The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [44]
"What a cynic Anna is!"
"I do think, Eddie, you are exaggerating."
"I've got no sense of proportion, thank God. That man palpably loathed me." Eddie stopped and blew out his lower lip. "Oh dear," said Portia, "I quite wish we hadn't met him."
"Well, I told you we would if we went back. You know that house is a perfect web."
"But you said you wanted my diary."
They were having tea, or rather their tea was ordered, at Madame Tussaud's. Portia, who had not been here before, had been disappointed to find all the waitresses real: there were no deceptions of any kind—all the waxworks were in some other part. He and she sat side by side at a long table intended for a party of four or six. Her diary, fetched from Windsor Terrace, lay still untouched between their elbows, with a strong indiarubber band round it. She said: "How do you mean that Anna is a cynic?"
"She has depraved reasons for doing the nicest things. However, that doesn't matter to me."
"If it really doesn't, why does it upset you?"
"After all, darling, she is a human soul. And her character did upset me, at one time. I'm several degrees worse since I started to know her. I wish I had met you sooner."
"Worse how? Do you think you are wicked?"
Eddie, leaning a little back from the table, looked all round the restaurant, at the lights, at the other tables, at the mirrors, considering the question seriously, as though she had asked him whether he felt ill. Then he returned his eyes closely to Portia's face, and said with an almost radiant smile: "Yes."
"In what way?"
But a waitress came with a tray and put down the teapot, the hot-water jug, a dish of crumpets, a plate of fancy cakes. By the time she had done, the moment had gone by. Eddie raised a lid and stared at the crumpets. "Why on earth," he said, "didn't she bring salt?"
"Wave to her and ask her—Shall I really pour out?... But, Eddie, I can't see you are wicked. Wicked in what way?"
"Well, what do you hate about me?"
"I don't think I—"
"Try the other way round—what do you like least?"
She thought for a moment, then said: "The way you keep making faces for no particular reason."
"I do that when I wish I had no face. I can't bear people getting a line on me."
"But it attracts attention. Naturally people notice."
"All the same, it throws them on the wrong track. My goodness, they think, he's going to have a nerve-storm; he may be really going to have a fit. That excites them, and they start to play up themselves. So then that gives me time to collect myself, till quite soon I feel like ice."
"I see—but—"
"No, you see the fact is, darling, people do rattle me—You do see?"
"Yes, I do."
"It's vitally important that you should. In a way, I believe I behave worse with other people, Anna for instance, when you're there, because I always feel you will know why, and to feel that rather gins me up. You must never make me feel you don't understand."
"What would happen if I did make you feel I didn't?"
Eddie said: "I should stay unreal for ever." He rolled her gloves up into a tight ball, and squeezed them in the palm of one hand. Then he looked in horror past the brim of her hat. She turned her head to see what he saw, and they both saw themselves in a mirror.
"I feel I shall always understand what you feel. Does it matter if I don't sometimes understand what you say?"
"Not in the least, darling," said Eddie briskly. "You see, there is really nothing intellectual between us. In fact, I don't know why I talk to you at all. In many ways I should so much rather not."
"But we have to do something."
"I feel it is waste of you. You puzzle so much, with your dear little goofy face. Is it simply you've never met anybody like me?"
"But you said there wasn't anybody like you."
"But there are lots of people who imitate what I really am. I suppose you haven't met any of them, either—Look, darling, do pour out: the tea's getting cold."
"I hope I shall do it well," said Portia, grasping the metal teapot handle in her handkerchief.
"Oh Portia, has no one really taken you out to tea before?"
"Not by myself."