The Death of the Heart (35 page)

“No, I wore my velvet. I—”

“Oh, they dress for their dinner, then?”

“No, I wore it for their party. It was a dance.”

“I did ought to have packed your organdie, then. But I didn’t want it to crush, and sea air limpens the pleats out. I daresay your velvet did.”

“Yes, Matchett: it was admired.”

“Well, it’s better than they’d see: it’s got a nice cut.”

“You know, Matchett, I did enjoy myself.”

Matchett gave another sideways look at the clock, as though admonishing time to hurry for its own sake. Her air became more non-committal than ever; she appeared to be hypnotised by the speed of her knitting, and, at the 
same time, for her own private pleasure, to be humming an inaudible tune. After about a minute, she receipted Portia’s remark with an upward jerk of the chin. But the remark had, by that time, already wilted in the below stairs dusk of this room—like, on the mantelpiece, the bunch of wild daffodils, some friend’s present, thrust so sternly into a glass jar. These, too, must have been a gift that Matchett no more than suffered.

“You’re glad, aren’t you?” Portia more faintly said.

“The things you do ask… .”

“I suppose it may have been just the sea air.”

“And I daresay the sea air suited Mr. Eddie?”

Unarmoured against this darting remark, Portia shifted on the table. “Oh, Eddie?” she said. “He was only there for two days.”

“Still, two days are two days, at the seaside. Yes, I understood him to say he felt fine there. At least, those were his words.”

“When
were they his words? What do you mean?”

“Now don’t you jump down my throat in such a hurry as that.” Running the strand of pink wool over a rasped finger, Matchett reflectingly hummed a few more unheard bars. “Five-thirty yesterday, that would have been, I suppose. When I was coming downstairs in my hat and coat, just off to meet your train with no time to spare, my lord starts ringing away on the telephone— oh, fit to bring the whole house down, it was. Thinking it might be important, I went and answered.
Then
I thought I should never get him away—chattering on and on like that. However, no doubt that’s what Mr. Thomas’s office telephone’s for. No wonder they’ve got to have three lines. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, ‘but I am just on my way to meet a train.
’”

“Did he know it was my train?”

“He didn’t ask, and I didn’t specify. ‘I am just off to meet a train,’ I said. But did that stop him? Trains can wait while some people have to talk. ‘Oh, I won’t keep you,’ he said—then ran on to something else.”

“But what did he run on to?”

“He seemed quite put out to hear Mrs. Thomas was not back yet, and that neither were you. ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ he said, ‘I must have muddled the days.’ Then he said, to be sure to tell Mrs. Thomas, and to tell you, that he would be out of London from the following morning (today morning, that was) but would hope to ring up after the week-end. Then he said he thought I’d be glad to hear that you had looked well at the seaside. ‘You’d be so pleased, Matchett,’ he said, ‘she’s really got quite a colour.’ I thanked him and asked if there would be anything more. He said just to give his love to Mrs. Thomas and you. He said he thought that would be all.”

“So then you rang off?”

“No, he did. It was his teatime, no doubt.”

“Did he say he’d ring up again?”

“No, he left what he had to say.”

“Did you say I was on my way back?”

“No, why should I? He didn’t ask.”

“When did he
think
I’d be back?”

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you, I’m sure.”

“What made him be going away on a
Friday
morning?”

“I couldn’t tell you that, either. Office business, no doubt.”

“It seems to me very odd.”

“A good deal in that office seems to me very odd.

However, it’s not for me to say.”

“But, Matchett,—just one thing more: did he realise I’d be back that very night?”

“What he realised or didn’t realise I couldn’t tell you. All I know is, he kept chattering on.”

“He does chatter, I know. But you don’t think—”

“Listen: I don’t think: I haven’t the time to, really. What I don’t think I don’t think—you ought to know that. I don’t make mysteries, either. I suppose, if he hadn’t thought to say,
you’d
never have thought to tell me he’d been there at Mrs. Heccomb’s? Now, you get off my table, there’s a good girl, while I plug in the iron: I’ve got some pressing to do.”

Portia said, in a hardly alive voice: “I thought you said you had finished everything.”

“Finished? You show me one thing that is ever finished, let alone everything. No, I’ll stop when they’ve got me screwed into my coffin, but that won’t be because I’ve got anything finished… . I’ll tell you one thing you might do for me: run up, like a good girl, and shut Mrs. Thomas’s bedroom window. That room should be aired now, and I won’t have any more smuts in. Then you leave me quiet while I get on with my pressing. Why don’t you go in the park? It must be pretty out there.”

Portia shut Anna’s windows, and gave one blank look at herself in Anna’s cheval glass. Before shutting the windows she heard the wooing pigeons, and heard cars slip down the glossy road. Through the fresh net curtains, she saw trees in the sun. She could not make up her mind to go out of doors, for she felt alone. If one is to walk alone, it should be with pleasant thoughts. About this time, Mrs. Heccomb, alone today, would be getting back to Waikiki after the morning shopping… . She lagged downstairs to the hall: here, on the marble-topped table, two stacks of letters awaited Thomas and Anna. For the third time, Portia went carefully through these—it was still possible that something for Miss P. Quayne could have got slipped in among them. This proved not to be so—it had been not so before… . She went through the letters again, this time for interest purely. Some of Anna’s friends’ writings were cautious, some were dashing. How many of these letters were impulses, how many were steps in some careful plan? She could guess at some of the writings; she had seen these people already, stalking each other. For instance, here was St. Quentin’s well-cut grey envelope. Now what had he got to add to what was already said?

Personal letters for Thomas were not many, but to balance Anna’s pile back was quite an affair of art. Portia tried to imagine getting out of a taxi to find one’s own name written so many times. This should make one’s name mean—oh, most decidedly—more.

