The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [111]
Wednesday.
Tomorrow I shall be going. Because this is my last whole day, Mrs. Heccomb and Cecil's mother are going to take me to see a ruin. We are to pack our tea and go in a motor bus.
Clara is going to drive me in her car to the Junction tomorrow, to save the having to change. Clara says she feels really upset. Because this will be my last evening, Dickie and Clara and Cecil are going to take me to the Southstone rink, so's I can watch them skate.
I cannot say anything about going away. I cannot say anything even in this diary. Perhaps it is better not to say anything ever. I must try not to say anything more to Eddie, when I have said things it has always been a mistake. Now we must start to take the bus for the ruin.
Thursday.
I am back here, in London. They won't be back till tomorrow.
THE DEVIL
I
THOMAS and Anna would not be back from abroad till Friday afternoon.
Everything was ready for them to come back and live. That Friday morning, 2 Windsor Terrace was lanced through by dazzling spokes of sun, which moved unseen, hotly, over the waxed floors. Vacantly overlooking the bright lake, chestnuts in leaf, the house offered that ideal mould for living into which life so seldom pours itself. The clocks, set and wound, ticked the hours away in immaculate emptiness. Portia—softly opening door after door, looking all round rooms with her reflecting dark eyes, glancing at each clock, eyeing each telephone—did not count as a presence.
The spring cleaning had been thorough. Each washed and polished object stood roundly in the unseeing air. The marbles glittered like white sugar; the ivory paint was smoother than ivory. Blue spirit had removed the winter film from the mirrors: now their jet-sharp reflections hurt the eye; they seemed to contain reality. The veneers of cabinets blazed with chestnut light. Upstairs and downstairs, everything smelt of polish; a clean soapy smell came out from behind books. Crisp from the laundry, the inner net curtains stirred over windows reluctantly left open to let in the April air with its faint surcharge of soot. Yes, already, with every breath that passed through the house, pollution was beginning,
The heating was turned off. Up the staircase stood a shaft of neutral air, which, upon any door or window being opened, received a tremor of spring. This morning, the back rooms were still sunless and rather cold. The basement was still colder; it smelled of scrubbing; the light filtered down to it in a ghostly way. City darkness, a busy darkness, collected in this working part of the house. For four weeks, Portia had not been underground.
"Gracious, Matchett, you have got everywhere clean!"
"Oh—so that's where you've been?"
"Yes, I've looked at everywhere. It really is clean—not that it isn't always."
"More likely you'd notice it, coming back. I know those seaside houses—all claptrap and must."
"I must say," said Portia, sitting on Matchett's table, "today makes me wish only you and I lived here."
"Oh, you ought to be ashamed! And mind, too, you don't get a place like this without you have a Mr. and Mrs. Thomas. And then where would you be, I should like to know? No, I'm ready for them, and it's proper they should come back. Now don't give me a look like that—what is the matter with you? I'm sure Mr. Thomas, for one, would be disappointed if he was to know youwished you were still at that seaside."
"But I never did say that!"
"Oh, it isn't only what's said."
"Matchett, you do fly off when all I just said was—"
"All right, all right, all right." Matchett tapped at her teeth with a knitting needle and marvelled at Portia slowly. "My goodness," she said, "they have taught you to speak up. Anyone wouldn't know you."
"But you go on at me because I have been away. After all, I didn't go, I was sent."
Sitting up on the