The Death of the Heart (12 page)

“But Mother explained to me that she and Father had once done what was cruel to Mrs. Quayne.”

“And what did she do to them? Look how they lived, without a stick of their own. You were not born to know better, but he did.”

“But he liked keeping moving on. It was Mother wanted a house, but Father never would.”

“You don’t break a person’s nature for nothing.”

Portia said in a panic: “But we were happy, Matchett. We had each other; he had Mother and me—Oh, don’t be so angry: you make me feel it was my fault for having had to be born.”

“And who had the right to quarrel with you for that? If you had to be, then you had to be. I thought that day you were born, as I went on with my linen, Well, that’s one more thing happened: no doubt it is for a purpose.”

“That’s what they all feel; that’s why they’re all always watching. They would forgive me if I were something special. But I don’t know what I was meant to be.”

“Now then,” said Matchett sharply, “don’t
you
get upset.”

Portia had unconsciously pushed, while she spoke, at the knee under Matchett’s apron, as though she were trying to push away a wall. Nothing, in fact, moved. Letting her hand fall back on to her face in the dark, she gave an instinctive shiver that shook the bed. She ground the back of her hand into her mouth—the abandoned movement was cautious, checked by awe at some monstrous approach. She began to weep, shedding tears humbly, without protest, without at all full feeling, like a child actress mesmerized for a part. She might have been miming sorrow—in fact, this immediate, this obedient prostration of her whole being was meant to hold off the worst, the full of grief, that might sweep her away. Now, by crossing her arms tightly across her chest, as though to weight herself down with them, she seemed to cling at least to her safe bed. Any intimations of Fate, like a step heard on the stairs, makes some natures want to crouch in the safe dark. Her tears were like a flag lowered at once: she felt herself to be undefendable.

The movement of her shoulders on the pillow could be heard; her shiver came through the bed to Matchett’s body. Matchett’s eyes pried down at her through the dark: inexorably listening to Portia’s unhappy breaths she seemed to wait until her pity was glutted. Then— “Why goodness,” she said softly. “Why do you want to start breaking your heart? If that wasn’t finished, I wouldn’t go on about it. No doubt I’m wrong, but you do keep on at me, asking. You didn’t ought to ask if you’re going to work up so. Now you put it out of your head, like a good girl, and go right off to sleep.” She shifted her weight from her hand, groped over Portia, found her wet wrists, uncrossed them. “Goodness,” she said, “whatever good does
that
do?” All the same, the question was partly rhetorical: Matchett felt that something had been appeased. Having smoothed the top of the sheet, she arranged Portia’s hands on it like a pair of ornaments: she stayed leaning low enough to keep guard on them. She made a long sibilant sound, somewhere right up in space, like swans flying across a high sky. Then this stopped and she suggested: “Like me to turn your pillow?”

“No,” said Portia unexpectedly quickly, then added: “But don’t go.”

“You like it turned for you, don’t you? However—”

“Ought we both to forget?”

“Oh, you’ll forget when you’ve got more to remember. All the same, you’d better not to have asked.”

“I just asked about the day I was born.”

“Well, the one thing leads to the other. It all has to come back.”

“Except for you and me, nobody cares.”

“No, there’s no past in this house.”

“Then what makes them so jumpy?”

“They’d rather no past—not have the past, that is to say. No wonder they don’t rightly know what they’re doing. Those without memories don’t know what is what.”

“Is that why you tell me this?”

“I’d likely do better not to. I never was one to talk, and I’m not one to break a habit. What I see I see, but I keep myself to myself. I have my work to get on with. For all that, you can’t but notice, and I’m not a forgetter. It all goes to make something, I daresay. But there’s no end to what’s been said, and I’ll be a party to nothing. I was born with my mouth shut: those with their mouths open do nothing but start trouble and catch flies. What I am asked, I’ll answer—that’s always been sufficient.”

“Does no one but me ask you?”

