The Eye of the Storm (47 page)

‘A boy!'

To his monument of a mother, no doubt.

But an old man: he had let out a short fart, his buttocks quivering and hesitating, before he came; she had felt the elderly lips tasting her eyelids, bunting at her breasts. Then he had run hungry to his mother, and they had hatched this Hunter plot over the early kedgeree.

‘Even if there was any question of my getting engaged, oughtn't the man to give me the ring?' Because she was afraid of falling into one of a number of traps, she made herself sound as ungracious as she could.

‘He might be embarrassed—if I gave him the ring and told him to give it,' Mrs Hunter replied. ‘He'll see it as a practical arrangement if you explain why you're wearing it. Women
are
more practical. Some men know—though they mostly won't admit.'

Since you had allowed the old thing to transfer the pink lolly to your hand, you were growing greedy for it: from certain angles the buried star would come alive.

‘It's all very well for me to take the ring.' Flora Manhood sounded harsher still. ‘There'd be nothing to show I hadn't snitched it, if—supposing—you died all of a sudden, say.' It was she who wished to die: she was so ashamed; but had been pushed to it. ‘You did say we're practical,' she blurted, ‘didn't you?'

‘You are perfectly right. Telephone to—What's-his-name—my solicitor, Sister. Ask him to look in—to write it down that the ring has become your property.'

It sounded awful: she had never owned any property until this ring, her right to which existed only in the old girl's attic of a mind.

So she went out mumbling, neither agreeing nor refusing; though she had gone so far as to put the ring in her pocket.

The afternoon was the desert she had feared, in which she invented little unnecessary jobs for herself and disciplines to impose on her patient.

Twice Mrs Hunter remembered to ask, ‘Did you get through to
Arnold—to come about the sapphire—to put it on paper?' On the first occasion Sister Manhood was able to avoid answering: she was engaged in seating her patient on the commode; at the second inquiry, she snapped back, ‘I wonder if half his clients realize what a busy man Mr Wyburd is?' That would not have entered into it if she hadn't been afraid of how the solicitor might look at her, for winkling a jewel out of Elizabeth Hunter. But she would have to keep the ring; she knew by now: from its continued presence in her pocket, from its smooth motions against her thigh, from its burning itself into her flesh.

Then it was time at last for de Santis to arrive; soon you would escape to your own room, to fondle your jewel. Which would never fulfil its purpose, because you wouldn't accept a proposal, not even another proposition, from Basil Hunter, however hard his mother worked to prostitute you to her son.

This evening de Santis appeared unusually thoughtful. And was wearing (good grief) an orange hat.

‘I decided to take your advice,' she explained, ‘and buy myself something gay. How do you like it?'

It was more than awful; there was something sort of sacrilegious about Mary de Santis in this orange hat, not worse if she had bent down, switched her skirt over her back, and shown she was wearing a naked bum underneath.

‘Or don't you?' Sister de Santis was waiting.

‘It'll take a bit of getting used to. It isn't part of your—your image, Sister.' Flora Manhood was sweating with her own daring.

But she was able to start giving the details of their patient's condition during the afternoon. I'd say she's a bit constipated, whatever ideas Badgery may have. Badgery sees things as it suits her. The old girl could do, perhaps, with an enema. If you like, Sister, I'll stay back and give you a hand with the enema.'

Sister de Santis smiled; she was so thoughtful: was it of her own reflection in that hat? ‘Is she?' she said. ‘We'll see. I might phone Dr Gidley and ask what he thinks. In any case, there's no need for you to stay. I can manage the enema. Poor old thing, she's only a
husk.' All the while Sister de Santis continued smiling, for her own thoughts, or the orange hat.

Sister Manhood was beginning to lose patience, when her colleague said, ‘I'm going to let you into a secret, dear.' Never in history had Sister de Santis called you ‘dear'.

Sister Manhood was dumbfounded: coming from someone as remote and respected as de Santis, the gesture shocked rather than touched her; St Mary should never set foot on earth.

‘I've made up my mind,' Sister de Santis said, that smile still afloat on her face, but graver than before, I've decided to go to Sir Basil's hotel, tomorrow, to ask him what they really intend to do about their mother.'

