The Death of the Heart (7 page)

Otherwise, he could wish for nothing better. The Quaynes had both seen how happy he was to come. He was the man from back somewhere, out of touch with

London, dying to go on somewhere after a show. He would be glad to go on almost anywhere. But London, these nights, has a provincial meanness bright lights only expose. After dark, she is like a governess gone to the bad, in a Woolworth tiara, tarted up all wrong. But a glamour she may have had lives on in exiles’ imaginations. Major Brutt was the sort of man who, like a ghost with no beat, hesitates round the West End about midnight—not wanting to buy a girl, not wanting to drink alone, not wanting to go back to Kensington, hoping something may happen. It grows less likely to happen—sooner or later he must be getting back. If he misses the last tube, he will have to run to a taxi; the taxi lightens his pocket and torments him, smelling of someone else’s woman’s scent. Like an empty room with no blinds his imagination gapes on the scene, and reflects what was never there. If this is to be all, he may as well catch the last tube. He may touch the hotel porter for a drink in the lounge—lights half out, empty, with all the old women gone to bed. There is vice now, but you cannot be simply naughty.

“Well, here’s luck,” Major Brutt said, pulling himself together, raising his glass boldly. He looked round at their three interesting faces. Portia replied with her glass of milk-and-soda: he bowed to her, she bowed to him and they drank. “You live here, too?” he said.

“I’m staying here for a year.”

“That’s a nice long visit. Can your people spare you?”

“Yes,” Portia said. “They—I—”

Anna looked at Thomas as much as to say, check this, but Thomas was looking for the cigars. She saw Portia, kneeling down by the fire, look up at Major Brutt with a perfectly open face—her hands were tucked up the elbows of her short-sleeved dress. The picture upset Anna, who thought how much innocence she herself had corrupted in other people—yes, even in Robert: in him perhaps most of all. Meetings that ended with their most annihilating and bitter quarrels had begun with Robert unguarded, eager—like that. Watching Portia she thought, is she a snake, or a rabbit? At all events, she thought, hardening, she has her own fun.

“Thanks very much, no: no, I never smoke them,” Major Brutt said, when Thomas at last found the cigars. Having lit his own, Thomas looked at the box suspiciously. “These
are
going,” he said. “I told you they were.”

“Then why don’t you lock them up? It’s Mrs. Wayes, I expect; she has got a man friend and she’s ever so good to him.”

“Has she been taking your cigarettes?”

“No, not lately: Matchett once caught her at it. Besides, she is far too busy reading my letters.”

“Why on earth not sack her?”

“Matchett says she is thorough. And thorough chars don’t grow on every bush.”

Portia excitedly said: “How funny bushes would look!”

“Ha-ha,” said Major Brutt. “Did you ever hear the one about the shoe-tree?”

Anna swung her feet up on the sofa, a little back from the others, and looked removed and tired—she kept touching her hair back. Thomas squinted through his glass of drink at the light: now and then his face went lockjawed with a suppressed yawn. Major Brutt, having drunk two-thirds of his whisky, in his quiet way started dominating the scene. Portia’s first animation was in the room somewhere, bobbing up near the ceiling like an escaped balloon. Thomas suddenly said: “You knew Robert Pidgeon, I hear?”

“I should say so! An exceptional chap.”

“I never knew him, alas.”

“Oh, is he dead?” said Portia.

“Dead?”
Major Brutt said. “Oh, Lord, no—at least, I should think that is most unlikely. He had nine lives. I was with him most of the War.”

“No, I’m sure he wouldn’t be dead,” Anna agreed. “But do you know where he is?”

“I last had actual news of him in Colombo, last April—missed him there by about a week, which was bad. We are neither of us much of a hand at letters, but we keep in touch, on the whole, in the most astonishing way. Of course, Pidgeon is full of brain: that man could do anything. At the same time, he is one of those clever fellows who can get on with almost anyone. He is not a chap, of course, that I should ever have met if it hadn’t been for the War. We both took it on the Somme, and I got to know him best after that, when we were on leave together.”

