The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [28]
For the rest of that day, Anna had felt deeply concerned: she could not get Eddie out of her mind. Then at about six o'clock, Denis rang up to report that Eddie had just moved into his, Denis's, flat, and was in excellent spirits. He had just had a series of articles commissioned; they were the sort of articles he could do on his head. On the strength of this, he had borrowed two pounds from Denis and gone off in a taxi to the Piccadilly tube station left luggage office to bail out his things; he had promised, also, to bring back with him several bottles of drink.
Anna, considerably put out, said: "But there's not room for two of you in that flat."
"Oh, that will be all right, because I'm going to Turkey."
"What on earth do you want to go to Turkey for?" said Anna, still more crossly.
"Oh, various reasons. Eddie can stay on here while I'm away. I think he'll be all right; he seems to have sloughed that girl off."
"What girl?"
"Oh, that girl, you know, that he had at the Monkshoods'. He didn't like her a bit; she was a dull little tart."
"I do think all you college boys are vulgar and dull."
"Well, Anna darling, do see that Eddie isn't lonely. Eddie's such a dear, isn't he?" said Denis. "He's what I always call so volatile." He hung up before Anna could reply.
After two days, in which Anna's annoyance subsided, Denis really did go to Turkey, and Eddie sounded lonely in the flat. Anna, feeling he ought to be someone's responsibility, made him more or less free of Windsor Terrace. She hoped very much to keep him out of mischief. At first, these visits worked very well: Anna had never cared to be the romantic woman, but now Eddie became her first troubadour. He lent himself, gladly and quickly, or appeared to lend himself, to Anna's illusions about living. He did more: by his poetic appreciation he created a small world of art round her. The vanities of which she was too conscious, the honesties to which she compelled herself, even the secrets she had never told him existed inside a crystal they both looked at—not only existed but were beautified. On Anna, he had the inverse of the effect that Portia's diary was to produce later. He appeared to marvel at Anna—and probably did. If he went into black thoughts, he came out again, for her only, with a quick sweet smile. He showed with her, at its best, his farouche grace; the almost unwilling sweetness he had for her used to make her like hearing people, other people, call Eddie cold or recalcitrant.... This phase of sublime flattery, flattery kept delicate by their ironic smiles, lasted about six weeks. Then Eddie made a false move—he attempted to kiss Anna.
He not only attempted to kiss her, but made the still worse blunder of showing he thought this was what she would really like. When she was very angry (because he gave that impression) Eddie, feeling once more betrayed, misled and insulted, lost his grip on the situation at once. Having lost his grip, he then lost his head. Though he did not love Anna, he had honestly tried to repay some of her niceness in a way he thought she could but like. It had been his experience that everyone did. If, in fact, in these last years he had found himself rather ruthlessly knocked about, it was because people had wanted only that: their differing interests in him, however diverse, seemed in the end to lead to that one point. Another thing that had led him to kiss Anna, or try to, was that he took an underlyingly practical view of life, and had no time for relations that came to nothing or for indefinitely polite play. When Anna made this fuss, he thought her a silly woman. He did not know about Pidgeon, or how badly she had come out of all that—if, in fact, she had ever come out of it. He suspected her of making all this fuss for some rather shady reason of her own.
They were both nonplussed, chagrined, but unhappily neither of them was prepared to cut their losses. Up to now, their alliance had been founded on hopes of pleasure: from now on they set out to annoy each other, and could not help playing each other up. Eddie began to dart devouring looks in company, to steal uneasy touches when they were alone. Anna would have been less annoyed by all this had she felt herself completely unmoved by Eddie; as it was, aware of the lack of the slightest passion behind it, she was offended by the pantomime. She countered his acting up with insulting pieces of irony. Her one thought was, to put him back in his place