The Eye of the Storm (43 page)

‘Yes,' said Sister Manhood, sipping her cooler tea, ‘it's a shame.' She must try to feel it more deeply; she did: only Elizabeth Hunter her sleeves embroidered in gold thread and pearls in that studio portrait on the desk turning her flower her
face
in all the radiance of its arrogant beauty holding it up coldly to the light or camera made you concentrate on an old munching skull if you were to raise sympathy—and there you were back at a geriatric case no more than a job.

‘I'm thinking of giving it away,' she said.

‘Giving away what, dear?'

‘Nursing Mrs Hunter.'

‘But if they send her to the Thorogood Village, won't the job terminate—automatic ?'

‘She may be dead by the time they finish talking about it. They'll talk all right. Sir Basil and the princess see themselves as highly civilized.' She laughed through her nose, but didn't convince herself.

Nor Viddie Vidler. ‘Must be that, I'd say. They've had all the time and the money. And Sir Basil—he's a great actor. Anyway, they made him a Sir.'

‘He's a gorgeous man. Going a bit in places. But lush. How civilized I wouldn't like to bet. Personally, I don't think any man is all that civilized.'

Viddie sucked her teeth; she was picking non-existent fluff out of a broomhead. ‘What thoughts you have, Flora! You ought to settle down, dear—marry—have some kiddies.' It was a great sadness in Viddie that she had none of her own.

‘I could do with a kid,' Flora went so far as admitting. ‘Yes, I'd love a little child.' She gulped so greedily at her tea she choked; the tears came into her eyes.

Again the Yorkshire rose up Viddie's throat to unite with that sound of adenoids. ‘You wouldn't have one without the other—would you, dear?' she gasped.

Flora rinsed her cup and saucer. She flung the leaves from the pot, she realized too late, into the bin reserved for scraps suitable for hens; but Viddie didn't notice that.

‘Expect I'll be late in tonight,' Sister Manhood told her landlady.

‘Enjoying yourself, are you, dear?'

‘I'm going on the streets.'

Viddie laughed, but grudgingly, at one of Flora's off jokes. ‘And what shall I tell Him, if he comes, or phones?'

‘Tell who?'

‘Why, Mr Pardoe.'

‘I'm not his property, am I?' She was so enraged.

‘Nobody is anybody's property, dear.'

‘Not if I can help it, I won't be!'

‘I was only asking,' Viddie complained.

So the irritations began collecting as early as early like real fluff you can't pick out of a broomhead what ought to be a solid permanent core the too tidy too-decent-by-half Vidlers spilt the varnish doing your nails on their old convertible moquette oh dear oh God the green the best straining at your just about every direction how would you look if you ever got preggo the genuine bloaterbella to stare at climbing on buses now it's only greed it's
Lottie's lunches too much of what should have been today the dreamiest Stroodle if she hadn't burnt it only slightly bloody Badgery crooking her finger
my husband
as per usual
a public school man of Brighton College Sussex England never accustomed his ear to the Australian twang.

When the nurses had finished their lunch, or ‘luncheon' as Badgery called it, to copy Mother Hunter and put on extra dog, Lottie said, ‘I apologize for the
Strudel,
if it has burnt itself frightfully.'

‘Mmm. Didn't notice.' Sister Manhood scraped hard so as not to lose the merest flake.

‘It was delicious.' Sister Badgery might have invented the word; she smiled the kind of smile which rewards, but which knows better at the same time.

‘It is burnt,' said Mrs Lippmann with a simplicity which emphasized the tragedy. ‘I have planned this
Strudel
during several days, but on the morning did not reckon with the plumber.'

‘You've had the plumber?'

‘The cloakroom lavatory has been blocked—by somebody throwing superfluous matter down the hole.'

Sister Badgery lowered her eyes. Mrs Lippmann's clouded expression was directed, only incidentally perhaps, at Sister Manhood.

‘Don't look at
me,
Lottie! And anyway, if the plumber unblocked it.'

‘Oh, it is nothing. The plumber unblocked it.' It was nothing and everything.

Sister Badgery hoped to put an end to the post-mortem, for herself at least. ‘After nursing several cases in the country—all of them prominent graziers—I would never dare throw anything foreign down a toilet. Septic tanks taught me my lesson.' That was final; so Sister Badgery got up.

‘It is not the lavatory only. It is Mrs Hunter.' The housekeeper looked visionary today.

