Dusty Answer

by Rosamond Lehmann

  Examination week. The sky was fiercely blue all day; the air breathless, heavy. To walk into the town was to walk into a steam bath, where footsteps moved ever more languidly, and the dogs lay panting on the pavement, and the clocks seemed to collect themselves with a vast effort for their chiming.

  This week there was nothing in your mind save the machine which obeyed you smoothly, turning out dates and biographies, contrasting, discussing, theorizing.

  Judith walked in a dream among the pale examination faces that flowed to their doom. Already at nine o’clock the heat struck up from the streets, rolled downwards from the roofs. By midday it would be extremely unpleasant in Cambridge.

  This was the great examination hall. Girls were filing in, each carrying a glass of water, and searching in a sort of panic for her place. Here was a white ticket labelled Earle, J. So Judith Earle really was expected, an integral part of this grotesque organized unreality. No hope now.

  The bench was hard. Beside her sat a kind broad cow-like creature with sandy hair and lashes. Her ruminative and prominent eyes shed pity and encouragement. She was a good omen.

  All over the room girls’ heads turned, nodding and winking at friends, whispering, giggling and grimacing with desperate bravery. One simulated suicide by leaning her bosom on her fountain pen.

  Just behind sat Mabel. Her face was glistening and ghastly, and she sniffed at a bottle of smelling salts.

  ‘Mabel, are you going to faint?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I generally feel faint-like first thing in the morning. I’ll get better later.’

  ‘Mabel you’re not fit – you mustn’t –’

  ‘Sh! I’m all right. Only it makes my head feel stupid.’ She stared aghast. ‘I don’t seem to be able to remember a thing.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mabel. It’ll all come back when you settle down to it. I’ll look round now and then and see if you’re all right.’

  ‘Thanks, Judith.’

  ‘Poor Mabel! Good luck. Wait for me afterwards and I’ll take you to have a cup of coffee. That’ll do you good.’

  ‘I shall enjoy that. Good luck, Judith.’

  She summoned a smile, even flushed faintly with pleasure.

  Then panic descended suddenly upon Judith. Her head was like a floating bubble; there was nothing in it at all. She caught at threads of knowledge and they broke, withered and dissolved like cobwebs in the hand. She struggled to throw off a crowding confusion of half remembered words.

  Unarm Eros, the long day’s task is done. And we must sleep … Peace! Peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast That sucks the nurse asleep? … Who said that? Who could have said such a thing? I am Duchess of Malfi still … Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young. Beatrice died young too. Here Mother … bind up this hair in any simple knot … ay that does well … Prithee undo this button … Thank you. Sir … Cordelia! Cordelia! So many of them died young. There were those two, you had forgotten their names now, and Cordelia, and Desdemona too. O, thou weed! … It might be useful to remember them … But they had already slipped away. This was the parting that they had Beside the haystack in the floods. William Morris. Speak but one word to me over the corn. Over the tender bowed locks of the corn. Gold cornfield like Jennifer. A bracelet of bright hair about the bone. That had always been Jennifer’s bright hair. Only a woman’s hair… Calm hair, meandering in pellucid gold. But Jennifer’s hair had never been calm … Speak but one word to me. Roddy, one whisper from you!

  It was Tennyson who said: The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls … And Browning who said: The old June weather Blue above lane and wall. Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley … What had they said? and Blake:

  Bring me my bow of burning gold; Bring me my arrows of desire … Once you had composed a tune for that. Bring me my bow of burning gold … Oh, stop saying that now. Think about the origins of drama, the rise of the universities, the development of the guilds, the order of Shakespeare’s plays …

  A headful of useless scraps rattling about in emptiness –

  The clock struck nine.

  ‘You can begin now,’ said a thin voice from the dab.

  There was an enormous sigh, a rustling of paper, then silence.

  The questions had, nearly all, at first glance a familiar reassuring look. It was all right. Panic vanished, the mind assembled its energies coolly, precisely, the pen flew.

