The Death of the Heart (19 page)

During her years at Richmond she not only had not had to worry about money but had formed rather luxurious ideas. As a widow after several years of marriage she was contented but incompetent. Her well-wishers were more worried about her than she was herself. She had not, it is true, been left with nothing, but she did not seem to know how little she had. Anna’s father had insisted on adding a small pension, and on his death had left an annuity. Anna sent Mrs. Heccomb clothes she no longer wore, as well as various perquisites. Mrs. Heccomb rather enjoyed eking out her income: she gave piano lessons in Seale and Southstone, painted table mats, lamp shades and other objects, and occasionally took paying guests—but her house’s exposed position in bad weather, the roar of the sea on the shingle and the ruthless manners of the two Heccomb children almost always drove these guests away after a short time.

The Heccomb children helped her by growing up and becoming self-supporting: Daphne worked in a library at Seale, Dickie in a bank at Southstone, four miles away. They continued to live at home, and could contribute their share to the house. Dr. Heccomb’s friends at the club or their mother’s relations had found these positions for them, for Mrs. Heccomb had not exerted herself. Inevitably, she had had rather grander ideas: she would have liked Dickie to go into the Army; she had tried to model Daphne on the lines of Anna. When she first took them on—and she had been married, as she may have realised, very largely in order
to
take them on—the young Heccombs had been rough little things, not at all the type of children she would have stayed with had she been their governess. And they grew up rough, in spite of all she had done. The fact was, though one did not refer to this, that her husband’s first wife had not been quite-quite. But her affectionate nature resigned her to these young people, who continued to stay on because they were comfy with her, because all their friends lived around, because they had no desire to see the rest of the world. They tired soon of the sport of baiting her paying guests, so, when they could each contribute fifteen shillings a week, asked that the paying guests might be given up. This made a quieter home.

Daphne and Dickie Heccomb, when they were not working, were to be found with the rest of their gay set at rinks, in cafés, cinemas and dance halls. On account of their popularity and high spirits, other people were glad to pay for them. Seaside society, even out of season, is ideal for young people, who grow up in it gay, contented and tough. Seale, though itself quiet, is linked by very frequent buses to Southstone, which boasts, with reason, almost every resource.

Mrs. Heccomb herself had a number of friends at Seale. The seafront is rather commercial and not very select: most of her friends lived in those pretty balconied villas or substantial gabled houses up on the hill. In fact, she had found her level. She did a few good works and attended the choral society. Had she not been so worried about her step-children growing up common, hers would have been a very serene life. She was glad to have achieved marriage, not sorry that it was over.

At Charing Cross, Matchett put Portia into the train, then narrowly watched the porter put in the suitcases. When the train began to draw out, she waved several times after it, in a mystic semaphore, her fabric-gloved hand. She had given Portia a bottle of boiled sweets, though with instructions not to make herself ill. Her manner, during the drive in the taxi, had threatened the afternoon like a cloud that covers the sky but is almost certain never to break. Her eyelids looked rigid—tear-bound, you would have said. By giving such a faultless impersonation of a trusted housemaid seeing a young lady into a train, she had made Portia feel that, because of Eddie, the door between them had been shut for ever. While she bought the sweets at the kiosk, her face went harder than ever, in case this action be misunderstood. She said: “Mr. Thomas would wish it. Those are thirst-quenchers, those lime drops are. You don’t know when you’ll get your tea.”

Portia could not but be glad when the train steamed out. She put a sweet in both cheeks and began to look at her book. She had not travelled all by herself before, and for some time dared not look at anyone else in the carriage for fear of not doing so unconcernedly.