‘As if the old girl will know about it, Lottie—not if you don't tell her—or care if she did.'

‘She will care about what
they
do to her,' Mrs Lippmann said, ‘her children.'

‘Do you think she has any idea?' Sister Badgery was taking off her veil and folding it; her hair had thinned at the parting, and was of a neutral or sludge colour.

‘Who knows?' Mrs Lippmann had to suffer everything herself, or so it sounded.

Much as she disliked men, Sister Manhood began to think women got on her tits as badly, anyway this afternoon. Irritations must be in her stars. She went up and found the old biddy had done it in the bed. (Bet it had happened before Badgery handed over: her so pleased with herself at lunch.)

And Lottie Lippmann and the loo.

As Sister Manhood stripped her patient's bed, gathering together in one exasperated crumple of sheet anything ‘foreign' (trust Badgery) the tears were as good as shooting. Perspiring too. And no spare deodorant, more than likely, in the Nurses' Room.

When Betty Hunter said, ‘I haven't done anything, Sister—have I? I must have been dreaming. My nurse was so unkind to me. She told me I must eat the cold mutton or spend the rest of the day in my room. Or was it Kate Nutley's nurse? I don't—believe—we could afford one.'

‘P'raps it wasn't you that did it.' What bliss to be a geriatric nut.

It was a long afternoon. Sister Manhood fetched a mag to have a read in an easy chair by Mrs Hunter's window. She should have felt relieved her patient had withdrawn, it seemed, into sleep. But she wasn't relieved, the magazine too full of old women displaying the fluffy toys they had made, and crochet bedspreads, and tea cosies, themselves with scone faces and enormous overstuffed cosies for bodies. Sister Manhood could feel the wrinkles prickling as they opened in her own cheeks. She went at one stage and patted her face with wych-hazel. This evening it didn't soothe; it fed a burning which had taken possession of her skin.

Then the gate squealed, and Mr Wyburd was coming up the path. Slowly. Another geriatric: if his head was still his to use, it wouldn't
be for long; you could hear the arteries hardening in him in pauses between chosen words. Just your luck old Wyburd turning up the night you wanted off early; worse luck still, de Santis (Mary the Saint of Saints!) letting you down.

She came in at last in that same navy hat. ‘I see Mr Wyburd's car is at the gate.'

Flora Manhood was perked up, quickly and efficaciously. ‘He's in with Betty—having his turn,' she snickered.

‘I expect in the end he'll be the one who'll have to tell her what they propose doing to her.'

‘Oh hell—yes!' Flora Manhood felt breathless now that she was actually faced with the prospect for her evening. ‘Yes, he might. I can't think why I—why we've got to worry—not personally—about what happens in a patient's life—outside her
sick
life, I mean.'

Sister de Santis said, ‘But the princess and Sir Basil—it worries me when I find human beings more disappointing than I expected.'

‘I never start by expecting too much,' Sister Manhood maintained; though she often did, of course, she knew.

Seated on the stool, her own reflection in front of her in the dressing-table mirror, she became aware that Mary de Santis was looking at her from under the awful navy hat.

Flora tried to protect herself. ‘And I never had tickets on Princess Dorothy—or Sir Basil Hunter.'

De Santis didn't answer, but continued, probably, looking. What was she trying to winkle out?

Sister Manhood turned and said, ‘Why don't you get yourself another hat, Sister? It's gay colours today. And I don't think navy suits you. Makes you look livery.'

Sister de Santis had begun to remove the offending hat. ‘I grow attached to things.'

‘Not clothes, for God's sake! They're not for permanent, are they? It would turn women into statues, sort of—clothed statues.'

That made Mary de Santis smile, and Flora Manhood realized her colleague did in fact have something of a statue about her: a
statue with live eyes. Funny how old de Santis could make you feel inferior and you didn't mind.

Then she saw that Sister de Santis was not smiling for anything that had been said, but for thoughts she had been turning over. ‘I know it's really none of my business as a nurse—it's the doctor who could say something—but as an old friend who is fond of Mrs Hunter—that is why I feel I'm entitled to speak to Sir Basil. Not here where it's all so cluttered—too many associations to get in the way—I might go to his hotel, and appeal to him to consider the distress he's in danger of causing his mother.'

Flora Manhood was surprised to see Mary de Santis had begun to blush. She had never thought of her as being exactly beautiful, and now only for a moment, because of something shocking about it all.

