The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [85]
But boys were not Eddie. Portia paused, then said: "I thought I would ask you, then I thought you might ask her."
"What's your friend in?" put in Evelyn. "The Diplomatic?"
"Who's in the Diplomatic?" said Charlie, coming alongside.
"Portia's friend who's coming."
"Well, he is not really: he's in my brother's office."
"Well, after all," said Evelyn, adjusting to this. She was the receptionist in Southstone's biggest beauty parlour: her face, whatever Dickie might think of it, continued to bloom in luscious and artificial apricot tones. Her father was Mr. Bunstable, the important house agent who not only negotiated the Waikiki summer let but had clients throughout the county. Evelyn was thus not only a social light but had a stable position—consequently, she could not be hoped to enter into Daphne's feeling against the Quaynes. Business people were business people. She said kindly: "Then it's been nice for him, picking up with you."
"Your sister-in-law," said Daphne with some relish, "would probably have a fit."
Evelyn said: "I don't see why."
"Say, Cecil," cried Daphne, whisking round sharply at him, "must you keep on kicking that old stone?"
"So sorry: I was thinking something out."
"Well, if you want to think, why come for a walk? Anyone might think this was a funeral—I say, Wallace, I say do listen, Charlie: Portia doesn't think much of any of you boys! She's having her own friend down."
"Local talent," said Wallace, "not represented. Well, these ladies from London—what can you expect?"
"Yes, you'd think," said Daphne, "it should be enough for anyone, watching Cecil kicking that old stone."
"Oh, it isn't that," said Portia, looking at them anxiously. "It's not that, really, I mean."
"Well, I don't see why she shouldn't," said Evelyn, closing the matter. She went to the head of some steps to whistle to her dog, which had got down on to the beach and was rolling in something horrid.
The others waited for Evelyn. The act of stopping sent a slight shock through the party, like the shock felt through a train that has pulled up. They were really more like a goods than a passenger train—content as a row of trucks, they stood solidly facing the way they would soon walk. Over still distant Seale, crowned by the church, smoke dissolved in the immature spring sun. This veil etherealised hillside villas with their gardens of trees; behind the balconies and the gables the hill took a tinge of hyacinth blue and looked like the outpost of a region of fantasy. Portia, glancing along the others' faces, was satisfied that Eddie had been forgotten. They did more than not think of Eddie, they thought of nothing.
She had learned to be less alarmed by Daphne's set since she had learned to plumb their abeyances. People are made alarming by one's dread of their unremitting, purposeful continuity. But in Seale, continuity dwelt in action only—interrupt what anybody was doing, and you interrupted what notions they had had. When these young people stopped doing what they were doing, they stopped all through, like clocks. Thus nothing, completely nothing, filled this halt on their way to Sunday tea. Conceivably, astral smells of tea cakes with hot currants, of chocolate biscuits and warmed leather chairs vibrated towards them from Evelyn's home. They had walked; they would soon be back; they must have done themselves good.
Evelyn's dog came up the steps with a foul smear on its back, was scolded and wagged its rump in a merrily servile way. The dog was ordered to heel, where it did not stay, and the party, still with no word spoken, dropped forward into steady motion again.
At Evelyn's, Portia had time to think about next Sunday (or the Sunday after, was it to be?) for no one said much and she did