Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

Nurse is sitting you down upon your sit-upon.

‘Do you think it will happen, Mary?’

‘What will, Mrs Hunter?’

‘Well — I must remember.’ Seat’s too cold in the beginning the old commode to think or do.

It has these very delicate arms curving down like swans’ necks. Feathers are rough, not the heads, not the beaks even; swans’ beaks, in life, look knobbed — pustular.

‘You see these carved heads, Sister? They were polished by Basil’s hands. He used this same commode during his— his fatal illness, at “Kudjeri”. Eldred used to sit him on it. I did myself — sometimes — at the end.’

‘Really? Fancy!’

She’ll go soon, leaving you to fate. They do. Yes, they have always gone.

‘Hold on tight to the arms, Mrs Hunter. Do you think you’ll be all right on your own?’

‘Perfectly. It’s such a reliable piece of furniture. Isn’t it useful?’

‘Useful, and elegant too. Here’s the bell beside you. You can ring if you want me.’

‘Yes.’

She is going. And why not? Constipation is caused by nurses hanging around bossing, treating you like a bundle of dirty linen.

All afternoon evening wanting to drowse back to some difficult situation you were not allowed a nurse’s heel indenting the brain (ugh! not brains Nurse) carrying the sound of brittle roses the two later voices hammering together and apart in other rooms on words and names Elizabeth I must only ever be called without foreshortening ELIZABETH that is my isn’t it my given name whatever else parents parents are given too whether you like it the one her bones crumbling the other a rifle in his mouth children are dolls the parents leave for nurses to hoist I’m not a doll Nurse lolling on the cold commode however drowsy cold does not cut the will to discover which direction you must take the island was it the storm of course you had desired the man Dorothy ran away from but only desired as a last reflection in the little tin looking-glass a nocturne was hammering out that last of nights nothing else after the trees had bent double some snapped the house carried off like any human relationship then walking down towards the piled water the swans from dipping their beaks rose hard precise yet loving admittedly only for the bread you had and sodden unhallowed by the eye of the storm the swans accept the bread no longer hissing like children why had you called them Basil Dorothy ugly names hatched out of pride by Elizabeth Hunter a swan herself but black.

Ooh don’t kick mahogany only hurts the heels. Sister? No. What can they do for a jack-in-a-box once the spring’s gone? Not worth it. Throw it out. Boxes and islands. I must not think myself on to the island. I am not hallowed— therefore — I must eschew? all such thoughts — for the time being.

Love is closer anyway and warmer than adoration of some vast and unknowable cloud. Think instead of the silly human Manhood. Womanly: that’s it. Elizabeth Hunter was never womanly enough, her flaws too perfectly disguised under appearances: enormous, gaping, at times agonizing flaws. Even so, perhaps you are reserved, through these same flaws, for other ends. Whatever and when, it is more comforting to drowse over this Flora silly Man you gave the pink sapphire to belove her to her chemist.

After failing so many — worst oh far worst my darling Alfred born without the machinery for getting his own back — you could not expect fulfilment as a woman only as an all giver.

Little children come tumbling out like sheeps’ pellets but unexpectedly hard into the cold commodious world.

When love is what my Alfred has longed for what the chemist prescribes it is what the nurse and I withhold.

Perhaps it will drop pink at last the lolly sapphire like any common brown penny.

‘Sister? If you don’t leave the bell, how can you expect me to ring? Sister de Santis! Lungs aren’t leather, either. Urrr! I might die on this damn commode and nobody know.’

Mary de Santis sometimes wondered how she had chosen to live where she did; except she had to live somewhere. She was always promising herself she would move, but something in her, of the passive mollusc, or solitary female, had so far prevented it. And after all, she was only here in her ‘conveniently situated flatette’ to spend a few daylight hours, most of those asleep. And the rent was low: not low enough, perhaps, considering the view of visceral plumbing exposed against the wall of ox-blood brick opposite. She could stand a plant, however, on the window sill; and if the stove was obsolete and smelly she was not interested in food, or not when on her own: plenty of bread and butter, with strong tea, and just the occasional cigarette, had become her normal diet. Above the narrow divan where she slept, she had nailed Mamma’s icons, which caused a film to form, she noticed, almost always on the eyes of the casual caller; to her own eyes the icons were by now little more than atavistic windows, so choked with age, grime, and conflicting sentiments, they failed to open. In any case, she had decided not to make a cult of the past, though she had hung Papa’s diploma next to her own certificate on one of the walls of the superfluous triangular hall, and still had his medical books arranged with her own on the adjustable shelves she had wisely bought as far back as graduation. She loved her books. She owned some of the classics: George Eliot, Conrad, The Cloister and the Hearth, The Moonstone. If ever she felt particularly serious, or lonely, she might read a poem or two; she could read Dante, haltingly, in Enrico’s voice. Then, at the window, there was this exceptionally beautiful, velvety, deep crimson cyclamen she had nursed by regular attention and affection over several seasons: she liked to feel something growing, living, in the room where she lived if only during the less significant intervals. For she had her work: that was her life, and she was happy in it.

This at least was the comfortable theory well-meaning people had thrust on her. Reserved by nature, and not given to argument, she accepted it, while sensing that the visible ramifications of her work were no more than a convenient trompe l’œil to distract attention from that shadowy labyrinth strewn with signs through which she approached ‘happiness’.

Rational beings are pacified by evidence of efficiency: a scoured bedpan veiled in starched white, the geometry of linen, a temperature chart; or uplifted, rational though they claim to be, by a mystique inherent in the pretty confetti of capsules, and less demonstrative, more insidious, ampoules, locked for safety in the steel cabinet behind the bathroom door. All of which has only indirect bearing on your significant life, revealed nightly in the presence of this precious wafer of flesh from which earthly beauty has withdrawn, but whose spirit will rise from the bed and stand at the open window, rustling with the light of its own reflections, till finally disintegrating into the white strands strung between the araucarias and oaks of the emergent park, yourself kneeling in spirit to kiss the pearl-embroidered hem, its cold weave the heavier for dew or tears.

Frequently Sister de Santis grew ashamed of her opulent obsessions; just as, in a physical context, she was embarrassed by her own bust when men sitting opposite stared at her cleavage, or when Sister Manhood’s disapproval was stretched as remorselessly as a tapemeasure.

This morning after returning from duty Mary de Santis was unable to rest: neither her mind nor her body allowed her. She was this heavy slab, turned, and again, turned, on the narrow, rigidly sprung divan; but a slab holed by insinuating thoughts. As she tossed, her breasts bumped around, in search of independence it seemed, while never parted from her. And the orange hat so obviously condemned by Flora Manhood: she went cold thinking of her hat; she tried to wring it out of her inner vision by squeezing her eyes tighter shut. Sometimes by daylight, and particularly on this important morning, she could not believe that Mrs Hunter would survive till night, or herself experience again the peace which darkness offers.