The Eye of the Storm

by Patrick White

  Wyburd was making strangulated noises as though he had not enough of some foreign tongue to translate a simple wish into plain but consoling words. ‘You actors of—of intellectual integrity, must find it immensely rewarding—to immerse yourselves in the great classic roles,’ he at least attempted; poor old bugger, if he only knew!

  Then the men were interrupted by a gate squeaking on rusty hinges; the figure of a woman was approaching under the fluorescent lighting and a cautious moon.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen.’ Anachronistic, but not unpleasing.

  ‘Ah!’ The solicitor was prepared to do the honours. ‘Sister de Santis—Sir Basil Hunter. Sister is your mother’s night nurse.’

  The woman bowed her head beneath a large, dark, dowdy hat. She was one of those who make the worst of themselves: the stately bust was clothed, before anything else, in an impersonal gaberdine which disregarded the lengths of fashion; the large, luminous eyes in the rather livery face looked almost phosphorescent in the street lighting; nothing about the night nurse provoked the actor’s charm.

  The solicitor and the nurse had launched into a duet on weather themes.

  ‘A lovely evening, Sister, after the heat of the day.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Wyburd—rain, though—a storm: I caught sight of lightning from the bus stop.’

  The banality of the interweaving voices exorcised any mystery the night might have had, though the actor realized that he himself had contributed to this exorcism. He knew too much, alas. As he stood gloomily watching, a greenish sheet twitched for a moment against the cyclorama, making him listen for a rumble of zinc thunder from the wings.

  The thunder missed its cue, and the nurse left them, climbing the terraces towards bedpans and thermometers.

  ‘All these nurses and other characters must be eating up a fortune.’ Sir Basil made it sound like a practical approach, when he knew himself to be the least practical of men.

  ‘I don’t think the cost need worry your mother, even if she lives to a hundred.’

  ‘Hmmm!’

  ‘And ought to be allowed—at her age—to choose what she most enjoys.’

  ‘But does she enjoy? She seems to me full of grumbles.’

  ‘That is part of her enjoyment.’

  ‘Anyway we must talk, old Wyburd. I have a plan: a practical one.’

  The solicitor took out his car keys as though to protect himself from any possibility of conspiracy by night; jingling his keys in retreat he went only so far as to admit, ‘Yes, indeed. There will be plenty to discuss—for your sister and ourselves.’

  He who had taken off from London Airport in the fever of a conspiratorial plan might have sweated it out of his system as the solicitor drove away. When he had thought himself ready for piercing the heart of the matter with a ruthless blade, he might, he feared, fall back on brandishing the theatrical counterfeit of a weapon. A lot would depend on Dorothy: had she been taught, tempered by, her mistakes? Most people aren’t: an accumulation of failures either drives them inward or leads them to compassion for others; neither condition fits them to be partners in crime.

  Weaving back along the serpentine path which climbed towards the house, he found himself snatching the ribbons of leaves from native shrubs and inhaling their scent to the depths of his lungs: to restore his own toughness perhaps? at the same time bashing senselessly at the heavy panicles of overhanging blossom, like a boy expressing helplessness confused by spite.

  Something had happened to blunt his intention by filling him with his present malaise. If he hadn’t committed a blunder of the kind which those who are jealous of you—wives, for instance, and certain actors, and crypto-friends—chalk up as a major crime, his age and a veneer of dignity made of this too recent incident a pretty squalid minor mistake.

  Yes, Bangkok: thunder in the ears; a stickiness inside your unsuitable clothes; the bright, unquenchable inefficiency of the gentle Thai airport officials; the equally unquenchable English hostess holding her chin high to boost her frustrated efficiency as the scrambled voice announced a four-hour delay, for repairs of such an esoteric nature no layman would have asked for further explanation.

