The Death of the Heart (38 page)

“Well, with your aunt you may have time to be sorry. No, I am being unfair to you. I should never talk like this if you weren’t such a little stone.”

“It is what you’ve told me.”

“Naturally, naturally. Do you like to walk through the graveyard? And why has it got a bandstand in the middle? As you’re quite near home, do something about your face.”

“I don’t have any powder.”

“I’m not really sorry that this has happened: it was bound to happen sooner or later—No, I don’t mean powder: I just mean your expression. One thing one must learn is, how to confront people that at that particular moment one cannot bear to meet.”

“Anna’s out to tea.”

“If we had not said all this, I’d get you to have tea with me in a shop. But anyhow, I’m due somewhere at a quarter to five. I think I ought to go back now. I suppose you’re sorry we met?”

“I suppose it’s better to know.”

“No, truly it is not. In fact I’ve done something to you I could not bear to have done to myself. And the terrible thing is, I am feeling the better for it. Well, goodbye,” said St. Quentin, stopping on the asphalt path in the graveyard, among the tombs and the willows, taking off his hat.

“Goodbye, Mr. Miller. Thank you.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t say that.”

That had been on Wednesday. This Saturday, Portia soon moved out of Eddie’s chair, which he slipped gladly back to, to take her accustomed place on the stool near the fire. A pallid flare and a rustling rose from the logs; the windows framed panoramas of wet trees; the room looked high and faint in rainy afternoon light. Between Portia and Anna extended the still life of the tea-tray. On her knees, pressed together, Portia kept balanced the plate on which a rock cake slid. Beginning to nibble at the rock cake, she sat watching Anna at tea with Eddie, as she had watched her at tea with other intimate guests.

By coming in, however, she had brought whatever there was to a nonplussed pause. The fact that they let her see such a pause happen made her the accessory she hardly wanted to be. Eddie propped an elbow on the wing of his chair, leaned a temple on a palm and looked into the fire. His eyes flickered up and down with the point of flickering flame. Desultorily, and for his private pleasure, he began to make mouths like a fish—curling his lower lip out, sucking it in again. Anna, using her thumb nail, slit open a new box of cigarettes, then packed her tortoise-shell case with them. Portia finished her cake, approached the tray and helped herself to another —taking his eyes from the fire for one moment, Eddie accorded her one irresponsible smile. “When do we go for another walk?” he said.

Anna said: “Are you ready for more tea?”

“A fortnight ago,” said Portia, for no reason, going back for her cup, “I was having tea at Seale golf club with Dickie Heccomb and Clara—a girl there that he sometimes plays golf with.”

Anna ducked in her chin and smiled vaguely and nodded. Absently, she said, ”Was that fun?”

“Yes, the gorse was out.”

“Yes, Seale must have been fun.”

“There’s a picture of you there, in my room.”

“A photograph?”

“No, a picture holding a kitten.”

Anna put her hand to her head. “Kitten?” she said. “What do you mean, Portia?”

“A black kitten.”

Anna thought back. “Oh, that black kitten. Poor little thing, it died… . You mean, when I was a child?”

“Yes, you had long hair.”

“A chalk drawing. Oh, is that in her spare room? But Who is Clara? Tell me about her.”

Portia did not know how to begin—she glanced at Eddie. He came to himself and said with the greatest ease: “Clara? Clara’s position was uncertain. She was hardly in the set. All the same, she haunts me—perhaps because of that. She spends ever so much money hoping to marry Dickie—Dickie Heccomb, you know. Besides money, she keeps inside her handbag a sort of mouse’s nest that she dives into whenever things get too difficult. Doesn’t she, Portia? We saw Clara do that.”

Anna said: “I wish I could.”

“Oh, you would never need to, Anna darling… . Well, we made Clara pop into her handbag that night at the E.C.P. When we all behaved so badly. I was the worst, of course. It was really dreadful, Anna: Portia and I had been for a nice walk in some woods, then I ruined the day by getting tight and rowdy. I had made a fine impression when I first got to Waikiki, but I’m afraid that spoiled it.” Eddie gave Portia an equivocal sidelong look, then turned his head and went on talking to Anna. “Clara’s position was really trying, you see: she had eyes only for Dickie, and Dickie had eyes only for Portia here.”

