The Eye of the Storm (85 page)

‘Will you attend the auction?' Sister Badgery asked; they were so down in the mouth she only wanted to cheer them up.

Neither Sister de Santis nor Mrs Lippmann could whip up enthusiasm for auctions.

Sister Badgery might look in. ‘Buy myself a keepsake. If everything isn't beyond my means—as it well might be.' She showed her gums, and a morsel of chicken fell back on her plate. ‘Perhaps find a present to take my friend Sister Huxtable.'

‘Sister Who?' Mrs Lippmann asked.

‘Winifred Huxtable of Auckland, New Zealand. Don't you remember—she and I—went with a group—year before last—to Lord Howe Island?'

Her audience seemed peculiarly apathetic. Sister Badgery tilted her
head, dropped one shoulder, and began mopping up her sauce with a gobbet of bread. They would both know she knew what you don't do; but weren't we among friends?

‘Surely
you
must remember, Sister?' A corner of Sister Badgery's mouth failed to contain a drop of that grey, stale-smelling sauce. ‘Win Huxtable—a large girl with a flushed complexion. Well, she's a woman now. And more flushed, if anything. Didn't we all do obstets together?'

Sister de Santis had to confess she couldn't remember doing obstets with the flushed Winifred Huxtable.

‘There are those who
say—
malicious people,' Sister Badgery crooked a finger to flick a speck of sauce off her front, ‘and a great many people are malicious, aren't they? they say that Win Huxtable in her middle age is red as a beetroot. If she is, nothing can be done about it. I know. She and I never refer to her affliction. Those same malicious, hurtful people imply it's caused by alcohol. It isn't. I could assure them. Not that Win doesn't enjoy her brandy dry—socially. She never goes too far, though.'

Sister Badgery might have enjoyed another mopping of sauce if Mrs Lippmann had not begun clearing the plates; there was nothing you could do about that either, short of forgetting yourself.

‘Sister Huxtable and I have planned a coach tour of New Zealand—both islands,' she informed them after controlling her wind: that sauce again.

Sister de Santis held up her throat and smiled encouragingly at the wall.

Mary de Santis is putting on weight. ‘It's thanks to Mrs Hunter—her gift,' Sister Badgery said rather loudly. ‘The five hundred dollars.' She crooked her finger above the still unused pudding spoon. ‘Do you—I ask you in confidence, Sister—do you think it all above board? I would have expected more of Mrs Hunter, such a generous woman—and lovely lady. What I mean to say is, she mightn't have had her own way. Others may have dictated, so to speak.'

Sister de Santis might have been listening; she might not.

‘Don't think I'm not grateful,' Sister Badgery insisted. ‘It's thanks to Mrs Hunter that I'm doing this little tour of New Zealand with Win Huxtable. Only if the legacy had been slightly larger—Win has had quite a windfall—we might have got as far as Japan.'

The silence was awful in the breakfast room where they still had to finish what Mrs Hunter had always, and now Sister Badgery herself, referred to as ‘luncheon'.

Sister Badgery suddenly snorted down her nose. ‘It looks as if I have a lust for travel!' The confession made her giggle. ‘You will understand that, Mrs Lippmann.' She turned to the housekeeper who had brought this ‘tort'.

‘Oh, I have travelled. But have no lust.'

The Germans are a heavy lot.

As the housekeeper dished up the pudding, Sister Badgery noticed a bandage.

‘Damaged yourself, have you, dear?'

‘It is nothing. I have cut my finger. It is my new little vegetable knife, which is sharper than I have thought.'

Sister Badgery sucked her teeth. ‘There's nothing like a superficial cut for incapacitating a person.' She had done her duty, and might be allowed to return to graver issues. ‘This will,' she said, ‘if you won't think I'm harping on it. Mr Wyburd, though a good soul, was always too soft. Sir Basil Hunter is the perfect gentleman—you can tell. I know nothing about actors, but can recognize a gentleman.' Something forced Sister Badgery to pause. ‘It's Princess Dorothy—I feel—would not be above manipulating.'

Sister de Santis looked down at her plate; Mrs Lippmann was too far off: perhaps on her travels.

‘And the sapphire. Did they ever find it?'

