The Eye of the Storm (7 page)

Rejecting the thermometer with her mouth—lucky it didn't break off—Mrs Hunter was smiling, whether in bliss or fright it was difficult to tell.

Till she giggled through her flux of tears, ‘Too much excitement! I think I've wet myself.'

Madame de Lascabanes had felt her anxiety, together with a morbid craving for acceptance, turn to rage, as she endured the humiliations of the airport.

The man said, looking through her passport, ‘“Princess Dorothy de Lascabanes”, eh? French subject. Born at Gogong, Australie. Waddayerknow!'

The princess glared back along the ridge of her white nose. Her rather flat breasts were heaving beneath the uncomplicated little dress she had chosen for the journey: her faithful old Chanel; how would she manage when it wore out?

‘What business is it of yours where I was born?' The unaccustomed language was making her spit.

‘Only reading what's in the passport.'

‘I should have thought my birthplace beside the point—in the circumstances.' The rustiness of her English made it sound ruder, which was what she had intended after all.

‘That's what comes of offerun friendship. But we won't hold it against yer, lady. Welcome to yer native land!' The man laughed, and handed back the passport.

‘I'll report,' she began; but to whom? and for what?

She was by now more humiliated by her own ill temper than by
what had been only questionable insolence in the passport official.

It might have been worse at the customs if she had not clenched her jaws, after deciding to answer any questions as briefly and coldly as she knew how: French economy in fact.

The surly youth in an official's uniform who began stirring up the two bags packed by herself with such practical ingenuity, immediately put her to the test. Again, in rummaging through the case in which she carried her make-up, her tissues and so forth, as well as a few jewels, he provoked, but failed to draw her; not even when running his hands through the jewels with a cynical air of estimating their value. (They were certainly an impressive lot: some, gently lustrous, others, by the grubby airport light, imperiously brilliant. Her spoils. If she had not been so well-informed in the details of Hubert's private life, she might have lost the battle for the jewels; but
cette créature vulgaire, cette infecte Australienne
simply knew too much for her former
belle-mère,
the old Princesse Etienne, to launch a successful offensive.

At least the customs official's lack of respect was not expressed in words; she might not have borne it otherwise. Silently she hid her gall as he silently poured a few of her sleeping pills into his hand; and when he left his fingerprints on her books, as he scuffed up the pages, always ferretting, almost breaking the spine of her precious
Chartreuse de Parme.

He only opened his mouth to mumble, while sticking a plastic strip on her violated luggage, ‘Bet you get a good read out of some of these French books of yours.'

For a moment she regretted insisting that nobody should meet her, and that she had avoided travelling by the line she thought Basil most likely to choose. All she could do now was ignore, lower her discreetly smeared eyelids, dust down the coat she was carrying (her rather mature Persian lamb) and stalk behind the barrow on which her bags were being wheeled away. The briefest glance at her own reflection ought to restore her confidence if it were to falter. As it did. And her impeccable reflection let her down.

Dorothy Hunter's misfortune was to feel at her most French in Australia, her most Australian in France. Sometimes she wished she had been born a Finn: she might not have felt so strongly about it. She had only met a couple of Finns; but Australians—here they were, teeming around her, the older men like mattresses from which the hair was bursting out, or those younger, more disturbing ones, hipless, and over-articulated; the women, either in loud summary shifts, apparently with nothing underneath, or else imprisoned in a rigid armature of lace, shrieked at one another monotonously out of unhealed wounds. Some of the women looked as though they would expect to die in hats.

The Princesse de Lascabanes pushed her way between the bodies, using her hands united in an attitude of prayer inside the lumped-up coat she was carrying. Protected by this fur buckler, Madame de Lascabanes shoved on, to arrive beside the queue of infiltrating taxis, where she overtipped (one of the principles of ‘poverty') the unsuspecting, decent man her porter—or whatever he was: she had all but forgotten her native language.

As she entered the cab she was on the verge of crying; in fact she did drop a tear or two after bumping her head and giving the address, ‘The Queen Victoria Club.'

