The Eye of the Storm

by Patrick White

  Patrick White was born in England in 1912. He was taken to Australia (where his father owned a sheep farm) when he was six months old, but educated in England, at Cheltenham College and King’s College, Cambridge. He settled in London, where he wrote several unpublished novels, then served in the RAF during the Second World War. He returned after the war to Australia, where he became the most considerable figure in modern Australian literature before being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. His position as a man of letters was controversial, provoked by his unpredictable public statements and his belief that it is eccentric individuals who offer the only hope of salvation. Technically brilliant, he is a modern novelist of whom the epithet ‘visionary’ can safely be applied. Patrick White died in September 1990. In 2012, Knopf will publish The Hanging Garden. Handwritten in 1982 it had remained untranscribed, until now.

  BY PATRICK WHITE

  Fiction

  Happy Valley

  The Living And The Dead

  The Aunt’s Story

  The Tree Of Man

  Voss

  Riders In The Chariot

  The Burnt Ones

  The Solid Mandala

  The Vivisector

  The Eye Of The Storm

  The Cockatoos

  A Fringe Of Leaves

  The Twyborn Affair

  Three Uneasy Pieces

  Memoirs Of Many In One (Editor)

  Autobiography

  Flaws In The Glass

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  The Eye of the Storm

  9781742743684

  A Vintage book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Vintage in 1995

  First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd in 1973

  Copyright © Patrick White 1973

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  White, Patrick, 1912-1990

  The eye of the storm/Patrick White

  ISBN 978 1 74275 258 7 (pbk.)

  A823.3

  Cover illustration © Transmission Films

  Cover design by saso content & design pty ltd

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Patrick White

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Imprint Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  TO MAIE CASEY

  I was given by chance this human body so

  difficult to wear.

  N play

  He felt what could have been a tremor of

  heaven’s own perverse love.

  Kawabata

  Men and boughs break;

  Praise life while you walk and wake;

  It is only lent.

  David Campbell

  One

  THE OLD woman’s head was barely fretting against the pillow. She could have moaned slightly.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the nurse, advancing on her out of the shadow. ‘Aren’t you comfortable, Mrs Hunter?’

  ‘Not at all. I’m lying on corks. They’re hurting me.’

  The nurse smoothed the kidney-blanket, the macintosh, and stretched the sheet. She worked with an air which was not quite professional detachment, nor yet human tenderness; she was probably something of a ritualist. There was no need to switch on a lamp: a white light had begun spilling through the open window; there was a bloom of moonstones on the dark grove of furniture.

  ‘Oh dear, will it never be morning?’ Mrs Hunter got her head as well as she could out of the steamy pillows.

  ‘It is,’ said the nurse; ‘can’t you—can’t you feel it?’ While working around this almost chrysalis in her charge, her veil had grown transparent; on the other hand, the wings of her hair, escaping from beneath the lawn, could not have looked a more solid black.

  ‘Yes. I can feel it. It is morning.’ The old creature sighed; then the lips, the pale gums opened in the smile of a giant baby. ‘Which one are you?’ she asked.

  ‘De Santis. But I’m sure you know. I’m the night nurse.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  Sister de Santis had taken the pillows and was shaking them up, all but one; in spite of this continued support, Mrs Hunter looked pretty flat.

  ‘I do hope it’s going to be one of my good days,’ she said. ‘I do want to sound intelligent. And look—presentable.’

  ‘You will if you want to.’ Sister de Santis replaced the pillows. ‘I’ve never known you not rise to an occasion.’

  ‘My will is sometimes rusty.’

  ‘Dr Gidley’s coming in case. I rang him last night. We must remember to tell Sister Badgery.’

  ‘The will doesn’t depend on doctors.’

  Though she might have been in agreement, it was one of the remarks Sister de Santis chose not to hear. ‘Are you comfortable now, Mrs Hunter?’

  The old head lay looking almost embalmed against the perfect structure of pillows; below the chin a straight line of sheet was pinning the body to the bed. ‘I haven’t felt comfortable for years.’ said the voice. ‘And why do you have to go? Why must I have Badgery?’

  ‘Because she takes over at morning.’

  A burst of pigeons’ wings was fired from somewhere in the garden below.

  ‘I hate Badgery.’

  ‘You know you don’t. She’s so kind.’

  ‘She talks too much—on and on about that husband. She’s too bossy.’

  ‘She’s only practical. You have to be in the daytime.’ One reason why she herself preferred night duties.

  ‘I hate all those other women.’ Mrs Hunter had mustered her complete stubbornness this morning. ‘It’s only you I love, Sister de Santis.’ She directed at the nurse that milky stare which at times still seemed to unshutter glimpses of a terrifying mineral blue.

  Sister de Santis began moving about the room with practised discretion.

