The Eye of the Storm (27 page)

Flora Manhood awoke to greylight and a street full of skittled milk bottles. She had been dreaming of what she wouldn't bother herself to remember though a bitterness made her suspect Col Pardoe was behind it.

Col or not, she must end by every means the goose chase with Snow and Alix: it was her worst madness to date. Snow was lying on her back, her gollywog mouth desperate for air, her stomach,
with an old scar, rising and falling, but sluggishly. Alix, her curdled throat exposed, her flesh unsorted, would probably have settled for murder as the next best thing to love.

Having covered her bra and panties Flora Manhood slipped away very easily; she didn't even bother about her hair though she carried a comb in her bag. Outside ‘Miami Flats' the street was looking extra livid: the fluorescence had not yet been switched off to accommodate the light of morning. She walked briskly, but suspiciously, as though expecting to skid on something: one of the empty milk bottles left to roll in the gritty shallows. Crossing the Parade she avoided glancing to the right because of the
PHARMACY
sign, and soon afterwards arrived at 26 Gladys Street, where Mrs Vidler was scrubbing the step.

She looked up: a large brown-skinned woman with suds to halfway up her arms.' Vid and I might worry about you, love, if we thought there was any cause for it.'

‘For all you know, I could have been prostituting myself with a G.I. at the Cross.' Flora Manhood was that exasperated she added for good measure, ‘A Negro.'

Viddie laughed for the joke. ‘Mr Pardoe called and left a message.'

‘What message?' She could hardly bear it.

‘Vid put it in yer room.'

Flora went in, and there was the envelope, exactly in the centre of the Vidlers' cleanly table.

She wouldn't open it at once, but did sooner than she intended, because what was the use?

Dear Flo,

You can only misunderstand me. I honestly love you.

COL

Flora Manhood sat a while on the edge of the convertible lounge, her trembling fingers shielding her eyes from the gun which was neverendingly, inescapably, pointed at her.

A
S SHE
was rushed back from the depths of sleep in which she was being rolled and ground, and laid once more amongst the soft crests of comparatively placid sheets, Mrs Hunter became aware that something—some kind of transformation—had taken place at the foot of the bed. In the blur which the shaded light and mirrors made of her rudimentary vision, somebody was dwarfed.

‘Sister de Santis—' she realized, ‘what has happened? You're not kneeling, are you?'

The nurse gasped; you could see her veiled head shaken like a great white—not lily—Canterbury bell. ‘I was looking for a pin I dropped.'

‘Take care. I can remember a child—I believe it was one of the Nutleys—she knelt on a needle. It disappeared into her knee, and was lost in the flesh for weeks. One day they noticed a black speck on the skin, and drew out the needle with a magnet.'

The nurse said, ‘This was a safety pin, Mrs Hunter'; and began getting up off her knees.

You couldn't believe in the safety pin. She hadn't been praying for you, surely? For that thing your soul; or an easy death. Extraordinary the number of people who insist that death must be painless and easy when it ought to be the highest, the most difficult peak of all: that is its whole point.

‘Now that you're awake I might as well rub your back.' The nurse was laying a false trail.

‘Don't invent unnecessary jobs.'

Because she had been caught out, the answer sounded stifled. ‘I was only thinking of your comfort.'

‘You can take out my teeth at least. You forgot my teeth. I don't wonder. So many visitors appearing-I might need them at any
moment. On the other hand, I don't want to lose them in my sleep.'

When she had carried off the teeth the nurse returned to repair the bed. Such a token raft, it didn't seem worth the trouble. But you could tell she was glad of the job. Sister de Santis must have been praying, not for you, but for herself, while she was kneeling at the foot of the bed.

The veil, as it swept back and forth, was so sharp it almost cut your skin open, while reminding, ‘
Campanula
is the botanical name.'

‘For what?'

‘“Canterbury bell” of course.'

‘Oh, yes? They're pretty, aren't they?'

‘They never appealed to me much. I was drawn to the more spectacular flowers.' She laughed. ‘My enemies—and some of my friends—have called me an egoist—so other friends and enemies tell me.'

