The Eye of the Storm

by Patrick White

  The fact that the awful nurse was hurrying downstairs (you could hear the bits of broken crockery slithering and chattering on her tray) to find out what you were up to, confirmed a sense of rightness strengthened. And the telephone, dubious on the least suspicious occasions, had begun to ring. And ring.

  Downstairs, Sister Badgery had put down her tray to pick up the receiver. ‘Who? … Oh, yes! … Yes, yes, YES … Isn’t it? … Oh, she will … Yes … I’ll tell … Yes …’

  Maddening! The figure on the landing flung itself at the extension, to lift what might have been a butterfly, in bakelite; then it was fluttering against her ear: not one butterfly, but two, and having a love affair it seemed.

  ‘I know she’ll be disappointed, but has taught herself to bear disappointment: she’s such a strong character. And of course others will be disappointed too. I, for one, was looking forward to getting to know you. I have to confess I’m avid for people— though there are some in particular—you can always tell in advance—who are somehow on the same wave

  Thus flirting her wings, the white butterfly made them appear excessively fragile and sensitive. As her insect body writhed and squirmed, the male butterfly was vibrating round her, warmer in tone (copper to red) veined in black, with heavy black knobs or horns.

  ‘… My own disappointment is enormous—needless to repeat—and it’s only because this business meeting is so utterly important, that I’m postponing the visit I’d planned this morning. Tell her she’s an old darling, and that I love her, won’t you? As for what you say—it’s flattery of course—flattering to know one can mean something in advance to strangers—but nobody was ever any the worse for, only strengthened by, encouragement.’

  Dorothy thought she could see a spotted foulard butterfly bow fluttering, but with masculine conviction, as the adam’s apple bobbed in time.

  As for the white butterfly, if he wasn’t careful her frail wings might remain stuck together in their ecstasy. ‘Oh oh Sir Basil I do yes I do agree Sir Bas …’

  ‘I’d like to send her something when I can think send all you nurses but what? stockings? perfume? chocolates? we must talk it over every opportunity now that I’m here now that I’ve reestablished a relationship making fresh ones too …’

  ‘Oh oh Sir Basurl …’ The white butterfly’s antennae were bridling, buckling.

  ‘… some little trifle to show I do appreciate the attentions you’re paying my mother …’

  At some moments the white wings quivered greenish at their more transparent tips. ‘There’s one thing I’d like to ask you, Sir Basil—a personal favour …’

  ‘What?’ The male butterfly could have had enough of love dalliance.

  ’ … a young girl—I can’t tell you how she admires—we all do from reading about you in the papers and magazines—I would like to ask you for your autograph. The girl would kill me if she knew…’

  The male was stroked back, if only for a flutter or two. ‘… delighted to write in her book if you send it.’

  ‘Oh, a signature would be sufficient—to make it more of a surprise—to stick in, Sir Basil—in the book.’

  ‘Send her a photograph when I get back. What’s your friend’s name?’

  The white butterfly must have swooned; then she returned, though fainter, through their abstract firmament. ‘“Lurline” is the young girl’s name.’

  ‘“Lurl …”’ the male was repeating gravely, to let it be understood, between audible munches and sups at an invisible breakfast, that he was engraving the word on his heart, if not writing it in his diary. ‘To do the job thoroughly, what’s the girl’s second name?’

  The female might have sunk, battered and exhausted by the rigours of courtship, but rose again on the wings of inspiration. ‘“Lurline Skinner,”’ she barely managed to bring it fluttering out.

  ‘“Lurline Skinner.” Grand!’

  Dorothy Hunter heard herself rumble. Her brother she believed to be not only dishonest, but also, she regretted, humourless.

  The white butterfly could have flopped around a whole lot more, but the male was for drawing away in a last burst of coppery condescension.

  ‘I shan’t forget—Sister …?’

  ‘Badgery.’

  ’… neither the photograph, nor our agreeable conversation …‘

  ‘… urmssurbasurl …’

  ‘… already old friends …’

  The Princesse de Lascabanes was glad she had married, however unsuccessfully, away from Anglo-Saxondom.

