The Eye of the Storm

by Patrick White

  ‘That would be more in my line—Florrie, did Butch say? Only exclusive homes of course. I believe the loot is incredible if you know how to pick your cases.’

  Alix was staring with such concentrated intensity, not at the prospects of private nursing, but into what she must have decided was the innermost Flora Manhood, that Flora looked to Snow to take her part; but her cousin had moved down the kitchen end of the kitchen, and was slinging the pots around. And chops—yes, chops.

  A silence had fallen, outside the fridge and other kitchen noises, when Alix addressed Snow. ‘Isn’t she pretty, Snowy? Your little coz. Sweet.’

  But Snow either didn’t hear, or wasn’t going to, and Alix, after she had tiptoed back towards the bottle, went and started rubbing up against her friend.

  ‘You’re not cranky with me, Butch, just because I wasn’t on the dot? Darl?’

  Though Alix was rubbing up and down against Snow’s backview like a grater on a lump of cheese, Snow continued peeling a potato, holding it well away from her.

  Finally she asked, ‘Who wasut, I’d liketer know?’

  ‘Not what you think.’ Alix sighed into her glass. ‘It was a gentleman.’

  ‘Those bloody two-ball screwballs!’

  ‘A buyer,’ Alix extenuated, smoothing the black sateen over rather plump hips. ‘You’ve got to stay the right side of the buyers.’

  ‘Which side?’ Snow hollered out of the corner of her mouth.

  Alix said darl how could she, and soon afterwards Snow put down that long-distance potato; she turned and started kneading Alix, who submitted to the bumpy going.

  Suddenly Snow remembered. ‘’Ere, we’re forgettun the guest!’ she shouted.

  She poured her cousin a snifter, which Flora at once recognized as a snorter.

  ‘She’s pretty—your cousin,’ Alix repeated, and sighed. ‘Chawming.’ She gargled a few notes. ‘I think she’s probably sensitive.’

  Flora drank the gin because she had nothing else to do, except explore her own thoughts. These were occupied, she soon realized, almost exclusively by Col Pardoe: she saw him emptying the spittle out of the bowl of his stinking pipe; she saw that particular mole above the line of his pubic hair. By the time she could smell the chops Snow must have thrown on the grill, she had conjured Col into this kitchenful of drunken women. Seeing what would disgust him most, she began twisting in and out Snow and Alix. The woman shrieked; they loved it; they just on shot their hips out in imitation of a rumba from one of those old movies they drag up on the box; and as they pranced and wagged their bums they began to make a play for Snow’s cousin Florrie Manhood. While Col’s image, the mouth which in her weaker moments she liked to think of as ‘strong’, writhed for the obscenities he was being made to witness.

  She’d teach Col.

  Alix thought she had got hold of a breast, but what she caught was a handful of air; she almost fell over.

  ‘Oh, rurlly!’ Flora Manhood sang, ‘Don’t say it’s chops—my favourite cutt— of murr-heat!’ Then she went and sat down because the other two were so shickered it was no longer fun, toppling and giggling as they were from stored alcohol.

  Only when the chops began to burn, and she smelt it, Snow brought them to the dinette. She had forgotten about potatoes, it seemed. The one she had peeled was turning brown on the draining surface beside the sink.

  Snow said, ‘I always think it makes a chop tastier to eat it with the fingers—like in the outdoors.’

  Alix agreed through her opening mouthful. She was less a lady with a chop. Some of the fat had drizzled down her saleswoman’s sateen. Her blue eyelids, hanging heavy like some old parrot’s, confessed their wrinkles.

  The company sat mumbling its chops, Snow and Alix as part of a necessary exercise after gin, Flora because she was young and hungry.

  When she had licked her fingers, and no pud seemed forthcoming, she asked, ‘What about the washing up?’ as though it was her most natural function: the people who take you for granted are the ones who put you against things.

  Alix sniggered close to the bone she was tidying, while Snow pronounced through a shower of shredded mutton, ‘Never terday what yer can termorrer! Don’t yer remember that, Florrie, from Banana Land?’

  Alix added, ‘It’s easier after the fat’s hardened.’

