Dusty Answer

by Rosamond Lehmann

  Judith got up and went towards the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Geraldine sharply.

  ‘To Jennifer, to ask her to explain.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’ The change in her voice and manner was noticeable. ‘Jennifer’s lying down. I left her trying to sleep. She mustn’t be disturbed.’

  ‘I can go to Jennifer whenever I like. I can always go to Jennifer. I don’t ask you whether I am to or not.’

  At last this was anger, anger! At last she was able to want to wound, to cry: ‘I! I! I!’ brutally, aggressively, triumphantly in the face of her enemy. Pure anger for the first time in life.

  ‘Please! Listen.’ Geraldine took a few steps towards her. ‘Please don’t go now. She’s very much upset. I left her crying.’

  Crying – crying? Oh, that was a good thing. It was splendid that Jennifer should have been made to cry … And yet … if this woman had made her cry – poor Jennifer, darling Jennifer – you would –

  The situation seemed to have become reversed. Judith felt herself momentarily strong in self-assurance; and Geraldine was hesitating, as if doubtful what to say.

  ‘What’s she crying about? It takes a good deal to make Jennifer­ cry.’

  Geraldine shot her a glance and said venomously:

  ‘Yes. As far as I can make out, one of your charming friends must have taken a good deal of trouble to make her cry this morning. Anyway she seemed to have got it into her head that she’s treated somebody, or one of you, very badly – and that somebody was hurt – you were hurt – because she’d been neglecting­ you for me.’

  ‘How do you know she meant me?’

  She was silent, and then said:

  ‘She was crying a good deal and thoroughly upset and I heard her say your name. So I went and asked someone where your room was and came straight. But you were out.’

  ‘Did she tell you to come?’

  ‘She didn’t tell me not to.’

  ‘Then she told you where my room was. She knows you’re here.’

  ‘I didn’t ask her where your room was. I – found out.’

  ‘And does she know you’re here?’

  ‘No.’ She added after silence. ‘I didn’t come here to be cross-questioned.’

  ‘What did you come here for?’

  ‘Just to tell you we care that’ – she snapped her fingers – ‘for your mean little jealousies.’

  ‘Oh, it seems scarcely worth coming, just for that. It wasn’t worth losing your temper over, was it? Little jealousies are so common – in a female institution. I do think you over-estimate their importance. It isn’t as if you cared what we said, because you’ve just told me you don’t – either of you.’

  ‘And,’ she said, raising her voice angrily; ‘and to tell you I consider you owe me an apology – me and Jennifer.’

  ‘Oh!’ Judith buried her face in her hands and laughed. ‘Oh! that’s very funny.’

  She looked up at Geraldine with a sudden fantastic hope that she would see her laughing too; but the face presented to her was hostile and heavy. At sight of it she felt the laughter begin to shake her terrifyingly; and checked it with a gasp.

  Geraldine said:

  ‘I suppose you will deny having anything to do with this?’

  ‘Oh deny it – of course I do,’ said Judith with weary contempt.

  ‘Deny having insinuated – suggested –’ she began loudly.

  ‘I have never bothered to mention your name to anyone. Why should I? It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘No,’ she said, her face and voice rousing a little from their heavy deliberate monotony. ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’ She thought a moment and added slowly: ‘Then there’s some misunderstanding.’

  ‘Yes, some misunderstanding. Why go on treating it as if it were important?’

  After a silence she said:

  ‘Anything, however slight, that comes between me and Jennifer is important.’

  Judith felt herself start to tremble again. Those slow words rang a doom for her; and her spurious advantage was at an end.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said uncertainly, ‘If I have come between you and Jennifer.’

  ‘Not you,’ she said. (Yes, she was a stupid or a cruel woman.) ‘But I know what people’s mischievous tongues can do, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it before I go away. Just to assure myself that I’m not leaving her to face anything – unpleasant or distressing.’

  ‘Ah, so you realize how easily she’s influenced.’

