Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

After receiving her mother’s cheque Dorothy had considered splurging some of it on an important dress: an armature to intimidate any possible adversary, and to warn off what could be worse, an importunate admirer. But on sending for a statement almost immediately after paying the money into the bank, she thought she could not bring herself to reduce such a lovely round sum; she would make do with her trusty Patou black enlivened with a jewel or two. Moving back and forth as far as the club bedroom allowed, she felt temporarily safe, acceptable to herself, which after all, she had decided, is more important than being acceptable to others; and as she moved, she slightly and indolently rocked, grasping her shoulders, the bank statement pinned to her breast by her crossed arms; she derived considerable consolation from the chafing of this toughly material paper.

On the night, then, it was the Patou black, of such an urbane simplicity it had often ended by scaring the scornful into a bewildered reassessment of their own canons of taste. And the diamonds; everyone must bow to those: their fire too unequivocally real, their setting a collusion between class and aesthetics. These were some of the jewels the colonial girl had been clever enough to prise out of her husband’s family by knowing too much. If they had been more than a paltry fraction of the realizable de Lascabanes assets, and if she had not detested all forms of thuggery, Dorothy Hunter might have seen herself as a kind of female Ned Kelly.

She was standing at the dressing-table mirror massaging the lobes of her ears before loading them with moody de Lascabanes pearls encrusted with minor de Lascabanes diamonds. The ear-rings made her suffer regularly, but it was all in the game of self-justification. As she pulled on the long skins of gloves, she noticed the mauve tones in the crooks of her thin arms, in her salt cellars, and at her temples; she was not displeased with her angular looks — for that moment, anyway.

The princess licked her lips, and rang down for a hire-car; then, on second thoughts, remembering the round sum in her account, she changed her mind, and asked them for a taxi instead.

The night through which she was being driven seemed on a curve, as a bow is strung, herself the arrow shooting out of it, into the heart of the North Shore, which was where — who were they? the Douglas Cheesemans, lived. The princess could not recollect ever having crossed the bridge, and would have preferred not to be doing so now. She saw herself lying propped up in bed with an oeuf à la coque on a tray, and bread and butter as thin as only nuns know how. Instead, she was allowing herself to be driven, because by now it could not be avoided. (Unless she told a really super lie, one which even bread-and-butter nuns might not condone.)

So the expressway curved, flaunting rival but spurious jewels, past the windows of some unidentifiable club, above pavements darker for the tongues and maps made by the pissing of slanted sailors. The taxi drove her at that other curve, the great bridge, and here the north-easter tore in through the crack above the glass threatening the composition of her hair. Her first impulse was to close the window, to shut out the marauding wind, when the sense of her ultimate powerlessness returned, and she sank back inside the taxi, inside her Paris dress, her stole (not less modest for being sable), inside her own ruffled skin, shivering like a bitch temporarily parted from her owner (whoever that might be) on a railway platform.

She only vaguely and too suddenly realized the arcs of speed, the explosive missiles of light, had diminished, and that the taxi had pulled up on an ellipse of raked gravel: where Dorothy Hunter would have chosen to remain, encapsulated.

Mr and Mrs Douglas Cheeseman lived in an impeccably maintained, shamelessly illuminated, fairly recent Colonial mansion, surrounded by European trees and Japanese shrubs at a stage in their development which suggested they must have increased their rate of growth in an effort to keep up with their owners. The perfectly tended garden was not more personal for the attentions it received, except in parts of its thickets where nature had intervened, leaving an impression of assault and battery. Some of the deciduous trees had begun to colour in keeping with the season, but their leaves looked as though jaded by peroxide rather than thrilled by autumn. There was a smell of something: blood and bone, Dorothy seemed to remember it was called.

No time for more, except to invoke her de Lascabanes self: a man had pushed past the white blur of hovering servant, and was opening the taxi door.

‘Doug Cheeseman — Cherry’s husband.’ Haste and alcohol had stunted whatever he may have prepared by way of an introductory speech. ‘We were beginning to worry about you.’

The princess unsheathed her voice as though it had been a sword. ‘Don’t tell me I’m late! Your wife said eight-thirty, didn’t she?’

‘I expect she did.’ Mr Cheeseman laughed; he was one of the stringier males, of a freckled, reddish persuasion.

‘Eight-thirty, I’m positive.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he mumbled out of his good nature. ‘Cherry sometimes makes a mistake.’

Since she had settled the matter in her own favour the princess narrowed her eyes and gnashed a smile at Mr Douglas Cheeseman as a reward for his being reasonable. He appeared dazed, but delighted.

Dorothy was surprised to find it so easy. She would often surprise herself, and could not think why there were those other moments when her skill left her; if only she could have remained in permanent control of her de Lascabanes technique she might have rivalled Basil as an actor, or a hoax.

‘So charming — quite charming? The princess was taking notice of what were only too obviously Antiques as her host brought her through the chequered hall. ‘I do congratulate you.’ She reined in her kindness just this side of sincerity, because to have admired such ghastliness wholeheartedly, would scarcely have been honest, would it?

Again Mr Cheeseman’s sounds and glances expressed delight. ‘It’s one of Cherry’s hobbies. She took a course in home decoration.’ He had those paler eyelids, intensified by rimless glasses; the back of his neck was as wrinkled as those of other Australian males of the same age and complexion: saurian, but defenceless.

Douglas Cheeseman’s neck made Dorothy feel she must keep a tight hold on herself: she might easily topple over, not into compassion — self-pity. She must rely on her sword of a voice, and remember that the face can be transformed into a visor by narrowing the eyes. (She had practised that one in the glass to defend herself against her late belle-mere the old Princesse Etienne.)

In the Cheeseman salon— or whatever their own word for it — there was a galaxy of personages, a shimmer of pastels, a simmering of frustrated, but rearoused expectations. Square men in black alternated with others more demonstrative and decorative in ruffles and plum to midnight velvets. The women must have emptied their jewel cases, while one or two exposed invisible tiaras last worn for royalty.

The Princesse de Lascabanes narrowed her eyes at it all, and the smiles of some, she could see, commended her for her humble spirit, adding pity for myopia, together with forgiveness for the sin of unpunctuality. That she was in fact terribly late Dorothy had to admit to herself, for several of the company were swaying on their heels, the level of alcohol in the Georgian tumblers clamped against their waists, tilting, and in one case, spilling down a pale blue front.

The pale blue lady, crimson to purple in the cheeks, was her hostess, Dorothy de Lascabanes saw: pretty, glossy Cherry Bullivant swollen into a festive turkey.