Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

The Princesse de Lascabanes stirred; she coughed as though trying out her voice, which had been lying, as it were, deep down with her sunken thoughts, and might not at first be flexible enough. ‘Personally,’ she began, and found she was up to it, ‘I think you are both shilly-shallying — avoiding issues — playing about with words and theories. You in particular, Basil.’ The accusation was cold enough to remind her brother that, although she had been bowled over on his first appearance, by the cleft in his lower lip, by the steely hair, the glowing complexion, and for a moment thought she saw the husband she had failed to devour, she was not on any account prepared to be carried away to the point of incest.

Apparently disbelieving, Basil laughed and played with a pencil. ‘Tell us some more, darling.’ he coaxed.

Dorothy ignored it. ‘I mean to say — I’ve already gone as far as making practical investigations of my own. One fact, for instance, of which you can t possibly be aware, Basil, though Mr Wyburd must, I imagine,’ she looked with regret at her dream lover of the night before, ‘is that Mother has given orders for a hire-car to be sent regularly to fetch the cleaning woman from Redfern. That, one might argue, is a caprice, and anybody old should be allowed a caprice here and there, to show them their will is still theirs to use. But I discovered something else about which she can’t have known, and if she had, would most certainly not have approved.’ The princess narrowed her eyes to fire her shot. ‘I went down this morning into the kitchen

‘You didn’t, Dotty!’ Basil sniggered.

She closed her eyes for an instant to shut out the brother she had known, in spite of his deceitful overtures, to be as malicious and hateful as ever. ‘I went down and found in the dustbin at least two kilos of good filet de boeuf deliberately thrown away and already putrefying.’

Sir Basil roused himself to renew his entente with his French sister. ‘Nobody can have known about that except the housekeeper. Who, I wonder,’ he looked at the solicitor, and looked away, ‘engaged a crackpot Central European cabaret dancer, or whatever she is, as our mother’s cook? That was madness on a grand scale.’

‘But she loves Mrs Hunter.’

‘Loves, does she? Then love in the kitchen ends, apparently, in the dustbin.’ He was pleased with that; and Dorothy was visibly impressed.

‘It’s the waste. Wastage’, the additional syllable made her feel she was giving birth to a word, ‘has always been immoral, but in an age like ours, it’s unpardonable.’ Almost as soon as she had said it, she wondered which of the immoralities she pardoned: at least you have no control over your dreams.

Basil was preparing to lead the charge farther afield. ‘Whatever their professional skill, nurses are renowned for being unpractical creatures, unless, as private nurses, they find themselves in a position to fleece their wealthier patients. Then some of them become most realistic. Tell me, dear old Wyburd, where, for instance, does our mother’s army of nurses eat?

‘Naturally they’re entitled to a meal if they’re in her house at the time when the meal is usually eaten.’ He could see Dorothy Hunter’s eyes still trained on that chucked-out fillet. ‘If the night nurse eats a meal at an unconventional hour, it’s because she must feel hungry in the middle of the night.’ He was appealing to his prosecutors.

Sir Basil nodded: that woman in the awful hat.

‘What I’m not altogether prepared to accept,’ the solicitor admitted, typing with nervous fingers on his desk top, ‘is that Sister Manhood should arrive in time to share Sister Badgery’s lunch before Badgery goes off. Manhood made the arrangement to suit herself — economically most desirable from her point of view — and difficult to put a stop to, now that the precedent has been established.’

‘Is Manhood the pretty one?’ Sir Basil Hunter asked.

The solicitor drew in his mouth; he looked frightened; he nodded.

Madame de Lascabanes hated her brother, even her pseudo-lover, not to mention that healthy nurse in skimpy shift patterned with palpitating colours, who had stood in the doorway yesterday watching her go down the path.

‘If the girl isn’t entitled to a midday meal, you, in your position of authority, should have told her so,’ the princess considered.

‘She’s Mrs Hunter’s favourite.’ The solicitor began to protest, then slightly hesitated. ‘She makes your mother up.’ He hesitated more noticeably. ‘I understand Sister Manhood took a course in — wig — management, for which Mrs Hunter paid.’

Sir Basil clapped his hands above his head: a burst of percussion in their hitherto stately string music could not have startled his fellow artists more. ‘Good for Mum! As an actor I can hardly disapprove of her tendencies to theatre. Can I?’ It was one thing to arrive after many years and find a daubed mummy standing in for your real mother; but now Sir Basil was bored, and his vision of the Lilac Fairy tittuped deliciously amongst the law books and steel filing cabinets, her cupid’s bow strung for mirth. ‘Nor should I mind a pretty girl like Manhood slipping the bedpan under me.’ He took one of the two biscuits lying in the solicitor’s saucer, and shamelessly gobbled it up.

Dorothy was revolted; she unclenched her jaws with an effort to mutter, ‘So much still to settle. I should have thought you might control yourself.’

‘Mmm. You are right, dear Dorothy.’ Basil reached for the second biscuit. ‘Only there’s a frivolous bum hiding in my soul of reason.’ He munched, swallowed ostentatiously, and might have been preparing to burp; but folded his hands instead. ‘Now I am — ready — to resume — our discussion, which is important enough, God knows.’ And looked at her for the approval she couldn’t very well withhold; and smiled.

Why did he have to play the fool, and in so doing, make a fool of her? He seemed unaware that his coarseness might cause others to suffer. She couldn’t bear an elderly fool.

Arnold Wyburd, who might have enjoyed a clash between his critics if he hadn’t been distressed by what he sensed as the same motive behind their different approaches, shifted and mentioned, ‘ What I think we must bear in mind is Mrs Hunter’s need to spend her last years in the house she knows, surrounded by dependents to whom she is attached.’

‘In the house she knew, Arnold, but no longer sees, not even the room in which she lies.’

‘What do you mean, Mr Wyburd, by dependents? Has our mother no obligation to her children? Elderly children, too!’ Dorothy de Lascabanes wrenched it out, and laughed, but mirthlessly.

Basil stuck out his lower lip till it looked bulbous — tumerous. She would have seen him ageing before her eyes if she had looked at him, but she did not want to.

Then, she heard, he had lightened his tone of voice, and was using a staccato delivery by which he no doubt hoped to hustle their opponent. ‘What I am unable to believe is that this apparently evolved city can’t provide some kind of asylum for the aged. Oh, I don’t mean the poor house — but a simple life in agreeable surroundings which a woman like our mother might accept.’

‘There’s the Thorogood Village,’ Mr Wyburd admitted. ‘A great many people of both sexes retire to it and enjoy one another’s company in a more bracing climate than ours. I think Mrs Hunter would not accept it,’ he added simply.

‘What about the nuns?’ the Princesse de Lascabanes asked with appropriate reverence and a wistful smile. ‘I’ve known several old unregenerate ladies end their days very happily in convents.’ Mother, who hadn’t the rudiments of a religious faith, could not be expected to appreciate the spiritual balm the Church had to offer; it would be too tiresome if she refused to see the practical advantages of an organization to which she need only be superficially obliged.