The Eye of the Storm (52 page)

Walking down the corridor she heard the bones click once or twice from somewhere about her, and was reminded of early morning gallops on her first horse (as opposed to barrel-bellied pony) storming across the river flat in one long burst of thunder, till finally controlling her mount only by riding him, humped and groaning, at the steep of a hill. In the club corridor Dorothy Hunter's breath came faster; her nostrils thinned; she surprised a chambermaid by smiling, then by positively whinnying at her. Realizing at once that she had gone foolishly far, the princess fell silent and sober. In the taxi she sat looking with less demonstrative pleasure at her crossed ankles.

Some little apprehension, though only of a momentary nature, rose in her at Moreton Drive. Where a sharp wind had prevailed amongst the wharves and along the expressway, here more of a breeze, or circular languor, inspired the mops and switches of the native trees. Overcome by what should have been happy surprise, the princess almost tipped the driver twenty cents, before scotching that foolishness too: she made it ten.

Was it morning that caused the squeal made by the hinges on the gate to sound so penetrating, yet private, and somehow melancholy? She could remember listening as a child for the sound of the gate, wondering whether this time it was announcing the arrival she had always half expected: of the person in whom beauty was united with kindliness? Would she be listening still if she had continued living in Elizabeth Hunter's house?

Strange that Mother should have thought to preserve, stranger still to plant, native trees in her garden: herself an exotic even down to her hypocrisies.
I shan't feel happy till I've tasted everything there is to taste and I don't intend to refuse what is unpleasant—that is experience of another kind.
There must have been some Australian streak still existent under the posturing, the opinions and habits borrowed from
another tradition.
But how can you possibly love them Mother? Scarcely trees—monotonous ugly scarecrows—ugh!
When they broke your heart at times, just from thinking of them, and in another hemisphere.
I can't reason about it Dorothy only swear that it's a true passion whether you believe me or not tell me if you can why confident responsive women are attracted to withdrawn shadowy men? or gentle girls to hairy brutes? Oh Mother—must we descend to that level?
At any level Elizabeth Hunter could make you feel you had inherited some of her moral pretences, and added to them, if you were honest, a dash of priggishness all your own.

Now the princess went warily as she climbed the path which wound amongst the contentious trees. Wary of the light too. Round the suspended terracotta dish, which the night nurse kept filled with seed, birds were hanging in fluttering clusters. Instead of the normal clash and shattering of light, here it glowed and throbbed like the drone of doves.

She opened her bag and looked distractedly inside, without knowing, she realized, what she expected to find. She shut the bag. She wet her lips. She must forget about the light, the trees. She rang the bell, and heard her authority resound through a house, the size and misuse of which, made it redundant, if not downright immoral. (It occurred only very briefly to the Princesse de Lascabanes that she would have been horrified in other circumstances by the attitude she was forced to adopt.)

As on a previous occasion, the bell was answered by the nurse on duty.

‘Oh, dear!' Sister Badgery was sent flying several paces back. ‘I got a shock!' she clattered.

‘Why—whatever shocked you?' the princess heard a bleached voice inquire.

‘I expected someone else, I expect.' Sister Badgery laughed and gawked, unlike the widow of a tea planter.

‘Who is expected?'

‘I don't know I'm sure.' Behind her spectacles the nurse was trying to look mysterious. ‘Not you anyway—Princess Dor—
mad-
dahm!'
She was bubbling up again. ‘Maybe Jehovah's Witness!' she shrieked.

Neither of them could decide whether to take it as a joke or a revelation. The nurse at least was in a position to turn and lead the caller upstairs.

Dorothy thought it prudent to avoid inquiring after her mother's health; instead she asked with deliberate coldness, ‘Has the housekeeper broken a bridge on this occasion too?'

‘Oh, ne-o!' Sister Badgery twittered, and shook her veil. ‘She's a bit under the weather. That's all. Her feet—and everything.' She half turned while continuing to sidle up the stairs. ‘Between ourselves, mad-dam, many of these Continental Jewesses are more than a little neurotic.' The nurse herself had a tic in one cheek as she turned back to give full attention to the climb, with a less crablike, more of a perching-Leghorn motion. ‘In any case, it's no hardship for me to answer the bell. I love people.'