“They know better,” said Matchett. Satisfied that the fold of Portia’s upper sheet wanted no more attention, she drew back and once more propped herself on her hand. “What’s not said keeps,” she went on. “And when it’s been keeping some time it gets what not many would dare to hear. Oh, it wasn’t quite welcome to Mr. Thomas when I first came to this house after his mother dying, though he did speak civil and pass it off so well. ‘Why, Matchett,’ he said, ‘this feels like home again.’ Mrs. Thomas took it quite easy; it was the work she wanted and she knew I was a worker. The things that came to them here from Mrs. Quayne’s were accustomed to the best care; Mrs. Thomas knew they must have it. Oh, it is lovely furniture, and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas see the value of it. Valuables were the one thing Mrs. Quayne and Mrs. Thomas saw eye to eye about. You can see ten foot into my polish, and Mrs. Thomas likes the look of a thing.”

“But what made you come here?”

“It seemed to me proper. I hadn’t the heart, either, to let that furniture go: I wouldn’t have known myself. It was that that kept me at Mrs. Quayne’s. I was sorry to leave those marbles I’d got so nice, but those had to stop and I put them out of my mind.”

“The furniture would have missed you?”

“Furniture’s knowing all right. Not much gets past the things in a room, I daresay, and chairs and tables don’t go to the grave so soon. Every time I take the soft cloth to that stuff in the drawingroom, I could say, ‘Well, you know a bit more.’ My goodness, when I got here and saw all Mrs. Quayne’s stuff where Mrs. Thomas had put it—if I’d have been a silly, I should have said it gave me quite a look. Well, it didn’t speak, and I didn’t. If Mr. and Mrs. Thomas are what you say, nervous, no doubt they are nervous of what’s not said. I would not be the one to blame them: they live the best way they can. Unnatural living runs in a family, and the furniture knows it, you be sure. Good furniture knows what’s what. It knows it’s made for a purpose, and it respects itself—when I say
you’re
made for a purpose you start off crying. Oh, furniture like we’ve got is too much for some that would rather not have the past. If I just had to look at it and have it looking at me, I’d go jumpy, I daresay. But when it’s your work it can’t do anything to you. Why, that furniture—I’ve been at it years and years with the soft cloth: I know it like my own face… . Oh yes, I notice them, all right. But I’m not the one to speak: I’ve got no time. When they made a place for it, they made a place for me, and they soon saw nothing would come of
that
.”

“When I came, though, it was worse.”

“It was proper,” said Matchett quickly. “The first mortal thing he had ever asked since he went—”

“Yes, this was the house my father talked about. He used to tell me how nice it was. Though he never came here, he did walk past it once. He told me it had a blue door and stood at a corner, and I expect he imagined the inside. ‘That’s the part of London to live in,’ he used to say, ‘those houses are leased direct from the King, and they have an outlook fit for Buckingham Palace.’ Once, in Nice, he bought a book about birds and showed me pictures of the water birds on this lake. He said he had watched them. He told me about the scarlet flowerbeds—I used to imagine them right down to the lake, not with that path between. He said this was the one gentleman’s park left, and that Thomas would be wrong to live anywhere else. He used to tell me, and to tell people we met, how well Thomas got on in business, and how pretty Anna was—stylish, he used to call her—and how much they entertained, and what gay parties they had. He used to say, a young man getting on in the world is quite right to cut a bit of a dash. Whenever we spent a day in any smart place, he always used to notice the ladies’ clothes, and say to me, ‘Now that would look well on Anna.’ Yes, he was ever so proud of Thomas and her. It always made him happy to talk about them. When I was little and stupid, I used to say, ‘Why can’t we see them soon? and he used to say, ‘Some day.’ He promised that some day I should be with them—and now, of course, 
am.”

Matchett said triumphantly: “Ah, he got his way—in the end.”

“I liked them for making Father proud. But when I was with Mother, I had to forget them—you see, they were a sort of trouble to her. She thought Anna laughed at how we lived.”

“Oh, Mrs. Thomas didn’t trouble to laugh. She’d let live and let die—so long as she wasn’t trespassed upon. And she wasn’t trespassed upon.”

“She had to have me here.”

“She had this room empty, waiting,” said Matchett sharply.
“She
never filled it, for all she is so clever. And she knows how to make a diversion of anything—dolling this room up with clocks and desks and frills. (Not but what it’s pretty, and you like it, I should hope.) No, she’s got her taste, and she dearly likes to use it. Past that she’ll never go.”

“You mean, she’ll never be fond of me?”

