The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [11]
When the door shut, St. Quentin said: "Well, we might do better than that. You did not do well, Anna—raving about those bears."
"You know what made me."
"And how silly you were on the telephone."
Anna put down her cup and giggled. "Well, it is something," she said, "to be written up. It's something that she should find us so interesting. If you come to think of it, we are pretty boring, St. Quentin."
"No, I don't think I'm boring."
"No, I don't either. I mean, I don't think I am. But she does, if you know what I mean, rather bring us up to a mark. She insists on our being something or other—what, I'm not quite sure."
"A couple of cads—What a high forehead she's got."
"All the better to think about you with, my dear."
"All the same, I wonder where she got that distinction. From what you say, her mother was quite a mess."
"Oh, the Quaynes have it: one sees it in Thomas, really," Anna said—then, palpably losing interest, curled up at her end of the sofa. Raising her arms, she shook her sleeves back and admired her own wrists. On one she wore a small soundless diamond watch. St. Quentin, not noticing being not noticed, went on: "High foreheads suggest violence to me.... Was that Eddie, just now?"
"On the telephone? Yes. Why?"
"We know Eddie is silly, but why must you talk to him in such a silly way? Even if Portia were here. 'I'm not here; I never am here.' Tcha!" said St. Quentin. "Not that it's my affair."
"No," Anna said. "I suppose it isn't, is it." She would have said more, had not the door opened and Phyllis sailed in to take away the tea. St. Quentin looked at his handkerchief, frowned at the butter on it and put it away again. They did not pretend to talk. When tea had gone, Anna said: "I really ought to go down and talk to Thomas. Why don't you come too?"
"No, if he'd felt like me," said St. Quentin, without resentment, "he'd have come up here. I shall go very soon."
"Oh, I wanted to ask you—how is your book going?"
"Very nicely indeed, thank you very much," said he promptly, extremely repressively. He added with some return of interest: "What happens when you go down? Do you turn Portia out?"
"Out of her brother's study? How ever could I?"
Thomas Quayne had been standing near the electric fire, holding a tumbler, frowning, trying to shake the day off, when his half-sister came round the study door. Her face—hair back in a snood from the high temples, wide-apart unfocusing dark eyes—seemed to swim towards him over the reading lamp. To come in here at all was an act of intimacy, for this was Thomas's own room. He never studied down here, except in so far as his relaxation was studied, but the room had been called the study to suggest importance and quiet. It had matt grey walls, Picasso-blue curtains, armchairs and a sofa covered in striped ticking, tables for books, book-shelves, and a desk as large as a dinner-table. Having heard a step that was not Anna's, Thomas ground his feet pettishly into the goat's-hair rug.
"Oh, hullo, Portia," he said. "How are you?"
"Anna said you might like me to come down."
"What's Anna doing?"
"Mr. Miller is there. They're not doing anything special, I don't think."
Shaking what was left of the drink round in his glass, Thomas said: "I seem to be back early."
"Are you tired?"
"No. No, I just got home."
Portia stood with her hand on the back of an armchair; she ran one finger along a dark red stripe, then a grey stripe, looking down at the finger attentively. Then, as Thomas said nothing more, she came round the chair and sat down—drew up her knees, nursed her elbows and stared forward into the red concavity of the electric fire. At the other end of the hearth-rug Thomas sat down also, and remained also staring, but staring at nothing, with a concentration of boredom and lassitude. Anyone other than Anna being near him, anyone other than Anna expecting something gave Thomas, at this time of the evening, a sense of pressure he could hardly endure. He liked best, at this time of the evening, to allow his face to drop into blank lines. Someone there made him feel bound to give some account of himself, to put on some expression or other. Actually, between six and seven o'clock he thought or felt very little.