Dusty Answer

by Rosamond Lehmann

‘Why haven’t you?’

  ‘Nobody to dance with.’

  ‘Nobody?’

  ‘Nobody at all.’

  ‘Have you been living on your little lone since I went away?’

  ‘Ever since then.’

  ‘Well, now I’ve come back we’ll dance a lot, won’t we?’

  ‘Oh yes. But you’ll disappear again, I know you will.’

  ‘Not yet. And not for long.’

  She could have cried, he was so comforting.

  He spun, holding her tightly, stopped, held her a moment more, and let her go as the record came to an end. She watched him as he went, with that secret of idle grace in his movements, to switch off the gramophone. He looked pale and composed as ever, while she was flushed, throbbing and exhausted with excitement. She stood at the open French windows and leaned towards the cool night air; and he found her silent when he came back.

  ‘A penny for them, Judith.’

  ‘I was thinking – what extraordinary things one says. I suppose it’s the dancing. It seems so incredibly easy to behave as one naturally wouldn’t –’

  ‘I find that myself,’ he said solemnly.

  ‘The – the unsuitable things that generally stay inside one’s head, – they spring to one’s lips, don’t they?’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘Values are quite changed. Don’t you think so?’

  She must make him realize that she was not really a cheap flirtatious creature: re-establish her dignity in his eyes. She had behaved so lightly he might be led to think of her and treat her without respect, and laugh at her behind her back after she had ceased to divert him. It was very worrying.

  ‘Quite, quite changed,’ he said.

  ‘Isn’t it queer? I suppose – it doesn’t do much harm? One oughtn’t to think worse of a person for –’

  He threw back his head to laugh at his ease, silently, as always, as if his joke were too deep down and individual for audible laughter.

  ‘Are you laughing at me, Roddy?’

  ‘I can’t help it. You’re so terribly funny. You’re the funniest person I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Why am I?’

  ‘You’re so incredibly serious.’

  ‘I’m not – not always.’

  ‘I’m afraid you are. I’m afraid you’re terribly introspective.’

  ‘Am I? Is that wrong? Roddy, please don’t laugh at me. It leaves me out if you laugh by yourself like that. I could laugh with you at anything, if you’d let me –’ she pleaded.

  ‘Anything – even yourself?’

  She pondered.

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps not. That’s a weakness, isn’t it?’

  ‘There you go again! Never mind about your weaknesses. I was only teasing you. Let me see you smile.’

  To obey him her lips went upwards sorrowfully; but when she saw his laughing, coaxing face, her heart had to lift too.

  ‘Well you’re very nice anyway,’ he said, ‘serious or no. Have you forgiven me?’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, Roddy.’

  As she said it she realized with a passing prophetic sense of helplessness and joy and fear that whatever he did she would always inevitably forgive him. But she must not tell him that, yet.

  Martin and Mariella came strolling back from the garden, the spark of their cigarettes going before them. She heard Mariella’s little laugh bubbling out contentedly, her childish voice answering his in an easy chatter. Yes, Mariella was happy with Martin. He was polite and kind to her, and she was equal to him without effort As she came into the light Judith was struck afresh by the lack of all emphasis, the careful absence of any one memorable feature in the memorable whole of her beauty. Her lovely athletic body effaced itself in simple clothes of no particular fashion or cut, subdued in colour, moderately long, moderately low in their necks and short in their sleeves, – negative clothes that nevertheless were distinguished, and said ‘Mariella and nothing else in the world.

  It was time to go.

  ‘Oh must you?’ said Mariella.

  Roddy said not a word. He had detached himself as soon as the others came in, and was idly busy in a corner, tuning a guitar. Either he had not heard or was not interested. It seemed impossible that his face had been off its guard a few minutes ago, warming and lighting in swift response.

  Julian lounged in again silently, a book in his hand. He looked tired and fierce, as if daring her to remember his recent lapse into friendliness. The strange disheartening people …

  She stammered: ‘Well, good night everybody. Thank you so much.’

