Dusty Answer

by Rosamond Lehmann

  ‘Come and help us, Judith,’ screamed Julian. ‘We’ve never skated before in our lives. We can’t stop. We’re too thin to be allowed to fall down.’

  They were dragging each other on helplessly.

  ‘Come here,’ wailed Charlie. ‘Judith, come and help me to stand. Shan’t we fall in? Are you sure it’s safe? My feet are frozen.’

  Judith giggled as she went from one to the other encouraging, admonishing, supporting. The three ridiculous sillies! They enjoyed their silliness, they enjoyed making her laugh, they were not a bit frightening after all. Never, never since she had bidden them good-bye years ago had been such warm and bubbling happiness. Everything delightful was really starting at last.

  As they began to improve they became ambitious. They declared their desire to learn fancy skating, and Charlie swore he would cut a figure of eight before the day was out; and all the time they were simply no good at all. Out of the corner of an eye Judith saw the old gentleman and the boy in the Norfolk jacket wistfully looking on, and she ignored them.

  ‘Now, come along, Mariella,’ said Charlie. Take hands like this, crossed, and well go for a glide.’ They sailed rather haltingly away.

  Under Mariella’s blue wool cap the dark short hair curled softly upwards now, longer than the boyish crop of yore. Her face had preserved its pure and innocent mask. She was laughing, not as other people laughed, unreservedly in the enjoyment of physical pleasures, but rather as if she were making a concession to Charlie’s mood, and found the abandonment of laughter alien to her. There was still the curious likeness between the two clear bloodless faces, though Charlie’s was forever changing with quick emotions and Mariella’s was still, empty almost. They would understand each other, thought Judith. In spite of the friction that used to go on between them, they had always been more obviously, more oppressively blood-relations than any other members of the circle. With years the bond had become even more subtly defined.

  Julian was left out. He had never taken any notice of Mariella, yet he had always been the one upon whom her light gaze had dwelt with a faint difference, as if it meant to dwell. In the old days it had sometimes seemed as if she would have been pleased – really pleased, not just indifferently agreeable as she generally was – if Julian had offered to take her for a beetle-walk. She appeared to have a slight respectful interest in him, and a manner which suggested, though only to a remorseless watcher, that she would have valued his good opinion. It still seemed so. When he was teasing her about her school, her eyes, uncertain yet dwelling, had fallen on him a moment; but now, as formerly, you could detect no affection between them.

  ‘We wondered if we should meet you,’ said Julian shyly. ‘I’m so glad we did.’

  Then they had not completely forgotten. She blessed him for the assurance, which only he would have given.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it was you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I did miss you after you went. I thought perhaps Martin might write to me, but he didn’t. How is Martin?’

  ‘He’s all right. We don’t see him so much now. His people are back from Africa and he spends most of the holidays with them.’ He smiled and added: ‘I remember Martin was terribly devoted to you. I must tell him I’ve seen you.’

  ‘And where’s Roddy?’

  ‘Oh Roddy … He’s all right. He’s in London. Roddy’s very grown up: he’s having dancing lessons.’ Julian snorted.

  ‘Does he still draw?’

  ‘I don’t know. Should think he’s too lazy.’

  Julian had never liked Roddy.

  ‘Do you still compose, Julian?’

  ‘Oh, do you remember that?’ He smiled with pleasure.

  ‘Of course. “The Stag Beetles’ Dance”. And “Spring with the Cuckoo in it”.’

  ‘Oh, that rot. Fancy you remembering!’ He looked at her in just the old way, amused but interested, thinking well of her.

  ‘I thought it was beautiful. Have you written anything lately?’

  ‘No. No time. I’ve given it all up. I’ve been working like mad for a scholarship. P’raps I’ll take to it again a bit at Oxford.’

  He seemed to have become enthusiastic about it all at once, encouraged by her interest. He had not changed much.

  ‘And did you get your scholarship?’