She made a dumbfounded movement. “Oh, Eddie, he
hadn’t!”

“Well, there were goings-on—they were perfectly onesided, but there were goings-on as far as Dickie does go. I heard him breathing over you at the movies. He breathed so much that he even breathed over me.”

“Eddie,” Anna said, “you really are very common.” She looked remotely, sternly down at her fingernails, but after a minute could not help saying: “Did you all go to the movies? When?”

“That first evening I got there,” Eddie said fluently. “Six of us. All the set. I must say, I really was shocked by Dickie: not only is he an old Fascist, but he does not know how to behave at all. At the seaside, they really do go the pace.”

“How dreadful for you,” said Anna. “And so, what did you do?”

“It was in the dark, so I could not show how I felt. Besides, his sister was holding my hand. They really are a fast lot—I do think, Anna, you ought to be more careful where you send Portia off to another time.”

This did not go down well. “Portia knows how to behave,” said Anna frigidly. “Which makes more difference than you would ever think.” She gave Portia what could have been a kindly look had there been the least intention behind it. To Eddie she said, with enraged softness: “For anybody as clever as you are, you are really not good at describing things. To begin with, I don’t think you ever know what is happening: you are too busy wondering what you can make of it.”

Eddie pouted and said: “Very well, ask Portia, then.”

But Portia looked down and said nothing.

“Anyhow,” Eddie said, “it has been an effort to talk, when I don’t feel in the mood to. But one has got to be so amusing here. I’m sorry you don’t like what I say, but I have been more or less talking in my sleep.”

“If you are so sleepy, you had better go home.”

“I can’t see why the idea of sleep should offend you as much as it seems to, Anna. It is the natural thing on a rainy spring afternoon, when one’s not compelled to be doing anything else, especially in a nice quiet room like this. We ought all to sleep, instead of talking away.”

“Portia has not said much,” said Anna, looking across the fire.

At the very sound, on Eddie’s lips, of the word, desire to sleep had spread open inside Portia like a fan. She saw reflections of rain on the silver things on the tray. She felt blotted out from the room, as little present in it as these two others truly felt her to be. She moved a little nearer the fireplace, so as to lean her cheek on the marble upright, with as little consciousness of her movement as though she had been alone in some other place. Behind shut eyes she relaxed; she refreshed herself. The rug under her feet slid and wrinkled a little on the polished floor; the room, with its image of cruelty, swam, shredded and slowly lost its colour, like a paper pattern in water.

Since the talk with St. Quentin, the idea of betrayal had been in her, upon her, sleeping and waking, as might be one’s own guilt, making her not confront any face with candour, making her dread Eddie. Being able to shut her eyes while he was in this room with her, to feel impassive marble against her cheek, made her feel in the arms of immunity—the immunity of sleep, of anaesthesia, of endless solitude, the immunity of the journey across Switzerland two days after her mother died. She saw that tree she saw when the train stopped for no reason; she saw in her nerves, equally near and distant, the wet trees out there in the park. She heard the Seale sea, then heard the silent distances of the coast.

There was a pause in the drawingroom. Then Anna said: “I wish I could just do that; I wish I were sixteen.”

Eddie said: “She looks sweet, doesn’t she?” At some later time, he came softly across to touch Portia’s cheek with his finger, to which Anna, though still there, did not say anything.

“REALLY
,
Anna, things
have
gone too far!” Eddie, out of the blue, burst out on the telephone. “Portia has just rung me up to say you’ve been reading her diary. And I could say nothing—someone was in the office.”

“Are you on the office telephone now?”

“Yes, but it’s lunch time.”

“Yes, I know it is lunch time. Major Brutt and two other people are here. You are ruthlessly inconsiderate.”

“How was I to know? I thought you might think this urgent. I do. Are they in the room?”

“Naturally.”

