The Eye of the Storm (40 page)

‘Not in employment. It's hellish long in a love affair. Or a good marriage-which can be the same thing.'

They both decided against developing the theme.

Her eyelids had opened, but continued batting. ‘What I think I wanted you for was to show you the letter I had from Basil—our son.'

‘What did he write to you about?' The solicitor thought that when the time came to leave the house he would never have felt so glad. (Lal and himself eating a simple meal together: that would be the ultimate in gladness; and to tell her what he had been through.)

‘Basil wrote to thank me for the cheque,' Mrs Hunter said. ‘All the nurses have read it—Mrs Lippmann too—Mrs Cush—all agree it's a sweet letter, which of course it is. Basil is a great actor, and knows how to choose words for their—marrow; he's learnt the business thoroughly.'

The lids stopped batting. Her stare would have been trained directly on her visitor if sightlessness and the position of the lamp had not made the eye sockets look hollow.

‘I would like you to read it.' Her intense seriousness turned it into a command, while a certain invalid tone appealed for sympathy for herself rather than his approval of the letter. ‘See whether you don't also agree it's sweet.'

‘Of course I'll read it if you show—if you'll tell me, Mrs Hunter, where it is.'

‘It's here on the bedside table so that it can be easily found.' Waved vaguely in that direction, her hand collided with his, which at that moment could not have looked more ephemeral: under the transparent skin, bones awaiting distribution for the final game of jacks.

He had no difficulty in unfolding the letter: it must have been read so many times.

‘Aloud please,' Mrs Hunter ordered.

My dearest Mother,

On opening The Envelope in Mr Wyburd's office I was moved before anything else by your kindness in devising such a stunning surprise. No, it was not surprising; you have always been the soul of generosity. Now, if I am the richer for your gift, I am also humbler for your thoughtfulness

Mrs Hunter cleared her throat; possibly she also laughed. Because he had to continue reading to the end, the solicitor was unable to distinguish laughter with certainty.

‘… Soon I shall come in person to thank you. In the meantime, I send my grateful love, and leave you in the hands of those whose affectionate dedication, unexpected charms and rare skills are all that I could wish for you in your life of trials.'

‘You didn't read it very well, Arnold,' Mrs Hunter complained. ‘You sounded like some old man—trembly and addled.'

If he had been more than temporarily relieved by the evasions of the letter, he might have rejected some of her scorn. But he did feel old, and would not grow any younger trying to guess how the fatal blow might fall.

So he joined in the hypocrisy. ‘It's—yes, it's a wonderful letter.'

‘“Sweet” is what the others call it,' Mrs Hunter corrected. ‘And I am inclined to think that is what it is.' From movements of her
tongue on her lips she might still have been testing the letter's flavour.

‘At any rate, I expect he's been to see you since--probably more than once,' the solicitor ventured.

‘No. And I didn't expect it. I expect nothing with absolute certainty,' Mrs Hunter said, ‘but death.'

It started shocked sensibility battling in Arnold Wyburd against immense physical relief.

Somewhere in a lull of his own, he tried to offer consolation. ‘I seem to remember he did mention not wanting to tire you out with talk.'

Then it must have been Dorothy who had dropped the rumours at Moreton Drive; a sly, vindictive woman, she couldn't have resisted flashing her knife prematurely. ‘Well, the princess—daughters don't forget their duty so easily. I don't doubt you've had visits from Dorothy.'

‘She came—oh, several times. And each time I was asleep.' Mrs Hunter was so definite about that, he had to dismiss his theory.

‘I don't know whether I'm sorry,' she continued. ‘Dorothy gives the impression she would like to start discussing money. And that's boring. Think about it if you must, but don't talk about it. Almost any vice is more interesting than money.'

They languished after that, and the solicitor might have become the victim of his thoughts if the night nurse had not saved him, anyway from their lower depths. Sister de Santis was so much a presence he was not used to thinking of her as a person. Since she had begun trading in dangerous rumours, he looked at her tonight for further evidence of womanhood, but found only what pleased his old-fashioned, shy tastes.

