The Eye of the Storm (5 page)

She had faith in her own originality and taste; everybody admitted those were among her virtues. She was not interested in possessions for the sake of possessions, but could not resist beautiful and often expensive objects. To those who accused her of extravagance she used to reply,
They'll probably become more valuable;
not that she was materialistic, not for a moment. Her argument was: if I can't take your breath away, if I can't awaken you from the stupor of your ugly houses, I've failed. She did honestly want to make her acquaintances as drunk as she with sensuousness.

Oh, she would screw her eyeballs deeper into her skull today, knowing she would never again see her long drawing-room, its copper and crimson and emerald melting together behind the bronze curtains drawn against the afternoon sun.

You see,
she said,
you can't say it's extravagant if it's beautiful—now can you?
Standing on the stairs. Flinging out her arms to embrace this work of art her house; not forgetting her husband, her children, and a couple of servants she had as audience. If she overdid it
slightly it was because she had something of the actress in her. (They used to say of Basil later,
you can see where he gets it from.)

Only now it is Alfred speaking,
Don't over-excite yourself, Betty, every one of us is full of admiration.
Poor dear Alfred, she could have eaten him at times, from gratitude. When gentle devotion was what he would have liked. She was always trying to include him in what she was doing.
Come and see your room—the study—which I hope you'll use—when you come down to he with us—I hope you'll make a habit of it, darling—because we'll miss you, shan't we? Dorothy?
Dragging Alfred, and Alfred alone, by the hand, its skin coarsened by joining in the work at ‘Kudjeri'—to jolly the men—a square, undemonstrative hand, trying manfully to return her enthusiasm with curious little encouraging pressures. (Their whole married life they had spent trying to encourage each other's uninteresting interests.)
What am I going to study in this study?
He laughed after a fashion.
If I ever use it.

And yet, Alfred read, she discovered: he had accumulated a whole library of unexpected books, used ones, you could tell by the stains on them and crumbs between the pages. So she had found out in the painful months at the end when they were together again at ‘Kudjeri'.

Earlier, when he would come down and ask them to put him up at Moreton Drive, he took to film-going. Though what Dad saw in the pictures he sat through, Basil could not imagine. It made him laugh in his in-between voice (his lovely pure little treble had broken). Basil was at his most horrid, exploiting harshness under cover of his beauty: like a still-ripening plum, he would have shrivelled the mouth if you had bitten into him. But he was right about those crude films; after tagging along to one or two, you could only conclude that poor Alfred interpreted them to suit himself, laughing when there was nothing to laugh at, crying—you suspected—at a common actress in corkscrew curls bringing her illegitimate baby to be christened in the parish church patronized by the young man's family. Admittedly, you did sniffle slightly yourself—against your better judgment. Or because Alfred was trying to get hold of your hand and press his thigh against yours.
(Imagine if the lights went up and anyone you knew was at the ‘pictures'!)

Mrs Hunter's eyelids might have been turned to walnut-shells if tears had not started oozing from beneath them: out of old, mottled, dammed-up eyes.

Even during the phase after the (unofficial) separation, she never withheld herself when he came down to Sydney from ‘Kudjeri'. She was determined to show her gratitude and repay him in affection for what amounted to her freedom. (He, too, must appreciate that affection is much less bumpy going than passion.) She used to make some sign, cough a shade too dramatically, or slam a drawer, or remark in an unnaturally high voice,
Those Wyburds of yours—do you think she knows how to treat him?
and Alfred would come to her, on bare feet, from the next room, and immediately they would drop their disguises. If he had still been alive she hoped he would remember with as much delight as she the pleasures of this calmer, therapeutic relationship.

Not that the other hadn't been necessary, desirable: the purposeful is necessary. And their children were purposeful. She would still dream of the barbs he had planted in her womb.

But was Arnold Wyburd necessary?

