The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [9]
On the middle floors of the house, where she worked and the Quaynes lived, her step on the parquet or on the staircase was at the same time ominous and discreet.
It was five to four, not quite tea-time yet. Portia, turning away inconsequently and seriously, faced round once more to the radiator and spread her fingers a few inches above it, so that the hot vibration travelled up between. Her hands were still mottled from the out-door cold; her fingers had bloodless tips. Matchett looked on in silence, then said: "That's the way to give yourself chilblains. Those want rubbing—here, give me!" She came over, took Portia's hands and chafed them, her big bones grinding on Portia's painfully. "Quiet," she said. "Don't keep pulling away like that. I never saw a girl so tender to cold."
Portia stopped wincing and said: "Where's Anna?"
"That Mr. Miller called, and they went out."
"Then can I have tea with you?"
"She left word they'd be in at half-past four."
"O-oh," said Portia. "That's no good, then. Do you think she'll ever be out?"
Matchett, impassively not replying, stooped to pick up one of Portia's woolly gloves. "Mind and take these up," she said. "And those books too. Mrs. Thomas spoke about those exercise books. Nothing does down here that isn't here for the look."
"Has anything else been wrong?"
"She's been on about your bedroom."
"Oh golly! Has she been in there?"
"Yes, she seemed quite put out," said Matchett monotonously. "She said to me this morning, did I not find dusting difficult with all that mess about. Your bears' party, she meant, and one and another thing. 'Difficult, madam?' I said. 'If I made difficulties, I should not be where I am.' Then I asked if she had any complaint. She was putting her hat on—up in her room, it was. 'Oh dear no,' she said, 'I was thinking of you, Matchett. If Miss Portia would put some of those things away—' I made no remark, so she asked for her gloves. She went half out of the door, then she gave me a sort of look. 'Those arrangements are Miss Portia's hobbies, madam,' I said. She said: 'Oh, of course,' and went out of the house. No more was said at the time. It isn't that she's so tidy, but she thinks how things look."
Matchett's voice was flat and dispassionate: when she had done she folded her lips exactly. Letting her hair fall forward to hide her face from Matchett, Portia stooped over the table, getting her books together. Books under her arm, she stood waiting to go up.
"All I mean is," went on Matchett, "don't give her more to pick on. Not for a day or two, till it passes off."
"But what was she doing in my room?"
"I suppose she just took the fancy. It's her house, like it or not."
"But she always says it's my room.... Has she touched things?"
"How would I know? What if she did? You didn't ought to have secrets, at your age."
"I noticed some toothpowder had come off the top of one of my bears' cakes, but I thought that was the draught. I suppose I ought to have known. Birds know if you have been at their eggs: they desert."
"And, pray, where would you desert to?—You'd better go on up, if you don't want her and Mr. Miller right in on top of you. They'll be in early, likely, with this cold."
Portia, sighing, started up to her room. The solid stone staircase was so deep in carpet that her feet made no sound. Sometimes her elbow, sometimes her school-girlish overcoat, unbuttoned, brushed on the white wall. When she got to the first landing, she leaned down. "Will Mr. St. Quentin Miller be having tea?"
"Why not?"
"He talks so much."
"Well, then, he won't eat you. Don't you be so silly."
Portia went on up, up the next flight. When the bedroom door had been heard shutting, Matchett returned to the basement. Phyllis was darting about in her saucy new cap, getting ready the tray for drawingroom