Patrick White - The Vivisector

In brushing against one whose eyes invoked the particular of which the generality is composed, Pavloussis shied away. ‘Wonderful people! Beautiful house! My wife is enjoying herself,’ he pronounced, still smiling, not for his particular examiner, but for a whole abstract cosmos.

Duffield was interested in the little sacs of dark skin at the corners of the shipowner’s eyelids: they provided something ugly, excrescent, in the otherwise excessively bland.

This non-meeting occurred very quickly and, it seemed, irrelevantly. He returned to his increasing grudge against their hostess for not introducing Madame Pavloussi after insisting that they must be forced together. Her friend’s presence had drugged Olivia: she looked haggard, vulgar even, as she stuck her nose in a glass of gin; while Madame Pavloussi nursed her glass with both hands, as though it had been a handleless cup of innocent spring water.

Passing and repassing at the end of the room, his calves aching with tension, he heard a woman remark: ‘But I adore his paintings.’ A second replied: ‘I adore him! He’s always been one of my heart-throbs.’ He should have treated his adorers kindly, but allowed them to peter out in the abashed smiles of schoolgirl crushes.

The major-domo confessed to the hostess in velvety tones that dinner was served.

Mrs Davenport’s voice sounded comparatively raucous: ‘Oh, thank you, Spurgeon; I hope everyone’s as ravenous as I.’

The Amethyst Pendant folded her disapproving lips over her moist, greenish teeth. As a headmistress and an O.B.E. she couldn’t allow herself to approve of any kind of eccentricity.

The hostess’ example released something: what should have been a leisurely and graceful progress to the dining-room became bit of a rout; the burr and bray of male laughter jostled with the thin reeds of girlish giggles; a banker just missed knocking a T’ang horse off its stand; while the guests of honour smiled indulgently, seeming to find nothing, or perhaps everything, unusual.

It was at this point that Olivia Davenport remembered what she had forgotten, or was forced to face an anxiety she had been disguising. Her head held high, as though to keep her hair out of the water, she started an awkward swimming movement against the swell made by her mismanaged guests, dragging her friend after her. Jerked out of her Tanagra graces into a state of uncertainty, Madame Pavloussi’s attitudes became Cycladic; she followed bravely where she was drawn, her shoulders slightly hunched, her bronze dress opening and closing on its depths of turquoise and verdigris. Her arms appeared stumpy from closer, as her legs would be too, he guessed, under the play of liquid silk.

On reaching their objective Olivia Davenport shook the invisible drops off her immaculate coiffure, and announced with awful distinctness, if only for themselves: ‘Hero — this is my great friend Hurtle Duffield. My two dear friends! It’s rather like bringing together the two halves of friendship — into a whole.’ Then, as though she might have said something too ‘clever’ for a social occasion, she explained more practically: ‘I’m giving you Hurtle, Hero, for dinner.’

There was no sign that a plan had been discussed beforehand by the two women. In fact Madame Pavloussi, standing in front of him, continued looking dazed, if not frightened, by the possibility that she was intended as a sacrifice; while there flickered briefly through his mind an image of himself trussed on a gold plate, threatened by a knife and fork in her small, rather blunt hands.

Olivia was barely allowed to enjoy a sense of achievement: Emily’s creaking shoes were approaching through the shallows. When she had paddled close enough to clutch her mistress by the arm, she advanced her lips, which tonight were powdered as pale as her cheeks, and began a piece of muted recitative:

‘This Italian lady has locked herself in the convenience, dear, and won’t come out to do the prawn cutlets, because she says Ethel was unkind to her, and she couldn’t help bumping the charlotte russe . Now Ethel is wondering what ought to be done, Miss Boo?’

‘Oh God, who am I? ’ Mrs Davenport stamped, and frowned black.

Emily appeared shaken to discover that the one who should have known the answer, didn’t.

‘Can’t Spurgeon fetch her out?’

‘Mr Spurgeon washes ’is ’ands of it, dear.’

Olivia remembered to smile at her two favourites before repeating: ‘Oh, God! Nothing I undertake fails to turn into shambles. The simplest little occasion! Come with me, Emily!’

She marched off through her shambles. Objects in jade trembled on their pedestals as she managed her explosive dress. Emily followed, slower, on account of her rheumatism and her status.

‘Shouldn’t we find the others?’ Madame Pavloussi anxiously asked, because the laughter sounded several doors away.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, but casually. ‘There’ll be no prawn cutlets, but an otherwise excellent dinner.’

Madame Pavloussi was already striding on her short legs across empty rooms. ‘I am wondering what will become of my poor husband. He will feel unhappy, left to so many strangers.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought he needed protection.’

‘I suppose not.’ She sighed.

They turned a corner, and the thunder told them they were almost there; Madame Pavloussi appeared less anxious to arrive.

‘Look at this painting!’ she whispered, and nudged him conspiratorially. ‘Is she a girl? Or an octopus?’

‘Probably an octopus.’ He laughed at a good joke.

It was the original version of Rhoda Courtney Olivia had winkled out of him. In other circumstances he might have resented the reaction of this charming, but probably ignorant, woman. Now he forgave, because she herself was a work of art, and he would have liked to fall in love with her.

‘You agree?’ She laughed back; her teeth looked short, and strong, and real.

‘I’d never thought of the octopus. You’re right, though.’ She had given the painting a new life, in which suckers grew from the thin arms, the tones less milky-pink than grey.

If left to himself he would have continued thinking about it; but Madame Pavloussi’s nostrils had taken up a scent.

‘You don’t know the girl?’ she asked.

‘She was my sister.’

‘Oh, I am so, so sorry!’ His companion was gasping, and twisting her enormous pearl.

He was less conscious of her as he flirted with his slowly developing vision: the octopus-Rhoda, sponge attached to one sucker, beside the more or less unalterable bidet on its iron stand.

‘You say she was your sister. Your sister is dead?’

‘I don’t know,’ he had to confess.

Madame Pavloussi’s eyes had begun to water: they were magnificent in their horror — or was it pity? He could not yet have told with any certainty.

‘But you must admit,’ she cried in self-protection, ‘the painter is cruel. Why do painters have to deform everything they see? I do not understand what is modern painting about. Perhaps you will explain to me — one day — I mean, after dinner.’

‘Of course — if there’s time.’ Lucky he hadn’t signed his painting.

She appeared so distraught he would have liked to take her hand, but here they were on the threshold of the dining-room.

The marooned guests were standing around, wondering, though not yet seriously. While waiting, they admired the table. Their first thoughts had naturally been for the place cards, and some of them were still preoccupied with these; through bad eyesight or discretion they had not yet discovered what they were in for.

‘Aren’t the little stands exquisite! She really has exceptional taste,’ one lady was remarking.