  ‘Yes. Balliol. I go up next year.’ He was being brief and modest, actually blushing. But Balliol meant nothing to her: she was thinking of his great age.

  ‘You must be eighteen.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘D’you know, I remember all your birthdays.’

  As she said it she almost cried again, it seemed such a confession of long-cherished vain hope and love. He stared at her, ready to be amused, and then, seeing her face, looked away suddenly, as if he half-understood and were astonished, embarrassed, touched.

  ‘Oh, look at those two,’ he said quickly.

  Charlie had taken off his coat, and they were holding it up as a sail. With a pang of dismay Judith realized for the first time the ominous strength of the wind. It filled the coat full, and Mariella and Charlie, bearing it high in front of them, went sailing straight across the pond. They could not stop. They shrieked in laughter and agony and went ever faster. They were borne to the pond’s edge, stubbed their skates and fell violently in a heap on the grass.

  Charlie lay on his back and moaned.

  ‘I’ve got a pain. I’ve got a pain. Oh Mariella! Oh God! Oh all you people! The anguish, the sensation! – like the Scenic Railway – transports of horror and bliss. I thought: never, never shall we stop. We went faster and fas … Oh Mariella your face … I shall die …’

  He writhed with laughter, the tears poured down his face. ‘I t-tried to say: drop the c— I hadn’t any voice – Oh what feeling! … those skimming dreams … Oh God!’

  He shut his eyes exhausted.

  Then soon he had to try again. Then they all tried, and were a nuisance to the other skaters. Everyone looked at Charlie, and nobody was annoyed because of his beauty and radiant spirits, and his charming apologies when he got in the way.

  Judith ached with giggling; even Mariella and Julian were wiping their eyes. Charlie was so excited that he looked quite feverish. In his enthusiasm he threw his arms wide and cried:

  ‘Oh darlings!’ – and Judith was thrilled because she felt herself included in the endearment.

  ‘You know,’ said Julian, ‘you’ll be sick tonight, Charlie, if you go on like this.’

  So he was still the one to be sick.

  A small cold mongrel dog came shivering, wriggling across the ice and rolled over before him, waving limp deprecatory paws. Charlie picked it up and wrapped it in his coat, crooning to it and kissing it.

  ‘Oh what sweet paws you have, my chap. Mariella, his paws are particularly heart-breaking. Do look, – all blunt and tufted and uncontrolled. Don’t they melt you? Poor chap, – darling chap. You come along with me for a skate.’

  He skated away with the dog in his arms, talking his special foolish language to it, and colliding with people at every other step.

  Oh, he was strange, thought Judith, looking after him. She had no key to him: she could only dissect him and make notes, learn him by heart and marvel at him, – never hope to meet him some day suddenly, at a chance look, a trifling word, with that secret Aha! – that shock of inmost mysterious recognition, as she had once met Roddy.

  She thought of Roddy dancing in London, urban and alarming. She saw him distinctly, his dark head, his yellowish pallor, his smile; and wished wildly that he had come instead of Charlie: Charlie who troubled her, made her heavy-hearted with the burden of his lavish indifferent brilliance.

  The sharp, blue and white afternoon was paling to sunset. The pond flashed and glittered with empty light. In the middle rose the clump of withered flags, dry starved grasses and marsh plants,
berried bushes and little willows, – the whole a blur of pastel shades, purplish-brown, fading green, yellow and russet, with here and there a burning shred of isolated colour, – a splash of crimson, a streak of gold. The whirr and scratch of skates murmured on the air, and the skaters wove without pause, swiftly, lightly, like flies on a ceiling. Beneath the ice the needling grass-blades and the little water-weeds were still, spellbound; outspread stiffly, delicately in multitudinous and infinitesimal loveliness.

  As she stood alone gazing down at them Julian came back to her side and said:

  ‘Do you ever come to London?’

  ‘Hardly ever. If Daddy’s at home he generally takes me to a theatre at Christmas; and now and then I go with Mamma for clothes.’

