The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [60]
The Heccomb children helped her by growing up and becoming self-supporting: Daphne worked in a library at Seale, Dickie in a bank at Southstone, four miles away. They continued to live at home, and could contribute their share to the house. Dr. Heccomb's friends at the club or their mother's relations had found these positions for them, for Mrs. Heccomb had not exerted herself. Inevitably, she had had rather grander ideas: she would have liked Dickie to go into the Army; she had tried to model Daphne on the lines of Anna. When she first took them on—and she had been married, as she may have realised, very largely in order to take them on—the young Heccombs had been rough little things, not at all the type of children she would have stayed with had she been their governess. And they grew up rough, in spite of all she had done. The fact was, though one did not refer to this, that her husband's first wife had not been quite-quite. But her affectionate nature resigned her to these young people, who continued to stay on because they were comfy with her, because all their friends lived around, because they had no desire to see the rest of the world. They tired soon of the sport of baiting her paying guests, so, when they could each contribute fifteen shillings a week, asked that the paying guests might be given up. This made a quieter home.
Daphne and Dickie Heccomb, when they were not working, were to be found with the rest of their gay set at rinks, in cafes, cinemas and dance halls. On account of their popularity and high spirits, other people were glad to pay for them. Seaside society, even out of season, is ideal for young people, who grow up in it gay, contented and tough. Seale, though itself quiet, is linked by very frequent buses to Southstone, which boasts, with reason, almost every resource.
Mrs. Heccomb herself had a number of friends at Seale. The seafront is rather commercial and not very select: most of her friends lived in those pretty balconied villas or substantial gabled houses up on the hill. In fact, she had found her level. She did a few good works and attended the choral society. Had she not been so worried about her step-children growing up common, hers would have been a very serene life. She was glad to have achieved marriage, not sorry that it was over.
At Charing Cross, Matchett put Portia into the train, then narrowly watched the porter put in the suitcases. When the train began to draw out, she waved several times after it, in a mystic semaphore, her fabric-gloved hand. She had given Portia a bottle of boiled sweets, though with instructions not to make herself ill. Her manner, during the drive in the taxi, had threatened the afternoon like a cloud that covers the sky but is almost certain never to break. Her eyelids looked rigid—tear-bound, you would have said. By giving such a faultless impersonation of a trusted housemaid seeing a young lady into a train, she had made Portia feel that, because of Eddie, the door between them had been shut for ever. While she bought the sweets at the kiosk, her face went harder than ever, in case this action be misunderstood. She said: "Mr. Thomas would wish it. Those are thirst-quenchers, those lime drops are. You don't know when you'll get your tea."
Portia could not but be glad when the train steamed out. She put a sweet in both cheeks and began to look at her book. She had not travelled all by herself before, and