You could have pushed Sister Manhood over. ‘But do you think you ought to?' she could scarcely ask. ‘I mean—meddling in family affairs. Is it any of our business?'

Sister de Santis said, as though she had been reading it, ‘It's up to us not to remain what they call the silent majority;' and at least took off the orange hat.

Sister Manhood was horrified. ‘But what could you do? And him! If a man's dishonest enough to dump his mother, he's immoral, probably, in other ways we don't yet know of.'

Sister de Santis only smiled, and began taking off her dress. Overfulness in the bust showed her to be what you always thought—but never liked to admit—out of proportion.

Disappointment raged in Flora Manhood. ‘I think you're bonkers!' Not that she desired, having experienced, Sir Basil Hunter; not even though his mother had sealed a long-term contract with a star sapphire ring.

But Mary de Santis!

‘I'd be very careful, Sister,' Sister Manhood advised.

‘I have no intention of being anything else.' Sister de Santis had clothed herself in her uniform; there remained the veil: nobody adjusted a veil more religiously.

But Flora Manhood was unnerved. What if you could not trust this stately figure any more than you could trust yourself?
What if St Mary was a whore behind your back? Everyone knew about that colonel she had taken overseas in a liner, and got an annuity out of when he died. The colonel might not have been as old and gaga as she made out, and his nurse more subtle. Flora Manhood did not want to think such thoughts, just as she wanted no more of Basil—oh dear no; it was the threatened fall from grace of somebody revered which shocked her.

Presently, on seeing there was nothing she could do, either by persuasion, or helping with an enema, Sister Manhood left. At one point, she slithered on the steep, coiling path, and nearly fell. When there was nobody left to respect, neither Sister de Santis, nor Mrs Hunter (poor Lottie couldn't help it if she was foreign and out of the running), certainly not Sir Basil Hunter the Great Actor, she must concentrate on this child who had, perhaps, been planted in her and whom she would love with all the love and strength she could raise. But who was there for her boy to love and respect?

She went skittering away, in her bargain shoes, into darkness.

Nurse is sitting you down upon your sit-upon.

‘Do you think it will happen, Mary?'

‘What will, Mrs Hunter?'

‘Well—I must remember.' Seat's too cold in the beginning the old commode to think or do.

It has these very delicate arms curving down like swans' necks. Feathers are rough, not the heads, not the beaks even; swans' beaks, in life, look knobbed—pustular.

‘You see these carved heads, Sister? They were polished by Basil's hands. He used this same commode during his—
his fatal
illness, at “Kudjeri”. Eldred used to sit him on it. I did myself—sometimes—at the end.'

‘Really? Fancy!'

She'll go soon, leaving you to fate. They do. Yes, they have always gone.

‘Hold on tight to the arms, Mrs Hunter. Do you think you'll be all right on your own?'

‘Perfectly. It's such a reliable piece of furniture. Isn't it useful?'

‘Useful, and elegant too. Here's the bell beside you. You can ring if you want me.'

‘Yes.'

She is going. And why not? Constipation is caused by nurses hanging around bossing, treating you like a bundle of dirty linen.

All afternoon evening wanting to drowse back to some difficult situation you were not allowed a nurse's heel indenting the brain (ugh! not brains Nurse) carrying the sound of brittle roses the two later voices hammering together and apart in other rooms on words and names Elizabeth I must only ever be called without foreshortening
ELIZABETH
that is my isn't it my given name whatever else parents parents are given too whether you like it the one her bones crumbling the other a rifle in his mouth children are dolls the parents leave for nurses to hoist I'm not a doll Nurse lolling on the cold commode however drowsy cold does not cut the will to discover which direction you must take the island was it the storm of course you had
desired
the man Dorothy ran away from but only desired as a last reflection in the little tin looking-glass a nocturne was hammering out that last of nights nothing else after the trees had bent double some snapped the house carried off like any human relationship then walking down towards the piled water the swans from dipping their beaks rose hard precise yet loving admittedly only for the bread you had and sodden unhallowed by the eye of the storm the swans accept the bread no longer hissing like children why had you called them Basil Dorothy ugly names hatched out of pride by Elizabeth Hunter a swan herself but black.

