The Eye of the Storm

by Patrick White

  Sister Manhood was dumbfounded: coming from someone as remote and respected as de Santis, the gesture shocked rather than touched her; St Mary should never set foot on earth.

  ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Sister de Santis said, that smile still afloat on her face, but graver than before, I’ve decided to go to Sir Basil’s hotel, tomorrow, to ask him what they really intend to do about their mother.’

  You could have pushed Sister Manhood over. ‘But do you think you ought to?’ she could scarcely ask. ‘I mean—meddling in family affairs. Is it any of our business?’

  Sister de Santis said, as though she had been reading it, ‘It’s up to us not to remain what they call the silent majority;’ and at least took off the orange hat.

  Sister Manhood was horrified. ‘But what could you do? And him! If a man’s dishonest enough to dump his mother, he’s immoral, probably, in other ways we don’t yet know of.’

  Sister de Santis only smiled, and began taking off her dress. Overfulness in the bust showed her to be what you always thought—but never liked to admit—out of proportion.

  Disappointment raged in Flora Manhood. ‘I think you’re bonkers!’ Not that she desired, having experienced, Sir Basil Hunter; not even though his mother had sealed a long-term contract with a star sapphire ring.

  But Mary de Santis!

  ‘I’d be very careful, Sister,’ Sister Manhood advised.

  ‘I have no intention of being anything else.’ Sister de Santis had clothed herself in her uniform; there remained the veil: nobody adjusted a veil more religiously.

  But Flora Manhood was unnerved. What if you could not trust this stately figure any more than you could trust yourself? What if St Mary was a whore behind your back? Everyone knew about that colonel she had taken overseas in a liner, and got an annuity out of when he died. The colonel might not have been as old and gaga as she made out, and his nurse more subtle. Flora Manhood did not want to think such thoughts, just as she wanted no more of Basil—oh dear no; it was the threatened fall from grace of somebody revered which shocked her.

  Presently, on seeing there was nothing she could do, either by persuasion, or helping with an enema, Sister Manhood left. At one point, she slithered on the steep, coiling path, and nearly fell. When there was nobody left to respect, neither Sister de Santis, nor Mrs Hunter (poor Lottie couldn’t help it if she was foreign and out of the running), certainly not Sir Basil Hunter the Great Actor, she must concentrate on this child who had, perhaps, been planted in her and whom she would love with all the love and strength she could raise. But who was there for her boy to love and respect?

  She went skittering away, in her bargain shoes, into darkness.

  Nurse is sitting you down upon your sit-upon.

  ‘Do you think it will happen, Mary?’

  ‘What will, Mrs Hunter?’

  ‘Well—I must remember.’ Seat’s too cold in the beginning the old commode to think or do.

  It has these very delicate arms curving down like swans’ necks. Feathers are rough, not the heads, not the beaks even; swans’ beaks, in life, look knobbed—pustular.

  ‘You see these carved heads, Sister? They were polished by Basil’s hands. He used this same commode during his—his fatal illness, at “Kudjeri”. Eldred used to sit him on it. I did myself—sometimes—at the end.’

  ‘Really? Fancy!’

  She’ll go soon, leaving you to fate. They do. Yes, they have always gone.

  ‘Hold on tight to the arms, Mrs Hunter. Do you think you’ll be all right on your own?’

  ‘Perfectly. It’s such a reliable piece of furniture. Isn’t it useful?’

  ‘Useful, and elegant too. Here’s the bell beside you. You can ring if you want me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She is going. And why not? Constipation is caused by nurses hanging around bossing, treating you like a bundle of dirty linen.

  All afternoon evening wanting to drowse back to some difficult situation you were not allowed a nurse’s heel indenting the brain (ugh! not brains Nurse) carrying the sound of brittle roses the two later voices hammering together and apart in other rooms on words and names Elizabeth I must only ever be called without foreshortening ELIZABETH that is my isn’t it my given name whatever else parents parents are given too whether you like it the one her bones crumbling the other a rifle in his mouth children are dolls the parents leave for nurses to hoist I’m not a doll Nurse lolling on the cold commode however drowsy cold does not cut the will to discover which direction you must take the island was it the storm of course you had desired the man Dorothy ran away from but only desired as a last reflection in the little tin looking-glass a nocturne was hammering out that last of nights nothing else after the trees had bent double some snapped the house carried off like any human relationship then walking down towards the piled water the swans from dipping their beaks rose hard precise yet loving admittedly only for the bread you had and sodden unhallowed by the eye of the storm the swans accept the bread no longer hissing like children why had you called them Basil Dorothy ugly names hatched out of pride by Elizabeth Hunter a swan herself but black.

