Dusty Answer

by Rosamond Lehmann

  He laughed, watching her.

  ‘May I help you? Shall we tread the primrose path together?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Well, start by looking a little more as if you were going to enjoy it. Have you ever been happy? No. Whenever you come near to being, you start thinking: “Now I am happy. How interesting … Am I really happy?” You must learn a little continental abandon – I’ll teach you.’

  ‘You!’

  ‘– and scornful as well! Oh, Judith, you’re getting on. I like to see your mouth trying to be hard. It has such pretty points.’

  The music stopped, and she disengaged herself. A few people clapped, and she nodded and smiled to the band … performing, performing; conspicuously self-possessed …

  ‘Good!’ said Julian. Oh, good!’

  She turned to him and said:

  Thank you, Julian. That was exhilarating.’

  ‘Yes, you look as if you’d found it so.’

  His eyes, brilliant with nervous fatigue, pierced her with a glance too penetrating.

  ‘What a pity,’ he said, ‘you’re so unhappy.’

  ‘If it were so,’ she said, starting to walk back towards her chair, ‘it would be a pity … Or perhaps that would be exhilarating too.’

  ‘Oh don’t be enigmatical with your old friend,’ he said plaintively.

  She laughed and gave him her hand.

  ‘Good night, Julian. You go to bed. You’re so tired you can hardly stand upright. Tomorrow well start enjoying ourselves frightfully. You’ll stay a bit, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll stay,’ he said. ‘I think the moment is auspicious for me … Didn’t I always say I could await my turn?’

  ‘Yes, you said so. You have a flair undoubtedly. You are full of finesse … Good night.’

  She waved a hand and left him.

  Something was afoot … He had come casting shadows before and behind him. Old things were stirring: the old illness of remembering was going to start again. And ahead was not a glimmer.

  9

  In that thick, steamy world, in the mingled soils of sickly heat, bilious faces, rich food, sensual dancing, heavy scents of women, applied bow mouths, soft perspiring flesh – sprouted and nourished her response to Julian. Rooted in reluctance, nourished by his skilful arts, it grew, a curious plant: stronger and more curious with every stab of reawakening memory.

  Julian must save her this time: surely his wit and wisdom, surely the unknown world of sexual, emotional and intellectual experience which he held so temptingly, just out of reach – surely these would, in time, heap an abiding mound upon the past.

  Neither by touch nor look did he seem to desire her. He wove his net with words: he understood her and she felt him coming closer, a step at a time.

  He made himself the perfect companion – gossiping and exchanging cynicisms with Mamma, executing commissions for her, his car always at her disposal; taking them to hear music, to eat delicious meals; playing tennis with Judith and her hotel acquaintances.

  He even went so far as to say tennis was good for his asthma and played in the tennis-tournament, with herself for partner; and they were barely defeated in the finals by the Brazilian brother and sister, amid scenes of hilarious enthusiasm.

  His car was waiting outside the ground to whisk her away from the hot crowd.

  Happy, perspiring, dazed with heat and fatigue, she climbed in beside him and lay back.

  ‘We’ll go and find somewhere to bathe,’ he said.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘And have supper at an inn, and stay out much later than we ought.’

  ‘Yes. Oh Julian, we have done nice things together. I shall always remember them.

  She put a hand on his knee, and he smiled and nodded, all simple and brotherly … He had tried his very hardest to help her win. She was grateful to him for fitting himself to her mood.

  The car went spiralling up the vine-covered hills, and the electric air quivered away on each side of them in visible waves. The sun sank magnificently, without a cloud, a blood-red lamp. Its rays had long ago passed from the tortuous, steep and rock-bound way through which they now went; and a grey-green tranquil coolness blessed every sense. Then the road ran into profounder, wooded loneliness, and she espied a stream, leaping and plunging in little falls, far down in the gully below the side of the road.

  ‘Stop here, Julian. We must bathe.’

  She went springing down towards the water and he followed with the bathing-suits and towels.

