‘Sorry, dear, I can’t be of any help when it comes to cosmetics.’ Sister Badgery was slightly remorseful as she took the cup from the old thing’s hands. ‘Anything else I can do for you?’
The nurse stood holding her breath: bad enough if it were the bedpan, but to hoist her patient on to the commode almost always ricked her back.
‘Yes. There is something,’ Mrs Hunter said. ‘My jewel case. Then I shan’t feel completely naked.’
Sister Badgery began swishing about. The jewels played such a part in their owner’s life they increased the self-importance of any member of her household assisting at the ceremony.
Mrs Lippmann had once ventured to suggest, ‘She shouldn’t be allowed to flash her jewels at whoever comes: at the electrician, if you please, and window cleaners!’ But the housekeeper was notoriously jealous.
‘Poor old soul, they’re what she’s got to show,’ Sister Badgery replied, ‘and what she loves.’
‘Someone might steal — or murder her for them.’
‘They mightn’t dare.’
Mrs Lippmann agreed they might not.
Now when she had brought the case Sister Badgery asked, ‘Hadn’t I better open it for you?’
‘No, thank you.’ The catch responded less quickly to more agile fingers: she knew its tricks. She knew every inch of the mangy, velvet-covered box.
Her jewels.
Sister Badgery who thought she could recognize each, or almost every jewel — that was the peculiar part: not everything had been revealed — and who knew by heart the stories attached, though again not all, for the stories would breed others, was regularly entranced at the unveiling; but this morning felt provoked that Mrs Hunter should have scrabbled through the velvet trays and got herself into half-a-dozen rings behind her back.
‘Aren’t you well! Aren’t you active today!’ The nurse was genuinely impressed. ‘It’s your daughter’s arrival.’
‘Oh, the tale of jewels!’ Mrs Hunter knew her acolytes must often have caught her out telling her once blazing, if now extinct, beads.
Whatever her own feelings Sister Badgery would never be caught out in any popish act: no one would guess how she adored, for instance, this pigeon’s-blood ruby, or that she was capable of worshipping an ancient idol for its treasure.
To deflect the wrath of her forebears by a display of down-to-earth professional skill, the nurse announced, ‘We’ll prop you up a step or two, shall we? Whoopsy-dey, Mrs Hunter!’ as she hoisted.
And there was the idol propped against the pillows, the encrusted fingers outspread as though preparing to play a complicated scale on the hem of the sheet.
To introduce a touch of warmth, the nurse inquired, ‘Would you like your maribou jacket, dear? Or the woolly stole, perhaps?’
‘Thank you. The stole.’ Mrs Hunter barely breathed: physical exertion had exhausted her.
Sister Badgery draped the stole; she could not have treated a saint with greater reverence, though she did not believe in saints, not, at any rate, those Roman Catholic ones: ugh!
‘Wouldn’t you like me to choose you a necklace seeing as it’s a great occasion?’
‘Not a necklace. Not before luncheon. Not for Dorothy.’
Sister Badgery accepted reproof. ‘Gordon gave me an amethyst pendant.’
‘Gordon?’
‘My husband. Don’t you remember me telling you?’
‘I ought to.’
‘Well, Gordon gave me this pendant. It’s in exquisite taste. I wear it still — only when I visit friends, or to the Nurses’ and Residents’ Ball.’
Though Mrs Hunter had never distinctly seen Sister Badgery’s neck, she imagined it thin, white, and well-soaped: fitting support for the amethyst pendant.
‘Perhaps I never told you—’ Sister Badgery was treading familiar ground, ‘I met Mr Badgery — Gordon — on my way to the Temple of the Tooth. I was visiting Ceylon for pleasure — between cases, that is. What did you say, dear? Mrs Hunter?’
Mrs Hunter was not coaxed into repeating, but they used to call them ‘the Fishing Fleet’: the Australian women who went up to cast their nets in Ceylon waters; instead she confessed to a weakness of her own. ‘For years I kept the children’s baby teeth in a bottle. Then one day, for some reason, I threw them out.’
‘I was telling you about my trip to Kandy. My friends’ car got a puncture, and a tea planter who happened to be passing fetched a native to do the necessary. The planter was Mr Badgery. He kindly invited us to take refreshments — which was how everything started. Shortly after, he retired from tea and followed me by P. & O. to Sydney.’
‘He died, didn’t he?’ As if you didn’t know; but his widow liked to be asked.
‘Yes, he died. But not before we were married. That was when he gave me the amethyst pendant.’
Mrs Hunter wondered momentarily whether she should give Mrs Badgery something from her jewel box; it was easier to give presents than to waste emotions you were storing up against some possible cataclysm: as time ran on you did not know what you might have to face.
‘What is this weird ring I’ve never seen before?’ Sister Badgery was asking. ‘The one on your right thumb.’
The old girl was lolling there, her smouldering fingers scarcely part of her, and on that thumb a nest of plaited gold surrounding what might have been a cross, but out of plumb; the whole effect was thoroughly heathen.
‘That is an Ethiopian ring,’ Mrs Hunter explained. ‘It’s the only thing ever sent me by my son — apart from letters asking for money.’
Sister Badgery sucked her teeth. ‘And Sir Basil a great man! That’s what the papers tell us.’
‘I suppose, when they’re not being great, great men are as weak as the insignificant ones.’
Because of a tone of perversity and sadness, Sister Badgery changed the subject. ‘I expect your daughter — Dorothy — has lots of exquisite jewels: a lady in her position.’
‘She came off badly when he left her — though she was the innocent one. Still, she did manage to extract a jewel or two from her husband’s atrocious family.’
Sister Badgery was delighted to hear of this material success. She brought a brush and began stroking her patient’s hair.
‘I don’t believe you know my daughter’s name.’
‘Well, “Dorothy”, isn’t it? I’m no good at those foreign names.’
‘I shall teach you,’ said Mrs Hunter, her lips inflating as though she were tasting a delicious food, her nostrils filling with what could have been a subtle perfume. ‘“Princesse de Lascabanes”’; she laid on the French pretty thick for Sister Badgery’s benefit. ‘Let me hear you say it.’
The nurse obliged after a fashion. ‘But what shall I call her?’ the voice whined despairingly.
‘Nothing more elaborate than ‘“Madame”.’
‘“Mad-damm, mad-damm,”’ Sister Badgery breathed in imitation, and a more sonorous variant, ‘“Ma-darm!”’
Mrs Hunter sensed she had got her nurse under control, which was where she wanted her; she also suspected Sister Badgery would refer to ‘Princess Dorothy’ to please herself and impress her friends.
‘“Mad-damm, ma-darm”!’ Happier for its new accomplishment the voice went clucking in and out the golden morning.
Mrs Hunter was so soothed by clocks and brandy it seemed unlikely that anybody would arrive; if they did, it might even be undesirable: her life was too closely charted.
‘Open mouth! Mrs Hunter?’ It was that Badgery again. ‘Whatever happens, we must take our temp, mustn’t we?’