  ‘Now I must get myself ready for this chore at the solicitor fellow’s. To meet a sister I haven’t seen in half a lifetime. Don’t much enjoy the prospect either.’

  ‘Poor Dorothy!’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She hasn’t complained about her health.’

  ‘I’m surprised she hasn’t added that to the list. But the poor girl had a raw deal—not that she didn’t get what she wanted.’

  ‘Ideal marriage is as rare as snow at Galle, Mr Badgery used to say.’ His widow suggested she would have liked to tell the story of hers if Sir Basil had allowed.

  ‘… only the deal could have been less raw for someone less rigid and less humourless.’

  The princess was so deeply cut she cut herself off. Chin sunk, eyes bulging unnaturally, pearls heaved so spasmodically, she might have been suffering from heartburn. If only it were! Better unchaste than humourless, better dead than a dead weight.

  On opening her mother’s door she bumped against it, and Mrs Hunter’s head started up from the pillow, a relic miraculously raised from the timelessness of a morning nap.

  ‘What is it? Why—oh, Dorothy! I thought I saw a statue walking at me—out of the Botanical Gardens. It’s worth a visit. Ask Arnold. Will you be seeing Arnold, dear?’

  ‘That is what has been arranged.’

  Her daughter seated beside the bed, Mrs Hunter might still have suspected a statue: the practically sightless eyes were swivelling at an apparition in marble, if it wasn’t plaster.

  ‘You’ll treat him kindly, won’t you, dear?’

  ‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t.’ Madame de Lascabanes spoke as though she inhabited a world sans butterflies.

  ‘Because Arnold is kind—blinkered, but kind. The blinkers were torn off him probably only once, and I believe his whole life has been an effort to forget it.’

  Dorothy thought the word ‘kind’ sat uneasily on Mother’s lips, but she bent to kiss them, and was at once possessed, dared to question authority, cajoled, then rejected by an imperious but tired old woman.

  ‘And Basil—has he arrived? Tell him, if you see him, I didn’t expect his visit. I don’t expect anything of anyone—except myself—and one’s self, Dorothy, lets one down worse than the others.’

  Neither of them dared ask, either through words or fingers: who then, is there?

  Basil Hunter wiped the crumbs off. He had eaten three croissants (passable imitations) and drunk two cups of coffee (surprisingly, excellent: must be the Swiss management). He had received one telephone call, and made another, each in its way achieving something; he liked to think he was living positively even when he wasn’t working. But he couldn’t dismiss a suspicion of self-disgust, in spite of his still presentable features and body, a satisfied stomach, a sense of duty done: in agreeing to a meeting with the worthy Wyburd that same morning; in sending love-messages to his aged mother; and in promising a photograph to the nurse’s protégée, if it wasn’t the nurse herself. (More than likely he would forget the photograph, but to promise one pleased the nurse, and the minor gestures are often the most gratifying to those who make them.) Even the prospect of meeting a sister he hardly knew was only half a drag: to overcome her dislike would add significance to his conquest.

  He should have felt brisker in the circumstances. No doubt the change of climate had been too sudden. He was suffocating in this hotel room, stuffed with everything that is comfortable and hideous in walnut veneer and glaring chintz,
and sprawled on the Axminster roses, a great slippery monster of a Prussian blue eiderdown dismissed from the bed during the night. But it was the refrigerator, however homely and practical as a thought, which offended worst of all: ticking over ticking over, when it wasn’t simply standing mute.

  He was forced out into the garden, where the few hungry, city shrubs, and a plaster bird-bath painted to imitate brick, but suggesting slabs of uncooked beef, failed to provide the morale booster he was looking for. Nor did distance lessen the effect of the refrigerator’s racketty movement; and worse, a clunk clunk in overtone recalled the airconditioners of Bangkok. Oh God, his head, his mouth, were still frowsty with Bangkok! Against this background of mere mechanical threats and physical reminders, the Jewish housekeeper’s irony continued pricking: her celebration of failure, her own in particular, but anybody else’s as well, ‘They tell me you’ve played Hamlet—Lear—all the great “German” roles, so you must understand, Sir Basil!’ ein zwei drei. (EXIT) Laughter from the gallery.