  ‘One of the boys will see you home,’ said Mariella dubiously.

  ‘Oh no. It isn’t necessary. I’ll just climb over the wall if the gate’s locked. I shall be quite all right, honestly …’

  There was no need to protest. They dismissed the matter in silence.

  ‘Well, come in any time,’ said Mariella.

  But any time was no good. She had dreaded just such a non-committal invitation. Any time probably meant never. Despondently she looked back to smile her thanks; and as her eyes took in the group of them standing there looking at her, she felt suddenly startled.

  But they were all alike!

  So strange, so diverse in feature and colour, they yet had grown up with this overpowering likeness; as if one mind had thought them all out and set upon them, in spite of variations, the unmistakable stamp of itself. Alone among all the tall distinguished creatures Roddy made sharp departure, and preserved, though not wholly intact, the profounder individuality of his unimportant features.

  4

  It was some weeks later. The day had been long and fruitless. She had idled through the hours, playing the piano, reading Pêcheurs d’ Islande with voluptuous sorrow, doing nothing. A letter from her mother in Paris had arrived in the afternoon. They were not coming home just yet. Father had caught another of his colds and seemed so exhausted by it. He was in bed and she was nursing him, and it had meant cancelling this party, that party. Why should not Judith come out and join them, now that her examinations were over? It would amuse her; and Father would be glad to have her. They would expect her in a few days; she was old enough now to make the journey by herself.

  Her heart was heavy. She could not leave the house, the spring garden, this delicious solitude, these torturing and exquisite hopes. How could she drag herself to Paris when she dared not even venture beyond the garden for fear of missing them if they came for her? If she went now, the great opportunity would be gone irrevocably; they would slip from her again just as life was beginning to tremble on the verge of revelation. She must devise an excuse; but it was difficult. She swallowed a few mouthfuls of supper and wandered back into the library.

  The last of the sun lay in the great room like blond water, lightly clouded, still, mysterious. The brown and gold and red ranks of the dear books shone mellow through it, all round the room from the floor three quarters way to the ceiling; the Persian rap, the Greek bronzes on the mantelpiece, the bronze lamps with their red shades, the tapestry curtains, the heavy oak chairs and tables, all the dim richnesses, were lit and caressed by it into a single harmony. The portrait of her father as a dark-eyed, dark-browed young man of romantic beauty was above the level of the sun, staring sombrely down at his possessions. She could sit in this room, especially now with hair brushed smooth and coiled low across the nape, defining the lines of head and neck and the clear curve of the jaw, – she could sit alone herein her wine-red frock and feel part of the room in darkness and richness and simplicity of line; decorating it so naturally that, if he saw, his uncommunicating eyes would surely dwell and approve.

  She and the young man of the portrait recognized each other as of the same blood, springing with kindred thoughts and dreams from a common root of being, and with the same physical likeness at the source of their unlikeness which she
had noticed in the cousins next-door. She was knit by a heart-pulling bond to the portrait; through it, she knew she loved the elderly man whose silent, occasional presence embarrassed her.

  There was sadness in everything, – in the room, in the ringing bird-calls from the garden, in the lit, golden lawn beyond the window, with its single miraculous cherry-tree breaking in immaculate blossom and tossing long foamy sprays against the sky. She was sad to the verge of tears, and yet the sorrow was rich, – a suffocating joy.

  The evening held Roddy clasped within its beauty and mystery: he was identified with its secret.

  ‘Roddy, I love you! I’ve always loved you.’

  Oh, the torment of loving!

  But soon the way would open without check and lead to the happy ending. Surely it had started to open already.

  The pictures came before her.

  Roddy playing tennis, – playing a characteristic twisty game that irritated his opponents, and made him laugh to himself as he ran and leapt. His eyes forgot to guard themselves and be secret: they were clear yellow-brown jewels. She was his partner, and with solemn fervour she had tried to play as she had never played before, for his sake, to win his admiration. But he was not the sort of partner who said: ‘Well played!’ or ‘Hard lines’. He watched her strokes and looked amused, but was silent even when she earned him victory after victory.

