Dusty Answer

by Rosamond Lehmann

‘Which bit do you want to be buried in, Martin?’

  ‘I don’t care – as long as I’m well inside it.’

  ‘Would you ever commit suicide?’

  ‘Would I what?’

  ‘Commit suicide. To – to get there quicker.’

  He laughed and said comfortably:

  ‘Well, I’ve never been tempted to so far …’

  ‘It’s an old family place, is it Martin?’

  ‘Oh yes. My father was born here, and all the others: Roddy’s father and Julian’s, and the only sister – Mariella’s mother. She was very beautiful you know – and absolutely wild – almost mad I should think. She ran away from her husband and goodness knows what sort of life she led. I believe it simply broke my grandfather’s heart. He died, and then Granny – you remember Granny? – couldn’t bear to go on living here alone. All the children were scattered or married or dead. So she moved to the little place on the river – next door to you … Poor old lady, she didn’t have much of a time. She outlived all her children except Roddy’s father: and he was never much use to her. He quarrelled with his father when he was quite a boy and left home. I don’t know what about. Grandpapa was a terrible martinet … Yes, they were an unlucky family.’

  ‘And they all died young, Martin?’

  ‘More or less. But we none of us ever live to be old,’ he said cheerfully.

  They had reached the top of the hill; and, suddenly, up went Martin’s gun. Then, with an exclamation of disgust, he lowered it again.

  ‘Wasn’t ready for him. Once they get into that bracken –’

  ‘What’s that, Martin?’

  ‘Rabbit. Didn’t you see? Beastly vermin … Never saw anything like them. Much as we can do to keep pace with them.’

  He was muttering to himself in an annoyed way.

  ‘But Martin – do you mean to shoot them?’

  ‘Shoot them? I should say I do, if I get the chance.’

  ‘I never have been able to understand how people can bear to shoot rabbits.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Martin, grim and indifferent. ‘You mustn’t expect me to be sentimental about ’em.’

  His eyes roved round alertly; his gun was ready to go up in a trice. He was not giving a thought now to Judith walking beside him.

  Just over the crest of the hill came a sudden small kicking and flurry. A tiny pair of fur legs started away into the bracken, the white scut glancing and bobbing. But the bracken thinned away to nothing here: the small form was bound to emerge again in a moment.

  There was a sharp crack.

  ‘Aha!’ said Martin; and he went forward to where something flipped in the air and fell back again, horribly twitching in a mechanical and aimless motion.

  ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ She stood rooted where he had left her, aghast.

  He was stooping to examine it …

  She knew how it was looking – laid on its flat side and shewing­ the tender and vulnerable whiteness beneath its frail stiff paws. He was stooping just as a figure had stooped above that other rabbit … What years ago! … Roddy’s rabbit whose death and burial had started this awful loving. Who was if devilish enough to prepare these deliberate traps for memory, these malicious repetitions and agonizing contrasts?

  Oh this world! … No hope, no meaning in it; nothing but perversities, cruelties indulged in for sport, lickings of lips over helpless victims. Men treated each other just as Martin treated small animals. The most you could hope for was a little false security: they gave you that to sharpen their pleasure in the blow they were preparing: even the ones that looked kind: Martin for instance. As for Roddy – Roddy liked experimenting. He chose girls sometimes: that was more voluptuous. She saw his face, pallid and grinning, crowds of leering faces, all his. The hillside darkened. She sank on her knees, shaking and perspiring.

  He was striding back,

  ‘I buried it,’ he called. ‘It was a little smashed about the head.’

  She had to lift her face towards him; but she made it blind. He came and stood beside her – he dared to, red-handed as he was.

  ‘I’m afraid it wasn’t one of the cleanest shots,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I got him at too long range. Still, – that’s one less … Come on.’

  Her mind would frame only one sentence; and she tried over and over again to say it.

  ‘I will not be a witness of your butcheries. I will not be a witness of your butcheries.’