  ‘At least I can see you this morning.’ Mrs Hunter announced. ‘You can’t escape me. You look like some kind of—big—lily.’

  The nurse could not prevent herself ducking her veil.

 
‘Are you listening to me?’

  Of course she was: these were the moments which refreshed them both.

  ‘I can see the window too,’ Mrs Hunter meandered. ‘And something—a sort of wateriness—oh yes, the looking-glass. All good signs! This is one of the days when I can see better. I shall see them!’

  ‘Yes. You’ll see them.’ The nurse was arranging the hairbrushes; the ivory brushes with their true-lovers’ knots in gold and lapis lazuli had a fascination for her.

  ‘The worst thing about love between human beings,’ the voice was directed at her from the bed, ‘when you’re prepared to love them they don’t want it; when they do, it’s you who can’t bear the idea.’

  ‘You’ve got an exhausting day ahead,’ Sister de Santis warned; ‘you’d better not excite yourself.’

  ‘I’ve always excited myself if the opportunity arose. I can’t stop now—for anyone.’

  Again there was that moment of splintered sapphires, before the lids, dropping like scales, extinguished it.

  ‘You’re right, though. I shall need my strength.’ The voice began to wheedle. ‘Won’t you hold my hand a little, dear Mary—isn’t it? de Santis?’

  Sister de Santis hesitated enough to appease the spirit of her training. Then she drew up a little mahogany tabouret upholstered in a faded sage. She settled her opulent breasts, a surprise in an otherwise austere figure, and took the skin and bone of Mrs Hunter’s hand.

  Thus placed they were exquisitely united. According to the light it was neither night nor day. They inhabited a world of trust, to which their bodies and minds were no more than entrance gates. Of course Sister de Santis could not answer truthfully for her patient’s mind: so old and erratic, often feeble since the stroke; but there were moments such as this when they seemed to reach a peculiar pitch of empathy. The nurse might have wished to remain clinging to their state of perfection if she had not evolved, in the course of her working life, a belief—no, it was stronger: a religion—of perpetual becoming. Because she was handsome in looks and her bearing suggested authority, those of her colleagues who detected in her something odd and reprehensible would not have dared call it ‘religious’; if they laughed at her, it was not to her face. Even so, it could have been the breath of scorn which had dictated her choice of the night hours in which to patrol the intenser world of her conviction, to practise not only the disciplines of her professed vocation, but the rituals of her secret faith.

  Then why Mrs Hunter? those less dedicated or more rational might have suggested, and Mary de Santis failed to explain; except that this ruin of an over-indulged and beautiful youth, rustling with fretful spite when not bludgeoning with a brutality only old age is ingenious enough to use, was also a soul about to leave the body it had worn, and already able to emancipate itself so completely from human emotions, it became at times as redemptive as water, as clear as morning light.

  This actual morning old Mrs Hunter opened her eyes and said to her nurse,’ Where are the dolls?’

  ‘Where you left them, I expect,’ Because her inept answer satisfied neither of them, the nurse developed a pained look.

  ‘But that’s what they always say! Why don’t they bring them?’ Mrs Hunter protested.

  The nurse could only bite her lip; the hand had been dragged away from hers.

  ‘Of course you know about the dolls. Don’t say I didn’t tell you.’ The old woman was threatening to become vindictive. ‘We were living beside the—oh, some—some geographical river. My father had given me a hundred dolls. Think of it—a hundred! Some of them I didn’t look at because they didn’t interest me, but some I loved to distraction.’

  Suddenly Mrs Hunter turned her head with such a doll’s jerk Sister de Santis held her breath.

  ‘You know it isn’t true,’ the old child complained. ‘It was Kate Nutley had the dolls. She was spoilt. I had two—rather battered ones. And still didn’t love them equally.’

  Sister de Santis was troubled by the complexities of a world she had been forced to re-enter too quickly.

  ‘I tore the leg off one,’ Mrs Hunter admitted; her recovered calm was enviable.

  ‘Didn’t they mend it?’ the nurse dared inquire.

  ‘I can’t remember.’ Mrs Hunter gave a little whimper. ‘And have to remember everything today. People try to catch you out—accuse you—of not—not loving them enough.’

  She was staring at the increasing light, if not glaring, frightfully.

  ‘And look my best. Bring me my looking-glass, Nurse.’

  Sister de Santis fetched the glass: it was of that same ivory set as the brushes with lovers’ knots in gold and lapis lazuli. Holding it by its fluted handle she tilted the glass for her patient to look. The nurse was glad she could not see the reflection: reflections can be worse than faces.

  Mrs Hunter was panting. ‘Somebody must make me up.’

  ‘Sister Badgery will see to that.’

  ‘Oh, Badgery! She’s awful. If only little Manhood were here—she knows how to do it properly. She’s the one I like.’