The nurse was trying to think of something kind but truthful to offer as consolation when she needn't have bothered.

‘Lal Wyburd was the one for botanical names. They seemed to give her the feeling of superiority she needed. “Aren't you partial to an
Astilbe?
So feathery—delicate—but comical. It's common name, I believe, is goatsbeard.”' Mrs Hunter's laughter was wickeder for the rictus from which it issued. ‘“The great tragedy of my life is that I haven't succeeded in growing
Mimulus
at Double Bay.” Poor lucky Lal never to have had a tragedy!'

‘You'll wake yourself up if you talk too much.'

‘Don't worry. Sleep is what will wake me up.'

The nurse was adjusting the shade as though afraid the lamp might illuminate. Then she began to tiptoe out of the room. Silly girl: anybody on tiptoe lacks a sense of unbalance.

But the teeth you were glad without already drowning as you sink down horrid when sand gets under the false gums horrid teeth oh it is tiring yawnful the comforting true gums suck and gulp their way along the bottom of the sea nobody to want anything not love not money or illumination tell me the answer what it means tell me that you love me all that silly tiptoeing around you
wait for answers to flow in quietly illuminating from the inside not if it is too rough sleep too can quench the light
the fire can't you make it up Betty my feet are can't you bring in another log bring me my dispatch case Betty we'll burn the letters together the love-letters they're too personal don't you think yes Alfred if that is what you wish burn all letters I agree
you don't the bottom of the sea is littered with old unburnt sodden letters the letter you have always kept of all letters it was so cruel untrue Dr Treweek's never liked him well he didn't like you you can't expect only Christians love their detractors an exercise in masochism
nobody can ever call me a masochist no you are right there Mrs Hunter Bill wouldn't have married you if you hadn't known how to use the whiphandle on his devotion.

Oh the dreams with which the bottom of the sea is littered not always sodden like the old letters they will stand up in coral columns in whole cupolas and archways and long sculptural perspectives to confront entice you in where the daylight is solid and the expression in his eyes at that time perhaps the first clue I ever had to what is transcendent.

She was standing in the bow window at the end of the drawing-room at Moreton Drive, in that kind of light which can make a dream more convincing than life. Only she was awake. She was standing by the revolving bookcase, looking out over the park as she opened the letter they had brought her. (Miss Thormber had been admiring your hands while doing your nails. It was not a luxury bringing a manicurist to the house, more a charity: something had to be done about Miss Thormber, a hopeless manicurist—but an expert in flattery; therein could have lain the luxury.)

Elizabeth Hunter opened the letter, probably a tiresome one, and began to read, holding the indifferent paper at a casual distance:

Dear Mrs Hunter,

I am writing this letter against the wishes of one of those concerned, and realizing that what I have to say may be unforgivably distasteful to a second person …

She flipped over the page to see that it was from Dr Treweek of Gogong, an unattractive elderly man with dandruff on his coat collar, and a habit of breaking wind regardless of who was present. What Dr Treweek had to say would undoubtedly be distasteful; at least she was on her guard against it.

… Briefly, I have to inform you that Bill is suffering from cancer of the liver, and is unlikely to last many months. This was established on a recent visit to a specialist in Sydney, of which you are unaware, as your husband's chief concern in life is not to cause, others distress. I have strongly advised him to let me arrange for his admission to a hospital in the city, but his present intention is to see his illness out at ‘Kudjeri'. Even with a nurse in attendance, and at present he refuses to have one, this will create difficulties, as perhaps you can imagine. The housekeeper is in a state of nerves, and may easily pack her traps rather than accept responsibility for an incurable invalid. There you have the situation. Whether you are conscious of your husband's selflessness, any more than his stubbornness, I cannot tell, but
as you are his wife
it is up to you to make several important decisions. (Sorry if you can't forgive me for throwing such an unexpected bomb!)

