The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [137]
"You're the only person I ever—"
"That's what's the devil; that's just what I mean. You don't know what to expect."
Not taking her anxious eyes from his face—eyes as desperately concentrated as though she were trying to understand a lesson—she said: "But after all, Eddie, anything that happens has never happened before. What I mean is, you and I are the first people who have ever been us."
"All the same, most people get to know the ropes—you can see they do. All the other women I've ever known but you, Portia, seem to know what to expect, and that gives me something to go on. I don't care how wrong they are: it somehow gets one along. But you've kept springing thing after thing on me, from the moment you asked why I held that tart of a girl's hand. You expect every bloody thing to be either right or wrong, and be done with the whole of oneself. For all I know, you may be right. But it's simply intolerable. It makes me feel I'm simply going insane. I've started to live in one way, because that's been the only way I can live. I can see you get hurt, but however am I to know whether that's not your own fault for being the way you are? Or, that you don't really get hurt more than other people but simply make more fuss? You apply the same hopeless judgments to simply everything—for instance, because I said I loved you, you expect me to be as sweet to you as your mother. You're damned lucky to have someone even as innocent as I am. I've never fooled you, have I?"
"You've talked to Anna."
"That's something different entirely. Have I ever not spoken the truth to you?"
"I don't know."
"Well, have I? If I weren't innocent to the point of deformity, would you get me worked up into such a state? Any other man would have chucked you under the chin, and played you up, and afterwards laughed at you for a silly little fool."
"You have laughed at me. You've laughed at me with them."
"Well, when I'm with Anna you do seem pretty funny. I should think, in fact I'm certain that you'd seem funny to anybody but me. You've got a completely lunatic set of values, and a sort of unfailing lunatic instinct that makes you pick on another lunatic—another person who doesn't know where he is. You know I'm not a cad, and I know you're not batty. But, my God, we've got to live in the world."
"You said you didn't like it. You said it was wicked."
"That's another thing that you do: you pin me down to everything."
"Then why do you say you always tell me the truth?"
"I used to tell you the truth because I felt safe with you. Now—"
"Now you don't love me any more?"
"You don't know what you mean by love. We used to have such fun, because I used to think that we understood each other. I still think you're sweet, though you do give me the horrors. I feel you trying to put me into some sort of trap. I'd never dream of going to bed with you, the idea would be absurd. All the same, I let you say these quite unspeakable things, which no one has the right to say to anyone else. And I suppose I say them to you too. Do I?"
"I don't know what is unspeakable."
"No, that's quite clear. You've got some sense missing. The fact is, you're driving me mad." Eddie, who had been chain-smoking, got up and walked away Prom the armchair. He dropped his cigarette behind the gas fire, stopped to stare at the fire, then automatically knelt down and turned it out. "Apart from everything else, it's time you went home," he said. "It's going on for half-past seven."
"You mean you would be happier without me?"
"Happy!" said Eddie, throwing up his hands.
"I must make some people happy—I make Major Brutt happy, I make Matchett happy, when I don't have secrets; I made Mrs. Heccomb rather happy, she said.... Do you mean, though, that now, you feel you could be as happy without me as you used to be with me when you thought I was different?"
Eddie, with his face entirely stiff, picked up the forgotten dead daisies from the table, doubled their stalks