After very little correspondence the princess had been elected an honorary member of this irreproachable institution to which she now intended to drive. Go to Mother's later in the day, after resting. She was too
écoeurée
at the moment to risk being dragged under by the emotional demands of a domineering old woman. Carried along an impersonal expressway from the airport she would not allow herself to think of Mother, least of all ‘Mummy'. Were you really
rapace
as your
belle-mère
had insisted? Were you a
SNOB?
as every second Australian seemed to accuse: the bursting mattresses, the hipless Gary Coopers of your youth, not forgetting the fe-males, blue-glaring out of their wounded leather.

Dorothy Hunter might have had a good cry if, on opening the wrong bag, she could have found her tissues.
I have never managed to escape being this thing Myself.

Instead she addressed the driver's neck, ‘
Voyez—'
coughing for her lapse, ‘I've changed my mind. Take me to Moreton Drive, will you?' adding, strangely, superfluously, ‘To my mother's house.'

The driver did not seem to find it odd, ‘Been away long?'

‘Oh, years—
years
!' She heard a wheeze from deep down in her reply; and coughed again.

But felt fulfilled: it was like the sensation of settling yourself inside a cotton frock, between licks at an ice-cream horn, while voices droned on about weather, the wool clip, and the come-and-go of relatives.

‘Dear dear! Aren't we unfortunate? These terrible accidents!' Sister Badgery had hurried to the bedside to disengage her patient from a too emotional embrace; intent on professional duties, her least concern was a princess.

While Mrs Hunter, curled on her side in something like a foetal position, was grinning up at her daughter. ‘Don't worry, Dorothy. It's not as bad as you might imagine. There's the macintosh.' Relief drifted over her face as the water spread inside her bed: for the moment she would not have to think of what to talk about to this stranger; better disgraced by the body than by the mind.

She sighed and said, ‘You'll have to go into the nursery, Kate, play with the dolls—though mine aren't as good as yours;' then listened cunningly for the sound of Kate's boots tapping across the boards.

Kate Nutley was altogether too simple. Betty Salkeld had never cared for her friend, any more than for Kate's glacé buttonboots; the Nutleys were wealthier than the Salkelds.

Dorothy Hunter was rent as the nurse dragged the sheet back too quickly and her own babyhood was exposed. Its smell of pitiful flannel and the painful prickling of a rash invaded her far more ruthlessly than the memory of that adult ordeal: the trek through a chain of icy
salons
to the
cabinets
at Lunegarde; the door which wouldn't open at first and which wouldn't shut on the screech of urine, while the
belle-mère
snored, and Oncle Amédée slit the night
and the newspapers with his scissors, cutting out reports of incidents which might be interpreted as Communist conspiracy.

Confused by this collision between her still passive babyhood and some of the most painful steps she had taken in what remained a gawky-schoolgirl marriage, she was relieved to hear a man's voice. ‘We'd better leave them to it. I dare say they'll fetch you when everything's in order.' She had forgotten the solicitor.

Arnold Wyburd led her out along the passage towards the landing. He was the sort of person you take for granted: a nice bore; so reasonable and honest there is no need to be on your guard against him. She felt remorseful for never having sent a New Year card to the one who had managed their affairs all these years. He appeared dry enough not to look for sentimental attentions from a client. Or so she hoped.

On the other hand, he had known her as her other self: Dorothy Hunter.

He was so kind she might have been recovering from an illness. ‘I expect you'll want to potter about the house—quietly—by yourself.'

The Princesse de Lascabanes was restored to health, when it should have been Dorothy Hunter.

‘Yes,' she replied, returning his kindness with a kind smile. ‘Isn't it ridiculous of me—I'm dying to see my old room!' She settled her pearls with a practised hand. ‘I believe rooms actually mean more to me than people.' That was not entirely true, and she hoped it had not sounded shocking to somebody as good as the solicitor.

Looking at her he suspected her of having more of her mother than they credited her with: a horse-faced version of Elizabeth Hunter.

‘They got your room ready for you, if you care to change your mind.'

