Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

‘At least he must be interesting,’ she ventured, ‘a professor — and a Norwegian.’ She could not remember ever having met a Norwegian; perhaps as a Frenchwoman she was proud of it.

The children were hardly encouraging.

‘He’s all right.’

‘He doesn’t come out of his shell all that much.’

‘He writes in an old notebook.’

‘And picks his nose.’

‘And lets breezers, as if he didn’t know there was anybody else in the room.’

The children burst, Sara more violently than John, to show her appreciation of a coarse masculine joke. Though they wandered off soon after, the princess person tried to persuade herself she was already more acceptable to them than the professor could ever become.

In the kitchen Mother was peeling potatoes. As one of the characters it amused Elizabeth Hunter to project for sympathetic strangers, she was wearing an apron. There was a scent of gin.

‘“Pehl”—did you say?’ There had been giggling in the kitchen too.

‘Yes. Don’t think I’m running him down, will you? He’s not bad, only serious. And I’m really all in favour of serious men.’ Helen realized the (ex-) Princess Hubert de Lascabanes had intruded on their cosy conversation. ‘Oh, Dorothy, do help yourself to drink.’ After doing her duty, she altered course automatically. ‘I only wish, Elizabeth, you hadn’t insisted on peeling potatoes. Potatoes are half the ruin of my hands.’

‘I’m wholly a ruin without potatoes.’

Elizabeth and Helen sighed: they had been interrupted.

The Princesse de Lascabanes helped herself to a generous squirt of soda. She folded her arms like a thin man.

While peeling a grave potato, Elizabeth was assuring Helen, ‘Scandinavians are clean. I can’t bear those French lavatories— footprints!’ Helen and Elizabeth became convulsed. ‘Helen — you won’t believe — I knew a woman who dropped her passport down the— hole— between the footprints!’ The friends cried with laughter. ‘At Montpellier !’ Elizabeth invited Helen to shriek.

In spite of a decision to suspend hate, Dorothy hated Mother.

‘What is Professor Pehl’s subject?’ the Princesse de Lascabanes cut in coldly.

In self-defence, Helen remembered almost too quickly. ‘Why, he’s a — a marine ecologist, Dorothy.’

‘Interesting.’ Elizabeth sighed.

Then there was the sound of a potato being peeled, and Helen hauling pots around the stove, and men’s voices, and water sluiced.

‘By the way, there aren’t any baths, not even a shower, because we depend on rain water,’ Helen explained. ‘When we become self-conscious about our dirt, we water ourselves with a jug. That’s what Edvard’s doing now.’

Mother said, ‘I came prepared to rough it, darling. It’s Dorothy who grows uppity if all the cons aren’t mod — living in France, too.’

‘Really, Mother!’

Dorothy’s irritation was not given a chance to develop: Jack came in, somewhat improved by an old tussore suit and a crimson cummerbund.

Elizabeth remarked, ‘I do like my men with a dash of colour.’ She had tired of peeling potatoes.

Jack laughed. ‘You should see old Edvard’s back. It’s almost the colour of this cummerbund.’

‘Did you say “Ed- vard”?’ Elizabeth asked.

‘Yes. With a “v”.’

‘Turns it into something different — quite attractive.’ Mother had raised her head, pursed her lips, as though tasting the Norwegian’s name.

It was a characteristic attitude, one probably intended to bear out the legend of a neck and throat. To hide her contempt, Dorothy took up the knife, and began peeling the three or four potatoes Mother was obviously not prepared to finish.

Jack lowered his voice. ‘With or without the “v”, he’s one colossal bore. Wished on to us by somebody we thought our friend. If you don’t take care, Elizabeth, you’ll have him explaining benthic aggregations.’

‘You can rely on me to avoid anything of that description,’ Mother solemnly promised; merely by opening her mouth she made others laugh.

The moon was rising, full and red, a legacy from the flamingo sunset. Jack Warming had come round, seated himself on a corner of the table, and put an arm round his wife’s waist. Perhaps not altogether unconscious of the picture, Elizabeth Hunter’s still imperceptibly shrivelled lily offered its effulgence. Brumby Island appeared a world of harmony with which Dorothy de Lascabanes had been made to clash, and now, it seemed, Edvard Pehl; though she would not dare envisage him as an ally. In the circumstances she was humbly grateful for being allowed to peel potatoes.

Helen had started fussing, wondering where her children could be, and Elizabeth said, ‘Sara looks delicious in my chain. I hope she doesn’t lose it. Not that it’s of great value. Precious only because it’s practically the first thing I can remember.’

‘Lose it? God forbid!’ Perhaps it had been Mother’s intention that Helen should suffer. ‘I’ll go and round them up at once.’

‘Do let me go, Mrs Warming.’ The Princesse de Lascabanes had finished off her potato less meticulously than she would have wished; but she was again in danger of feeling desperate.

‘You wouldn’t know where.’

‘No. I’ll look around — I’d like to — and find them.’

Without waiting for considered permission, Dorothy escaped. By moonlight the house almost convinced that it had put to sea. Under the heavy red moon the distance undulated gently as her feet spanked along the deck. Silence had fallen in the galley. No other sound but the whirring of a bird somewhere between sea and land.

When a door opened and Edvard Pehl stepped out on to the veranda. In one hand he was carrying a towel, in the other, the pair of bathing trunks. Nor did darkness help clothe him; if anything, a phosphorescence emphasized his nakedness. She was conscious of the parting of his rather fleshy, though firm breasts; then her glance, decently averted, was drawn for a flickering instant — no, worse: she was hypnotized. Mon Dieu, des seiches! When in all her married life she had not allowed herself to notice.

That she did not collide compulsively with a monolith of flesh was due to the professor’s self-possession. He slightly swerved, not ungracefully considering the stolid first impression, rather as though playing a bull, and continued firmly along the veranda, or deck, or slatted nightmare. Though large enough to run the risk of wobbling, his buttocks looked hard as marble. She was compelled to watch them, and saw the moonlight glinting in a polished saucer as he disappeared inside the cabin next to her own.

Under her retreat the veranda swung groaned she might have been prising the slats wider open without giving thought to direction hadn’t she been directionless ever since coming to this island heels now trapped in mattresses of coarse hair or grass now bogged in wet sand. Logically, on arrival at the water’s edge, she should have taken the smooth path distance offered. Instead she turned, and walked or wallowed back, and was received into the room which was hers for want of another.

The walls might have been felt-lined: they were breathing at her. She bolted the shutters. Nothing could be done about the door: its lock was not provided with a key.

So Helen was able to break in and attempt to coax this troubled child. ‘Dorothy, darling, aren’t you coming for some dinner?’

‘No — thank you— Mrs Warming.’ She had not meant her voice to explode.

‘What, I wonder, can we do for you?’

It made Dorothy laugh cry. ‘Nothing, really— chère Hélène. Je vous en prie— Helen.’ All the more humiliating in that you were the prefect and Helen Warming the junior girl.