The Dust That Falls From Dreams

by Louis de Bernières

  Rosie bridled. ‘No, it isn’t. Without my faith I’d die of loneliness. And despair. And fright.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ said Ottilie quickly. ‘What matters is that Daniel is a very fine man, and that now you’ve got the chance to make a new start.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I’m going. To make a new start.’

  ‘You’ve got to throw yourself into it,’ said Ottilie, ‘you really have. No half-measures.’

  ‘It isn’t so easy,’ said Rosie. ‘I have…you know…because of Ash…How shall I put it? I’ve been suffering from a disengaged heart. I’ve often thought that I shouldn’t have married poor Daniel.’

  ‘Am I right in thinking that, when you married Daniel, you were only…how shall I put it?…demi-vierge?’

  ‘Ottilie! Why do you say that?’

  ‘I’m not condemning you or criticising. I know you were promised to each other absolutely. In your minds, in everybody’s minds, you were married already, weren’t you?’

  ‘We didn’t…you know we didn’t…’

  ‘Go all the way? Well, I’m sure you were sensible.’

  ‘And obedient. It was obedience, that’s all.’

  ‘Obedient?’

  ‘God’s law.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Ottilie paused. ‘But that didn’t stop you knowing…many pleasures, did it? You did manage to be alone together an awful lot.’

  ‘What’s this got to do with anything, Ottie? Why are you questioning me?’

  ‘Well, I’ve heard it said, and I expect it’s true, that a woman gets terribly attached to the first man who, well, you know…and I’m sure that must have made it most awfully difficult with Daniel. Does he know about you…being a demi-vierge?’

  ‘He hasn’t said anything.’

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ said Ottilie, putting her hand on her sister’s arm. ‘When I was at Brighton, at the Pavilion, with all those Mahommedans and Hindus and Sikhs, well, just about all of them have arranged marriages. You know, Mummy and daddy arrange for someone suitable. None of them marries for love, Rosie, but do you know what? You know how wounded men talk, late at night, when they are in too much pain to sleep, and someone is having a nightmare and yelling? And all you can do is hold a man’s hand and listen?’

  Rosie nodded. She knew it as if it were engraved upon her psyche.

  ‘Well,’ said Ottilie, ‘those men, who didn’t marry for love, it’s obvious that when they talk about their wives, they do love them, they really do. Rosie dearest, you don’t have to love the man you marry. You can marry and the love comes later. It truly can. It does. I know it. I learned it from those poor wounded Indians.’

  ‘I know what you’re saying,’ said Rosie, ‘but it’s not as bad as you think.’

  ‘I know it’s specially difficult for you,’ said Ottilie, ‘I really do know that it is. We all do. Even Daniel knows. All I’m asking is, do try properly.’

  ‘Properly with brass knobs on, and pink ribbons?’

  ‘And silver bells.’

  The sisters laughed, and Ottilie said, ‘I wouldn’t ask, but Daniel really is a good catch. I wouldn’t ask you if he was a bounder. And I think he probably still loves you.’

  ‘I’m sure he does,’ replied Rosie, ‘and things have already begun to get better. They really have. You didn’t have to talk to me about this at all. What about you, Ottie? What’s going to happen with you?’

  ‘Moi? I shall be deliriously happy, you wait and see.’

  ‘What about Archie?’

  ‘Not to be, I don’t think. He’s not here any more, is he? And when he is here, he’s just desperate to get back to the North-West Frontier. And it’s you he loves, not me. That’s why he’s such a sad man who can’t wait to go. Not a hope for me, I’m afraid. I’ve just got to bear up and see what’s round the corner. I did take a little fancy to Fluke, between you and me, but he’s already spoken for. Two children, I believe. And gone to South America. And let’s face it, he’s an aviator. They don’t last much longer than a meteorite, do they? That’s what they are, meteorites waiting to hit the ground. Aviators are born to become a beautiful memory, like a poppy whose petals are ripped away in a storm.’

  ‘Daniel’s an aviator,’ said Rosie. She looked at Ottilie, taking her in now that it was almost time to part. Ottilie was quite short, and even dumpy if one were to be uncharitable. She wore her black shiny hair in a simple bob, and her large oval face seemed little more than a neutral setting for her enormous dark brown eyes. Rosie thought, ‘How many ways there are of being beautiful!’