  ‘Well, you’d better come up some time soon and we’ll go to a play. Fix it with Mariella.’

  ‘Oh!’

  It couldn’t be true, – it could never happen.

  There was a scratch and stumble of skates, and the other two came to a wavering halt in front of them.

  ‘We must go,’ said Mariella.

  ‘Judith’s coming to go to a play with us,’ said Julian.

  ‘Oh good,’ said Mariella, not interested.

  ‘When?’ snapped Julian. ‘Fix it.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, with a quick glance at him. ‘We must ask Granny. I’ll ask Granny, Judith, and let you know tomorrow.’

  ‘Because we’re coming back tomorrow,’ broke in Charlie. ‘Julian, we must, mustn’t we? Will you be here, Judith?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘That’s good, because I shall need you. I need thee every hour. I shall have forgotten my breast-stroke by tomorrow. I do believe if we hadn’t found you, Judith, we should never have stepped on to the ice at all. We should just have looked at it and faded gracefully back to London. We are so very silly.’

  He sat down to take off his boots, and began whistling – then burst out singing:

  ‘There once were three sillies

  Who stood like –lillies –’

  A pause-

  ‘Refusing to spin –’

  Another pause –

  ‘Crying, Hey, Lackaday! The ice will give way, And we shall fall in –’

  He pulled off his boots; and finished:

  ‘If Miss Earle they’d not met

  They’d be standing there yet.’

  ‘Pretty poor,’ cried Julian.

  ‘I think it’s awfully good,’ said Judith.

  Charlie bowed, and said:

  ‘I can do more like that.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Not now. Pouf! I’m tired.’

  He looked it. Save for the bright flush on each cheek his pallor was startling. His eyes looked dark in their shadowy rings, and he leaned back against Mariella while she gravely fastened his shoes and buttoned up his coat. When she put on his muffler he dragged it off again, crying:

  ‘Oh Mariella. No! I’m so hot.’

  ‘You’re to wear it,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ll catch cold,’ and she wound it round his neck again, while he submitted and made faces at her, his eyes laughing into hers, like a child coaxing an elder to smiles.

  Watching him, Judith thought:

  ‘Are you conceited and spoilt?’

  All that gaiety and proud indifference, all that unconscious-seeming charm, that confident chatter – all might be the product of a complete self-consciousness. Surely he must look in the glass and adore his own reflection. She remembered her old dream of marrying him, and thought with a melancholically prophetic sense of the many people who would yearn to him silently for love, while he went on his way, wanting none of them.

  Against the dusk, his head, his face shone as if palely lit.

  Narrowly she watched him; but there was no sign for her: all that brilliance of expression glancing and pausing around him, and nothing for her beyond a light smile or two, a casual appreciation of her temporary uses. He and Mariella had scarcely once said: ‘Do you remember?’ If they still cherished any of the past she was not in it. It was strange to think of such indifference, when they, with the other three, were all the pattern, all the colour and richness that had ever come into life.

  In the dying light their mystery fell over them again, and they were as unattainable as ever. If only with the rare quality of their physical appearance they must always enslave her; and she felt worn out with the stress of them.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Charlie, ‘we’ll bring Roddy.’

  ‘Yes. Come on,’ said Mariella. ‘We must hurry for our train.’

  They tramped in silence across the cold solitude of the marsh, and the wind came after them, keen and menacing. When they arrived at the river’s edge, Charlie stood still, and looked across, saying dreamily:

  ‘There’s a light in the old house. I suppose that’s the caretaker person. We might look in tomorrow and surprise her. Doesn’t it look lonely? … I wish we would live there again. Where’s your house, Judith? I thought it was next door.’

  ‘So it is, but the trees hide it.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten.’

  Then she ferried them across the river in the punt, and parted from them on the other side, where the lane to the station branched off.

  ‘Well, see you tomorrow.’

