The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [59]
Mrs. Heccomb smiled at the taxi and she and Portia got in.
The taxi drove down a long curve into Seale, past white gates of villas with mysterious gardens in which an occasional thrush sang. "That would be our way really," said Mrs. Heccomb, nodding left when they reached the foot of the hill. "But today we must go the other, because I have to shop. I do not often have a taxi to shop from, and it is quite a temptation, I must say. Dear Anna begged me to have the taxi up to the station, but I said no, that the walk would be good for me. But I said I might take the taxi the rather longer way home, in order to do my shopping."
The taxi, which felt narrow, closed everything in on them, and Portia now saw only shop windows—the High Street shop windows. But what shops!—though all were very small they all looked lively, expectant, tempting, crowded, gay. She saw numbers of cake shops, antique shops, gift shops, flower shops, fancy chemists and fancy stationers. Mrs. Heccomb, holding her basket ready, wore a keyed-up but entirely happy air.
The shopping basket was soon full, so one began to pile parcels on the taxi seats. Every time she came back to the taxi, Mrs. Heccomb said to Portia: "I do hope you are not wanting your tea?" By the Town Hall clock it was now twenty past five. A man carried out to them a roll of matting, which he propped upright opposite Portia's feet. "I am so glad to have this," said Mrs. Heccomb.
"I ordered it last week, but it was not in till today.... Now I must just go to the end"—by the end she meant the post office, which was at the end of the High Street—"and send Anna that telegram."
"Oh?"
"To say you've arrived safely."
"I'm sure she won't be worried."
Mrs. Heccomb looked distressed. "But you have never been away from her before. One would not like her to go abroad with anything on her mind." Her back view vanished through the post office door. When she came out, she found that she had forgotten something right down the other end of the town. "After all," she said, "that will bring us back where we started. So we can go back the shorter way, after all."
Portia saw that all this must be in her honour. It made her sad to think how Matchett would despise Mrs. Heccomb's diving and ducking ways, like a nesting waterfowl's. Matchett would ask why all this had not been seen to before. But Irene would have been happy with Mrs. Heccomb, and would have entered into her hopes and fears. The taxi crossed a canal bridge, heading towards the sea across perfectly flat fields that cut off the sea-front from the town. The sea-line appeared between high battered rows of houses, with red bungalows dotted in the gaps. These were all raised above the inland level, along a dyke that kept the sea in its place.
The taxi turned and crawled along the back of the dyke; Mrs. Heccomb brisked up and began to muster her parcels. From here, the chipped stucco backs of the terraces looked higher than anything seen in London. The unkempt lawns and tamarisks at their foot, the lonely whoosh of the sea away behind them made them more mysterious and forbidding. Gaunt rusted pipes ran down between their windows, most of which were blank with white cotton blinds. These fields on their north side were more grey than the sea. That terror of buildings falling that one loses in London returned to Portia. "Who lives there?" she said, nodding up nervously.
"No one, dear; those are only lodging houses."
Mrs. Heccomb tapped on the glass, and the taxi, which already intended stopping, stopped dead with a satirical jerk. They got out; Portia carried the parcels Mrs. Heccomb could not manage; the taxi-man followed with the suitcases. They all three scrabbled up a steep shingly incline and found themselves alongside the butt end of a terrace. Mrs. Heccomb showed Portia the esplanade. The sea heaved; an oblique wind lifted her hat. Shingle rolled up in red waves to the brim of the asphalt; there was an energetic and briny smell. Two steamers moved slowly along the horizon, but there was not a soul on the esplanade. "I do hope you will like it," said Mrs. Heccomb. "I do hope you can manage those parcels: can you? There is no road to our gate