  He glanced up. A sonsy maid and a chronically unemployed valet were talking on a balcony. They were looking at him from out of their frame of cast-iron lace. Well, he couldn’t pretend it didn’t go with his profession to be looked at, though he was hardly prepared for it at the moment, with his growth of stubble, and dressing-gown crumpled by the journey. Still, his head, his shoulders, could take it; when the maid and the valet burst out again; and he hadn’t been playing for laughs.

  He withdrew into his hideous but comparatively charitable room, away from what might take its place amongst the rankling moments, like that banana skin in Glasgow, brown-blotched and clammy-wet. How they laughed that night, till the decent among them shushed, and he forced himself back into the character he was playing. Dangerous attempting Richard Two at forty, but isn’t an actor proved by danger? and the original notices (he still had them) were too seductive to resist. If they couldn’t respect the accolade, there were the notices—if you could have shown them to the bastards: Of all our younger actors, Basil Hunter … Produce the notices, however tattered and discoloured, and the laughter of all trumpery chambermaids and Irish-thug-valets would be stilled.

  Sir Basil Hunter, who always felt better after shaving, less frayed, splenetic, awful, began to lather himself. (Remember too, Basil old boy, that when you see people laughing together at a distance they are more often than not acting a scene in which you don’t appear.)

  Like make-up, the white lather usually seemed to protect him from both past and future—if only temporarily. But this morning these red rims, dragged into view by fingers preparing a path for the razor, destroyed the authority, the chances of renewal, of an ageing, blighted fool. Have another go at Lear at least. During that other jinxed run he had seen himself in every other part but the one he had accepted to play: the Fool if you had been younger, smaller, a shade more fly, and considerably more selfless; Edgar, whom some find a bore—again if you had been younger, nimbler—and lower in the hierarchy; Gloucester, simple and rather stupid, can’t fail to win sympathy: those empty eye sockets a gift to any actor. While Lear, that other loon, or human landslide, must work for pity which, unlike tearful sympathy, can survive on tragic heights, and is harder to rouse because purer, perhaps only begotten by purity of the inner man. Is it why almost everyone can fail as Lear—not completely of course: Hunter’s monolithic, weather-and emotion-haunted king … Produce those notices, too, for anybody troubled by superficial doubts, anyone short on ‘purity’ (doesn’t it cut both ways?) remind them of the ‘monolithic’ triumph some critics and co-operative playgoers had more than witnessed: which they too had lived.

  In spite of the inverted corners of his mouth and a bitter taste, Sir Basil found reason for perking up at his still only half-shaven reflexion; snow could not have brought out the ruddiness of the skin, its morning glow, more brilliantly than the drift of lather. Then he began to laugh, and finished snorting for what he didn’t care to admit: that you were as remote in character from Lear and any of his attendant ‘forces for good’ as only the eternal bastard could be; if nobody else knew, God and yourself did. Who but Edmund, at a hint from the Guiding Spirit, would have taken plane for Sydney and Mummy’s bedside? The real, utter bastard: so much so, he nicked the lobe of an ear, the worst possible place, usually bleeds for ever, leads from fury to wretchedness and depression, unless the styptic, which had more than likely been left behind, along with the anyway useless pills against gout.

  Murderously, while pitifully bleeding, Sir Basil rootled his overnight bag into worse chaos, to find an invisible styptic pencil among the lozenges, the Jermyn Street handkerchiefs, the useless and expensive tackle in leather and silver which acquaintances (the recent ones) force on you for journeys; rootling always more hopelessly amongst the crumpled notepaper, unanswered letters, and one small book.

  There was this scruffy paperback of plays he had snatched off a stand at the airport, to protect himself with something familiar: Lear in fact, and in spite of bitter associations; a shield against Mitty Jacka’s last, still unanswered, for that matter, unread letter.

  Here they were: in one hand a once more dogeared, smudged, pencilled Lear; in the other the latest directive in that awesomely elegant, convent-formed calligraphy from which he recoiled, hackles up; he couldn’t say he feared, when its absence from his letter-box made him resentful.

