The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [1]
"All I did," she went on, "when I had hung her dress up, was to take one look round, rather feeling I ought. As usual, my heart sank; I really did feel it was time I took a line. But she and I are on such curious terms—when I ever do take a line, she never knows what it is. She is so unnaturally callous about objects—she treats any hat, for instance, like an old envelope. Nothing that's hers ever seems, if you know what I mean, to belong to her: which makes it meaningless to give her any present, unless it's something to eat, and she doesn't always like that. It may be because they always lived in hotels. Well, one thing I had thought she'd like was a little escritoire thing that came from Thomas's mother's—her father may well have used it. I'd had that put in her room: it has drawers that lock, and quite a big flap to write on. The flap locks too: I hoped that would make her see that I quite meant her to have a life of her own. You know, though it may seem rash, we even give her a latchkey. But she seems to have lost the keys—nothing was locked, and there was no sign of them."
"How annoying!" said St. Quentin again.
"It was indeed. Because if only—However... Well, that wretched little escritoire caught my eye. She had crammed it, but really, stuffed it, as though it were a bin. She seems to like hoarding paper; she gets almost no letters, but she'd been keeping all sorts of things Thomas and I throw away—begging letters, for instance, or quack talks about health. As Matchett would say, it gave me rather a turn."
"When you opened the desk?"
"Well, it looked so awful, you see. The flap would not shut—papers gushed out all round it and even stuck through the hinge. Which made me shake with anger—I really can't tell you why. So I scooped the papers all out and dropped them into the armchair—I intended to leave them there, then tell her she must be tidy. Under the papers were some exercise books with notes she had taken at her lessons, and under the exercise books this diary, which, as I say, I read. One of those wretched black books one buys for about a shilling with moiré outsides.... After that, of course, I had to put everything back the way it was."
"Exactly as it had been?"
"Exactly, I'm quite certain. One may never reproduce the same muddle exactly, but she would never know."
There was a pause, and St. Quentin looked at a seagull. Then he said: "How inconvenient it all is I"
Inside her muff, Anna drove her hands together; raising her eyes she looked angrily down the lake. "She's made nothing but trouble since before she was born."
"You mean, it's a pity she ever was?"
"Well, naturally, I feel that at the moment. Though I would rather, of course, that you didn't say so—she is Thomas's sister after all."
"But don't you think perhaps you exaggerate? The agitation of seeing something quite unexpected often makes one think it worse than it is."
"That diary could not be worse than it is. That is to say, it couldn't be worse for me. At the time, it only made me superficially angry—but I've had time since then to think it over. And I haven't quite finished yet—I keep remembering more things."
"Was it very... unkind?"
"No, not meant to be that. No, she'd like to help us, I'm sure."
"Then, mawkish, you mean?"
"I mean, more, completely distorted and distorting. As I read I thought, either this girl or I are mad. And I don't think I am, do you?"
"Surely not. But why should you be so upset if it simply shows what is the matter with her? Was it affected?"
"Deeply hysterical."
"You've got to allow for style, though. Nothing arrives on paper as it started, and so much arrives that never started at all. To write is always to rave a little—even if one did once know what one meant, which at her age seems unlikely. There are ways and ways of trumping a thing up: one gets more discriminating, not necessarily more honest. I should know, after all."
"I am sure you do, St. Quentin. But this was not a bit like your beautiful books. In fact it was not like writing at all." She paused and added: "She was