  Flora snorted; she was so glad for what she was hearing, though melancholy in the end that these women should know better than Col. She noticed Snow’s nails, bitten to the quick, and Alix’s long, overhanging pearlshell ones; Col pared his nails to his broad blunt fingertips. (Though she would never have admitted, Flora Manhood was fascinated watching Col’s blunt fingers perform unexceptional acts.)

  Snow was yawning now, which made her look like a money-box, while Alix was inclined to hide her yawns in crumpled smiles. Flora herself suddenly felt a dead weight descending on her, from Snow’s snorter no doubt, followed by the hot meat. Her homeless-ness struck her afresh, since she couldn’t face Vidlers’ convertible lounge, any more than Col’s possessive single. What she visualized, she dismissed almost at once, because it wasn’t warm of her: she saw Mrs Hunter’s great bed after the undertakers had been; she saw herself waking in its acres as the sun struck through the curtains, and Lottie Lippmann standing with breakfast on a tray.

  Instead it was Snow Tunks saying, ‘Early bed for working girls.’

  And old Alix grimacing and asking, ‘Is your cousin with us for the night?’

  Since you had turned down the offer of a permanent lodging, perhaps Snow hadn’t contemplated that, but jerked or burped at the suggestion. ‘Nobody ever knew what Flora intends.’

  Flora played for cautious. ‘I could doss down here,’ she said, ‘if it was convenient;’ patting the grease-stained cretonne.

  The two friends looked at each other. ‘We wouldn’t expect that!’ Snow was sentimentally reproachful.

  Then they entwined themselves around the third party, and bumped their way as far as a black gulf which shot into light and became a bedroom.

  Snow said, ‘You can’t always find the time of a mornun not even to pull the bedclothes up,’ as she ruffled up the pillows and smoothed a sheet.

  Alix giggled. ‘Most nursing sisters can’t see an unmade bed and resist making it,’ she regurgitated before falling over on the one that offered.

  Flora mumbled she had always found it resistible.

  They were all three getting out of their clothes: Snow, that white gollywog; Alix riding a bicycle out of her black sateen; Flora, on account of what she had observed, kept her bra and panties on. Snow must have got through life without taking a look at the glass, but Alix would have liked to hide bits of herself, only she hadn’t enough arms. Then they were pulling you down to be the ham in their sandwich. The two women flapping around, one white and the other black, reminded Flora of hens half paralysed by ticks.

  After Snow had yanked the string which brought darkness down on them, the women became more frantic, and would have been united in a single aim if the drink hadn’t sided with Flora Manhood: the drowsy dark blurred the ambitions of the two friends as well as affecting their sense of direction.

  Half strangled chewed nuzzled Flora recovered enough of her wits to know she did not belong to this community of seething flesh. She managed to defect and stumble by the light of the spitting fluorescence in the street, as far as the window and what she remembered as an armchair. She flopped, but first had to jettison a well-heeled shoe buried in the nest of anonymous garments in which she finally settled to enjoy her independence. By comparison it was delicious and unlimited.

  Snow’s voice rose once out of the straining and muffled mumping on the bed. ‘Watch out, Someone! Florrie? Alix! Those flamun nails of yours! Watcher take me for—a joint?’

  ‘You know you always tole me, darl, I’m the most professional carver.’

  ‘Carla Who?’

  The flickering fluorescence was developing other pictures on the inside of Flora Manhood’s eyelids.


  ‘Eh? What about Carla? It wasn’t that bloody buyer, then. It was Carla Abrams! Alix? Wasut?’

  It will probably be a professional man a surgeon is more temperamental when you give away this private jazz dust down your ideals and go back to P.A. as theatre sister best for surgeons only counting the swabs puts the wind up you at times can’t concentrate on the surgeon for concentrating on the count Sir Sir Archibald Humphrey no Valentine never knew a Valentine except the ones Col sends a black Daimler Jags are too common for Lady Valentine Parr Parbury not sit close riding to Admiralty House by air to seminars at Kuala Lumpur Delhi San Francisco all university men medical diplomats Prince Philip has his eye on Lady Valentine Whatever in skinthin sheath of black leather yes the perfume is Shared Secret my husband adores it yes we are exhausted what with the seminars swab counting the many responsibilities of diction deportment French archaeology there really isn’t time except in the soundproof Daimler to discuss personal problems and for Sir Valentine to only very very occasionally put his hand under the rug.

