Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

‘Oh yes, we know each other. Don’t we, Mr Wyburd?’ Sister Badgery winked, and moistened her already glistening teeth.

He knew her too well. She had shaken her head at him on sidling into the room with the tray, reminding him of a white Leghorn: inquisitive, ostentatiously industrious, silly, easily outraged. She would look in at the office on Fridays after duty and he handed her her envelope. (This had been ordained by Mrs Hunter for all her staff, not as a nuisance to him, but to ensure personal relationships for them.) Sister Badgery would sit a while to air her pretensions, based on her training at the Royal Prince Alfred and a curtailed marriage to a retired tea planter from Ceylon.

Over just visibly reluctant lips Mr Wyburd murmured, ‘Sister Badgery and I are old friends.’

Mrs Hunter swallowed her third mouthful of nauseating egg, some of which, she could feel, had dribbled on to her chin, and Badgery would be too flattered by Arnold to notice. ‘Mr Wyburd,’ she succeeded in ejecting the words, ‘should be having his own breakfast. It’s been arranged. I hope it’s a man’s breakfast, Arnold. Foreign women don’t understand that a man’s strength — hinges — on his breakfast.’

Sister Badgery laughed at the joke; the things on the tray clattered.

‘I don’t doubt it will be an adequate breakfast,’ Mr Wyburd said, and Sister Badgery renewed her laughter as though he too had made a joke.

‘I don’t know why you didn’t go sooner,’ Mrs Hunter was hectoring: foolishness in a dependent would turn her lungs to leather in an instant.

‘You were having such a good sleep,’ he protested; ‘I didn’t want to disturb it.’

‘I wasn’t sleeping — only thinking. I hope Mrs Lippmann has cooked you a chop — or a dish of devilled kidneys. Alfred used to take cold chops whenever he went mustering or drafting. Horrid! But that’s what the men like. Take him — show him, Sister!’

‘I’m sure Mr Wyburd knows the way. I dare say he could show me corners of this house I never ever knew existed.’ Sister Badgery laughed some more, and Mr Wyburd went downstairs exceedingly humiliated.

‘Now you can put away that wretched egg. There are things you must do for me — urgently.’

‘Really? But the coffee. You’ve forgotten your coffee, Mrs Hunter.’

She had too. ‘Did you put the brandy in it?’

‘Oh dear, yes, my life wouldn’t be worth much, would it? if I forgot the brandy.’

Mrs Hunter groped for and took the cup, her lips feeling for the lip. She found, and strength returned in a delirious stream, through the funnel of her mouth, right down to her chilly toes.

Sister Badgery watched this old blind puppy with approval, even affection. She did not approve of drink, only of Mrs Hunter’s brandy. She admired the rich, and enjoyed working for them because it gave her a sense of security, of connection, however vicarious. To her friends she would refer to wealthy patients always by their first names; she knew intimately strangers she had read about in gossip columns: they were no longer strangers if you read about them often enough.

Mrs Hunter was supping her brandied coffee; soon she would grow muzzy, and sleep.

‘I want you to make me up, Sister,’ she spluttered through a last mouthful, ‘for my daughter’s arrival.’

‘Make you up? You know I can’t. In all my life nothing but good soap and water ever touched my face.’

‘I was afraid of that.’ She sounded more resigned than bitter. ‘If only it were little Manhood: she could do it for me.’

‘I don’t doubt. Sister Manhood comes of a different background.’

‘So what? She came off a banana farm. And you’re an engine driver’s daughter.’

‘My father was an engineer employed by the State Government. My three brothers are public servants, and two of them elders of the Presbyterian Church.’ Mrs Hunter did not care as much as Sister Badgery. ‘I had a very strict upbringing. Even when I started my nurse’s training at P.A., my father expected a full account of my leisure activities. As for Sister Manhood — she was out dancing around with any young resident doctor who asked her. I know that for a fact. Oh, I have nothing against Sister Manhood. Believe me ! She’s a charming girl — so full of vitality, fm actually fond of Sister Manhood, and only wish she wouldn’t touch up so much; it gives strangers a wrong impression.’

Mrs Hunter said, ‘I like to feel I have been made up. It fills me with — an illusion — of beauty. Of course I may never have been beautiful: even in my heyday I was never absolutely sure — only of what was reflected in other people’s eyes — and I can no longer see distinctly.’

‘Sorry, dear, I can’t be of any help when it comes to cosmetics.’ Sister Badgery was slightly remorseful as she took the cup from the old thing’s hands. ‘Anything else I can do for you?’

The nurse stood holding her breath: bad enough if it were the bedpan, but to hoist her patient on to the commode almost always ricked her back.

‘Yes. There is something,’ Mrs Hunter said. ‘My jewel case. Then I shan’t feel completely naked.’

Sister Badgery began swishing about. The jewels played such a part in their owner’s life they increased the self-importance of any member of her household assisting at the ceremony.

Mrs Lippmann had once ventured to suggest, ‘She shouldn’t be allowed to flash her jewels at whoever comes: at the electrician, if you please, and window cleaners!’ But the housekeeper was notoriously jealous.

‘Poor old soul, they’re what she’s got to show,’ Sister Badgery replied, ‘and what she loves.’

‘Someone might steal — or murder her for them.’

‘They mightn’t dare.’

Mrs Lippmann agreed they might not.

Now when she had brought the case Sister Badgery asked, ‘Hadn’t I better open it for you?’

‘No, thank you.’ The catch responded less quickly to more agile fingers: she knew its tricks. She knew every inch of the mangy, velvet-covered box.

Her jewels.

Sister Badgery who thought she could recognize each, or almost every jewel — that was the peculiar part: not everything had been revealed — and who knew by heart the stories attached, though again not all, for the stories would breed others, was regularly entranced at the unveiling; but this morning felt provoked that Mrs Hunter should have scrabbled through the velvet trays and got herself into half-a-dozen rings behind her back.

‘Aren’t you well ! Aren’t you active today!’ The nurse was genuinely impressed. ‘It’s your daughter’s arrival.’

‘Oh, the tale of jewels!’ Mrs Hunter knew her acolytes must often have caught her out telling her once blazing, if now extinct, beads.

Whatever her own feelings Sister Badgery would never be caught out in any popish act: no one would guess how she adored, for instance, this pigeon’s-blood ruby, or that she was capable of worshipping an ancient idol for its treasure.

To deflect the wrath of her forebears by a display of down-to-earth professional skill, the nurse announced, ‘We’ll prop you up a step or two, shall we? Whoopsy-dey, Mrs Hunter!’ as she hoisted.

And there was the idol propped against the pillows, the encrusted fingers outspread as though preparing to play a complicated scale on the hem of the sheet.

To introduce a touch of warmth, the nurse inquired, ‘Would you like your maribou jacket, dear? Or the woolly stole, perhaps?’

‘Thank you. The stole.’ Mrs Hunter barely breathed: physical exertion had exhausted her.

Sister Badgery draped the stole; she could not have treated a saint with greater reverence, though she did not believe in saints, not, at any rate, those Roman Catholic ones: ugh!