The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [26]
"It's from a friend of Anna's. Because I got him his hat."
"Had he lost his hat?"
"No. I heard him coming downstairs, and his hat was there, so I gave it to him."
"That doesn't seem a thing to write a letter about. Is he not a nice man, or is he very polite? What on earth were you doing in the hall?"
"I was in Thomas's study."
"Well, that comes to the same thing. It comes to the same thing with the door open. You had been listening for him, I suppose?"
"I just was down there. You see, Anna was in the drawingroom."
"You are extraordinary. What does he do?"
"He is in Thomas's office."
"Could you really feel all that for a man? I'm never sure that I could."
"He's quite different from St. Quentin. Even Major Brutt is not at all like him."
"Well, I do think you ought to be more careful, really. After all, you and I are only sixteen. Do you want red-currant jelly with this awful mutton? I do. Do get it away from that pig."
Portia slipped the dish of red-currant jelly away from Lucia Ames—who would soon be a debutante. "I hope you are feeling better, Lilian?" she said.
"Well, I am, but I get a nervous craving for things."
When the afternoon classes were over—at four o'clock today—Lilian invited Portia back to tea. "I don't know," said Portia. "You see, Anna is out."
"Well, my mother is out, which is far better."
"Matchett did say that I could have tea with her."
"My goodness," Lilian said, "but couldn't you do that any day? And we don't often have my whole house to ourselves. We can take the gramophone up to the bathroom while I wash my hair; I've got three Stravinsky records. And you can show me your letter."
Portia gulped, and looked wildly into a point in space. "No, I can't do that, because I have torn it up."
"No, you can't have done that," said Lilian firmly, "because I should have seen you. Unless you did when you were in the lavatory, and you didn't stay in there long enough. You do hurt my feelings: I don't want to intrude. But whatever Miss Paullie says, don't you leave your bag about."
"It isn't in my bag," said Portia unwarily.
So Portia went home to tea with Lilian and, in spite of a qualm, enjoyed herself very much. They ate crumpets on the rug in front of the drawingroom fire. Their cheeks scorched, but a draught crept under the door. Lilian, heaping coals of fire, brought down, untied from a ribbon three letters the 'cello mistress had written to her during the holidays. She also told Portia how, one day at school when she had a headache, Miss Heber had rubbed with magnetic fingers Lilian's temples and the nape of her neck. "When I have a headache I always think of her still."
"If you've got a headache today, then ought you to wash your hair?"
"I ought not to, but I want it nice for tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? What are you doing then?"
"Confidentially, Portia, I don't know what may happen."
Lilian had all those mysterious tomorrows: yesterdays made her sigh, but were never accounted for. She belonged to a junior branch of emotional society, in which there is always a crisis due. Preoccupation with life was not, clearly, peculiar to Lilian: Portia could see it going on everywhere. She had watched life, since she came to London, with a sort of despair—motivated and busy always, always progressing: even people pausing on bridges seemed to pause with a purpose; no bird seemed to pursue a quite aimless flight. The spring of the works seemed unfound only by her: she could not doubt people knew what they were doing—everywhere she met alert cognisant eyes. She could not believe there was not a plan of the whole set-up in every head but her own. Accordingly, so anxious was her research that every look, every movement, every object had a quite political seriousness for her: nothing was not weighed down by significance. In her home life (her new home life) with its puzzles, she saw dissimulation always on guard; she asked herself humbly for what reason people said what they did not mean, and did not say what they meant. She felt most certain to find the clue when she felt the frenzy