“So that’s what you want?” Matchett said, so jealously pouncing that Portia drew back in her bed.

“She had a right, of course, to be where I am this minute,” Matchett went on in a cold, dispassionate voice. “I’ve no call to be dawdling up here, not with all that sewing.” Her weight stiffened on the bed; drawing herself up straight she folded her arms sternly, as though locking love for ever from her breast. Portia saw her outline against the window and knew this was not pique but arrogant rectitude—which sent her voice into distance two tones away. “I have my duties,” she said, “and you should look for your fond-ofs where it is more proper. I’d be glad you should get them. Oh, I was glad somehow, that day she came and said you had been born. I might have done better to wish you out of it.”

“Don’t be angry—oh, don’t be! You’re quite enough, Matchett!”

“Now don’t you work yourself up again!”

“But don’t, don’t keep going off—” began Portia, desperate. Stopping, she put both arms out, with a rustle of sheet falling away. Matchett, reluctantly softening, inch by inch, unlocked her arms, leaned across the bed again, leaned right down—in the mysterious darkness over the pillow their faces approached, their eyes met but could not see. Something steadily stood between them: they never kissed—so that now there followed a pause at once pressing and null. Matchett, after the moment, released herself and drew a judicial breath. “Well, I’m hasty, I daresay.” But Portia’s hand, with its charge of nervous emotion, still crept on the firm broad neck, the strong spine. Matchett’s embrace had made felt a sort of measured resistance, as though she were determined to will, not simply to suffer, the power of the dividing wall. Darkness hid any change her face might allow itself. She said finally: “I’ll turn your pillow now.”

Portia at once stiffened. “No, don’t. I like it this way—No, don’t.”

“Why ever not?”

“Because I like it this way.”

But Matchett’s hand pushed underneath the pillow, to turn it. Under there, going wooden, her hand stopped. “What’s this you’ve got under here?
Now,
what have you got?”

“That’s only just a letter.”

“What have you got it here for?”

“I must just have put it there.”

“Or maybe it walked,” said Matchett. “And who’s been writing
you
letters, may I ask?”

As gently as possible, Portia tried saying nothing. She let Matchett turn the pillow, then settled with her cheek on the new, cool side. For nearly a minute, propitiat-ingly, she acted someone grateful going to sleep. Then, with infinite stealth, she felt round under the pillow— to find the letter gone. “Oh,
please
, Matchett!” she cried.

“The proper place for your letters is in your desk. What else did Mrs. Thomas give you a desk for?”

“I like having a letter here when it’s just come.”

“That’s no place for letters at your age—it’s not nice. You didn’t ought to be getting letters like that.”

“It’s not a letter like that.”

“And who wrote it, may I ask?” said Matchett, her voice rising.

“Only that friend of Anna’s—only Eddie.”

“Ah! So he did?”

“Only because I got him his hat.”

“Wasn’t he civil!”

“Yes,” Portia said firmly. “He knows I like getting letters. I haven’t had any letter for three weeks.”

“Oh, he does, does he—he knows you like getting letters?”

“Well, Matchett, I do.”

“So he saw fit to thank you kindly for getting his hat? It’s the first manners he’s shown here, popping in and out like a weasel. Manners? He’s no class. Another time, you leave Phyllis get him his hat, else let him get it himself—he’s here often enough to know where it should be… . Yes, you mind what I’m saying: I know what I say.”

Matchett’s voice, so laden and unemphatic, clicked along like a slow tape, with a stop at the last word. Portia lay in a sort of coffin of silence, one hand under the pillow where the letter had been. Outside the room there sounded a vacuum of momentarily arrested London traffic: she turned her eyes to the window and looked at the glassdark sky with its red sheen. Matchett’s hand in the cuff darted out like an angry bird, knocked once against the pleated shade of the bed lamp, then got the light switched on. Immediately, Portia shut her eyes, set her mouth and lay stiff on the pillow, as though so much light dug into a deep wound. She felt it must be very late, past midnight: that point where the river of night flows underneath time, that point at which occurs the mysterious birth of tomorrow. The very sudden, anaesthetic white light, striped by the pleats of the shade, created a sense of sickroom emergency. As though she lay in a sickroom, her spirit retreated to a seclusion of its own.