The Eye of the Storm (81 page)

Crossing the Parade, probably for the fifteenth time, Flora Manhood heard the traffic screech. Elizabeth Hunter herself, determined that nothing should prevent her having her way, could not have stalled it more effectively. Flora tripped, lurched against the plate glass, which at first buckled, but settled down by tremors against her flattened nose. Mrs Hunter's fingers always trembled if she won; if she didn't, they stiffened into claws. Considering the dead woman was not present even in a spirit nightie, only a nut would believe there was any question of influence.

Tonight the pharmacy window was divided between proprietary skin foods and
OUR NATIONAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE HOUSE
FLY.
His window dressing had never been bang on; he hadn't the time to give it thought, but left it to Bev Sills who was a doll, though he didn't seem to notice. Now it was late and of course the dispensary shut. So she went along the side and up the stairs to the residence. The same yellow asparagus fern was drooping out of a slit in the brawn surrounds. The smell of gas was still there, and of burning chops when he opened the door.

He said, ‘I've got some chops going.'

She went in, past him, into the kitchen, pulled out the grill to take a look. The fat flared up. The smoke started her eyes smarting.

‘They're just about done,' he said, as though everything he had ever intended was coming to pass.

There was nothing much you could do about the chops. She turned off the gas.

She was sitting at the kitchen table. She had never wanted so much to sit down and stay sitting.

Col said, ‘What do I owe the honour to?'

‘Mrs Hunter's dead. She went this evening. I reckon that's my last case.'

‘Don't tell me! What had this Mrs Hunter got?'

‘I don't know. She'd lived it up, I suppose. You felt that if you zombied around long enough you might find out what you can expect.'

‘And did she let you in on it?' Col had twitched back one corner of his mouth which made him look as though that side had never recovered from an accident; it was an expression she had never liked to see, because soon after, they usually started exchanging abuse.

‘No,' she said. ‘I don't know,' she modified it; but felt incurably ignorant.

Amongst the dishes on the table, bacon rind set in waves of fat, lettuce leaves wilted by vinegar dregs, one of Col's books was lying:
Thus Spake Zarathustra,
whoever he was to sound so certain. She who was plumb ignorant would probably remain so for ever.

‘If you come expecting answers here, you know the only one you'll get.'

‘I don't expect anything,' she said.

The smoke from the burnt chops was making her eyes worse than smart; they were running.

The other side of the fluctuations Col was still hammering away. ‘From what you told me, you always hated that old woman.'

‘Yes!' she cried. ‘No—I didn't
hate
! She understood me better than anybody ever. I only always didn't like what she dug up out of me.'

‘I understand you, Flo.' He had got down beside her. ‘What you are. And you are it.'

‘I'm nothing.'

He was kissing her thighs. He kissed between them, and she, the awkward bleeding goof, was holding his head against her belly. It would embarrass her to tell him she had the painters in and there was nothing doing.

He saved her the trouble by going to fetch something which would make her sleep, and a dressing for what he called her ‘wound', where the branch had scratched her cheek.

She would have liked to share with him the joy she had felt when the blood had begun to run between her legs. But would not tell what nobody but herself knew. Unless Mrs Hunter had guessed. Sir Basil Hunter's misconceived, miscarried child would remain a secret: the dishonest touch is sometimes also necessary and harmless.

As sleeplessness can become a virtue of sorts or stocktaking in the bed he hadn't made since when he was all around you though sleeping on the lounge in the other room never properly heard him before sleeping too close in this narrow marriage bed She is knocking on the wood with her sapphire the pink it is yours isn't it the coffin Nurse is where one sows one's last seed I can see it germinating inside you like a lot of little skinned rabbits oh Mrs Hunter how can you be so
unkind
(giggle) always hated obstets but your own flesh is different my children are human we hope Mrs Hunter if the blessed sapphire works.

Miss Haygarth stood the tea beside his blotter. ‘I got them to make it early. Later on, you mightn't have time to enjoy it.'