  The stream-was shallow and broken up with boulders: no use for bathing.

  ‘Let’s follow it, Julian: Well find something, I know.’

  Soon it took a turn deeper into the wood’s heart, and began to grow in depth and volume; then all at once plunged in a smooth gentle cascade into a wide rock basin. There it paused, deep and silent, magic … What do you suppose lives here? It may put a spell column, and racing on downwards, and downwards again.

  ‘Oh Julian, what a bathing-pool! Is it possible? Look at that colour. I ask you. Is it limestone?’

  The whole circular sweep of the rock shimmered in faint silver through the dim bluish depth of water.

  ‘And deep enough to dive into, Julian – if we dare break into such magic … What do you suppose lives here? It may put a spell on us … I don’t care! I long to be spellbound. Don’t you think, if one plunged in, one might come out all silver-blue and cold and gleaming? I’d love to walk through the hotel lounge naked like that, with long blue dripping hair! Oh, come on, Julian – let’s both try! I’ve had no luck for ages, have you? Perhaps it’s turned today. You undress here and I’ll go behind this bush and talk to you out of it, like God. Come-off with our lendings!’

  And, in a flash, with the uttering of the last words, Jennifer came back, slipping the clothes down off white shoulder and breast, talking and laughing. A tide of memories; Jennifer’s head burning in the sunlight, her body stooping towards the water – the whole of those May terms of hawthorn blossom and cowslips, of days like a warm drowsy wine, days bewildered with growing up and loving Jennifer, with reading Donne and Webster and Marlowe, with dreaming of Roddy … Where had it all gone – Where was Jennifer? – Whom enchanting now? – How faintly remembering Judith? Compared with that tumultuous richness, how sickly, how wavering was this present feeling – what a sorry pretence. Would one ever be happy again?

  Julian, lean and hairy in his bathing-suit, was already feeling the water with his toe when she emerged and, spurring her flagging spirits, leapt down through the bushes, paused a moment beside him, cried ‘Ah!’ and dived into liquid twilight.

  He plunged in after her, and they came up together. ‘You shouldn’t have dived like that,’ he cried. ‘Don’t do it again. There’s a great jag of rock just below where you went in, – you might have hit your head. You’re a very stupid girl.’

  ‘Pooh!’ She splashed and kicked round him, and went swimming close under the waterfall, feeling its weight press down and bubble upon her shoulder. The water was cold: the sun could never reach it save in light flecks through leafy branches. The pouring of the falls made a soft, full, lapsing speech. Nothing in the world was so smooth as the polished silk of their downcurving necks.

  ‘Hey!’ cried Julian.

  She looked round and saw him near the further edge of the basin, trying to save himself from being carried over. She laughed, but he did not laugh back, and dragged himself out and sat on a rock in silence; and she saw that his legs and arms were grazed and bleeding. She went to him remorsefully and washed the blood away with palmfuls of water and sat by him, murmuring little sympathies until the stinging pain eased. He was not strong, she must remember: the shock and the pain had made him white about the lips. Poor Julian … How smooth and creamy her limbs looked beside his …

  ‘One more dip before dressing, Julian. You sit t
here and rest.’

  He sat and watched while she slipped in again and, lying on her back, pushed off vigorously from the side with both feet and floated in a great ruffle of water to the other edge. Then she climbed out and stood opposite him, dripping and smiling.

  Something leapt into his eyes as they rested, for once, full on her: not admiration or desire, but something harsh and hostile, as if the sight of her exasperated him.

  ‘Oh yes, it shows you off well,’ he said.

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Your maillot. I suppose you weren’t aware of it?’

  ‘No!’ She spat the word at him; and went quickly away.

  They had supper at a white inn by the edge of the wood, about half a mile further on. The same stream flowed, sedately now, through the garden; and a dark plump Madame with great glossy raven plaits brought omelettes and trout and salads and fruits to their table beneath the plane-tree. Birds were singing the last of their songs in all the branches.