“Was he badly wounded?” said Portia.

“In the shoulder,” said Anna, seeing the pitted scar.

“Now Pidgeon was what you would call versatile. He could play the piano better than a professional—with more go, if you know what I mean. In France, he once smoked a plate and did a portrait of me on it—exactly like me, too; it really was. And then, of course, he wrote a whole lot of stuff. But there was absolutely no sort of side about him. I’ve never seen a man with so little side.”

“Yes,” Anna said, “and what I always remember is that he could balance an orange on the rim of a plate.”

“Did he do that often?” said Portia.

“Very often indeed.”

Major Brutt, who had been given another drink, looked straight at Anna. “You haven’t seen him lately?”

“No, not very lately. No.”

Major Brutt quickly said: “He was always a rare bird. You seldom hear of him twice in the same place. And I’ve been rolling round myself a good bit, since I left the Army, trying one thing and another.”

“That must have been interesting.”

“Yes, it is and it’s not. It’s a bit uncertain. I commuted my pension, then didn’t do too well out in Malay. I’m back here for a bit, now, having a look round. I don’t know, of course, that a great deal will come of it.”

“Oh, I don’t see why not.”

Major Brutt, a good deal encouraged, said: “Well, I’ve got two or three irons in the fire. Which means I shall have to stick around for a bit.”

Anna failed to reply, so it was Thomas who said: “Yes, I’m sure you’re right to do that.”

“I’ll be seeing Pidgeon sometime, I dare say. One never knows where he may or may not turn up. And I often run into people—well, look at tonight.”

“Well, do give him my love.”

“He’ll be glad to hear how you are.”

“Tell him I’m very well.”

“Yes, tell him that,” Thomas said. “That is, when you do see him again.”

“If you always live in hotels,” said Portia to Major Brutt, “you get used to people always coming and going. They look as though they’d be always there, and then the next moment you’ve no idea where they’ve gone, and they’ve gone for ever. It’s funny, all the same.”

Anna looked at her watch. “Portia,” she said, “I don’t want to spoil the party, but it’s half-past
twelve
.”

Portia, when Anna looked straight at her, immediately looked away. This was, as a matter of fact, the first moment since they came in that there had been any question of looking straight at each other. But during the conversation about Pidgeon, Anna had felt those dark eyes with a determined innocence steal back again and again to her face. Anna, on the sofa in a Recamier attitude, had acted, among all she had had to act, a hardy imperviousness to this. Had the agitation she felt throughout her body sent out an aura with a quivering edge, Portia’s eyes might be said to explore this line of quiver, round and along Anna’s reclining form. Anna felt bound up with her fear, with her secret, by that enwrapping look of Portia’s: she felt mummified. So she raised her voice when she said what time it was.

Portia had learnt one dare never look for long. She had those eyes that seem to be welcome nowhere, that learn shyness from the alarm they precipitate. Such eyes are always turning away or being humbly lowered—they dare come to rest nowhere but on a point in space; their homeless intentness makes them appear fanatical. They may move, they may affront, but they cannot communicate. You most often meet or, rather, avoid meeting such eyes in a child’s face—what becomes of the child later you do not know.

At the same time, Portia had been enjoying what could be called a high time with Major Brutt. It is heady—when you are so young that there is no talk yet of the convention of love—to be singled out: you feel you enjoy human status. Major Brutt had met her eyes kindly, without a qualm. He remained standing: his two great feet were planted like rocks by her as she knelt on the rug, and from up there he kept bellowing down. When Anna looked at her watch, Portia’s heart sank—she referred to the clock, but found this was too true. “Half-past twelve,”
she said. “Golly!”

When she had said good-night and gone, dropping a glove, Major Brutt said: “That little kid must be great fun for you.”