After she had greeted him by bowing her veiled head, Sister de Santis became too intent on her patient's welfare to bother with any visitor. ‘Have you spent a happy day, Mrs Hunter?' she asked as she took up the token of a wrist.

‘How innocent you are, Mary! Oh, yes—I suppose I have,' Mrs Hunter was forced to admit. ‘Happy, or un-happy: by this stage
there's not much to choose between them.' She turned to the solicitor and asked, ‘Is there any reason why I shouldn't feel happy, Arnold?'

‘Not that I know—unless you know of one yourself.' He had staved her off, he hoped, and would not expose himself to further danger. ‘I'll go now, Mrs Hunter, if you'll excuse me.'

She had lost interest.

Sister de Santis seemed to be trying to apologize for her patient's lapse. The immaculate lips were smiling at him, though the lamp was so placed, he could not judge the expression of her eyes. Probably she was on his side, but even if he had dared ask for confirmation, he suspected her discretion of being as great as his.

So he went down through the house, its silence alive with clocks, suggestions of subterfuge, the blatant echoes of downright lies, together with hints of the exasperating, unknowable truth.

The house in which he lived (judicious Georgian borrowings by a once fashionable, now forgotten architect) was making a last stand against a Central European pincer movement in yellow brick. He let himself in, and at once Lal, in an apron, was coming towards him across the hall. ‘I've done us some haddock,' she said, ‘with a couple of poached eggs.'

As they sat down to enjoy their simple nursery food, it relieved him to find life still as he hoped it might be
the
other side of the hectic shimmer of apprehension: they were free to masticate the requisite number of times in silence, or mumble about grandchildren's ailments, and discuss the price of things.

Over the bottled pears (Lal was for making a religion out of the country virtues) he thought to mention, ‘I paid Her a visit this evening.' In masticating, he didn't pretend to emulate Gladstone, but managed a ritual twelve to fifteen chews.

‘How was it?' He only faintly heard above his absorption.

Lal's face was inclined over the brown and leathery, but healthful pears. Their friends must always have seen his wife as plain, he imagined; he too, at times: some species of modest, monochrome
bird, her low, and uniformly agreeable call unexpectedly punctuated by an ironic note or two. Now he surprised himself thinking Lal looked downright ugly; he was repelled in particular by that single pockmark on one cheek beside the nose, which he must have noticed every day of their life together. Disloyalty to this loyal wife made Arnold Wyburd swallow a mouthful of unmasticated pear.

And Lal was repeating in a louder, slightly reproachful voice, ‘How was the
visit?

Suddenly he was leaning forward. ‘It was
awful!'
he ejaculated with such force that some of his mouthful of pear shot on to the surface of the mahogany table; some of the juice must have spurted as far as his wife's bare arm: from the way she jerked it back against her side she might have been spattered with acid.

But the account of his discoveries at Moreton Drive had to come pouring out on Lal. Wasn't she the only recipient for what might otherwise have eaten him away? With age, the half hour of mutual confession had practically replaced their sexual life, after which, in normal times, they fell deliciously asleep.

‘On top of the children's criminal intentions, to find a houseful of half-informed, speculating nurses! The housekeeper too. Even the cleaning woman, I gather, is in the know.' If he had been able to restrain himself till later, it might have sounded less reprehensible after the light was turned out. ‘How far it has gone, I couldn't tell, but suspect.'
Is there any reason why I shouldn't feel happy Arnold?
he was stabbed by a voice which memory made appeal and accuse more pointedly. ‘Or how the leak occurred.' It was torn out of him in what, for Arnold Wyburd, was almost a tortured shout.

Lal had finished her pears; she laid her spoon and fork together, her behaviour the more seemly for his display of dry passion.

She looked at him and said, ‘It was I who told, Arnold.'

‘You!'
Who was this woman he hadn't got to know in a lifetime of intimate exchange? Because of his faith in her, a greater criminal perhaps than Basil and Dorothy Hunter themselves.