  ‘Listen, Julian! – if that isn’t a thrush? What is he doing out of England? Can you imagine a French thrush? Oh, he sounds homesick!’ A sudden nostalgia overcame her. ‘I want to go home too! I’m not a traveller. Sick for home – that’s what I am. This thrush and our pool are probably the things I shall most remember about France – and all because they made me think of England … There was a girl at College I used to bathe with … You’d have loved to look at her. Her name was Jennifer Baird …’

  ‘I think I’ve met her.’

  What was he saying so casually?

  ‘You’ve met her?’ Hands clasped, heart thumping, she stared at him.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure that was the name. I was staying in Scotland with some cousins of hers.’

  ‘When, Julian?’

  She could scarcely speak.

  ‘Last year, I believe. I remember now she was at Cambridge and said she knew you; but she wasn’t very forthcoming about you. I’d never have guessed from her that you were bosom friends.’ His voice sounded mocking.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t!’ she retorted, stung and scornful. ‘She doesn’t tell just anybody when –’ She checked herself; for perhaps after all it had been that Jennifer had not remembered her much in absence. She added quietly: ‘She was a person I knew well for a time. Tell me … What did you think of her?’

  ‘Oh, mad as a hatter. But she was more alive than most people. A flame, let us say.’ His voice was ambiguous, unkind.

  ‘You didn’t like her, then?’

  ‘No, nor she me.’ He laughed briefly. ‘But she had a power, I admit. I intend to go and find her again some day. I dare say I might make her – like me.’

  ‘I don’t think you could!’ She wanted to strike him for his coldblooded self-assurance. ‘If you think you could – manage her, control her, I pity you, that’s all! I’d like to see you try! You’d think you’d got her easily – and then in another moment she’d have slipped through your fingers … How I’d laugh! … Personally I didn’t need to make her like me: she just did.’

  She felt that she was speaking wildly, and fell silent, weak before the flooding onslaught of the past.

  It was too much pain. What was the use of trying to go on? You could never get free of the past. It came all around again at a word, and in a trice all save its shadows was trivial and insubstantial.

  Julian was watching her; raising his eyebrows in a pretence of polite surprise and watching closely.

  ‘Well, well!’ he said. ‘Calm yourself, my serpent. You have convinced me my best endeavours would be wasted.’

  She hid her face, stooping it over the table with both hands across her forehead, feeling the nausea and sweat of faintness.

  He helped himself to grapes and remarked:

  ‘Not that I shan’t be sorry never to see her on a horse again. She looked magnificent.’

  ‘Oh yes! She …’ Still with her face hidden she added, summoning a faint but steady voice: ‘I’d go to her now, this minute, if I knew where she was. But I don’t.’

  There was a silence; and then he said gently:

  ‘I’ll find her for you if you like, my dear.’

  She stretched a hand across the table to him.

  ‘No. Help me forget her … and everything else …’

  He stroked the hand; and without a word left her, to pay the bill. When he came back she was able to raise a calm and smiling face to him.

  The stars were out when they took the road again, and the coming dark flowered like a field of pansies.

  ‘Hadn’t we better go home now, Julian?’

  ‘No. I’m not going to take you home yet.’

  She sat beside him, silent and dully apprehensive.

  ‘It’s a pity you’re so unhappy,’ said Julian. ‘I think I said so before.’

  She made no answer.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’re a fool to take on like this.’

  Silence.

  ‘You’re simply destroying yourself over it and it can’t be worth it. Why don’t you tell me about it? I’ll be nice.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Do tell me, darling. You know, things have a way of swelling to monsters if we lock them up inside us. You see if you won’t feel better after you’ve once got it out of you.’ He spoke like a kindly father, and put an arm round her.

  ‘I’m in love with someone,’ she whispered. ‘That’s all. I thought it was finished … Oh dear, dear, dear, how awful! …’ She drew deep choking breaths.

  ‘Poor devil,’ he said.

  ‘You needn’t be sorry.’ She collected herself. ‘It’s good for me. Besides, it is finished really: I scarcely ever think of it now.’

