Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

Mrs Cheeseman’s nerves rose in her for an instant, but were sucked back at once into the sea of brandy in which they had been conveniently submerged. As she plunged forward, her garnish of jewellery and tulle bobbing and frothing round her thickly powdered neck and shoulders, her lips preceded her, to express a warmth her hand certainly impressed, even through a glove, deep into the comparatively chilly fingers of her former friend, a princess: Mrs Cheeseman could hardly believe in her own luck.

‘Dorothy!’ she moaned and glugged for everyone to hear.

The princess was so close to it she could only give in. While Cherry Bullivant Cheeseman wheezed and expostulated against her cheek, about time and life and other comforting complaints, Dorothy Hunter de Lascabanes nuzzled and whinnied her way back to fillyhood, till both were again standing corrected in the Crillon lounge, two young girls bedazzled by a real prince one of them was daring enough to imagine she had fallen in love with.

Her major gaffe reminded Dorothy of the minor trials she had to face in the present, so she withdrew from Cherry’s rather too adhesive embrace with one last, isolated, high-strung giggle. Madame de Lascabanes was so embarrassed at herself, she blushed; though from the glances exchanged by some of the older ladies present, they were impressed to discover signs that Dorothy Hunter hadn’t lost her Australian ‘warmth’. If an ambush was to be expected, the princess scented it in another quarter: several girls, stunning in their pant-suits and their youth, were smiling sceptical smiles, as though they understood too well, or misunderstood more dangerously.

To allow them to share in her triumph and pay homage, Mrs Cheeseman led her guests on a somewhat uncertain course towards the objective. They tottered, or stomped, or tittuped, or swayed past: the blue and the pink, the pink and the blue, the double-barrels and the knights, Rotarians who squeezed your glove till they had practically emptied it, those op deceivers whose naked faces and mermaid hair disguised ambivalence as innocence, the lissom younger men, who might have been longing to take you to their ruffles.

‘And this is Zillah. She’s an actress.’

‘How is Sir Basil? the actress whispered in professional tones out of an expert mouth; a hairless kangaroo-rat of a woman, she vibrated in basso from deep down amongst the Iceland poppies stencilled on her velvet shift.

Mrs Cheeseman explained that Zillah Puttuck was dedicated to serious drama, and had played all the major Chekov roles — in North Sydney.

The hostess was entranced to reveal her own artistic connections. ‘And Brian Learmonth.’ She gave her wheezy giggle. ‘If you re not careful, Brian will write you up for his paper.’

The princess saw she had been written up already.

When suddenly Mrs Cheeseman reverted to more important matters, and spun round, a topheavy top. ‘Is there time for her, Doug, to knock back a teensy one? Or will that bloody woman walk out if we keep dinner waiting any longer?’

To which her husband replied, ‘Don’t work yourself up, Treasure. If a crash comes, it comes. To start expecting one, gives a person blood pressure.’

The princess was persuaded to accept a drink they did not want to give her, and which she did not want. As nothing would have moistened her by now, she slid her glass behind the lavishly inscribed photograph of somebody in tights called ‘Bobby’.

At dinner she was sat between her host, and, she was alarmed to discover, an Australian Writer she hadn’t heard of. It was perhaps his increasing awareness of this which made him slash at the wings of his Dickens hairdo, while glancing in the mirror opposite at the woman who continued to exist in spite of her incredible deficiency.

‘Don’t you read?’ he inquired, when he could no longer leave her unmasked.

‘Not adventurously,’ she admitted. Tm reading La Chartreuse de Parme for I think probably the seventh time.’

‘The who?’ The Australian Writer could not have sounded more disgusted.

‘The Charterhouse of Parma.’ Repetition made her throat swell as though forced to confess a secret love to someone who might defile its purity simply by knowing about it.

‘Oh— Stendhal!’ He gave her a rather literary smile; and slashed at his Dickens wings; and turned to his other neighbour to explain — again a waste of intellect — how he was adapting the Gothic novel to local conditions.

At least Mrs Puttuck was appreciative of the Australian Writer: she leant across the table to inform the ignorant princess which awards and grants he had received in the name of brilliance; though if the actress continued to lean across from time to time it was usually in honour of herself: to tell what Larry had said of her Arkadina, or Sibyl’s praise of her Madame Ranevsky. Once she observed in her most vibrant basso, ‘Coral would be mad to attempt Lubov Andreyevna. She’s petite — and like all Chekov’s major women, essentially feminine.’

In the course of it all, and the changes of dishes, Dorothy poked at something on her plate, and found that by coincidence Cherry had chosen roast turkey as the piece de résistance of her dinner.

Noticing what could have been a repugnance, Mr Cheeseman remarked, ‘Bit dry, isn’t it? Turkey’s always a bit of a sell.’ He would have liked to do something for their guest of honour, and had an idea, which he popped on her plate from his own. ‘Liven it up with the parson’s nose!’ Better than that he couldn’t think of; a tip for the stock market might have offended such a pernickety princess.

He was so pleased with what was obviously his sacrifice, she had to eat the fatty morsel; but behind her smiles of ‘gratitude’ lurked the sense of guilt which little acts of unpremeditated kindness on the part of others roused in her.

Again, after dinner, while the ladies were rinsing their teeth under the taps, and reconstructing their faces, and telling their fellow masons what their husbands did to them, or didn’t, the old and crumbly wife of a detergent knight detached herself from the others, approached the strangers, and revived the theme of kindness.

‘I do think it’s good — so kind of you, to honour us this evening,’ she began to quaver.

That the old lady, herself obviously innocent and kind, could yet be so wrong, threw Dorothy momentarily into a panic of despair. ‘Oh, but I am not kind!’ she blurted in a loud voice through painful laughter.

The old lady, faced with such unaccountably odd behaviour, could only smile tremulously, crumble some more, and murmur, ‘I know, dear, you have a modest nature. Anybody can see you are kind. And it must be a great joy to your mother — to have you here: such a kind daughter.’

Which Cherry Cheeseman overheard. ‘Why, yes, darling, your mother — is she well? How shabby of me — forgetting to ask.’

The others had by now scented something peculiar: their faces were turned towards the princess while awaiting the revelation they craved.

For this agonizing instant you might have seemed odd, if you hadn’t been too much yourself your little-girl’s voile damp with evening crumpled tortured by hot hands resisting Your Own Good Dorothy dear you’re running the risk of a relapse if you don’t come in out of the damp there’s salmon loaf you know how you love and caramel custard they stick in your throat like kindness in your ears the truth as Mother playing the piano she likes to when she remembers playing and talking at the same time if I’m to tell the truth Dorothy you’re going out of your way to develop a warped character tinkle ping.

For this split instant of anguish Dorothy saw that the knights’ ladies, the pant-suits and the op mermaids, all here gathered watching in the Cheesemans’ ideal-home bedroom, were probably agreed.