  But he would not understand. Perhaps it did not make sense anyway.

  ‘Oh dear!’ She sat there, tearing up turf with shaking cold wet hands, face averted, eyes staring, mouth open and out of shape, impossible to control. ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear!’ The repetition was a sort of whine or mew.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said sharply. He sank down beside her, and his astounded face came round her shoulder.

  ‘The poor little thing, the poor little thing! …’

  ‘Do you mean the rabbit?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But Judith – good heavens! A rabbit … Judith. I’d never have shot it if I’d dreamed you’d mind.’

  She went on staring and pulling up the grass.

  ‘Oh this world!’ …

  ‘Judith …’ He was silent, completely at a loss.

  ‘Still – it can’t be helped … I suppose one gets accustomed …’

  Her mind grew black again with formless and colossal conceptions of torture, murder, lust: and Roddy’s face went on grinning among them. All was lost, lost.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ said Martin helplessly.

  ‘Oh I don’t blame …’

  ‘It didn’t suffer you know. Did you think it had? That kicking didn’t mean anything: it was simply reflex action.’ He thought he had found the clue; and added cheerfully: ‘You’d do the same if I shot you dead at the back of the head.’

  ‘I wish you had.’

  She wept.

  ‘Good God! Really, Judith … I’ve said I’m sorry. I can’t go on saying it, can I? I didn’t know you were so – you oughtn’t to be so – easily upset. Rabbits have to be kept down, you know. They destroy everything. Ask my mother.’

  She went on weeping; and after a little while he got up and strode a few steps away, and stood with his back to her, shoulders hunched.

  Worse and worse: he was deserting her … She bit hard on her thumb till the pain of it steadied her, waited and then called tremblingly:

  ‘Martin!’

  He turned, saw her hand held out and came quickly and knelt beside her.

  ‘What is it, Judy, what is it?’

  ‘Oh Martin! It’s nothing. Don’t ask, don’t … Only – just – only –’

  His arms went round her and she abandoned herself against him, pressing her head into his shoulder, groping for comfort, sobbing vast sobs, while he knelt beside her quietly and let himself be wept on; and now and then gave her shoulder a little pat.

  After a long time she was so empty of tears that their source seemed dry for ever. She would never in her life weep any more. In the thin crystalline buoyancy of exhaustion she lay back on his shoulder and observed the gold light lying tender and still in the folds of the hills; and two rabbits skipping unperturbed not so very far away; and blue butterflies swinging on the long grasses; and all the evening shadows slanting beautifully downwards. Peace and comfort dropped upon her. The heavy ache for Roddy was gone. Now to make this no-pain permanent, to fix this languor and mindless calm, to smother the voice which cried and cried: ‘I am cheap and shameful. I have been used for sport!’ Now was the time to turn to Martin and see if he could save her.

  She sat up and dried her eyes.

  ‘There!’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. Thank you, Martin. You are a dear. You’ve always been very kind to me, haven’t you?’

  ‘Kind to you! Oh Judith, you know –’
/>
  ‘I think you must rather like me, Martin.’

  He said with a deep intake of breath:

  ‘Like you! You know I’ve loved you for years.’

  She was silent, tasting a faint relief and satisfaction; and then said:

  ‘Well, what would you like me to do about it, Martin?’

  She saw that his hands were trembling, and he answered shakily:

  ‘Do about it … I … What do you want to do about it? … I’ve said I –’

  ‘Would you like me to marry you?’ she asked softly.

  ‘God! If there was a chance! …’

  ‘Well – I might, Martin.’

  She started to laugh and cry weakly at sight of the transfigured face he turned towards her; and a voice went on protesting inside her: ‘No! No! No! It isn’t true. I never will.’

  ‘I’m so tired, Martin, I’m so tired!’

  ‘Come home, my dear, come home.’

  It was compassion and exultation and doubt and certainty, all mixed in an inarticulate eloquence.

