The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [12]
"It's freezing," he unwillingly said at last. "It bites your face off, out there."
"Yes, it nearly bit mine off—and my hands too. I walked all the way home."
"Do you know if Anna went out?"
"I think she walked in the park."
"Mad," said Thomas, with an intimate pleasure. He brought out his cigarette case and looked into it flatly: it was empty. "Would you mind," he said, "passing that cigarette box—No, just there by your elbow—What did you do today?"
"Would you like me to fill your case?"
"Oh, thank you so much: thanks—What did you say you'd been doing?"
"Constitutional history, musical appreciation, French."
"Liking it? I mean, how are you getting on?"
"I do think history is sad."
"More, shady," said Thomas. "Bunk, misfires and graft from the very start. I can't think why we make such a fuss now: we've got no reason to expect anything better."
"But at one time, weren't people braver?"
"Tougher, and they didn't go round in rings. And also there was a future then. You can't get up any pace when you feel you're right at the edge."
Portia looked blank, then said: "I know some French. I know more French than some of the other girls."
"Oh well, that is always something," said Thomas. His voice trailed off—slumped in his chair, across the fire from Portia, he sat slowly turning his head with an uneasy baited look, like an animal being offered something it does not like. Thomas had very dark hair, always brushed very flat, and decidedly-drawn eyebrows, like his father's and Portia's. Like his father's, his expression was obstinate, but with a hint of deep indecision behind. His head and forehead were rather grandly constructed, but at thirty-six his amiable, mobile face hung already loosish over the bony frame. His mouth and eyes expressed something, but not the whole, Of him; they seemed to be cut off from the central part of himself. He had the cloudy, at some moments imperious look of someone conscious of fulfilling his destiny imperfectly; he looked not unlike one of the lesser Emperors. Now, one hand balanced his tumbler on the arm of his chair, the other hung to the floor, as though rather vaguely groping for something lost. There was clearly, at this moment, nothing that Thomas was at all moved to say. The vibration of London was heard through the shuttered and muffled window as though one were half deaf; lamplight bound the room in rather unreal circles; the fire threw its hard glow on the rug. The house held such tense, positive quiet that he and she might have been all alone in it. Portia raised her head, as though listening to this.
She said: "A house is quiet, after a hotel. In a way, I am not used to it yet. In hotels, you keep hearing other people, and in flats you had to be quiet for fear they should hear you. Perhaps that is not so in flats with a big rent, but in our flats we had to be very quiet, or else the landlord jumped out."
"I didn't think the French minded."
"When we took flats, they were in people's villas. Mother liked that, in case something should happen. But lately, we lived in hotels."
"Pretty awful," said Thomas, making an effort.
"It might be if you had ever lived in a house. But Mother and I got fond of it, in some ways. We used to make up stories about the people at dinner, and it was fun to watch people come and go. Sometimes, we got to know some of the other people."
Thomas absently said: "I expect you quite miss all that."
At that, she looked away in such overcome silence that he beat a tattoo on the floor with his hanging-down hand.
He said: "I realise much more than that, of course. It was rotten about your mother—things like that shouldn't happen."
She said with quite surprising control: "It's nice being here with you, though, Thomas."
"I wish we could give you a better time. We could if you were grown-up."
"But by that time perhaps I—"
She stopped, for Thomas was frowning into his empty tumbler, wondering whether to get another drink. Deferring the question, he turned to look doubtfully at the books stacked beside him at elbow-level, at the reviews and magazines balancing on their top. He rejected these after a glance, put his glass down and reached the Evening Standard from the edge of his desk. "Do you mind," he said, "if I just have a look at this?" He frowned at one or two headlines, stopped, put down the paper, went across to his desk and defiantly jabbed a button of the house telephone.