Scarcely saw him at first after the move to Moreton Drive. Old Keemis was too possessive: an old, reputed masher, in silk hat and thin white ribbon of a necktie pushed through what looked like a wedding ring. Married to Millicent, a person you never set eyes on: an invalid, it was said. The old man was very correct in his behaviour: sucked peppermints, for instance, to disguise his breath. She would have preferred the full blast of tobacco which lingered under the peppermint. Flowers for her birthday from Keemis: yellow roses; at Christmas the box of French liqueur chocolates. Archie Keemis was a man who made life seem everlasting: then he went and died in Pitt Street, on Cup Day, on his way to the club. Her grief for this old man who hadn't meant all that much to her was as spontaneous as any she had experienced. Must have been the suddenness the shock, the removal of something solid and dependable. An almost
solidly male funeral watched her while pretending not to. She was glad she had thought to wear a veil. They were watching to see what ‘Bill' Hunter's wife had meant to their solicitor. And Millicent Keemis was not there. The wife's absence, however invalid she may have been, made your presence more calculable to men who believed in their powers of calculation. (Honest affection, she had found, often appears more dubious than outright infidelity: probably no one—well, almost no one, had guessed at her consummated flings; there had been other, unconsummated ones of course, because you can be unfaithful, mentally unfaithful, with a jewel, a house, a child, a woman—couldn't have gone all the way with a woman, or not farther than a hand's flirt. Who had said—some forgotten brute—
Her only genuine adulteries are those she commits with herself?
She must try to remember.

Not Archie Keemis: whatever his reputation as a ladykiller, he had always been respectful. Too old. Too honourable. So was his junior, Arnold Wyburd. It was Archie who suggested she should make a will—only a couple of weeks before they picked him up dead in Pitt Street. (Dead: she used to shy away from the word, saw it as a stone; then it becomes an idea rather, hovering round the body like mist, straying through the skull in unravelled snatches of thought, but never frightening, or personal.) And here was Archie, incredibly, asking her to confess to a belief in her own death now that she had property to leave: the house in Moreton Drive was hers; her jewels; the stocks Alfred had settled on her after they married. She had never thought about it. Might have enjoyed a sense of importance if it had not been for a slight uneasiness in her stomach. The document itself was ludicrous: the laborious phrases he insisted on wrapping round her simple wishes. His serious courtliness made her smile as she sat twisting her rings, looking at everything there was to look at in that dusty office; she always enjoyed seeing what there was to see. To save her the trouble of a trip to the city—which she made every day in her little electric brougham, even when there was scarcely a pretext—he said he would bring out the draft for her approval.

Then they telephoned to say Mr Keemis was off-colour: he hadn't come to the office today; Mr Wyburd would bring the draft after lunch.

Arnold Wyburd was dressed in grey on this occasion: a great improvement on that hot black he wore for ‘Kudjeri'. When she came in he was standing looking out the window. She surprised herself thinking she would like to touch the lines of this back, to slide her arms round the waist, and up, till her hands met on the other side, knotted on his chest; to fit herself closely to this splendid, slender, still unconscious, grey form.

Though he must have been conscious. If he did not turn immediately, she began to sense he was postponing their facing each other. She could feel herself flush, jaws clenching to prevent what was still only a warmth in her throat from gushing out as something more reprehensible. It was a warm, not a hot day, a scent of daphne from the bed outside. When he could no longer put off turning, it was not his eyes she was drawn to, it was the drops of perspiration lying in the saucer of a temple.

They were making sounds at each other, of welcome, of apology: social sounds, by one interpretation. He was carrying the folded will, the guarantee of her eventual death. She half noticed the stiff paper was tied with a ribbon: the ribbon gave it a coquettish air.

You mustn't be afraid,
she said; it would have sounded more surprising if it had not been part of a plan or theory, she suspected, which had started evolving already at ‘Kudjeri' as she held his white though sinewy wrist to steady a wavering flame. She began elaborating—Mrs Hunter laughed to remember,
You must realize I'm much older than you—that I married late: I was thirty-two—that there's nothing to be afraid of.
The irrelevance of it all made it sound strangely idiotic, even now. Must have decided in the beginning Arnold was a stupid young man. Herself doubtfully cool; but coolness prevailed: at least it must have impressed him more than Lal Pennecuick and the two little girls, Marjorie and Whatever. You hadn't forgotten your own Dorothy and Basil: they were out walking in the park with Nanny. Nora—you knew her habits—would have returned to her
interrupted novelette; Gertrude, by now in her basket chair, is snoring off a lunch of scones and tea.

