The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [105]
Sunday.
My last Sunday. It's very very fine, hot. The leaves are out on the chestnuts, though not big leaves, and the other trees have a quite frilly look. After church Mrs. Heccomb and I were asked into someone's garden to have a look at the hyacinths. They are just like all sorts of coloured china. In the garden Mrs. Heccomb said to the lady, Next Sunday, alas, we shall not have Portia with us. I thought, next Sunday, I might even see Eddie and yet I still thought, oh I do want to stay here. Now the summer is coming they will do all sorts of things I have not seen them doing yet. In London I do not know what anybody is doing, there are no things I can watch people do. Though things have hurt me since I was left behind here, I would rather stay with the things here than go back to where I do not know what will happen.
On the way back from the hyacinth garden, Mrs. Heccomb said what a great pity it was that I had not been for a row on the canal. She says that is where they row in summer. I said, but don't they row in the sea, and she said no, that is so public, the canal is shadier. She said how would it be if she asked Cecil to row her and me there this afternoon. So we went round by Cecil's house, he was out but his mother said she would certainly ask him to row us.
So this afternoon we did. Cecil rowed, and he showed me how to steer, and Mrs. Heccomb held up a parasol. It was mauve silk, and once or twice when I was not steering I caught weed in my hands. The weed is strong, and it also caught on the oars. So none of us said much while Cecil was rowing, Mrs. Heccomb thought and I looked down in the water or up at the trees. The sun shone almost loudly. A swan came along and Mrs. Heccomb said it would be nesting and might likely be cross, so she folded up her parasol to hit at it, and Cecil said, I had better ship my oars. But the swan did not take any notice of us. Later we passed its nest, with the other one sitting there.
All the others were playing tennis somewhere. When I first got here, Mrs. Heccomb was wearing her fur coat. Now though it is all pale green it is summer. Things change very fast at this time of year, something happens every day. All winter nothing happened at all.
Tonight Mrs. Heccomb is singing in an oratorio. Daphne and Dickie and Clara and Evelyn and Wallace and Charlie and Cecil are all downstairs playing rummy because she is out. But Mrs. Heccomb made me go to bed early, because I caught a headache on the canal.
Monday.
Mrs. Heccomb is tired after the oratorio, and Daphne and Dickie do not like fine Mondays. Now I shall go out and lie on the beach.
Tuesday.
I have not yet had the letter Eddie said he would write, but that must be because I am coming back. This is a new place this week, this is a place in summer. The esplanade smells all over of hot tar. But they all say that of course this will not last.
Wednesday.
Tomorrow I shall be going. Because this is my last whole day, Mrs. Heccomb and Cecil's mother are going to take me to see a ruin. We are to pack our tea and go in a motor bus.
Clara is going to drive me in her car to the Junction tomorrow, to save the having to change. Clara says she feels really upset. Because this will be my last evening, Dickie and Clara and Cecil are going to take me to the Southstone rink, so's I can watch them skate.
I cannot say anything about going away. I cannot say anything even in this diary. Perhaps it is better not to say anything ever. I must try not to say anything more to Eddie, when I have said things it has always been a mistake. Now we must start to take the bus for the ruin.
Thursday.
I am back here, in London. They won't be back till tomorrow.
THE DEVIL
I
THOMAS and Anna would not be back from abroad till Friday afternoon.
Everything was ready for them to come back and live. That Friday morning, 2 Windsor Terrace was lanced through by dazzling spokes of sun, which moved unseen, hotly, over the waxed floors. Vacantly overlooking the bright lake, chestnuts in leaf, the house offered that ideal mould for living into which life so seldom pours itself. The clocks, set and wound, ticked the hours away in immaculate emptiness. Portia