‘Oh, no,' she said in her highest voice, ‘I couldn't impose to that extent—on the housekeeper person. And besides, they have a room for me at the club. Wasn't it civil of them to make me an honorary member for my visit?'

They looked at each other. Perhaps he did not consider it a visit; he saw her gummed up in the web of nostalgic associations and forced to witness the great conjuring trick to which her mother must soon lend herself. A gust of renewed panic made her determined to cling to her not altogether satisfactory life in Paris: the underfurnished apartment at Passy; a pretence of meals prepared by herself over a leaking gas stove; her art of making expensive dresses continue to look expensive; the rationed sympathy of practical friends (her folly had been to value the friendship of those who respect
rentes).
All this might change of course, but how quickly? Her flight to the bedside could decide. She had never been a skilled beggar, perhaps because it was only late in life that there had been any need to beg; the alternate solution was something she must not think about, though she often did in terrifying detail.

Making a great effort, and still at a considerable distance, Madame de Lascabanes inquired, ‘How is dear Mrs Wyburd?' At once she hoped her smile allied to the borrowed adjective would not strike the solicitor as fulsome; and come to think of it, she did have a genuine affection for his wife; in fact, as a child she had loved Lal.

‘Thank you. She's keeping pretty well. We hope you'll come to see her.'

‘That will be charming—charming.' Doubly stupid: the words she used half the time were not her own; but one skates more smoothly shod with platitudes. ‘See the children—and grandchildren.'

The solicitor was so far encouraged as to launch into Wyburd history; but stopped when he saw she was not interested.

She was though, she was: she remembered a picnic smelling of trampled grass when she had stuck her face in a freckled neck and thought she would have liked Mrs Wyburd as mother; till Basil stole the solicitor's wife, as Basil stole everybody.
I've been reading Lady Windermere's Fan don't tell my mother Mrs Wyburd.
Basil always impressed and nobody ever seemed to guess when he was being dishonest.
Have you Basil and is there a particular part you think you'd like to play?
Fancy Mrs Wyburd lapping it up; or was she too, dishonest in her way?
Oh no nothing big interesting enough in
Lady Windermere I'll only ever want the great roles Lear particularly.
Mrs Wyburd seriously saying
you'll have to wait a long time for that hut I expect you'll play it in the end if that's what you've decided.
She hated Mrs Wyburd almost as much as she hated her brother, who never looked in her direction unless to make faces or persuade her she was a fool.

‘There'll be a number of business matters we'll have to discuss. Not these first days of course,' the solicitor was reminding her. ‘You're not in any hurry now that you're here.'

Why did he have to take that for granted? She looked at him suspiciously.

‘Your brother's delayed—did you know? at Bangkok. He'll arrive this evening, according to the telegram.'

‘How
extraordinary
!' She adopted the tone used in social intercourse. ‘Bangkok! Where I changed planes. I didn't run into him,' she added, and giggled on realizing the inanity of her remark.

She was glad the solicitor was old enough to be her father, equally glad he was not nearly as old as her mother. She wished she had known her father better; probably her mother had not allowed it: Mother was the mouthpiece through which they addressed one another (even Basil fell for that)
all so helpless how would you manage I wonder if I weren't here?

Dorothy Hunter, long-legged and shy, almost of the same shoulder height as the solicitor, confessed with an abruptness which surprised him, ‘Some day I want to talk to you about my father.'

He became as abrupt, expressed the opinion that Alfred Hunter had been a fine man, and announced that he ought to be going along to the office to see what was happening there.

Which of them had made the break it was difficult to decide, but the Princesse de Lascabanes was at liberty to shut herself up in Dorothy Hunter's room.

It was very little changed, it seemed at first: a chaste, girl's room, fairly narrow and predominantly white. There was the glass in which she had tried massaging her face into a more desirable shape. The cupboards opened on naphthalene and emptiness. Still arranged
on shelves, books she remembered, some of them anyway:
The Forest Lovers; Salammbô; A Man of Property; Winnie-the-Pooh; Confessions of an English Opium Eater
(a grey book when she had hoped for purple).