The Unsettled Dust (20 page)

‘Through there,’ said Noelle, pointing.

‘More bushes!’ cried the man, in mock irony.

‘Not such dense ones. Then you come to a barbed-wire fence. All of which you know perfectly well. I’m afraid your shoes will suffer in all this wet moss. But it’s entirely your own fault.’

‘But of course,’ cried the man, as before. ‘Please go ahead.’

Noelle wallowed across the river of moss without looking back. She wondered if there were small snakes and horrid insects concealed in it, which the dampness might bring out, perhaps for feeding purposes.

At the far side, the tapping and tinking were distinctly clearer. Noelle looked quickly back. She saw that the man’s shoes were submerged at every pace, and that water streamed from them each time he took a new step. She knew from her own experience how wringing wet the bottoms of one’s trousers become at such moments.

‘Are you all right?’ she enquired weakly.

‘Go on, go on,’ the man said. ‘Go on as though I were not here.’

Noelle considered for a moment.

‘All right,’ she decided. ‘I shall.’

But through the second belt of trees and bushes, and short though this part of the journey was, she advanced far more slowly.

The staid truth was that now there was no other sound at all but that of the tapping, the hammering, the clanking – perhaps even clanging. It seemed to Noelle that the din was rising in a degree entirely out of proportion with the distance she was covering, as presumably, she advanced towards it. It was continuing to be much as in the opera, when hurricanes of sound had at times risen almost on an instant from a seemingly peaceful and even flow. She realised perfectly well, however, that the present turmoil of noise was as nothing to that on a reasonably large modern building site; or not yet. There was always something for which to be grateful when one made the effort to see life in that way.

Furthermore, all the disfiguring barbed-wire seemed to have vanished or been taken away; at least for the limited distance in either direction that Noelle could find time to take in.

The hedge round the garden was still there, low and thin, but now sadly shredded, selectively shrivelled.

The costly-looking half-timbered house seemed not to be there. Alas for so many human certainties!

Noelle compelled herself to advance in her mackintosh and boots across the line which once the barbed wire had marked. At that moment, she realised that though barbed-wire had a bad name among her friends, yet those having recourse to it might often so do for largely benevolent reasons. Melvin’s friends would take that for granted. What was happening to her now was like going over the top.

She peered downwards over the tattered hedge.

There was the most enormous hole or cavity; excessively diametered, far deeper than Noelle could discern.

All down the hole men were working constructionally – or so she assumed. Hundreds of men – thousands, she might have been forgiven for thinking. Men were doing pretty well everything the mind could think of – and not only Noelle’s quiet and reasonable mind.

Sooner rather than later, she realised that women too were working down there: to start with, at typewriters, at
comptometers
, at computers. Noelle knew these things from the days when she had herself worked in offices, as Mut still did.

There was noise enough in all conscience, for any auditor who was fully human; but Noelle soon realised that probably the noise was nothing like enough for everything that was being actually done. The comparison with the fully modern building site of average scale recurred to her. Properly, there should have been far, far
more
noise. She was sure of it. Perhaps that was the most alarming thought of all on that day of her husband’s obsequies.

Noelle turned herself right round and stood with her entire back squarely against the garden hedge. She looked in every direction for the man who had challenged her to this strange experience on such a day of threnody.

John Morley-Wingfield, like the once-tangled wire, was no longer visible. His apparition was no more finite than his name.

Of course, notwithstanding his talk, he might have failed at the last thicket; might have decided upon some care, after all, for his suit; might even have retreated before the full moss crossing, and be composedly awaiting Noelle on her own fully domestic side of the edificial glade.

His case would in some degree have been made. Noelle had seen for herself that, in the strictest construction of words, there was no half-timbered house with over-large windows. Possibly, indeed, Mr. Morley-Wingfield was a property
speculator
who had demolished his dwelling to set up a factory more or less on the site, or an office block. Few of Melvin’s friends would have seen much to criticise in that, and some would have pointed out that the transformation would give employment at many different levels, and thus contribute to progress.

The moisture in the air had begun to precipitate heavily and also to darken the sky. Right through the experience, Noelle had realised, at the back of her mind, how late in the day it was. Possibly the second most alarming thing of all was that at such an hour all these entities were still at work.

