The Death of the Heart (22 page)

Seale sea front takes the imperceptible curve of a shallow, very wide bay. Towards the east horizon, the coast rises—or rather, inland hills approach the sea: an imposing bluff is crowned by the most major of Southstone’s major hotels. That gilt dome, the flying flags receive at about sunset their full glory, and distantly glitter, a plutocratic heaven, for humbler trippers on the Seale esplanade. On sunless clear mornings, the silhouette of the Splendide seems to be drawn on the sky in blue-grey ink… .On from Seale towards Southstone, the forcible concrete seawall, with tarmac top, stretches empty for two miles. The fields the sea wall protects drop away from it, unpeopled and salty, on the inland side. The abstract loneliness of the dyke ends where the Seale-Southstone road comes out to run by the sea.

West of Seale, you see nothing more than the marsh. The dead flat line of the coast is drawn out into a needle-fine promontory. The dimming gleaming curve is broken only by the martello towers, each smaller, each more nearly melted by light. The silence is broken only by musketry practice on the ranges. Looking west of Seale, you see the world void, the world suspended, forgotten, like a past phase of thought. Light’s shining shifting slants and veils and own interposing shadows make a world of its own… . Along this stretch of the coast, the shingle has given place to water-flat sands: the most furious seas only slide in flatly to meet the martello towers.

Standing midway between these two distances, hands knotted behind her back, Portia looked out to sea: the skyline was drawn taut across the long shallow bow of the bay. Three steamers’ smoke hung in curls on the clear air—the polished sea looked like steel: amazing to think that a propeller could cut it. The edge of foam on the beach was tremulous, lacy, but the horizon looked like a blade.

A little later this morning, that blade would have cut off Thomas and Anna. They would drop behind the horizon, leaving behind them, for only a minute longer, a little curl of smoke. By the time they landed at Calais, their lives would have become hypothetical. To look at the sea the day someone is crossing is to accept the finality of the defined line. For the senses bound our feeling world: there is an abrupt break where their power stops —when the door closes, the train disappears round the curve, the plane’s droning becomes inaudible, the ship enters the mist or drops over the line of sea. The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We have really no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgement is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart. Willing absence (however unwilling) is the negation of love. To remember can be at times no more than a cold duty, for we remember only in the limited way that is bearable. We observe small rites, but we defend ourselves against that terrible memory that is stronger than will. We defend ourselves from the rooms, the scenes, the objects that make for hallucination, that make the senses start up and fasten upon a ghost. We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can.

Happily, the senses are not easy to trick—or, at least, to trick often. They fix, and fix us with them, on what is possessable. They are ruthless in their living infidelity. Portia was learning to live without Irene, not because she denied or had forgotten that once unfailing closeness between mother and child, but because she no longer felt her mother’s cheek on her own (that Eddie’s finger-tip, tracing the crease of a smile, had more idly but far more lately touched) or smelled the sachet-smell from Irene’s dresses, or woke in those hired north rooms where they used to wake.

With regard to Eddie himself, at present, the hard law of present-or-absent was suspended. In the first great phase of love, which with very young people lasts a long time, the beloved is not outside one, so neither comes nor goes. In this dumb, exalted and exalting confusion, what actually happens plays very little part. In fact the spirit stays so tuned up that the beloved’s real presence could be too much, unbearable: one wants to say to him: “Go, that you may be here.” The most fully-lived hours, at this time, are those of memory or of anticipation, when the heart expands to the full without any check. Portia now referred to Eddie everything that could happen: she saw him in everything that she saw. His being in London, her being here, no more than contracted seventy miles of England into their private intense zone. Also, they could write letters.

But the absence, the utter dissolution, in space of Thomas and Anna should have been against nature: they were her Everyday. That Portia was not more sorry, that she would not miss them, faced her this morning like the steel expanse of the sea. Thomas and Anna by opening their door to her (by having been by blood obliged to open their door) became Irene’s successors in all natural things. He, she, Portia, three Quaynes, had lived, packed close in one house through the winter cold, accepting, not merely choosing each other. They had all three worked at their parts of the same necessary pattern. They had passed on the same stairs, grasped the same door handles, listened to the strokes of the same clocks. Behind the doors at Windsor Terrace, they had heard each other’s voices, like the continuous murmur inside the whorls of a shell. She had breathed smoke from their lungs in every room she went into, and seen their names on letters each time she went through the hall. When she went out, she was asked how her brother and sister were. To the outside world, she smelled of Thomas and Anna.

But something that should have been going on had not gone on: something had not happened. They had sat round a painted, not a burning, fire, at which you tried in vain to warm your hands… . She tried to make a picture of Thomas and Anna leaning over the rail of the ship, both looking the same way. The picture was just real enough, for the moment, to make her want to expunge from their faces a certain betraying look. For they looked like refugees, not people travelling for pleasure. Thomas—who had said he always wore a cap on a ship— wore the cap pulled down, while Anna held her fur collar plaintively to her chin. Their nearness—for they stood with their elbows touching—was part of their driven look: they were one in flight. But already their faces were far less substantial than the faces of Daphne and Dickie Heccomb… . Then Portia remembered they would not be aboard yet: in fact, they would hardly have left London. And the moment they
were
aboard, Anna would lie down: she was a bad sailor; she never looked at the sea.

2, Windsor Terrace, 

N.W. 1.