  That was it then: the woman was afraid. She had given herself away at last: she knew the terrible insecurity of loving Jennifer. Judith felt a quiver of new emotion dart through her: it seemed like a faint pity.

  ‘I don’t want her bothered,’ said Geraldine aggressively. ‘I loathe this interfering.’

  ‘You don’t quite understand,’ said Judith in a voice of calm explanation, ‘how much Jennifer means to some people – a lot of people here. They love her. Naturally they resent it a little when somebody else comes in and claims all her attention. They miss her. Isn’t it natural? And then you see, since you’ve been here I believe she’s been getting into awful trouble for neglecting her work. I heard one of them say so a day or two ago – and another one said it was time someone spoke to her or she’d be sent down. So I dare say that’s what happened: somebody tried to give her a sort of warning. Of course it was silly: but then, as you say, girls are silly. It was meant kindly.’ She paused, feeling a kind of faintness, took a deep sighing breath and continued:

  ‘If my name was brought into it, it was because I have had – I think – a certain amount of influence with Jennifer. She and I were a good deal together at one time. But lately I have been working very hard. They had no business at all …’

  She felt her voice dwindling and stopped, trembling now uncontrollably.

  Geraldine lit another cigarette and leaned back against the mantelpiece. Oh, she was going to lean there for ever! If only she would allow you to soften her into some emotion of pity and understanding so that you might fling yourself down and weep, crying: ‘Now you must understand. Now I have told you all. Leave me.’ But there was no hope of that. Her hostility was hardening. She was more alert now; and she seemed to be taking note for the first time since her sweeping entrance of Judith’s person. Her eyes went attentively over face, hands, feet, hair, clothes, and over the whole room. Something alive was rearing itself from the stony envelope. She was silent for a long time, and then said uncertainly:

  ‘I hope you won’t – mention all this to her.’ Judith laughed.

  ‘I can’t quite promise that,’ she said. ‘You see, we’ve been used to telling each other most things. There’s no reason to make a mystery of it. Is there?’

  She was silent again; and then said:

  ‘I think it would be best not to say anything to her. I don’t want you to think there’s been any fuss. I don’t think she’ll care to hear any more about it. She was very unwilling to – to dwell –’

  That brought home Jennifer’s attitude with painful clarity. She was, of course, flying to escape. Why should she go free always, always? This time it would be easy to make her uncomfortable, if not to hurt her. And yet, it could not be done. Once more she felt the faintest stir of sympathy with Geraldine. She said with a shrug:

  ‘Very well, I won’t refer to it.’

  ‘We’ll agree,’ said Geraldine, to keep it to ourselves.’

  Judith nodded.

  Geraldine threw away her cigarette, smoothed her sleek hair, stood upright as if preparing to go and said with brisk indifference:

  ‘Well, I’m sorry if I’ve been a nuisance.’

  ‘Oh, you haven’t been a nuisance.’

  Judith crushed her cold hands into her lap. Now it was almost over: soon she could let herself coll
apse. But Geraldine still lingered, looking about her.

  ‘You’ve got nice things,’ she said. ‘Most of the rooms I’ve seen are too frightful.’

  ‘I’m luckier than most girls here. I have more money.’

  ‘Do you like being here?’

  ‘I have liked it – and disliked it.’

  ‘Hmm. Jennifer hates it. I don’t wonder. I think I’ve persuaded her to leave and come abroad with me.’

  Defeat at last. She had no answer to that, not one weapon left. She stared before her, paralysed.

  ‘I can’t think,’ added Geraldine, ‘how she’s stuck it so long.’

  Judith heard herself say slowly, softly:

  ‘As I told you, there are a great many people here who love her. That makes a difference, doesn’t it? People have to love Jennifer.’ She buried her face in her hands, and thought aloud, in a sort of whisper: ‘People have to love her and then she seems cruel. But she doesn’t mean to be. There’s something about her – people don’t seem to be able to love her clearly and serenely: they have to love her too much. Everything gets dark and confused and aching, and they want to – touch her and be the only one near her; they want to look after her and give her everything she wants. It’s tiring. And then when they’re tired she gives them back life. She pours life into them from herself.’

