The Eye of the Storm (6 page)

He knew her too well. She had shaken her head at him on sidling into the room with the tray, reminding him of a white Leghorn: inquisitive, ostentatiously industrious, silly, easily outraged. She would look in at the office on Fridays after duty and he handed her her envelope. (This had been ordained by Mrs Hunter for all her staff, not as a nuisance to him, but to ensure personal relationships for them.) Sister Badgery would sit a while to air her pretensions, based on her training at the Royal Prince Alfred and a curtailed marriage to a retired tea planter from Ceylon.

Over just visibly reluctant lips Mr Wyburd murmured, ‘Sister Badgery and I are old friends.'

Mrs Hunter swallowed her third mouthful of nauseating egg, some of which, she could feel, had dribbled on to her chin, and Badgery would be too flattered by Arnold to notice. ‘Mr Wyburd,' she succeeded in ejecting the words, ‘should be having his own breakfast. It's been arranged. I hope it's a man's breakfast, Arnold. Foreign women don't understand that a man's strength—hinges—on his breakfast.'

Sister Badgery laughed at the joke; the things on the tray clattered.

‘I don't doubt it will be an adequate breakfast,' Mr Wyburd said, and Sister Badgery renewed her laughter as though he too had made a joke.

‘I don't know why you didn't go sooner,' Mrs Hunter was hectoring: foolishness in a dependent would turn her lungs to leather in an instant.

‘You were having such a good sleep,' he protested; ‘I didn't want to disturb it.'

‘I wasn't sleeping—only thinking. I hope Mrs Lippmann has cooked you a chop—or a dish of devilled kidneys. Alfred used to take
cold
chops whenever he went mustering or drafting. Horrid! But that's what the men like. Take him—show him, Sister!'

‘I'm sure Mr Wyburd knows the way. I dare say he could show me corners of this house I never ever knew existed.' Sister Badgery laughed some more, and Mr Wyburd went downstairs exceedingly humiliated.

‘Now you can put away that wretched egg. There are things you must do for me—urgently.'

‘Really? But the coffee. You've forgotten your coffee, Mrs Hunter.'

She had too. ‘Did you put the brandy in it?'

‘Oh dear, yes, my life wouldn't be worth much, would it? if I forgot the brandy.'

Mrs Hunter groped for and took the cup, her lips feeling for the lip. She found, and strength returned in a delirious stream, through the funnel of her mouth, right down to her chilly toes.

Sister Badgery watched this old blind puppy with approval, even affection. She did not approve of drink, only of Mrs Hunter's brandy. She admired the rich, and enjoyed working for them because it gave her a sense of security, of connection, however vicarious. To her friends she would refer to wealthy patients always by their first names; she knew intimately strangers she had read about in gossip columns: they were no longer strangers if you read about them often enough.

Mrs Hunter was supping her brandied coffee; soon she would grow muzzy, and sleep.

‘I want you to make me up, Sister,' she spluttered through a last mouthful, ‘for my daughter's arrival.'

‘Make you up? You know I can't. In all my life nothing but good soap and water ever touched my face.'

‘I was afraid of that.' She sounded more resigned than bitter. ‘If only it were little Manhood: she could do it for me.'

‘I don't doubt. Sister Manhood comes of a different background.'

‘So what? She came off a banana farm. And you're an engine driver's daughter.'

‘My father was an engineer employed by the State Government.
My three brothers are public servants, and two of them elders of the Presbyterian Church.' Mrs Hunter did not care as much as Sister Badgery. ‘I had a very strict upbringing. Even when I started my nurse's training at P.A., my father expected a full account of my leisure activities. As for Sister Manhood—she was out dancing around with any young resident doctor who asked her. I know that for a fact. Oh, I have nothing
against
Sister Manhood. Believe
me
! She's a charming girl—so full of vitality, fm actually fond of Sister Manhood, and only wish she wouldn't touch up so much; it gives strangers a wrong impression.'

Mrs Hunter said, ‘I like to feel I have been made up. It fills me with—an illusion—of beauty. Of course I may never have been beautiful: even in my heyday I was never absolutely sure—only of what was reflected in other people's eyes—and I can no longer see distinctly.'