One could call this nothing but heavy rain. Noelle wondered if there was a way out of the wood by turning rightwards up the glade: a shortcut. She had no wish ever again in her life, short or long, to meet those furbelows of parched or sodden trash at the point where people turned; to behold those deftly shaped official seats, fouled with
inscriptions
, nicked in or encrusted.

But turning rightwards up the unknown, moss-bottomed glade would be far too much of a further new experience at this of all moments. The glade might appear comparatively indifferent to her, but, even in a suburban wood, the coming of darkness could bring unexpected risks, as poor Melvin had so often emphasised. Noelle was sure that Melvin had often been right in matters of that kind.

Indeed, while hurriedly reflecting in this way, Noelle had almost recrossed the spongy moss, which this time seemed less likely to harbour leeches and freshwater scorpions than to be in itself vaguely bottomless. Had John Morley-Wingfield simply sunk through a particularly soft spot?

She pushed into the by now almost familiar bushes. At this point the noise of the rain had become loud enough to drown the faint thumping and tip-tapping of the overtime workers.

Noelle could not hold back a cry. The briar immediately before her was still splashed and flushed with blood; exactly as when she had last seen it. The weeks and months of rain had made no difference at all.

Up the slope from where the rubbish rotted, down the gentler slope through the silver birches, Noelle, encumbered by her boots, ran for home, with half-shut eyes. She was quite surprised to find her home still there.

*

But she did not enter the house: partly because the man might soon be there too; partly because, after all, Melvin might still be there (it was supposed to take forty days for the dead to clear); partly, perhaps mainly, for wider reasons still.

Instead she walked to Kay Steiner’s house. Though winded by her up-hill and down-dale run, she still walked briskly and unobtrusively. But surely it was by now too dark for the neighbours to continue watching her, abstaining the while from the television?

‘I’ve changed my mind. Can I please stay the night too?’

‘Of course you can, dear. I always thought it would be the best thing. I hated leaving you in that gloomy house.’

‘Yes, it
was
a
gloomy house, wasn’t it?’

Kay Steiner looked at Noelle. ‘Well,’ she ventured, ‘in all the circumstances –’

‘No. It was not that only.’

‘Really? In that case you’d better all move in here until Franklin gets back.’

‘Kay. Are you in love with Franklin?’

‘Of course I’m in love with Franklin. Don’t ask such silly questions. Now take off your boots and your wet clothes. These smart macs never keep out the rain, do they? I’ll lend you some clothes, if you like. We’re exactly the same size. Perhaps I ought to tell you that Judith is a little feverish. I think it’s because she fought so hard on the way here. She’s been refusing anything to eat or drink, and she’s been
screaming
. It’s nothing to worry about, of course. I’ll lend you a thermometer so that you can take her temperature yourself during the night.’

*

Noelle entered the dining room in Kay’s clothes, less
sophisticated
than her own, but not necessarily less expensive, or less fashionable.

Kay had laid the table beautifully, and with pink lighted candles; all as if it had been a special occasion. She was hard at work in the kitchen. The many surfaces were strewn with comestibles and accessories. Kay wore an apron publicising British Airways. The
British
Ley l
and
Cook
Book
lay open.

‘I see no reason why we shouldn’t make the best of things,’ said kind Kay. ‘I’m glad you like that sweater. It’s my
favourite
. It was given me in rather romantic circumstances.’

They consumed several glasses of sherry and a whole bottle of wine. Franklin Steiner belonged to a wine club connected with a well-known firm, which made the selections: neither costly top table nor cheap plonk.

‘Let’s have coffee in the lounge,’ said Kay ultimately.

‘Tell me,’ said Noelle, while Kay was filling the two cups. ‘Have you ever taken a lover? Since you married Franklin, I mean.’

‘Yes,’ said Kay. ‘I’ve taken, as you call it, several. But you don’t take milk, do you?’

‘No milk,’ said Noelle. ‘But you might stick in a spoonful of sugar.’

‘You shouldn’t, you know,’ said Kay, but affectionately, understandingly.

‘I know I shouldn’t,’ said Noelle.

Kay passed across the cup. All the things belonged to a set which Franklin had bought somewhere upon impulse at an auction.

‘Does it make any difference?’ asked Noelle.

‘To what, dear?’

‘To your feelings for Franklin. To the nature of your
marriage
.’

‘Most certainly not. How serious you are!’

‘Yes,’ said Noelle. ‘I think I am serious.’