  Ottilie said, ‘I want to give you a hug, like when we were little.’

  After a while, Rosie said, ‘Ottie, I’m so sad. I feel I hardly know you.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ murmured Ottilie. ‘I’m the quiet one. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I know you right down to the last drop.’

  ‘Dear Ottie,’ said Rosie. ‘Please look after Daddy, won’t you? If anything happens send me a telegram and I’ll come straight back. I know you don’t entirely agree with me, but I really do think there’s something wrong with his heart.’

  ‘I’ll keep Daddy wrapped up in cotton wool,’ said Ottilie.

  102

  The Clonking

  One Sunday after church (which he endured patiently for the sake of the family’s respectability) Daniel came down the front steps of the house and found Mr Wragge in his Sunday best, gazing at the AC with a worried look on his face.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Wragge. Not taking your day off?’ said Daniel.

  ‘I am, sir, but this car’s giving me a right headache. Can’t stop thinking about it. Just thought I’d call by and take another look.’

  ‘I see that Caractacus has been walking all over it,’ said Daniel.

  ‘I only have to polish it and the bleedin’ cat walks all over it with muddy feet,’ said Wragge. ‘I’ve had to resign myself. The family don’t seem to mind. And when you go anywhere you have to check he isn’t sitting in the back like a bloody gentleman off to the races.’

  ‘What’s the matter with it, then?’

  ‘Noises, sir. Horrible noises.’

  ‘What sort of noises, Mr Wragge?’

  ‘Clonking, sir. Specially when you start off, stop or go round corners.’

  ‘It sounds like the perfect excuse for a drive,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ve got an hour before lunch. Get her started and we’ll go for a spin. Can I drive?’

  Mr Wragge looked doubtful. ‘Just so’s you remember it ain’t a Sopwith, sir. Long as you don’t throw her about, sir.’

  ‘I’ll drive very sedately, Mr Wragge. Start her up!’

  Daniel heard the clonking the moment they pulled out of the drive. They set off down Court Road, he applied the brakes and there it was. They turned into North Park, and it was even worse. When Daniel braked at Footscray Road and turned right to go round behind the golf course, it was horrendous. Daniel stopped the car and it clonked again.

  ‘Do you think it’s safe to drive?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, that’s the odd thing, sir. It drives perfectly sweet, and you can’t feel nothing strange at the wheel. It’s not like she’s juddering, or wandering about the road or anything.’

  They started off again and completed the circuit back past the Tarn. In the driveway of The Grampians, Daniel switched off the engine and said, ‘I think we’d better jack her up at the back and take a look. You get the jack out and I’ll go and get some overalls.’

  Ten minutes later Sophie came out of the house on her way to post a letter, and saw Mr Wragge crouched down at the side of the car next to Daniel’s feet. She heard Daniel’s voice drifting out, as if he were talking to himself. ‘Nothing wrong with the propshaft. I mean, it feels perfectly solid. It couldn’t be the diff, could it?’

  ‘Don’t think so, sir. Diffs grind. They don’t clonk.’

  ‘The suspension looks absolutely fine. I see you greased the springs recently.’

  ‘I did, sir. I
take care of her as best I know.’

  Sophie interrupted. ‘Do we have a little local difficulty, oh comrades stout and true? May a mere slip of a sliver of a very slight female be of any assistance?’

  Daniel emerged from beneath the car, with a long streak of heavy grease across the bridge of his nose and down one cheek.

  ‘Gracious,’ said Sophie, ‘your maquillage is all lopsided. You must go to the agency and get yourself a better maid.’

  ‘There’s a hideous clonking when you brake,’ said Daniel.

  ‘And when you go round corners,’ added Wragge. ‘It’s a right mystery.’

  ‘Whence cometh it? What is its provenance, where its domicile, where and what its dwelling?’

  ‘Somewhere in the back, sort of behind and below the driver and passenger.’

  Sophie put her forefinger to her lip and adopted a theatrically thoughtful expression. ‘Well, enfant de la patrie, would you condescend to lift up the back seat?’

  ‘The back seat?’

  ‘Yea, verily, the back seat.’

