The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [144]
"Clearly not," said St. Quentin. "Look where we all three are. Utterly disabused, and yet we can't deride anything. This evening the pure in heart have simply got us on toast. And look at the fun she has—she lives in a world of heroes. Who are we to be sure they're as phony as we all think? If the world's really a stage, there must be some big parts. All she asks is to walk on at the same time. And how right she is really—failing the big character, better (at least, arguably) the big flop than the small neat man who has more or less come off. Not that there is, really, one neat unhaunted man. I swear that each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant—impossible socially, but full-scale—and that it's the knockings and batterings we sometimes hear in each other that keeps our intercourse from utter banality. Portia hears these the whole time; in fact she hears nothing else. Can we wonder she looks so goofy most of the time?"
"I suppose not. But how are we to get her home?"
St. Quentin said: "How would Thomas feel if he were his own sister?"
"I should feel I'd been born in a mare's nest. I should want to get out and stay out. At the same time, I should thank God I was a woman and did not have to put up one particular kind of show."
"Yes," Anna said, "but that's only because you feel that being a man has run you in for so much. Your lack of gusto's your particular thing. If you were Portia, let off being a man, you would find something else to string yourself up about. But that's not what St. Quentin is getting at. The point is, if you were Portia this evening, what would be the only thing you could bear to have us do?"
"Something quite obvious. Something with no fuss."
"But my dear Thomas, in our relations with her nothing has ever seemed to be obvious. It's been trial and error right from the start."
"Well, I should like to be called for and taken away by someone who would not make any high class fuss. They could be as cross as they liked if they'd cut the analysis." Thomas stopped and looked sternly at Anna. "She's not fetched from places nearly enough," he said. "When she is fetched, who generally fetches her?"
"Matchett."
"Matchett?" St. Quentin said. "You mean Matchett your housemaid? Are they on good terms?"
"Yes, they're on very good terms. When I am out for tea I hear they have tea together, and when they think I am out say good-night. They say a good deal more—but what I have no idea. Yes, I have though: they talk about the past."
"The past?" said Thomas. "What do you mean? Why?"
"Their great mutual past—your father, naturally."
"What makes you think that?"
"Their being so knit up. They sometimes look like each other. What other subject—except of course, love—gives people that sort of obsessed look? Talk like that is one climax the whole time. It's a trance; it's a vice; it's a sort of complete world. Portia may have defaulted lately because of Eddie. But Matchett will never let that drop; it's her raison d'être, apart from the furniture. And she is least likely of all to let it drop with Portia about the house. Portia's coming here was a consummation, you see."
"Consummation my aunt. Has this really been going on? If I'd had any idea, I'd have fired Matchett at once."
"You know quite well Matchett stays with the furniture. No, you inherited the whole bag of tricks. Matchett thinks the world of your father. Why shouldn't: Portia hear about her father from someone who sees him as someone, not just as a poor ignominious old man?"
"I don't think you need say that."
"I've never said it before.... Yes, St. Quentin: it's Matchett she talks to chiefly."
"Matchett—is that the woman with the big stony apron, who backs to the wall when I pass like a caryatid? She's generally on the stairs."
"Yes, she's generally up and down.... Why not Matchett, after all?"
"It's 'why not' now, then, not 'why'? Well, how would you feel, Anna?"
"If I were Portia? Contempt for the pack of us, who muddled our own lives, then stopped me from living mine. Boredom, oh such boredom, with a sort of secret society about nothing, keeping on making little signs to each other. Utter lack of desire to know what it was about. Wish that someone outside would blow a whistle and make the whole thing stop. Wish to have my own innings. Contempt for married people, keeping on playing up. Contempt for unmarried people, looking cautious and touchy. Frantic, frantic desire to be handled with feeling, and, at the same time, to be let alone. Wish to be asked how I felt, great wish to be taken for granted