As the train drew in Lymly, the junction for Seale, Mrs. Heccomb waved two or three times—first at the engine, as though signalling it to stop, then in order that

Portia should not overlook her. This was unlikely, for hers was the only figure on the platform stretching its dead length. This unfrequented junction, far from the village, at the mouth of a cutting, exists alone among woods. Ground ivy mats its lozenge-shaped flowerbeds, and a damp woody silence haunts it—except when boat trains, momentary apparitions, go rocking roaring through. Mrs. Heccomb wore a fur coat that had been Anna’s, that cut her a little across the back. She wore the collar turned up, because a draught always blows down a main line. Methodically, she began to search down the train, beginning with the first carriage after the engine. On seeing Portia alight from the far end she broke into a smooth trot, without any break in deportment. When she came up to Portia she looked at her small round hat, took a guess at her mental age and kissed her. “We won’t try and talk,” she said, “till we’re quite settled.” A porter took the luggage across the platform to another, waiting, train, very short, with only three coaches. Not for some minutes after they
were
settled did this train puff off down the single line through the woods.

Mrs. Heccomb, sitting opposite Portia, balanced on her knee a coloured wicker shopping basket, empty. She had a plump abstracted rather wondering face, and fluffy grey hair piled up under her hat. Portia noted scars in her fur coat where buttons had been cut off and moved out. “So isn’t this nice,” she said. “You’ve come, just as Anna said. Now tell me, how is my dear Anna?”

“She told me to be sure and give you her love.”

“Fancy thinking of that, when she’s just going abroad! She takes things so calmly. Are they all packed up?”

“Matchett’s still got to finish.”

“And then she’ll spring clean the house,” said Mrs. 
Heccomb, viewing this vision of order. “What a treasure Matchett is. How smoothly things can run.” Seeing Portia looking out at the woods, she said:

“And perhaps you’ll quite enjoy a little time in the country?”

“I am sure I shall.”

“Where we live, I’m afraid, is not really the country, it is the sea. However—”

“I like the sea, too.”

“The sea in England, or rather the sea round England, will be quite new to you, won’t it?” said Mrs. Heccomb.

Portia saw Mrs. Heccomb did not expect an answer, and guessed that Anna had told her the whole story— where they had lived, and why they never came home. Anna would not have gone on seeing Mrs. Heccomb if this had meant her having to be discreet. Anna was truly fond of Mrs. Heccomb, but there would have been nothing to say, when they were not at
matinées
, had Anna not made stories out of her passing worries and got sympathy for them. About three times a year, Anna sent Mrs. Heccomb the price of a day ticket to London, then very warmly devoted the day to her. This was always a great success—it was never known, however, whether Mrs. Heccomb’s worries came up too. Did she talk to Anna about her step-children? “I’m afraid they are pretty awful,” Anna had said.

“Do you skate?” Mrs. Heccomb said suddenly.

“I’m afraid I don’t know how to.”

Mrs. Heccomb, relieved, said: “Perhaps that is just as well. You need not go to the rink. Are you fond of reading?”

“Sometimes.”

“You are quite right,” said Mrs. Heccomb, “there is plenty of time to read when you are older, like I am. At one time, Anna read too much. Fortunately she loved gaiety, too: she always had so many invitations. In fact, she still enjoys herself like a young girl. How old are you, Portia, if I may ask?”

“Sixteen.”

“That makes such a difference,” said Mrs. Heccomb. “I mean, it’s not as though you were eighteen.”

“I do quite enjoy myself, even now.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure you do,” said Mrs. Heccomb. “I do hope you’ll enjoy the sea while you are with us. And there are some interesting places, ruins, for instance, round. Yes, I do hope …”

“I’m sure I shall enjoy myself very much.”

“At the same time,” said Mrs. Heccomb, flushing under her hair, “I don’t want you to feel a
visitor
here. I want you to feel completely at home, just as you do with Anna. You must come to me about any little trouble, just as you would to her. Of course, I hope there may be no little troubles. But you must ask me for anything that you want.”

Portia chiefly wanted her tea: lime drops do leave you thirsty, and she still tasted the tunnels in her mouth. She feared they must still be far from the coast—then the train ran clear of the woods along a high curved ridge. Salt air blew in at the carriage window: down there, across flat land, she saw the sea. Seale station ran at them with no warning; the engine crawled up to buffers: this was a terminus. The door through from the booking hall framed sky, for this was an uphill station, built high on a ramp. While Mrs. Heccomb had her chat with the porter, Portia stood at the head of the flight of steps. She felt elated here, thinking: “I shall be happy.” The view of sea, town and plain, all glassy-grey March light, seemed to be tilted up to meet her eyes like a mirror. “That is my house,” said Mrs. Heccomb, pointing to the horizon. “We’re still rather far away, but this is the taxi. He always comes.”

