Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

‘Only turn me on, princess,’ was what she heard; ‘I love everybody.’

Naturally she paid no attention, but was horrified to see him fling himself from his sofa at what he judged the level of her knees, as though she were a footballer whose evading tactics he had set out to queer by a flying tackle.

The princess was almost crying her relief to find herself slightly ahead of the thud the Australian Writer made with the banisters. She ran on, clutching, not the ball, but her intention of getting away as quickly as possible from the Cheesemans and their guests, her furs streaming, the tails of sables galloping behind her on the stairs.

She ran out into the night, through the more emphatic, at the same time liquid black poured around her by trees, till she reached the suburban street, slower now, and holding her temples. Above her were stars she might not have noticed since — oh, too long — since ‘Kudjeri’. If only the lid could be lifted from her head to let out the bursting rockets of thoughts alternating with evil smog, she might see more clearly; but clear vision, she suspected, is something you shed with childhood and do not regain unless death is a miracle of light; which she doubted.

Although she was walking, her mind continued running.

Since Sister Manhood thought up her idea she had become pretty obsessed with it. Actually she couldn’t claim to have thought of it in the sense of reasoning it out; she would probably never learn to reason as people did in books, or famous doctors, or even a comparatively ordinary man like Col Pardoe; her idea, it seemed, had been lying quietly somewhere inside her till the time came for it to spring into her head. She liked to believe it was what they call an ‘inspiration’.

The day Flora Manhood felt her embryonic inspiration ready to convert itself into a positive event, she had woken early, but drifted a while longer, enjoying the ripeness of her intention. She lay glowing and expansive on what was normally the Vidlers’ unyielding convertible lounge, but which this morning responded to her form with an almost sensual recognition of their possibilities, so that she had to smile and rub one cheek against a shoulder, and enjoy lazily scratching a flank; the smell of her hair and her flesh was so delicious she thrilled with an unusual sense of her own power. But wasn’t she, anyway, about to take her fate in hand? In the circumstances, she only faintly frowned at the stench of fowl manure intruding through the open window in opposition to her own drowsily voluptuous scents.

No more than four hens, in any case, and not all that much shit: Vid was too clean (cleanliness was Vid and Viddie’s life). And so decent, not any of the neighbours would have dreamt of lodging a complaint with the Health Inspector: they thought of other reasons for their asthma; or how they might scrounge a handful of manure for the aluminium, plant. If anybody was to complain, Flora Manhood knew, it could be herself in one of her nursier moments: didn’t you have to prove your status from time to time, to other people? But with Vid and Viddie so decent, never ever had she complained. She was fond besides, she thought perhaps she loved, certainly she depended on them more than any other person (her parents dead; Snow Tunks in the dyke racket; and there was no one else, thank you).

Flora Manhood opened her eyes so suddenly and wide there was a distinct scratching sound. Although she could have lain in bed most of the morning as she mostly did, she got out of it quicker than usual. She would take her time, though, on such a day: do her nails, run the bath later on, make herself extra nice before afternoon duty at Moreton Drive. One pyjama leg had hitched up around a thigh, which she sat a moment stroking in the way someone exceptional, chosen for the important part he must play, would most likely-caress (none of that take-you-for-granted stuff). Her skin was smooth, hairless, suntinged, except for the two white cups, and lower down, less than a triangle, a line. She had thought how she might give up pyjamas (cut down on laundry apart from anything else) but Viddie walked in one morning, so shocked to see what was only another woman’s breasts, you hadn’t taken to sleeping starkers.

The girl stood, rather abruptly. What makes people grow up decent? she wondered while washing the sleep out of her eyes. It could be from not wanting anything enough. Like Vid and Viddie, and Mr Wyburd, and de Santis, and Lottie Lippmann, even binding Badgery, though Badgery put on dog and liked to be thought better than she was. Not the Princess Lascabanes, from what others had to tell. Or Sir Basil Hunter.

Flora Manhood soaped her armpits. After she had rinsed them, she got out the pale lipstick and clothed her mouth: her lips looked healed, and neat, and meek. Yes, you could thank the pale lipstick for meekness.

And Mrs Hunter: nothing meek about old Betty; she wouldn’t be selected for the Decent Team. Trample you when she felt like it. Even at her oldest, most pitiful, feeblest. Because Elizabeth Hunter, judging by the studio portraits, and the oil painting, had been a beautiful, a passionate woman. And that, together with money, was power, wasn’t it? Power couldn’t resist trampling. Not even while mumbling a prayer through bluish gums. Was it prayers Elizabeth Hunter mumbled on? or dreams of her own beauty — and men? All together, they had given her the power which can’t help trampling. Doesn’t God? On whole nations, as well as decent inoffensive individuals like Vid and Viddie; they must have it coming to them as sure as any Vietnamese.

Flora Manhood—‘Flo’ as she had been to Mum and Dad, and someone else more recent, but as dead, ‘Florrie’ to Snow Tunks; made you fetch up only to remember — looked in the glass and wondered if she had gone too far. She was not irreligious, she didn’t think. Right down from the banana days and the miracle that wasn’t — vouchsafed? she had more than respected, she needed God.

So virtue plumped out her lips as she went into the kitchen she had the use of (together with cons) her bare feet this moment enjoying the cleanliness, the reliability, of Viddie’s lino. Indeed, she stamped once or twice, to drum her pleasure into her soles, before taking the Magic Wand and making the gas explode around the burner.

Presently Viddie came in from cleaning: front path, doorstep, and hall were the first details on her schedule. ‘Early for you, isn’t it?’

Flora said, ‘It’s an important day.’

Seated at the shining laminex table, she was still no more than warming her lip on the steam from the cup. For once her appetite for food had left her, though if she had wanted, there were eggs with dates on them, gifts from Vid, from his four hens.

‘Is it to do with Mrs Hunter?’ Mrs Vidler asked. ‘About what you told me? It’s a scandal!’ Whenever she was outraged, something of Yorkshire rose up Viddie’s throat, until, as it overflowed, it was joined by a sound like as if the adenoids hadn’t been taken from her. ‘Her own flesh and blood!’ she gasped.

‘Yes,’ said Sister Manhood, sipping her cooler tea, ‘it’s a shame.’ She must try to feel it more deeply; she did: only Elizabeth Hunter her sleeves embroidered in gold thread and pearls in that studio portrait on the desk turning her flower her face in all the radiance of its arrogant beauty holding it up coldly to the light or camera made you concentrate on an old munching skull if you were to raise sympathy — and there you were back at a geriatric case no more than a job.

‘I’m thinking of giving it away,’ she said.

‘Giving away what, dear?’

‘Nursing Mrs Hunter.’

‘But if they send her to the Thorogood Village, won’t the job terminate — automatic?’

‘She may be dead by the time they finish talking about it. They’ll talk all right. Sir Basil and the princess see themselves as highly civilized.’ She laughed through her nose, but didn’t convince herself.