  After an hour the first pause to cool her forehead with a stick of frozen Eau de Cologne and to sip some water. Behind, poor Mabel’s dry little cough and sniff went on. The head bowed low over her writing looked as if it could never raise itself again.

  Girls were wriggling and biting their pens. Somewhere the tooth-tapper was playing her dreary tune. The Cow looked up, shed a peaceful smile around her and continued to write, with deliberation, a little impeded by her bosom.

  Another hour fled. The trouble was having too much to say, rather than too little. The room was rigid, dark with concentration now. There came an appalling confusion of haste and noise, and a girl rose and ran from the room, supported by the invigilator. The handkerchief she held to her nose was stained sickeningly with scarlet. She returned in a little while, pallid and tearful, resumed her seat, bowed herself once more over the paper.

  Three hours. It was over. You could not remember what you had written; but you had never felt more firm and sure of mind. Three hours nearer to life.

  Into the street once more, beneath the noon sun’s merciless down-beating. But now its rays seemed feeble: their warmth scarcely penetrated chilled hands and feet, or shivering, aching back.

  A troop of undergraduates passed on the way from their examination room. They looked amused and exhilarated. They stuffed their papers into their pockets, lit pipes, straightened their shoulders and went cheerfully to lunch.

  The girls crept out in twos and threes, earnestly talking, comparing the white slips they carried.

  ‘Did you do this one?’

  ‘What did you put for that?’

  ‘Oh, I say! Will they take off marks do you think?’

  ‘It was a beast.’

  ‘Oh, it might have been worse.’

  Girls really should be trained to be less obviously female students. It only needed a little discipline.

  There was Mabel to be looked after. She was grateful, passive: she drank much coffee but refused food. She broke the heavy silence once to say with a quiet smile: ‘Of course I see now I shan’t pass – It seems a pity, after all that work – My memory is practically gone –’

  Back to the vault now for another three hours.

  Suddenly round the corner came a slender, dark, sallow boy. He walked with an idle grace, leaning slightly forward. His faint likeness to Roddy made the heart leap; and his expression was dejected and obstinate, just as Roddy’s would be if he were forced to spend an afternoon scribbling infernal rubbish.

  Judith paused at the entrance of the vault and looked back. His eyes were eagerly fixed on her: and she smiled at him.

  He was delighted. His funny boy face lost its heaviness and broke up with intimate twinklings; and flashed a shyly daring inquiry at her before he vanished round the corner.

  It was like a message from Roddy, sent forward to meet her from the new life, to say: ‘Remember I am coming.’

  That day passed smoothly; and the next. The days sinking to evenings drenched with the smell of honeysuckle and draining to phantasmal and luminous twilights of blossom and tree-tops and starry skies, flowed imperceptibly to their end.

  Suddenly there were no answers to be written from nine till twelve, from two till five – no lectures, no coachings, no notes, no fixed working hours. Instead, a great idleness under whose burden you felt lost and oppressed. The academic years were gone for ever.

  13

  The evening before the end of term.

&n
bsp; Judith walked with the rest of the circle arm in arm across the grass, down the wooded path, past the honeysuckle for the last time.

  The garden spread out all her beauties that were hers alone, overburdening the watchers, insisting:

  ‘See what you are leaving. Look at what you will never have again.’

  The whole shrine lay wide open for the last time, baring its mysteries of cedar and limes and nightingales, of lawns and mown hay, of blossoming shrubs and wild flowers growing beneath them, of copper beeches and all the high enclosing tree-tops, serenely swimming like clouds in the last of the light.

  They chose careers for each other, light-heartedly discussing the future, and making plans for regular reunions.

  ‘But what’s the good?’ said one. ‘We shall all be scattered really. We can’t come back year after year as if things would all be the same. There’s nothing more awful than those gatherings of elderly people trying to be girls together again. The ghastliness of pretending to get back to where one was! If we meet again, let it be in the big world. I shall never come back here.’