  Julian looked up at the sky.

  ‘I believe it’s thawing,’ he said. ‘I believe it’ll rain in the night.’

  ‘Rot!’ said Charlie. ‘Why – feel the ground.’

  ‘Yes, but the air’s milder. And look at the sky.’

  To the east and north the frosty stars pointed their darts; but in the smoky, tumultuous west, black clouds devoured the last of the sun.

  Panic seized Judith, and she hated Julian, wanted to strike him.

  ‘Rot! that doesn’t mean anything,’ said Charlie uneasily.

  ‘And listen to the wind.’

  The wind was in the tree-tops, full and relentless, and driving the clouds.

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ said Charlie. ‘Can’t there be a wind without a thaw? And come on, can’t you, or we’ll miss our train.’

  ‘Good night then.’

  ‘G’night Judith. We’ll look out for you.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘Goo’night.’

  ‘Good night.’

  Judith ran home, shutting eyes to the clouds, ears to the wind, and, with the slam of the front door behind her, striving to ignore the God of envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness whose portents were abroad in the sky.

  ‘Tomorrow they are coming again and bringing Roddy. Tomorrow I shall see Roddy. Oh God, be merciful!’

  Towards dawn she woke and heard the blind, drearily sighing, futile hurry and hiss of the rain, – and said aloud in the darkness: ‘How can I bear it?’

  Yet lured by sick fantastic hope she crossed the river that morning and made her way to the pond.

  There was nobody there, save one small boy, sliding upon the ice through several inches of water and throwing up before him in his swift career two separate and divided fountains.

  Then that was the end. They were lost again. They would not come back, they would not write, she would never go to London to see them. Even Julian would forget about her. They did not care, the rain was glad, there was nothing in the wide world to give her comfort. She turned from the rain-blurred place where their unreal lost images mocked at and confused her, – dreams within the far-off dream of happy yesterday.

  3

  It was some time in the middle of the war that she knew for certain that Julian was at the front. She heard it from the old next door gardener, who had given her apples and pears long ago, and it was from the grandmother herself that he knew it. She had written to tell him to plant fresh rose-beds and to keep the tennis lawn in perfect order,
for very soon, directly the war was over, the grandchildren were to have the house for their own, as a place for week-ends and holidays.

  Mr Julian was at the front, safe so far, God be thanked, and Mr Charlie had just been called up; but the fighting, so the grandmother said, would be over before ever he went to France.

  Then, nourished afresh on new hopes, desires, and terrors, the children next door came back night after night in dreams.

  Julian in uniform came suddenly into the library. He said:

  ‘I’ve come to say good-bye.’

  ‘Good-bye? Are you going back to the front?’

  ‘Yes. In a minute. Can’t you hear my train?’

  She listened and heard the train-whistle.

  ‘Charlie’s going too – He’ll be here in a minute. Good-bye, Judith.’

  She put out her hand and he took it and then bent down with a sort of grin and kissed her. He said:

  ‘That’s what men do when they’re going to the front.’

  She thought with pleasure: ‘Then Charlie will want to kiss me too’; and she looked out of the window, hoping to see him.

  It was impenetrably dark, and she thought anxiously: ‘He won’t be able to find his way. He always hated the dark.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Julian. ‘You must come and wave good-bye to me.’

  But still she delayed and peered out, looking with growing panic for Charlie.

  All at once she saw him in the darkness outside. He was not in uniform, but in grey flannel shorts and a white shirt open at the neck, – the clothes of his childhood. He trailed himself haltingly, as if his feet hurt him.

  ‘Sh!’ said Julian in her ear. ‘He’s disguised himself.’

  ‘Ah, then he won’t get killed …’

  ‘No.’

  She caught sight of his face. It was a terrible disguise, – the shrivelled, yellow mask of an ancient cretin. He looked at her vacantly, and she thought with a pang: ‘I must … I must pretend I don’t know him.’