‘Not as far as I know,' Sister de Santis replied. ‘It may come to light when the furniture is gone and the carpets have been taken up.'

‘It may. But I think I know it won't.'

‘Possibly.'

‘I have my—
intuitions.'
Sister Badgery was proud of that. ‘In fact, if I wasn't a nurse—but I wouldn't give up nursing, not for worlds—I
often think I might offer my services to the police. I am always right.' Laughter exposed almost the whole of the pale gums before the mouth closed abruptly; she might have overdone it, owning to psychic powers in front of a colleague.

‘Will you take a little trip yourself, Sister?'

‘Oh, no! I couldn't! After sitting here all these months.' Thought of her recent inactivity seemed to agitate Sister de Santis; she shifted heavily in her chair.

Though she wasn't one to criticize, Sister Badgery had always considered de Santis rather on the stout side. At the same time she had admired her colleague for a certain stateliness of manner. Today and out of uniform, she had shed the stateliness. Tactful is tactful, but in the course of luncheon, de Santis had not expressed a single opinion, not even with her face. You could not say she looked unhappy, not like the Jewess. Sister de Santis was more sort of calm: she had the smooth, washed look of some of the more simple-minded nuns.

Sister de Santis raised her voice; the tablecloth in front of her subsided. ‘As a matter of fact I've accepted a case, f m expected tomorrow. It was the obvious thing—since the auctioneers are taking over.'

‘We have our professional duty of course.' Sister Badgery was very firm on that score. ‘Is it a difficult case, Sister?'

‘A young girl paralysed in both legs.'

Sister Badgery shook her head, sympathy straying between her vision of this young girl and the slice of
Torte
the housekeeper had put before her. ‘Win Huxtable had a private case—a boy in an iron lung; it got her down in the end.' By which time Sister Badgery considered she might decently help herself to cream.

‘Cream, Mrs Lippmann? I must say the tort looks scrumptious. Your puddings were always lovely.'

Neither Mrs Lippmann nor Sister de Santis was prepared to touch the
Torte.

Sister de Santis might have removed herself already. Though she was faintly smiling, the smile was an impersonal one, stranded on her lips as she withdrew behind her eyes, amongst her thoughts.

She was, in fact, again seated at the bedside of this young girl, where she had been ushered and left.

‘What is your name?' she heard herself asking to break the silence.

‘Irene.'

‘You're lucky to have such a beautiful name.'

‘Is it?'

‘To me it is.'

‘I loathe it!'

Although it was around eleven o'clock Irene was lying stretched on her bed pricking a card with a pin. Her rather lifeless hair was laid along the sides of her cheeks and over her shoulders almost as far as the small, but aggressively mature breasts. The long gown, printed with a yellowish green design, must have been carefully arranged in those folds where the skirt covered the legs: the folds were too formal, like stone. Sister de Santis was reminded of a figure she had seen on a tomb.

The girl continued pricking at the card.

‘Wouldn't you be better sitting in your chair?' the nurse asked.

‘Oh, I'll sit in my chair! I'll sit in my chair all right! Today and tomorrow. And tomorrow.' She drove the pin savagely into the card.

‘Do you enjoy reading?'

The girl shook off the whole idea. ‘I watch the box—if ever there's anything of interest.'

‘What interests you most?'

The girl dropped the card. ‘I like to watch brutes exerting themselves. Specially killing one another.' She laughed to herself, then looked sideways at this stodgy nurse. ‘Do you think you'll like me?'

‘Perhaps I shall if I get to know you as you really are.'

‘Oh, I'm worse—worse than you could possibly imagine!' A convulsion of the hand on the long green skirt dragged at it and rucked it above the little-girl's feet and useless legs.

The nurse got up to arrange the skirt in its original folds. The girl's hostility appeared to have increased now that the stranger was introduced to the unmentionable.

Sister de Santis noticed a bowl of anemones standing on the sill of a
bow window. The garden beyond was a labyrinth, not without glimmers of fruitfulness.

‘Did these anemones come from your garden?' she asked for the sake of saying something.

‘I don't know. Yes, I suppose they did.' The girl seemed unwilling to consider anything beyond the fringe of her inturned thoughts.