  Ooh don’t kick mahogany only hurts the heels. Sister? No. What can they do for a jack-in-a-box once the spring’s gone? Not worth it. Throw it out. Boxes and islands. I must not think myself on to the island. I am not hallowed— therefore—I must eschew? all such thoughts—for the time being.

  Love is closer anyway and warmer than adoration of some vast and unknowable cloud. Think instead of the silly human Manhood. Womanly: that’s it. Elizabeth Hunter was never womanly enough, her flaws too perfectly disguised under appearances: enormous, gaping, at times agonizing flaws. Even so, perhaps you are reserved, through these same flaws, for other ends. Whatever and when, it is more comforting to drowse over this Flora silly Man you gave the pink sapphire to belove her to her chemist.

  After failing so many—worst oh far worst my darling Alfred born without the machinery for getting his own back—you could not expect fulfilment as a woman only as an all giver.

  Little children come tumbling out like sheeps’ pellets but unexpectedly hard into the cold commodious world.

  When love is what my Alfred has longed for what the chemist prescribes it is what the nurse and I withhold.

  Perhaps it will drop pink at last the lolly sapphire like any common brown penny.

  ‘Sister? If you don’t leave the bell, how can you expect me to ring? Sister de Santis! Lungs aren’t leather, either. Urrr! I might die on this damn commode and nobody know.’

  Mary de Santis sometimes wondered how she had chosen to live where she did; except she had to live somewhere. She was always promising herself she would move, but something in her, of the passive mollusc, or solitary female, had so far prevented it. And after all, she was only here in her ‘conveniently situated flatette’ to spend a few daylight hours, most of those asleep. And the rent was low: not low enough, perhaps, considering the view of visceral plumbing exposed against the wall of ox-blood brick opposite. She could stand a plant, however, on the window sill; and if the stove was obsolete and smelly she was not interested in food, or not when on her own: plenty of bread and butter, with strong tea, and just the occasional cigarette, had become her normal diet. Above the narrow divan where she slept, she had nailed Mamma’s icons, which caused a film to form, she noticed, almost always on the eyes of the casual caller; to her own eyes the icons were by now little more than atavistic windows, so choked with age, grime, and conflicting sentiments, they failed to open. In any case, she had decided not to make a cult of the past, though she had hung Papa’s diploma next to her own certificate on one of the walls of the superfluous triangular hall, and still had his medical books arranged with her own on the adjustable shelves she had wisely bought as far back as graduation. She loved her books. She owned some of the classics: George Eliot, Conrad, The Cloister and the Hearth, The Moonstone. If ever she felt particularly serious, or lonely, she might read a poem or two; she could read
Dante, haltingly, in Enrico’s voice. Then, at the window, there was this exceptionally beautiful, velvety, deep crimson cyclamen she had nursed by regular attention and affection over several seasons: she liked to feel something growing, living, in the room where she lived if only during the less significant intervals. For she had her work: that was her life, and she was happy in it.

  This at least was the comfortable theory well-meaning people had thrust on her. Reserved by nature, and not given to argument, she accepted it, while sensing that the visible ramifications of her work were no more than a convenient trompe l’œil to distract attention from that shadowy labyrinth strewn with signs through which she approached ‘happiness’.

  Rational beings are pacified by evidence of efficiency: a scoured bedpan veiled in starched white, the geometry of linen, a temperature chart; or uplifted, rational though they claim to be, by a mystique inherent in the pretty confetti of capsules, and less demonstrative, more insidious, ampoules, locked for safety in the steel cabinet behind the bathroom door. All of which has only indirect bearing on your significant life, revealed nightly in the presence of this precious wafer of flesh from which earthly beauty has withdrawn, but whose spirit will rise from the bed and stand at the open window, rustling with the light of its own reflections, till finally disintegrating into the white strands strung between the araucarias and oaks of the emergent park, yourself kneeling in spirit to kiss the pearl-embroidered hem, its cold weave the heavier for dew or tears.