  ‘Sister Manhood won’t be here till lunch.’

  ‘Why can’t somebody telephone her?’

  ‘She’ll still be asleep. And later she’ll probably have some shopping to do.’

  Mrs Hunter was so upset she let her head drop on the pillow: tears gushed surprisingly out of the half-closed eyes.

  Sister de Santis heard her own voice sound more placid than she felt. ‘If you rest your mind you’ll probably look far more beautiful as your natural self. And that is how they’ll want to see you.’

  But the old woman fully closed her eyes. ‘Not now. Why, my lashes are gone—my complexion. I can feel the freckles, even on my eyelids, without having to look for them.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re exaggerating, Mrs Hunter.’ Small comfort; but the nurse’s feet were aching, nor had her mind, her eyes, adjusted themselves to daylight: the withdrawal of darkness had left her puffy and moth-like.

  When she noticed her patient staring at her too obsessively. ‘I’d like you to bring me something to drink. And something else—’ putting out a hand at its oldest and feeblest, ‘I want you to forgive me, Mary. Will you?’ stroking no longer with bones, but the tips of feathers.

  The sensation experienced by Sister de Santis was scarcely sensual; nor did it lift her to that state of disembodiment they sometimes enjoyed together. It was disturbing, though.

  For her own protection the nurse ignored half the request, while agreeing too heartily to the other. ‘All right! What do you fancy?’

  ‘Nothing milky.’ Mrs Hunter made a smacking sound with her lips, because those two glutinous strips did not release each other easily. ‘Something cold and pure,’ she added after rejecting pap.

  Sister de Santis had to relent; she had to look; and at once added to the caress of feathers, there were the eyes, some at least of their original mineral fire burning through the film with which age and sickness had attempted to obscure it. ‘I’d like a glass of water,’ Mrs Hunter said.

  Sister de Santis was reduced to feeling embarrassed and lumpish. ‘It’ll be cold,’ she promised, ‘from the fridge. I can’t answer for its purity. It’s what the Water Board provides.’

  As she left the room, a glare from furniture and a bedpan scarcely covered by a towel, sprang at the high priestess, stripping her of the illusions of her office, the night thoughts, speculations of a mystical turn few had ever guessed at, and certainly, thank God, no one shared, except, perhaps, one malicious old woman. In her daytime form, Mary de Santis of thumping bust and pronounced calves, might have been headed for basket-ball.

  Left alone, which after all was how she wanted to be, with due respect to poor broody faithful de Santis, Mrs Hunter lay with her eyes closed listening to her house, her thoughts, her life. All around her clocks were ticking, not to mention that muffled metronome which might have been her heart. In some ways it was an advantage to be what they refer to as ‘half blind’. She had always seen too
clearly, it seemed: opaque friends had been alarmed by it; a husband and lovers had resented; worst of all, the children—they could have done murder. She scrabbled after the handkerchief a nurse had hidden; so she cried without it. I’ve never seen you cry, Elizabeth, unless you wanted something. Alfred would lower his chin as though riding at an armoured opponent. And she would raise hers, accepting the challenge. It hadn’t occurred to me. But must be right if you’ve noticed. Opposing a husband with the weapon of her profile: she had perfect nostrils, so they told her; she had also seen for herself in the glass. Only Alfred had not told her; was it out of delicacy? His friends all referred to him as ‘Bill’. Most of his life he had spent trying to disguise himself as one of the costive, crutch-heavy males who came to discuss wool and meat: so slow and ponderous, like rams dragging their sex through a stand of lucerne. There were also the would-be cuddly females making up to ‘Bill’, unaware how immaculate he was.

  Mrs Hunter laughed.

  You know, Betty, you are the only one who has never called me by a friendly name. Not ‘Bill’: just to attempt it made her feel she was shaking her jowls like a bloodhound. How can I? When ‘Alfred’ is the name you’ve been given. I mean it’s your NAME— as mine is ‘Elizabeth’. She raised her voice and drew down her mouth to produce a dimple she held in reserve; but on this occasion it failed to persuade him.

  Though he had never accused her of being cold, others had suggested that she was: satellite spinsters hopeful of prolonging schoolgirl crushes; wives in need of a receptacle in which to pour an accumulation of injustices; a man like Athol Shreve (she had only done it as an essay in sensuality; the hair alone disgusted her); that young Norwegian—no, or had he? (wasn’t his subject fish?)—on the Warmings’ island.

  Not everyone is an island: they loved ‘Bill’, while admiring Elizabeth Hunter. It is the children who are the most forbidding, the least hospitable of islands, though you can light a fire if you know how to scrape together the wherewithal.

  She sucked the corner of a pillowslip remembering the children. What were their names? Dor-o-thy? And Bsl? Bas-il! Words of love at the time, ugly and pretentious in the end.