‘My last case loved flowers. She was blind, but she enjoyed their scent, and she liked to touch them. Roses were her particular flower. I used to cut the roses early in the morning and stand them in her room with the dew still on them.'

You could almost hear the girl listening: her eyelashes. ‘Sick people must be disgusting,' she said. ‘To have to handle them! I'd always rather be surrounded by beautiful, perfect people. Even if they're cold and cruel. I don't want anyone I have to pity. To offer pity—that's the most disgusting act of all.'

‘Mrs Hunter wasn't sick,' Sister de Santis said. ‘She was old. She had been a great beauty in her day—a success. She was also cold and cruel when it suited her to be.'

‘Was she happy?' Irene asked.

‘Not altogether. She was human. In the end I feel age forced her to realize she had experienced more than she thought she had at the time.'

Using her elbows and ugly handfuls of the bed, Irene was raising herself higher on the pillows; she had developed unusual power in her arms and shoulders, the nurse noticed, and decided not to help.

‘That's all very well, but what shall
I
experience?' the girl asked.

‘I'd say you have the will—haven't you? to find out.'

She didn't reply. She had resumed her original occupation of pricking a card with a pin.

‘What's this?' Sister de Santis asked. ‘Are you making a pattern?'

‘A pattern?
NOTHING.'
Suddenly Irene leaned over and stabbed the outstretched hand with the pin.

When she had recovered from the pain and her surprise, Sister de Santis—they were both staring at the bead of blood which had risen to the surface of the skin.

The nurse asked, ‘Why did you do that, Irene?'

The girl's lips, her eyelids, had thickened. ‘You won't come,' she mumbled.

‘If you want me I shall.'

The girl had slipped back to a lower position on the bed. The nurse was again reminded of the figure on the tomb, except that blotches had appeared on the cheeks, their human ugliness emphasized, if not illuminated, by tears which had oozed from under struggling lids.

When it seemed that Irene would not commit herself further, Sister de Santis left.

The mother was waiting to waylay the nurse. ‘Now you know what to expect,' Mrs Fletcher began in a high voice which the tiled hall made sound more chittery. ‘I didn't want to come in with you because Irene holds me responsible for everything she considers bad.' The mother's wrinkled prettiness tried to turn the situation into an amusing one; if her daughter had not been her cross, the pursuit of pleasure might have taken its place.

‘I shall come on Thursday,' Sister de Santis told her, ‘if that is convenient.'

‘Thank God!' Mrs Fletcher used the term with professional ease, and such vehemence that a scent of gin hovered around them as they stood discussing hours and the inevitable money.

‘I could live in if you wanted,' Sister de Santis thought.

‘If you haven't a life of your own!' Mrs Fletcher jittered worse than ever with gratitude and amusement; then she said, ‘It wouldn't be fair if I didn't warn you she literally tortured the last nurse into leaving. She is so warped, she is only convinced by what is evil.' The mother laughed.

The nurse repeated they could expect her on the Thursday.

Now as she watched Sister Badgery devouring the
Torte
, Mary de Santis wondered how she would have answered Mrs Fletcher if pressed to explain what constituted her own life. Memory of her parents had faded since Mrs Hunter's death: if they recurred in physical form they had the wooden faces of the figures in time-darkened icons. Her own clothes were a habit. She sat with books
more often than she read them. (Dante had died with the forgotten cadences of her father's voice.) And desire. Incredulously she watched Sir Basil Hunter's silken ankle as his foot beat time to boredom in the garden of the Onslow Hotel. Of all her personal life it was perhaps physical desire which had died the most painful, because the most shamefully grotesque, death. Would she have admitted wearing that hat to the funeral if she had been accounting for herself to her future employer? Her betrayal of Mrs Hunter that second time was only outdone by Sir Basil's absence.

Sister Badgery had spooned up the last of the lovely cream, the last fleck of apricot.

Sister de Santis had thrown that orange hat away. She could have confessed truthfully to Irene's mother that she was entirely free.

‘What is the name of this family?' For Sister Badgery names were of considerable importance.

‘Fletcher.'

‘Which ones, I wonder?'

Sister de Santis did not know.

‘Well, there's the flour Fletchers. Isn't there jewellers too? Cheap jewellers, but the cheap ones often come off best. I expect you've fallen on your feet, Sister.'