The Death of the Heart (30 page)

“No, I couldn’t ask Daphne.”

“Then take it from me.”

“But, Eddie, they thought you were my friend. I was so proud because they all thought that.”

“But darling, if I hadn’t wanted to see you would I have come all this way and broken all those dates?
You
know I love you: don’t be so silly. All I wanted was to be with you at the seaside, and here we are, and we’re having a lovely time. Why spoil it for a thing that means simply nothing?”

“But it does mean something—it means something else.”

“You are the only person I’m ever serious with. I’m never serious with all these other people: that’s why I simply do what they seem to want me to do … You do know I’m serious with you, don’t you, Portia?” he said, coming up and staring into her eyes. In his own eyes, shutters flicked back, exposing for half a second, right back in the dark, the Eddie in there.

Never till now, never since this half-second, had Portia been the first to look away. She looked at the ghostly outline of some cabinet on the paper with its bleaching maroon leaves. “But you said,” she said, “up there” (she nodded at the ceiling) “that you need not mean what you say because I am a little girl.”

“When I talk through my hat, of course I’m not serious.”

“You should not have talked about marriage through your hat.”

“But darling, I do think you must be mad. Why should you want to marry anybody?”

“Were you talking through your hat on the beach when you said I ought to be afraid of you?”

“How you do rememberl”

“It was yesterday evening.”

“Perhaps yesterday evening I
was
feeling like that.”

“But don’t
you
remember?”

“Look here, darling, you must really not exasperate me. How can I keep on feeling something I once felt when there are so many things one can feel? People who say they always feel as they did simply fake themselves up. I may be a crook but I’m not a fake—that is an entirely different thing.”

“But I don’t see how you can say you are serious if there’s no one thing you keep feeling the whole time.”

“Well, then I’m not,” said Eddie, stamping his cigarette out and laughing, though in an exasperated way. “You will really simply have to get used to me. I must say I thought you were. You had really better not think I’m serious, if the slightest thing is going to make you so upset. What I do remember telling you last evening is that you don’t know the half of what I do. I do do what you would absolutely hate. Yes, I see now I was wrong —I did think once that I could tell you, even let you discover,
anything
I had done, and you wouldn’t turn a hair. Because I had hoped there would be one person like that, I must have let myself make an absurd, quite impossible image of you … No, I see now, the fact is, dear darling Portia, you and I have drifted into a thoroughly sickly, not to say mawkish, state. Which is worlds worse for me than a spot of necking with Daphne. And now it comes to this—you start driving me up trees and barking at the bottom like everyone else. Well, come on, let’s go down. We’ve had enough of this house. We’d better lock up and give the key back to Dickie.”

He moved decisively to the drawingroom door.

“Oh stop, Eddie: waitl Has this spoilt everything for you? I would rather be dead than a disappointment to you.
Please
… You are my whole reason to be alive. I promise, please, I promise! I mean, I promise not to hate anything. It is only that I have to get used to things, and I have not got used to quite everything, yet. I’m only stupid when I don’t understand.”

“But you never will. I can see that.”

“But I’m perfectly willing not to. I’ll be not stupid without understanding.
Please—”

She pulled at his near arm wildly with both hands, making no distinction between the sleeve and the flesh. Not wildly but with the resolution of sorrow, her eyes went round his face. He said: “Look here, shut up: you make me feel such a bully.” Freeing his arm, he caught both her hands in his in a bothered but perfectly kindly way, as though they had been a pair of demented kittens. “Such a
noise
to make,” he said. “Can’t you let a person lose an illusion without screaming the house down, you little silly, you?”

“But I don’t want you to.”

“Very well, then. I haven’t.”

“Promise, Eddie. You swear? I don’t mean just because it’s about me, but you told me you had so few— illusions, I mean. You do promise? You’re not just keeping me quiet?”

“No, no—I mean, yes. I promise. What I said was all in my eye. That’s the worst of talk. Now shall we get out of here? I should not mind a drink, if they have got such a thing.”

The echoes of their voices followed them down: once more the stairs creaked; once more the banisters wobbled. In the hall, a slit of daylight came through the letter box. They kicked through drifts of circulars, musty catalogues. Their last view of the hall, with its chocolate walls that light from a front room only sneaked along, was one of ungraciousness, of servility. Would people ever come to this house again? And yet it faced the sun, reflected the sea and had been the scene of happy holidays.

They ran into Dickie at the gate of Waikiki, and Eddie handed him back the key. “Thanks very much,” Eddie said, “it’s a nice piece of property. Portia and I have been over it carefully. We rather thought of starting a boarding house.”

“Oh, did you,” said Dickie, with a certain
méfiance.
He headed the two guests up the garden path, then clicked the gate behind them. Daphne could still be seen extended in the sun porch, with the Sunday paper over her knee.

“Here we all are,” Eddie said, but Daphne did not react. They grouped round her
chaise longue,
and Eddie, with a rather masterful movement, flicked the
Sunday Pictorial
from her person and began to read it himself. He read it with overdone attention, whistling to himself at each item of news. Just after twelve struck, he began to look rather anxiously round the Waikiki lounge, in which he saw no signs (for there were none) of sherry or gin and lime. He at last suggested they should go out and look for a drink, but Daphne asked: “Where?” adding: “This is not London, you know.”

Dickie said: “And Portia does not drink.”

“Oh, well, she can come along.”

“We cannot take a girl into a bar.”

“I don’t see why not, at the seaside.”

“It may be that to you, but it’s rather more to us, I am afraid.”

“Oh naturally, naturally—well, er, Dickie, shall you and I roll along?”

“Well, I don’t mind if I—”

Daphne yawned and said: “Yes, you two boys go along. I mean, don’t just stick around.” So the two boys went along.

