The Death of the Heart (10 page)

Anna, considerably put out, said: “But there’s not room for two of you in that flat.”

“Oh, that will be all right, because I’m going to Turkey.”

“What on earth do you want to go to Turkey for?” said Anna, still more crossly.

“Oh, various reasons. Eddie can stay on here while I’m away. I think he’ll be all right; he seems to have sloughed that girl off.”

“What girl?”

“Oh, that girl, you know, that he had at the Monkshoods’. He didn’t like her a bit; she was a dull little tart.”

“I do think all you college boys are vulgar and dull.”

“Well, Anna darling, do see that Eddie isn’t lonely. Eddie’s such a dear, isn’t he?” said Denis. “He’s what I always call so volatile.” He hung up before Anna could reply.

After two days, in which Anna’s annoyance subsided, Denis really did go to Turkey, and Eddie sounded lonely in the flat. Anna, feeling he ought to be someone’s responsibility, made him more or less free of Windsor Terrace. She hoped very much to keep him out of mischief. At first, these visits worked very well: Anna had never cared to be the romantic woman, but now Eddie became her first troubadour. He lent himself, gladly and quickly, or appeared to lend himself, to Anna’s illusions about living. He did more: by his poetic appreciation he created a small world of art round her. The vanities of which she was too conscious, the honesties to which she compelled herself, even the secrets she had never told him existed inside a crystal they both looked at—not only existed but were beautified. On Anna, he had the inverse of the effect that Portia’s diary was to produce later. He appeared to marvel at Anna—and probably did. If he went into black thoughts, he came out again, for her only, with a quick sweet smile. He showed with her, at its best, his farouche grace; the almost unwilling sweetness he had for her used to make her like hearing people, other people, call Eddie cold or recalcitrant… . This phase of sublime flattery, flattery kept delicate by their ironic smiles, lasted about six weeks. Then Eddie made a false move—he attempted to kiss Anna.

He not only attempted to kiss her, but made the still worse blunder of showing he thought this was what she would really like. When she was very angry (because he gave that impression) Eddie, feeling once more betrayed, misled and insulted, lost his grip on the situation at once. Having lost his grip, he then lost his head. Though he did not love Anna, he had honestly tried to repay some of her niceness in a way he thought she could but like. It had been his experience that everyone did. If, in fact, in these last years he had found himself rather ruthlessly knocked about, it was because people had wanted only that: their differing interests in him, however diverse, seemed in the end to lead to that one point. Another thing that had led him to kiss Anna, or try to, was that he took an underlyingly practical view of life, and had no time for relations that came to nothing or for indefinitely polite play. When Anna made this fuss, he thought her a silly woman. He did not know about Pidgeon, or how badly she had come out of all that—if, in fact, she had ever come out of it. He suspected her of making all this fuss for some rather shady reason of her own.

They were both nonplussed, chagrined, but unhappily neither of them was prepared to cut their losses. Up to now, their alliance had been founded on hopes of pleasure: from now on they set out to annoy each other, and could not help playing each other up. Eddie began to dart devouring looks in company, to steal uneasy touches when they were alone. Anna would have been less annoyed by all this had she felt herself completely unmoved by Eddie; as it was, aware of the lack of the slightest passion behind it, she was offended by the pantomime. She countered his acting up with insulting pieces of irony. Her one thought was, to put him back in his place—a place she had never quite clearly defined. The more she tried to do this, the worse Eddie behaved.

There were times when Anna almost hated Eddie, for she was conscious of the vacuum inside him. As for him, he found her one mass of pretence, and detested the feeling she showed for power. Through all this, they did still again and again discover reaches of real feeling in one another. Anna did ask herself what they were both doing, but Eddie apparently never did. Could she be injuring genius? Once, in a fit of penitence, she rang up Denis’s flat and heard Eddie in tears. The extreme pity she felt brought her, for some reason, to snapping point: she went straight downstairs and complained to Thomas that Eddie tired her more than she could bear.

