Dusty Answer

by Rosamond Lehmann

  A French, an Austrian, a Russian; and now an English … But perhaps he had been lying then. He did tell such lies about his experiences.

  ‘I’m not made for matrimony any more than you are,’ he said in a voice of gentle explanation. ‘Can you imagine me as a husband? What hell for some poor fool! … Yet,’ he added with a sigh, ‘I’d be fond of my children. I’d like to bring up a son. But I shall never have one.’

  ‘If you would marry Mariella,’ she said, still out of her dream, ‘you could bring up Peter. She’d like that. I think she loves you.’

  He took no notice; and she wondered if she had not spoken aloud, after all; or whether her small voice had not penetrated his absorption.

  ‘Why, what would we make of each other married?’ he went on. ‘It would be one long succession of agacements. We’re both so self-conscious, so fastidious, so civilized … It would be appalling.’

  ‘Yes it would.’

  ‘But Judith, lovely delightful Judith,’ he pleaded, his voice deep and beautiful, ‘for a season, for a season! A clean leap in, and out again the minute it started to be a failure. Think what we could give each other!’

  ‘It would be very good for us I suppose …’ She held her head in her hands, trying to think. What could he possibly give her that she would want?

  ‘It would, it would. We’d live a bit instead of thinking. I’d make you forget, I swear: and what things I’d give you to remember instead! – good things that have been my secrets for years, that I’ve longed for years to share, to offer to your nice quick intelligence. No one else has had them, Judith. They’ve been waiting for you: nobody else has ever come near you in my mind. Judith, it wouldn’t be the irritating tiresome old bore you know: that isn’t I! I’ve got secrets. Let me tell you them. So much beauty I’d enrich you with, and then I’d let you go. Isn’t that fair? Isn’t that worth having? Go and marry and breed afterwards if you must, but let me give you this first. Try me, Judith, try me. You can’t refuse to try me. I want you so much.’

  She wanted to stop her ears: for she felt herself helplessly yielding to the old syren of words.

  ‘Julian – I couldn’t give you – what you wanted. Oh I couldn’t! It’s such a step – you don’t realize – for a woman. She can’t ever get back – afterwards, and be safe in the world. And she might want to.’

  ‘I’d see you got back if you wanted to. But I don’t think you will. You won’t want to be safe. That’s not for you. Oh Judith, I know you better than you know yourself.’

  ‘No. No.’

  She was locked away from him and he did not know it. What he mistook for her living self was a mummy, with a heart of dry dust. He had not the perspicacity to see it.

  He was silent, and then said:

  ‘I wouldn’t ask you for anything you – weren’t prepared to give me. I hope – that might come. But for the present all I want is to help you live again – in better, more enduring, ways. Will you let me? Will you allow me to love you, Judith?’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps, Julian. I’ll try. I’ll try to love you too.’ The words broke from her on top of a great sigh.

  ‘My dear!’ She felt his triumph. He put an arm round her and lightly kissed her, and she thought: ‘Now I’ve been kissed by all three of them.’

  ‘But wait, Julian!’ she protested, near to nervous tears. ‘Don’t say any more now. Take me home.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’ll take you home now.’ His voice was soothing and tender. He was letting her see that his patience was infinite. This time, she was caught.

  The car glided downwards from the hills into the plain, through the lovely calm. Once she broke silence to say:

  ‘Nothing’s worth-while, Julian? It doesn’t matter what one does? There’s no point, really, in being alive?’

  He laughed.

  ‘Poor Judy! Give it up! You’ll have to in time. Resign yourself, and the compensations won’t seem so preposterously inadequate. There was a time … But that’s past. So long as there’s a balance of happiness I’m content to be alive. That it’s all futile has ceased to trouble me. It’s not really difficult to be happy, Judith.’

  ‘Well – you shall show me.’

  But she felt crushed with melancholy to hear him; and his calm voice echoed drearily in her heart.

  She bade him good night in the empty lounge, and went upstairs to the bedroom’s rose and gilt harshness.

