The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [94]
Daphne bawled: "And Clara's going to meet us there."
Dickie did not react.
"I say, Clara's coming along to meet us."
Dickie looked up coldly from the Evening Standard to say: "This is the first I have heard of that."
"Well, don't be so silly. Clara'll probably pay."
Dickie grunted and stooped down to scratch his ankle, as though an itch were a really urgent matter. For a minute Daphne's eyes, dull with consideration, seemed to be drawn right into her face. Then she said to Portia: "You and your friend coming?" and shot her most nonchalant look into the mantelpiece mirror behind Eddie's ear. "Shall we, Eddie?" said Portia, kneeling up on the sofa. At once Eddie dropped into her eyes the profoundest of those quick glances of his. A peaceful malicious smile illuminated his features as he continued not to look Daphne's way. "If we really are invited," he yelled back above the music, "it would be quite divine."
"Do you really want us, Daphne?"
"Oh, it's all the same to me. I mean, just as you like."
So directly after supper they set out. They stopped at Wallace's house to pick up Wallace, then marched, five abreast, down the asphalt walk to the town. It was dark under the trees and the lights twinkled ahead. A breath mounted from the canal as they trooped over the foot bridge with a clatter; through an evergreen grove the Grotto Cinema glittered its constellation of gold, red, blue. Clara, with her most sacrificial expression, waited by a palm in the foyer, wearing a mink coat. There was polite confusion at the box office window, where Dickie, Wallace and, less convincingly, Eddie all made gestures of preparing to stand treat. Then Clara bobbed up from under Dickie's elbow and paid for them all, as they had expected her to do. They filed down the dark aisle to seat themselves in this order—Clara, Dickie, Portia, Eddie, Daphne, Wallace. A comic was on the screen.
During most of the programme, Dickie was more oncoming with Portia than he was with Clara—that is to say, he put one elbow on Portia's arm of his fauteuil, but did not put the other on Clara's arm. He breathed heavily. Clara, during a brief hitch in the comic, said she hoped Dickie had had nice hockey. When poor Clara dropped her bead bag, money and all, she was left to recover it. Portia sat with eyes fixed on the screen—once or twice, as Eddie changed his position, she felt his knee touch hers. When this made her glance his way, she saw light from the comic flickering on his eyeballs. He sat with his shoulders forward, in some sort of close complicity with himself. Beyond Eddie, Daphne's profile was tilted up correctly, and beyond Daphne comatose Wallace yawned.
Then the news ran through, then the big drama began. This keyed them all up, even the boys. Something distracted Portia's mind from the screen—a cautiousness the far side of Eddie's knee. She held her breath—and failed to hear Eddie breathe. Why did not Eddie breathe? Whatever could be the matter? She felt some tense extra presence, here in their row of six. Wanting to know, she turned to look full at Eddie—who at once countered her look with a bold blank smile glittering from the screen. The smile was diverted to her from someone else. On her side, one of his hands, a cigarette between the two longest fingers, hung down slack: she only saw one hand. Hitching herself up on her seat, she looked at the screen, beseechingly, vowing not to wonder, never to look away.
The screen became threatening with figures, which seemed to make a storm: she heard Clara let out a polite gasp. Proof against whatever more was to