She had taken to creeping round him on her errands to his desk, standing too close, irritating him by her thoughtfulness, and more than anything by an only recent tendency to mumble.

‘What are you saying?' he had to ask.

‘… enjoy it before they come.' Miss Haygarth explained; even then half of it was lost.

At the door she turned, and the importance of her question lent her an adequate voice. ‘Should I provide tea for the princess and Sir Basil?'

Mr Wyburd manœuvred his glance to the level required by his bi-focals. ‘By the time they arrive you might try offering them lunch.'

Though the corrugations in which her employer's forehead was set implied seriousness, Miss Haygarth knew a joke was intended. She laughed for Mr Wyburd's joke; her round, rimless spectacles and the gums of her denture appeared unduly grateful for it.

Arnold Wyburd did not laugh. The cold had got into his right side, his right leg, from hanging about at the funeral.

Mrs Hunter had made a point of not knowing the inhabitants of the Northern Suburbs, but like everybody one knew, she was disposed of by the Northern Suburbs Crematorium, of which she had been a shareholder. The mourners from across the water were brought there in long black hire cars which slowed up on entering the precincts, and rolled the rest of the way on what seemed like supernatural impetus, past the perfect shrubs. Overhead a pennant of smoke streamed from the chimney. Not inappropriately, one of Sydney's black winds was blowing.

Even before the ceremony, as he stood about acknowledging smiles which went so far and no farther, Arnold Wyburd suspected the wind had marked him down: he could almost feel the twinges in his lumbar regions. There were few mourners. Since age and her condition had compelled Mrs Hunter to withdraw from the world, most of her friends had dropped off—or died; in any case funerals, like shipboard farewells, tend to attract recent acquaintances rather than friends. Though several of those present for the funeral could not have been other than friends: elderly people stuffed into
long-lasting tweed or fur held together by moulted buttons, they limped or shuffled out of the past, peering through a brandy haze with an air of humorous incredulity.

The solicitor waited outside till the last possible moment, then walked in past the sparsely filled benches till reaching a row where his relationship with the deceased dictated he should sit. Not far behind him he was aware of Mrs Hunter's cleaning woman, and what must have been the daughter and perhaps son-in-law. (The tribe of Cush, he had found, are amongst the most dedicated mourners.) Sister Badgery, always at her most professional when out of uniform, gave him a therapeutic smile.

Arnold Wyburd was glad of the intimations of physical pain which came and went between himself and a mentally distressing situation. From time to time he moved in his seat to discover whether he could produce a twinge when he needed one. There was a smell of mothballs somewhere near, and the racket of a bronchial cough. Hands the plumper for a pair of black kid gloves were straining to get at the lozenges inside a difficult tin.

Mrs Hunter had not encouraged the clergy
(all the handsome ones are dead)
but the man in the dog collar who gave the address had done his homework pretty conscientiously. He spoke with consoling warmth of the dead woman's kindness, her beauty, intelligence, benefactor-husband, distinguished children, and managed to introduce discreet reference to her wealth. For an instant Elizabeth Hunter's image radiated all the human virtues in an unmistakably celestial aura. But Arnold Wyburd's vision was a blur: he could have been partially blinded by the vitriol she had flung at him over a lifetime.

He looked round quickly, either to produce that twinge from above his right buttock, or persuade himself he could see clearly, or accuse some of those who were absent. In any case, he frowned, and through his frown noticed Sister de Santis arriving late, dressed in what he thought he recognized as her usual navy coat, and in addition a shocking hat: nothing less than a Caliph's turban in orange silk.

De Santis took a seat in the back row on the aisle. She must have had an uninterrupted view of the coffin. But she was not looking at it, or at anything, as far as you could tell from her eyelids. The great onion of a hat would have disguised nothing if her face had not been closed. He admired her prudence in matters other than the hat. He must offer her a lift back. They would talk about Mrs Hunter, which in itself would be consoling, because a return to habit, and Sister de Santis might mention, he did not know what, nothing he had ever expected of any human being, certainly not his good Lal, not even the late Elizabeth Hunter; he was positively trembling for the arcane wisdom Sister Mary de Santis might reveal on opening the locked cupboard of her face after the funeral.