‘You'd be wasting your time,' Sister Manhood mumbled, and got up. ‘Or that's what I think.' She wished it had been a hospital, when she could have produced a chart, handed over with efficient, completely impersonal cool, and swept off without further yakker.

She did sweep off, even so.

She couldn't skip quick enough bang the door she didn't care down the dark treacherous path a shrub hitting her across the eyes could have been a wire switch made her whinge she couldn't see what some people saw in trees (it was Col Pardoe who was so sold on trees on nature: its
spontaneous recurrence).

Nobody could say she wasn't spontaneous; it was spontaneity which had ended by making her regret the situation she was in. It was too much spontaneity which persuaded her for a time that she needed Colin Pardoe.
I am not whole Col except when I feel you inside me then we are truly one person,
she had been fool enough to even put it in writing; the spoken word fades out, but writing lasts for ever if a person is mean enough to want to prove something.

After passing Wyburd's car she began to act more—more
prudently.
It was not her word, but one she had heard the solicitor use:
I don't think it would be prudent Sister Manhood to allow Mrs Hunter to go for a drive she would see nothing almost certainly overtire herself and perhaps catch a chill.
To live, to love prudently. That
meant to think so much about it you didn't get anywhere at all. It wouldn't pay today. If it mightn't be desirable in the long run.

As she walked (more prudently) along Moreton Drive towards the bus, she wondered what and how Sister de Santis, who suggested she was capable of thinking things out, would say and do to Sir Basil Hunter. One thing for sure: he wouldn't take her seriously wearing that hat. But perhaps St Mary would buy herself a new one, a real whirligig, on the solemn occasion of her intercession for Basil's mother.

Flora Manhood was slightly sorry she had brought up the subject of hats. With or without, what would de Santis know to do with any man, let alone Basil Hunter? You could only imagine her sitting alone in her room, mending, or, to turn it into a holiday, leafing through the
National Geographic.

Then Sister Manhood felt wholly sorry for the colleague she did respect. Sincerely.
I am sincere aren't I?
She often thought you can never know truthfully what you are, when you are the one and only who ought to be in a position to know.

On the bus she caught there were several men looking at her. She looked away from the dirty men. She tried to adopt a comfortable position, to pull her skirt down, but it wouldn't come, or only so far: her green. The bus wasn't all that full because it happened to be a between period. (She could reason things out for herself when these ran along practical lines.) There was a pretty bitch of a conductress: no dyke. (You would have died if it had been Snow.) The conductress looked down her nose at you. Well, you couldn't deny it was you the greasy old men coming off shifts and out of pubs, scabby, horny men, were looking at, wasn't it?

The betweentime bus rumbled along.

She had worked this out at least: she would catch him before his dinner, perhaps changing into dinner gear for some gala occasion when the presence of a great visiting actor might be sought. She would send up her name: Flora Manhood. Miss? No,
Sister
Manhood. Give him a clue, for Christ's sake.

After she had left the bus, and found her connection, and arrived,
she hung around the bright thoroughfare a while before going down the hill to the hotel at which he was staying. Take her time. She could hear the voice through the receptionist's receiver asking for them to send her up, like a meal on a tray. Upstairs Sir Basil would have dropped to which nurse, the ‘pretty one', the one his eye had roved over, the night of his arrival. If she was to be completely frank, it scared the shits out of her now that it was approaching.

So she hung around a bit, looking at the cheap engagement rings in the windows; in the souvenir shops, the opals and the kangaroo claws. (Wear a kangaroo coat—white—for her first press interview—her hair a short bleached Mia Farrow.)

But what she never ever wanted was marriage. Col had taught her that, if not about
MAHL
-er. She turned her back on everything that made her want to puke, and her skirt, what there was of it, swished in the plate glass. She didn't seem able not to swish tonight however prissy she walked. Along the pavement the men were looking at her: the disguised G.I.s on leave from that war; the Hungarian Jews without, and even with, their wives; the spotty, fish-eyed kinks. A pair of poufs had a good giggle, as though recognizing their own act. She looked in a window and caught her green swishing, her body barely camouflaged by the pattern of deeper greener leaves. Shoot said the eyes of the G.I.s on leave from war the kinks picked their noses and rolled it at least the Jewish gentlemen were dry and professional in their glances a queeny giggle sprayed her up one side of her neck.