Mrs. Heccomb smiled at the taxi and she and Portia got in.

The taxi drove down a long curve into Seale, past white gates of villas with mysterious gardens in which an occasional thrush sang. “That would be our way really,” said Mrs. Heccomb, nodding left when they reached the foot of the hill. “But today we must go the other, because I have to shop. I do not often have a taxi to shop from, and it is quite a temptation, I must say. Dear Anna begged me to have the taxi
up
to the station, but I said no, that the walk would be good for me. But I said I might take the taxi the rather longer way home, in order to do my shopping.”

The taxi, which felt narrow, closed everything in on them, and Portia now saw only shop windows—the High Street shop windows. But what shops!—though all were very small they all looked lively, expectant, tempting, crowded, gay. She saw numbers of cake shops, antique shops, gift shops, flower shops, fancy chemists and fancy stationers. Mrs. Heccomb, holding her basket ready, wore a keyed-up but entirely happy air.

The shopping basket was soon full, so one began to pile parcels on the taxi seats. Every time she came back to the taxi, Mrs. Heccomb said to Portia: “I do hope you are not wanting your tea?” By the Town Hall clock it was now twenty past five. A man carried out to them a roll of matting, which he propped upright opposite Portia’s feet. “I am so glad to have this,” said Mrs. Heccomb.

“I ordered it last week, but it was not in till today… . Now I must just go to the end”—by the end she meant the post office, which was at the end of the High Street— “and send Anna that telegram.”

“Oh?”

“To say you’ve arrived safely.”

“I’m sure she won’t be worried.”

Mrs. Heccomb looked distressed. “But you have never been away from her before. One would not like her to go abroad with anything on her mind.” Her back view vanished through the post office door. When she came out, she found that she had forgotten something right down the other end of the town. “After all,” she said, “that will bring us back where we started. So we can go back the shorter way, after all.”

Portia saw that all this must be in her honour. It made her sad to think how Matchett would despise Mrs. Heccomb’s diving and ducking ways, like a nesting waterfowl’s. Matchett would ask why all this had not been seen to before. But Irene would have been happy with Mrs. Heccomb, and would have entered into her hopes and fears. The taxi crossed a canal bridge, heading towards the sea across perfectly flat fields that cut off the seafront from the town. The sea-line appeared between high battered rows of houses, with red bungalows dotted in the gaps. These were all raised above the inland level, along a dyke that kept the sea in its place.

The taxi turned and crawled along the back of the dyke; Mrs. Heccomb brisked up and began to muster her parcels. From here, the chipped stucco backs of the terraces looked higher than anything seen in London. The unkempt lawns and tamarisks at their foot, the lonely whoosh of the sea away behind them made them more mysterious and forbidding. Gaunt rusted pipes ran down between their windows, most of which were blank with white cotton blinds. These fields on their north side were more grey than the sea. That terror of buildings falling that one loses in London returned to Portia. “Who lives there?” she said, nodding up nervously.

“No one, dear; those are only lodging houses.”

Mrs. Heccomb tapped on the glass, and the taxi, which already intended stopping, stopped dead with a satirical jerk. They got out; Portia carried the parcels Mrs. Heccomb could not manage; the taxi-man followed with the suitcases. They all three scrabbled up a steep shingly incline and found themselves alongside the butt end of a terrace. Mrs. Heccomb showed Portia the esplanade. The sea heaved; an oblique wind lifted her hat. Shingle rolled up in red waves to the brim of the asphalt; there was an energetic and briny smell. Two steamers moved slowly along the horizon, but there was not a soul on the esplanade. “I do hope you will like it,” said Mrs. Heccomb. “I do hope you can manage those parcels: can you? There is no
road
to our gate—you see, we’re right on the sea.”