Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

The female might have sunk, battered and exhausted by the rigours of courtship, but rose again on the wings of inspiration. ‘“Lurline Skinner, ”’ she barely managed to bring it fluttering out.

‘“Lurline Skinner.” Grand!’

Dorothy Hunter heard herself rumble. Her brother she believed to be not only dishonest, but also, she regretted, humourless.

The white butterfly could have flopped around a whole lot more, but the male was for drawing away in a last burst of coppery condescension.

‘I shan’t forget — Sister …?’

‘Badgery.’

’… neither the photograph, nor our agreeable conversation …‘

‘… urmssurbasurl …’

‘… already old friends …’

The Princesse de Lascabanes was glad she had married, however unsuccessfully, away from Anglo-Saxondom.

‘Now I must get myself ready for this chore at the solicitor fellow’s. To meet a sister I haven’t seen in half a lifetime. Don’t much enjoy the prospect either.’

‘Poor Dorothy!’

‘How is she?’

‘She hasn’t complained about her health.’

‘I’m surprised she hasn’t added that to the list. But the poor girl had a raw deal — not that she didn’t get what she wanted.’

‘Ideal marriage is as rare as snow at Galle, Mr Badgery used to say.’ His widow suggested she would have liked to tell the story of hers if Sir Basil had allowed.

‘… only the deal could have been less raw for someone less rigid and less humourless.’

The princess was so deeply cut she cut herself off. Chin sunk, eyes bulging unnaturally, pearls heaved so spasmodically, she might have been suffering from heartburn. If only it were! Better unchaste than humourless, better dead than a dead weight.

On opening her mother’s door she bumped against it, and Mrs Hunter’s head started up from the pillow, a relic miraculously raised from the timelessness of a morning nap.

‘What is it? Why — oh, Dorothy! I thought I saw a statue walking at me — out of the Botanical Gardens. It’s worth a visit. Ask Arnold. Will you be seeing Arnold, dear?’

‘That is what has been arranged.’

Her daughter seated beside the bed, Mrs Hunter might still have suspected a statue: the practically sightless eyes were swivelling at an apparition in marble, if it wasn’t plaster.

‘You’ll treat him kindly, won’t you, dear?’

‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t.’ Madame de Lascabanes spoke as though she inhabited a world sans butterflies.

‘Because Arnold is kind — blinkered, but kind. The blinkers were torn off him probably only once, and I believe his whole life has been an effort to forget it.’

Dorothy thought the word ‘kind’ sat uneasily on Mother’s lips, but she bent to kiss them, and was at once possessed, dared to question authority, cajoled, then rejected by an imperious but tired old woman.

‘And Basil — has he arrived? Tell him, if you see him, I didn’t expect his visit. I don’t expect anything of anyone — except myself — and one’s self, Dorothy, lets one down worse than the others.’

Neither of them dared ask, either through words or fingers: who then, is there?

Basil Hunter wiped the crumbs off. He had eaten three croissants (passable imitations) and drunk two cups of coffee (surprisingly, excellent: must be the Swiss management). He had received one telephone call, and made another, each in its way achieving something; he liked to think he was living positively even when he wasn’t working. But he couldn’t dismiss a suspicion of self-disgust, in spite of his still presentable features and body, a satisfied stomach, a sense of duty done: in agreeing to a meeting with the worthy Wyburd that same morning; in sending love-messages to his aged mother; and in promising a photograph to the nurse’s protégée, if it wasn’t the nurse herself. (More than likely he would forget the photograph, but to promise one pleased the nurse, and the minor gestures are often the most gratifying to those who make them.) Even the prospect of meeting a sister he hardly knew was only half a drag: to overcome her dislike would add significance to his conquest.

He should have felt brisker in the circumstances. No doubt the change of climate had been too sudden. He was suffocating in this hotel room, stuffed with everything that is comfortable and hideous in walnut veneer and glaring chintz, and sprawled on the Axminster roses, a great slippery monster of a Prussian blue eiderdown dismissed from the bed during the night. But it was the refrigerator, however homely and practical as a thought, which offended worst of all: ticking over ticking over, when it wasn’t simply standing mute.

He was forced out into the garden, where the few hungry, city shrubs, and a plaster bird-bath painted to imitate brick, but suggesting slabs of uncooked beef, failed to provide the morale booster he was looking for. Nor did distance lessen the effect of the refrigerator’s racketty movement; and worse, a clunk clunk in overtone recalled the airconditioners of Bangkok. Oh God, his head, his mouth, were still frowsty with Bangkok! Against this background of mere mechanical threats and physical reminders, the Jewish housekeeper’s irony continued pricking: her celebration of failure, her own in particular, but anybody else’s as well, ‘They tell me you’ve played Hamlet — Lear — all the great “German” roles, so you must understand, Sir Basil!’ ein zwei drei. (EXIT) Laughter from the gallery.

He glanced up. A sonsy maid and a chronically unemployed valet were talking on a balcony. They were looking at him from out of their frame of cast-iron lace. Well, he couldn’t pretend it didn’t go with his profession to be looked at, though he was hardly prepared for it at the moment, with his growth of stubble, and dressing-gown crumpled by the journey. Still, his head, his shoulders, could take it; when the maid and the valet burst out again; and he hadn’t been playing for laughs.

He withdrew into his hideous but comparatively charitable room, away from what might take its place amongst the rankling moments, like that banana skin in Glasgow, brown-blotched and clammy-wet. How they laughed that night, till the decent among them shushed, and he forced himself back into the character he was playing. Dangerous attempting Richard Two at forty, but isn’t an actor proved by danger? and the original notices (he still had them) were too seductive to resist. If they couldn’t respect the accolade, there were the notices — if you could have shown them to the bastards: Of all our younger actors, Basil Hunter … Produce the notices, however tattered and discoloured, and the laughter of all trumpery chambermaids and Irish-thug-valets would be stilled.

Sir Basil Hunter, who always felt better after shaving, less frayed, splenetic, awful, began to lather himself. (Remember too, Basil old boy, that when you see people laughing together at a distance they are more often than not acting a scene in which you don’t appear.)

Like make-up, the white lather usually seemed to protect him from both past and future — if only temporarily. But this morning these red rims, dragged into view by fingers preparing a path for the razor, destroyed the authority, the chances of renewal, of an ageing, blighted fool. Have another go at Lear at least. During that other jinxed run he had seen himself in every other part but the one he had accepted to play: the Fool if you had been younger, smaller, a shade more fly, and considerably more selfless; Edgar, whom some find a bore — again if you had been younger, nimbler — and lower in the hierarchy; Gloucester, simple and rather stupid, can’t fail to win sympathy: those empty eye sockets a gift to any actor. While Lear, that other loon, or human landslide, must work for pity which, unlike tearful sympathy, can survive on tragic heights, and is harder to rouse because purer, perhaps only begotten by purity of the inner man. Is it why almost everyone can fail as Lear — not completely of course: Hunter’s monolithic, weather-and emotion-haunted king … Produce those notices, too, for anybody troubled by superficial doubts, anyone short on ‘purity’ (doesn’t it cut both ways?) remind them of the ‘monolithic’ triumph some critics and co-operative playgoers had more than witnessed: which they too had lived.