The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [35]
The movement of her shoulders on the pillow could be heard; her shiver came through the bed to Matchett's body. Matchett's eyes pried down at her through the dark: inexorably listening to Portia's unhappy breaths she seemed to wait until her pity was glutted. Then—"Why goodness," she said softly.. "Why do you want to start breaking your heart? If that wasn't finished, I wouldn't go on about it. No doubt I'm wrong, but you do keep on at me, asking. You didn't ought to ask if you're going to work up so. Now you put it out of your head, like a good girl, and go right off to sleep." She shifted her weight from her hand, groped over Portia, found her wet wrists, uncrossed them. "Goodness," she said, "whatever good does that do?" All the same, the question was partly rhetorical: Matchett felt that something had been appeased. Having smoothed the top of the sheet, she arranged Portia's hands on it like a pair of ornaments: she stayed leaning low enough to keep guard on them. She made a long sibilant sound, somewhere right up in space, like swans flying across a high sky. Then this stopped and she suggested: "Like me to turn your pillow?"
"No," said Portia unexpectedly quickly, then added: "But don't go."
"You like it turned for you, don't you? However—"
"Ought we both to forget?"
"Oh, you'll forget when you've got more to remember. All the same, you'd better not to have asked."
"I just asked about the day I was born."
"Well, the one thing leads to the other. It all has to come back."
"Except for you and me, nobody cares."
"No, there's no past in this house."
"Then what makes them so jumpy?"
"They'd rather no past—not have the past, that is to say. No wonder they don't rightly know what they're doing. Those without memories don't know what is what."
"Is that why you tell me this?"
"I'd likely do better not to. I never was one to talk, and I'm not one to break a habit. What I see I see, but I keep myself to myself. I have my work to get on with. For all that, you can't but notice, and I'm not a forgetter. It all goes to make something, I daresay. But there's no end to what's been said, and I'll be a party to nothing. I was born with my mouth shut: those with their mouths open do nothing but start trouble and catch flies. What I am asked, I'll answer—that's always been sufficient."
"Does no one but me ask you?"
"They know better," said Matchett. Satisfied that the fold of Portia's upper sheet wanted no more attention, she drew back and once more propped herself on her hand. "What's not said keeps," she went on. "And when it's been keeping some time it gets what not many would dare to hear. Oh, it wasn't quite welcome to Mr. Thomas when I first came to this house after his mother dying, though he did speak civil and pass it off so well. 'Why, Matchett,' he said, 'this feels like home again.' Mrs. Thomas took it quite easy; it was the work she wanted and she knew I was a worker. The things that came to them here from Mrs. Quayne's were accustomed to the best care; Mrs. Thomas knew they must have it. Oh, it is lovely furniture, and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas see the value of it. Valuables were the one thing Mrs. Quayne and Mrs. Thomas saw eye to eye about. You can see ten foot into my polish, and Mrs. Thomas likes the look of a thing."
"But what made you come here?"
"It seemed to me proper. I hadn't the heart, either, to let that furniture go: I wouldn't have known myself. It was that that kept me at Mrs. Quayne's. I was sorry to leave those marbles I'd got so nice, but those had to stop and I put them out of my mind."