The Death of the Heart (37 page)

Well, she’ll never find any answer here, thought Anna, lying with her feet up on the sofa, unrestfully clasping her hands behind her head, asking herself what that brother and sister found to say to each other down there. It’s no use her looking everywhere like that. Who are we to have her questions brought here?

Pulling the telephone towards her, Anna dialled St. Quentin’s number. She heard the bell ringing for some time—quite clearly St. Quentin was out.

On Monday morning, Thomas went back to the office, Portia went back to her classes in Cavendish Square. Mild grey spring rain set in and shivered down on the trees. Thomas, who liked to be right about small things, liked having foretold this change in the weather. The first week the tulips were out, no sun shone on them; they stood in their mauves, corals and crimsons, fleshily damp, with no one by to see. No, this May afternoon was not like that May afternoon when old Mr. Quayne had crept about in the park. Portia did not see Eddie till the end of that week, when she came in on Saturday afternoon to find him at tea with Anna. He seemed very much pleased, greatly surprised to see her, jumped up, smiled all over, took her hand and exclaimed to Anna: “Doesn’t she look well, stilll” He made her sit down where he had been sitting, while he sat on the arm of the chair. Meanwhile, Anna, with just the hint of a flicker, rang for another cup. Portia was in the wrong; she was not expected; she had said she would have tea with Lilian that afternoon. “Do you know,” went on Eddie, “it must be months since we have all three met?”

St. Quentin, the previous Wednesday, had been more enthusiastic. Portia had met him walking briskly, aimlessly along Wigmore Street—black Homburg hat cocked forward, gloves tightly clasped in both hands behind his back. Half stopping now and then, and turning his whole body, he gave the luxury objects in dark polished windows glances of a distracted intensity. His behaviour was, somehow, not plausible: Portia felt uncertain, as she approached him, whether St. Quentin really did not see her, or did see her and wished to show that he did not. She hesitated—ought she to cross the street?—but then made on down the pavement, swinging her despatch case, like a too light little boat before a too strong wind: she could find no reason to stop. Something about her reflection in a window caught St. Quentin’s eye, and he turned round.

“Oh, hullo,” he said rapidly, “hullo! So you’re back, too: how nice! What are
you
doing?”

“Going home from lessons.”

“How lucky you are—I am not doing anything. That’s to say, I am putting in time. Do you go down Mandeville Place? Shall we walk down Mandeville Place?”

So they turned the corner together. Portia shifted her despatch case from one hand to the other and said: “How is your new book?”

Instead of replying, St. Quentin looked up at the windows. “We’d better not talk too loud: this is full of nursing homes. You know how the sick listen… . Have you had a nice time?” he continued, pitching his voice low.

“Yes, very,” she said almost down to a whisper. She had an inner view of white high beds, fever charts, waxy flowers.

“I’m afraid I can’t remember where you were.”

“At Seale. The seaside.”

“Delightful. How you must miss it. I wish I could go away. In fact I think I shall; there is no reason why I shouldn’t, but I’m in such a neurotic state. Do tell me about something. How is your diary?”

He saw Portia’s face flash his way; she at once threw him a look like a trapped, horrified bird’s. They pulled up to let someone, stepping out of a taxi, cross the pavement and carry a sheaf of flowers up the stark steps of a nursing home. When they walked on again, St. Quentin was once more up to anything, while Portia looked ahead steadily, stonily, down the overcast canyon of the street that was threatening in this sudden gloom of spring. He said: “That was just a shot in the dark. I feel certain you should keep a diary. I’m sure you have thoughts about life.”

“No, I don’t think much,” she said.

“My dear girl, that is hardly necessary. What I’m certain you do have are reactions. And I wonder what those are, whenever I look at you.”

“I don’t know what they are. I mean, what are reactions?”

“Well, I could explain, but must I? You do have feelings, of course?”

“Yes. Don’t you?”

St. Quentin bit at his upper lip moodily, making his moustache dip. “No, not often; I mean, not really. They’re not so much fun for me. Now what can have made me think you kept a diary? Now that I come to look at you, I don’t think you’d be so rash.”

“If I kept one, it would be a dead secret. Why should that be rash?”

“It is madness to write things down.”

“But you write those books you write almost all day, don’t you?”

“But what’s in them never happened. It might have, but never did. And though what is felt in them is just possible—in fact, it’s much more possible, in an unnerving way, than most people will admit—it’s fairly improbable. So, you see, it’s my game from the start. But I should never write what had happened down. One’s nature is to forget, and one ought to go by that. Memory is quite unbearable enough, but even so it leaves out quite a lot. It wouldn’t let one down as gently, even, as that if it weren’t more than half a fake—we remember to suit ourselves. No, really, er, Portia, believe me: if one didn’t let oneself swallow some few lies, I don’t know how one would ever carry the past. Thank God, except at its one moment there’s never any such thing as a bare fact. Ten minutes later, half an hour later, one’s begun to gloze the fact over with a deposit of some sort. The hours I spent with thee dear love are like a string of pearls to me. But a diary (if one did keep it up to date) would come much too near the mark. One ought to secrete for some time before one begins to look back at anything. Look how reconciled to everything reminiscences are… . Also, suppose somebody read it?”

This made Portia miss one step, shift her grip on her case. She glanced at St. Quentin’s rather sharklike profile, glanced away and stayed silent—so tensely silent that 
he peered round for another look at her.

“I should lock it up,” he said. “I should trust no one an inch.”

“But I lost the key.”

“Oh, you did? Look here, do let’s get this straight: weren’t we talking about a hypothetical diary?”

“Mine’s just a diary,” she said helplessly.

St. Quentin coughed, with just a touch of remorse. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’ve been too smart again. But that does me no good, in the long run.”

