Dusty Answer

by Rosamond Lehmann

  But Judith had thought, whilst she nodded agreement: ‘Some day, when I’m much older, I’ll come back alone and think of her; and then perhaps write and say: do you remember? Or perhaps not, in case she has forgotten.’

  And now, it seemed, far sooner even than Judith had feared, Jennifer was forgetting everything. They had meant to go away together during the summer vacation; go to Brittany, and bathe and walk and read: but in the end Jennifer’s don had said cold things regarding Jennifer’s progress, and requested her to attend college during the Long. Judith had gone on a reading party with three of the circle, and written Jennifer long letters which were answered briefly and at rare intervals. But that was not surprising. Jennifer’s letters had always been spasmodic, if passionately affectionate. Then the letters had ceased altogether. Judith had written asking if they could not spend September together, and Jennifer had answered in five lines, excusing herself. She was going to shoot in Scotland in September.

  And then the third year had started, with everything as it had always been, or seeming so, for a few moments; and then in one more moment shivered to pieces.

  She would not stay behind alone, after the others had gone, to say good night. She ceased to talk with abandonment and excitement, her eyes shining to see you listening, to feel you understanding. There seemed nothing to say now. In particular, she would not speak of the Long.

  It was, of course, Mabel who was the first to hint of ill-tidings­. Eating doughnuts out of a bag, late one night, during one of Judith’s charity visits, she said:

  ‘Has that Miss Manners been up lately?’

  ‘Who’s Miss Manners?’

  ‘Why – that Miss Manners, Jennifer’s friend, who stayed with her so much during the Long.’

  ‘Oh yes –’

  ‘I was sure you must have heard about her, because they seemed such very great friends. They were always about together and always up to some lark.’ She gave a snigger. ‘We used to wonder, we really did, how long it would be before Jennifer got sent down, the way they used to go on, coming in so late and all. But somehow Jennifer never gets found out, does she?’ Another snigger. ‘What a striking-looking girl she is.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Miss Manners.’

  ‘Oh yes … I’ve never seen her. Only photographs.’

  ‘Everybody said what a striking pair they made … I expect she’ll be up soon again, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know at all,’ said Judith. ‘I expect so.’ Mabel looked solemn.

  ‘The wrestling matches they used to have out there on the lawn! I used to watch them from my window. I wonder they didn’t … I really wonder … any of the dons … It looked so … throwing each other about like that… It’s not the sort of thing you expect – quite, is it? I mean …’

  ‘Oh, wrestling’s glorious,’ said Judith. ‘I love it. Jennifer’s tried to teach me. But I’m not strong enough for her; the – the – Manners­ girl is much more of a match for her.’

  Mabel pursed up her mouth and was silent.

  It was necessary to leave her quickly for fear of striking her; because her deliberate intent was obvious; because she knew quite well now that you had never before heard of Miss Manners; because you were seeing that girl plainly, tall, dark and splendid, striding on the lawn with Jennifer, vying with her in feats of strength, a match for her in all magnificent unfeminine physical ways, as you had never been. Her image was all at once there, ineffaceably presenting itself as the embodiment of all hitherto uncoordinated and formless fears, the symbol for change, and dark alarms and confusions. And the unbearable image of Mabel was there too, watching by herself, gloating down from the window with glistening eyes that said:

  ‘At last!’

  She stopped short in the corridor, and moaned aloud, aghast at the crowding panic of her thoughts.

  Judith, returning from her bath, heard voices and laughter late at night behind Jennifer’s door. Should she stop? All the circle must be there as usual, laughing and talking as if nothing were amiss. She alone had excluded herself, sitting with a pile of books in her room, pretending to have important work. It was her own fault. She had said she was busy, and they had believed her and not invited her to join their gathering. She would go in, and sit among them and smoke, and tell them things, – tell them something to make them laugh; and all would be as before. They would drift away in the end and leave her behind; she would turn and look at Jennifer in the firelight, put out a hand and say: ‘Jennifer …’

  She opened the door and looked in.