This was a moment Thomas had seen coming, and he had awaited it philosophically. He had looked on at other declines and falls. He did not at that time dislike Eddie, whose efforts to please him pleased by their very transparency. He had watched, not without pleasure, Eddie annoy St. Quentin and others of their friends. He had also read Eddie’s novel with a good deal of pleasure, and more sympathy than Anna had brought to it: Eddie was still free to say a good deal about life that he, Thomas, was too deeply involved to say. So Thomas had read the novel with an appeased smile, almost with a sense of complicity. He passed on the book to Merrett, who, liking its savage glitter, pigeonholed Eddie for possible future use. This was well, for the time came when Anna announced to Thomas that what Eddie needed was straight, regular work, that need not quite waste his wits—in fact, could they not use Eddie in Quayne and Merrett’s? The moment happening to be propitious, Eddie was sent for for an interview.

The day Anna heard that Quayne and Merrett were prepared to give Eddie three months’ trial, she rang Eddie up and asked him to come round. Their relation, from now on, promised to be ideal: she was his patroness.

That morning Eddie was wearing a sober tie, and already seemed to belong to another world. His manner was civil, and extremely remote. He said how kind they had been at Quayne and Merrett’s, and what fun it would no doubt be to write funny advertisements. “How can I thank you?” he said.

“Why should you? I wanted to help.”

Eddie met her smile with an equally pious look.

She went on: “I have been worried about you: that’s what may have made me seem unsympathetic. I felt sure you needed a more regular life. Thomas thinks I am bad for you,” she added, rather unwisely.

“I don’t think that’s possible, darling,” said Eddie blithely. Then he bit off that manner. “You’ve both been so good,” he said. “I do hope I haven’t been difficult? When I’m worried I seem to get everything on my nerves. And all the jobs I’ve been after turned me down flat. I really did begin to think there was something against me—which was stupid, of course.”

“But
have
you been looking for jobs?”

“What did you think I’d been doing, all this time? I didn’t tell you about it, partly because it depressed me, partly because I thought you’d think it was sordid. All my friends seem to be rather out with me at the moment, so I didn’t like to go round to them for backing. And of course, I owe a good deal of money—apart from everything else, I owe thirty-five shillings to Denis’s charwoman.”

“Denis should not have left you with an expensive charwoman,” Anna angrily said. “He never thinks. But surely you’ve had
some
money?”

“Well, I had till I spent it.”

“What have you been eating?”

“Oh, one thing and another. I must say, I was grateful for your very nice lunches and dinners. I do hope I wasn’t snappy at meals? But being anxious gives me indigestion. I’m not like St. Quentin and Denis and all those other people that you see—I’m afraid I haven’t got very much detachment, darling, and getting nothing to do made me feel in disgrace.”

“You might have known we would help you. How silly you were!”

‘Yes, I thought you probably might,” said Eddie, with perfect candour. “But in a sort of way I rather hated to ask, and while you had it on me, it made it more difficult. However, look how lucky I am now!”

Anna collected herself. “I’m so glad to know,” she said, “that what has been the matter was simply money. I was afraid, you know, it was really you and me.”

“Unfortunately,” said Eddie, “it was a good deal more.”

“I should rather call it a good deal less. To be right or wrong with people is the important thing.”

“I expect it would be if you had got money. However, Anna, you’ve got beautiful thoughts. It must have done me good to know you. But I’m not really interesting, darling: I’m all stomach.”

“Well, I’m so pleased that everything is all right,” Anna said with a slightly remote smile. She got up from the sofa and went to lean on the mantelpiece, where she tinkled a lustre. She could stay so still, and she so greatly disliked other people to fidget, that to fidget herself was almost an act of passion—and Eddie, aware of this, stared round in surprise. “All the same,” she said, “leaving aside money—which I do see is very, very important—what
has
been making you quite so impossible?”