  He wouldn’t, anyway, although it had been written, there is nobody like Hunter for doing his homework. Given a part which interested him, yes, he would ferret out the last refinement of lust in a Bosola, say, or just to show them, wrap up a homosexual bread-carter in all the oblique motivation required by the Royal Court. What concerned him now was how to keep himself company in the four-hour wilderness; none of the faces of his fellow passengers would have helped populate a ten-minute interval. The Scotch had been doctored. He sat on his stool, sideways to the bar, not entirely unaware of his own predicament as reflected in the peach-tinted mirrors: that of a vessel waiting to be filled. Had he always been empty, and not realized? God knows, actors can be! But not yourself: not with the press cuttings, the knighthood, memories of occasions when words and emotions fermented inside you, seethed upwards through the throat in a delirium to which you might have succumbed if you had been without the skill to direct it through the darkness at the many-faced monster. Hardly heard the applause sometimes; if there wasn’t any, then you heard; that, and ruder sounds, were mostly on the road; a few occasions in the West End, for bad plays and mediocre support (politeness can also be daunting).

  Everyone has had their failures: John, Edith, poor old Donald. (Donald would have had a damn sight more if he had allowed himself to think about them; or perhaps he used to. Anyway, dead now, and you mustn’t muck about with the dead: least of all, dead actors. A wonder nobody had thought about that for a dressing-room superstition.)

  You only couldn’t prevent mirrors mucking about with empty disintegrating faces. At least before crumbling they acquire a kind of patina; and emptiness is not emptiness when it serves a purpose. Many of the greatest have been empty. How else could they have filled with those necessary flashes of inspiration, the surge of words, emotion, if they had been a bunch of intellectuals stuffed with theories and ‘taste’? Or Shiela (not Sheila) Sturges, the cerebral actress to bury other contenders. What’s eating you now Shiely? Those intense, protruding, all but goitrous eyes. I’m having a terrible time Basil with my self. Always knotting herself tighter. Some critic had committed the crime of telling Shiela she was the ‘second Meggie Albanesi’. Unlike Meggie, Shiela hadn’t died, except mentally, daily, in her efforts to work things out, and in trying to coax inside her head a dead woman she hadn’t seen, couldn’t even imagine, only cerebrate on the theme of. For God’s sake you’re late Shiela. What’s got into you this morning? Here we are half an hour in rehearsal! That was after you had separated, physically at least—for a long time Shiela continued to expect her professional perks—after Imogen was born. I’m late Basil because I had to get off the bus—and rub earth into my hands. I felt it might help me understand this woman—this peasant; how she mashed what she considered the more virtuous words. Poor Shiela: still having fits of cerebration when the grog allowed her; so you gathered from Imogen on her duty visits.

  This is Imogen (pause) my daughter. What else could you tell actors about an actor’s daughter who was a hospital almoner or something? They would have laughed, oh really? how original, darling. I mean—so warm—helping people. In any case, as old pros, the whole bang lot of them would be able to fill in the gaps in the story: Shiela Sturges and Basil Hunter—he divorced her before the title; she never enjoyed her ladyhood, only the booze and L. C. Bottomley—hee hee!

  L. C. Bottomley, a reliable character actor and boring man (he played cricket) was always ready to give you a hand with your traps between station and digs, run out and buy you the evening paper, paid a bill or two on occasions and let you forget about it. A thin Bottomley; and Imogen a big, thick-ankled girl throwing back God knows where. Daddy darling I want you to know that in any kind of fix—regardless of everything—and my living with Mother—you can rely on me. She must have inherited that from the Bottomleys.

&nb
sp; It was a sad script if you were forced to study it:

  THE ACTORS. Imogen—such a lovely name.

  SHIELA (dead serious as usual). I hoped it might help her grow up steadfast.

  BASIL HUNTER picks up his Number 9 and works steadfastly on his face.

  There are the born actors: no amount of Cremine will wholly remove their make-up; and there are the Bottomleys: clerks, salesmen, and schoolmasters gone in the wrong direction. There are also the Hunters in a special class of their own. Most of him derived from Betty Salkeld, an ingénue stationed behind the willows at the bend in the river to see who was clopping over the bridge, and Elizabeth Hunter, a grande dame descending the stairs. Mother was always on the stairs, in an inexhaustible wardrobe, white for preference, and the smile which charmed innocent men, grateful spinsters, seldom other wives, or servants, or children. That for sure was where he got his—gift; let other people use the more pretentious word. He had almost nothing of Alfred in him. For God’s sake, he would forget about Dad for years on end, then regret it; but what was there to remember? The rams for which he was famous within a circle of limited radius. They ‘erected’ a monument to Alfred (‘Bill’) Hunter of ‘Kudjeri’ in the main street at Gogong. The traffic parts at the point where this insignificant man is permanently stood, in wrinkled bronze trousers, and waistcoat carefully buttoned on a barrel chest, unexpected in anyone so short and mild. The Council had invited Athol Shreve the politician to unveil Alfred Hunter’s statue; Mother hadn’t been present, but sent a cutting from a grey-paged country newspaper.

