The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [66]
"Already? Oh dear! Has she?"
"Yes, they were on the top of the bus I was on. He's got a spot on his neck. First I looked at the spot, then I looked at the boy, then who should I see but Doris grinning away beside him."
"I do hope he's a nice boy..."
"Well, I tell you, he's got a spot on his neck.... No, but I say, really, Mumsie, I do wish you'd fly out at Dickie about that bell. It looks awful, hanging out at the root like that, besides not ringing. Why don't we have an electric, anyway?"
"Your father always thought they went out of order, dear."
"Well, you ought to fly out at Dickie, you ought really. What did he say he'd mend that bell for if he wasn't going to mend it? No one asked him to say he would mend that bell."
"It was very good of him, dear. I might remind him at supper,"
"He won't be in for supper. He's got a date. He said."
"Oh yes, so he did. What am I thinking about?"
"Don't ask me," said Daphne kindly. "However, don't you worry: I'll eat the odd sausage. What is it, by the way?"
"Egg pie. I thought that would be light."
"Light?" said Daphne appalled.
"For Portia after the journey. If you want more, dear, we can open the galantine."
"Oh well," said Daphne resignedly.
Portia sat at one end of the sofa, looking through a copy of Woman and Beauty. Mrs. Heccomb was so much occupied with the lamp shade, Daphne by simply sitting and glooming there, that she wished she could have brought Major Brutt's puzzle—she could have been getting on with that. But you cannot pack a jigsaw that is three-quarters done. As it was, sitting under an alabaster pendant that poured a choked orange light on her head, she felt stupefied by this entirely new world. The thump of the broadcast band with the sea's vibration below it, the smell of varnish, hyacinths, Turkey carpet drawn out by the heat of the roaring fire came at her overpoweringly. She was not yet adjusted to all this. How far she had travelled—not only in space.
Wondering if this could ever make her suffer, she thought of Windsor Terrace. I am not there. She began to go round, in little circles, things that at least her senses had loved—her bed, with the lamp turned on on winter mornings, the rug in Thomas's study, the chest carved with angels out there on the landing, the waxen oilcloth down there in Matchett's room. Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain. Looking back at a repetition of empty days, one sees that monuments have sprung up. Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie: when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness. So, she and Irene had almost always felt sad when they looked round a hotel room before going away from it for always. They could not but feel that they had betrayed something. In unfamiliar places, they unconsciously looked for familiarity. It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home. The need to attach themselves makes wandering people strike roots in a day: wherever we unconsciously feel, we live.
Upstairs in Waikiki, the bedroom ceilings sloped because of the roof. Mrs. Heccomb, saying good-night to Portia, had screwed a steel-framed window six inches open, the curtain flopped in the light of a lamp on the esplanade. Portia put her hand up once or twice to touch the slope of ceiling over her bed. Mrs. Heccomb had said she hoped she would not be lonely. "I sleep just next door: you need only tap on the wall. We are all very near together in this house. Do you like hearing the sea?"
"It sounds very near."
"It's high tide. But it won't come any nearer."
"Won't it?"
"No, I promise, dear, that it won't. You're not afraid of the sea?"
"Oh, no."
"And you've got a picture of Anna," Mrs. Heccomb had added, with a beatific nod at the mantelpiece. That had already been looked at—a pastel drawing of Anna, Anna aged about twelve, holding a kitten, her long soft hair tied up in two satin bows. The tender