Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

Some little apprehension, though only of a momentary nature, rose in her at Moreton Drive. Where a sharp wind had prevailed amongst the wharves and along the expressway, here more of a breeze, or circular languor, inspired the mops and switches of the native trees. Overcome by what should have been happy surprise, the princess almost tipped the driver twenty cents, before scotching that foolishness too: she made it ten.

Was it morning that caused the squeal made by the hinges on the gate to sound so penetrating, yet private, and somehow melancholy? She could remember listening as a child for the sound of the gate, wondering whether this time it was announcing the arrival she had always half expected: of the person in whom beauty was united with kindliness? Would she be listening still if she had continued living in Elizabeth Hunter’s house?

Strange that Mother should have thought to preserve, stranger still to plant, native trees in her garden: herself an exotic even down to her hypocrisies. I shan’t feel happy till I’ve tasted everything there is to taste and I don’t intend to refuse what is unpleasant — that is experience of another kind. There must have been some Australian streak still existent under the posturing, the opinions and habits borrowed from another tradition. But how can you possibly love them Mother? Scarcely trees — monotonous ugly scarecrows — ugh! When they broke your heart at times, just from thinking of them, and in another hemisphere. I can’t reason about it Dorothy only swear that it’s a true passion whether you believe me or not tell me if you can why confident responsive women are attracted to withdrawn shadowy men? or gentle girls to hairy brutes? Oh Mother — must we descend to that level? At any level Elizabeth Hunter could make you feel you had inherited some of her moral pretences, and added to them, if you were honest, a dash of priggishness all your own.

Now the princess went warily as she climbed the path which wound amongst the contentious trees. Wary of the light too. Round the suspended terracotta dish, which the night nurse kept filled with seed, birds were hanging in fluttering clusters. Instead of the normal clash and shattering of light, here it glowed and throbbed like the drone of doves.

She opened her bag and looked distractedly inside, without knowing, she realized, what she expected to find. She shut the bag. She wet her lips. She must forget about the light, the trees. She rang the bell, and heard her authority resound through a house, the size and misuse of which, made it redundant, if not downright immoral. (It occurred only very briefly to the Princesse de Lascabanes that she would have been horrified in other circumstances by the attitude she was forced to adopt.)

As on a previous occasion, the bell was answered by the nurse on duty.

‘Oh, dear!’ Sister Badgery was sent flying several paces back. ‘I got a shock!’ she clattered.

‘Why — whatever shocked you?’ the princess heard a bleached voice inquire.

‘I expected someone else, I expect.’ Sister Badgery laughed and gawked, unlike the widow of a tea planter.

‘Who is expected?’

‘I don’t know I’m sure.’ Behind her spectacles the nurse was trying to look mysterious. ‘Not you anyway — Princess Dor — mad- dahm!’ She was bubbling up again. ‘Maybe Jehovah’s Witness!’ she shrieked.

Neither of them could decide whether to take it as a joke or a revelation. The nurse at least was in a position to turn and lead the caller upstairs.

Dorothy thought it prudent to avoid inquiring after her mother’s health; instead she asked with deliberate coldness, ‘Has the housekeeper broken a bridge on this occasion too?’

‘Oh, ne-o!’ Sister Badgery twittered, and shook her veil. ‘She’s a bit under the weather. That’s all. Her feet — and everything.’ She half turned while continuing to sidle up the stairs. ‘Between ourselves, mad-dam, many of these Continental Jewesses are more than a little neurotic.’ The nurse herself had a tic in one cheek as she turned back to give full attention to the climb, with a less crablike, more of a perching-Leghorn motion. ‘In any case, it’s no hardship for me to answer the bell. I love people.’

‘I’m told that’s why some women choose to work at news stalls on railway stations,’ the princess remarked. ‘But surely, with a temperament like yours, you must feel lonely in this big old unused house?’

Looking down into the gulf of the hall which she had known intimately, Dorothy herself half-admitted to loneliness.

But Sister Badgery was protesting out of a flurry of veil, ‘Oh, ne-o, ne-o! Mrs Hunter is such a happy — such an original soul! She makes a person see things in a different light from day to day. We all worship Mrs Hunter — your mother.’

Dorothy was more than ever determined not to inquire after Mother’s health. ‘I’m expecting my brother at almost any moment.’ She made it a cheerful warning.

‘Oh, Sir Basil!’ Sister Badgery gasped. ‘Then there will be two of you,’ she added rather pointlessly; even more so, ‘I had three brothers. I could rely on each one of them for moral support.’

The two women had reached the landing, where they were glad to draw breath a moment.

‘Though it amuses you to answer the bell, I’m sorry you’ve had this exhausting climb,’ the princess thought to apologize.

‘Oh ne-o, it’s really nothing. I love the exercise,’ Sister Badgery insisted; in between panting and smiling, she seemed to be drying the buckle of her teeth with her under lip while developing a line of thought. ‘Actually, for some people it’s a climb. Poor Mrs Lippmann has her feet. Actually, what upsets Mrs Lippmann more than anything is to think she may become so incapacitated she won’t be able to dance again for Mrs Hunter.’

‘Have you seen it?’ the princess was tempted to ask about what she had vaguely heard.

‘Only Mrs Hunter has seen.’ Sister Badgery bowed her head and led the way along the passage, lightly tossing over her shoulder, perhaps to frustrate the visitor some more, ‘In her day Mrs Lippmann was a great artiste we are told — by Mrs Lippmann.’ Standing with one hand on the knob, head inclined against a panel of the door, the nurse might have ended by sounding vindictive if it were not for looking as though physical exertion and some demanding preoccupation had blanched the malice out of her.

Other questions were rising to the surface of Dorothy’s mind, but there was no time to ask them: the nurse had opened the door of Mother’s room, and you would have to go inside. What made the moment more portentous, Sister Badgery was clinging to the knob, holding back, while an intensified flickering of eyelids and the directionless drift of a pallid smile implied that she personally would have no part in anything reprehensible anyone else might be plotting. The princess hesitated, to give protocol a chance. But the nurse failed to announce her; she closed the door, shutting out her own blameless figure and a last simper of apologies.

‘Is that you, Dorothy? I can’t see.’

‘Yes, Mother.’ The Princesse de Lascabanes felt her nylons turn to lisle.

The figure on the bed — her mother — continued treading the waters of recent sleep, till rising above the wave she was to some extent clothed by the myth of her former beauty.

Alone, Dorothy was already quailing for the kind of sentimental weaknesses a raking of the past might uncover. At the Judgment, too, you stand alone: not only Basil, all other sinners will contrive to be late. Your only hope in the present lies in indignation for whatever disgusts most: from faecal whiffs, breath filtered through mucus, the sickly scent of baby powder. Thus fortified, you may hope to face the prosecution and conduct your own defence.