The Death of the Heart (14 page)

He looked on Thomas as someone who held the prize. But in this darkening light of Saturday afternoon, loneliness lay on his study like a cloud. The tumbled papers, the ash, the empty coffee-cup made Pidgeon’s successor look untriumphant, as though he had never held any prize. Even the fire only grinned, like a fire in an advertisement. Major Brutt, whose thought could puzzle out nothing, had, in regard to people, a sort of sense of the weather. He was aware of the tension behind Thomas’s manners, of the uneasy and driven turnings of his head. Without nerves, Major Brutt had those apprehensions that will make an animal suddenly leave, or refuse to enter, a room. Was Pidgeon in here with them, overtower-ing Thomas, while Thomas did the honours to Pidgeon’s friend? He had decided to smoke, so he pulled at his cigarette, reflecting the fire in his fixed, pebble-grey eyes. He saw that he ought to go soon—but not yet.

Thomas, meanwhile, gave a finished representation of a man happily settling into a deep chair. He gave, inadvertently, one overstated yawn, then had to say, to excuse this: “It’s too bad, Anna’s not in.”

“Oh well, of course I chanced that. Just dropping in.”

“It’s too bad Portia’s not in. I’ve no idea where she’s gone.”

“I daresay she goes about quite a bit?”

“No, not really. Not yet. She’s a bit young.”

“There’s something sweet about her, if I may say so,” said Major Brutt, lighting up.

“Yes, there is, rather… . She’s my sister, you know.”

“That’s awfully nice.”

“Or rather, my half sister.”

“Comes to much the same thing.”

“Does it?” said Thomas. “Yes, I suppose it does. In a way, it feels a bit funny though. For one thing, she and I are a half generation out. However, it seems to work out all right. We thought we might try it here for a year or so, see how she liked things with us, and so on. She’s an orphan, you see—which is pretty tough on her. We had never seen as much as we’d have liked to of her, because my father liked living abroad. We rather felt she might find us a bit of a proposition. Having just lost her mother, and not being grown up yet, so not able to go about with Anna, we thought she might find London a bit … well—  However, it seems to work out all right. We found some quite good classes for her to go to, so she’s been making friends with girls of her own age… .”

Overcome by the dullness of what he had been saying, Thomas trailed off and slumped further back in his chair. But Major Brutt, having listened with close attention, evidently expected more to come. “Nice to have a kid like that to keep one cheerful,” he said. “How old did you say she was?”

“Sixteen.”

“She must be great company for—for Mrs. Quayne.”

“For Anna? Oh yes. Funny you and Anna running into each other. She’s slack about keeping up with her old friends, and at the same time she certainly misses them.”

“It was nice of her to remember my name, I thought. You see, we’d only met once.”

“Oh yes, with Robert Pidgeon. Sorry I never met him. But he seems to move round, and I’m rooted here.” Casting at Major Brutt one last uneasy flash of suspicion, Thomas added: “I’ve got this business, you know.”

“Is that so?” said Major Brutt politely. He knocked off his ash into the heavy glass tray. “Excellent, if you like living in town.”

“You’d rather get out somewhere?”

“Yes, I must say I would. But that all depends, at the moment, on what happens to come along. I’ve got a good many—”

“Irons in the fire? I’m sure you are absolutely right.”

“Yes, if one thing doesn’t turn up, it’s all the more likely that another will… . The only trouble is, I’ve got a bit out of touch.”

“Oh yes?”

“Yes, I’ve stuck out there abroad too long, it rather seems. I’d rather like, now, to be in touch for a bit; I’d rather like to stay for a bit in this country.”

“But in touch with what?” said Thomas. “What do you think there is, then?”

Some obscure hesitation, some momentary doubt made Major Brutt frown, then look across at Thomas in a more personal manner than he had looked yet. But his look was less clear—the miasma thickening in the study had put a film over him. “Well,” he said, “there must be something going on. You know—in a general way, I mean. You know, something you all—”

“We all? We who?”

