‘What — are you still here, Nurse? when I want to talk confidentially with my friend. Ask my housekeeper to make the tea. Only tea. I don’t think we’ll bother about anything to eat. Mrs Wyburd was never interested in food.’
Mrs Wyburd had folded her hands in her lap. She sat smiling straight ahead. She did look honest.
‘I’m sure Mrs Lippmann won’t forget the tea. But isn’t it early, Mrs Hunter?’
Mrs Hunter stared at her nurse, who left the room.
‘I have another nurse who brings me roses. She must have forgotten today. I can’t smell them.’
‘This isn’t the season for roses.’
‘No. There aren’t any.’
‘I remember how you loved roses. I should have brought you some if they had been in season.’
‘She is the one who is. The pretty one. Permanently. She thinks I can’t smell it, but I can.’
Mrs Wyburd was not liking it at all. She glanced at one of the mirrors. Though she was in fact alone with this unpleasant old woman, other people might have been present.
‘Wasn’t his name “Arnold”?’ Mrs Hunter went on hammering.
‘Who?’
‘The solicitor.’
Mrs Wyburd uttered too hoarsely, ‘Yes.’
‘Do you remember the goatsbeard?’
‘The what?’
‘Astilbe.’
‘I can’t think what you mean, Mrs Hunter.’
Mrs Hunter laughed. ‘You were the one for botanical names.’
‘My memory isn’t what it was.’
‘My mimulus of Double Bay!’ Mrs Hunter was mimicking somebody’s voice.
Mrs Wyburd sat looking at her knotted hands. ‘How are the children?’ she asked of her protectress. ‘I was hoping they might find time to pay me a visit.’
‘They have their own affairs. Oh, yes!’ Mrs Hunter sighed. ‘Be thankful for your garden, Lal.’
Mrs Wyburd was glad she had her reflection for company, even if an ugly one, its (cancerous) freckles masking the record of so many bungled attempts to console those she loved.
‘Does my husband love you?’ Mrs Hunter pursued.
‘I hardly think he did,’ Mrs Wyburd answered; ‘in fact you know he didn’t.’
‘Yes. I am the one.’ Mrs Hunter stirred.
Mrs Wyburd was relieved when the nurse brought in the tea.
‘It’s the jasmine you’re so fond of,’ Sister Manhood informed. ‘Can’t you smell the scent from it?’
Everything, as ever, was in honour of Elizabeth Hunter, but she who had been all for scents, turned her head and would barely breathe.
Mrs Wyburd swallowed what she was not prepared to admit: her true feelings for Elizabeth Hunter.
While Sister Manhood poured the tea and handed the cups, she was trying to crook a finger, but that seemed to have thickened, like her body. ‘Let me prop you up, Mrs Hunter. Shall I help you with your tea?’
‘Of course not.’ Then, ‘Leave it — thank you.’
Sister Manhood left altogether, and Mrs Wyburd sat sipping too soon: her palate was scalded; the pouches under her eyes were running; her (cancerous) freckles must have looked, she guessed, like drops of rust. She no longer dared face herself in the glass.
Mrs Hunter would not touch her tea, such was the crisis towards which they were heading. ‘Where is my husband?’ she asked.
‘I should have thought,’ gasped Mrs Wyburd, ‘buried.’
‘You needn’t remind me,’ Mrs Hunter said, ‘of what we know. What I meant was: Arnold — does he treat you kindly?’
‘He’s an honourable man, and I’m married to him.’
‘Oh, Lal! Does he love you?’
Mrs Wyburd managed, ‘Yes.’ Why should this creature be allowed to explore your nakedness, first with her claws and now with her vindictive mind? ‘He loves me,’ she asserted, though it was like jumping into darkness.
She felt completely naked, with Mrs Hunter always looking closer.
‘Arnold was hairless,’ Mrs Wyburd’s torturer seemed to remember.
‘How do you mean? He isn’t bald even now.’ Mrs Wyburd was shocked by her own laughter.
‘But does his beard?’
‘I couldn’t tell. Every morning he shaves it off;’ with the electric razor the girls persuaded him to adopt several birthdays ago.
‘No astilbe,’ Mrs Hunter only mumbled because she was already thinking of other things.
Mrs Wyburd could feel that her eyes were controlled and dry, but she failed to prevent a perspired tear from plopping into the dregs of her tea. The roof of her mouth was cauterized.
Mrs Hunter said, ‘Now I remember, Lal, why I was persuaded to send you that chain. I don’t know why I should say “persuaded” when I was compelled— isn’t that the word? If we care to admit, most of life is compulsion or coincidence. So I gave this chain. Which I was wearing in the storm — on Brumby Island. And survived. You are the one I wanted to have it.’
Was it generosity, or humbug? Lal Wyburd could not tell; she might have cried if she had not been trained by Arnold.
Then Mrs Hunter decided, ‘I must ask you to go. I’m tired. Not as tired as Gladys Radford. They had to give her oxygen. Do you remember Gladys?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Wyburd; her cup almost shot out of its saucer. ‘You’re the one who has the memory.’
‘Thank you,’ Mrs Hunter said. ‘I have nothing else.’
Mrs Wyburd was putting on her gloves. Mrs Hunter must have heard it, but she did not look relieved.
‘Will you kiss me, Lal?’ she asked.
Mrs Wyburd laughed. ‘Why, yes! Did you think I wasn’t going to?’ She knew she was blushing for her lie: she preferred to kiss even Arnold in the dark.
Mrs Hunter was raising her blind head on the end of its ringed neck: the effect was ancient and reptilian. Lal Wyburd felt herself contained in what might have been an envelope of vapour, or sentimental pity, inside which, again, her mind was reared in horror, not for the decayed humanity she had at her mercy, but beyond the mask, still the legend of Elizabeth Hunter’s beauty.
By grace of desperation she recalled an incident of years ago when she and the girls were on their European tour. Dawdling with appropriate Protestant incredulity and disapproval through the town of Lourdes, they found themselves automatically taking their places in a queue. Too late Marjorie at the head of their party realized they had been roped in to pay their respects in the grotto of the miraculous vision. There was no way out. Marjorie, one saw, bend and actually kiss the rock in front of her like any Roman. Heather turned for a moment, crimson with scorn, if not panic, before they were jostled forward from behind. Heather marched past, her head held high. What, oh, what to do? Then Lal Wyburd ducked and, in no way disrespectfully, kissed the air several inches above the surface of the slimy rock. She walked on dazed but thankful she had managed to avoid hygienic and spiritual contamination without vulgarly demonstrating.
And now here below her Mrs Hunter’s lips were probing trembling around at nothing.
Quickly Mrs Wyburd stooped: she kissed the air just short of the older woman’s face.
Elizabeth Hunter must have heard it. She sank back on her pillows looking fairly well satisfied. ‘Love me!’ she murmured, scarcely for her caller.
It might have been another conquest, not so much of an individual as of the abstract: in any case, she would chalk it up along with the others.
Mrs Wyburd left. She was glad neither the housekeeper nor the nurse was anywhere in sight: they might have asked questions, or worse, complimented her in some way. She walked downstairs looking at her feet, holding her handkerchief to her mouth, to stop up an emptiness where that kiss should have been. Still, she had her husband, whom beauty had failed to destroy. Nor would death if she could prevent it.