‘After what you told me, I had to tell someone. I rang Sister de Santis. That is all,' Lal was saying. ‘I was so upset,' she continued
with more difficulty, ‘not that I ever greatly cared for Mrs Hunter, I may as well admit; she was always too selfish, greedy, in spite of being over endowed—with everything. And cruel,' she gasped. ‘But I suppose I also looked up to her as somebody beautiful, brilliant—occasionally inspired.'

He couldn't help approving of the way his wife was choosing her words to express his own feelings; but her treachery came back at him; the dishonesty which had lurked behind her homely virtues increased her physical ugliness.

‘I knew you respected Sister de Santis,' she was continuing when almost run down. ‘And I was so shocked that they could even contemplate discarding this pitiful old creature, I suppose I didn't stop to think I had been told in confidence.'

‘Stop to think? After all these years—not to
be—ethically conditioned?

She looked as though she expected him to dash his napkin in her face.

He had never seen Lal crying convulsively before; not even after Heather's premature baby died. Her present anguish was streaming from a source far less rational than death because more unexpected. She was at her plainest. And Arnold Wyburd knew that he would not have wished her otherwise. Nor did he attempt to hide his own few spurts of tears: in that way, Lal and he completed each other.

He only removed himself while she was blowing her nose without thought for her table napkin. He went, as coldly as the undertaking demanded, to the upstairs telephone; not that there was much point in telephoning pretentious people at that hour. Indeed, at the Onslow, Sir Basil Hunter was not receiving calls; and the Princesse de Lascabanes had left the club for dinner with friends. So he was frustrated; or saved up.

That night the Wyburds went to bed earlier than usual. There were no confidences after lights-out. Instead, they were clutching at a flawed reality they had been allowed to discover in each other, perhaps even taking upon themselves the healing of a wounded conscience.

It was an occasion when it did not occur to Arnold Wyburd to regret the snoring sound he made as he approached an orgasm.

It was the night of the Douglas Cheesemans' dinner for Princesse de Lascabanes: one of the club maids had read an announcement in the
Telegraph.
As the evening approached Dorothy increasingly regretted her too hasty acceptance. She had always practised social deferment at the risk of suffering for it: from being ‘hard to get', she was gradually forgotten. Now, she thought, she would have given anything to be dropped by one who was never more than a casual girlhood acquaintance. If Cherry Bullivant had been proposed as bridesmaid it was because Dorothy Hunter had not been encouraged to form close attachments; she had never had what is called a Best Friend. In any case, if it had been expected of her to go in search, she might not have known how to find. So, whatever her legend and her weapons, she dreaded her entrée into Cherry Cheeseman's world.

After receiving her mother's cheque Dorothy had considered splurging some of it on an important dress: an armature to intimidate any possible adversary, and to warn off what could be worse, an importunate admirer. But on sending for a statement almost immediately after paying the money into the bank, she thought she could not bring herself to reduce such a lovely round sum; she would make do with her trusty Patou black enlivened with a jewel or two. Moving back and forth as far as the club bedroom allowed, she felt temporarily safe, acceptable to herself, which after all, she had decided, is more important than being acceptable to others; and as she moved, she slightly and indolently rocked, grasping her shoulders, the bank statement pinned to her breast by her crossed arms; she derived considerable consolation from the chafing of this toughly material paper.

On the night, then, it was the Patou black, of such an urbane simplicity it had often ended by scaring the scornful into a bewildered reassessment of their own canons of taste. And the diamonds; everyone must bow to those: their fire too unequivocally
real, their setting a collusion between class and aesthetics. These were some of the jewels the colonial girl had been clever enough to prise out of her husband's family by knowing too much. If they had been more than a paltry fraction of the realizable de Lascabanes assets, and if she had not detested all forms of thuggery, Dorothy Hunter might have seen herself as a kind of female Ned Kelly.

She was standing at the dressing-table mirror massaging the lobes of her ears before loading them with moody de Lascabanes pearls encrusted with minor de Lascabanes diamonds. The ear-rings made her suffer regularly, but it was all in the game of self-justification. As she pulled on the long skins of gloves, she noticed the mauve tones in the crooks of her thin arms, in her salt cellars, and at her temples; she was not displeased with her angular looks—for that moment, anyway.