  For a time you sent your own cuttings to prove the brilliance the family hadn’t been willing to believe in: ‘Basil Hunter, a young actor to watch, makes Guildenstern a real presence.’ (Not getting Rosencrantz had left you feeling sore till somebody spotted Guildenstern.) ‘Basil Hunter’s Orlando is a dazzling display of virile sensitivity, enough to bewitch Arden girls far less perceptive than Shiela Sturges’s Rosalind.’ (According to that old queen Hotchkiss; and poor Shiela had been awful, cerebrating into a boy playing a girl who becomes a boy: she got horribly tangled converting him back into a girl who was Shakespeare’s boy.)

  Then you left off sending the cuttings: you no longer had to prove you were an actor; there is only, finally, the need to convince that you can leave off acting.

  He looked round the almost deserted bar, and out the doorway, at travellers lumped on plastic in a gritty expanse of chrome and concrete. Given better lighting, would any of these detached souls have recognized in him a human being as well as an actor? Hardly likely; who amongst them would have heard of Sir Basil Hunter? And who amongst those who ‘knew’, could possibly know? unless they were actors themselves: the eternal bloody actors.

  This was where Basil Hunter, contorting on his perch between the mirror and the view through the doorway, tipped the chrome and plastic stool, and almost landed on his arse: for catching sight of what might be—what was a whole troupe of actors lugging vanity cases and overnight bags, dolls and paper parasols, trailing coats and stoles, and their own assorted tempers, one or two sustaining that roll of kettledrum brightness they had brought with them courageously from rep, years ago, into the jungle of the West End.

  Averting his physical downfall at the bar, the lost actor couldn’t wait to identify himself with the troupe, but skedaddled out, suede and rubber thumping tile and concrete, one trouser-leg still rucked at calf-level, his jacket showing too much shirt-cuff; a tie-end, flying, nicked his right eyeball.

  Careering towards them, mouthing, he sprayed them at last with his relief. ‘Madge! Waddayerknow, Dudley? For God’s sake—not Babs!’ Kisses for the girls; a shoulder clinch for good old Dudley Howard, a nice bloke, if just about the stodgiest actor.

  ‘But darling, how in-cred-ible!’ Madge Puckeridge was the brightest of all kettledrummers. ‘And in Bang-kok!’

  ‘ ’Ere, not in front of ladies!’ Born to the halls, Babs Rainbow couldn’t forget it even at the Royal Shakespeare: that’s why they signed her up.

  There was also a straggle of young things, he noticed, in too much costume and not enough make-up. Some of them he knew by sight, one or two by name, so he ducked his head. ‘Hi, Gemma—Hamish!’ Under his bonhomie he was shy of the young. Never let them see it, though. Some of them put on a moony, worshipful look for a famous experienced actor and knight. Others halted unwillingly, hand on sword, still too obviously in codpiece, and convinced they could run rings round this old ham it was their misfortune to bump into.

  Here they were on their way from Japan, he remembered now. ‘But why Bangkok?’

  Madge explained. ‘A British Council return gesture for a ballet or something they sent us.’ Several of them groaned.

  ‘Only a two-night stand.’

  ‘Fabulous temples, if you can beat the heat to them.’

  ‘Then Delhi.’

  ‘And you, Bas?’ It was Babs, whose Nurse and Mistress Quickly were rather special. ‘Where are you taking your one-man band?’

  ‘To Australia.’ He made the face they would expect, though not all of them did.

  ‘I’d adore to go to Australia. Must be simply ravenous for theatre.’ Herself a hungry thing: a mini-kirtled draft mare, about the thighs at least; the kind of face which is Plasticine to emotions.