MOST
mornings, Lilian waited for Portia in the old cemetery off Paddington Street: they liked to take this short cut on the way to lessons. The cemetery, overlooked by windows, has been out of touch with death for some time: it is at once a retreat and a thoroughfare not yet too well known. One or two weeping willows and tombs like stone pavilions give it a prettily solemn character, but the gravestones are all ranged round the walls like chairs before a dance, and half way across the lawn a circular shelter looks like a bandstand. Paths run from gate to gate, and shrubs inside the paling seclude the place from the street—it is not sad, just cosily melancholic. Lilian enjoyed the melancholy; Portia felt that what was here was her secret every time she turned in at the gate. So they often went this way on their way to lessons.

They had to go to Cavendish Square. Miss Paullie, at her imposing address, organised classes for girls—delicate girls, girls who did not do well at school, girls putting in time before they went abroad, girls who were not to go abroad at all. She had room for about a dozen pupils like this. In the mornings, professors visited her house; in the afternoon there were expeditions to galleries, exhibitions, museums, concerts or classical
matinées
.
A girl, 
by special arrangement, could even take lunch at Miss Paullie’s house—this was the least of many special arrangements: her secretary lived on the telephone. All her arrangements, which were enterprising, worked out very well—accordingly Miss Paullie’s fees were high. Though Thomas had rather jibbed at the expense, Anna convinced him of Miss Paullie’s excellent value—she solved the problem of Portia during the day; what Portia learned might give her something to talk about, and there was always a chance she might make friends. So far, she had made only this one friend, Lilian, who lived not far away, in Nottingham Place.

Anna did not think Lilian very desirable, but this could not be helped. Lilian wore her hair forward over her shoulders in two long loose braids, like the Lily Maid. She wore a removed and mysterious expression; her rather big pretty developed figure already caught the eye of men in the street. She had had to be taken away from her boarding school because of falling in love with the ‘cello mistress, which had made her quite unable to eat. Portia thought the world of the things Lilian could do— she was said, for instance, to dance and skate very well, and had one time fenced. Otherwise, Lilian claimed to have few pleasures: she was at home as seldom as possible, and when at home was always washing her hair. She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her… . This morning, when she saw Portia coming, she signalled dreamily with a scarlet glove.

Portia came up with a rush. “Oh dear, I’m afraid I have made us late. Come on, Lilian, we shall have to fly.”

“I don’t want to run: I am not very well today.”

“Then we’d better take a 153.”

“If there is one,” said Lilian. (These buses are very rare.) “Have I got blue rings under my eyes?”

“No. What did you do yesterday evening?”

“Oh, I had an awful evening. Did you?”

“No,”
said Portia, rather apologetic. “Because we went to the Empire. And imagine, quite by chance we met a man who knew someone Anna used once to know. Major Brutt, his name was—not the person she knew, the man.”

“Was your sister-in-law upset?”

“She was surprised, because he did not even know she was married.”

“I am often upset when I meet a person again.”

“Have you seen a person make an orange balance on the rim of a plate?”

“Oh, anyone could: you just need a steady hand.”

“All the people Anna always knows are clever.”

“Oh, you’ve brought your handbag with you today?”

“Matchett said I was such a silly not to.”

“You carry it in rather a queer way, if you don’t mind my saying. I suppose you will get more used to it.”

“If I got too used, I might forget I had it, then I might forget and leave it somewhere. Show me, though, Lilian, how you carry yours.”

They had come out into Marylebone High Street, where they stood for a minute, patiently stamping, on chance of there being a 153 bus. The morning was colder than yesterday morning; there was a black frost that drove in. But they did not comment upon the weather, which seemed to them part of their private fate—brought on them by the act of waking up, like grown-up people’s varying tempers, or the state, from day to day, of their own insides. A 153 did come lurching round the corner, but showed every sign of ignoring them, till Lilian, like a young offended goddess, stepped into its path, holding up a scarlet glove. When they were inside the bus, and had settled themselves, Lilian said reproachfully to Portia: “You do look pleased today.”