  Afterwards she said:

  ‘I do love tennis. Don’t you?’

  He answered indifferently:

  ‘Sometimes, – when they let me do as I like; when I’m not expected to play what they call properly. One of my lady opponents once told me I played a most unsporting game. “My intelligence, however corrupt, is worth all your muscle” – was what I did not just then think of saying to her. She was in a temper, that lady.’

  She smiled at him, thinking how she loved the feel of her own body moving obediently, the satisfaction of achieving a perfect stroke, the look of young bodies in play and in repose, – especially his; and she hazarded:

  ‘I love it just for the movement. I love movement, – the look of people in motion and the thought and feel of my own movements. I suppose I am too solemn over it. I want so much to do it as well as I can. I’m solemn because I’m excited. I sometimes think I would like above all things to be the best dancer in the world, – or the best acrobat; or failing that, to watch dancers and acrobats for ever.’

  Looking back on their few but significant conversations, she decided that there was something about him which invited confidences while seeming to repel them. Though his response – if it came at all or came save in silent laughter – was uncoloured by enthusiasm and unsweetened by sympathy, he made her feel that he understood and even pondered in secret over her remarks.

  ‘There are some things I tell you, Roddy, that I tell no one else. They make themselves be told. Often I haven’t known they were inside me.’ She rehearsed this silently. One day she would say it aloud to him.

  Then she had added:

  ‘Do you still caricature, Roddy?’

  ‘Now and then, – when I feel like it.’

  ‘It is funny how a caricature impresses a likeness on you far quicker and more lastingly than a good portrait. Do you remember you once did one of me when we were little and I cried?’

  ‘I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘Do you see everybody with their imperfections exaggerated – always?’

  ‘Only with one eye. That’s my defence. The other has so frequently to be shut – or wounded. But there’s a great deal of aesthetic pleasure to be had from the contemplation of monsters.’

  ‘I suppose the temptation is to shut the normal one more and more until finally it ceases to work; especially if the other one has a greater facility. And it has, hasn’t it, Roddy?’

  ‘Perhaps. You must stay by me and counteract it.’

  ‘Which is it?’ she looked at him laughing.

  He shut one eye.

  ‘I shut it entirely to look at you,’ he said.

  Afterwards when she played again, a single with Martin, he lay on the bank, indolent after his burst of energy, watching her long after the others had lost interest and gone indoors. Passing him once, she had closed one eye and looked at him inquiringly; and all his face had broken up in warm delighted twinklings. He did welcome the most trivial jokes from her; and they were always trivial, and not nearly frequent enough.

  Next time had been the time of Julian’s extremely bad temper. He had played tennis with malice and vicious cuts and nasty exclamations of triumph. Over Roddy’s face slid down the mask of deadly obstinacy which was his anger.

  He came from the game and flung himself on the bank without a word, while Julian remained on the court, peevishly patting balls about.

  ‘He annoys me,’ said Roddy after a bit, watching him under heavy lids. Presently he took a piece of paper from his pocket and worked in silence.

  ‘Roddy, may I see it?’

  He made no reply; but after a few more minutes he flung it over to her.

  It was a terrible success (Julian had always been the most successful subject); and it was devilish as well as funny.

  ‘Oh Roddy!’ She began to giggle.

  ‘Sh! Look out! He’s coming back.’

  He snatched the paper from her and crushed it up.

  ‘Let me keep it.’

  ‘Well, don’t let him see it. He hates it.’

  He flung it hurriedly into her lap as Julian came up; and as she stuffed it into her pocket with studied carelessness, his lips suddenly relinquished the last of his obstinacy, and he flashed her a look suffused with laughter and the sense of shared guilt. Surely he had never looked at anyone before with such irresistible intimacy and appeal. The less assured face of the child Roddy peered for a moment in that look; but the dark and laughing fascination was new and belonged to the young man; and she melted inwardly at the remembrance of it.

