The Death of the Heart (45 page)

ST. QUENTIN
,
drawn to the scene of his crime—or, more properly, to its moral source—was drinking sherry at Anna’s when the alarm broke. St. Quentin had been, up to then, in good spirits, relieved to find how little guilty he felt. Nothing was said on the subject of diaries.

The trouble began on the ground floor of 2 Windsor Terrace and moved up. While St. Quentin and Anna were at their sherry, Thomas came home, happened to ask for Portia, was told she was not back. He thought no more of this until Matchett, in person, came to the study door to say Portia was still not in yet, and to ask Thomas what he meant to do. She stood in the doorway, looking steadily at him: these days they did not often confront each other.

“What I mean,” she said, “twenty to eight is late.”

“She must have made some plan, and then forgotten to tell us. Have you told Mrs. Quayne?”

“Mrs. Quayne has company, sir.”

“I know,” said Thomas. He almost added: Why else do you think I am down here? He said: “That’s no reason not to ask Mrs. Quayne. She may quite likely know where Miss Portia is.”

Matchett gave Thomas a look without any quiver; Thomas frowned down at his fountain pen. “Well,” he said, “better ask her, at any rate.”

“Unless you would wish to, sir… .”

Under this compulsion, Thomas heaved himself up from his writing desk. Evidently, Matchett was thinking something—but was Matchett not always thinking something? If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm. Thomas went upstairs, to gain the drawingroom landing enough infected by whatever Matchett did think to open the door sharply, then stand on the threshold with a tenseness that unnerved the other two. “Portia isn’t back,” he said. “I suppose we know where she is?”

St. Quentin at once got up, took Anna’s glass to the tray and gave her some more sherry. The business with this enabled him to stay for some time with his back to the Quaynes: he gave himself more sherry, then filled a glass for Thomas. Then he strolled away and, looking out of the window, watched people calmly rowing on the lake. He told himself that if this had been going to happen it would have happened before: the argument therefore was that it could not be happening now. Five days had elapsed since he had lifted his hat to Portia in the graveyard, having just said to her what he had just said. At the same time—he had to face it—you cannot be sure how long a person may not take to react. Shocks are inclined to be cumulative. His heart sank; he loathed his renewed complicity with the child’s relations and wanted to leave their house. He heard Thomas agree with the quite disconcerted Anna that it might be well to telephone to Lilian’s home.

But Lilian’s mother said that Lilian was out with her father: quite certainly, Portia was not with them. “Oh, dear,” Lilian’s mother said, with a touch of smugness, “I’m so sorry. What a worry for you!” Anna at once hung up.

Then Thomas started, on a sustained note that soon became rather bullying: “You know, Anna, no one but us would let a girl o£ that age run round London alone.” “Oh, shut up, darling,” said Anna, “don’t be so upper class. At her age, girls are typists.” “Well, she is not a typist; she’s not likely to learn to be anything, here. Why don’t we send Matchett to fetch her, in the afternoons?” “We don’t live quite on that scale: Matchett’s rather too busy. One thing Portia can learn here is to look after herself.” “Yes, in theory all that is excellent. But in the course of learning she might, perhaps, get run over.” “Portia takes no chances: she’s much too scared of the traffic.” “How can you know what she’s like when she’s alone? Only the other evening, just outside here, I had to pull her back from right under a car.” “That was because she suddenly saw me.” Anna with a bold and frightened little inflection, said: “Well, do we start to ring up the hospitals?”

“Before that,” said Thomas, impervious, “why not ring up Eddie?”

“Because, for one thing, he is never in. Also, why on .earth should I?”

“Well, you quite often do. I grant that Eddie’s not bright, but he might have some idea.” Thomas picked up the glass of sherry St. Quentin had left poured out, and drank it. Then he said: “After all, they are quite thick.”

“By all means let’s try everything,” Anna said, with the perfect smoothness of ice. She dialled Eddie’s number, and for some time waited. She had been right: he was out. She hung up again and said: “What a help telephones are!”