  She stopped short, seeing in a flash how it had always been between herself and Jennifer. Tired, you had come again and again to her, pressing close to be replenished from her vitality. But Jennifer had not drunk life from you in return: quietness and tenderness and understanding, but not life. And the quietness had passed into sadness – yes, you knew now you had seen it happening sometimes, – sadness, flatness: the virtue had gone out of her in the incessant giving of herself, the incessant taking on of an alien quietness. You had wanted too much, you had worn her out. Perhaps after all you had been unlucky to Jennifer, committed that crime of trying to posses her separateness, craved more than even she could give without destroying herself. So in the end she had gone to someone more wholesome for her nature. Perhaps after all the balance had been sorely ill-adjusted she your creator, you her destroyer. Perhaps she should be surrendered to Geraldine now, ungrudgingly. She said, looking up at Geraldine:

  ‘I dare say you make her very happy.’

  Geraldine said, answering Judith’s gaze unwaveringly:

  ‘Yes, we are very happy together. Absolutely happy.’

  ‘She is a good companion, isn’t she?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, her heavy lips lifting in a faint curious smile.

  What was in her voice? – insolence? – triumph? – malice? an obscure challenge? She seemed to be implying that she knew things about Jennifer of which you had no knowledge. She was a terrible woman.

  Judith could find no words, and the other continued:

  ‘She’s starting to find herself. It’s very interesting. Of course nobody’s understood her here.’

  ‘And you think you do?’

  ‘I do, yes.’

  ‘Oh, but I’d never dare say that about a person I loved! You might seem to touch everywhere and all the time be strangers.’ Judith clasped her hands and spoke urgently:

  ‘Don’t you feel how you might long to say to someone you love: I give you all myself, all myself – and all the time be sad because with all your efforts and longing you know you never could – that the core can’t ever be stirred at all? It seems such dreadful arrogance to say –’ she stopped short, pressing her hand to her lips, shutting her eyes. After a pause she added quickly: ‘But I don’t doubt you love her …’ she sighed. ‘Thank God this term is nearly over. This is a terrible place for getting overwrought.’

  Geraldine seemed to be thinking deeply. Her face was awake and preoccupied behind its heavy mask.

  ‘It’s very odd,’ said Judith, ‘how she doesn’t value her brains in the very least – isn’t interested in them – can’t be bothered. I suppose you know she’s the most brilliant history student of her year. Easily. Of course she’s never worked, but she could have done anything she liked. In spite of all her idleness and irresponsibility they were still excited about her – they thought she’d do something in the end. And I was going to make her pull it off. I could have – in one term. I mean I could have once. Not now of course.’

  Her voice ceased drearily. As if it would matter to Geraldine how much Jennifer wasted brains, or academic opportunities … as if it would move her!

  The bell started to ring for Hall.

  ‘There!’ said Judith, ‘I must brush my hair I suppose, and go down. Are you coming to Hall?’

  ‘No. I’m going to dine in Cambridge.’

  Judith rose and stood before her, looking full at her for the last time. She thought suddenly: ‘But she’s not beautiful! She’s hideously ugly, repulsive.’

  That broad heavy face and thick neck, those coarse and masculine features, that hothouse skin: What taste Jennifer must have to find her attractive! …

  Oh, no, it was no good saying that. In spite of all, she was beautiful: her person held an appalling fascination. She was beautiful, beautiful. You would never be able to forget her face, her form. You would see it and dream of it with desire: as if she could satisfy something, some hunger, if she would. But she was not for you. The secret of her magnetism, her rareness must be for ever beyond reach; but not beyond imagination.

