Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

At least Mrs Hunter wouldn’t notice your complexion. But what would she know? What would she smell? Remembering their talk about the goats, Sister Manhood was possessed by dread, her whole body numbed with it, on the soft, relentless stairs. With, her own Basil involved, Mrs Hunter’s sense of smell would surely be all the more acute.

Much as Sister Manhood would have liked to change quickly, to avoid Jessie Badgery in the Nurses’ Room, she had no wish to go bursting in on her patient, to act the spirit of light when she was feeling the complete leaden bod. So she camped around a bit, making mouths at herself in the glass, and peering into the crammed cupboards. It cheered her to some extent to think that Lottie must soon come with the tray, after which Mrs Hunter would indulge in her guessing game of what there was to eat.

‘Ooh, pardon me!’ Sister Badgery put her hand to her mouth, as they did, no doubt, on tea plantations and P. & O. liners, before observing to her colleague, ‘She’s spent really — whatever she may tell you — a cheery morning. Pulse normal — bowels open at ten-thirty — everything the relieving nurse could desire. Oh, and Dr Gidley called. Doctor couldn’t have been better pleased. He’s such fun, isn’t he? I do think Doctor’s a jolly man.’ Then Sister Badgery shook her wattles, her comb, and raised her disdainful beak, as though suddenly remembering she was superior, in the hierarchy of the yard, to this shapely but scatterbrained pullet. ‘Appetite excellent.’ She shuttered a yellow eye. ‘Mrs Lippmann says Mrs Hunter ate an enormous luncheon, and asked for more — which of course she wasn’t allowed,’ Sister Badgery added.

‘She’s had her lunch?’

‘She’s had her lunch. Because you were late. We couldn’t keep her waiting, could we?’ Sister Badgery was so cheerful to be going off duty.

Then Sister Manhood knew that nothing stood between herself and her patient: she had the whole afternoon before her, and some of the evening, with Mrs Hunter.

She went in.

More often than not a wind would be blowing through the house in Moreton Drive, but this was only a wafting breeze fidgeting the muslin curtains, the rather grubby folds of which could become convulsed at other times, with violent shudders, or swell into great majestic sails. This agreeable afternoon breeze would in the long run dull the furniture by laying a film of moisture on its rosewood and mahogany. On the dressing-table, too far off to benefit the patient, was one of the vases of roses Sister de Santis made a point of standing beside the bed, and Sister Badgery of moving to a distance. Sister Manhood could never make up her mind which side she was on in the Wars of the Roses. Because nobody had ever brought her flowers, she failed to see a reason for them, unless plastic: plastic lasts. The current roses had wilted, and she hated both the feel and smell of dead roses. Later on she must remember to throw them out: something to do in the desert of the afternoon.

Mrs Hunter was looking gentle. The breeze from the ocean might have laid its film of moisture on her forehead already: the skin glittered where light caught it. Once or twice she stuck out her under lip blowing at a non-existent lock of hair; her actual hair, thin, dank, indeterminate stuff, lay along her cheeks and on the pillow.

Matching her patient’s gentleness, or obeying her own wariness, the nurse made a silent approach and felt for the pulse: there was much else she must investigate, but warily.

Mrs Hunter said, ‘The butterflies — there used to be those big red ones— brick red, as I remember — making love above the lantana. I often wondered why they chose horrid stuff like lantana. Its smell. He hated it. It used to make him sneeze. So that was an excuse: I had it rooted out.’

It was one of the many moments in life when Flora Manhood could not think what to answer; and the remark, which started by seeming to accuse, had fluttered off in some other direction; or perhaps it was still hovering, not for you to see or understand, but for those who control their own and other people’s lives.

So the nurse asked, ‘Did you have your lunch, love?’ to make certain this too was not something Lottie and Badgery had dreamed up: like what you were supposed to have done to the cloakroom loo.

‘Yes, and it was lovely — if I could remember what it was. Breakfast was better. Kedgeree. I can remember better the things that happened long ago. Except that this foreign woman I’ve engaged isn’t in the kedgeree tradition. But he was so kind — talked so sympathetically. I’m the one who should have had more understanding. But of course, the breakfast — he always loved kedgeree. He likes an early breakfast.’

In her disbelief Sister Manhood ran the tip of her tongue along the line of her lipstick, but said, ‘That was fine, wasn’t it? To both have enjoyed yourselves so much.’

This slack man panting on top of you in his fur bra then dashing off to early breakfast with his old mother when you read that actors lie in bed till afternoon exhausted by acting in the play and love and suppers. Basil hadn’t had the supper, though. He hadn’t exactly acted in a play; though it is always hungry work. Perhaps it was pure hunger drove him out to early breakfast. Or else, the love he imagined he felt for you, had done a boomerang and come back as thoughtfulness for Mum.

Either way, Sister Manhood’s sense of her own deceit returned.

While Mrs Hunter had brightened: she had begun to kindle, to shine, as she did when following up an inspiration; her shoulders twitched on and off. ‘I’ve thought of something—’ she was spitting slightly, ‘something I want to give you, Sister — to wear.’

‘I’ve got all I need, love.’ It was a lie anybody must see through; but you couldn’t be in any way indebted to old Mrs Betty Hunter: the next moment she would turn the thumbscrews.

‘What you need! Praise, love, beauty — anyone can do without them.’ Mrs Hunter snorted. ‘They aren’t necessary. You can live on potatoes and a cup of milk — like an Irish peasant — in a bog!’

Flora Manhood was convinced that, without the least encouragement, Elizabeth Hunter had started tightening the thumbscrews.

When she had licked her lips, Mrs Hunter ordered, ‘Fetch me the box, Sister.’

Sister Manhood brought the jewel case from where it was kept, and the old piebald fingers began actively running over its contents till they found what they could more or less identify.

‘These,’ Mrs Hunter said, and showed. ‘Alfred took to giving me sapphires: one year he gave me the blue, the following year the pink. He had a passion for star sapphires. I never liked them,’ she confessed; ‘too much like lollies. But lovely trans — cend— ental? lollies;’ she gave a hiccup, and the jewels rattled in spite of their velvet nest. ‘Well — aren’t they?’

Because she didn’t know what ‘transcendental’ meant (she couldn’t remember Col ever using the word) Flora Manhood brooded. Or sulked.

Mrs Hunter must have decided to ignore her nurse’s mood and develop her theme. ‘You will have to tell me’, she was forced to admit, ‘which is which. Which is the pink, Sister?’

‘Why the pink?’

‘It’s feminine, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes, I think so. Blue is more intellectual— spiritual,’ she hiccuped again, ‘compared with lush lollypink.’

Flora Manhood had begun to feel unhappy, both for herself and her patient, then, incidentally, for others. ‘That’s the pink,’ she said, stroking it where it lay in the palm of Mrs Hunter’s hand.

‘Take it.’

‘If I don’t want it?’