“What other friends has she got?”

“I can’t really think of any,” said Anna frowning. Taking a comb from her bag, she ran the comb through her hair—and this nonchalant action only proclaimed her utter lack of indifference. “She ought to have friends,” she said. “But can we do that for her?” Her eye travelled round the room. “If you were not here, St. Quentin, I could telephone you.”

“I’m afraid I should not be much help, even if I were not here… . I’m so sorry I can’t think of anything to suggest.”

“Well, do try. You’re a novelist, after all. What
do
people do? But, after all, Thomas, it isn’t eight o’clock yet: it’s not really so late.”

“Late for her,” said Thomas relentlessly. “Late if there’s never any place you do go.”

“Well, she may have gone to a movie… .”

But Thomas, whose voice had become legal—obdurate, tough, tense—bore this down without considering it. “Listen, Anna,” he said, “has anything special happened? Had she been upset about anything?”

The sort of blind dropping over the others’ faces made it clear that they were not prepared to say. The air immediately tightened, like the air of a court. Thomas cast a second look at St. Quentin, wondering how he came to come in on this. Then, looking back at Anna, he saw that behind her face, with its non-committal half smile and dropped eyelids, Anna clearly believed she was alone. An individual deep guilty knowledge isolated her and St. Quentin from each other—she did not even see St. Quentin’s fishy look; she had no idea he had anything on his mind. This split in the opposite party encouraged Thomas, who just allowed Anna to finish saying: “I didn’t see her this morning, as a matter of fact,” before, himself, going on saying: “Because, of course, in that case she might just be staying out. It’s a thing one’s inclined to do.”

“Yes, you are,” agreed Anna. “But Portia’s almost unfairly considerate. However, how can one know what people might do?”

St. Quentin, amiably putting down his glass, put in: “She’s quite a mystery to you, then?” Ignoring this, Anna said: “Then, Thomas, you mean she may just be trying it on?”

“We all have our feelings,” he said, looking oddly at Anna.

St. Quentin said: “Possibly Portia really hasn’t got much talent for home life.”

“What you both really mean,” said Anna, from her end of the sofa, a handsome image, not turning a hair, “is, that I am not nice to Portia? How little it takes to bring things to the top. No, it’s all right, St. Quentin: we’re not having a scene.”

“My dear Anna, do if you want. The thing is, I don’t feel I am being very much use. Unless I can be, hadn’t I better go? If I can do anything later, I’ll come back. If I go, I’ll go back and sit by my telephone.”

“Goodness,” she said tartly, “it’s not such a crisis yet. It won’t be even nearly a crisis for half an hour. Meanwhile, it’s eight—the whole point is, are we to have dinner? Or don’t we want to have dinner? I don’t know, really: this sort of thing has never happened before.”

Neither St. Quentin nor Thomas seemed to know how they felt, so Anna rang downstairs on the house telephone. “We’ll have dinner now,” she said. “We won’t wait for Miss Portia, she’ll be a little late… . I’m sure that is best,” she said, “there are no half measures. We either have dinner or telephone the police… . The best thing you can do, St. Quentin, is, stay and support us—that is, if you’re not dining anywhere else?”

“It would not be that,” said St. Quentin, quite frankly at bay. “But the point is,
is
there much point in my being here?”

“The point is, you’re an old family friend.”

The evening became more gloomy and overcast. Clouds made a steely premature dusk, and made the trees out in the park metallic. Anna had had the candles lit for dinner, but, because it should still be light, the curtains were not drawn. The big shell of columbines on the table looked theatrical in a livid way: out there on the lake the people went on rowing. Phyllis served dinner to Thomas, Anna, St. Quentin: no one looked at the time. Just after the duck came in, the diningroom telephone started ringing. They let it ring for some seconds while they looked at each other.

“I’ll answer,” said Anna—but not moving yet.

Thomas said: “No, I think I’d better go.”

“I could, if you’d both rather,” St. Quentin said.

