The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [41]
This being so, even Phyllis, with all her aplomb, her ever-consciousness of a pretty cap, had forgotten how to cope with a plain call. She well knew the cut of "expected" people, people who all but admitted themselves, who marched in past her without the interrogatory pause. Some smiled at her, some did not—but well did she know the look of someone who knew the house. And, except for a lunch party or a dinner, nobody ever came who did not.
So, directly she opened the door and saw Major Brutt, she knew it was in her power to oppress. She raised her eyebrows and simply looked at him. For him, that promising door had opened on something on which he had not reckoned. He knew, of course, that people have parlourmaids—but that last time the hall had been so full of light, of goodbye smiles, of heaps of women's fur coats. He faltered slightly at once: Phyllis saw the drop in his masculine confidence. Her contempt for humility made her put him down as an ex-officer travelling in vacuum cleaners, or those stockings that are too shiny to wear.
So it was with snappy triumph that she was able to say Mrs. Quayne was not at home. Modifying his expectant manner, he then asked for Mr. Quayne—which made Phyllis quite sure that this person must be wanting something. She was quite right: he was—he had come all this way to see a holy family.
"Mr. Quayne? I couldn't say," Phyllis replied pursily. She let her eye run down him and added "sir". She said: "I could enquire if you liked to wait." She looked again—he did not carry a bag, so she let him in to a certain point in the hall. Too sharp to give Thomas away by looking into the study, she started downstairs to ring through on the room-to-room telephone. As she unhooked the receiver at the foot of the basement stairs, intending to say, "Please, sir, I think there is someone—" she heard Thomas burst open his door, come out and make some remark. Now Mrs. Quayne would not have allowed that.
In the seconds before Thomas came to his door, Major Brutt may have realised this was a better house to be brought back to in triumph than to make one's way into under one's own steam. While he looked up the draughtless stairs behind the white arches, some aspirations faded out of his mind. He glanced at the console table, but did not like to put down his hat yet: he stood sturdily, doubtfully. Then a step just inside that known door made him re-animate like a dog: his moustache broadened a little, ready for a smile.
"Oh, you: splendid!" said Thomas—he held his hand out, flat open, with galvanised heartiness. "I thought I heard someone's voice. Look here, I'm so sorry you—"
"Look here, I do hope I'm not—"
"Oh, good God, no! I was simply waiting for Anna. She's out at some sort of lunch—you know how long those things take."
Major Brutt had no idea—it had seemed to him rather more near tea-time. He said: "They must be great places for talk," as Thomas, incompletely resigned, got him into the study, with rather too much fuss. The room now held fumy heavy afternoon dusk—Thomas had been asleep in here for an hour before unscrewing his pen, opening the blotter and sitting down with some of his papers out. "Everyone talks," said Thomas. "I can't think, can you, how they keep it up." He looked at his cats with nostalgia, shut the blotter, swept some papers into a drawer and shut the drawer with a click. That was that, he seemed to say, I was busy, but never mind. Meanwhile, Major Brutt pulled his trousers up at the knees and lowered himself into an armchair.
Thomas, trying to concentrate, said: "Brandy?"
"Thanks, no: not just now."
Thomas took this with a just touch of rancour—it made the position less easy than ever. Major Brutt was clearly counting on tea, and the Quaynes would be likely to cut tea out. Anna, with whom large lunches did not agree, would be likely to come home claustrophobic