Dear Miss Portia,

You will be sorry to hear that Phyllis has interfered with your puzzle, which I had put newspaper over like you said. She had orders not to, but overlooked that. Owing to me being busy packing Mrs. Thomas, Phyllis was sent to see to your room, she did not know what was under the newspaper so gave the table a nudge. She upset some sky and part of the officers, but I have put the pieces in a box by your bed. She was upset when I told her you set store by it. I think it well to tell you, lest you should be disappointed when you get back. Phyllis will not be let go in your room again, where she has no business really.

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas were got off in good time for their train to Italy, and today I am getting the curtains to the cleaners. I was glad to know from Mrs. Heccomb’s telegram that you reached Seale. I have no doubt Mr. and Mrs. Thomas were glad also. I hope you are taking care of that wind along the front, which is very treacherous at this time of year. Mrs. Heccomb spoke of the cold there last time she was up, she seemed pleased to get Mrs. Thomas’s former nutria coat. You did ought to wear a cardigan between your coat and your jumper, I packed you two but likely you will forget.

I hear Major Brutt called this afternoon and was disappointed to find the family gone. It seems he mistook the day, owing to what he thought Mrs. Thomas had said. He asked for you and was told you were at the sea. You would not know the house with the curtains gone, not what you have been used to. Also Mr. Thomas’s books are out to be electric cleaned, preparatory to washing the shelves down. Your friend Mr. Eddie came to the door after a muffler he says he left, and particularly remarked on the smell of soap. He also took from the drawingroom some French book he says he loaned to Mrs. Thomas. I had to unsheet the drawingroom for him to find this, the room having been covered ready for the sweep.

I trust that you will do well at the seaside. I once visited Seale along with my married sister who lives at Dover. It is said to be a nice residential place. No doubt the time will fly till you come back.

I must now close.

                       Yours respectfully,

                             R. Matchett.

PS. Should you wish anything sent, no doubt you would write. A picture postcard would be sufficient.

Q. and M.
 S
’

Friday.

Darling Portia,

Thanks for your letter written before starting. It is awful to realise you are away, in fact I hoped I might not, but I do. I rashly went round to Windsor Terrace to get back that red scarf, and it was as if you had all died of the plague and Matchett was disinfecting it after you. The house reeked of awful soap. Matchett had got all Thomas’s books in a heap, and seemed to be dancing on them. She gave me a singularly dirty look. I felt your corpses must be laid out in the drawingroom, which was all sheets. That old crocodile took me up under protest and stood snapping her jaws while I dug out  
Les Plaisirs et les Jours
, which I’m anxious to get back before Anna loses it. It felt odd, while I was in the drawingroom, to know I wouldn’t hear you scuttering on the stairs. Everything really had a charnel echo and I said to myself “She died young.”

I say, darling, how much do you think Matchett knows about you and me? It was a foul bleak day and I could have cried.

Now remember how awful I often feel and write me long letters. If you write too much about Dickie I shall come down and shoot him, I am a jealous man. Is he as awful as Anna says, and is Daphne? I really do want you to tell me everything, you are horrid to say that I don’t read your letters. Shall I come down one week-end, even not to shoot Dickie? It might be frightfully funny if I did. I suppose they could have me to stay, don’t you? But of course that all depends how things pan out; at present I am having an awful time.

This office is going to bits without Thomas, which would be gratifying for Thomas to know. I can’t tell you how awful they all are. I always did know all these people were crooks. They intrigue in really a poisonous way, and nothing is getting done. However, that gives me more time to write to you. You see I’m not using the office paper: I look after Thomas’s interests while he’s gone.

Oh, darling Portia, it’s awful not to see you. Please do feel awful too. I saw a pair of Indian silver baby’s bangles in Holborn, I think I’ll send them to you for your silly wrists.

Do you remember Saturday?

I think it is just like them, packing you off like that to the seaside when everything could be so nice now. Anna locks you up like jam. I hope it will sleet and freeze all the time she is in that vulgar Italian villa. I really should laugh if I went to Seale. Do you hear the sea when you are in bed?

I must stop. I do feel homeless and sad. I have got to go out now for drinks with some people, but that isn’t at all the same thing. Wouldn’t it be nice if you were poking our fire and expecting me home at any minute?

Goodbye, Good-night, you darling. Think of me last thing.

                      Eddie.

THE KARACHE HOTEL,

CROMWELL ROAD,

Dear Miss Portia,

I was sorry to miss you all when I called at 2 Windsor Terrace. I had hoped to wish your brother and sister-in-law luck on their trip, and hoped to reply personally to that very sweet little message you sent me through Mrs. Quayne, reporting your progress made with a certain puzzle. I also meant to have asked if you would care to have another puzzle, as that must be nearly done. To do the same puzzle twice would be pretty poor fun. If you would allow me to send you another puzzle, you could always send on the first to a sick friend. I am told they are popular in nursing homes, but as I enjoy excellent health I have never checked up on this. That kind of puzzle was not much in vogue during the War.

The weather has turned quite nasty, you are “well out of London” as the saying goes. Your brother’s hospitable house was, when I called, dismantled for spring cleaning. What a dire business that is! I hope you have struck some pleasant part of the coast? I expect you may find it pretty blowy down there. I have been kept pretty busy these last days with interviews in connection with an appointment. From what I hear, things look quite like shaping up.

Some good friends of mine in this hotel, whose acquaintance I made here, have just moved on, and I find they leave quite a gap. One is often lucky in striking congenial people in these hotels. But of course people rather come and go.

Well, if you feel like trying your skill with yet another puzzle, will you be so good as to send me a little line? Just possibly you might care to have the puzzle to do at the seaside, where the elements do not always treat one as they should. If I were to know your address, I could have the puzzle posted direct to you. Meanwhile, your excellent parlourmaid will no doubt forward this.