  She was going to be Julian’s mistress … He was sure of her: she had noted his triumphant eyes and smiling mouth when he said good night… Perhaps if she had offered to be Roddy’s mistress he would have agreed with alacrity. He too was not made for matrimony.

  She wished suddenly for Martin and sat down and started a letter to him; gave up after a few sentences, too heavy-minded to think; and went to bed.

  10

  The next day was jour defête: there were to be grand balk, carnivals and exhibition dancing in all the hotels.

  ‘We’ll make the round of them, Judy,’ said Julian. ‘And afterwards we’ll take the car and go up into the hills – shall we?’

  And she thanked him and agreed.

  He was debonair, gay and gracious: the lines in his face seemed to have been smoothed out, and the likeness to Charlie was strongly in evidence.

  Dreaming ahead, she saw herself reluctantly, helplessly, plunging further and further into relationship with him. He would not weary of her soon. When once the thing started, the break with the past would inevitably be complete. Together they would be reckless, free; together they would snatch pleasure out of life’s worthlessness; for Julian had promised faithfully that he was going to give her exactly what she wanted, that he had learnt precisely how happiness was to be come by, and would teach her … She had given him leave to teach her.

  Judiciously he absented himself for the day; and she spent the morning with Mamma, watching all the internally-disordered people pass, cup in hand, up and down the Place from spring to spring; and the afternoon with Mamma at the dressmaker’s; and the hours between tea and dinner with Mamma in the hotel-lounge, glumly banishing and recurring to thoughts of Roddy.

  Mamma sent her out to buy a copy of the Continental Daily Mail, which shrill-voiced women were excitedly advertising in the Place. Through her lorgnette, Mamma scanned the announcement of recent arrivals, the political outlook, the new French train smash, yawned, remarked that the holiday season in England seemed marked as usual by murders and drowning fatalities, yawned again and went upstairs to rest before her bridge-party.

  An hour yet till dinner and nothing to do but sit and think of things.

  Idly she picked up the evilly printed sheets. Triple Boating Tragedy. Why were they always triple? What must it be like to be relatives and friends of a triple boating tragedy? But that was a class disaster, like a charabanc death – not general.

  Sailing Fatality off St Catherine’s, Isle of Wight. That was where Martin and Roddy were yachting. They might have witnessed it. Tragic End of well-known Young Yachtsman.

  She had an impulse to put down the paper; but a name caught her eye and she had to go on reading.

  A dense fog in the Channel is presumed to be the cause of the death of Mr G. M. St V. Fyfe, one of the best known of the younger Solent yachtsmen.

  According to information at present available, Mr Fyfe, who was an expert sailor and swimmer, had been out since early morning of the —th sailing his small cutter ‘Sea Pink’ single-handed. About noon a heavy sea-fog drove up from the Channel with great suddenness and in the evening his friends became alarmed at his failure to return. Next morning a life-buoy and some other wreckage identified as belonging to Mr Fyfe’s boat was found washed up on the shore near Brooke. It is thought that the boat must have been run down by a liner or other large vessel off St Catherine’s Head during the fog of the previous afternoon. The body has not yet been recovered.

>   Mr G. M. St V. Fyfe, who was twenty-four years of age, was the only son of the late Sir John Fyfe, KCB, and of Lady Fyfe of the Manor House, Fernwood, Hants. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was among the most …

  There followed a few more words, but the type was illegible.

  It could not be Martin, because he was Mr Martin Fyfe. Martin’s initials were – Oh God! – forget you know his initials. She could see them now written in her own hand on an envelope: G. M. St V. Fyfe, Esq. Such dignified satisfying initials … It could not be Martin because an unfinished letter to him was lying upstairs waiting to be sent. Martin was sailing safely with Roddy and one or two others. He would not sail a cutter single-handed in a fog, because that was so dangerous; and he never did dangerous things.

  The body had not yet been recovered …

  If she read the thing through again calmly she would realize it was somebody else.

  Perhaps better not.