‘I'm told that's why some women choose to work at news stalls on railway stations,' the princess remarked. ‘But surely, with a temperament like yours, you must feel lonely in this big old unused house?'

Looking down into the gulf of the hall which she had known intimately, Dorothy herself half-admitted to loneliness.

But Sister Badgery was protesting out of a flurry of veil, ‘Oh, ne-o, ne-o! Mrs Hunter is such a happy—such an
original
soul! She makes a person see things in a different light from day to day. We all worship Mrs Hunter—your mother.'

Dorothy was more than ever determined not to inquire after Mother's health. ‘I'm expecting my brother at almost any moment.' She made it a cheerful warning.

‘Oh, Sir Basil!' Sister Badgery gasped. ‘Then there will be two of you,' she added rather pointlessly; even more so, ‘I had three brothers. I could rely on each one of them for moral support.'

The two women had reached the landing, where they were glad to draw breath a moment.

‘Though it amuses you to answer the bell, I'm sorry you've had this exhausting climb,' the princess thought to apologize.

‘Oh ne-o, it's really nothing. I love the exercise,' Sister Badgery insisted; in between panting and smiling, she seemed to be drying the buckle of her teeth with her under lip while developing a line of thought. ‘Actually, for some people it's a climb. Poor Mrs Lippmann has her feet. Actually, what upsets Mrs Lippmann more than anything is to think she may become so incapacitated she won't be able to dance again for Mrs Hunter.'

‘Have you seen it?' the princess was tempted to ask about what she had vaguely heard.

‘Only Mrs Hunter has seen.' Sister Badgery bowed her head and led the way along the passage, lightly tossing over her shoulder, perhaps to frustrate the visitor some more, ‘In her day Mrs Lippmann was a great artiste we are told—by Mrs Lippmann.' Standing with one hand on the knob, head inclined against a panel of the door, the nurse might have ended by sounding vindictive if it were not for looking as though physical exertion and some demanding preoccupation had blanched the malice out of her.

Other questions were rising to the surface of Dorothy's mind, but there was no time to ask them: the nurse had opened the door of Mother's room, and you would have to go inside. What made the moment more portentous, Sister Badgery was clinging to the knob, holding back, while an intensified flickering of eyelids and the directionless drift of a pallid smile implied that she personally would have no part in anything reprehensible anyone else might be plotting. The princess hesitated, to give protocol a chance. But the nurse failed to announce her; she closed the door, shutting out her own blameless figure and a last simper of apologies.

‘Is that you, Dorothy? I can't see.'

‘Yes, Mother.' The Princesse de Lascabanes felt her nylons turn to lisle.

The figure on the bed—her mother—continued treading the waters of recent sleep, till rising above the wave she was to some extent clothed by the myth of her former beauty.

Alone, Dorothy was already quailing for the kind of sentimental weaknesses a raking of the past might uncover. At the Judgment,
too, you stand alone: not only Basil, all other sinners will contrive to be late. Your only hope in the present lies in indignation for whatever disgusts most: from faecal whiffs, breath filtered through mucus, the sickly scent of baby powder. Thus fortified, you may hope to face the prosecution and conduct your own defence.

Madame de Lascabanes stripped off her gloves, dumped her bag: it tumbled off the bedside table, and lay; she seized the freckled claws, and asked, ‘Do they look after you, darling?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Rub your back regularly. Change you often enough. Keep you fresh.'

‘Why? Do I smell?'

‘Of course not! I was only inquiring generally.'

‘They spend far too much time messing me about. But that's what they're paid to do, isn't it? Poor wretches!'

‘I shouldn't have thought of them as “poor wretches”. They're paid very well. The award's ridiculously high.'

‘What do you know about awards?'

‘Only what I've found out.'

Overcoming her repugnance for the signs of human decay, the princess stooped to kiss the papery cheek, and was again victimized by the past.
Oh Mummy can't we stay together? can't you come into my bed?
To sleep blissfully secure.
In this dress? do he sensible Dorothy you must know Mummy's expected at dinner.
The fingers as pink-tipped the dress as slippery scentful white as—what was it?
Tuberoses darling somebody thought they were paying me a compliment
.

