The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [33]
"Is this the last time I shall call you darling, darling?"
It possibly was, she said. This gave her the chance to put it to him, as nicely as possible, that in future they would be seeing less of each other. "But I know," he insisted. "That is what I was saying. That's exactly why I have come to say goodbye."
"Only goodbye in a way. You exaggerate everything."
"Well, goodbye in a way."
"This won't really make any difference."
"I quite understand, darling. But it will have to appear to."
It turned out to have been hardly goodbye at all. But it was, as Anna said to herself, the start of a third, and their most harmonious, phase. That evening, half a dozen camellias came, and three days later, when he had started work, a letter—the first of a series on the imposing office notepaper. In his open writing, so childish as to be sinister, he wrote how nice they all were in the office. In fact, his resentment against her kind act lasted for some weeks. The letter in which he said that this new start had made quite a man of him Anna tore up: she left the scraps in the grate. She asked Thomas how Eddie was really getting on, and Thomas said he was still showing off rather, but that there seemed no reason why he should not shape up.
Eddie came round to report six evenings later, bearing three sprays of flowering cherry in a blue paper sheath. After that, perspicacity, money to spend or new friends elsewhere made him not repeat the visit for some time. He settled down to a routine of weekly tulips, cosy telephone calls, equivocally nice letters, and after the tulips, roses. Thomas, questioned further, reported that Eddie was doing well, though not so well as Eddie himself thought. When Denis came back from Turkey and wanted his flat, Anna wrote and said the flowers must stop: Eddie would have to begin to pay rent now. The flowers stopped, but Eddie, as though he felt communication imperilled, started coming round more often again. Office or no office, he was once more a familiar feature of Windsor Terrace when Portia arrived to join the family.
VI
IT WAS half-past ten at night. Matchett, opening Portia's door an inch, breathed cautiously through the crack: a line of light from the landing ran across the darkness into the room. Portia, without stirring on her pillow, whispered: "I'm awake." The entire top of the house was, in fact, empty: Thomas and Anna had gone to the theatre, but Matchett never let their going or coming temper her manner in any way. She was equally cautious if they were out or in. But only when they were not out she did not come up to say good-night.
If, after ten o'clock, Matchett sank her voice and spoke still more shortly, this seemed to be in awe of approaching sleep. She awaited the silent tide coming in. About now, she served the idea of sleep with a series of little ceremonials—laying out night clothes, levelling fallen pillows, hospitably opening up the beds. Kneeling to turn on bedroom fires, stooping to slip bottles between sheets, she seemed to abase herself to the overcoming night. The impassive solemnity of her preparations made a sort of an altar of each bed: in big houses in which things are done properly, there is always the religious element. The diurnal cycle is observed with more feeling when there are servants to do the work.
Portia instinctively spoke low after dark: she was accustomed to thin walls. She watched the door shut, saw the bend of light cut off, and heard Matchett crossing the floor with voluminous quietness. As always, Matchett went to the window and drew the curtains open—a false faint day began again, tawny as though London were burning. Now and then cars curved past. The silence of a shut park does not sound like country