  The voices stopped, cut off sharply.

  In the strange, charged, ensuing silence, she saw that the curtains were flung back. Purple-black night pressed up against the windows, and one pane framed the blank white globe of the full moon. They were all lying on the floor. Dark forms, pallid, moon-touched faces and hands were dimly distinguishable; a few cigarette points burned in the faint hanging cloud of smoke across the room. The fire was almost out. Where was Jennifer?

  ‘Hullo, there’s Judith,’ said one.

  ‘Is there room for me?’ said Judith in a small voice. She came in softly among them all, and went directly over to the window and sat on the floor, with the moon behind her head. She was conscious of her own unnatural precision and economy of movement; of her long slender body wrapped in its kimono crossing the room in three light steps, sinking noiselessly down in its place and at once remaining motionless, expectant.

  Where was Jennifer?

  ‘All in the dark,’ she said, in the same soft voice. And then: ‘What a moon! Don’t you know it’s very dangerous to let it shine on you like this? It will make you mad.’

  One or two of them laughed. She could now recognize the three faces in front of her. Jennifer must be somewhere by the fireplace. There was constraint in the room. She thought with awful jealousy; ‘Ah, they hate my coming. They thought they were getting rid of me at last. They come here secretly without me, to insinuate themselves. They all want her. They have all hated me always.’ She said:

  ‘Give me a cigarette someone.’

  Jennifer’s voice broke in suddenly with a sort of harsh clangour. From her voice, Judith knew how wild her eyes must be.

  ‘Here, here’s a cigarette, Judith … Have something to eat. Or some cocoa. Oh – there was a bottle of cherry-brandy, but I believe we’ve finished it.’

  Horrible confusion in her voice, a stumbling hurry of noise …

  ‘I have just licked up the last dregs,’ said a deep voice.

  ‘Who’s that who spoke then?’ said Judith softly and sweetly.

  ‘Oh …’ cried Jennifer shrilly, ‘Geraldine, you haven’t met Judith yet.’

  What was she saying? Geraldine Manners was staying the week-end, no, was walking on the lawn with her; had just arrived, no, had been in the room for months, since the summer, for they were such very great friends …

  ‘How do you do. I’m guessing what you are like from the way you speak,’ said Judith softly, laughingly.

  ‘Oh, I’m no good at that.’

  How bored, how careless a voice!

  ‘Shall I switch on the light?’ said someone.

  ‘No!’ said Judith loudly.

  She lifted up her arm against the window. The kimono sleeve fell back from it, and it gleamed cold and frail in the moonlight, like a snake. She spread out her long fingers and stared at them.

  ‘I would like to be blind,’ she said. ‘I really wish I were blind. Then I might learn to see with my fingers. I might learn to hear properly too.’

  And learn to be indifferent to Jennifer; never to be enslaved again by the lines and colours of her physical appearance, the ever new surprise and delight of them; learn, in calm perpetual darkness, how the eyes’ tyrannical compulsions had obscured and distorted all true values. To be struck blind now this moment, so that the dreaded face of t
he voice by the fireplace remained for ever unknown! … Soon the light would go on, and painfully, hungrily, with awful haste and reluctance, the eyes would begin their work again, fly to their target.

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Judith,’ said someone. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about’; and went on to talk of work among the blind, of blinded soldiers, of St Dunstan’s.

  The conversation became general and followed the usual lines: it was better to be deaf than blind, blind than deaf. Jennifer and Geraldine were silent.

  ‘It’s time we went to bed,’ said someone. ‘Jennifer, I must go to bed. I’m almost asleep. What’s the time?’

  Now the light would go on.

  It went on. The room suddenly revealed its confusion of girls, cushions, chairs, cups, plates and cigarette-ends. Everybody was getting up, standing about and talking. Jennifer was on her feet, voluble, calling loud good nights. They made a group round her and round somebody still sitting on the floor beside her. Judith caught a glimpse of a dark head leaning motionless against the mantelpiece. Now they were all going away. Judith followed them slowly to the door and there paused, looking over her shoulder towards the fireplace.

