The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [78]
Dickie came down in a dark blue pin-striped suit, and asked if she'd like to help him roll the carpet back. They had got as far as rolling back the settee when a sort of batlike fumbling was heard at the glass door, and Dickie stopped with a grunt to let in Cecil.
"I say," Cecil said, "I'm afraid I've come rather early."
"Well, you have rather in one way. However, give a hand with the carpet. As usual, everything has been left to me—Oh, by the way, this is Mr. Cecil Bowers, Miss Portia Quayne... By the way, Cecil," said Dickie, rather more sternly, "the bell does ring now."
"Oh? Sorry. It didn't use to."
"Well, make a note that it does."
"Dickie, who's that?" Daphne wailed over the banisters.
"Only Cecil. He's rolling up the carpet."
When Cecil had finished rolling up the carpet he straightened his tie and went off to wash his hands. Portia found no special fault with his appearance, though it was certainly not as manly as Dickie's. When he came back, he was beginning to say to her: "I understand that you have just come from London," when Daphne appeared and made him carry a tray.
"Now, Cecil," she said, "there's no time to stand there chatting." Her manner made it quite clear that if Cecil were for Portia, he would come on to her as one of Daphne's discards. Daphne wore a crepe-de-chine dress, cut clinging into the thighs and draped lusciously elsewhere: on it poppies, roses, nasturtiums flowered away, only slightly blurred by the folds. In her high-heeled emerald shoes, she stepped higher than ever. When the bell rang, seeming to tweak at the whole house, and Dickie went to let some more people in, Daphne sent Cecil and Portia into the diningroom to stick the flags on the sandwiches, and to count the glasses for cider-cup.
They could only find what was inside the sandwiches by turning up the corners to have a look. Even so, they could not be sure which kind of fish paste was which: Cecil, having made sure they were alone in the room, tasted a crumb of each with his finger-tip. "Not quite in order," he said, "but que voulez vous?"
"No one will know," said Portia, standing behind him.
The complicity set up between her and Cecil made them sit down on two chairs, when they had planted the flags, and look at each other with interest. There was a hum in the lounge, and no one was missing them. "These do's of Daphne's and Dickie's are very jolly," said Cecil.
"Do they often have them?"
"Quite frequently. They are always on Saturdays. They always seem to go with rather a swing. But I daresay this may seem quiet after London?"
"It doesn't really. Do you often go to London?"
"Well, I do—when I don't slip over to France."
"Oh, do you slip over to France?"
"Yes, I must say I often do. You may think me mad, too: everyone here does. Everyone here behaves as though France did not exist. 'What is that you see over there?' I sometimes say to them, when it's a clear day. They say, 'Oh, that's France.' But it makes no impression on them. I often go to Boulogne on a day trip."
"All by yourself?"
"Well, I have been by myself, and also I often go with a really wonderfully sporting aunt of mine. And once or twice I have been with another fellow."
"And what do you do?"
"Oh, I principally walk about. In spite of being so easy to get at, Boulogne is really wonderfully French, you know. I doubt if Paris itself could be much Frencher. No, I haven't yet been to Paris: what I always feel is, supposing it rather disappointed me.... 'Oh, hullo,' all those others always say to me, when I haven't shown ,up at the Pav or the Icedrome or the Palais, 'you've been abroad again!' What conclusions they come to I've no idea," said Cecil consciously, looking down his nose. "I don't know if you've noticed," he went on, "but so few people care if they don't enlarge their ideas. But I always like to enlarge mine."
"Oh, so do I." She looked timidly at Cecil, then said: "Lately, my ideas have enlarged a lot."
"I thought they must have," said Cecil. "You gave me just