The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen Read Free Book Online Page B

enough. If it suited you, I might drop in from time to time?" "To see how everything's going?" "In case you _had__ made your mind up." "And meanwhile, nothing will happen?" "I think one may pretty safely say pretty likely not.--And now--" "Now what?" "You don't think, a spot of dinner?" "No, thank you," she said in a final tone. His face fell. "Oh but, I say, I say--I'd got a table for us. What's the matter? You're not upset? Can't you eat, aren't you hungry?" "Simply, I'm staying in." "Oh, that's it, is it--you're staying in? Staying in who for?" He heard the telephone before she did, being one of those people who receive that vibration just before the ring: he had jerked his head in the direction of the dividing door before she was aware of the telephone in there in her bedroom. The same possibility made them exchange a glance--as though already there were complicity. She stood where she was, head down, while the telephone continued its double-ringing--to which Harrison, for his part, listened closely as though trying to familiarise himself with a code. "Look, take it, why don't you?" he said at last. She made a sweeping turn and went through to the other room, contemptuously leaving the door open behind her. Behind the mirror the curtains were still undrawn; there was an ashy glimmer of window--she went round the foot of the bed to sit at the pillow end, her back to the scene she had left behind. In the dark she took up the receiver with the unfumbling sureness of one who habitually answers a telephone at any, even the deepest, hour of the night. Her hand would have reached its mark before her eyes opened; before her brain stirred, her ear would be ready, so that the first word she heard, even the first she spoke, would be misted over by some unfinished dream. This mechanical reflex of hers to a mechanical thing suggested to Harrison, standing there aware in the other room, the first idea he had had of poetry--her life. Enflamed by the picture he could not see, he could but think, "So _that's__ what it can be like!" Meanwhile, feet planted apart in the lamplit drawing-room, he looked about him like a German in Paris. "Hullo?" she said--to be checked: whoever it was had failed to press Button A. Then--"Oh, _you__--oh, darling!... You are, are you? For how long?... However, that's better than nothing. But why didn't you tell me? Have you had any dinner?... Yes, I'm afraid that might be best: I don't think I've got anything in the flat. How I wish you'd told me.... And directly after that you'll come straight here?... Of course; naturally; don't be so idiotic.... Yes, there is just at the moment, but there soon won't be.... No, no one you know.... Soon, then--as soon as ever you can!" She hung up, but remained to black out her bedroom. And in the series of rushes with which she made the curtains run on the rail could be heard release, a lightening, a larklike soaring up of her mood. She lit up the dressing-table, hummed a tune, tranquilly touched her hair. Harrison could not but be drawn to the doorway, in which he remained standing--he searched, with his eyes, the room, the built-in cupboards, the satin low bed, her face reflected in the dazzling mirror. He said: "Well, that was that. You always sound so surprised?" "Only when I am," she replied, turning. "That was my son, on leave." "Oho." "He's just got to London. He's at the station. He's on his way round here."
    Chapter 3
    RODERICK never came to the flat without giving warning. When, at a quarter to ten that night, Stella heard the bell of the street door, she was in the act of pulling blankets out of a cupboard. Had her parting with Harrison been of a different kind she would have called after him, as he went downstairs: "Please leave that door on the latch again, for Roderick." As things were, she had had the irritation of hearing Harrison pause outside, to make sure the door _was__ shut, before making off down Weymouth Street. He had gone--but he had brought life to