The Death of the Heart (Characters)

Characters

Cecil Bowers

Cecil is a friend of the Heccomb family who is brought to Daphne and Dickie's Saturday night party for Portia. Cecil and Portia become good friends while Portia is at Seale-on-Sea.

Major Eric "e. J." Brutt

Major Brutt is a lonely, retired soldier. Anna, along with Thomas and Portia, runs into him after the movies, and he mistakenly calls her Miss Fellowes, her maiden name. Major Brutt remembers Anna from before her marriage when she was with her lover, Robert Pidgeon. The family invites him back to the house for a drink, and he visits them on a number of other occasions although both Anna and Thomas are snippy about him behind his back. Portia likes him a great deal, and he gives her puzzles as gifts. After Eddie rejects her and she runs away from home, Portia ends up at his hotel.

Eddie

Eddie is twenty-three, charming, self-centered, a heavy drinker, and a ladies' man. He can swing from one emotional extreme to the other in a matter of minutes. He encourages Portia to fall in love with him even though he has no intention of honestly returning her affections. Early in the novel he claims to be in love with Anna and constantly visits the house to flirt with her. Anna finds a job for Eddie in Thomas' advertising firm because she believes him to be clever but in need of something to settle him down.

Eddie first encourages Portia's affections when he writes a letter to her, thanking her for an insignificant courtesy and adds that he is lonely and wants to be her friend because he sees that she is lonely, too. They begin to meet secretly because they know that no one approves of the two of them being together. Portia feels that no one understands Eddie. She begins to fall in love and shares her diary with him. She invites him to the seashore while she is there but is shocked when she sees him holding hands with Daphne in the movie theater. He tells her he no longer cares for her, primarily because he is simply overwhelmed by her innocence and eagerness for love. This statement prompts her to run away to Major Brutt's hotel room.

Daphne Heccomb

Daphne is Mrs. Heccomb's stepdaughter and has a job at a library. She lives at home with her brother and Mrs. Heccomb to help with the expenses. She is popular and full of spontaneity. Portia discovers Daphne and Eddie holding hands at the movie theater, but Daphne assures her that it was nothing — although she warns Portia to beware of Eddie.

Dickie Heccomb

Dickie is Mrs. Heccomb's stepson. He has a job at a bank and lives at home, helping his stepmother with the expenses. It is his cigarette lighter that illuminates Eddie holding hands with Daphne at the move theater.

Mrs. Heccomb

Mrs. Heccomb takes care of Portia at her home in Seale-on-Sea while Thomas and Anna are in Capri. She was once Anna's governess. She married a physician, who died and left her very little to live on. To make a little extra money, she paints lamp shades and rents out her house in the summer. The family life at Waikiki, Mrs. Heccomb's seaside villa, is lively and unrestricted — in stark contrast to Anna and Thomas' grim home in London. Mrs. Heccomb's two children, Daphne and Dickie, are popular and energetic and often have large spontaneous dance parties at the villa.

Lilian

Lilian is Portia's schoolmate, her only friend close to her in age. She has already started to get a womanly figure and to attract looks from men. She is at Miss Paullie's school because she fell in love with the female cello teacher at a previous school.

R. Matchett

Matchett is a servant in Thomas and Anna's house, coming from the first Mrs. Quayne's household after her death. She is very proper and runs the house with a sense of the absolute. But she is also sympathetic to Portia's situation. On evenings when Thomas and Anna are out, Matchett comes up to Portia's room to tuck her in for the night and to share stories about Portia's father when he lived with the first Mrs. Quayne.

One night, Matchett finds one of Eddie's letters to Portia under Portia's pillow. While she does not read the letter, she makes clear to Portia that she disapproves of Eddie and thinks he is nothing but trouble for a girl as inexperienced as Portia. Because of her relationship with Portia, Thomas and Anna choose Matchett to bring Portia back after she has run away.

St. Quentin Miller

St. Quentin Miller is a close friend of Anna's and a writer of some fame. He is aloof and somewhat cold and counts Anna one of his few friends. He makes vague references to the fact that he is so distant from others because in the past he has found that becoming intimate with another person is too painful. He is responsible for inadvertently telling Portia that Anna has read her diary.

Miss Paullie

Miss Paullie is the head of the school Portia attends. It is a very expensive school but seems to be especially for girls who have not done well at other schools. Miss Paullie holds classes in her father's huge house, where he also sees patients as a physician. She is strict and has very rigid codes of conduct for the girls.