  ‘Stay,’ said Jennifer shrilly. She was standing and staring at Judith with wild eyes; pale, with a deep patch of colour in each cheek, and lips parted.

  ‘No, I must go. I’ve got some work,’ said Judith, smiling over her shoulder. She let her eyes drop from Jennifer’s face to the other one.

  At last it confronted her, the silent-looking face, watching behind its narrowed eyes. The hair was black, short, brushed straight back from the forehead, leaving small beautiful ears exposed. The heavy eyebrows came low and level on the low broad brow; the eyes were long slits, dark-circled, the cheeks were pale, the jaw heavy and masculine. All the meaning of the face was concentrated in the mouth, the strange wide lips laid rather flat on the face, sulky, passionate, weary, eager. She was not a young girl. It was the face of a woman of thirty or more; but in years she might have been younger. She was tall, deep-breasted, with long, heavy but shapely limbs. She wore a black frock and a pearl necklace, and large pearl earrings.

  Judith said politely:

  ‘Is this the first time you have been here?’

  ‘No.’ She laughed. Her voice was an insolent voice.

  ‘I’m tired,’ said Jennifer suddenly, like a child.

  ‘You look it,’ said Judith. ‘Go to bed.’

  ‘I’ll get undressed.’ Jennifer passed a hand across her forehead and sighed.

  The woman by the fireplace fitted a cigarette into an amber holder slowly, and lit it.

  ‘I’m not sleepy yet,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait till you’re in bed and come and tuck you up.’

  ‘This room feels –’ cried Jennifer staring around her in horror. She dashed to the window and flung it wide open; then disappeared into her bedroom; and there was not another sound from her.

  The woman started singing to herself very low, as if forgetful of Judith’s presence; then broke off to say:

  ‘I like your kimono.’

  Judith wrapped the long red and blue silk garment more closely round her hips.

  ‘Yes. It was brought me from Japan. I gave Jennifer one. A purple one.’

  ‘Oh, that one. She’s lent it to me. I forgot to bring a dressing-gown.’

  She turned her head away, as if to intimate that so far as she was concerned conversation was neither interesting nor necessary.

  Judith bit back the ‘Good night Jennifer’ which she was about to call; for she was never going to care any more what happened to Jennifer, never again soothe her when she was weary and excited, comfort her when she was unhappy. She would look at Jennifer coldly, observe her vagaries and entanglements with a shrug, comment upon them with detached and cynical amusement: hurt her, if possible, oh, hurt her, hurt her.

  Now she would leave her with Geraldine and not trouble to ask herself once what profound and secret intimacies would be restored by her withdrawal.

  She smiled over her shoulder and left the room.

  10

  A week later, Geraldine was still there. She and Judith had not met again; when she and Jennifer, arm in arm, were seen approaching, Judith avoided them; and changing her place at Hall – her place which had been beside Jennifer for two years – went and sat where she could not see the sleek dark head next to the fair one, turning and nodding in response.

  All day they were invisible. Geraldine had a car, and they must go miles and miles into the country in the soft late autumn weather.

  It seemed to Judith that life had ceased to bear her along upon its tide. It flowed past her, away from her; and she must stay behind, passive and of no account, while the current of Jennifer met and gaily mingled with a fresh current and fled on. It seemed as if even the opportunity for the gesture of relinquishment was to be denied her. And then, wearily returning from lectures one morning she found upon her table a torn scrap of paper scrawled over violently in an unknown hand.

  Please be in your room at six o’clock this evening. I want to see you.

  Geraldine Manners.

  It was an insolent note. She would ignore such a command. She would put a notice up on her door: Engaged – and turn the key; and when the woman came she would just have to go away again.

  But at six o’clock, Geraldine knocked loudly and she cried: ‘Come in.’ They stood facing each other.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Judith. But neither of them made any movement.

