The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [67]
Portia dreamed she was sharing a book with a little girl. The tips of Anna's long fair hair brushed on the page: they sat up high in a window, waiting till something happened. The worst of all would be if the bell rang, and their best hope was to read to a certain point in the book. But Portia found she no longer knew how to read—she did not dare tell Anna, who kept turning pages over. She knew they must both read—so the fall of Anna's hair filled her with despair, pity, for what would have to come. The forest (there was a forest under the window) was being varnished all over: it left no way of escape. Then the terrible end, the rushing-in, the roaring and gurgling started—Portia started up from where they were with a cry—
"—Hush, hush, dear! Here I am. Nothing has happened. Only Daphne running her bath out."
"I don't know where I—"
"You're here, dear."
"Oh!"
"Did you have a dream? Would you like me to stay a little?"
"Oh no, thank you."
"Then sleep with no dreams, like a good girl. Remember, you can always rap on the wall."
Mrs. Heccomb slipped out, closing the door by inches. Then, out there on the landing, she and Daphne started a whispering-match. Their whispers sounded like whispers down the clinic corridor, or sounds in the forest still left from the dream. "Goodness," said Daphne, "isn't she highly strung?" Then Daphne's feet, in mules, clip-clopped off across the landing: the last of the bath ran out; a door shut.
Perhaps it was Portia's sense that by having started awake she had not been a good girl that now kept her in the haunted outer court of the dream. She had not been kind to Anna; she had never been kind. She had lived in that house with her with an opposed heart.... That kitten, for instance—had it died? Anna never spoke of it. Had Anna felt small at day school? When had they cut her hair off? In the electric light, that hair in the portrait had been mimosa yellow. Did Anna also, sometimes, not know what to do next? Because she knew what to do next, because she knew what to laugh at, what to say, did it always follow that she knew where to turn? Inside everyone, is there an anxious person who stands to hesitate in an empty room? Starting up from her pillow Portia thought: And she's gone. She may never come back.
Mrs. Heccomb must have stayed up to keep Dickie quiet. His no-nonsense step had grown loud on the esplanade. Through the floor, Mrs. Heccomb was to be heard hush-hushing as Dickie crashed open the glass door. Then he rolled an armchair round and kicked the fire: it sounded like a giant loose in the lounge. There was then the muted clatter of a tray being brought: perhaps they were opening the galantine. Mrs. Heccomb may have said something about the bell, for Dickie was to be heard replying: "What is the good of telling me that now?..." Portia knew she must meet him in the morning. She had heard he was twenty-three: the same age as Eddie.
When she came down next morning, at eight o'clock, Dickie was in the act of polishing off his breakfast. There was one particular bus to Southstone he must catch. When she came in he half got up, wiping egg from his chin: when they had shaken hands and both muttered something he bumped back again and went on drinking his coffee, not saying anything more. Dickie was not so enormous as he had sounded, though he was fine and stocky: he had a high colour, a tight-fitting skin, stag-like eyes with a look striking frankness, a large chin, and hair that though sternly larded would never stay down. Dickie, indeed, looked uncompromisingly vigorous. This working morning, he wore a dark suit and hard collar in a manner that