  He lifted her and brushed her skirt.

  There was nothing to do but accompany him down the hill.

  He left her at her bedroom door. His mother, he said, would come and give her aspirin and put her to bed, and see that dinner was brought up to her. His mother was splendid about headaches. Tomorrow there would be plenty of time to talk.

  He had behaved perfectly.

  She fell asleep that night in her white room with its cretonne wreaths of pink roses tied up with blue ribbon, and dreamed of Roddy. He sat on the hill, close to where the rabbit had been shot, and conversed in friendly fashion. He had come back from abroad, from some remote island. He took a puff at his pipe and said with apparent irrelevance: ‘Not wives, my dear girl – mistresses. It’s more convenient. When I return I intend to take Martin as my partner.’

  ‘Martin wouldn’t come. Not if it’s mistresses …’

  ‘Oh dear me, yet. He’ll soon forget you over there. It’s a very voluptuous clime.’

  She said very humbly:

  ‘Would you care for me to come, Roddy?’

  ‘I fear you’re supered,’ he said with elaborate courtesy.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  He studied a notebook.

  ‘Where do I come in your list, Roddy?’

  ‘You’re in the twenties, somewhere,’ he said indifferently.

  ‘Oh miles down –’

  He seemed suddenly bored or suspicious, and shifted his position. As he did so, she saw his face for an instant, heavy-lidded and dissipated. She understood that he was thinking of voluptuous climes.

  It seemed then there was no use in hoping to win him back. He was, obviously, bored to death with her.

  ‘What’s in here?’ he said suddenly, and plunged his hand into the earth.

  The rabbit! … the rabbit! … Everything shrieked, – and she started awake, sweating, in horror and desolation.

  She leaned out of the window and saw the moon high in the sky. Beneath it, the trees had suffered their moon-change and were sculptured masses of dark marble, washed over with a silver-green phosphorescence. A tragic night, sleepless and staring beneath the urgent pressure of the moon: there was no comfort in it.

  This house was full of ghosts … Perhaps Roddy’s father had slept in this room as a small boy. He had grown up here and then shaken the dust of his home from his feet and gone away and begotten Roddy … Charlie must have looked like the beautiful wild sister, and that was why the grandmother had given him all that anxious and painful love.

  The sister had given birth to Mariella, and then run away and led God knows what sort of life. Poor Mariella! She had never had the sun on her: she had lived from birth – perhaps before birth – in the shadow cast by her bright mother; and when she grew up she had not emerged from it. That was the truth about Mariella.

  The family portraits were in the dining-room. Tomorrow she would see them, study and compare …

  It was madness to have come to this haunted house.

  Oh Roddy! She could not live without him. He must, he must come back and take her for a year – a month even. Perhaps he had found out by now that he did love her after all, and was too proud to write and confess it. Martin had said it was agony to him to answer even an invitation. She must write to him again, give him an opening.

  Where was he now? If she could be transported to him now, this minute, she could make him succumb utterly to loving her. She would think of such ways of delighting him with caresses that he would never be able to do without her again … It was sheer stupidity to go on enduring this agony when it only needed a trifling effort to end it all. For instance, if you leaned a little further out of the window … But one did not commit suicide in other people’s houses: that was the ultimate error of taste.

  And then, poor Martin’s feelings at the inquest!

  Mr Martin Fyfe, who was overcome with emotion several times, stated that a few hours previously deceased had declared her willingness to become his wife. This avowal, made on her own initiative, had met with ample response on his side, and there seemed every cause for joy and congratulation. The coroner in returning a verdict of suicide while of unsound mind observed that this reversal of the customary procedure in betrothals was but another example of the lack of self-control so deplorably frequent in the young woman of today, and seemed to him sufficient in itself to suggest a distinct lack of mental balance in deceased. He tendered his sincerest sympathy to Mr Fyfe and absolved him from all blame.