  Judith cried out inwardly: ‘Tell me all your life!’ All about herself, where she had come from, why she was alone and equivocal, why she wore such clothes, such pearls, how she and Jennifer had met, what knowledge her expression half-hid, half-revealed. Time had swept her down one moment out of space, portentously, and now was sweeping her away again, unknown. And now, in the end, you wanted to implore her to stay, to let herself be known, to let you love her. Yes, to let you love her. It was not true that you must hate your enemies. What was all this hatred and jealousy? Something so terrifyingly near to love, you dared not contemplate it. You could love her in a moment, passionately, for her voice, her eyes, her remarkably white hands, for loving Jennifer – anything.

  The bell stopped ringing.

  ‘Good-bye,’ said Judith. ‘I’m late.’ She held out her hand.

  Geraldine took it. Her hand was cool, smooth and firm.

  ‘Good-bye.’

  ‘Are you – staving much longer?’

  ‘I’m going away tomorrow.’

  ‘I’d like to have known you better,’ said Judith, very low, and she lifted her eyes to the long, hidden eyes of Geraldine. ‘I hope you and she will be happy when you go abroad.’ She opened the door politely, and then said, smiling: ‘We won’t forget each other, will we?’

  ‘No,’ said Geraldine, still watching her. But she did not smile.

  They went their different ways along the corridor.

  Now to go down to the dull food and clamour, to sit among them all and torture herself with fancying intercepted glances which might have pity in them; to hear, perhaps, her name and Jennifer’s in a whispered aside; to try with anguish to guess which of them it was who had dared to drag her pain from its hiding-place and proclaim it aloud.

  11

  Jennifer lay in bed; and on her door was pinned a notice signed by the matron: No visitors allowed.

  Her friends were disconsolate, and the evening gatherings were leaden-spirited. It was certain there had not been so much evening work done before in the whole two years. There was nothing better to do now: no excitement, no laughter or colour. They went on tiptoe past the shut door and the notice: for Jennifer, so it was said, was threatened with nervous collapse, and her only chance lay in sleep and quiet. But in all the rumours, discussions and communications which went on over Jennifer’s case, Judith took no part.

  Once indeed when they were all at Hall and the corridor was empty of echoes, Judith had crept up to the
door, lingered hesitating, then noiselessly turned the handle and looked in.

  The electric lamp shone beside the bed and Jennifer lay with her face turned to the wall. All that was visible was her hair, tossed in a rough mass over the pillow and palely burning where the dim light struck it. Her death-like unconsciousness was intolerable pain. She should have stirred at least, feeling a presence through all the seals of sleep … But she did not move; and night after night the sight of that unstirring hair upon the pillow returned, mocking her longing to reach to Jennifer with a picture that seemed the symbol for all that was eternally uncommunicating and imperturbable.

  They said she was to be sent home before the end of term; then that her mother had arrived, was to take her away on the morrow.

  That night the message came: Jennifer wanted to say good-bye to Judith.

  Jennifer’s boxes stood packed and strapped in a corner. Her personality had already, terrifyingly, been drained from her two rooms. There was now only a melancholy whisper of that which, during the two years of her tenancy, had filled the little space between her walls with a warm mystery. She had become identified with the quickening of imagination, the lyrical impulse. Oh how ridiculous, how sad, to have made one person into all poetry! Tomorrow it would all be finished.

  Judith went softly from the sitting-room into the bedroom: and there was Jennifer lying back on her pillow and waiting.

  ‘Hullo, darling,’ she said. Her voice was low and mournful.

  ‘Jennifer!’

  She put out her hand and Judith took it, clung to it, while Jennifer drew her down beside her on the bed.

  ‘Jennifer, darling, how are you?’

  ‘I’m better, I’ve slept. I was so tired. But I’m going away.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone, Judith, but I’m not coming back.’

  ‘Oh Jennifer, what shall I do without you?’

  ‘Darling I can’t come back,’ she said in an urgent, painful whisper­.

  ‘I know. I know. And I must come back, I suppose. I’m like that: I can’t uproot. You’re wise, you never grow roots. So you can go away when you want to without making a wound in yourself. It’s no good my pretending I could do the same. I must wait; though goodness knows for what: the examinations I suppose. This place without you … Oh!’