Cling, for God's sake, to the present. ‘Only what I've found out,' Dorothy de Lascabanes repeated, and what that was could have been as distasteful to her as the body's corruption.

Even so, screwed up for ruthlessness, she felt inside her a movement too physical to be ignored, as though conscience had become the baby sterility had prevented her having. Her lips seemed to grow thick and blubbery as she withdrew them from her mother's cheek. She had to go quickly and stand looking out of the open window.

‘Basil will be here presently,' she flung back over her shoulder as hard as she could.

‘I expect he will have found out a whole lot more.'

‘I doubt it. Basil has his gift; beyond that, I suspect him of being a wobbly, helpless male.'

‘Basil was the affectionate one.'

‘His manners were always flamboyant. And it's an advantage to be a man, Mother.' Dorothy's mirth was so dry, she herself was reminded of a lizard, possibly a deadly one; again she felt guilty, no longer on this old woman's account, but for the people she could see strolling through the park below, innocent of what might be in store for them, at any thicket, even in the open grass.

‘What was that man's name, dear?'

‘Which man, Mother?' As if your instinct for danger had not forewarned.

‘You know—the Norwegian—when somebody invited us to an island.'

Dorothy did not think she could bring herself to force it out from between her teeth; but Mother seemed to have lost interest since she had got her own back. If she had. Out of a haze of sentiment and tuberoses, she had conjured for you this solid land mass, or island of hate: its stinging sand, twisted tree-roots, and the brumbies snapping at one another with yellow teeth, lashing out with broken hooves as they stampeded along their invaded beach.

Dorothy de Lascabanes did not have to remind herself she had never hated anyone so bitterly as she had hated their mother on their brief visit to Brumby Island. She should remember Elizabeth Hunter's treachery on that occasion could only make the most brutally reasonable plan her children might now conceive for her seem morally defensible.

Jack and Helen Warming were going on ahead to the island, to open up the house and get in some serious fishing before the arrival of their guests. The Hunters would fly up later from Sydney to Oxenbould, and there transfer to the helicopter Jack was chartering
to take them across to Brumby. From the beginning Dorothy wondered why they were invited. The Warmings had never been more than superficial acquaintances living in another state. Though Helen and Dorothy had gone to the same school, Helen had been a junior when Dorothy was at the point of leaving. Then there was Mother, a most incongruous element: on finding this out for herself she would develop the fidgets, and start rearranging other people's furniture and lives.

‘I know what's on your mind, Dorothy. Don't worry; I shall fit in. Though the island's uninhabited except for a few forestry workers, the Warmings don't pig it, so I'm told. In any case, I've never had a craving for luxury, and know how to pull my weight under primitive conditions.' Her Edwardian man's slang made it the more irritating.

The thought that the Warmings might be doing them a kindness started to fester in Dorothy.
There she is Jack ditched by the Frenchman back on old Betty's hands shouldn't we do something about them only a couple of weeks won't ruin the holidays.
Becoming an obsession it nagged and throbbed, bringing on a migraine at times.
Wouldn't you think Jack the unfortunate Dorothy has probably reached the menopause it must be ghastly for her mewed up with that hideously successful ex-beauty of a mother.
Till she looked to reason to rescue her from her thoughts: surely the Warmings would not have invited Mother if they had been taking pity on you? Dorothy knew that one of her worst faults was to suspect ulterior motives in others; and kindness always roused her suspicions.

Now, at the end of the journey, arrival practically upon them, everything smooth-running, so far no one specific to accuse, she felt afraid. It must be the helicopter. She was no good at this sort of thing: beneath them the straits burnished to silver by the heat; ahead of them the solid island trembling just perceptibly with the motion of their flight. If she could have heard a door closing behind her, and hidden herself, not only from strangers, but from kind friends. She had been wrong to come. Yes, to be perfectly truthful, it was the menopause, which Helen Warming would see, if she had not already guessed—or more likely, Mother told.