“I’d rather not have it known. It is simply a thing of mine.”

“No, that’s where you’re wrong. Nothing like that stops with oneself. You do a most dangerous thing. All the time, you go making connections—and that can be a vice.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re working on us, making us into something. Which is not fair—we are not on our guard with you. For instance, now I know you keep this book, I shall always feel involved in some sort of plan. You precipitate things. I daresay,” said St. Quentin kindly, “that what you write is quite silly, but all the same, you are taking a liberty. You set traps for us. You ruin our free will.”

“I write what has happened. I don’t invent.”

“You put constructions on things. You are a most dangerous girl.”

“No one knows what I do.”

“Oh, but believe me, we feel it. You must see how rattled we are now.”

“I don’t know what you
were
like.”

“Neither did we: we got on quite well then. What is unfair is, that you hide. God’s spy, and so on. Another offence is, you have a loving nature; you are the loving nature
in vacuo.
You must not mind my saying all this. After all, you and I don’t live in the same house; we seldom meet and you seldom affect me. All the same—”

“Are you teasing me now, or were you teasing me before? You must have been teasing one or the other time. First you said you felt sure I kept a diary, then you told me I mustn’t, then you asked where it was, then you pretended to be surprised when you knew there was one, after that you called me an unkind spy, now you say I love everyone too much. I see now you knew about my diary…
I suppose Anna found it and told you?
Did she?”

St. Quentin glanced at Portia from the tail of his eye. “I don’t come out of this well,” he said.

“But did she?”

“I am perfectly able to tell a lie, but my trouble is that I have no loyalty. Yes, Anna did, as a matter of fact. Now what a fuss this will make. Now, can I trust your discretion? You see that nobody can rely on mine.”

Pushing her hat brim further back from her forehead, Portia turned and sized St. Quentin up boldly. She believed he had a malignant conscience; she did not feel he was really indiscreet. “You mean,” she said, “not tell Anna you told me?”

“I would as soon you didn’t,” said St. Quentin humbly. “Avoid scenes; in future keep one eye on your little desk.”

“She told you I had a little desk?”

“I supposed you would have one.”

“Has she often—?”

St. Quentin rolled his eyes up. “Not so far as I know. Don’t be at all worried. Just find some new place to keep your book. What I have always found is, anything one keeps hidden should now and then be hidden somewhere else.”

“Thank you,” said Portia, dazed. “It is very kind of you.” She was incapable of anything past this: her feet kept walking her on inexorably. The conversation had ended in an abyss—impossible to pretend that it had not. Like all shocked people, she did not see where she was— they were well down Marylebone High Street, among the shoppers—from the depth of her eyes she threw wary, unhuman looks at faces that swam towards her, faces looking her way. She was aware of St. Quentin’s presence only as the cause of her wish to run down a side street. They had been walking fast, in this dreadful dream, for some time, when he cried loudly: “These
lacunae
in people 1”

“What did you say?”

“You don’t
ask
what made me do that—you don’t even ask yourself.”

She said, “You were very kind.”

“The most unlikely things one does, the most utterly out of character, arouse no curiosity, even in one’s friends. One can suffer a convulsion of one’s entire nature, and, unless it makes some noise, no one notices. It’s not just that we are incurious; we completely lack any sense of each other’s existences. Even you, with that loving nature you have—In a small way I have just ratted on Anna, I have done something she’d never forgive me for, and you, Portia, you don’t even ask why. Consciously, and as far as I can see quite gratuitously, I have started what may make a frightful breach. In me, this is utterly out of character: I’m not a mischievous man; I haven’t got time; I’m not interested enough. You’re not even listening, are you?”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“I’ve no doubt you’re upset. So you and I might be at different ends of the world. Stop thinking about your diary and your Anna and listen to me—and don’t flinch at me, Portia, as though I were an electric drill. You ought to want some key to why people do what they do. You think us all wicked—”

“I don’t, I—”

“It’s not so simple as that. What makes you think us wicked is simply our little way of keeping ourselves going. We must live, though you may not see the necessity. In the long run, we may not work out well. We attempt, however, to be more civil and kindly than we feel. The fact is, we have no great wish for each other—no spontaneous wish for each other, that is to say. This lack of gout makes us have to behave with a certain amount of policy. Because I quite like Anna, I overlook much in her, and because she quite likes me she overlooks much in me. We laugh at each other’s jokes and we save each other’s faces—When I give her away to you, I break an accepted rule. This is not often done. It takes people in a lasting state of hysteria, like your friend Eddie, for instance, or people who feel they have some higher authority (as I’ve no doubt Eddie feels he has) to break every rule every time. To keep any rule would be an event for him: when he breaks one more rule it is hardly interesting—at least, not to me. I simply cannot account for his fascination for Anna—”

“Does he fascinate Anna?”

“Oh, palpably, don’t you think? I suppose the dedue-tion is that she really must have a conventional mind. And of course he has some pretty ways—No, with me there has to be quite a brainstorm before I break any rule, before speaking the truth. Love, drink, anger— something crumbles the whole scene: at once one is in a fantastic universe. Its unseemliness and its glory are indescribable, really. One becomes a Colossus. … I still don’t know, all the same, what made that happen just now. It must be this close spring weather. It’s religious weather, I think.”

“You think she’s told Eddie about my diary, then?”

“My dear, don’t ask me what they talk about—Why turn down here?”

“I always go through this graveyard.”

“The futility of explaining—this is telling you nothing. Some day, you may hear from somebody else that I was an important man, then you’ll rack your brains to remember what I once said. Where shall you live next?”

“I don’t know. With my aunt.”

“Oh, you won’t hear of me
there.”

“I think I am to go and be with my aunt, when I’m not with Thomas and Anna any more.”