The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [135]
"Them all. What they make happen—"
He interrupted, austerely: "I thought there was something special; I thought something had happened."
"It has."
"When?"
"It always has the whole time; I see it has never stopped. They were cruel to my father and mother, but the thing must have started even before that. Matchett says—"
"You ought not to listen to servants' talk."
"Why? When she's the person who sees what really happens? They did not think my father and mother wicked; they simply despised them and used to laugh. That made all three of us funny, I see now. I see now that my father wanted me to belong somewhere, because he did not: that was why they have had to have me in London. I hope he does not know that it has turned out. like this. I suppose he and my mother did not know they were funny: they went on feeling upset because they thought they had once done an extraordinary thing (their getting married had been extraordinary) but they still thought life was quite simple for people who did not do extraordinary things. My father often used to explain to me that people did not live the way we did: he said ours was not the right way—though we were all quite happy. He was quite certain ordinary life went on—yes, that was why I was sent to Thomas and Anna. But I see now that it does not: if he and I met again I should have to tell him that there is no ordinary life."
"Aren't you young to judge?"
"I don't see why. I thought when people were young that they were allowed to expect life to be ordinary. It did seem more like that at the seaside, but as soon as Eddie came it got all queer, and I saw even the Heccombs did not believe in it. If they did, why were they so frightened by Eddie? Eddie used to say it was he and I who were mad, but he used to seem to think we were right, too. But today he said we were wrong: he said I gave him the horrors and told me to go away."
"That's it, is it? You two have had a quarrel?"
"He's shown me all my mistakes—but I have not known what to do. He says I've gone on taping him too much. I never could stop asking him why he did some things: you see, I thought we wanted to know each other."
"We all take these knocks—this is your first, I daresay. Look here, my dear child, do you want a handkerchief?"
"I have one somewhere." Automatic, compliant, she pulled a crushed one out of a buttoned pocket, held it up to please him, then, in a hand that went on sketching vague motions, held it crunched up tight. "How can you say 'first'? she said. "This can't happen again."
"Oh, one forgets, you know. One can always patch oneself up."
"No. Is this being grown up?"
"Nonsense! This is no time to say so, and you'll bite my head off, but you'll do better without that young man. Oh, I know I've got no business to chip bits off him, but—"
"But it isn't just Eddie," she said, looking amazed. "The thing was, he was the person I knew. Because of him, I felt safer with all the others. I did not think things could really be so bad. There was Matchett, but she got cold with me about Eddie; she liked me more when she and I were alone: now she and I are not the same as we were. I did not mean to be wrong, but she was always so angry; she wanted me to be angry. But Eddie and I weren't angry: we soothed each other. But I find now, he was with them the whole time, and they knew. I can't go back there now I know."
"One's feelings get hurt; one cannot avoid that. One really can't make a war out of that, you know. A girl like you, Portia, a really good girl, ought not to get her back to the wall. When people seem to give you a bad deal, you've got to ask what sort of deal they may have once got themselves, but you are still young enough
"I don't see what age has to do with it."
He swivelled round on his chair, as wretchedly as a schoolboy, to look, in glum, dumb, nonplussed communication at his own rubbed ebony hairbrushes, his stud-box, his nail-scissors—as though these objects, which had travelled with him, witnessed to his power somehow to get through life, to reach a point when one says, It doesn't really much matter. Unhappy on his bed, in this temporary little stale room, Portia seemed to belong nowhere, not even here. Stripped of that pleasant home that had seemed part of her figure, stripped, too, of his own wishes and hopes, she looked at once harsh and beaten, a refugee