  Just the date though … Two days old, this thing was now … Mr G. M. St V. Fyfe – Martin Fyfe – Martin had been absent for two days …

  She thought: If I pretend I never saw it, it will be just as if it hadn’t happened. I won’t know it, and then it’ll stop being true.

  She folded the newspaper carefully, took it and went upstairs; and dressed for dinner with meticulous care. She was going to dine with Julian at the hotel which promised the best exhibition dancing; and she had agreed to wear his favourite frock tonight.

  It was a very rich and expensive dinner that Julian had ordered; and a bouquet of red carnations lay beside her plate. Lobster and champagne. What a crowd of excited people! Bare flesh was very ugly, and all those waved heads of women were intolerable. The monotony of faces in a crowd! …

  Julian was studying her covertly, with flickering glances, though his attention was ostensibly for the company. He drank restlessly: the lines in his face were very marked. She would say something to him about the monotony of faces in a crowd; and then something about waved hair. After that she said:

  ‘Julian, does anybody know you’re here?’

  ‘No, not a soul.’

  ‘You left no address?’

  ‘No. Paris is my headquarters. When I go off like this I prefer that the great world should await my return, not follow me.’

  ‘Ah, you’re wise.’ She laughed. ‘It must make you feel so free.’

  ‘Why did you ask?’

  ‘Because it just occurred to me.’

  Because they might have sent him a telegram: he was the eldest of the family, and they might have wanted him for all sorts of reasons: for the funeral … But the body had not yet been recovered. Soon she must say to him: ‘Julian, Martin has been drowned.’ He would not much mind: they had never been very intimate: but of course they had shared that blood-intimacy of the circle. She must really tell him soon.

  They were dancing now. The room was full of smoke and light and sickly scent; and the heat was choking. Everybody was rising to dance.

  One of the American young men from her hotel was bowing and murmuring in front of her.

  ‘Not just now, thank you so much.’ She flashed a smile at him. ‘Perhaps later on …’

  Oh the queer marionettes bobbing up and down in their mechanical motions! How could people look so serious and perform such imbecile antics? But they were not real people.

  ‘Look Julian, there’s the Spanish boy we played against in the tournament. He’s good-looking, isn’t he? He’s simply enrapturing that girl. Hasn’t he got a lazy smile? … You know, however ugly a Frenchwoman’s body is at any rate it is a body and she’s not ashamed of it. Those English people are just bundles of clothes. If you undressed them there’d be nothing. That’s the whole difference … Oh look, they’re giving out favours. I’d like a fan. Let’s dance.’

  Threading her way through the crowded tables, she pawed a party of fat elderly Frenchmen and heard one say to another, loudly and with drunken excitement:

  ‘Mais regardes donc un peu! En blanc – vois tu ? Elle est bien, celle-là. C’est tout à fait mon type.’

  Their faces leered at her out of a dream.

  Julian took her once round the room and then looked down at her and said:

  ‘You can’t dance tonight. What’s the matter?’

  She gazed at him in dread, dumb. There was a reason. Soon – soon she would have to tell him; and then, when it had been spoken, imparted, it would be true for ever and ever. Not yet.

  After a little while Julian held her as if he had ceased to expect or desire any response or rhythm from the lumpish wooden body he had to push. It was no good trying to keep things going much longer … All things were coming waveringly to an end. The end would come with her own voice saying: ‘Martin has been drowned.’ After that there would be a breaking-up and confusion, a going away to hide … Not yet.

  The dancing competition had started, amid loud laughter and applause. The couples, gradually thinning out, circled self-consciously­. The little soft-eyed half-caste brother and sister – they were the ones. Their bodies were lithe and flat and sinuous, their proudly-carried small heads shone like black water, their eyes and lips were dreamy, sensual, sad, their limbs made poetry and music as they moved. They agreed, as prize-winners, to dance an exhibition dance.

  Blushing, her teeth sparkling in a smile, she glided from the other end of the room towards her brother. He gave her his hand, she paused with a swirl of her long full yellow skirt, – and then they started swaying and circling together. They whirled; stopped dead; whirled again. He lifted her in the air and there she hung poised, laughing at him, pointing her tiny foot, then dropped like a feather and went weaving on.

