The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [6]
"Just before poor Thomas went back to Oxford, the bomb went off. Mr. Quayne woke Thomas's mother up at two in the morning and told her the whole thing. What had happened I'm quite sure you can guess—Irene had started Portia. She had done nothing more about this, beyond letting him know; she had gone on sitting in Notting Hill Gate, wondering what was going to happen next. Mrs. Quayne was quite as splendid as ever: she stopped Mr. Quayne crying, then went straight down to the kitchen and made tea. Thomas, who slept on the same landing, woke to feel something abnormal—he opened his door, found the landing lights on, then saw his mother go past with a tray of tea, in her dressing-gown, looking, he says, just like a hospital nurse. She gave Thomas a smile and did not say anything: it occurred to him that his father might be sick, but not that he had been committing adultery. Mr. Quayne, apparently, made a night of it: he stood knocking his knuckles on the end of the big bed, repeating: 'She is such a staunch little thing!' Then he routed out Irene's letters and three photographs of her, and passed Mrs. Quayne the lot. When she had done with the letters and been nice about the photos, she told him that now he would have to marry Irene. When he took that in, and realised that it meant the sack, he burst into tears again.
"From the first, he did not like the idea at all. To get anywhere near the root of the matter, one has got to see just how dumb Mr. Quayne was. He had not got a mind that joins one thing and another up. He had got knit up with Irene in a sort of a dream wood, but the last thing he wanted was to stay in that wood for ever. In his waking life he liked to be plain and solid; to be plain and solid was to be married to Mrs. Quayne. I don't suppose he knew, in his own feeling, where sentimentality stopped and want began—and who could tell, with an old buffer like that? In any event, he had not foreseen ever having to put his shirt on either. He loved his home like a child. That night, he sat on the edge of the big bed, wrapped up in the eiderdown, and cried till he had no breath left to denounce himself. But Mrs. Quayne was, of course, implacable: in fact, by next day she had got quite ecstatic. She might have been saving up for this moment for years—in fact, I daresay she had been, without knowing. Mr. Quayne's last hope was that if he curled up and went to sleep now, in the morning he might find that nothing had really happened. So at last he curled up and went to sleep. She probably didn't—Does this bore you, St. Quentin?"
"Anything but, Anna; in fact, it curdles my blood."
"Mrs. Quayne came down to breakfast worn but shining, and Mr. Quayne making every effort to please. Thomas, of course, saw that something awful had happened, and his one idea was to stave everything off. After breakfast, his mother said that he was a man now, walked him round the garden and told him the whole story in the most idealistic way. Thomas saw his father watching them round the smoking-room curtain. She made Thomas agree that he and she must do everything possible to help his father, Irene and the poor little coming child. The idea of the baby embarrassed Thomas intensely on his father's behalf. Words still fail him for how discreditably ridiculous the whole thing appeared. But he was sorry about his father having to go, and asked Mrs. Quayne if this was really necessary: she said it was. She had got the whole thing sorted out in the night, even down to the train he was to catch. She seemed to be quite taken with her idea of Irene: Irene's letters had gone down better with her than with Mr. Quayne, who did not like things in writing. In fact, I'm afraid Mrs. Quayne always liked Irene a good deal better than, later, she liked me. Mr. Quayne's faint hope that the whole thing might be dropped,