The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [124]
Anna said: "I wish I could."
"Oh, you would never need to, Anna darling.... Well, we made Clara pop into her handbag that night at the E.C.P. When we all behaved so badly. I was the worst, of course. It was really dreadful, Anna: Portia and I had been for a nice walk in some woods, then I ruined the day by getting tight and rowdy. I had made a fine impression when I first got to Waikiki, but I'm afraid that spoiled it." Eddie gave Portia an equivocal sidelong look, then turned his head and went on talking to Anna. "Clara's position was really trying, you see: she had eyes only for Dickie, and Dickie had eyes only for Portia here."
She made a dumbfounded movement. "Oh, Eddie, he hadn't!"
"Well, there were goings-on—they were perfectly onesided, but there were goings-on as far as Dickie does go. I heard him breathing over you at the movies. He breathed so much that he even breathed over me."
"Eddie," Anna said, "you really are very common." She looked remotely, sternly down at her finger-nails, but after a minute could not help saying: "Did you all go to the movies? When?"
"That first evening I got there," Eddie said fluently. "Six of us. All the set. I must say, I really was shocked by Dickie: not only is he an old Fascist, but he does not know how to behave at all. At the seaside, they really do go the pace."
"How dreadful for you," said Anna. "And so, what did you do?"
"It was in the dark, so I could not show how I felt. Besides, his sister was holding my hand. They really are a fast lot—I do think, Anna, you ought to be more careful where you send Portia off to another time."
This did not go down well. "Portia knows how to behave," said Anna frigidly. "Which makes more difference than you would ever think." She gave Portia what could have been a kindly look had there been the least intention behind it. To Eddie she said, with enraged softness: "For anybody as clever as you are, you are really not good at describing things. To begin with, I don't think you ever know what is happening: you are too busy wondering what you can make of it."
Eddie pouted and said: "Very well, ask Portia, then."
But Portia looked down and said nothing.
"Anyhow," Eddie said, "it has been an effort to talk, when I don't feel in the mood to. But one has got to be so amusing here. I'm sorry you don't like what I say, but I have been more or less talking in my sleep."
"If you are so sleepy, you had better go home."
"I can't see why the idea of sleep should offend you as much as it seems to, Anna. It is the natural thing on a rainy spring afternoon, when one's not compelled to be doing anything else, especially in a nice quiet room like this. We ought all to sleep, instead of talking away."
"Portia has not said much," said Anna, looking across the fire.
At the very sound, on Eddie's lips, of the word, desire to sleep had spread open inside Portia like a fan. She saw reflections of rain on the silver things on the tray. She felt blotted out from the room, as little present in it as these two others truly felt her to be. She moved a little nearer the fireplace, so as to lean her cheek on the marble upright, with as little consciousness of her movement as though she had been alone in some other place. Behind shut eyes she relaxed; she refreshed herself. The rug under her feet slid and wrinkled a little on the polished floor; the room, with its image of cruelty, swam, shredded and slowly lost its colour, like a paper pattern in water.
Since the talk with St. Quentin, the idea of betrayal had been in her, upon her, sleeping and waking, as might be one's own guilt, making her not confront any face with candour, making her dread Eddie. Being able to shut her eyes while he was in this room with her, to feel impassive marble against her cheek, made her feel in the arms of immunity—the immunity of sleep, of anaesthesia, of endless solitude, the immunity of the journey across