The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [11]
"Yes. I'm afraid they collect dust."
"I didn't notice the dust; I just thought what hundreds there were. All hand-carved, I suppose, by the Swiss peasants.... I went in there to hang up your white dress."
"If you'd rather, Anna, I could put them away."
"Oh no, why? They seemed to be having tea."
The Quaynes had a room-to-room telephone, which, instead of ringing, let out a piercing buzz. It buzzed now, and Anna put out a hand, saying: "That must be Thomas." She unhooked. "Hullo?... Yes, St. Quentin is, at the moment.... Very well, darling, soon." She hung up the receiver. "Thomas is back," she said.
"You might have told him that I am just going. Does he want anything special?"
"Just to say he is in." Anna folded her arms, leaned her head back, looked at the ceiling. Then: "Portia," she said, "why don't you go down to Thomas in the study?"
Portia lit up. "Did he say for me to?" she said.
"He may not know you are in. He'd be ever so pleased, I'm sure.... Tell him I'm well and will come down as soon as St. Quentin goes."
"And give Thomas my love."
Getting up from the stool carefully, Portia returned her cup and plate to the tray. Then, holding herself so erect that she quivered, taking long soft steps on the balls of her feet, and at the same time with an orphaned unostentation, she started making towards the door. She moved crabwise, as though the others were royalty, never quite turning her back on them—and they, waiting for her to be quite gone, watched. She wore a dark wool dress, in Anna's excellent taste, buttoned from throat to hem and belted with heavy leather. The belt slid down her thin hips, and she nervously gripped at it, pulling it up. Short sleeves showed her very thin arms and big delicate elbow joints. Her body was all concave and jerkily fluid lines; it moved with sensitive looseness, loosely threaded together: each movement had a touch of exaggeration, as though some secret power kept springing out. At the same time she looked cautious, aware of the world in which she had to live. She was sixteen, losing her childish majesty. The pointed attention of St. Quentin and Anna reached her like a quick tide, or an attack: the ordeal of getting out of the drawingroom tightened her mouth up and made her fingers curl—her wrists were pressed to her thighs. She got to the door, threw it ceremonially open, then turned with one hand on it, proudly ready to show she could speak again. But at once, Anna poured out another cup of cold tea, St. Quentin flattened a wrinkle out of the rug with his heel. She heard their silence till she had shut the door.
When the door shut, St. Quentin said: "Well, we might do better than that. You did not do well, Anna—raving about those bears."
"You know what made me."
"And how silly you were on the telephone."
Anna put down her cup and giggled. "Well, it is something," she said, "to be written up. It's something that she should find us so interesting. If you come to think of it, we are pretty boring, St. Quentin."
"No, I don't think I'm boring."
"No, I don't either. I mean, I don't think I am. But she does, if you know what I mean, rather bring us up to a mark. She insists on our being something or other—what, I'm not quite sure."
"A couple of cads—What a high forehead she's got."
"All the better to think about you with, my dear."
"All the same, I wonder where she got that distinction. From what you say, her mother was quite a mess."
"Oh, the Quaynes have it: one sees it in Thomas, really," Anna said—then, palpably losing interest, curled up at her end of the sofa. Raising her arms, she shook her sleeves back and admired her own wrists. On one she wore a small soundless diamond watch. St. Quentin, not noticing being not noticed, went on: "High foreheads suggest violence to me.... Was that Eddie, just now?"
"On the telephone? Yes. Why?"
"We know Eddie is silly, but why must you talk to him in such a silly way? Even if Portia were here. 'I'm not here; I never am here.' Tcha!" said St. Quentin. "Not that it's my affair."
"No," Anna said.