  Oh, let them dance for ever! While they danced, people could die, gently, easily, as a dancer sinks to earth, without pain to them or horror to others. Let them dance for ever! … It was over. Hand in hand they curtsied and bowed, and ran off the floor.

  ‘That was dancing,’ said Julian. ‘Nobody but each other to dance with you see, poor little devils. That’s the way to learn.’

  Roddy would have danced with that soft-smiling sidelong-glancing little dancer: he would have made a point of it, not out of pity. Martin would have left her alone with quiet distaste.

  Then, in a flash, saw the sea try

  With savage joy and efforts wild

  To smash its rocks with a dead child.

  To smash its rocks with Martin.

  Everybody was very gay now. Through the smoke, all the eyes and mouths laughed, excited with wine and dancing. Balloons and favours waved; the band blared. The musicians donned false noses and moustaches and stood up, leaping and shouting.

  This place is Hell!

  Yes, Hell. Grimacing faces, obscene bodies, chattering parrot and monkey voices; Hell’s musicians, with vicious tunes and features dark with unmentionable evil …

  The lights were dimmed, the floor cleared. A dancing girl leapt into the middle of the space, throwing flowers. Her white ballet skirts spun mistily. The lights were extinguished altogether, and you saw that the outline of her bodice and her skirts, her shoe-buckles and the star on her forehead had been painted with luminous paint; so that now she was three stars and some circles and loops of light, wheeling fantastically in the dark.

  Now was the time to slip out. Julian would not notice.

  Half-way across the Place he caught her up.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘There’s something I must show you. Come with me.’

  He followed in silence, into the hotel, upstairs, into the sitting-room.

  ‘Wait there, then. I’ll come back.’

  She saw that she was carrying a purple balloon. She dropped it and watched it go bouncing like a great bubble across the room.

  In the bedroom she found the letter in the folds of the blotter. ‘What a silence,
Martin! I have been missing you …’ Aghast, she tore it in shreds.

  Now to go back to Julian.

  He was standing in the middle of the room, waiting.

  ‘Julian, what are Martin’s initials?’

  He thought.

  ‘Something St V. – G. M. St V. – George Martin St Vincent.’

  He raised his eyebrows – but grew pale.

  ‘Ah yes.’

  The paper lay on the window-seat; she went to get it. ‘Take it away and read. There, where I’ve marked it.’ She made a cross with her thumbnail.

  She went back to the bedroom and locked the door; and, after a few minutes, heard him going downstairs again.

  Then she flung herself upon the bed, weeping for Martin whom she loved: whom she had left crying for her sake; who should have lived to be loved by his children, and honoured and full of years; Martin who was kind when all else was unkind – Martin who had been dead two days, rolling about in the waves; Martin for whom poor Roddy had searched the sea in vain; Martin who had been comely and now was destroyed utterly and made horrible, – sea-water in his mouth and eyes and hair, sea-water swelling his shapely body to a gross lump.

  Whom had he thought of while he drowned? Had he fought and cursed? Or had he welcomed death because of somebody’s unkindness and deceit?

  ‘Martin, I didn’t mean it.’

  Martin was almost in the room – quite in the room – standing just behind her, saying: ‘I’m all right.’ He had come to comfort her.

  Martin had entered into everlasting life. Yes!

  No. No. No. Dead. Unconscious. Nothing. Beyond sight and touch for ever.

  Part Five

  1

  It was the end of September. She had come home again, alone. Morning, noon and evening she sat about or wandered by herself, and watched the coloured procession of the days. Chill mornings wrapped in bluish mist broke softly towards mid-day, bloomed into shining pate yellow afternoons, died early, wistfully, in mists again, in grey dews shimmering upon the leaf-strewn lawn and the fallen apples, in motionless massed pomp of foliage burning softly beneath sunsets of muffled crimson, in moonrises strange with a bronze light.