The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [7]
"Mrs. Quayne went up to London the following day, and put the divorce proceedings on foot at once. It is even said that she called and had a kind word with Irene. She sailed back to Dorset all heroic reserve, kept the house on, and stayed there through it all. Mr. Quayne, who detested being abroad, went straight to the south of France, which seemed to him the right place, and months later Irene joined him, just in time for the wedding. Portia was then born, in Mentone. Well, they stayed round about there, and almost never came home. Thomas was sent by his mother to visit them three or four times, but I think they all found it terribly lowering. Mr. Quayne and Irene and Portia always had the back rooms in hotels, or dark flats in villas with no view. Mr. Quayne never got used to the chill at sunset: Thomas saw he would die of this, and he did. A few years before he did die, he and Irene came back for a four months' visit to Bournemouth—I suppose Bournemouth because he knew no one there. Thomas and I went to see them two or three times, but as they had left Portia behind in France, I never met her till she came to live with us here."
"Live? I thought she was only staying."
"Whatever it's called, it comes to the same thing."
"But why was she called Portia?"
Anna, surprised, said: "I don't think we ever asked."
Mr. Quayne's love life had taken them round the lake. Already, the All Out whistles were blowing: an inch of park gate was kept open for them alone, and a keeper waited by it with such impatience that St. Quentin broke into a stately trot. Cars slid lights all round the Outer Circle; lamps blurred the frosty mist from here to the Quaynes' door. Anna swung her muff more light-heartedly: she was less unwilling to go in to tea now.
II
THE front door of 2 Windsor Terrace brushed heavily-over the mat and clicked shut. The breath of raw air that had come in with Portia perished on the steady warmth of the hall. Warmth stood up the shaft of staircase, behind the twin white arches. She slid books from under her elbow on to the console table, dropped her latchkey back into her pocket, and went to the radiator, tugging off her gloves. She just saw her reflection cross the mirror, but the hall was a well of dusk—not a light on yet, either upstairs or down. Everywhere, she heard an unliving echo: she had entered one of those pauses in the life of a house that before tea time seem to go on and on. This was a house without any life above-stairs, a house to which nobody had returned yet, which, through the big windows, darkness and silence had naturally stolen in on and begun to inhabit. Reassured, she stood warming her hands.
Down there in the basement a door opened: there was an intent pause, then steps began to come up. They were cautious—the steps of a servant pleasing herself. Whitish, Matchett's long face and tablet of apron soared steadily up the dark of an arch. She said: "Ah, so you're in?"
"This minute."
"I heard you all right. You were very quick with that door. Likely you left that key outside in the lock again?"
"No, it's here, truly." Portia scooped the key from her pocket.
"You didn't ought to carry that key in your pocket. Not loose like that—and with your money too. One of these days you'll go losing the lot. She gave you a bag, didn't she?"
"I feel such a goat with a bag. I feel so silly."
Matchett said sharply: "All girls your age carry bags."
Vexed ambition for Portia made Matchett click her teeth; her belt creaked as she gave an irate sigh. The dusk seemed to baulk her; they could barely see each other—her hand went up decidedly to the switch between the arches. Immediately, Anna's cut-glass lamp sprang alight over their heads, dropping its complex shadow on the white stone floor. Portia, her hat pushed back from her forehead, stood askance under the light; she and Matchett blinked; there followed one of those pauses in which animals, face to face, appear to communicate.
Matchett stayed with her hand propped on the pillar. She had an austere, ironical straight face, flesh padded smoothly over the strong structure of bone. Her strong springy lustreless hair was centre parted and drawn severely back; she wore no cap. Habitually, she walked with her eyes down, and her vein-marbled eyelids were unconciliating. Her mouth, at this moment stubbornly inexpressive, still had a crease at each end from her last unwilling smile. Her expression, her attitude were held-in and watchful. The monklike impassivity of her features made her big bust curious, out of place; it seemed some sort of structure for the bib of her apron to be fastened up to with gold pins. To her unconscious sense of inner drama, only her hands gave play: one hand seemed to support the fragile Regency pillar, the other was spread fanwise, like a hand in a portrait, over her aproned hip. While she thought, or rather, calculated, her eyes would move slowly under her dropped lids.