  ‘As her ladyship wishes,’ said Daniel. ‘But you must know there’s no machinery under there.’

  ‘’Tis true,’ said Sophie. ‘Beneath a back seat dwell no cogs, gudgeon pins or big ends. The latter repose upon the seat but do not occupy the space beneath.’

  Daniel reached in and pulled up the leather tabs at the back of the seat. Sophie leaned over and looked. Her hand darted down and she plucked something up.

  ‘Just as I ratiocinated,’ she said, holding up the golf ball, and tossing it to Daniel. ‘Toodle-oo, gentlemen of England. Must go and post an epistle. Vivat floreatque gynocracy!’

  Daniel and Mr Wragge watched her go. Even from behind they could see her triumphant amusement.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Mr Wragge, drawing the syllables out.

  ‘I bet she put it there herself, the little minx,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ll ask Fairhead.’

  ‘I’ll fetch us a cup of tea from the kitchen,’ said Mr Wragge.

  They drank it side by side on the step outside the boiler room. ‘Mr Wragge,’ said Daniel, ‘have you ever thought of setting up a business?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know how, sir. What kind of business?’

  ‘Well,’ said Daniel, ‘something mechanical. Cars or motorcycles. Or both. Aeroplanes if possible.’

  ‘I dunno, sir. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I have two friends in Germany. Willy and Fritzl. I captured them in 1918. They’ve started a motorcycle business in Germany. They’ve written and asked me if I’d like to go over and pitch in. It occurred to me that you would make up the numbers perfectly.’

  ‘You’d go to Germany, sir? After all that?’

  ‘It wasn’t the Germans, Mr Wragge, it was the bloody Kaiser. If His Majesty went mad and told the young men of this country to go out and conquer France, you can bet that half of us would go.’

  ‘Well, maybe so, sir, but you’re a gentleman. Gentlemen aren’t mechanics.’

  ‘I am beginning to think that I have no future as a gentleman,’ said Daniel. ‘And in any case, in business it helps if you’ve got a gentleman on board. And the sad truth is that I love machinery. If I can’t spend my life tinkering, I shall live unhappy, I know it. I was born to make things work.’

  ‘Well, I’m not a gentleman. We’d have to rub along, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘You’re a bloody good mechanic, Mr Wragge. That’s why I asked you. You’re damned useful with a spanner and you understand how everything works.’

  ‘Anyway, I thought you was going to Ceylon, sir.’

  ‘I am. I’m just making a plan B. In case it doesn’t work out. My wife…’ Daniel stood up without completing the sentence. ‘Give me your cup and saucer, Mr Wragge. I’ll take them back to the kitchen.’

  ‘Gentleman don’t take washing-up to the kitchen.’

  ‘I’m getting in practice for when I have to give it up,’ said Daniel.

  As he left, Mr Wragge said, ‘Thanks for helping me find that there golf ball.’

  103

  A Letter to Gaskell

  The Grampians

  Thursday

  Gaskell Old Thing, Green-Eyed and Monstrous to Boot,

  Your exhibition was a delight. I particularly liked the portraits of rotting horses. I’d say you’ve got it down to a T.

  I don’t know about you, but I think there are two ways to have come through the war. You can either let it haunt you and torment you, like the poor Bs who hide under the table because of the snipers, and tremble so much that they can’t hold a cup of tea steady, and wake up terrified the moment they go to sleep; or you can be thankful for what beauty and honour came through it intact, and are steadily growing now that the fighting’s over. I am not sure whether one can choose which one to be, and sometimes I wonder if I am somewhat both, but I am inclined to think that I have come out of it mainly with the more positive attitude. I was walking up by Chanctonbury Ring some weeks ago, with Esther on my shoulders, and Rosie was there with a big wide hat on, trailing behind looking at the flowers, and my mother somewhere far below making bread, and I was so filled with the pleasure of how perfect it is up there that I felt a kind of gratitude, at the same time as I felt sorrow that so many of my friends will never see it. I had a sense of wonder that I was still here to experience all that loveliness. We have come through, old thing.

