The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [48]
Portia's life, up to now, had been all subtle gentle compliance, but she had been compliant without pity. Now she saw with pity, but without reproaching herself, all the sacrificed people—Major Brutt, Lilian, Matchett, even Anna—that she had stepped over to meet Eddie. And she knew that there would be more of this, for sacrifice is not in a single act. Windsor Terrace would not do well at her hands, and in this there was no question of justice: no outside people deserve the bad deal they get from love. Even Anna had shown her a sort of immoral kindness, and, however much Matchett’s love had been Matchett's unburdening, it had been love: one must desert that too.
For Eddie, Portia's love seemed to refute the accusations that had been brought against him for years, and the accusations he had brought against himself. He had not yet told her of half the indignation he felt. Older than she was, he had for longer suffered the guilty plausibility of the world. He had felt, not so much that he was in the right as that he was inevitable. He had gone wrong through dealing with other people in terms that he found later were not their own. However kind seemed the bosom he chose to lean his head on, he had found himself subject to preposterous rulings even there—and this had soon made the bosom vile for him. With love, a sort of maiden virtue of spirit stood outside his calamitous love affairs—the automatic quick touches he gave people (endearments, smiles to match smiles, the meaning-unmeaning use of his eyes) were his offensive-defensive, in defence of something they must not touch. His pretty ways had almost lost correspondence with appetite; his body was losing its naiveté. His real naiveté stayed in the withheld part of him, and hoped for honour and peace. Though he felt cut apart from his father and mother, in one sense he had never left home. He hated Anna, in so far as he did hate Anna, because he saw in her eyes a perpetual "What next?" Himself, he saw no Next, but a continuous Now.
He looked down at Portia's hand and said: "What a fat diary!"
Lifting her hand, she uncovered the black-backed book. "It's more than half full," she said, "already."
"When that's done, you're going to start another?"
"Oh yes, I think so: things are always happening."
"But suppose you stopped minding whether they did?"
"There would always be lunch and lessons and dinner. There have been days that were simply that already, but in that case I always leave a blank page."
"Do you think they were worth a whole blank page?"
"Oh yes, because they were days, after all."
Eddie picked the diary up and weighed it between his hands. "And this is your thoughts, too?" he said.
"Some. But you make me wonder if I might stop thinking."
"No, I like you to think. If you stopped, I should feel as though my watch had stopped in the night.... Which of your thoughts are these?"
"My more particular ones."
"Darling, I love you to want me to take it home.... But supposing I went and left it in a bus?"
"It's got my name and address, inside: it would probably come back. But perhaps, though, you could put it in your pocket?" They squeezed the note-book into his overcoat pocket. "As a matter of fact," she said, "now there is you, I may not want my diary so much."
"But we shan't often meet."
"I could keep what I think for you."
"No, write it down, then show me. I like thoughts when they were thought."
"But, in a way, that would not be quite the same thing. I mean, it would alter my diary. Up to now, it's been written just for itself. If I'm to keep on writing the same way, I shall have to imagine you do not exist."
"I don't make you different."
"You make me not alone. Being that was part of my diary. When I first came to London, I was the only person in the world."
"Look—what will you write in while I've got this book? Shall we go to Smith's and buy you another?"
"Smith's near here is shut on Saturday afternoon. I don't think, anyhow, I shall write about today."
"No, don't; you're perfectly right. I don't want you to write about you and me. In fact you must never write about me at all. Will you promise me you will never do that?"