“No, nonsense,” said Anna. “Why shouldn’t I? It may not even be anything at all.”

St. Quentin steadily ate, his eyes fixed on his plate: Anna kept shifting her grip on the receiver. “Hullo?” she said. “Hullo? … Oh,
hullo,
Major Brutt… .”

“Well, he says she’s there,” she said, sitting down again.

“Yes, I know, but
where?”
said Thomas.
“Where
does he say she is?”

“At his hotel,” said Anna, with no expression. “That sort of hotel that he stays at, you know.” She held out 
her glass for some more wine and then said: “Well, that is that, I suppose?”

“I suppose so,” said Thomas, looking out of the window. St. Quentin said: “Does he say what she’s doing there?”

“Just being there. She turned up.”

“Now what, then?” Thomas said. “I take it he’s going to bring her home?”

“No,” said Anna, surprised. “He wasn’t suggesting that. He—”

“Then what
did
he want?”

“To know what we meant to do.”

“So you said?”

“You heard me—I said I’d ring up again.”

“To say—I mean, what are we meaning to do?”

“If I had known, I’d have told him, wouldn’t I, Thomas dear?”

“Why on earth not tell him, just bring her straight round? The old bastard’s not as busy as that. We could give him a drink or something. Or why not just let him put her into a taxi? What could be simpler?”

“It’s not so simple as that.”

“I don’t see why not. What are the complications? What in God’s name
was
he chattering on about?”

Anna finished her wine, but after that only said: “Well, it
could
be simpler, if you know what I mean.”

Thomas picked up his table napkin, wiped his mouth, glanced once across at St. Quentin, then said: “What you mean is, she won’t come home?”

“She doesn’t seem very keen to, just at the minute.”

“Why just at the minute? Do you mean she’ll come later?”

“She is waiting to see whether we do the right thing.”

Thomas said nothing. He frowned, looked out of the window and rapped his thumbs on the table each side of his plate. “Then you mean, something
is
up?” he finally said.

“Major Brutt seemed to think so.”

“Damn his eyes,” Thomas said. “Why can’t he keep out of this? What is it Anna?
Have
you any idea?”

“Yes, I must say I have. She thinks I read her diary.”

“Does she keep a diary?”

“Yes, she does. And I do.”

“Oh! Do you,” said Thomas. Having seemed not to think of this for some time, he began to rap with his thumbs again.

“Darling, must you do that? You make all the glasses jump—No, it’s not at all odd: it’s the sort of thing I do do. Her diary’s very good—you see, she has got us taped. Could I not go on with a book all about ourselves? I don’t say it has changed the course of my life, but it’s given me a rather more disagreeable feeling about being alive—or, at least, about being me.”

“I can’t see, all the same, why that should send her right off at the deep end. His hotel’s right off in Kensington, isn’t it? And why Brutt? Where does he come in?”

“He has sent her puzzles.”

“Still, even that could be something,” said St. Quentin. “Even that, I suppose, could be quite encouraging.”

“I’ve got housemaid’s tricks,” Anna went on, “and more spare time than a housemaid. All the same, I should like to know how she knew I’d been at her diary. I put it back where it lives; I don’t leave finger marks: I should have seen if she’d tied a thread round it. Matchett cannot have told her, because I never touch it unless I know Matchett is out… . That’s what puzzles me. I really should like to know.”

“Would you?” St. Quentin said. “Well, that’s simple: I told her.” He looked at Anna rather critically, as though
she
had just said some distinctly doubtful thing. The pause, through which Thomas made his steady aloofness felt, was underlined by the swimming entrance of Phyllis, who changed the plates and brought in a strawberry cômpote. St. Quentin, left face to face with what he had just said, stayed composedly smiling and looking down. Meanwhile: “Oh, Phyllis,” said Anna, “you might tell Matchett Miss Portia has rung up. She has been delayed; we’re expecting her back later.”

“Yes, madam. Should cook keep her dinner hot?”