  And Roddy might depart from his habits and inclinations once again, and write Martin a letter of condolence. No, no. She was going to show him she did not care, was not weeping for him: she was going to announce her engagement to Martin before long.

  There would be a paragraph in The Times, congratulations, letters to write – (I am a very lucky girl) – a pretty ring – and almost certainly photographs in the illustrated weeklies.

  Roddy would smile his cynical smile because she had behaved just as women always did behave: so long as they hooked some poor devil – no matter who – they were quite satisfied. And a damned fuss they made if a chap refused to be hooked.

  Martin would probably insist on being married in church, and ask Roddy to be his best man.

  No. Poor Martin was not going to be able to save her. Perhaps, instead, she was going to destroy him.

  She went back to bed and tossed between her sheets all dawn.

  6

  Next morning Martin’s face of suppressed excitement shewed only too clearly how deeply the web was tangled now.

  She went with him after breakfast to visit his little farm.

  There was something in the brown soft earth, in the dark warmth of byres and stables, in the rich smell of animal breath and hay and soil mingled, something in the many secret, silent heads lifting, snuffing, reaching tentatively out, then tossing away from the outstretched hand; especially something in the clear golden-brown eyes curiously greeting you for a moment, then recoiling, relapsing into their animal aloofness: something that painfully suggested Roddy. He was like animals, electric and mysterious. The half-distrustful fleeting glance, the dark soft glossy head, the appealing grace: these were attributes he had in common with the farm dog, and the calves, the black kittens playing all over the stables, the dark chestnut colt in the meadow.

  There was no escape from him in all the world.

  She said to herself, moving her lips:

  ‘Sick fancies. Sick fancies.’

  If she could see Roddy as a natural human being, then only could she hope to be free of him.

  She climbed a slope and sat on a stile at the top, waiting for Martin while he interviewed a farmer.

  Below lay the house and garden she had elected to share with Martin all her life: lovely, intricate patterns of roof and
wall in the morning sun; enchanting shapes of violet shadow spilt across the mellow brick; charming lavender smoke spirals from the chimneys; carefully-ordered paths and lawns, hedges and flower-beds; two cedar trees motionless in their great planes of gloom on green brightness, green on gloom; and beyond the fruitful walk, the enfolding patiently-productive land which was Martin’s.

  You would be thought lucky indeed to live here. Perhaps the land might compensate, drug the mind and give it slow contented musings. Perhaps you could escape from Martin and feel alone with it… But no: with its medium tints and mild companionable expression it was he himself. You could never get away from Martin here.

  As he came running up the hill, eagerly, like a cheerful dog, she watched him coldly. With a faint distaste she observed his agile leap on to the stile beside her.

  ‘Well?’ he burst out happily.

  ‘Well Martin?’

  ‘What are you thinking of, looking so solemn?’

  The unpardonable question. And he would always be asking it and she always answering sweetly with a lie; or else disagreeably with: ‘Nothing.’ No peace ever again, not even to think one’s private disloyal venomous thoughts.

  ‘I was thinking Martin, I don’t believe you know a bit what I’m like.’

  ‘I know enough to know I love you anyway,’ he said with hearty confidence.

  ‘You don’t,’ she said petulantly. ‘Because you’ve never troubled to find out what I’m really like. It’s never occurred to you there might be anything more than what you see. That’s so like a man … Lord, how stupid! Everybody dismissed with a little label. Everybody taken for granted once they’ve passed a few idiotic conventional tests …’

  ‘What on earth have I done now?’ cried Martin despairingly.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing. I’m only warning you.’

  After a pause of non-comprehension he said gently:

  ‘Of course I don’t take you for granted, Judith. I could never do that. You’re so clever and beautiful and marvellous – much, much too good for me. Oh my dear! – you don’t know how I value you.’ The tears came into his eyes. ‘Whatever happens, nothing can alter my idea of you. If I could believe you had any faults, they’d only make me love you more.’