  ‘Does that yellow-haired female come into it, then?’

  ‘Jennifer? No. Though she’s gone too … and that makes it all far worse …’ She added quickly: ‘It’s nobody you know.’

  His silence told her that he was not deceived.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said lightly, ‘there’s one bad thing over in my life: falling in love, I mean. I’m free of it!’

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, my dear child! Don’t be such a fool! Why, you haven’t mastered your infant primer yet. I know! Do you mean to tell me this unknown fellow has absorbed all your powers of loving to the end of your life? I’m sorry then: you’re less of a person than I thought you. Ah, you think I’m mocking, and you hate me. And I do mock. Yes, Yes! And I’m so sorry for you I –. But of course you won’t believe that.’

  He spoke with passion, slowing the car down till she scarcely crawled, then finally stopping her altogether by the edge of the road, beneath an overhanging rocky hillside. It was getting very dark: she felt rather than saw the tense expression of his eyes and mouth.

  ‘You won’t believe that,’ he repeated, ‘and you’re thinking at this moment that such a brute as I never before existed.’

  ‘No.’ She felt dazed. ‘I think you’re meaning to be kind. But you don’t understand.’

  ‘Aha! Of course not. How can a coarse male animal like myself understand the feelings of a refined and sensitive young lady?’

  ‘Oh, Julian – unfair … unkind!’

  ‘Well, damn you, don’t you see I love you myself?’ he cried in a perfect fury. ‘Here am I, alone with you at last for a paltry ten days – after waiting years, mind you, years for my opportunity, and I find you moping and moaning over your lost schoolgirl illusions! Good God! Haven’t you the guts to snap your fingers at a fellow who can’t be bothered with you? Aren’t you attractive and intelligent? Can’t you laugh? Aren’t there plenty of others? What am I here for? Go to the devil for a bit – I’ll help you. I’ll see you through it. But don’t moan.’

  He paused for breath, and went on:

  ‘Here am I, as I said, with ten days of your company as my limit ten days in which to make you look
back into my eyes, not through them, to make you stop smiling and being polite and tolerant and sorry for me – oh, anything rather than your damned indifference! Why don’t you hate me? I could do some good with you then. I thrive on hatred. Here am I, of all people, not able to sleep or eat for wanting to kiss you, shaking all over when I see you coming, raging when you talk to another man – and here are you, making a fool of yourself obstinately wasting our time making a romantic fool of yourself.’

  ‘Well, we’re quits then,’ she interrupted quickly. ‘I love without being loved. You’re another.’

  He turned to her and said delightedly:

  ‘You’re angry. I’ve stung you up. You’ve lost your temper.’

  ‘Oh, you’re impossible.’

  ‘No, no I’m not,’ he said coaxingly. ‘Look, I’ll be so nice now. Listen to me, Judy darling. You’re not the sort of person to have one abortive little romance and go to your grave an old maid. An old maid who’s had a disappointment, Judy! – isn’t that what it’s called? There, I’m teasing again and I said I wouldn’t. Darling, what’s the use of being so damned constant? Do find someone else quick. You’ve no idea how delightful you’ll find it when you’re old to remember what a lot of people you’ve loved. And it’s the very best remedy, Judy, for your indisposition.’

  ‘Shall you employ it if –’

  ‘If you turn me down? Probably. But don’t turn me down – not without a trial. Here am I, ready to hand: you could do a damned sight worse than take me. I’ll see we have a good time.’

  Moths flittered and spun in the light of the head-lamps; beyond the two still long shafts of brightness the night looked very dark. How many miles from home?

  At length she said:

  ‘I take it this is not a proposal of marriage, Julian.’

  He laughed.

  ‘No, my dear, it is not. Nothing so grim.’

  ‘Ah I see – your mistress.’

  Her voice and her words made her wonder if she were not holding a conversation in a dream: there was the same feeling of having made a pronouncement of the first importance; but whose meaning she could not detect.

  Julian’s mistress … The idea was for some reason profoundly shocking.