Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

‘But you must. You must wear it for your engagement.’

‘I’m not engaged.’

‘You will be. There’s hardly anyone doesn’t go through it.’

‘I might be an old maid.’ Sister Manhood cackled.

So did Mrs Hunter.

Then the latter composed her lips before delivering the gipsy’s warning which rings a bell in most women, and which surely this silly nurse would hear. ‘It’s your fate. And he loves you,’ Mrs Hunter said.

Flora Manhood pouffed. ‘I don’t know so much about that. They make use of you. In any case, I could never ever marry a man so much older than myself.’

‘A boy!’

To his monument of a mother, no doubt.

But an old man: he had let out a short fart, his buttocks quivering and hesitating, before he came; she had felt the elderly lips tasting her eyelids, bunting at her breasts. Then he had run hungry to his mother, and they had hatched this Hunter plot over the early kedgeree.

‘Even if there was any question of my getting engaged, oughtn’t the man to give me the ring?’ Because she was afraid of falling into one of a number of traps, she made herself sound as ungracious as she could.

‘He might be embarrassed — if I gave him the ring and told him to give it,’ Mrs Hunter replied. ‘He’ll see it as a practical arrangement if you explain why you’re wearing it. Women are more practical. Some men know — though they mostly won’t admit.’

Since you had allowed the old thing to transfer the pink lolly to your hand, you were growing greedy for it: from certain angles the buried star would come alive.

‘It’s all very well for me to take the ring.’ Flora Manhood sounded harsher still. ‘There’d be nothing to show I hadn’t snitched it, if — supposing — you died all of a sudden, say.’ It was she who wished to die: she was so ashamed; but had been pushed to it. ‘You did say we’re practical,’ she blurted, ‘didn’t you?’

‘You are perfectly right. Telephone to — What’s-his-name — my solicitor, Sister. Ask him to look in — to write it down that the ring has become your property.’

It sounded awful: she had never owned any property until this ring, her right to which existed only in the old girl’s attic of a mind.

So she went out mumbling, neither agreeing nor refusing; though she had gone so far as to put the ring in her pocket.

The afternoon was the desert she had feared, in which she invented little unnecessary jobs for herself and disciplines to impose on her patient.

Twice Mrs Hunter remembered to ask, ‘Did you get through to Arnold — to come about the sapphire — to put it on paper?’ On the first occasion Sister Manhood was able to avoid answering: she was engaged in seating her patient on the commode; at the second inquiry, she snapped back, ‘I wonder if half his clients realize what a busy man Mr Wyburd is?’ That would not have entered into it if she hadn’t been afraid of how the solicitor might look at her, for winkling a jewel out of Elizabeth Hunter. But she would have to keep the ring; she knew by now: from its continued presence in her pocket, from its smooth motions against her thigh, from its burning itself into her flesh.

Then it was time at last for de Santis to arrive; soon you would escape to your own room, to fondle your jewel. Which would never fulfil its purpose, because you wouldn’t accept a proposal, not even another proposition, from Basil Hunter, however hard his mother worked to prostitute you to her son.

This evening de Santis appeared unusually thoughtful. And was wearing (good grief) an orange hat.

‘I decided to take your advice,’ she explained, ‘and buy myself something gay. How do you like it?’

It was more than awful; there was something sort of sacrilegious about Mary de Santis in this orange hat, not worse if she had bent down, switched her skirt over her back, and shown she was wearing a naked bum underneath.

‘Or don’t you?’ Sister de Santis was waiting.

‘It’ll take a bit of getting used to. It isn’t part of your — your image, Sister.’ Flora Manhood was sweating with her own daring.

But she was able to start giving the details of their patient’s condition during the afternoon. I’d say she’s a bit constipated, whatever ideas Badgery may have. Badgery sees things as it suits her. The old girl could do, perhaps, with an enema. If you like, Sister, I’ll stay back and give you a hand with the enema.’

Sister de Santis smiled; she was so thoughtful: was it of her own reflection in that hat? ‘Is she?’ she said. ‘We’ll see. I might phone Dr Gidley and ask what he thinks. In any case, there’s no need for you to stay. I can manage the enema. Poor old thing, she’s only a husk.’ All the while Sister de Santis continued smiling, for her own thoughts, or the orange hat.

Sister Manhood was beginning to lose patience, when her colleague said, ‘I’m going to let you into a secret, dear.’ Never in history had Sister de Santis called you ‘dear’.

Sister Manhood was dumbfounded: coming from someone as remote and respected as de Santis, the gesture shocked rather than touched her; St Mary should never set foot on earth.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Sister de Santis said, that smile still afloat on her face, but graver than before, I’ve decided to go to Sir Basil’s hotel, tomorrow, to ask him what they really intend to do about their mother.’

You could have pushed Sister Manhood over. ‘But do you think you ought to?’ she could scarcely ask. ‘I mean — meddling in family affairs. Is it any of our business?’

Sister de Santis said, as though she had been reading it, ‘It’s up to us not to remain what they call the silent majority;’ and at least took off the orange hat.

Sister Manhood was horrified. ‘But what could you do? And him! If a man’s dishonest enough to dump his mother, he’s immoral, probably, in other ways we don’t yet know of.’

Sister de Santis only smiled, and began taking off her dress. Overfulness in the bust showed her to be what you always thought — but never liked to admit — out of proportion.

Disappointment raged in Flora Manhood. ‘I think you’re bonkers!’ Not that she desired, having experienced, Sir Basil Hunter; not even though his mother had sealed a long-term contract with a star sapphire ring.

But Mary de Santis!

‘I’d be very careful, Sister,’ Sister Manhood advised.

‘I have no intention of being anything else.’ Sister de Santis had clothed herself in her uniform; there remained the veil: nobody adjusted a veil more religiously.

But Flora Manhood was unnerved. What if you could not trust this stately figure any more than you could trust yourself? What if St Mary was a whore behind your back? Everyone knew about that colonel she had taken overseas in a liner, and got an annuity out of when he died. The colonel might not have been as old and gaga as she made out, and his nurse more subtle. Flora Manhood did not want to think such thoughts, just as she wanted no more of Basil — oh dear no; it was the threatened fall from grace of somebody revered which shocked her.

Presently, on seeing there was nothing she could do, either by persuasion, or helping with an enema, Sister Manhood left. At one point, she slithered on the steep, coiling path, and nearly fell. When there was nobody left to respect, neither Sister de Santis, nor Mrs Hunter (poor Lottie couldn’t help it if she was foreign and out of the running), certainly not Sir Basil Hunter the Great Actor, she must concentrate on this child who had, perhaps, been planted in her and whom she would love with all the love and strength she could raise. But who was there for her boy to love and respect?

She went skittering away, in her bargain shoes, into darkness.