  ‘I wanted to see you.’ Her voice was low and emotional – angry perhaps; and Judith had a moment’s fainting sense of impotence. The woman was so magnificent, so mature and well-dressed; if there was to be a fight, what chance was there for a thin young student in a woollen jumper?

  She leaned against the mantelpiece and, staring at Judith, flung at her:

  ‘What’s all this about?’

  Judith sat down again, without a word, and waited, steadily holding the green eyes with her own. She heard the blood beat deafeningly in her ears.

  Geraldine went on:

  ‘I think it’s the damnedest bit of impertinence I ever heard. Schoolgirls! My God!’ She flung her head back theatrically.

  Judith thought, with a shudder of excitement and anguish: ‘Wait. Wait. It is because you are unused to it that it seems like physical blows. Soon you will be able to collect yourself. This is anger and you are the cause. You are being insulted and called to account for the first time in your life. Carry it off. Carry it off.’

  And her blood went on repeating ‘Jennifer’ in her ears.

  Geraldine took a gold cigarette case and the amber holder from a gold chain bag with a sapphire clasp.

  ‘It’s pretty awful, isn’t it, to be so mean and petty? I’m sorry for you, I must say.’

  ‘Please don’t be sorry for me.’ She noted her own voice, icy and polite.

  Geraldine had inserted a thin, yellow cigarette in the holder and was searching for a match.

  ‘Here,’ said Judith. She got up, took the matchbox from the mantelpiece and struck a light. Geraldine stooped her head down over the little flare. White lids, black curling lashes, broad cheek-bones, Egyptian lips – the heaviness, the thick waxen texture of the whole face: Judith saw them all with an aching and terrible intensity, her eyes clinging to the head bowed above her hand. She should have smelt like a gardenia.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Geraldine. She lifted her head, narrowed her eyes and puffed out smoke, moving and stretching her mouth faintly round the amber. She smoked like a man.

  Judith sat down again.

  Geraldine seemed now very much at her ease. She leaned against the mantelpiece, dominating the room: and she seemed of gigantic height and significance.

  ‘Are you a friend of Jennifer’s?’ she said.

  ‘Jennifer – is a person I kn
ow well.’

  She looked at Judith as if in surprise at her tone and manner.

  ‘I had no idea of that. She never mentioned you.’

  For a moment that dealt a blinding blow, with its instantaneous implications of dishonesty and indifference. But she repeated:

  ‘I’ve known her well for two years. You can ask her. She might admit it.’ And as she spoke the last words she thought with sudden excitement: ‘Just as I never mentioned Roddy …’

  ‘Oh, I can’t get anything out of her,’ said Geraldine and added truculently: ‘You might as well tell me what it’s all about.’

  ‘I have nothing whatever to tell you. I don’t know why you’ve come. I’d like you to tell me what it’s all about – or else go away, please.’ She was conscious all at once of a terrible inward trembling, and got up again. The other watched her in silence, and she added: `I haven’t been near her – since that night in her room. I’ve kept away – you know that night …’

  ‘What night?’

  Judith broke into a sort of laugh; and then checked herself with a vast effort: for the suppressed hysteria of weeks was climbing upwards within her and if it broke loose, it might never, never cease.

  ‘Well – one night,’ she said, ‘I thought perhaps you remembered.’

  There was not a flicker on Geraldine’s face. She must be very stupid or very cruel.

  ‘What beats me,’ said Geraldine, ‘is why this dead set against me? – against her and me. What do you want to interfere with us for? It’s not your business, any of you. I thought I’d come and tell you so.’

  There was a curious coarseness about her: almost a vulgarity. It was difficult to combat.

  Judith lifted her eyes and looked at her in silence.

  ‘So you’ve all sent Jennifer to Coventry.’ She laughed. ‘It’s marvellous. A female institution is really marvellous. At least it would be if it weren’t so nauseating.’ Still Judith was silent, and she added contemptuously:

  ‘I should have thought a bit better of you if you’d come yourself. Do you generally get other people to do your dirty work for you?’