‘Sorry, dear, I can't be of any help when it comes to cosmetics.' Sister Badgery was slightly remorseful as she took the cup from the old thing's hands. ‘Anything else I can do for you?'

The nurse stood holding her breath: bad enough if it were the bedpan, but to hoist her patient on to the commode almost always ricked her back.

‘Yes. There is something,' Mrs Hunter said. ‘My jewel case. Then I shan't feel completely naked.'

Sister Badgery began swishing about. The jewels played such a part in their owner's life they increased the self-importance of any member of her household assisting at the ceremony.

Mrs Lippmann had once ventured to suggest, ‘She shouldn't be allowed to flash her jewels at whoever comes: at the electrician, if you please, and window cleaners!' But the housekeeper was notoriously jealous.

‘Poor old soul, they're what she's got to show,' Sister Badgery replied, ‘and what she loves.'

‘Someone might steal—or murder her for them.'

‘They mightn't dare.'

Mrs Lippmann agreed they might not.

Now when she had brought the case Sister Badgery asked, ‘Hadn't I better open it for you?'

‘No, thank you.' The catch responded less quickly to more agile fingers: she knew its tricks. She knew every inch of the mangy, velvet-covered box.

Her jewels.

Sister Badgery who thought she could recognize each, or almost every jewel—that was the peculiar part: not everything had been revealed—and who knew by heart the stories attached, though again not all, for the stories would breed others, was regularly entranced at the unveiling; but this morning felt provoked that Mrs Hunter should have scrabbled through the velvet trays and got herself into half-a-dozen rings behind her back.

‘Aren't you
well
! Aren't you active today!' The nurse was genuinely impressed. ‘It's your daughter's arrival.'

‘Oh, the tale of jewels!' Mrs Hunter knew her acolytes must often have caught her out telling her once blazing, if now extinct, beads.

Whatever her own feelings Sister Badgery would never be caught out in any popish act: no one would guess how she adored, for instance, this pigeon's-blood ruby, or that she was capable of worshipping an ancient idol for its treasure.

To deflect the wrath of her forebears by a display of down-to-earth professional skill, the nurse announced, ‘We'll prop you up a step or two, shall we? Whoopsy-dey, Mrs Hunter!' as she hoisted.

And there was the idol propped against the pillows, the encrusted fingers outspread as though preparing to play a complicated scale on the hem of the sheet.

To introduce a touch of warmth, the nurse inquired, ‘Would you like your maribou jacket, dear? Or the woolly stole, perhaps?'

‘Thank you. The stole.' Mrs Hunter barely breathed: physical exertion had exhausted her.

Sister Badgery draped the stole; she could not have treated a saint with greater reverence, though she did not believe in saints, not, at any rate, those Roman Catholic ones: ugh!

‘Wouldn't you like me to choose you a necklace seeing as it's a great occasion?'

‘Not a necklace. Not before luncheon. Not for Dorothy.'

Sister Badgery accepted reproof. ‘Gordon gave me an amethyst pendant.'

‘Gordon?'

‘My husband. Don't you remember me telling you?'

‘I ought to.'

‘Well, Gordon gave me this pendant. It's in exquisite taste. I wear it still—only when I visit friends, or to the Nurses' and Residents' Ball.'

Though Mrs Hunter had never distinctly seen Sister Badgery's neck, she imagined it thin, white, and well-soaped: fitting support for the amethyst pendant.

‘Perhaps I never told you—' Sister Badgery was treading familiar ground, ‘I met Mr Badgery—Gordon—on my way to the Temple of the Tooth. I was visiting Ceylon for pleasure—between cases, that is. What did you say, dear? Mrs Hunter?'

Mrs Hunter was not coaxed into repeating, but they used to call them ‘the Fishing Fleet': the Australian women who went up to cast their nets in Ceylon waters; instead she confessed to a weakness of her own. ‘For years I kept the children's baby teeth in a bottle. Then one day, for some reason, I threw them out.'

‘I was telling you about my trip to Kandy. My friends' car got a puncture, and a tea planter who happened to be passing fetched a native to do the necessary. The planter was Mr Badgery. He kindly invited us to take refreshments—which was how everything started. Shortly after, he retired from tea and followed me by P. & O. to Sydney.'

‘He died, didn't he?' As if you didn't know; but his widow liked to be asked.