  So let’s remember the rotting horses and shattered houses, and let that memory make us thankful for the lives we lead now. That is how I want to look at your war work, as something to make me grateful for what’s left, and for what is still to come. I have been thinking that when this vein is exhausted, you will need to start mining a new one, and it has occurred to me that it would be marvellous if you were to do a portrait of Christabel, in one of her blue dresses, perhaps in profile, by a window. I can vividly imagine how well you would do it. Do ask her to write and tell us how her photographic exhibition goes next month. We are very sorry not to be seeing it.

  As you know, Rosie and I are going to Ceylon, in the hope of making a new start. Why that is necessary, I think it is plain for all to see. You and Christabel will, I know, be pleased to learn that Rosie has been perking up considerably in recent days, and I am catching frequent glimpses of her as I remember her when she was a girl. That great cloud of unhappiness seems to be dispersing very gradually, and I live in the greatest hope that one day before too long she may be free of it entirely. Going to Ceylon does, however, leave me with the problem of what to do with my three aeroplanes.

  I know you quite well enough to know that you will probably try and fly them without even one minute’s instruction, and so I am strictly enjoining you not to. If you start one up on your own, it will be inclined to trundle away without you in the cockpit. You should join an aero club, use the club’s riggers and fitters, and learn from an instructor like everyone else, and get your ticket properly. The one crucial thing I must tell you, and any instructor will tell you the same, is never never never try to turn back if your engine fails on take-off. Turning back is an almost irresistible impulse, and it is invariably fatal. Even crashing head-on into a tree or a house is better than what happens when you try to turn back on take-off. Promise me faithfully. I am worried for you. I fear that you are like a French cavalry officer, more brave than sensible.

  Of course, if you lose power in flight, you pick a distant field and just go for it. Be very careful to watch out for power lines. Those planes can land on a sixpence, and you will be simply amazed at the hospitality and assistance that will be given to you by all the locals. I’d say it’s worth the inconvenience almost every time! Watch out for bulls, as well. I was charged by one in France, and it stove in the side of my Camel. It got its head and horns entangled in the interior bracing wires, and it was the Devil’s own job trying to disengage it. In the end the farmer fetched a hacksaw and we cut one of its horns off. It was probably the most frightening thing I had to do in the whole of the war, and the d—-d
thing kept standing on my foot and bellowing. After that the plane was unflyable and had to be collected by the tender. In retrospect it would have been more sensible simply to cut the wires, but in the heat of the moment the old man and I can’t have been thinking straight. I remember thinking that if we cut the wires, well, I never would get off the ground, and then I didn’t anyway. Somewhere near Arles there is a one-horned bull called Pierre. I wonder how he is. Do horns regrow?

  And do please take out insurance.

  I am sincerely hoping that there might eventually be opportunities in aviation in Ceylon, but in the meantime it’s tea for me. It’s lucky I like it, and of course one can do the most marvellous things there. When we are settled in, it would be a delight if you and Christabel were to come out and see us. You can bring your golf clubs, and do bring your Purdeys and keep us satiated with duck.

  The gong has rung for supper. The house reverberates. Time to sign off. We shall miss you!

  Chin-chin, and love to the ever-glorious Christabel,

  Daniel P. (ex RAF, soon to be tea planter)

  PS And for God’s sake don’t fly blotto. We sometimes used to do that, and now the thought of it fills me with horror.

  PPS I came across my father-in-law in the dining room recently. He was trying out a cast-iron contraption with a golf ball suspended on it from a rod. There is a dial with a needle on it. It is called the McCosh Patent Driveometer, and the idea is that you whack the captive golf ball and the dial shows how far it would have gone. In his own way, the man is a genius, n’est-ce pas? He is now working on a version that tells you if have sliced or hooked it. This will be the McCosh Patent Stratedrive.

  104

  Young Edward

  Mr Hamilton McCosh was practising his putting on the drawing-room carpet with his new McCosh Patent Flagsure Stainless Putter when Millicent came in to tell him that someone was at the tradesmen’s door, hoping to speak to him. Putter in hand, he went out of the front door, and round the side of the house, where he found a woman of about thirty, accompanied by a boy of twelve. They were respectably dressed, but in clothes that had been greatly patched up. ‘Poor people who take pride in themselves,’ thought Mr McCosh approvingly. The woman was brown-haired, with early silver streaks, and her pale face was thin and pinched. She had once been very pretty.