  Her letters might have been love-letters, but they weren’t. There had never been a hint of love in their relationship: in his own case, perhaps the need to exorcise a dread of staleness with the dread of danger; in hers, he had not yet succeeded in deciding what.

  He wouldn’t open the Jacka letter: he was already late, he realized, for the appointment with Arnold—yes, time you called the old bugger by his first name; and it wasn’t as though the letter hadn’t lain already several days ignored and crumpled in your bag.

  Basil might have kept to his intention of snubbing the Guiding Spirit if he hadn’t taken another look at the glass, where he saw that the blood had started to clot, while glittering like a single jewel hooked into his left lobe. Distracted by this rather pleasing conceit, he found himself fumbling the letter out of its envelope, the parchment sheet still basically stiff and formal in spite of its martyrdom during the journey. Again he might have decided to postpone reading, if he hadn’t already begun sifting.

  … those who are younger often allow themselves to be gulled by the old: by purblindness, which doesn’t necessarily prevent them seeing very clearly; or by some distressing tic they exaggerate because they have found it pays; or by a general pathos of old age. The aged are usually tougher and more calculating than the young, provided they keep enough of their wits about them. How could they have lived so long if there weren’t steel buried inside them? …

  … beware of the saintly in particular: the tactics they employ are often the most subtly elastic. I believe aged saints are made through the waning of desire more than by the ripening of inherent sanctity; nor does diminished desire mean they cannot draw on a knowledge of the world they have been forced to renounce …

  … dear creature, you can’t be unaware that my spirit goes with you on your flight. That you must succeed in your mission and return to collaborate in this work of ours, which will add another dimension to the art of theatre, is something I take for granted …

  Hooey, of course! Still trembling, he sheathed the letter. As a young fool he had dabbled furtively in the arcane; as an old one, the possibility of controlling events normally considered uncontrollable often kept him awake at night. One of her more ribald associates had referred to the Jacka as the Witch of Beulah Hill. He had met her on a wet night, on the deserted upper deck of a bus: it could have been to compensate him for a walk-through performance in a sick contemporary play with which he had unwisely become involved. (‘They’ said he didn’t understand it, when—balls to them—he understood it so well he hesitated to convey its putrescence.)

  The woman on the bus was dressed in bla
ck: woolly leotards under transparent waterproof cape; over her head, and tied beneath the chin, a scarf in colours which might have looked flaunted on someone less oblivious. The rain had brushed with as much of her hair as you could see, and freshened the long parchment-coloured face, the thin, naked lips, on which the last words spoken still seemed vibrating.

  As the empty bus staggered and panted with suppressed speed, the woman’s body, her long legs and pointed shoes protruding at an angle from the seat, appeared to derive a weary and in no way voluptuous pleasure from its motion. Facing straight ahead, the half-lowered radiant eyelids and live mouth began to suggest that you might have something to say to each other, only it was up to you to confirm.

  On a thumb of the hands laid together in her lap he noticed a ring, the twin of one he had sent his mother some years ago; he had often regretted parting with it, though the gesture had produced material results. As for the woman, she was aware of his interest in the ring, and could recognize a crucial moment.

  ‘Is it Ethiopian?’ He was pointing at the Orthodox cross in the nest of plaited gold. ‘I knew another, exactly like it—as far as I can remember.’

  ‘I can’t say. I haven’t asked’; and after a pause, ‘I took it from someone who didn’t appreciate what they had. It’s the only thing I ever stole—except flowers from over fences.’ The bus lulled her back into silence and a half-smile, though she appeared to take it for granted that it wasn’t the end of their conversation.

  He was certainly fascinated, if also mystified by the woman across the aisle: ageless rather than old; not a whore as he had suspected at first; probably more willing to receive a stranger into her thoughts than into her still supple body.

  Presently she said, ‘If I could choose, I’d lead my entire waking life at night. Well, I can choose, I suppose, and I do more or less.’ She turned towards him. ‘Don’t you feel more aware at night? Of course you must—Sir Basil Hunter!’