“Well, goodbye.
bon appétit
,”
added Eddie, in a loud bitter tone. He hung up just before Anna, who returned to the table. The three guests, having heard in her voice that note of loverlike crossness, tried not to look askance: they were all three rather naïve. Mr. and Mrs. Peppingham, from Shropshire, had this Monday been asked to lunch because they were known to have a neighbour in Shropshire who was known to be looking for an agent, and it seemed just possible Major Brutt might do. But during lunch it became clearer and clearer that he was only impressing the Peppinghams as being the sort of thoroughly decent fellow who never, for some reason, gets on in the world. Tough luck, but there you are. He was showing a sort of amiable cussedness; he ignored 
every hoop that Anna held out for him. The Peppinghams clearly thought that though no doubt he had done well in the War, he had not, on the whole, been unlucky in having
had
the War to do well in. It became useless for Anna to draw him out, to repeat that he had grown rubber, that he had had—for he had had, hadn’t he?— the management of a quite large estate. In Malay, of course, but the great thing was—wasn’t it?—to know how to manage men.

“Yes, that is certainly so,” agreed Mr. Peppingham, safely.

Mrs. Peppingham said: “With all these social changes, I sometimes fear that’s a lost art—managing men, I mean. I always feel that people work twice as well if they feel they’ve got someone to look up to.” She flushed up the side of her neck with moral conviction and said firmly: “I’m quite sure that is true.” Anna thought: These days there’s something dreadful about talk; people’s convictions keep bobbing to the surface, making them flush. I’m sure it was better when people connected everything of that sort with religion, and did not talk about religion at meals. She said: “I expect one thinks about that in the country more. That is the worst of London: one never thinks.”

“My dear lady,” said Mr. Peppingham, “thinking or not thinking, there are some things that you cannot fail to notice. Destroy tradition, and you destroy the sense of responsibility.”

“Surely, for instance, in your husband’s office—” Mrs. Peppingham said.

“I never go to the office. I don’t think Thomas inspires hero worship, if that’s what you mean. No, I don’t think he’d know what to do with that.”

“Oh, I don’t mean hero worship. I’m afraid that only leads to dictators, doesn’t it? No, what I mean,” said Mrs. Peppingham, touching her pearls with a shy but firm smile and flushing slightly again, “is,
instinctive
respect. That means so much to the people working for us.”

“Do you think one really inspires that?”

“One tries to,” said Mrs. Peppingham, not looking very pleased.

“It seems so sad to have to
try
to. I should so much rather just pay people, and leave it at that.”

Phyllis inhibited Mrs. Peppingham from any further talk about class by firmly handing the orange
souffle
round.
Pas Avant les Domestiques
might have been carved on the Peppinghams’ diningroom mantelpiece, under
Honi Soit qui Mai y Pense
.
Mrs. Peppingham helped herself and, with a glance at Phyllis’s cuff, was silent. Anna, plunging the spoon and fork into the souffle with that frank greed one shows in one’s own house when there is enough of everything, said: “Besides, I thought you said that it was instinctive. Whose instincts do you mean?”

“Respect’s a broad human instinct,” said Mr. Peppingham, letting one eye wander to meet the
soufflé.

“Oh yes. But do you think it is still?”

The two Peppinghams’ eyes, for less than a second, met. They share the same ideals, thought Anna. Do I and Thomas? Perhaps, but what ever are they? I do wish Major Brutt would say something or contradict me: the Peppinghams will start thinking
he is a Red. What a misleading reputation my house has—the Peppinghams must have come here for Interesting Talk, because they feel they don’t get enough of that in Shropshire. The yearnings of the County are appalling. They forget Major Brutt has come here to get a job; they probably are offended at meeting only him. If I had asked an author, which they must have expected, things could not be more hopeless than they are now, and it might have put the Peppinghams into a better mood—besides showing Major Brutt up as the practical man. I thought that my
beaux yeux
should be enough to send Major Brutt and the Peppinghams into each other’s arms. But these Peppinghams are not nice enough to be flattered. No, they are full of designing hardness; all they think is that I’m making use of them. Which I would do if I could, but they are impossible. They despise Major Brutt for being nicer than they are and for not having made good in their line. If he would only flush and argue, instead of just sitting. Oh dear, oh dear, I shall never sell him at all.