The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [86]
Eddie would be overpowered by this, besides not being glad to pay for the taxi—so it was arranged that the carrier should bring down his bag. Portia walked up the station hill to meet him. She heard the train whistle away back in the woods; then it whistled again, then slowly came round the curve. When Eddie had got out they walked to the parapet and looked over at the view. Then they started downhill together. This was not like the afternoon when she had arrived herself, for a week more of spring had already sweetened the air.
Eddie had been surprised by the view from the parapet: he had had no idea Seale was so far from the sea.
"Oh yes, it is quite a way," she said happily.
"But I thought it was once a port."
"It was, but the sea ran back."
"Did it really, darling: just fancy!" Catching at Portia's wrist, Eddie swung it twice in a gay methodical way, as, with the godlike step of people walking downhill, they went down the station incline. All at once he dropped her wrist and began to feel in his pockets. "Oh God," he said, "I forgot to post that letter."
"Oh—an important letter?"
"It had to get there tonight. It was to someone I put off by telegram."
"I really do thank you for coming, Eddie!"
Eddie smiled in a brilliant but rather automatic and worried way. "I invented all sorts of things. It had to get there tonight. You don't know how touchy people are."
"Couldn't we post it now?"
"The postmark.... However, everyone hates me already. Anyway, London seems beautifully far away. Where's the next post box, darling?"
At the idea of this desperate simplification, Eddie's face cleared. He no longer frowned at the letter but, crossing the road, plunged it cheerfully into the corner letter box. Portia, watching him from across the road, had a moment in which to realise he would be back beside her; in fact, they were together again. Eddie came back and said: "Oh, you've tied your hair ribbon in a bow at the top. And you are still wearing your woolly gloves." Taking her hand in his, he scrunched the fingers inside her glove together. "Sweet," he said. "Like a nest of little weak mice."
They lagged along, all down the turning road. Eddie read aloud the names on the white gates of all the villas—these gates were streaked with green drips from trees; the houses behind them looked out through evergreens. The sea was, for the moment, out of view: a powerful inland silence, tinted grey by the hour, filled the station road. Seale was out of sight behind the line of the hill: its smoke went up behind garden conifers. Later, they heard a stream in a sort of gulch. All this combined to make Eddie exclaim: "Darling, I do call this an unreal place!"
"Wait till we get back to tea."
"But where on earth is Waikiki?"
"Oh, Eddie, I told you—it's by the sea."
"Is Mrs. Heccomb really very excited?"
"Yes, very excited—though I must say, it does not take much to excite her. But even Dickie said this morning at breakfast that he supposed he would bump into you tonight."
"And Daphne—is she excited?"
"I'm sure she really is. But she's afraid you're ritzy. You must show her you're not."
"I'm so glad I came," said Eddie, quickening his step.
At Waikiki, Mrs. Heccomb's deportment was not, for the first minute, equal to the occasion. She looked twice at Eddie and said: "Oh..." Then she rallied and said how pleased to see him she was. Holding her hand out, she nervously circumscribed the tea table,' still fixing her eyes on the silhouette of Eddie as though trying to focus an apparition. When they all sat down to tea, her own back was to the light and she had Eddie in less deceptive view. Each time he spoke, her eyes went to his forehead, to the point where his hair sprang back in its fine spirited waves. In^pauses that could but occur in the talk, Portia could almost hear Mrs. Heccomb's ideas, like chairs before a party, being rolled about and rapidly rearranged. The tea was bountiful, but so completely distracted was Mrs. Heccomb that Portia had to circulate the cakes. It occurred to her to wonder who would pay for them, and whether she had done wrong, on account of Eddie, in tempting Waikiki to this extra expense.