  Frequently Sister de Santis grew ashamed of her opulent obsessions; just as, in a physical context, she was embarrassed by her own bust when men sitting opposite stared at her cleavage, or when Sister Manhood’s disapproval was stretched as remorselessly as a tapemeasure.

  This morning after returning from duty Mary de Santis was unable to rest: neither her mind nor her body allowed her. She was this heavy slab, turned, and again, turned, on the narrow, rigidly sprung divan; but a slab holed by insinuating thoughts. As she tossed, her breasts bumped around, in search of independence it seemed, while never parted from her. And the orange hat so obviously condemned by Flora Manhood: she went cold thinking of her hat; she tried to wring it out of her inner vision by squeezing her eyes tighter shut. Sometimes by daylight, and particularly on this important morning, she could not believe that Mrs Hunter would survive till night, or herself experience again the peace which darkness offers.

  At a point when the small box enclosing her seemed about to fly apart, from the orange light, the sounds of traffic, the fumes of petrol collected in it, she was forced up. If only to wash some stockings and hang them on a line at her viewless window. To sit a while over the morning paper without deciphering the print. Before she began bathing herself, putting up her hair, examining the angles of her appearance, all according to some more than ordinarily complex ritual, performed it could have been, for the first time.

  When she was ready, she had no doubts about putting on her usual navy hat, and a matching, old, but presentable coat (which Flora M. dismissed for being as dowdy as the hat). Though not wearing a uniform, she looked as though she were, Sister de Santis realized, not disapprovingly: she felt safer in her unofficial uniform.

  It was neither too early for actors, nor yet too late to have lost one of such charm and fame, she had calculated; and the receptionist’s words, so carefully enunciated at the telephone, her smile so beautifully evoked, together with the single dimple she must keep for favourites, made it at once clear that Sir Basil was in his room.

  ‘He’ll be down presently,’ the girl announced through the last glimmer of her waning smile.

  Gratefully enough the nurse accepted the receptionist’s bounty. She sat down to wait opposite the desk, crossing her ankles as though seated beside Colonel Askew on the liner’s deck or in the lounge at Brown’s Hotel. It also occurred to her, but fleetingly, embarrassingly, that Mamma had claimed descent from three Emperors of Byzantium. Mary de Santis averted her thoughts, settled the crown of her navy hat, coughed to clear her voice of a suspected huskiness which might obscure the meaning of what she had to say.

  And Sir Basil Hunter came running down the last short flight of stairs, presenting a figure she would not have expected, perhaps because his clothes were more casual than she—well, she had not attempted to foresee’, but they were in fact casual: silk paisley-patterned scarf, its crimson reflected upward on to his already ruddy, shaven skin; suede jacket, the cuffs of which were turned back over shirt cuffs of a halcyon blue. But it was not, after all, the details of his dress which surprised her, so much as a breathless jollity, his soles squelching across the foyer carpet in what would have seemed a parody of loose-limbed boyishness if the actor had not ended by persuading you that it was the real thing.

  Sir Basil made Sister de Santis feel artificial: she must have looked like one of those great soft ponderous dolls in felt or kid sometimes referred to nowadays as sculpture; and as though that were not perverse enough, she heard herself giggling like some trainee nurse telling about an evening spent at a night club with a reprobate surgeon.

  While Sir Basil tried to raise her to a less ignominious level, by squeezing her elbow, sinking his chin in the paisley foulard, and directing his stare full at her face, his eyes as charismatic as Mrs Hunter’s were in the beginning. ‘This is a most agreeable surprise,’ he admitted in the greatest confidence.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t want to disturb?’ Sister de Santis protested in painfully lumbering contralto. ‘I only looked in,’ she blundered on, ‘to say how much I—how we all—appreciate Mrs Hunter.’ There she fizzled out, the dismally inept bungler of a mission.

