside chair.

‘Mummy!’ she began mouthing in a genuine attempt at affection. ‘I should have brought you something.’

‘What?’

‘A present.’

‘Don’t be silly! It’s too late. I’m too old. Though that doesn’t mean I’m going to die.’

‘Did you have a good night?’

‘Oh-dreaming.’

‘What about?’

‘My husband.’

‘Won’t you share him with me as my father?’

Mrs Hunter ignored it.

‘I hope at least they were pleasant dreams,’ her daughter persisted.

‘Yes, and no.’ She began wheezing like a bellows. ‘Oh, Alfred — oh, his face! His teeth — or throat — suddenly clicked. That’s how I knew he was dead.’

Boiling tears were pouring down the dry canyons of Dorothy de Lascabanes’s face.

‘I’ll tell you something,’ Mrs Hunter’s voice warned the listener not to expect an abstract confession. ‘For many years I couldn’t love, only respect him. Then I — well, I never loved enough. In all our life together, I didn’t touch his penis. To touch would have shown, wouldn’t it?’ Hands moved on the sheet as though to gather a rare flower; lips twitched back, exposed naked gums. ‘Or would it have seemed — whorish?’

The Princesse de Lascabanes was horrified; she couldn’t answer: her best intentions were destroyed at every move.

But she tried again, making conversation with what after all was only a dotty old woman. ‘As a matter of fact, I too had a bad night.’