Robert Pidgeon

Robert Pidgeon was a lover of Anna's before she married Thomas. She keeps his letters to her, of which Thomas is aware. The reason for Robert and Anna's breakup is not clear but has something to do with both his and Anna's inability to be truly intimate. Anna and Major Brutt see Robert as exceptionally capable, and he is well thought of. Anna still reads his old love letters.

Anna Quayne

Anna is Thomas' wife and is currently thirty-four. She and Thomas tried to have children but she miscarried twice, and she has now decided that she doesn't want children. Their relationship seems tense, and she is in control of just how close they are to each other. Anna does not like Portia and is almost cruel to her, but puts up with her living at their house because this is the right thing to do. She is unsympathetic toward everyone, most of all Portia, and is unable to imagine herself in anyone else's place. Both she and Thomas speak ill of many of their friends behind their backs. One of her closest friends is St. Quentin Miller, but she is also very attached to Eddie and has found him a job at Thomas' firm.

Irene Quayne

Irene is Mr. Quayne's second wife, considerably younger than he is, and Portia's mother. She and Mr. Quayne had an affair after being introduced to each other by mutual friends, and they married once she became pregnant with Portia. She dies in Switzerland after Mr. Quayne's death, and her sister sends the letter about Portia to the Quaynes in London. Portia has many memories of moving from one cheap hotel room to another in Switzerland with her mother and of the closeness they shared.

Mr. Quayne

Mr. Quayne is Portia and Thomas' father. He once ran a small business, but the first Mrs. Quayne had money, and she urged him to retire early to a house she had bought. Mr. Quayne is depicted as a weak man who has been led around by his wife. He was about fifty-seven and living a very orderly life when his affair with Irene began in London. At that time, he had had his first child, Thomas, with the first Mrs. Quayne, who, upon being told of the affair, calmly insisted upon a divorce and upon Mr. Quayne's marriage to Irene. Before he dies, Mr. Quayne writes a letter asking that, if Irene should also die before Portia becomes an adult, Anna and Thomas take care of Portia, at least for a year.

Mrs. Quayne

Mrs. Quayne is Thomas' mother and Mr. Quayne's first wife, and she has a substantial amount of money. When Mr. Quayne tells her of his affair with Irene, and that Irene is pregnant, she very calmly arranges the entire series of events that follows: her divorce from Mr. Quayne; the packing of his bags; Thomas' driving him to the train station; and even Mr. Quayne's marriage to Irene. When Matchett speaks of her former employer to Portia, she notes that Mrs. Quayne meant "to do right," as opposed to doing good when she kicked Mr. Quayne out of the house and made him marry Irene.

Portia Quayne

Portia is the sixteen-year-old love child of Mr. Quayne and Irene Quayne (the second Mrs. Quayne), and was born in France soon after their marriage. Her childhood has been spent traveling around Switzerland from one cheap hotel room to another. After her father and mother die, Portia moves to the London house of her half-brother, Thomas, and his wife, Anna. The childless couple takes in the orphan Portia because it is the right thing to do, but they take no joy in her company and find her a disruption to their sterile household. She is as eager as a puppy to fit in and learn the ways of their world, but her innocence startles them.

Portia keeps a diary, which Anna reads, learning that Portia has portrayed her and others in a less than flattering light. Realizing that Anna has read her diary is one of the events that precipitates Portia's running away from home toward the end of the book.

Portia falls in love with Eddie, a friend of Anna's who is a callous, self-centered Lothario (a man who likes to seduce women). He encourages her to consider him the focus of her life, but her innocence and eagerness for love frighten him, and he eventually tells her that he no longer loves her. His rejection of her is one of the other events that launches Portia's desperate attempt to run away.

Thomas Quayne

Thomas is Portia's older half-brother, the son of Mr. Quayne and the first Mrs. Quayne. He has few brotherly feelings toward Portia because he is still hurting from the fracture Portia's birth created in his family. He has been married to Anna for eight years, lives in a nice house in London, and is a partner in his own advertising firm, Quayne and Merrett.

Thomas' marriage to Anna appears, on most occasions, to be very cold and passionless. As well, his character gives the impression of being weak when dealing with his wife. For example, when St. Quentin Miller, a friend of Anna's, comes for tea, Thomas feels that he is not welcome and stays down in his library until Miller has left the house.

Media Adaptations

• In 1985, Granada Television (United Kingdom) produced a television movie version of The Death of the Heart, starring JoJo Cole as Portia, Wendy Hiller as Matchett, Patricia Hodge as Anna, and Miranda Richardson as Daphne.