With a stage groan, Anna said: “Now will you look at those letters!”

She did not, at first, attempt to pick them up: she read one or two messages on the telephone pad, and looked at a florist’s gilt box on the chair—there was no room on the laden table for it. She said to Thomas: “Someone has sent me flowers,” but he had already gone into the study. So Anna, smiling at Portia, said nicely to her: “One can’t attempt to open everything, can one? … How well you’re looking: quite brown, almost fat.” She looked up the stairs and said: “Well, we certainly are clean. You got back yesterday evening, didn’t you?”

“Yes, yesterday.”

“And you enjoyed yourself frightfully?”

“Oh, yes, I did, Anna.”

“You said so, but we did hope you did. Have you seen Matchett?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Yes, you naturally would have: I was forgetting you got back yesterday… Well, I must look round,” said Anna picking up the letters. “How odd I do feel. Will you open those flowers and tell me who they’re from?”

“The box looks nice. I expect the flowers are lovely.”

“Yes, I’m sure they are. But I wonder who they are from.”

Anna took her letters up, and went up to have a bath. Five minutes later, Portia came to tap on the bathroom door. Anna was not yet quite into the bath; she opened the door, showing a strip of herself and letting out a cloud of scented steam. “Oh hullo?” she said. “Well?”

“They are carnations.”

“What colour?”

“Sort of quite bright pink.”

“Oh God—Who are they from?”

“Major Brutt. He says on the card that they are to welcome you home.”

“This would happen,” Anna said. “They must have cost him the earth; he probably didn’t have lunch and this makes me hysterical. I do wish we had never run into him: we’ve done nothing but put ideas into his head. You had better take them down and show them to Thomas. Or else give them to Matchett; they might do for her room. I know this is dreadful, but I feel so unreal … Then you might write Major Brutt a note. 
Say I have gone to bed. I am sure he would much rather have a note from you. Oh, how was Eddie? I see he rang up.”

“Matchett answered.”

“Oh! I thought you probably would. Well, Portia, let’s have a talk later.” Anna shut the door and got into her bath.

Portia took the carnations down to Thomas. “Anna says these are the wrong colour,” she said. Thomas was back again in his armchair, as though he had not left it, one foot on a knee. Though only a dimmed-down reflection of afternoon came into the study, he had one hand near his eyes, as though there were a strong glare. He looked without interest at the carnations. “Oh, are they the wrong colour?” he said.

“Anna says they are.”

“Who did you say they were from?”

“Major Brutt.”

“Oh yes, oh yes. Do you think he’s found a job?” He looked more closely at the carnations, which Portia held like an unhappy bride. “There are hundreds of them,” he said. “I suppose he has found something. I hope he has: we cannot do anything… . Well, Portia, how are you? Did you really have a good time?—Forgive me sitting like this, but I seem to have got a headache—How did you like Seale?”

“Very much indeed.”

“That’s excellent: I’m really awfully glad.”

“I wrote and said I did, Thomas.”

“Anna wondered whether you did really. I should think it was nice. I’ve never been there, of course.”

“No, they said you hadn’t.”

“No. It’s a pity, really. Well, it’s nice to see you again. Is everything going well?”

“Yes, thank you. I’m enjoying the spring.”

“Yes, it is nice,” said Thomas. “It feels to me cold, of course… . Would you care to go for a turn in the park, later?”

“That would be lovely. When?”

“Well, I think later, don’t you? … Where did you say Anna was?”

“She’s just having her bath. She asked me to write something to Major Brutt. I wonder, Thomas, if I might write at your desk?”

“Oh yes, by all means do.”

Having discharged himself of this good feeling, Thomas unostentatiously left the study while Portia opened the blotter to write to Major Brutt. He got himself a drink, carried the drink upstairs, and took a look round the drawingroom on his way. Not a thing had been tweaked from its flat, unfeeling position—palpably Anna had not been in here yet. So then he carried his drink into Anna’s room, and sat on the big bed till she should come from her bath. His heavy vague reflections weighted him into a stone figure—Anna jumped when she came round the door at him, her wrapper open, the bunch of steam-blotched opened letters in her hand. Superfluously, she said: “How you made me jump!”

“I wondered if there were letters …”

“There are letters, of course. But nothing at all funny. However, darling, here they all are.” She dropped the letters on to the bed beside him, and went across to the mirror, where she took off the net cap that kept the waves in her hair. Making a harsh face at her reflection, she began to rub in complexion milk with both hands. Tapping about among the pots and bottles, she had found everything in its known place—the familiarity of all these actions made something at once close in on her: the mood of her London dressing-table. With her back to Thomas, who sat raking through letters, she said: “Well, here we are back.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, we are back again.”

Thomas looked all round the room, then at the dressing-table. He said: “How quickly Matchett’s unpacked.”

“Only the dressing case. After that, I turned her out and told her to come back and finish later. I could see from her face she was going to say something.”

Thomas left the letters and sat leaning forward. “Perhaps she really had got something to say.”

“Well, Thomas, but what a moment—really! Did you hear me say just now that here we were, back?”

“I did, yes. What do you want me to say?”

“I wish you would say something. Our life goes by without any comment.”

“What you want is some sort of a troubadour.”

Anna wiped complexion milk off her fingers on to a tissue, smartly re-tied the sash of her wrapper, walked across and gave Thomas’s head a light friendly-unfriendly cuff. She said: “You are like one of those sitting images that get moved about but still always just sit. I like to feel some way about what happens. We’re
home
, Thomas: have some ideas about home—”  More lightly, less kindly, she hit at his head again.

“Shut up: don’t knock me about. I’ve got a headache.”

“Oh dear, oh dear! Try a bath.”