‘Yes, he died. But not before we were married. That was when he gave me the amethyst pendant.'

Mrs Hunter wondered momentarily whether she should give Mrs Badgery something from her jewel box; it was easier to give
presents than to waste emotions you were storing up against some possible cataclysm: as time ran on you did not know what you might have to face.

‘What is this weird ring I've never seen before?' Sister Badgery was asking. ‘The one on your right thumb.'

The old girl was lolling there, her smouldering fingers scarcely part of her, and on that thumb a nest of plaited gold surrounding what might have been a cross, but out of plumb; the whole effect was thoroughly heathen.

‘That is an Ethiopian ring,' Mrs Hunter explained. ‘It's the only thing ever sent me by my son - apart from letters asking for money.'

Sister Badgery sucked her teeth. ‘And Sir Basil a great man! That's what the papers tell us.'

‘I suppose, when they're not being great, great men are as weak as the insignificant ones.'

Because of a tone of perversity and sadness, Sister Badgery changed the subject. ‘I expect your daughter—Dorothy—has lots of exquisite jewels: a lady in her position.'

‘She came off badly when he left her—though she was the innocent one. Still, she did manage to extract a jewel or two from her husband's atrocious family.'

Sister Badgery was delighted to hear of this material success. She brought a brush and began stroking her patient's hair.

‘I don't believe you know my daughter's name.'

‘Well, “Dorothy”, isn't it? I'm no good at those foreign names.'

‘I shall teach you,' said Mrs Hunter, her lips inflating as though she were tasting a delicious food, her nostrils filling with what could have been a subtle perfume. ‘“
Princesse de Lascabanes”'
; she laid on the French pretty thick for Sister Badgery's benefit. ‘Let me hear you say it.'

The nurse obliged after a fashion. ‘But what shall I
call
her?' the voice whined despairingly.

‘Nothing more elaborate than ‘“Madame”.'

‘“Mad-damm, mad-damm,”' Sister Badgery breathed in imitation, and a more sonorous variant, ‘“Ma-
darm
!”'

Mrs Hunter sensed she had got her nurse under control, which was where she wanted her; she also suspected Sister Badgery would refer to ‘Princess Dorothy' to please herself and impress her friends.

‘“Mad-damm, ma-
darm
”!' Happier for its new accomplishment the voice went clucking in and out the golden morning.

Mrs Hunter was so soothed by clocks and brandy it seemed unlikely that anybody would arrive; if they did, it might even be undesirable: her life was too closely charted.

‘Open mouth! Mrs Hunter?' It was that Badgery again. ‘Whatever happens, we must take our temp, mustn't we?'

What did they call it? Dettol? Cool, anyway. Sterilizing. Was it better this way: to be sterilized out of existence?
I don't mind dying, Dr Gidley, but I do expect my nurses to protect me against worse than death:
such as the visitants you do not conjure up for yourself, worst of all the tender ones.

‘Shall I be strong enough, I wonder?'

Holding her patient's wrist, Sister Badgery found it unnecessary to answer: the pulse was remarkably strong.

When they were both shocked, if not positively alarmed, by an interruption to their celebration.

The door opened.

‘Sister, can she be seen?' It was Mr Wyburd in something too loud for a whisper and less than his usual grammar. ‘The princess has arrived. Her daughter.'

As if this were not enough, a second figure was pushing rustling past the one at the door: for Mrs Hunter it was sound perfume joy despair; whereas Sister Badgery saw a tall thin hatless woman, somewhere around fifty (to be on the kind side) her dress unsurprising except for its simplicity and the pearls bounding about around her neck, and on her bosom, as she half ran half staggered.

A princess shouldn't run, the nurse recovered herself enough to disapprove; and she shouldn't have a horse face.

But Dorothy floundered, imperviously, on.
‘O man Dieu, aidez-moi!
' she gasped, before assuming another of her selves, or voices, to utter, ‘Mother!' and lower, ‘Mum!'

Then, by act of special grace, a blind was drawn over the expression the intruder was wearing for this old
mummy
propped up in bed, a thermometer sticking out of its mouth; if life were present, it was the life generated by jewels with which the rigid claws were loaded.

The princess fell against the bed, groping through the scents of Dettol and baby powder, to embrace, deeper than her mother, her own childhood.