“Well, darling, for one thing I wanted to make you happy, and for another I thought you might get bored if we kept on and on and nothing ever happened. You see, people have sometimes got bored with me. And while everything round me was such a nightmare, I wanted something with you that wasn’t such an effort, something to stop me from going quite mad.” Anna tinkled the lustre harder. “Have no more nightmares,” she said.

“Oh no, darling: Quayne and Merrett’s will be like a lovely dream.”

Anna frowned. Eddie turned away and stood looking out of the window at the park. Shoulders squared, hands thrust in his pockets, he took the pose of a chap making a new start. Her aquamarine curtains, looped high up over his head with cords and tassels, fell in stately folds each side of him to the floor, theatrically framing his back view. He saw the world at its most sheltered and gay: it was, then, the spring of the year before; the chestnuts opposite her window were in bud; through the branches glittered the lake, with swans and one running dark-pink sail; the whole scene was varnished with spring light. Eddie brought one hand out of his pocket and pinched a heavy
moiré
fold of the curtain by which he stood. This half-conscious act was hostile: Anna heard the
moiré
creak between his finger and thumb.

She did not for a moment doubt that in his own mind Eddie was travestying the scene. Yes, and he showed her he felt he was bought goods, with “Quayne and Merrett” pasted across his back. She said in a light little voice: “I’m glad you’re pleased about this.”

“Five pounds a week, just for being good and clever! How could I not be pleased!”

“I’m afraid they may want just a little more than that. You really will work, I hope?”

“To do you credit?”

Then, because she did not reply, there was a pause. Eddie swung round at her with his most persuasive, most meaningless smile. “Do come and look at the lake! I don’t suppose I shall ever look at it with you in the morning again: I shall be much too busy.” To show how immaterial this was, Anna good-temperedly came to join him. They stood side by side in the window and she folded her arms. But Eddie, with the aifectionate nonchalance of someone whose nearness does not matter, put a hand on her elbow. “How much I owe you!”

“I never know what you mean.”

Eddie’s eyes ran over her doubtful face—the light seemed to concentrate in their brilliant shallows; his pupils showed their pin-points of vacuum. “Marvellous,” he said, “to have a firm in your pocket.”

“When did you first think I might fix this up for you?”

“Of course it occurred to me. But the idea of advertising was so repellent, and to tell you the truth, Anna, I’m so vain, I kept hoping I might get something better. You’re not angry, are you, darling? You shouldn’t judge people by how they have to behave.”

“Your friends say you always fall on your feet.”

The remark was another thing that he would never forgive her. After a stonelike minute he said: “If I have to know people who ruin me, I mean to get something out of it.”

“I don’t understand. Ruin you? Who does?”

“You do, and your whole lot. You make a monkey of me, and God knows what else worse. I’m ashamed to go back home.”

“I don’t think we can have done you much harm, Eddie. You must still be quite rugged, while you can be so rude.”

“Oh, I can be rude all right.”

“Then what is upsetting you?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Anna,” he said, in a burst of childishness. “We seem to be on an absurd track. Please forgive me—I always stay too long. I came round to thank you for my lovely job; I came here intending to be so normal—Oh, look, there’s a gull sitting on a deck chair!”

“Yes, it must be spring,” she said automatically. “They’ve put the deck chairs out.” She opened her case and lighted a cigarette with a rather uncertain hand. Sun shone on the white gull on the green deck chair; a striped sail blew after the pink sail down the lake; smiling people walking and children running between the harp-shaped lawns composed a pattern of play. The carillon played a tune, then the clock struck.

“Is this the last time I shall call you darling, darling?”

It possibly was, she said. This gave her the chance to put it to him, as nicely as possible, that in future they would be seeing less of each other. “But I know,” he insisted. “That is what I was saying. That’s exactly why I have come to say goodbye.”

“Only goodbye in a way. You exaggerate everything.”

“Well, goodbye in a way.”