Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

Arnold Wyburd said, ‘I think Mrs Hunter would die rather than have her way of life dictated to her.’

‘To talk sense into her wouldn’t be dictating.’ Sir Basil’s recent flight out of fog, to the indulgent air surrounding him ever since arrival, appeared to have made him drowsy: he stretched, and one of his shirt buttons flew off, which his sister and the solicitor pretended not to notice.

Dorothy de Lascabanes could hardly help being conscious of something so revolting as a glimpse of bodyhair through the gap, as well as ribs arching under a transparent fabric. At the same time it inspired in her parallels of languor. It is I who am revolting, she was forced unwillingly to decide.

While Basil had started kicking at her from round the corner of the desk; Basil was shouting, ‘You, Dorothy — you’re the one who must talk to Mother.’

‘Why should I?’ So precipitately jolted from her thoughts, she found herself shouting back.

‘Because you’re the woman, aren’t you?’

She was perspiring with injustice. ‘I like that! Why shouldn’t Mr Wyburd — he’s the solicitor — and Mother’s — well, intimate — talk?’ She struggled, gulping uglily, to get it out.

As for Arnold Wyburd, he realized he had lost his faith in words, when his life of usefulness had depended on them: they could be used as fences, smoke-screens, knives and stones; they could take the shape of comforting hot water bottles; but if ever you thought they were about to help you open a door into the truth, you found, instead of a lighted room, a dark void you hadn’t the courage to enter.

Perhaps he had come closest to illumination in some of those talks with Bill Hunter in front of the fire in the library at ‘Kudjeri’ after Mrs Hunter had gone to bed (you suspected her of being bored by the preoccupations her husband had in common with yourself). There was, in particular, the night Bill told about the earthquake he had been through as a young man travelling in Baluchistan, and which you were soon experiencing together, while the house shuddered and crumbled around you, smoke rising not only from the immediate hearth but from the shambles of rubble with its clusters of dark bodies lying limp or struggling calling sinewy arms stretched begging for mercy sometimes out of the cracks in the earth. After Bill had come to the end of his ‘story’, you both remained precariously suspended, it seemed, while dark fingers still raked and clawed at your ankles from the smoking chasm. Words, as Bill had already realized, were pitiful threads to dangle above those whom actions had failed, and God was swallowing up. Even after you had been returned to the leather chairs in the library at ‘Kudjeri’, you continued sitting in silence, daunted, but in some sense toughened, by what you had shared.

Basil had left his chair, and was insisting, as he stamped about the office, ‘Yes, I agree, Dorothy, the old Wyburd’s the one who must persuade Mother. However well-meaning our proposal, Arnold’s honesty has been proved. She won’t have any doubts about him.’

If this building were to fall, we might, all three of us, be purified in the mass destruction, Arnold Wyburd hoped. He did truly long for Bill Hunter’s earthquake, to save him the humiliation of an alliance with the Hunter children; or would the earth refuse to swallow him? His prayer lasted only an instant, because of course there were Lal, Marjorie and Heather, the girls’ husbands (whether you liked the fellows or not) and children: the grand children; Jenny already dancing around with undesirable young men.

While Basil, holding on to the window frame as he stared down into the gulf, had begun declaiming what sounded like a speech, ‘My God, how it would crash, all this concrete and glass, and we — the insects — ground together with other insects. Well, there are worse ways. Worse to be picked out for your colour, or your spots, or unorthodox behaviour, and impaled by a pin — alone!’

‘Oh, darling —’ Dorothy was surprised her insincerity could sound so warm, why be morbid on such a heavenly morning?’ She was laughing incontinently; she was mauve gooseflesh along the visible half of her arms.

‘You’re right. Why should insect life panic while it has the sun to flatter it?’ But as he turned away from the window he mightn’t have convinced himself: the arch-enemy could have confused his instinct for survival.

The solicitor remembered a duty still to be performed, and opened a drawer in his desk. ‘Mrs Hunter particularly wanted you to have these.’ He came round, and handed each an envelope inscribed with full name, not forgetting the title.

The Hunter children were enchanted, feverish it looked, to discover the Christmas tree still existed. Dorothy hissed with surprise as she scrabbled at her envelope, but recovered her ‘breeding’, and with it the approved functions of her long thin manicured fingers. Basil, on the other hand, tore an ugly handful out of the end, just missing the contents; the heavy breathing reminded the solicitor unpleasantly of what he would always have preferred not to hear: himself approaching an orgasm.

Dorothy was genuinely dazzled by the cheque signed for Elizabeth Hunter by her attorney Arnold Wyburd. ‘Isn’t that kind? So kind!’ she kept repeating, as though kindness were a virtue she had forgotten about; she must really start practising at it herself: there was no reason why she shouldn’t; except that the thought without the attempt was enough to make her feel virtuous.

‘Yes, very. Very generous,’ Basil was mumbling over his cheque. ‘The old girl was always generous — if nothing else.’ His voice had acquired a huskiness he was probably going to make the most of. ‘If one’s wives had been half as generous.’

‘Oh, Mother was noted for being the soul of generosity: selfish, but generous in countless material ways.’

‘Must ring her up. Send some flowers. Look in later in the afternoon.’ While exploring the range of his huskiness, Sir Basil was folding his cheque and putting it away.

The Princesse de Lascabanes would have loved to see how much it was worth. Not that she could complain. But out of curiosity. Had Basil come off better from being the boy?

The solicitor was relieved to find the cheques had cut short an argument which promised to prolong itself over weeks: the Hunter children were encouraged to leave.

As they passed through the outer office the princess walked ahead, smiling for Miss Haygarth, the typists, a spotty boy with sausage roll halfway to his mouth, and a junior partner emerging from a frosted booth. It was a vague, general sort of smile, but she couldn’t have directed it: she felt too languid.

After her came Sir Basil Hunter, the shining actor, holding old Wyburd where his biceps would have been. ‘ … at the moment several irons in the West End fire — one especially exciting — but I can’t go into that. How long I stay will depend on how quickly we clear up the matter we have been discussing — and on my mother’s health. Don’t want to exhaust the old lady, do we, Dorothy?’

She did not consider it necessary to answer, nor to speak again. As the lift closed, she raised her head, parting her lips to breathe some kind of wordless message at the considerate solicitor. How really grateful she was that they had Mr Wyburd: he was so necessary; strange though, how the most necessary characters can be dismissed so easily.

When they were alone in the lift Basil made a vulgar noise with his tongue, and dug her in the ribs with a stiffened index finger. ‘It’s my turn to be generous. What do you say to a spot of lunch? 1’11 shout you, Dot.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, recovering her primness, ‘I have an appointment with a hairdresser.’