‘It takes all sorts,’ said Kay.

Noelle began to stir her coffee. ‘Did you ever know a man calling himself John Morley-Wingfield?’

‘If you mean was he one of them, the answer is no. Mine didn’t have names like that.’

‘He may be a neighbour,’ said Noelle. ‘But you never heard of him?’

‘Never,’ said Kay. ‘And I don’t believe you did either. You’ve just dreamed him up.’

*

Wearing Kay’s solidly pink nightdress, Noelle lay unsleeping in one of Kay’s beds. As Kay had no children, there were no fewer than four spare rooms in the house; and as Kay was Kay, all four were always available. It was just as well at such times as this.

The door opened quietly. In the stream of light from the passage, Noelle could see Agnew’s wild head.

‘Mummy.’

‘What is it, darling?’

‘Who was that man you were walking with after I came here? Was it Daddy?’

Certainly the almost total darkness was something of an immediate relief to Noelle.

‘Of course it wasn’t Daddy, Agnew. It was someone quite different. But how did you see him?’

‘Mrs. Steiner was making a fuss about Judith, so I was bored, and just ran home. What man was he, Mummy?’

‘He was a friend of Daddy’s, who couldn’t come earlier. There are always people like that in life. You must never let them upset you.’

‘Mummy, are you going to marry him?’

‘I don’t think so, Agnew. I’m not proposing to marry anyone for some time yet. No one but you.’

‘Really not, Mummy? Why did you go for a walk with him if he was only Daddy’s friend?’

‘He wanted to take me out of myself. It was kind of him. You know it’s been a difficult day for me, Agnew.’

‘Are you
sure
that’s all, Mummy?’

‘Quite sure, Agnew. Now get into bed with me for a little while, and we’ll say no more about it, if you please, not even think about it.’

Agnew put his arms round her, squeezing himself tightly against her breasts; and all was peace until the morrow.

I had an acquaintance who had begun, before I knew him, as a painter but who took to ‘compiling and editing’ those costly, glossy books about art which are said to sell in surprising numbers but which no person one knows ever buys and no person one sees ever opens.

I first met this man at a party. The very modern room was illuminated only in patches by dazzling standard lamps beneath metal frames. The man stood in one of the dark corners, looking shy and out of it. He wore a light blue suit, a darker blue shirt, and a tie that was pretty well blue-black. He looked very malleable and slender. I walked towards him. I saw that he had a high, narrow head and smooth dark hair, cut off in a sharp, horizontal line at the back. I saw also that with him was a woman, previously invisible, though, as a matter of fact, and when she had come into focus, rather oddly dressed. None the less, I spoke.

It seemed that I was welcome after all. The man said
something
customary about knowing almost none of the guests, and introduced the nearly invisible woman to me as his wife. He proceeded to chat away eagerly but a little anxiously, as if to extenuate his presence among so many dark strangers. He told me then and there about his abandonment of painting for editorship: ‘I soon realised I could not expect my pictures to sell,’ he said, or words to that effect. ‘Too far-fetched.’ About that particular epithet of his I am certain. It stuck in my mind immediately. He offered no particulars, but talked about the terms he got for his gaudy pictorial caravanserais. I have, of course, written a little myself from time to time, and the sums he named struck me as pretty good. I avoided all comment to the effect that it is the unread book which brings in the royalty (after all, modern translations of the
Iliad 
and the
Odyssey
are said to sell by the hundred thousand, and the Bible to be more decisively the best seller of all with every year that passes); and observed instead that his life must be an interesting one, with much travel, and, after all, much beauty to behold. He agreed warmly and, taking another Martini from a passing tray, described in some detail his latest business excursion, which had been to somewhere in Central America where there were strange things painted on walls, perfect for colour photography. He said he hoped he hadn’t been boring me. ‘Oh, no,’ I said. All the time, the man’s wife had said nothing. I remark on this simply as a fact. I do not imply that she was bored. She might indeed have been enthralled. Silence can, after all, mean either thing. In her case, I never found out which it meant. She was even
slenderer
than he was, with hair the colour (as far as I could see) of old wheat, collected into a bun low on the neck, a pale face, long like her husband’s, and these slightly odd, dark garments I’ve mentioned. I noticed now that the man had a rather weak, undeveloped nose. In the end, the man said would I visit their flat in Battersea and have dinner? and I gave my promise.