“Well, you, for instance,” Major Brutt said. “There must be something—that’s why I feel out of touch. I know there must be something all you people get together about.”

“There may be,” said Thomas, “but I don’t think there is. As a matter of fact, I don’t think we get together. We none of us seem to feel very well, and I don’t think we want each other to know it. I suppose there is nothing so disintegrating as competitiveness and funk, and that’s what we all feel. The ironical thing is that everyone else gets their knives into us bourgeoisie on the assumption we’re having a good time. At least, I suppose that’s the assumption. They seem to have no idea that we don’t much care for ourselves. We weren’t nearly so much hated when we gave them more to hate. But it took guts to be even the fools our fathers were. We’re just a lousy pack of little Christopher Robins. Oh, we’ve got to live, but I doubt if we see the necessity. The most we can hope is to go on getting away with it till the others get it away from us.”

“I say, don’t you take a rather black view of things?”

“What you mean is, I ought to take more exercise? Or Eno’s, or something? No, look here, my only point was that I really can’t feel you are missing very much. I don’t think much goes on—However, Anna might know —Cigarette?”

“No thanks: not at the moment.”

“What’s that?” said Thomas sharply.

Major Brutt, sympathetic, also turned his head. They heard a key in the hall door.

“Anna,” Thomas said, with a show of indifference.

“Look here, I feel I probably ought—”

“Nonsense. She’ll be delighted.”

“But she’s got people with her.” There certainly were voices, low voices, in the hall.

Repeating “No, stay, do stay,” with enormous concentration, Thomas heaved himself up and went to the study door. He opened the door sharply, as though to quell a riot. Then he exclaimed with extreme flatness: “Oh … Hullo, Portia … oh,
hullo
: good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” returned Eddie, with the matey deference he now kept for Thomas out of office hours. “I say, don’t let us disturb you: we’re just going out again.” Expertly reaching round Portia, he closed Thomas’s hall door behind Thomas’s sister. His nonchalance showed the good state of his nerves—for since when had old Thomas taken to popping out? Portia said nothing: close beside Eddie she stood smiling inordinately. To Thomas, these two appeared to be dreadful twins—they held up their heads with the same rather fragile pride; they included him in the same confiding smile. Clearly, they had hoped to creep in unheard— their over-responsiveness to Thomas only showed what a blow Thomas had been. They both glowed from having walked very fast.

Thomas showed what a blow they were by looking heavily past them. He explained: “I thought you were Anna.”

Eddie said nicely: “I’m so sorry we’re not.”

“Isn’t she in?” said Portia mechanically.

“But I’ll tell you who
is
here,” said Thomas. “Major Brutt. Portia, you’d better show up, just for a minute.”

“We—we were just going out.”

“Well, a minute won’t hurt you, will it?”

The most stubbornly or darkly drawn-in man has moments when he likes to impose himself, to emerge and be a bully. The diversion of a raindrop from its course down the pane, the frustration of a pet animal’s will in some small way all at once becomes imperative, if the nature is to fulfil itself. Thomas took pleasure in thrusting Portia into the study, away from Eddie, to talk to Major Brutt. A hand on her shoulder-blade, he pushed her ahead of him with colourless, unadmitted cruelty. Eddie, dogged, determined to be as much
de trop
as he could be, followed along behind.

Major Brutt, during the colloquy in the hall, had sat with his knees parted, turning his wrists vaguely making his cuff-links wink. What he may have heard he shook off, like a dog shaking its ears. The little kid was propelled round at the door at him: Thomas then made a pause, then introduced Eddie. Portia and Eddie lined up shoulder to shoulder, smiling at Major Brutt with a captive deference. In their eyes he saw the complicity of a suspended joy.

“I’ve come crashing round here,” Major Brutt said to Portia. “Disturbing your brother a good bit, I’m afraid. 
But your sister-in-law had very kindly said—”

“Oh, I’m sure she did really mean it,” said Portia.

“At all events,” he went on, going on smiling with agonized heartiness, “she’s been well out of it. I gather she’s out at lunch. But I’ve been keeping your brother from forty winks.”