  Flora Manhood had to shift her dead arm. Her throat had dried. From ‘Miami Flats’ you could just see the fiery furnace blazing down Botany way. Those women on the bed must have reached a compromise the right side of sleep. They were all sighs as they were sucked under. Flora too.

  Flora? Yes, Sir Basil. Not Sir Archibald Humphrey Valentine Whatever it’s Basil Hunter you’re after how could you have ever forgot remember quick the details you hardly had time for the peppersalt eyebrows meeting over what colour the biggest watch crocodile strap flattening hairs a vein suit you can tell the very best crumpled a bit up the back from sitting in a plane tie woven for winter everyone looks wrong who arrives out of the air don’t you remember your lines Flora you can’t neither lines nor anything important only the superfluous superficial that’s what I am a swab count never chilled worse than the expression in Basil Hunter’s eyes do you think I’ll learn the part Basil so bad an actress in bra and panties too Mother Hunter would have booed you off the stage if she wasn’t a lady as for Sir her son if I teach you the technique Flora the rest is in you coming at you bigger than the ad on a hoarding then bending down to part to look inside you for something no no you can’t they’re there all right all the children and none of them his pouring out and around he must recognize you are not the actress but acted on by all these children unlabelled uncounted warm and overpowering any reason you may find to offer.

  Flora Manhood awoke to greylight and a street full of skittled milk bottles. She had been dreaming of what she wouldn’t bother herself to remember though a bitterness made her suspect Col Pardoe was behind it.

  Col or not, she must end by every means the goose chase with Snow and Alix: it was her worst madness to date. Snow was lying on her back, her gollywog mouth desperate for air, her stomach, with an old scar, rising and falling, but sluggishly. Alix, her curdled throat exposed, her flesh unsorted, would probably have settled for murder as the next best thing to love.

  Having covered her bra and panties Flora Manhood slipped away very easily; she didn’t even bother about her hair though she carried a comb in her bag. Outside ‘Miami Flats’ the street was looking extra livid: the fluorescence had not yet been switched off to accommodate the light of morning. She walked briskly, but suspiciously, as though expecting to skid on something: one of the empty milk bottles left to roll in the gritty shallows. Crossing the Parade she avoided glancing to the right because of the PHARMACY sign, and soon afterwards arrived at 26 Gladys Street, where Mrs Vidler was scrubbing the step.

  She looked up: a large brown-skinned woman with suds to halfway up her arms.’ Vid and I might worry about you, love, if we thought there was any cause for it.’

  ‘For all you know, I could have been prostituting myself with a G.I. at the Cross.’ Flora Manhood was that exasperated she added for good measure, ‘A Negro.’

  Viddie laughed for the joke. ‘Mr Pardoe called and left a message.’

  ‘What message?’ She could hardly bear it.

  ‘Vid put it in yer room.’

  Flora went in, and there was the envelope, exactly in the centre of the Vidlers’ cleanly table.

  She wouldn’t open it at once, but did sooner than she intended, because what was the use?

  Dear Flo,

  You can only misunderstand me. I honestly love you.

  COL

  Flora Manhood sat a while on the edge of the convertible lounge, her trembling fingers shielding her eyes from the gun which was neverendingly, inescapably, pointed at her.

  Five

  AS SHE was rushed back from the depths of sleep in which she was being rolled and ground, and laid once more amongst the soft crests of comparatively placid sheets, Mrs Hunter became aware that something—some kind of transformation—had taken place at the foot of the bed. In the blur which the shaded light and mirrors made of her rudimentary vision, somebody was dwarfed.

  ‘Sister de Santis—’ she realized, ‘what has happened? You’re not kneeling, are you?’

  The nurse gasped; you could see her veiled head shaken like a great white—not lily—Canterbury bell. ‘I was looking for a pin I dropped.’

  ‘Take care. I can remember a child—I believe it was one of the Nutleys—she knelt on a needle. It disappeared into her knee, and was lost in the flesh for weeks. One day they noticed a black speck on the skin, and drew out the needle with a magnet.’

