The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [130]
Lilian cast a look at those voluptuous plaits that hung over her shoulders, down her bosom. Then she said: "Where are you going now?"
"I told you: I am meeting someone at six."
"That's what I mean—six is not now, you silly. I mean, are you going home for tea, or what?"
Very nervous, Portia said: "I'm not going home."
"Then look, we might have tea in a shop. I think some tea might be good for your nerves."
"You really are being very kind, Lilian."
"Of course, I can see you are upset. I know myself what that is, only too well."
"But I've only got sixpence."
"Oh, I've got three shillings. After what I've been through myself," said Lilian, guiding Portia down the side of the square, "I don't think you ever ought to be shy of me. And you can keep my handkerchief till this evening, in case you need it again when you meet whoever it is, but please let me have it back tomorrow, don't let them wash it, because it is one with associations."
"You are being kind."
"I go right off my food when I am upset; if I try to eat I simply vomit at once. I thought at lunch, you're lucky not to be like that, because of course it attracts attention. It was a pity you had attracted attention by being caught using Miss Paullie's telephone. I must say, I should never dare do that. She was perfectly beastly, I suppose?"
"She was scornful of me," said Portia: her lip trembled again. "She has always thought I was awful since last term, when she found me reading that letter I once got. She makes me feel it's the way I was brought up."
"She is just at the age when women go queer, you know. Where did you say you had got to meet your friend?"
"Near the Strand."
"Oh, quite near your brother's office?" said Lilian, giving Portia a look from her large near-in gelatinous dark grey eyes. "I do think, Portia, you ought to be careful: an untrustworthy man can simply ruin one's life."
"If there wasn't something one could trust a person about, surely one wouldn't start to like them at all?"
"I don't see the point of our being such bosom friends if you don't confess to me that this is really Eddie."
"Yes, but I'm not upset because of him; I'm upset about something that's gone on."
"Something at home?"
"Yes."
"Do you mean your sister-in-law? I always did think she was a dangerous woman, though I did not like to tell you so at the time. Look, don't tell me about this in Regent Street, because people are looking at us already. We will go to that A.B.C. opposite the Polytechnic; we are less likely to be recognised there. I think it's safer than Fuller's. Try and be calm, Portia."
Actually, it was Lilian who commanded attention by looking sternly into every face. Beside her goddess-like friend, Portia walked with her head down, butting against the draughty air of the street. When they came to the crossing, Lilian gripped Portia's bare arm in a gloved hand: through the kid glove a sedative animal feeling went up to Portia's elbow and made the joint untense. She pulled back to notice a wedding carpet up the steps of All Souls', Langham Place—like a girl who has finished the convulsions of drowning she floated, dead, to the sunny surface again. She bobbed in Lilian's wake between the buses with the gaseous lightness of a little corpse.
"Though you are able to eat," said Lilian, propping her elbows on the marble-topped table and pulling off her gloves by the finger tips (Lilian never uncovered any part of her person without a degree of consciousness: there was a little drama when she untied a scarf or took off her hat), "though you are able to eat, I should not try anything rich." She caught a waitress's eye and ordered what she thought right. "Look what a far-off table I got," she said. "You need not be afraid of saying anything now. I say, why don't you take off your hat, instead of keeping on pushing it back?"