Ooh don't kick mahogany only hurts the heels. Sister? No. What can they do for a jack-in-a-box once the spring's gone? Not worth it. Throw it out. Boxes and islands. I must not think myself on to the island. I am not
hallowed—
therefore—I must
eschew?
all such thoughts—for the time being.

Love is closer anyway and warmer than adoration of some vast and unknowable cloud. Think instead of the silly human Manhood.
Womanly: that's it. Elizabeth Hunter was never womanly enough, her flaws too perfectly disguised under appearances: enormous, gaping, at times agonizing flaws. Even so, perhaps you are reserved, through these same flaws, for other ends. Whatever and when, it is more comforting to drowse over this Flora silly Man you gave the pink sapphire to belove her to her chemist.

After failing so many—worst oh far worst my darling Alfred born without the machinery for getting his own back—you could not expect fulfilment as a woman only as an all giver.

Little children come tumbling out like sheeps' pellets but unexpectedly hard into the cold commodious world.

When love is what my Alfred has longed for what the chemist prescribes it is what the nurse and I withhold.

Perhaps it will drop pink at last the lolly sapphire like any common brown penny.

‘Sister? If you don't leave the bell, how can you expect me to ring? Sister de Santis! Lungs aren't leather, either. Urrr! I might die on this damn commode and nobody know.'

Mary de Santis sometimes wondered how she had chosen to live where she did; except she had to live somewhere. She was always promising herself she would move, but something in her, of the passive mollusc, or solitary female, had so far prevented it. And after all, she was only here in her ‘conveniently situated flatette' to spend a few daylight hours, most of those asleep. And the rent was low: not low enough, perhaps, considering the view of visceral plumbing exposed against the wall of ox-blood brick opposite. She could stand a plant, however, on the window sill; and if the stove was obsolete and smelly she was not interested in food, or not when on her own: plenty of bread and butter, with strong tea, and just the occasional cigarette, had become her normal diet. Above the narrow divan where she slept, she had nailed Mamma's icons, which caused a film to form, she noticed, almost always on the eyes of the casual caller; to her own eyes the icons were by now little more than atavistic windows, so choked with
age, grime, and conflicting sentiments, they failed to open. In any case, she had decided not to make a cult of the past, though she had hung Papa's diploma next to her own certificate on one of the walls of the superfluous triangular hall, and still had his medical books arranged with her own on the adjustable shelves she had wisely bought as far back as graduation. She loved her books. She owned some of the classics: George Eliot, Conrad,
The Cloister and the Hearth, The Moonstone.
If ever she felt particularly serious, or lonely, she might read a poem or two; she could read Dante, haltingly, in Enrico's voice. Then, at the window, there was this exceptionally beautiful, velvety, deep crimson cyclamen she had nursed by regular attention and affection over several seasons: she liked to feel something growing, living, in the room where she lived if only during the less significant intervals. For she had her work: that was her life, and she was happy in it.

This at least was the comfortable theory well-meaning people had thrust on her. Reserved by nature, and not given to argument, she accepted it, while sensing that the visible ramifications of her work were no more than a convenient
trompe l'œil
to distract attention from that shadowy labyrinth strewn with signs through which she approached ‘happiness'.

Rational beings are pacified by evidence of efficiency: a scoured bedpan veiled in starched white, the geometry of linen, a temperature chart; or uplifted, rational though they claim to be, by a mystique inherent in the pretty confetti of capsules, and less demonstrative, more insidious, ampoules, locked for safety in the steel cabinet behind the bathroom door. All of which has only indirect bearing on your significant life, revealed nightly in the presence of this precious wafer of flesh from which earthly beauty has withdrawn, but whose spirit will rise from the bed and stand at the open window, rustling with the light of its own reflections, till finally disintegrating into the white strands strung between the araucarias and oaks of the emergent park, yourself kneeling in spirit to kiss the pearl-embroidered hem, its cold weave the heavier for dew or tears.