  ‘This isn’t theatre.’ Sir Basil Hunter could tell he was about to lose an audience, some of whom were already bored. ‘It’s a deathbed. My old mother.’ He wagged his head from side to side to make it lighter, gayer, more acceptable for those it didn’t concern.

  ‘Better let’s all have a drink, Basil old boy.’ It looked as though Dudley had found the only possible way out of a difficult situation, not to say dead end.

  Madge was sputtering and fizzing. ‘Poor darling, how utterly tiresome for you! Alcohol is definitely called for.’ Although a loyal and generally reliable actress, she was giving a bad performance, and knew it; but how could you make death convincing off the stage?

  Suddenly he was disappointed; he hadn’t found the hoped-for reality in these reinforcements of himself: these other actors. Time stretched almost as elastic as in the peach-tinted bar with its pretty little Thai barman and gusts of ice. He was more than disappointed: he was horrified.

  ‘Yes. Alcohol. Why don’t I come with you while they fix this bloody machine? I can keep in touch from the hotel.’

  However little they had to give in the present circumstances, or perhaps ever, they were of his life, and that was in itself heartening: the ‘pros’ as opposed to the ‘public’. Some of them had come in so far back they had probably forgotten you had slept together. (Madge Puckeridge one night in Manchester after particularly stinking notes from that cunt Arundel Hallett; that was before Madge’s apparently endless marriage with Dudley, after Shiela had taken her child and gone; Shiela would have liked to make a barnstorm out of her departure, but her style wasn’t broad enough.)

  They were all bundling into a bus. ‘We’re staying at the Miramar—some of us,’ Dudley said. ‘The rest are on another flight, arriving later.’

  Lights were spinning: the drinks Sir Basil had downed on his own must be catching up with him.

  Babs Rainbow cackled. ‘Remember Phyl Spink, Bas?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She died. They found her in the bath with a gin bottle floating beside her.’ Babs must have smoked a fortune in cigarettes: her lungs rattled worse than this complimentary bus. ‘What a lovely way to die!’

  ‘I won’t, I will— NOT!’ Madge was protesting. ‘I’m a Christian Scientist in everything but the label.’

  Some of the silent young were barely suffering the bus ride: those lithe boys still in their swords and hose, who seem to burn themselves out in the performance; nothing to give afterwards, unless perhaps to their equivalent girls.

  He experienced another surge of anxiety: if he could no longer make contact with the Madge Puckeridges, the Dudley Howards, the Babs Rainbows, and certainly not with the silent young, wher
e exactly did he stand?

  ‘Are you terribly fond of her?’ It was the mini-kirtled draft-mare, he recognized, as the street-lights played on the thighs beside him.

  ‘Fond of who?’

  ‘Your mother.’

  ‘Oh, Lord—I don’t know! I haven’t seen her in more than half a lifetime.’

  She had not been prepared for that degree of unconventionality in an old man and knight; perhaps it was surprise which made her near thigh increase its pressure.

  Then they were signing the register, receiving their keys and mail, finding rooms, and one another. He lost interest: other people’s hotel arrangements have an importance it is impossible to believe in; while they, from their side, had cast him off temporarily.

  He looked in a mirror and tried to remember his mother, but couldn’t distinctly: his own reflection got in the way. Funny he couldn’t remember ever having known what it feels like to be a father; or not funny, considering.

  It was better in Madge and Dudley’s room after the bottles had arrived, and the ice, and Babs returned on getting rid of her foundations. There was a handful of the younger ones, on the whole only those who make a practice of ‘sitting at the feet of.’

  The draft-mare, whose name was Janie Carson, announced that she would contribute her duty-free to the party, ‘to drink to the time I barged into Sir Basil Hunter’. (Possibly Janie embarrassed some of her contemporaries, to whom she might have explained herself more fully: all right there’s art we all know that but who’s going to look after Janie if she doesn’t look after herself and the ways of getting on are the same old ways it’s only art that changes.)

  The refrigeration in a second-class tropical hotel was turning over groggily: you would see everybody’s thoughts before the night was half over.

  Two or three new faces put in an appearance at the door; the second flight had arrived, flogged, from Tokyo. They faded on seeing someone they knew only in the press or by repute.