  Then there had been the time Martin and Roddy had come to tea – so exciting a little time that she still dwelt on it with beating heart.

  She felt again her delighted astonishment at sight of the pair of them coming up the garden. She had washed her hair and was drying it in the sun when they appeared; it was spread in a mass round her shoulders and down to her waist, and she was brushing the last of the damp out of it.

  ‘Hullo!’ said Martin.

  ‘Hullo!’

  They came smiling up to her.

  ‘Are you busy?’ said Martin.

  ‘No, only washing my hair. Please excuse it.’

  ‘We like it,’ said Roddy. He watched her brushing, combing it and shaking it back over her shoulders as if fascinated.

  ‘Are you doing anything this afternoon?’ said Martin.

  ‘Oh no!’ – eagerly.

  ‘Shall we be in the way?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then may we come to tea?’

  ‘Will you really?’

  ‘Julian has got some tiresome people we don’t like, so we escaped, and Roddy suggested coming to find you.’

  Roddy raised his eyebrows, smiling faintly.

  ‘Well, we both suggested it,’ continued Martin with a blush. ‘May we really stay?’

  Which, oh which of them had suggested it? …

  ‘Will you wait here while I go and put my hair right?’

  ‘It’s not dry yet,’ said Roddy. ‘Let me brush it at the back for you.’

  She stood still in embarrassed pleasure while he brushed and combed her hair.

  ‘You do it beautifully. You don’t pull a bit.’

  ‘I’m a good hair dresser. I brush my mother’s when her maid’s out.’

  ‘Has she got lovely hair?’

  ‘Goodish. Very long. Not such lumps of it as this though.’ He took up a handful and weighed it. ‘Extraord
inary stuff.’

  It was the first time that she had ever heard him mention his mother. Why, Roddy must have a home life, a whole background of influences and associations of which she knew nothing … She felt startled and anxious; and the old ache at being left out, failing to possess, stirred in her.

  She saw him brushing his mother’s hair with careful hands. His mother had long dark hair perfumed deliciously. She had a pale society face, and she sat before her brilliantly lit dressing table wearing a rich wrap and pearls, and put red on her lips, and made Roddy fetch and carry for her about the bedroom. They talked and laughed together. She had never heard of Judith.

  Judith dismissed the picture.

  Roddy went on brushing, while Martin stared and smiled at her. They made a most intimate-looking little group. She thought of herself for a moment as their sister. Roddy would often brush her hair for her if she was his sister, or if …

  ‘There!’ said Roddy. ‘Je vous félicite, Mademoiselle.’ He adjusted her tortoiseshell slide and bowed to her with the hairbrush over his heart.

  ‘I love your garden,’ said Martin.

  She showed them the garden and then the house. They asked questions and admired the furniture and the rare books she picked out for them in the library.

  ‘When Daddy comes back you must meet him,’ she said. ‘He’d love to show you his books.’

  She was sure he would like such appreciative young men.

  ‘I’d like to meet him awfully/ said Martin. ‘I’ve often heard about him.’

  She glowed.

  ‘No wonder you’re a bookworm, Judy,’ said Roddy, searching the shelves with absorbed eyes. ‘I’d be myself if I had this always round me.’

  He could hardly tear himself away from browsing and gazing.

  In the hall hung a water-colour portrait of Judith at the age of six.

  ‘Ah!’ said Roddy. ‘I remember you like this.’

  He looked from her to the portrait, and then at her again, as if remembering and comparing, and dwelling on the face she smilingly lifted to him until she had to drop her eyes.

  They had tea in the drawing-room, – exquisite China tea in the precious Nankin cups which always appeared for visitors. Everything in the house was precious and exquisite: she had never realized it before; and she thought: