The Death of the Heart (24 page)

“Well after all, Clara’s coming.”

“What does she want to come for? This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Well I really must say—I
must
say, reallyl You asked her yourself, Dickie: you did I You said why not drop in Saturday, and of course she jumped at it. I daresay she’s cutting some other date.”

“Well, I don’t know what dates all your friends have, but I know I never asked Clara.
Would
I ask Clara when the Montreal Eagles are here?”

“Which eagles, dear?” said Mrs. Heccomb.

“They’re at the Icedrome tonight—as Daphne has known for weeks.”

“Well, I don’t care where your beastly old eagles are. All I know is that you did ask Clara. And you needn’t go on as if
I
knew what dates Clara had. I should have thought that was your business, not mine.”

“Oh, would you really?” said Dickie, giving his sister a brassy stare. “And what grounds, may I ask, have you for saying that?”

“Well, she’s only round when you’re here,” said Daphne, weakening slightly.

“Where the girl may choose to be is her own business, I take it.”

“Then don’t you go making out she’s a friend of mine.”

“Oh, all right, all right, all right, you didn’t ask her, I did.
I
didn’t want to see the Montreal Eagles, oh
no
. Must Cecil come?”

“I just slipped in and asked him,” said Mrs. Heccomb. “I thought you two might forget, and he would have been so hurt.”

Dickie said: “I don’t see why we have got to have Cecil.”

“I do,” said Daphne. “Mumsie and I thought he would do for Portia.”

“Oh, Daphne, that was your idea, you know.”

For the first time, Dickie looked full at Portia with his commanding stag’s eyes. “You will find Cecil a bit cissie,” he said.

“Oh Dickie, he’s not.”

“Oh, I like Cecil all right, but I can’t stand those cissie pullovers.”

“Well, you wear pullovers.”

“I don’t wear cissie pullovers.”

“Oh, by the way, Dickie, you ought to see Doris bounce when she hears that bell.”

“Oh, so it rings now, does it?”

“No thanks to you, either.”

“Dickie’s so busy, dear—Look, we ought to go up and dress now. And Doris is in there wanting to clear.”

“Then for goodness’ sake why doesn’t she? Make her open the windows—we don’t want the whole place smelling of veal and ham.”

The three ladies went upstairs, Mrs. Heccomb taking her last cup of coffee with her. Dickie, after an interval for reflection, could be heard going up to change his appearance, too. Now, all over the bedroom floor of Waikiki, chests of drawers were banged open, taps were run. A black night wind was up, and Waikiki breasted it steadily, straining like a liner: every fixture rattled. This all went to heighten a pre-party tensity of the nerves. Portia wormed her way into her black velvet, which, from hanging only behind a curtain, had taken on a briny dampness inside: the velvet clung to her skin above her chemise top. She combed back her hair and put on the red snood—so tight that it drew the ends of her eyebrows up. With eyes too much dilated to see, she looked past herself in the mirror.

She was first downstairs and, squatting on the tiled kerb in front of the fire, heard the chimney roar. With arms raised from the elbows, like an Egyptian, she turned and toasted her body, feeling the clammy velvet slowly unstick from between her shoulder blades.

This was to be her first party. Tonight, the ceiling rose higher, the lounge extended tense and mysterious. Columns of translucent tawny shadow stood between the orange shades of the lamps. The gramophone stood open, a record on it, the arm with the needle bent back like an arm ready to strike. Doris not seeing Portia, Doris elate and ghostly in a large winged cap passed through the lounge with trays. Out there at sea they might take this house for another lighted ship—and soon this magnetic room would be drawing people down the dark esplanade. Portia saw her partners with no faces: whoever she danced with, it would always be Eddie.

Dickie came down in a dark blue pinstriped suit, and asked if she’d like to help him roll the carpet back. They had got as far as rolling back the settee when a sort of batlike fumbling was heard at the glass door, and Dickie 
stopped with a grunt to let in Cecil.

“I say,” Cecil said, “I’m afraid I’ve come rather early.”

“Well, you have rather in one way. However, give a hand with the carpet. As usual, everything has been left to me—Oh, by the way, this is Mr. Cecil Bowers, Miss Portia Quayne … By the way, Cecil,” said Dickie, rather more sternly, “the bell does ring now.”

“Oh? Sorry. It didn’t use to.”

“Well, make a note that it does.”

“Dickie, who’s
that
?” Daphne wailed over the banisters.

“Only Cecil. He’s rolling up the carpet.”

When Cecil had finished rolling up the carpet he straightened his tie and went off to wash his hands. Portia found no special fault with his appearance, though it was certainly not as manly as Dickie’s. When he came back, he was beginning to say to her: “I understand that you have just come from London,” when Daphne appeared and made him carry a tray.

“Now, Cecil,” she said, “there’s no time to stand there chatting.” Her manner made it quite clear that if Cecil
were
for Portia, he would come on to her as one of Daphne’s discards. Daphne wore a crêpe-de-chine dress, cut clinging into the thighs and draped lusciously elsewhere: on it poppies, roses, nasturtiums flowered away, only slightly blurred by the folds. In her high-heeled emerald shoes, she stepped higher than ever. When the bell rang, seeming to tweak at the whole house, and Dickie went to let some more people in, Daphne sent Cecil and Portia into the diningroom to stick the flags on the sandwiches, and to count the glasses for cider-cup.

They could only find what was inside the sandwiches by turning up the corners to have a look. Even so, they could not be sure which kind of fish paste was which: Cecil, having made sure they were alone in the room, tasted a crumb of each with his finger-tip. “Not quite in order,” he said, “but
que voulez vous
?”

“No one will know,” said Portia, standing behind him.

The complicity set up between her and Cecil made them sit down on two chairs, when they had planted the flags, and look at each other with interest. There was a hum in the lounge, and no one was missing them. “These do’s of Daphne’s and Dickie’s are very jolly,” said Cecil.

“Do they often have them?”

“Quite frequently. They are always on Saturdays. They always seem to go with rather a swing. But I daresay this may seem quiet after London?”

“It doesn’t really. Do you often go to London?”

“Well, I do—when I don’t slip over to France.”

“Oh, do you slip over to France?”

“Yes, I must say I often do. You may think me mad, too: everyone here does. Everyone here behaves as though France did not exist. ‘What is that you see over there?’ I sometimes say to them, when it’s a clear day. They say, ‘Oh, that’s France.’ But it makes no impression on them. I often go to Boulogne on a day trip.”

“All by yourself?”

“Well, I have been by myself, and also I often go with a really wonderfully sporting aunt of mine. And once or twice I have been with another fellow.”

“And what do you do?”

“Oh, I principally walk about. In spite of being so easy to get at, Boulogne is really wonderfully French, you know. I doubt if Paris itself could be much Frencher. No, I haven’t yet been to Paris: what I always feel is, supposing it rather disappointed me… . ‘Oh, hullo,’ all those others always say to me, when I haven’t shown up at the Pav or the Icedrome or the Palais, ‘you’ve been abroad again!’ What conclusions they come to I’ve no idea,” said Cecil consciously, looking down his nose. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he went on, “but so few people care if they don’t enlarge their ideas. But I always like to enlarge mine.”

“Oh, so do I.” She looked timidly at Cecil, then said: “Lately, my ideas have enlarged a lot.”

“I thought they must have,” said Cecil. “You gave me just that impression. That is why I am talking like this to you.”

“Some of my ideas get enlarged almost before I have them.”

“Yes, that was just what I felt. Usually, I am a bit reserved… . Do you get on well with Dickie?”

“Well, when you came he and I were just going to roll the carpet up.”

“I hope I was not tactless.”

“Oh no.”

“Dickie’s extremely popular,” Cecil said with a mixture of gloom and pride. “I should say he was a born leader of men. I expect you find Daphne awfully fascinating?”

“Well, she is out most of the day.”

“Daphne,” said Cecil, a shade reproachfully, “is one of the most popular girls I have ever met. I don’t suppose one will get near her the whole evening.”

“Oh dear! Couldn’t you try?”

“To tell you the truth,” said Cecil, “I am not doing so badly where I am.”

At this interesting point Mrs. Heccomb, in a claret lace dress that could not have come from Anna, looked anxiously into the diningroom. “Oh, here you are, dear,” she said. “I was wondering. Good evening, Cecil, I’m so glad you could come. I think they are thinking of dancing quite soon now.”

Portia and Cecil rose and trailed to the door. In the lounge, an uncertain silence told them that the party’s first impetus had lapsed. About a dozen people leaned round the walls, sat rather stonily on the settee-back or crouched on the roll of carpet. They were all looking passively at Daphne, willing though not keen to fall in with her next plan. Mrs. Heccomb may have been right when she said they
were
thinking of dancing—if they were thinking, no doubt it was about that. Daphne gave them one or two hostile looks—this was what she called sticking about. She turned, and with Mr. Bursely beside her, stickily fingering records, began to hover over the gramophone.

But there was a deadlock here, for she would not start the gramophone till they had got up, and they would not get up till she had started the gramophone. Dickie stood by the mantelpiece with Clara, clearly feeling that he had done enough. His manner rather said: “Now if we had gone to the Eagles, this would not have happened.” Clara was a smallish girl with crimped platinum hair, a long nose, a short neck and the subservient expression of a good white mouse. Round her neck she wore a frill of white organdie roses, which made her head look as though it were on a tray. Her manner of looking up made Dickie look still more virile. Any conversation they did seem to be having seemed to be due to Clara’s tenacity.

Portia’s appearing in the doorway with Cecil released some inside spring in Daphne immediately. No doubt she thought of Anna—stung to life, she let off the gramophone, banged the needle down, and fox-trotted on to the parquet with Mr. Bursely. Four or five other couples then rose and faced each other to dance. Portia wondered if Cecil would ask her—so far, they had been on such purely mental terms. While she wondered, Dickie stepped from Clara’s side, impressively crossed the room and stood over Portia, impassive. “Shall we?” he said.

She began to experience the sensation of being firmly trotted backwards and forwards, and at each corner slowly spun like a top. Looking up, she saw Dickie wear the expression many people wear when they drive a car. Dickie controlled her by the pressure of a thumb under her shoulder blade; he supported her wrist between his other thumb and a forefinger—when another couple approached he would double her arm up, like someone shutting a penknife in a hurry. Crucified on his chest against his breathing, she felt her feet brush the floor like any marionette’s. Increasingly less anxious, she kept her look fixed on the cleft of his chin. She did not flatter herself: this
démarche
of Dickie’s could have only one object—by chagrining Clara to annoy Daphne. Across Mr. Bursely’s shoulder, Daphne threw Dickie a furious, popping look. For Clara was both grateful and well-to-do, and Daphne, by an unspoken arrangement, got her percentage on any fun Clara had.

But Dickie, though inscrutable, was kind: half way through the second record, he said: “You seem to be getting on quite well.” Too pleased, she left behind one toe, and Dickie immediately trod on it. “Sorry!” “Oh, I’m sorry!” She had reason to be, so Dickie accepted this. Taking her more in hand, he splayed the whole of one palm against her ribs and continued to make her foxtrot. When the record was over, he took her in state to the fire, where poor Clara had stood. Shrinking but elated queen of the room she looked down it, saw Mrs. Heccomb knitting, saw Mr. Bursely’s hand hover over the crêpe-de-chine bow just above Daphne’s bottom as they talked in the sun porch with their backs to the room, saw Cecil despondently being civil elsewhere, Clara’s head sadly aslant on her white ruff. She hoped no one was bearing her any malice.

“You don’t smoke, do you?” Dickie said rather threateningly.

“I’m not really sure how to.”

Dickie, having slowly lighted a cigarette of his own, said: “I should not let that worry you. Most girls smoke too much.”

“Well, I may never begin.”

“And another thing you had much better not begin is putting stuff on your nails. That sort of thing makes the majority of men sick. One cannot see why girls do it.”

“Perhaps they don’t know.”