Arnold Wyburd was suddenly so ashamed he wrenched himself round to face the parson, the coffin, the pleated curtains still intact before the fiery furnace. What would have been a reckless action at the best of times, now produced an authentic twinge all the way down his right side. (Lal would be upset; he would keep it from her; though his behaviour must give him away in the end.)

The service was as short and decontaminated as a busy day at the crematorium demands. There were no spectacular outbreaks of grief, only the hint of a soggy patch here and there in the broken rows. Elizabeth Hunter's own sense of style would not have encouraged emotional excess.

Then, as they waited for the mechanism to release the coffin, there was the sound of tin buckling, clattering, and a rain of lozenges on the tiles. At once the glaring varnished box came to life: it began to jerk, to stagger down the ramp towards the parted curtains. The least military of men, the solicitor decided to square his shoulders: it might be what those behind expected of him. Nobody would see that he was not watching. Hearing was what he could not avoid: above his deafness and the bumping of his heart in his creaking body, he was forced to hear; in fact he ended by listening to it.

When he looked again the curtains had closed; he might have experienced anti-climax if it had not been for recalling the clause in
what must be something like her eleventh will: ‘… that my solicitor and friend Arnold Wyburd take my ashes on a day when it is convenient and scatter them over the lake in the park opposite the house where I have lived …' In the circumstances he was glad the twinge came in his side without assistance.

And again in the open, he was all spontaneous twinge, exchanging condolences with other controlled faces, some of which he could not identify; while those who had done their duty by the dead strolled amongst the wreaths, to look for the inscriptions on the cards attached, and perhaps discover somebody had been as stingy or as tasteless as one would have imagined.

Arnold Wyburd tried to think what it was he had to remember: oh, yes! to offer Sister de Santis a lift. He looked round for the Caliph's hat, and searched along a couple of the paths which led away from the holocaust between memorial plaques and the unnaturally perfect shrubs. In no direction was there any sign of an orange beacon, and he felt relieved at last. Would they have found enough to say to each other on the long drive back? and how would he have explained to Lal why he had chosen to give a lift to Sister de Santis of all people?

He told his wife on his return, ‘You did well not to come.'

‘You know I would have if you had wanted. But you gave me no indication.' She added,
‘She
mightn't have wanted it.'

He noticed Lal was wearing a chain Mrs Hunter had given him for her. Her neck looked red and shrivelled, its freckles fretted by the turquoise clusters dividing the ceremonial chain.

‘Was it a success?' Immediately she blushed for what must seem a gaffe. ‘Well, you know how furious she got if any of her entertainments fell flat. I can't think how she would feel if she knew her funeral had been a failure.'

The pain in Arnold Wyburd's thigh became so inescapably violent she must have seen it reflected in his face.

‘Oh, darling, what is it?'

‘Nothing,' he said. ‘A touch of my sciatica.'

‘Ohhh!' she moaned.

He rather enjoyed her sympathy.

‘Why don't I slip round to the chemist for a plaster?' She did so hope to be allowed.

‘It's nothing,' he grimaced.

He was not a masochist, but wanted to bear this superficial pain without Lal's well-intentioned interference. At the same time he gave her a wry smile in appreciation of her sympathy, while tapping on her hand in the code they had used over practically half a century to communicate their love.

Out of prudence, Mrs Wyburd waited till his second helping of salmon loaf before inquiring, ‘Was there anybody I know?'

‘Nurses. Cleaners. Otherwise, the kind of face one half knows: the reason why one has never joined a club.' Arnold continued masticating his salmon.

Lal drank a draught of water. ‘The children?'

Arnold began shaking his head, swallowing; he looked quite ratty. ‘I told you. Or didn't I? Dorothy developed a migraine.' As he returned them to the plate the knife and fork escaped from his fingers and landed loudly in the pink slush and two or three white vertebrae.

Lal rounded her eyes and breathed under pressure for a treachery she would have expected.