  The nurse said, ‘This was a safety pin, Mrs Hunter’; and began getting up off her knees.

  You couldn’t believe in the safety pin. She hadn’t been praying for you, surely? For that thing your soul; or an easy death. Extraordinary the number of people who insist that death must be painless and easy when it ought to be the highest, the most difficult peak of all: that is its whole point.

  ‘Now that you’re awake I might as well rub your back.’ The nurse was laying a false trail.

  ‘Don’t invent unnecessary jobs.’

  Because she had been caught out, the answer sounded stifled. ‘I was only thinking of your comfort.’

  ‘You can take out my teeth at least. You forgot my teeth. I don’t wonder. So many visitors appearing-I might need them at any moment. On the other hand, I don’t want to lose them in my sleep.’

  When she had carried off the teeth the nurse returned to repair the bed. Such a token raft, it didn’t seem worth the trouble. But you could tell she was glad of the job. Sister de Santis must have been praying, not for you, but for herself, while she was kneeling at the foot of the bed.

  The veil, as it swept back and forth, was so sharp it almost cut your skin open, while reminding, ‘ Campanula is the botanical name.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘“Canterbury bell” of course.’

  ‘Oh, yes? They’re pretty, aren’t they?’

  ‘They never appealed to me much. I was drawn to the more spectacular flowers.’ She laughed. ‘My enemies—and some of my friends—have called me an egoist—so other friends and enemies tell me.’

  The nurse was trying to think of something kind but truthful to offer as consolation when she needn’t have bothered.

  ‘Lal Wyburd was the one for botanical names. They seemed to give her the feeling of superiority she needed. “Aren’t you partial to an Astilbe? So feathery—delicate—but comical. It’s common name, I believe, is goatsbeard.”’ Mrs Hunter’s laughter was wickeder for the rictus from which it issued. ‘“The great tragedy of my life is that I haven’t succeeded in growing Mimulus at Double Bay.” Poor lucky Lal never to have had a tragedy!’

  ‘You’ll wake yourself up if you talk too much.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Sleep is what will wake me up.’

  The nurse was adjusting the shade as though afraid the lamp might illuminate. Then she began to tiptoe out of the room. Silly girl: anybody on tiptoe lacks a sense of unbalance.

  But the teeth you were glad without already drowning as you sink down horrid when sand gets under the false gums horrid teeth oh it
is tiring yawnful the comforting true gums suck and gulp their way along the bottom of the sea nobody to want anything not love not money or illumination tell me the answer what it means tell me that you love me all that silly tiptoeing around you wait for answers to flow in quietly illuminating from the inside not if it is too rough sleep too can quench the light the fire can’t you make it up Betty my feet are can’t you bring in another log bring me my dispatch case Betty we’ll burn the letters together the love-letters they’re too personal don’t you think yes Alfred if that is what you wish burn all letters I agree you don’t the bottom of the sea is littered with old unburnt sodden letters the letter you have always kept of all letters it was so cruel untrue Dr Treweek’s never liked him well he didn’t like you you can’t expect only Christians love their detractors an exercise in masochism nobody can ever call me a masochist no you are right there Mrs Hunter Bill wouldn’t have married you if you hadn’t known how to use the whiphandle on his devotion.

  Oh the dreams with which the bottom of the sea is littered not always sodden like the old letters they will stand up in coral columns in whole cupolas and archways and long sculptural perspectives to confront entice you in where the daylight is solid and the expression in his eyes at that time perhaps the first clue I ever had to what is transcendent.

  She was standing in the bow window at the end of the drawing-room at Moreton Drive, in that kind of light which can make a dream more convincing than life. Only she was awake. She was standing by the revolving bookcase, looking out over the park as she opened the letter they had brought her. (Miss Thormber had been admiring your hands while doing your nails. It was not a luxury bringing a manicurist to the house, more a charity: something had to be done about Miss Thormber, a hopeless manicurist—but an expert in flattery; therein could have lain the luxury.)

  Elizabeth Hunter opened the letter, probably a tiresome one, and began to read, holding the indifferent paper at a casual distance:

  Dear Mrs Hunter,

  I am writing this letter against the wishes of one of those concerned, and realizing that what I have to say may be unforgivably distasteful to a second person …