The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [12]
"No, if he'd felt like me," said St. Quentin, without resentment, "he'd have come up here. I shall go very soon."
"Oh, I wanted to ask you—how is your book going?"
"Very nicely indeed, thank you very much," said he promptly, extremely repressively. He added with some return of interest: "What happens when you go down? Do you turn Portia out?"
"Out of her brother's study? How ever could I?"
Thomas Quayne had been standing near the electric fire, holding a tumbler, frowning, trying to shake the day off, when his half-sister came round the study door. Her face—hair back in a snood from the high temples, wide-apart unfocusing dark eyes—seemed to swim towards him over the reading lamp. To come in here at all was an act of intimacy, for this was Thomas's own room. He never studied down here, except in so far as his relaxation was studied, but the room had been called the study to suggest importance and quiet. It had matt grey walls, Picasso-blue curtains, armchairs and a sofa covered in striped ticking, tables for books, book-shelves, and a desk as large as a dinner-table. Having heard a step that was not Anna's, Thomas ground his feet pettishly into the goat's-hair rug.
"Oh, hullo, Portia," he said. "How are you?"
"Anna said you might like me to come down."
"What's Anna doing?"
"Mr. Miller is there. They're not doing anything special, I don't think."
Shaking what was left of the drink round in his glass, Thomas said: "I seem to be back early."
"Are you tired?"
"No. No, I just got home."
Portia stood with her hand on the back of an armchair; she ran one finger along a dark red stripe, then a grey stripe, looking down at the finger attentively. Then, as Thomas said nothing more, she came round the chair and sat down—drew up her knees, nursed her elbows and stared forward into the red concavity of the electric fire. At the other end of the hearth-rug Thomas sat down also, and remained also staring, but staring at nothing, with a concentration of boredom and lassitude. Anyone other than Anna being near him, anyone other than Anna expecting something gave Thomas, at this time of the evening, a sense of pressure he could hardly endure. He liked best, at this time of the evening, to allow his face to drop into blank lines. Someone there made him feel bound to give some account of himself, to put on some expression or other. Actually, between six and seven o'clock he thought or felt very little.
"It's freezing," he unwillingly said at last. "It bites your face off, out there."
"Yes, it nearly bit mine off—and my hands too. I walked all the way home."
"Do you know if Anna went out?"
"I think she walked in the park."
"Mad," said Thomas, with an intimate pleasure. He brought out his cigarette case and looked into it flatly: it was empty. "Would you mind," he said, "passing that cigarette box—No, just there by your elbow—What did you do today?"
"Would you like me to fill your case?"
"Oh, thank you so much: thanks—What did you say you'd been doing?"
"Constitutional history, musical appreciation, French."
"Liking it? I mean, how are you getting on?"
"I do think history is sad."
"More, shady," said Thomas. "Bunk, misfires and graft from the very start. I can't think why we make such a fuss now: we've got no reason to expect anything better."
"But at one time, weren't people braver?"
"Tougher, and they didn't go round in rings. And also there was a future then. You can't get up any pace when you feel you're right at the edge."
Portia looked blank, then said: "I know some French. I know more French than some of the other girls."
"Oh well, that is always something," said Thomas. His voice trailed off—slumped in his chair, across the fire from Portia, he sat slowly turning his