Yrs truly

ROBERT TREWEEK

As it burst around her, distorting the view of the park, tingling in pins and needles down her limbs, and with particular violence in the freshly manicured hands with which she held the offensive letter (how had he dared underline the ‘wife'!) she couldn't easily, perhaps never, forgive Robert Treweek. In the first surge of her rage and horror she almost went so far as to hold him responsible for Alfred's condition. At the mercy of a country physician! The physician no doubt would draw attention to the patient's neglect of himself (through selflessness, desire not to cause distress, etc.) to disguise his own ignorance and negligence.

So at first she could not weep, for anger, and because the charming
filigree of her life had been hammered without warning into an ugly, patternless entanglement.

Till she did begin to cry. She could only remember Alfred's hurt, never the joyful, expressions of his face. Not their affection for each other, only her ill-natured dismissal of some of his more tender advances. Lying on her unshared bed, the freedom of which she had so often told herself she enjoyed, she tried to recover her normal capacity for making up her mind. Unable to do so, she was glad of Dr Treweek's image, to match her rage against the explosion of his bomb.

Then, as the afternoon advanced, she exorcised her grief simply by letting it pour out. It seemed as though nothing would remain of herself, who had failed to recognize this gentle man her husband.

As light as unlikely probably as painful as a shark's egg the old not body rather the flimsy soul is whirled around sometimes spat out anus-upward (souls have an anus they are never allowed to forget it) never separated from the brown the sometimes tinted spawn of snapshots the withered navel string still stuck to what it aspires to yes at last to be if the the past the dream life will allow.

Suddenly Mrs Hunter was leaving for ‘Kudjeri'. Herself packed the crocodile dressing-case (tearing one of her nails on a hasp) as well as a larger bag, for what kind of visit she did not stop to think, only that she had to go. Nor could she give the maids any indication how long she would be away from home; she would ask Mr Wyburd to pay them weekly if she continued absent. She did not send for Lennox—it was late—but rang for a taxi to drive her to the station.

Throughout the train journey she sat pressed into her corner of the empty compartment. She felt cramped with cold, while unable to make the effort to raise a half-lowered window. The upholstery smelt of tunnels and night. She saw she had forgotten her gloves, and that the hands Miss Thormber had admired that morning were wearing a superfluity of rings.

It was again morning, though still only the dead of it, when she
arrived at Gogong, at the Imperial Hotel. While she tried to rouse someone, she became increasingly aware of her own superfluousness. On the other hand, Hagerty the publican, as soon as he had recovered from his first annoyance, was impressed by the arrival of Mrs Hunter, of all people. He offered to run her out, there and then, to ‘Kudjeri'. She said she would take a room at the hotel, and hire a car in the morning: she didn't want to upset her husband's housekeeper by fetching her down in her nightdress.

The remainder of those white hours trickled like sand under her eyelids as she lay between the rough sheets and tried to accept the small part she played in existence. A cock, a dog, and the moon were the major characters, it seemed. Till a cockatoo, evidently left uncovered, united its screeches with the crowing and barking. A man was cursing as he first muffled, then silenced, the cockatoo. Slippers slopped across the yard. There was the sound of somebody making water against stone.

She may have slept an instant. And did not really wake till the hire-car was approaching ‘Kudjeri', her husband's property, never hers, though for some years her automaton had run his house and given orders for the rearing of his children. If she belonged at all in the district, it was from living as a little girl at Salkelds' rundown place. So she did belong: as inevitably as the brown river flowing beneath willows, as her own blood running through her veins. So she had to respond at last to these hidden jewels of hills. The same sun, re-discovering fire in dew and rock, was drawing tears and bedazzled acceptance from frozen eyes.

Too soon the car was crunching on the drive, bruising the laurels, swirling round the oval rose-bed in front of the house. Alfred had come out and was standing at the foot of the veranda steps, as though by appointment. At least he did not
appear
surprised, only so much thinner, smaller, than she remembered. She had to stoop, she found, to embrace her husband. This, and the hire-car man's abrupt departure, gave their relationship a special significance: they must have looked like lovers locked in one of the conventional attitudes of passion; whereas she knew by her own diffidence, and
the response of her frail ‘lover', each of them only wanted to comfort the other's spirit. Whether they would be given time or grace, remained to be seen.