The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [34]
"I thought you were never coming."
"I had mending to see to. Mr. Thomas burnt the top of a sheet."
"But does he smoke in bed?"
"He did last week, while she was away. His ash-tray was full of stumps."
"Do you think he would always like to, but doesn't because she's there?"
"He smokes when he doesn't sleep. He's like his father; he doesn't like to be left."
"I didn't think anyone left Father. Mother never did—used she to, ever? I mean, did Mrs. Quayne?—Oh Matchett, listen: if she was alive now—I mean, if Thomas's mother was—what would I call her? There wouldn't be any name."
"Well, what matter? She's gone: you don't have to speak to her."
"Yes, she's dead. Do you think she is the reason Thomas and I are so unlike?"
"No, Mr. Thomas always favoured his father more than he did her. You unlike Mr. Thomas? How much liker are you wanting to be?"
"I don't know—Listen, Matchett, was Mrs. Quayne sorry? I mean, did she mind being alone?"
"Alone? She kept Mr. Thomas."
"She'd made such a sacrifice."
"Sacrificers," said Matchett, "are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those that they sacrifice. Oh, the sacrificers, they get it both ways. A person knows themselves what they're able to do without. Yes, Mrs. Quayne would give the clothes off her back, but in the long run she would never lose a thing. The day we heard you'd been born out there in France, she went on like a lady who'd got her first grandchild. She came after me to the linen room to tell me. 'The sweet little thing,' she said. 'Oh, Matchett I' she said, 'he always wanted a girl!' Then she went down in the hall to telephone Mr. Thomas. 'Oh Thomas, good news,' I heard her say."
Fascinated as ever by the topic, Portia turned over on to her side, drawing up her knees so that she lay in a bend round Matchett's sitting rump. The bed creaked as Matchett, bolt upright, shifted her weight. Sliding a hand under her pillow, Portia stared up through the dark and asked: "What was that day like?"
"Where we were? Oh, it was quite a bright day, springlike for February. That garden was very sheltered; it was the sunny side of that hill. I saw her go down the lawn without her hat, and across the stream Mr. Quayne made: she started picking herself snowdrops down there the other side of the stream."
"How could he make a stream?"
"Well, there was a brook, but not where Mrs. Quayne wanted, so he dug a new ditch and got it to flow in. He was at it all that summer before he went—how he did sweat: I could have wrung his clothes out."
"But that day I was born—what did you say, Matchett?"
"When she said you were born? I said, 'To think of that, madam,' or something to that effect. I've no doubt she expected to hear more. But I felt it, the way I felt it quite went to my throat, and I couldn't say more than that. Besides, why should I?—not to her, I mean. Of course, we had all known you were to be coming: the others were all eyes to see how Mrs. Quayne took it, and you may be sure she knew they were all eyes. I went back to putting away the linen, and what I said to myself was 'The poor little soul!' She saw that, and she never forgave me for it—though that was more than she knew herself."
"Why did you think me poor?"
"At that time I had my reasons. Well, she kept picking snowdrops, and now and then she'd keep stopping and looking up. She felt the Almighty watching, I daresay. None of that garden was out of sight of the windows—you could always see Mr. Quayne, while he was working, just as if he had been a little boy. Then she came back in and she did the snowdrops, in a Chinese bowl she set store by—oh, she did set store by that bowl, till one of the girls broke it. (She came to me with the bits of it in her hand, smiling away she was. 'Another little bit of life gone, Matchett,' she said. But she never spoke a cross word to the girl—oh no, she liked herself far too well.) Then, that