The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [32]
"Well, darling, for one thing I wanted to make you happy, and for another I thought you might get bored if we kept on and on and nothing ever happened. You see, people have sometimes got bored with me. And while everything round me was such a nightmare, I wanted something with you that wasn't such an effort, something to stop me from going quite mad." Anna tinkled the lustre harder. "Have no more nightmares," she said.
"Oh no, darling: Quayne and Merrett's will be like a lovely dream."
Anna frowned. Eddie turned away and stood looking out of the window at the park. Shoulders squared, hands thrust in his pockets, he took the pose of a chap making a new start. Her aquamarine curtains, looped high up over his head with cords and tassels, fell in stately folds each side of him to the floor, theatrically framing his back view. He saw the world at its most sheltered and gay: it was, then, the spring of the year before; the chestnuts opposite her window were in bud; through the branches glittered the lake, with swans and one running dark-pink sail; the whole scene was varnished with spring light. Eddie brought one hand out of his pocket and pinched a heavy moire fold of the curtain by which he stood. This half-conscious act was hostile: Anna heard the moire creak between his finger and thumb.
She did not for a moment doubt that in his own mind Eddie was travestying the scene. Yes, and he showed her he felt he was bought goods, with "Quayne and Merrett" pasted across his back. She said in a light little voice: "I'm glad you're pleased about this."
"Five pounds a week, just for being good and clever! How could I not be pleased!"
"I'm afraid they may want just a little more than that. You really will work, I hope?"
"To do you credit?"
Then, because she did not reply, there was a pause. Eddie swung round at her with his most persuasive, most meaningless smile. "Do come and look at the lake! I don't suppose I shall ever look at it with you in the morning again: I shall be much too busy." To show how immaterial this was, Anna good-temperedly came to join him. They stood side by side in the window and she folded her arms. But Eddie, with the affectionate nonchalance of someone whose nearness does not matter, put a hand on her elbow. "How much I owe you!"
"I never know what you mean."
Eddie's eyes ran over her doubtful face—the light seemed to concentrate in their brilliant shallows; his pupils showed their pin-points of vacuum. "Marvellous," he said, "to have a firm in your pocket."
"When did you first think I might fix this up for you?"
"Of course it occurred to me. But the idea of advertising was so repellent, and to tell you the truth, Anna, I'm so vain, I kept hoping I might get something better. You're not angry, are you, darling? You shouldn't judge people by how they have to behave."
"Your friends say you always fall on your feet."
The remark was another thing that he would never forgive her. After a stonelike minute he said: "If I have to know people who ruin me, I mean to get something out of it."
"I don't understand. Ruin you? Who does?"
"You do, and your whole lot. You make a monkey of me, and God knows what else worse. I'm ashamed to go back home."
"I don't think we can have done you much harm, Eddie. You must still be quite rugged, while you can be so rude."
"Oh, I can be rude all right."
"Then what is upsetting you?"
"Oh, I don't know, Anna," he said, in a burst of childishness. "We seem to be on an absurd track. Please forgive me—I always stay too long. I came round to thank you for my lovely job; I came here intending to be so normal—Oh, look, there's a gull sitting on a deck chair!"
"Yes, it must be spring," she said automatically. "They've put the