The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [102]
Wearing a hat like Ronald Colman's, Mr. Bursely came up the path with the rather knock-kneed walk of extreme social consciousness, and Eddie, who had heard all about him, said: "You can't beat the military swagger." Daphne squinted hard at her knitting; Eddie leant over Portia and pinched her gaily in the nape of her neck. He whispered: "Darling, how excited I am!" Mr. Bursely was let into the lounge. "I'm afraid I've given you rather a miss," he said. "But it's been a thickish week, and I got all dated up." Having hitched his trousers up at the knee, he plumped down on the settee beside Eddie. Portia looked from one to the other face.
Mr. Bursely said to Portia: "How's the child of the house?"
"Very well, thank you."
Mr. Bursely gave her a sort of look, then discreetly passed Daphne his next remark. "I left my car just along. I thought you and I might go for a slight blow."
"Oh, I'm fixed up now, I'm afraid."
"Well, unfix yourself, why don't you? Come on, be a good girl, or I shall think you're ever so sick with me. Too bad I can't take you all, but you know what small cars are. I call mine the Beetle; she buzzes along. She—"
"—Actually," said Dickie, "I'm playing golf."
"Clara didn't say so."
"Because I'm playing with Evelyn."
"Well, look here, why don't we all forgather somewhere in Southstone? What about the E.C.P.? Why not all forgather there?"
"Oh, all right."
"Right-o. Well, make it sixish. Bring the whole gang along."
"Portia and I," Eddie said, "will just go for a walk."
"Well, bring young Portia along to the E.C.P."
"Someone ought to tell Clara...."
"Right-o, then sixish," Mr. Bursely said.
VII
THEY walked inland, uphill, to the woods behind the station—the ridge of the woods she had seen from the top of the sea wall. That Sunday, when she had been looking forward to Eddie, woods had played no part in the landscape she saw in her heart.
But here they were this Sunday, getting into the woods over a wattle fence, between gaps in the vigilant notices that said Private. Thickets of hazel gauzed over the distances inside; boles of trees rose rounded out of the thickets into the spring air. Light, washing the stretching branches, sifted into the thickets, making a small green flame of every early leaf. Unfluting in the armpit warmth of the valley, leaves were still timid, humid: in the uphill woods spring still only touched the boughs in a green mist that ran into the sky. Scales from buds got caught on Portia's hair. Small primroses, still buttoned into the earth, looked up from ruches of veiny leaves—and in sun-blond spaces at the foot of the oaks, dog violets burned their blue on air no one had breathed. The woods' secretive vitality filled the crease of the valley and lapped through the trees up the bold hill.
There were tunnels but no paths: doubling under the hazels they every few minutes stood up to stretch, "Shall we be prosecuted, do you think?"
"Boards are only put up to make woods disagreeable."
Portia, unlacing twigs in front of her face, said: "I only imagined us walking by the sea."
"I've had quite enough seaside—one way and another."
"But you are enjoying it, Eddie, I do hope?"
"Your hair's full of flies—don't touch; they look very sweet."
Eddie stopped, sat, then lay down in a space at the foot of an oak. Slowly flapping one unhinged arm from the elbow, he knocked the place beside him with the back of his hand till she sat down too. Then, making a double chin, he slowly began to shred up leaves with his thumbnails, now and then stopping to glance up at the sky—as though Someone there had said something he ought to have heard. Portia, her hands clasped round her knees, stared straight