Free The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen Page B

yours," she sharply said. "Put it back." "Or had you better take charge of it? It might fall out again." "It didn't _fall__ out this time," she could not help remarking. "However, it always might; and you never know." She said: "What on earth do you mean?" "Well, you never know, you know, who might pick up what. And isn't what Robert's at quite important?" She over-easily smiled, took the paper from him, made ready to tear it up. "Hi!" he expostulated, "It isn't yours, either." "It can't be anything much." "Still," he said gravely, "it was found worth keeping." "So are old bus tickets and empty match-books and receipts for things at two-and-eleven-three, and en-velopes telegrams have arrived in." "I am sure, though, you ought to have a look at it." "Are you?" she said derisively, holding the twice-folded paper, dingy along its edges, pincer-nipped between her fingers and thumbs. She was aware of Roderick's eyes upon her in a suspended, dispassionate curiosity. Up to now, with that evasiveness a division between any two loves makes natural, she never had come to the point of asking herself what Roderick thought, or did not think, of herself and Robert. It could be possible that Roderick had succeeded in thinking nothing. If so, here was a crisis for them both. Like an ignorant looker-on at some famous game, trying to grasp the score and get the hang of the rules, he was watching to see what she would now do--expecting, evidently, to learn how far the prerogative of love went. He was waiting to see if this paper from Robert's pocket did count, was to be counted, as also hers. What a blunder, this bringing things to a head by this insane show of tearing the paper up! All the proprieties, everything sweet and lasting between herself and Roderick seemed to be caught up into this moment--in which she could hardly spare _them__ a thought. This was dynamite, between her fingers and thumbs. That she was terrified of the paper--she wondered, could Roderick see that, too? This secretively-folded grey-blue half-sheet became the corpus of suspicion--of guilt, hers, baseness, hers. What did she feel to be possible?--and, how could she? Smiling, as though Roderick were some atrocious contemporary, she remarked: "It always could be a letter from a woman." He said naïvely: "Oh, I shouldn't think so, should you?--No, more likely notes on some conversation." "But why should anybody make notes on a conversation?" "Why, but really, Mother," he exclaimed, heaving himself up on the sofa for greater emphasis, "conversations are the leading thing in this war! Even I know that. Everything you and I have to do is the result of something that's been said. How far do you think we'd get without conversations? And can you really suppose that someone where Robert is doesn't have conversations _about__ conversations, even if he doesn't have conversations himself?" "Very well, very well, very well; I daresay he does." "And in that case," said Roderick, lying back mollified, "he might be expected to jot down points." She, however, went on staring at nothing, till she suddenly asked: "Do _you__ believe what you're told?" "Depends on what I'm told, and who tells me." "Naturally. But, in general?" "Well, I am not told much. In fact, Fred says, it comes to seem fishy when one _is__ told anything. Go by what you find out for yourself, he says. If a thing's true, you find it sticks out a mile once you come to look. Whereas if anybody goes out his way to tell you something, Fred says you can take it he's got an axe to grind." "If what you were told were about someone you knew?" "In that case, how could I be told anything? If I properly knew the person I'd already know the thing--I should imagine. If I knew what I was told was true, it would not be news to me. If it both was news to me and then did turn out to be true, I suppose I should take it that after all I never had properly known the person." "It all sounds so simple." "Well, so it should; it is." He qualified