“Not at all,” said Thomas. “It’s been frightfully nice.” He sat down again in his own chair so firmly that Portia and Eddie had either to sit down somewhere also, or else, by going on standing (as they continued to do), to make their semi-absence, their wish to be elsewhere, marked. They stood a foot apart but virtually hand in hand. Portia looked past Eddie liquidly, into nowhere, as though she did not exist because she might not look at him. Eddie began to smoke, but smoked very consciously. This announcement of their attachment—in a way that showed complete indifference to the company —struck on Thomas coldly: one more domestic fatigue. He also wondered how Eddie had the nerve… . To Major Brutt, kinder to love than Thomas, this seemed a holy anomaly.

“And where have you been?” said Thomas—who had after all, every right to ask.

“Oh, we’ve been to the Zoo.”

“Wasn’t it very cold there?”

They looked at each other, not seeming to know. “It’s all draughts and stinks,” Eddie said. “But we did think it was pretty, didn’t we, Portia?”

Thomas, marvelling, thought: He really
has
got a nerve. What happens when Anna comes in?

“WHO
was that old bird?”

“Major Brutt. He was a friend of someone Anna knew.”

“Who that she knew?”

“His name was Pidgeon.”

Eddie tittered at this, then said: “Is he dead?”

“Oh no. Major Brutt says he thinks he is very well.”

“I’ve never heard of Pidgeon,” said Eddie, frowning.

Withbut guile, she said: “But do you know all her friends?”

“I said we’d run into someone, you little silly. I told you we would, if we went back.”

“But you did ask me to fetch it—”

“I suppose I did—I must say I think Brutt’s a rather nasty old thing. He leers.”

“Oh no, Eddie—he
doesn’t.”

“No, I suppose he doesn’t,” said Eddie, looking depressed. “I suppose he’s really much nicer than I am.”

Turning and anxiously eyeing Eddie’s forehead, Portia said: “Today he looked rather sad.”

“You bet he did,” said Eddie. “He wanted an innings. He may be a great deal nicer than I am, darling, but I do feel I ought to tell you that that sort of person makes me perfectly sick. And look how he’d rattled Thomas— poor old Thomas was all over the place. No, Brutt is a 
brute. Do you realise, Portia darling, that it is because of there being people like him that there are people like me? How on earth did he get into the house?”

“He said Anna’d asked him to come again.”

“What a cynic Anna is!”

“I do think, Eddie, you are exaggerating.”

“I’ve got no sense of proportion, thank God. That man palpably loathed me.” Eddie stopped and blew out his lower lip. “Oh dear,” said Portia, “I quite wish we hadn’t met him.”

“Well, I told you we would if we went back. You know that house is a perfect web.”

“But you said you wanted my diary.”

They were having tea, or rather their tea was ordered, at Madame Tussaud’s. Portia, who had not been here before, had been disappointed to find all the waitresses real: there were no deceptions of any kind—all the waxworks were in some other part. He and she sat side by side at a long table intended for a party of four or six. Her diary, fetched from Windsor Terrace, lay still untouched between their elbows, with a strong indiarubber band round it. She said: “How do you mean that Anna is a cynic?”

“She has depraved reasons for doing the nicest things. However, that doesn’t matter to me.”

“If it really doesn’t, why does it upset you?”

“After all, darling, she is a human soul. And her character did upset me, at one time. I’m several degrees worse since I started to know her. I wish I had met you sooner.”

“Worse how? Do you think you are wicked?”

Eddie, leaning a little back from the table, looked all round the restaurant, at the lights, at the other tables, at the mirrors, considering the question seriously, as though she had asked him whether he felt ill. Then he returned his eyes closely to Portia’s face, and said with an almost radiant smile: “Yes.”

“In what way?”

But a waitress came with a tray and put down the teapot, the hot-water jug, a dish of crumpets, a plate of fancy cakes. By the time she had done, the moment had gone by. Eddie raised a lid and stared at the crumpets. “Why on earth,” he said, “didn’t she bring salt?”