This was the extent of the coolness which spread also to Arnold Wyburd: never could a mouth have grown more familiar in a shorter time.

‘Oh dear!' Mrs Hunter was momentarily so racked by guilt, the elderly solicitor at the bedroom window again wondered whether he should advance to the bedside and try in some way to share whatever she was suffering.

Making love by daylight: it was the first time as far as she could remember; and yes, it must certainly be the first time Arnold Wyburd had taken off his clothes in public. It appeared easier after the shoes. Her bed felt so deliciously cold it made her shiver; it had never looked so blinding. She closed her eyes, out of modesty as well, and in this way hoped to make it easier for Arnold to find the courage she had promised herself to inspire in him. Only it seemed, in the end, that Arnold was not in need of inspiration. His heavy breathing exploded her theory. So she opened her eyes to his white, practically hairless, sinewy body. As he surfaced for breath, it was Arnold's eyes which were closed. To shut her out because she wasn't Lal? At least she could say, with eyes open or shut, he wasn't Alfred; this was neither love, nor the more satisfactory affection. On her part it was only desire, and on Arnold's a kind of dissolved frustration. She was so relieved she almost laughed. But he can't have felt the least tremor: he was too deeply concentrated; and she lulled him deeper and deeper, it seemed, and deeper. At his climax, she took his head with her hands, and tried to press into his mouth the admiration with which she was running over: that he had succeeded in leaping a barrier—and with her help.

When Arnold Wyburd dashed her off, disengaged himself entirely, and stubbed his toe on a caster.
Never forgive myself Mrs Hunter a position of trust so many others involved.
Poor man.
But we don't love each other Arnold and I am the one to blame I don't love you but I loved it it is something which had to which you will forget and I shall remember with pleasure.
Too foolish of her to suggest that they were
only half-absolved. She would always remember his braces, his suspenders, trying to impress an enormity on her. Men are at their most priggish managing braces or suspenders. Ah well, better a priggish solicitor than a lecherous one, she supposed.

She could not remember how Arnold Wyburd got away. Didn't telephone for a cab; must have walked to the tramstop. When she went downstairs, in time for the children's return from the park, she found the draft will. She wished it had been the final version. She drove herself in next morning, in the electric brougham, and handed over the approved draft to some young woman at Keemis & Wyburd's office: Arnold did not appear; and poor Archie was at home preparing for his fall in Pitt Street.

‘Who's for brekkie?' Too much a clattering scratching clucking: too rude an interruption to thought and stillness.

‘Who are you?' Mrs Hunter asked.

‘I'm your nurse—Sister Badgery. And here's a nice
coddled
egg!'

‘I was hoping you'd be the other one—Mary. She hasn't walked out on me—has she?'

‘She's downstairs enjoying a cup of coffee. Sister's off duty now. She only stayed on this morning in hopes of catching a glimpse of the—your daughter.'

‘Oh, yes. They never met. De Santis came to me that other time—just after I'd returned from some island—after Dorothy had flown back to France in one of her huffs.'

‘Here's the lovely egg, dear! Open mouth, Mrs Hunter!'

Mrs Hunter pointed her chin. ‘I haven't been interested in breakfast—not since I married. I like a good luncheon—“dinner” they seemed to call it nowadays—nothing heavy at night.' After which her gums closed down.

‘Just a tiny spoonful!' Mrs Hunter could feel Sister Badgery's bone spoon trying to prise her lips open. ‘I'm sure you don't want to disappoint me. Or Mr Wyburd here. There's no one has your interests at heart so much as Mr Wyburd.'

‘Oh, my solicitor. Yes. Have you met him?'

Sister Badgery's arrival with the hateful egg had confused Mrs
Hunter: she was terrified her mind might crumble before Dorothy came, let alone Basil, who was delayed.

‘Oh yes, we know each other. Don't we, Mr Wyburd?' Sister Badgery winked, and moistened her already glistening teeth.