  Sir Basil was leading her somewhere, into the garden it began to appear from the yellow light which was filtered on their faces through the leaves of autumn plane trees.

  ‘Mother—yes—isn’t she an extraordinary--beautiful—exceptional person?’ His boyishness let him down at last, and he began to look the grave man she had anticipated; still not wholly grave, however. ‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ he continued confiding, ‘even if you’ve stolen a march on me, in a sense.’ He laughed, for her personally, making it clear she was not to take his remark as an accusation. ‘Because I’ve been meaning to see more of those who—who’ve been devoting themselves to Mother’s care—to—to get to know you more intimately.’

  At his most hesitant he was also at his gravest. It was what she had hoped for, and now that she had found it, must resist. It was Papa: an elderly, distinguished, but weak man, asking for love and understanding as well as the drug he depended on. Mary de Santis was so shaken she lowered her eyes.

  Sir Basil came almost too promptly to the rescue. ‘What, I wonder, can I offer you to drink?’

  ‘Oh, it’s early, isn’t it?’ She laughed. ‘I didn’t come here expecting hospitality,’ she added, and blushed.

  But Sir Basil was waiting for her to name her fancy, and as her confusion mounted she was unable to think; then remembered the White Ladies Colonel Askew had prescribed before lunch (the name prevented her asking for one now) and before dinner, knew she had enjoyed a sherry (sweet). She might have settled for the sherry if she had not gathered, long after the colonel’s death, that there was something shameful in confessing to a taste for sweet sherry.

  Sir Basil Hunter was growing impatient, shooting his cuffs. ‘My lunchtime poison,’ he said, ‘is a dry martini.’

  ‘Very well.’ She laughed and blushed again. ‘A dry martini would be perfect.’

  ‘How dry?’ He raised his eyebrows and cocked his head, as though to show he recognized a knowledgeable guest.

  ‘Oh, dry!’ If she had been true to herself she would have in some way resisted the cloak of incongruous worldliness he was laying on her shoulders; but she rather liked it.

  Then he had gone inside to give the order, and she was left amongst the white furniture, the plaster storks, and a bird bath painted in mock brick. A sadness began to filter through to her, perhaps caused by the jaundiced light, together with
the blotched leaves, and seed-clusters in moulting plush, of the expatriate planes. She was alone in the hotel garden. She sat down on one of the mass-produced iron chairs. There was a dusting of smuts on the iron-lace table. As she waited for her host, bag still wedged between arm and side, she was tempted to forget the reason for her being there, and slip away through the smell of fallen, half-rotted leaves, rescuing her susceptibility from a disturbing presence. But she owed it to Mrs Hunter to stay.

  Very resolutely Sir Basil returned. He had decided to adopt a dogged look, for the part of a tarnished ex-brigadier in a play which didn’t appeal to him. It couldn’t be helped: for the moment, there was nothing else offering.

  ‘Incredibly lackadaisical service,’ he nattered, ‘at the Onslow.’

  And this Sister de What’s-it raised her incredible eyebrows: they were broad and glossy, almost furry, reminding him of moth down; only he had never seen, as far as he could remember, a black moth.

  ‘Though nowadays, isn’t it the same everywhere?’ he continued tediously, while resigning himself to the cast-iron acorns already eating his buttocks. ‘London and Paris are, if anything, worse.’ He looked to her for the confirmation she would not be able to give.

  He knew it was wrong of him, but she did so intensely bore him: in her fright of a hat; when he had half expected the little Manhood to return for the other half. Surely this deadly Hera had not taken it upon herself to warn him off, or worse still, stand in for the nymph she was protecting?

  But it was his mother’s nurse reacting in earnest monotone to his (pretty lamentable, he had to admit) cosmopolitan ostentation. ‘I remember the year I travelled over with Colonel Askew, the poor colonel never stopped complaining—often with reason—in hotels and restaurants. It was not long after the War. Everything was down at heel, I suppose. Certainly the people were depressed. And the colonel was old, and sick—a cardiac case. But for me it was enough to have arrived in a great city of which I knew nothing. After the colonel died I took a short holiday in the country. I roamed around on my own, along those wet, narrow lanes. The trees were bare by then—everything very austere—but somehow strengthening.’