The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [78]
Frantic smiles at parties, overtures that have desperation behind them, miasmic reaches of talk with the lost bore, short cuts to approach through staring, squeezing or kissing all indicate that one cannot live alone. Not only is there no question of solitude, but in the long run we may not choose our company. The attempt at Windsor Terrace to combat this may have been what made that house so queasy and cold. That mistaken approach to life—of which at intervals they were all conscious, from Thomas Quayne down to the cook—produced the tensions and hitches of an unpromising love affair. Each person at Windsor Terrace lived impaled upon a private obsession, however slight. The telephone, the door bell, the postman's knock were threatening intimations, though still far off. Crossing that springy door mat, the outside person suffered a sea change. In fact, something edited life in the Quaynes' house—the action of some sort of brake or deterrent was evident in the behaviour of such people as Eddie. At the same time, no one seemed clear quite what was being discarded, or whether anything vital was being let slip away. If Matchett were feared, if she seemed to threaten the house, it was because she seemed most likely to put her thumb on the thing.
The uneditedness of life here at Waikiki made for behaviour that was pushing and frank. Nothing set itself up here but the naïvest propriety—that made Daphne shout but not swear, that kept Dickie so stern and modest, that had kept even Mr. Bursely's hand, at yesterday evening's party, some inches above the bow on Daphne's behind. Propriety is no serious check to nature—in fact, nature banks itself up behind it—thus, eyes constantly bulged and skins changed colour with immediate unsubtle impulses. Coming from Windsor Terrace, Portia found at Waikiki the upright rudeness of the primitive state—than which nothing is more rigidly ruled. The tremble felt through the house when a door banged or someone came hurriedly downstairs, the noises made by the plumbing, Mrs. Heccomb's prodigality with half crowns and shillings, the many sensory hints that Doris was human and did not function in a void of her own—all these made Waikiki the fount of spontaneous living. Life here seemed to be at its highest voltage, and Portia stood to marvel at Daphne and Dickie as she might have marvelled at dynamos. At nights, she thought of all that force contained in those single beds in the other rooms.
In terms of this free living, she now saw, or re-saw, not only the people she met at Waikiki, but everyone she had known. The few large figures she saw here represented society with an alarming fairness, an adequacy that she could not deny. In them, she was forced to see every motive and passion—for motives and passions are alarmingly few. Any likeness between Mr. Bursely and Eddie her love did still hope to reject. All the same, something asked her, or forced her to ask herself, whether, last night on the settee, it had not been Eddie that emerged from the bush.
Portia felt her sixpence for the collection between the palm of her right hand and the palm of her glove. The slight tickling, and the milled pressure of the new coin's edge, when she closed her hand, recalled her to where she was—in Seale church, in a congregation of stalwart elderly men and of women in brown, grey, navy or violet, with collars of inexpensive fur. The sun, slanting moltenly in at the south windows, laid a dusty nimbus over the furs, and printed cheeks with the colours of stained glass. Turning her head a little, she perceived people with whom she had been to tea. Above the confident congregation the church rose to its kind inscrutable height. Tilting her chin up, she studied the east window and its glittering tale: she had joined the sermon late and just got the gist of it—though it was after Easter, one must not be more callous than one had been in Lent.
Fanned on down the aisle by blasts from the organ, the choir disappeared in the vestry under the tower. Mrs. Heccomb, as the procession passed, cast some appraising looks at the surplices. Brasso and the devotion of her fellow ladies had given a blond shine to the processional cross. As the last chords sounded, discreet smiles were exchanged across the aisle, and the congregation jumbled happily out. Mrs. Heccomb was a great porch talker, and it was therefore in quite a knot of friends that she and Portia at last started downhill. Daphne and Dickie were not great church-goers: the Sunday after a party they always voted against it. Back at Waikiki the lounge, restored to order, was full of sun; Daphne and Dickie read the Sunday papers in a very strong smell of roasting meat. They had not been down at twenty minutes past ten, when Mrs. Heccomb and Portia had started for church. Outside, gulls skimmed in the rather cold air, and Mrs. Heccomb quickly shut the glass door.