Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

Flora Manhood lumped herself together in the bed. Already there were flashes of tawny light through the rattling blinds. The light blew cold on her nakedness raising goosepimples as she watched.

Basil Hunter looked frightening in his sleep. His expression twitched, and on and off, it was twisted into tight knots of wrinkles. She too felt frightened at last.

She put out a hand, before bending over him to say, ‘You must have been having a shocking dream.’

‘Yes. I was murdering — or being murdered — I can’t remember — or who.’

Though it sounded sleepy enough, he was watching her keenly to see whether his explanation had satisfied her. But she was not interested in his dream: she looked preoccupied by some unhappiness, or murder, of her own. It had given her something more than her rather commonplace, healthy prettiness: she was beautiful, her hair an equal of the tawny light; only her expression remained remote and sad.

Flora Manhood did in fact feel unbearably sad. Here was this strange, not bad, but boring man, unconscious of the part he was playing, or the child she could conceive by him, regardless of whether he, or the child, wished it. She herself would not have wished to be born; sometimes she wondered whether her parents had wished it; or whether it was something that had happened because it was too long a drive to the pictures, so they stayed at home. Of course they would never have admitted to it if you had been brave enough to ask them; they were honest, religious-minded people.

She was the dishonest one, the deceiver. Her own child, whom she could not help seeing with the features of Colin Pardoe, would grow up as the visible proof of her deception, and she would have to disguise her remorse as love for her boy. Whichever way she looked she could see no end to her dishonesty: a vista of mirrors inside a mirror.

At least the actor would go away, and need not know. It was the rightful father who would remain and know. Passing them in the street or sitting opposite in the bus, he would look for his own features in what should have been his child. Oh, but she would take her boy away to another city, and there perhaps she would be able to love him enough to prevent him suspecting her deceit and ending up hating her.

While Basil Hunter, the more he looked at her brooding over her secret thoughts, wanted to make amends for what must have seemed a capricious seduction: on the contrary, he had been feeling tired and dispirited, not to say disgusted with himself for his intentions towards that old woman who was also his mother. Actually there should not have been any question of making amends to Flora Manhood; he was by now sure — or as sure as you can ever be — that it was not merely a matter of sexual desire: he could love this girl for the beauty of her simplicity, and her still unformed character would respond gratefully and happily.

‘What is it?’ She didn’t really want an answer, but felt that, for politeness’s sake, she was bound to ask.

‘I’d like you to kiss me.’

His request was so simple she laughed, and bent over him; she more than kissed him: she raised his shoulders with her strong arms, and began dashing her lips against his forehead, his hair, as though trying to give expression to some deep-seated, natural passion.

So that, from being at first only her patient, he became her baby. He could have been wanting that. He did in fact nuzzle at those breasts overflowing with kindness and — and ‘nourishment’, unlike the reluctant official tit recoiling from his importunity.

As he sucked, and made all the sounds of gratified fulfilment, she felt herself to be doubly a deceiver: for she was holding the past in her arms, under the staggy orange trees, amongst the hummocks, in the green haze of Noamurra. When the haze cleared, and here was this ugly substitute.

But she went through her part in the play, of wife and mother, without showing her distress, let alone disgust.

Basil was saying, ‘Don’t you feel this is real, Flora?’ He did honestly want to believe it.

She smiled, and began putting on her clothes.

‘When shall we see each other?’ he asked. ‘It’s going to be a right old lark phoning you in that house! Don’t you appreciate the irony?’

She pounced on finding her mislaid shoes.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I’ll get into something and come out to the gate with you.’

‘Won’t there be somebody at the desk?’

‘Only a man at this hour. And a man is less likely to chalk it up against me.’

For the moment she couldn’t think which sex she despised more; neither man nor woman would silence the objections which kept raising their heads in her mind.

So she preferred to kiss him formally, and go. She had a thumping appetite too: she could eat a plate of bacon, and a couple of Vid’s numbered eggs fried till the whites were crisp round the edges.

While Basil got back, looking forward to another stretch. Till now his thoughts had been mostly of love; but he might even marry the girl. Himself as husband. In the days when marriage had implied Shiela’s drunken slanging or Enid’s spiked epigrams, he couldn’t take it; matured since, he was again tempted by this peculiarly exacting role; above all, the idea of a woman keeping the bed permanently warm, was beginning to exercise its appeal. And a nurse: look after you; go out and work if necessary. It wouldn’t be. There was the money, your own and rightful. Little Flora could only respond with gratitude.

Half asleep he tried out the variations on a name: Sister Manhood; Lady Hunter; Sir Basil’s wife; all of them strong, and the total woman a conspicuously attractive addition to the cast of his play.

He continued drowsily smiling, till a hair bent in one of his nostrils, making him sneeze.

Flora Manhood looked in at the breakfast room where Badgery had begun her lunch, Lottie Lippmann in attendance.

‘You’re late, darling.’ The housekeeper was not accusing. ‘We began to wonder.’ If anything, there was awe in her voice, as though she believed in the sanctity of youth and beauty; she would have liked to start at once stuffing this pretty young thing with food, because it was the only way in which she could express her belief.

‘I’m not staying. I’m not hungry.’

‘You’re not ill, are you?’ Badgery asked rather too loud through a mouthful of chicken liver and rice.

‘I’m late. I got up late.’

‘Not ill !’ Mrs Lippmann’s scorn rang out. ‘Sie sieht so reizend aus! Strahlend!’ she chanted.

‘What is that, may I ask, when translated for ordinary persons to understand?’ Sister Badgery might have looked provoked if the foreign language had not allowed her to feel complacent as she sat spooning more of the sauce over her food. (She never understood how people could ‘make a practice of foreign food’, but she tried to do justice to it.)

Herself reduced to Sister Badgery’s earthly level, Mrs Lippmann answered in dulled tones, ‘It means, if you’d like to know, Floradora is looking good.’

‘Ah, dear!’ Sister Badgery sighed; she gave a peck or two, for propriety’s sake, then settled down to gobbling her mash.

Sister Manhood didn’t feel good. Going upstairs, going on duty, she could not have described her feelings. On arriving home she had eaten four of the Vidler eggs and as many rashers of bacon. She had slept too long and too heavy, and jumped up, and got into her clothes too quick. If she looked good to other people, it was, to put it crudely, on account of the friction: there’s nothing like the friction of one human skin against another, she had often noticed, for bringing the complexion to life.