  ‘Oh, but I shan’t have the strength to resist it,’ said another. ‘You see I more or less know I shall never be so happy again. I’ve got to teach brats algebra. I shall be pulled back to indulge in vain regrets.’

  ‘Does it mean so much to you?’ murmured Judith. ‘You talk as if your life was over.’

  ‘Something that matters – terribly to me is over,’ she said, almost fiercely.

  ‘Oh!’ Judith sighed.

  ‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you then?’

  Judith was silent, thinking how it had all meant the single tremendous calamitous significance of Jennifer; how since her going it had been like the muddy bed of a lake whose waters have been sapped day after day in a long drought; like a tasteless meal to be swallowed without appetite; like a grey drizzling unwholesome weather. Nothing had brought even a momentary illusion of restored contentment: nothing save her copper bowl glowing for her sake with flowers or fruit. Not one of those to whom she had turned had been able to soothe the gnawing perpetual sore, or bury for a single day that one face. And they knew it. The three years’ absorption in Jennifer had separated her irrevocably from them, and, though they had kindly welcomed her, it had been with the tacit assumption that she was not of them.

  They were so charming, so gentle, so sensitive and intelligent: fascinating creatures: how fascinating she had never troubled to realize and would never know now. To all, save Jennifer, that had offered itself, she had turned an unheeding car, a blind eye. And so much that might have been of enduring value had offered itself: so many possible interests and opportunities had been neglected.

  There had been that girl the first year who, from the pinnacle of her third-year eminence, had stooped, blushing and timid, with her invitation to an evening alone. Frail temples, narrow exquisite bone of cheek and jaw, clear little face with lips whose composure seemed the result of a vast nervous effort, so still were they, so nearly quivering, so vulnerable; eyes with a sad liquid brilliance in their steadfast gaze; small head with smooth brown hair parted in the middle; narrow hands folded in her lap; she had sat, the most important scholar in the College, like a shadow, a moth, a bird, listening, questioning, listening again.

  She was a poet. She never shewed her verses, but to you she promised to shew them. She had a mind of such immaculate clarity that you feared to touch it: yet she was offering it to you, all that evening.

  It had come to nothing after all. She had retired very soon, shrinking from Jennifer as if she were afraid.

  There had been the girl with the torturing love affair that had gone wrong. One night she had suddenly spoken of it, telling you all. You had lingered by her with a little tenderness and pity and then passed on. She had said ‘You won’t tell Jennifer, will you?’

  There had been the girl who drew portraits and who had wanted you for a model. There had been the silent girl who read ‘The Book of the Dead’ night after night in her room, who was studying, so it was whispered, to raise the devil and who looked at you with a secret smile, half malice, half something else; there had been that most beautiful young girl in the first year, with her cold angelic face and shining silver-fair hair; all those and countless others had offered themselves. There had been Martin ignored and neglected because he disliked Jennifer. And there had been books, far more books in far more libraries: and new poetry, new musk, new plays, – a hundred intellectual diversions which you had but brushed against or missed altogether by secluding yourself within the limits of an unprofitable dream.

  She said at last:

  ‘Oh yes. It means something. I don’t know yet how much. I’m afraid now I’ve missed a lot.’

  They were all silent, and she thought with nervous dread that they were all thinking of Jennifer.

  ‘Isn’t it extraordinary,’ said another, ‘how time seems to have stood still in this place? Nothing’s moved since we’ve been here. Even though I suppose it’s all been advancing towards the Tripos, I don’t feel as if there’d been any step forward. Everything – what’s the word? – static. Or else just making circles. I feel I’ve been sitting in a quiet safe pool for three years.’

  ‘And now we’re going to be emptied out.’

  And swept into new life, thought Judith longingly. Yet her heart misgave her. The building, caressed with sunset, looked motherly and benign, spreading its sheltering breast for the last time above its midgets. New life might find nothing so secure and tranquil as its dispassionate protection.

