‘Anyway it did you good,’ Mrs Hunter said when their self-indulgence could no longer be excused.
‘What did?’ Dorothy exchanged her lumped-up position, half on the bed, for a less embarrassing, more comfortable attitude; while the Princesse de Lascabanes started administering a series of flat pats to her coiffure in one of the distant looking-glasses: she wasn’t consoled by her own reflection, nor by her mother’s implication that she had benefited by a ‘good cry’.
‘Well, I mean — the air of Sydney,’ Mrs Hunter selected out of the air. ‘Isn’t that why we came here? Your bronchitis. To escape from those severe winters at Gogong, after the burning hot summers.’
Knowing this was the official reason, Dorothy replied, ‘Actually I can’t remember much about the bronchitis. I expect I was too young.’
‘Basil will remember,’ Mrs Hunter said; it must have sounded complacent because she herself detected it. ‘Basil remembers the least detail.’
‘Basil is a genius.’ Dorothy no longer resented it; in her wrung-out condition it would have been too exacting; now she only passively despised.
‘I remember how quickly you revived in this balmy Sydney air. You never had bronchitis again.’ In fact, it was herself who had bloomed like a different flower on the same plant; how exotic, how naked her body felt when the southerly began to blow at the end of a sticky summer’s day, caressing her inside her dresses.
‘The Sydney climate was always unreliable: changeable, treacherous,’ the princess insisted feelingly. ‘That’s why the people are like they are.’
‘Oh, but they are so kind, hospitable—out-giving.’ Mrs Hunter came at it as though she were reading from a brochure of moral touristry.
Then perhaps because it was not clear who had won, Mother asked, ‘In the winter — in Paris — do you wear woollen vests, Dorothy?’
‘No.’ the princess replied. ‘Because indoors there are the — the salamandres. And when I go out I wear my fur coat. Fur boots too,’ she added for good measure; her argument would have satisfied any reasonable Frenchwoman.
‘But wool is best, Dorothy. And steak. My advice to any girl living on her own is to order steak — when she is invited out — by men.’
‘Bien saignant!’ Dorothy de Lascabanes laughed a rackety laugh. ‘But I’m no longer invited out, Mother, by men. Or not very often.’
Mrs Hunter appeared not to believe it, anyway of herself: she closed her mouth so abruptly; then she opened it and said, ‘There’s this man — what’s his name? Athol Something. I don’t like him. We met at some dinner party. Athol Shreve? After we came to live in this house. I definitely don’t like him. He’s in business, or something awful — politics.’
Dorothy wondered whether she could stick it out.
‘You haven’t told me about your flight. Did they feed you properly, darling?’ Mrs Hunter flickered her eyelids in the shallows of social intercourse.
Madame de Lascabanes was only too glad to accept the invitation. ‘Yes. I saw to that: I travelled Air France. The food is frightfully civilized: none of your Qantas plastic’
‘Oh, but darling — Qantas — the best in the world!’
The mother heard her daughter give what she interpreted as a French sniff: the French were so certain of their values, and here was Dorothy, always knotted to the point of strangulation, aspiring to be what she was not, because of that parvenu prince.
Mrs Hunter saw him: the groove in the lower lip, above the cleft chin, beneath the pink-shaded restaurant lights. She had ordered tournedos Lulu Watier. After the first shock of mutual disapproval, she felt that she and Hubert were enjoying each other. Alfred said, ‘Out with us, the food is plainer. We don’t feel the need to titillate our palates by dolling it up with a lot of seasoning and fancy sauces.’ He might have worsened the situation if she hadn’t kicked him under the table.
They had gone over for the wedding because the old princess insisted she could not travel out to ce pays si lointain et inconnu. It was the first occasion the mountain hadn’t come to Elizabeth Hunter: she couldn’t very well believe it; nor that she would overlook the fact that her little Dorothy was being received into the Roman Catholic Church. But you did: at the nuptial mass there was your plain little girl in the dress by Lanvin tissé exprès à la main à Lyon, and none of it could disguise the fact that you were prostituting your daughter to a prince, however desirably suave and hung with decorations. For one instant, out of the chanting and the incense, Elizabeth Hunter experienced a kind of spiritual gooseflesh. (Ridiculous when you came to think you had never felt in any way religious, except occasionally at puberty, on clear mornings, down along the river bank. No, there had been other, later, more secret occasions.) Then she was carried on by the sea of words ebbing and flowing round her child’s head. Her child! The eyes of several elderly Frenchmen were directed at the mother of the bride, from out of their aura of distinction and smell of mothballs. And the eyes of that priest standing on the altar steps. She had never met a priest’s eyes, let alone felt them penetrate her: cold eyes can burn the deepest. She was glad of Alfred’s shoulder: her rock, if not always, at least when necessary.
‘Considering how uncomplicated Alfred was, it is surprising he never seemed surprised at anything that happened,’ Mrs Hunter said. ‘The Bullivants, Dorothy — will you be seeing the Bullivants?’
‘Why should I?’
‘But Cherry was your great friend. And the Bullivants took you to Paris that — that time — Daddy decided to send you. He had such faith in Charles and Violet — a reliable wing to protect you in foreign parts.’
‘Are you blaming the Bullivants?’
‘I’m not blaming anybody.’
‘I’m relieved. It’s only I who was to blame.’
Mrs Hunter thought she detected a masochistic tone of voice; she wondered whether she might take advantage of it.
‘Well, I expect you’ll see Cherry. She’s married to a nice man. So I’m told — I haven’t seen him: a stockbroker or something. They live up the North Shore. That can’t be helped. Cherry’s happy.’
An ambulance was screeching down Anzac Parade, or was it a fire engine? Madame de Lascabanes had not yet learnt to distinguish between the different Sydney emergencies.
‘Dorothy, dear, I’ve been trying to understand why you shouldn’t settle down in this house. Comfort each other. An excellent cook. Of course I had to take her in hand — pass on what I know — Mrs Lippmann. Have you met my housekeeper?’ Dorothy was palpitating.
‘In your old room. Practically as you left it. One has to respect what other people are — essentially — even when they try to destroy themselves. But I offer you your room — your latchkey — financial security — if only you will realize that badly heated Paris apartment is — so — so pernicious.’
Dorothy de Lascabanes had flown to her mother’s bedside to pronounce an ultimatum, a brutal one if necessary, and here she was, her head literally so heavy she had to support it with her hands. ‘I don’t know, Mummy!’ she muttered from behind her wrists.
‘Think it over, darling. Nothing can be decided in—you know I would never let you want — and for that reason.’
They had lapsed. Both of them. The princess might have been sunk in a lake of mercury, but Mrs Hunter was probably born of that substance.