“What a thirst your friend always has,” said Daphne looking after them. “He wanted me to cut off with him somewhere last night, after the movies, but of course I told him everywhere would be shut. How do you think those two boys get along?”

“Who?” said Portia, going back to her puzzle.

“Him and Dickie?”

“Oh … I don’t think I’d thought.”

“Dickie thinks he chatters rather too much, but of course Dickie would think that. Is what’s-his-name, I mean Eddie, a popular boy?”

“I don’t know who you mean with.”

“Do girls fall for him much?”

“I don’t know many girls.”

“But your sister-in-law likes him, didn’t you say? Not that
she’s
a girl, of course. I must say, that gives one a funny idea of her. I mean to say, he’s so awfully fresh. I suppose that’s the way he always goes on?”

“What way?”

“The way he goes on here.”

Portia walked round her puzzle and stared at it upside down. Pushing a piece with her finger, she mumbled vaguely: “I suppose he always goes on about the same.”

“You don’t seem to know much about him, do you? I thought you said he and you were such friends.”

Portia said something unintelligible.

“Well, look here, don’t you trust that boy too far. I don’t know, I’m sure, if I ought to say anything, but you’re such a kid and it does seem rather a shame. You shouldn’t let yourself be so potty about him, really. I don’t mean to say there’s any harm in the boy, but he’s the sort of boy who must have his bit of fun. I don’t want to be mean on him, but honestly—Well, you take it from me—Of course he’s no end flattered, having you stuck on him; anybody would be; you’re such a nice little thing. And a boy in a way likes to have a girl round after him—look at Dickie and Clara. I wouldn’t see any harm in your going round with an idealistic sort of a boy like Cecil, but honestly Eddie’s not idealistic at all. I don’t mean to say he’d try anything on with you; he wouldn’t want to: he’d see you were just a kid. But if you get so potty about him without seeing what he’s like, you’ll get an awful knock. You take it from me. What I mean to say is, you ought to see he’s simply playing you up— coming down here like that, and everything. He’s the sort of boy who can’t help playing a person up; he’d play a kitten up if we had a kitten here. You’ve no idea, really.”

“Do you mean about him holding your hand? He does that because he feels matey, he says.”

Daphne’s reaction time was not quick: it took her about two seconds to go rigid all over on the
chaise longue.
Then her eyes ran together, her features thickened: there was a pause in which slowly diluted Portia’s appalling remark. In that pause, the civilisation of Waikiki seemed to rock on its base. When Daphne spoke again her voice had a rasping note, as though the moral sound box had cracked.

“Now look here,” she said. “I simply dropped you a word because I felt in a sort of way sorry for you. But there’s no reason for you to be vulgar. I must say, I was really surprised when you said you had got a boy friend. What I thought was, he must be rather a sap. But as you were so keen to have him, I was all for his coming, and, as you know, I fixed Mumsie about that. I don’t wish to blow my own trumpet, I never have, but one thing I will say is that I’m not a cat, and I’d never put in my oar with a girl friend’s boy friend. But the moment you brought that boy here, I could see in a moment anybody could have him. It’s written all over him. He can’t even pass the salt without using his eyes. Even so, I must say I thought it was a bit funny when—”

“When he held your hand? Yes, I did just at first.

But I thought perhaps you didn’t.”

“Now Portia, you look here—if you can’t talk like a lady, you just take that puzzle away and finish it somewhere else. Blocking up the whole place with the thing! I had no idea at all you were so
common,
and nor had Mumsie the least idea, I’m sure, or she wouldn’t have ever obliged your sister-in-law by having you to stop here, convenient or not. This all simply goes to show the way you’re brought up at home, and I am really surprised at them, I must say. You just take that awful puzzle up to your room and finish it there, if you’re really so anxious to. You get on my nerves, always picking about with it. And this is our sun porch, if I may say so.”

“I will if you like. But I’m not doing my puzzle.”

“Well, don’t just fidget about: it drives anyone crazy.” Daphne’s voice and her colour had kept steadily rising: now she cleared her throat. There was a further pause, with that remarkable tension that precedes the hum when a kettle comes to the boil. “The matter with you is,” she went on, gathering energy, “you’ve had your head thoroughly turned here. Being taken notice of. Cecil sorry because you are an orphan, and Dickie fussing you up to get a rise out of Clara. I’ve been letting you go about with our set because I thought it would be a bit of experience for you, when you’re always so mousy and shy. I took poor Mumsie’s word that you were a nice little thing. But as I say, this does only go to show. I’m sure I have no idea how your sister-in-law and all her set behave, but I’m afraid down here we are rather particular.”

“But if it seemed so very funny to you, why were you patting Eddie’s hand with your thumb?”

“People creeping and spying,” said Daphne, utterly tense, “and then talking vulgarly are two things that I simply cannot stick. It may be funny of me, no doubt it is, but I just never could and I never can. Angry with you. I should never lower myself. It’s not my fault that you’ve got the mind of a baby—and an awful baby, if you’ll excuse my saying so. If you don’t know how to behave—”

“I don’t know why to behave… . Then Eddie told me this morning that people have to get off when they can’t get on.”

“Oh! So you’ve had quite a talk!”

“Well, I asked him, you see.”

“The fact is you are a jealous little cat.”

“I’m not any more
now,
Daphne, really.”

“Still, you felt you could do with a bit of that—Oh yes,
I
 
saw you, shoving up against him.”

“That was the only side I had any room. Dickie was right on the other arm of my chair.”

“You leave my brother out of it!” Daphne screamed. “My goodness, who do you think
you
are?”

Portia, her hands behind her, murmured something uncertain.