  The clock struck the hour pensively.

  ‘Well, I think it’s beastly,’ said one. ‘I’m going in to finish packing.’

  Where, on this calm lime-scented last evening, was Jennifer?

  14

  In the end there was no time to say good-bye to anyone. Girls were scattering, flying about with labels and suitcases, or with flat-irons to press the frocks they were to wear in May Week.

  May Week had been fun last year: five nights’ dancing on end, with Jennifer and a young cousin of hers at Trinity, and a boy in the Navy. This year it had not seemed worth while to accept invitations.

  While Judith was engaged in strapping her boxes and throwing the accumulated rubbish of three years out of drawers and cupboards into a heap on the floor, a maid came smiling and said a gentleman was waiting downstairs.

  It was Martin.

  ‘Martin! Oh, my dear!’

  ‘I came on the chance, Judith. I motored up to see a man who’s going abroad. Are you – are you staying up for May Week?’

  ‘No, Martin. I’m catching a train in about two hours and going straight home.’

  ‘Really home, do you mean? next door to us?’

  ‘Yes. Thank Heaven. It’s not let any more. Mother and I will be there part of the summer anyway. Will you – will any of you be there?’

  ‘Mariella’s down there now, with the boy. And Roddy and I are going for a bit. In fact I’m going today – motoring. That’s what I came for – to see if you’d care to motor back with me.’

  ‘Drive home? Oh, how marvellous! You are an angel, Martin, to think of me.’

  He was as shy as ever, bending his head as he talked to her. Observing him she thought that she herself had grown up. The loss of Jennifer had given her a kind of self-assurance and maturity of manner, a staidness. For the first time she was seeing Martin from an entirely detached and unromantic angle, and she thought: ‘Then this is how I shall see Roddy. He won’t confuse and entangle me any more. All that sort of thing is over for me.’

  ‘It’s very nice to see you again, Judith. It’s ages since – You look a bit thin, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s those miserable exams, Martin. I did work so hard … I don’t know why.’

  ‘Oh! You shouldn’t have.’

  He seemed quite overcome.

 
Dear Martin! … In some corner of her heart a weight was lifting … Jennifer was suddenly remote.

  ‘Wait for me, Martin … I’ll be ready in a quarter of an hour.’

  She had not said good-bye to Mabel. She had been dreading that last duty … No time now, thank heaven, for anything prolonged … Simplest to write a little note and tell someone to stick it in her door.

  She wrote:

  Dear Mabel,

  I have been called for unexpectedly in a car. I have only ten minutes to finish packing and do all the last things. I knocked on your door a little while ago but got no answer.

  She hesitated. Was it too gross? It was; but it must stand now; it could not be crossed out.

  And now I’m afraid I haven’t a minute to try and find you. I’m dreadfully sorry not to see you to say good-bye, Mabel. Won’t it be sad when next October comes to think we shan’t all be meeting again? You must write and tell me what happens to you, and I will write to you. I dare say we shall see each other again. You must let me know if you ever come my way –

  That must stand too … What else? … Results would be out tomorrow – Better not to refer to them; for Mabel had certainly failed. She had not been able to remember anything in the end. The last three days she had given in one or two sheets of paper blank save for a few uncertain lines.

  She finished:

  I do hope you are going to get a good long rest. You do need it You worked so marvellously. Nobody ever could have worked harder. We’ve all been so sorry for you feeling so ill during Tripos week. It was terribly hard luck.

  Good-bye and love from …

  Judith

  Nothing could be added. There was nothing more to be said. Mabel’s face this last week came before her, blank, haggard, still watching her from moribund eyes, and she dismissed it. She had thought she would have to kiss Mabel good-bye: and now she would not have to.

  She must be quick now, for Martin.

  The car turned out of the drive and took the dusty road.

  Almost she forgot to look back to see the last of those red walls.

  ‘I’m saying good-bye to it, Martin. Ugh! I hate it. I love it.’