Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen Read Free Book Online Page A

capacity for making trouble, attracting trouble, strewing trouble around her, is quite endless. She, er, begets trouble—a dreadful gift. And the more so for being inborn. You may not realise for how long and how painfully closely I’ve known that family. The Trouts have, one might say, a genius for unreality: even Willy was prone to morose distortions. Hysteria was, of course, the domain of Cissie. Your, er, generous defence of Cissie won’t, I hope, entirely blind you to how much of what was least desirable in Cissie is in her daughter. Eva is tacitly hysterical. —Has Eva been truthful with you?”
    “Not lately.”
    “Yours is the paramount influence.”
    “No longer.”
    “She rebels against it, I grant—but that’s proof, isn’t it?” He paused. “You and I, Mrs. Arble, are wicked people. We know, at least, what the form is. You and I cut ice. We effect something , and—do you know?—it’s not always quite for the worse. Don’t blinker yourself.”
    Iseult gave a dizzied touch to her turban. She leaned back from the table; her skin glistened. “Airless in here—isn’t it?”
    “Probably.—Mrs. Arble, you must keep Eva!”
    She mutinied. “I am sorry, I have done all I can.”
    He raised, then touched, a barely-visible eyebrow. “You would not be entirely single-handed. Not quite unaided.”
    “You mean there’s Eric?”
    “Such a delightful certainty! But you and I should, probably, keep in touch? Closer in touch than hitherto. Er— collaborate.”
    Iseult took stock of him anew. Mere misgivings gave place to incredulity: he did not seem possible—did not seem likely, even. Nothing authenticated him as a “living” being. A figure cut from some picture but now pasted on to a blank screen. To be with him was to be in vacuo also. She said to him: “Do you know, Mr. Ormeau, I have actually no idea what you do. What you actually do , I mean.” “I import.”
    “Oh, do you?—Or, where you live.”
    “In an hotel, principally.—What can I next tempt you to? The profiteroles here are not always bad; they go down easily, which we may be glad of. Because, we must put our heads together before we part. Don’t you think so? Begin to concoct something …”

FIVE

Two Schools

    TIME, inside Eva’s mind, lay about like various pieces of a fragmented picture. She remembered, that is to say, disjectedly. To reassemble the picture was impossible; too many of the pieces were lost, lacking. Yet, some of the pieces there were would group into patterns—patterns at least. Each pattern had a predominant colour; and each probably had meaning, though that she did not seek. Occupationally, this pattern-arriving-at was absorbing, as is a kindergarten game, and, like such a game, made sense in a way.
    The day of Iseult’s absence in London was passed by Eva, hazily, in this manner. At Larkins, the girl lay abed with her heavy cold. A slight feverish drowsiness ran the hours together. From noon on, she was alone in the house (Eric at work, the morning woman gone home) but for her bedfellow: this was a princely cold. Could it be a descendant of Mr. Dancey’s? One might hope so. Best of all, she was no longer at bay—for so long, that was, as the cold lasted. Also the cold set up a moratorium; during it, no decision had to be taken, or indeed could be … And, how if Iseult should never return? Suppose she vanished?—women constantly did so. Then , it would be unnecessary to leave Larkins.
    She felt entrenched by being in bed. “Stay where you are,” had been the injunction (Eric’s). Any show of concern was heart-warming. Seldom in anything but rude health, used to but scanty attention when she was otherwise, she had set store by the hourly cups of tea brought by the morning woman during the morning. The last remained at her bedside, a cherished memento, scum on its dregs. And there was, too, a clouded tumbler of water. This afternoon she ate eucalyptus lozenges, exhumed by Eric from the back of a