Dusty Answer

by Rosamond Lehmann

  The river lay stretched like a silken substance, with an oil-smooth sheen upon its dark olive surface; and all the poplars and willows upon the bank grew both ways – into the air, and down through the water with their long trunks shortened and their brightness tenderly blurred.

  Next door, the shutters were up, and the copper beech dropped its leaves upon the deserted lawn.

  In that deep-weighing, windless, mellow hush, alone in the house and garden, by the river, and on the hills, she saw all things begin to turn lingeringly, richly towards their end; and, at long last, felt in herself the first doubtful stir of new awakening.

  Mamma had not come home. She was in Paris now, and was to remain there for the present.

  She had been kind on that morning, when Judith had come to her bedside, told her that Julian had gone, that Martin was dead and that she herself was not feeling very well. She had asked not a single confidence, spoken no word of pity, but with merciful everydayness looked after her, revived her body with the practical comfort of brandy and hot-water bottles; and then, the next day, abandoned her cure and taken her away. They had motored all over France and into Italy and Switzerland; and Mamma, between long intervals of silence, had talked light sharp surface talk of the places and people they encountered, of food and clothes: talk that could be listened to with adequate attention and answered with ease. Through the close wrapping of lead upon her mind. Judith had understood the deliberate and painstaking scheme of help, and been grateful for it. But when, after three weeks, Mamma started to make plans for an autumn together in Paris, Judith had suddenly asked to be allowed to go home. It was the first spontaneous impulse from a mind diseased, so it had seemed, beyond hope of revival. Sluggishly it stirred, but it remained: she must go home, be alone, find work, write a book, something … Acquiescing, Mamma had not been able to conceal her relief: What a bore these weeks must have been for her!

  Judith saw England once more with the senses of one waking before dawn exhausted from a nightmare, apprehending reality with shrinking and confusion, and then, gradually, with a faint inflowing of relief, of hope morning of the light-Each morning she thought:

  ‘Today I will begin to write – start practising again – apply through College for some post …’

  But each evening found her still folded in the golden caressing solitudes of the garden, mindless and inert. There was no subject that could conceivably provide material for a book; no music that was not far too difficult to learn to play; no post that did not seem entirely distasteful.

  Then, one afternoon, she paused by the grand piano, hesitated, opened it and sat down to play – Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel … a little of each, stumbling, giving up, going on again. At the end of two hours she stopped. At first her hands had not obeyed her; but after a time they had begun to remember, she had forced them to remember a little. She must practise scales and exercises: it was too humiliating to be at the mercy of stiff clumsy fingers.

  She looked round the drawing-room and saw that it was empty of flowers. She took a basket and went out into the misty sharp-smelling garden and gathered dahlias and late roses. The flower petals seemed to caress her cheek as she stooped to them, the stalks to yield gladly and fall towards her. They loved and welcomed her. She chose, picked, stroked them, held them against her face with voluptuous delight in their colour, form and texture. It was thrilling, living alone and gathering flowers.

  She looked around her, up at the sky. The evening was like Jennifer.

  She went in to put her flowers in water.

  Sheaves of cut lavender still lay drying on newspaper in the little room where the vases were kept. She finished stripping the brittle stalks, dividing the fragrant dried bluish heaps of buds and pouring them into bowls. The feel of lavender held in the palms and sifting through the fingers was delicious.

  That day, years ago, when Roddy had come to tea, he had plunged both hands into a bowl of lavender in the hall and then buried his nose in them with a long ‘Ah!’ of satisfaction. This very famille rose bowl she was filling had been the one. She had said that, when the fresh lavender was ready, she would make him lavender bags to keep among his ties and handkerchiefs … How long ago! …

  She longed for Roddy suddenly with a new and unenvenomed pang: she thought of him with tenderly regretful, half-maternal sorrow. He too would be lonely now. She would have liked to give him lavender, to walk with him in the autumn garden, quietly talking, sharing with him its loveliness and tranquillity. She would have liked to show him she wanted nothing now save to take his hand and tell him that she was sorry for him; they must be friends now, always, remembering whom they had both loved.

  The evening post came just as she had finished disposing the bowls of lavender about the house. It brought a letter from Julian.

  Judith,

  Now that I know that my moment is over and will never come again, I must speak to you these last few words; and then be silent. If you reply to me, I beg you not to say you hope we may still be friends. We may not. I am not one who has friends.

  That night I went from you and from that vile town raging, cursing God and man. I had been thwarted, so I thought, by a monstrous trick of chance in the very hour of my life’s most delicious triumph. I never could endure failure, as you know. I have generally succeeded in getting what I wanted. I have been very successful. That is because I am such a supreme egoist and because in spite of all my window-dressing and general ambiguity and deceitfulness I don’t – often – deceive myself. I know very well what I went: I go straight for it in spite of my path’s apparent twists end deviations; and indeed, indeed, Judith, I wanted you. I say to myself: ‘Fool! There are plenty of others worth the wanting’; and yet – and yet it does not seem so. No! Despite a life’s endeavours, I am not proof yet against the slings and arrows. And when at last they do come to assail me, it will, I begin to fear, be merely because I have become moribund, not philosophical.

  God, I raged! – against Martin for dying, against you for being so foolish as to care, against myself for being made uncomfortable and ridiculous; for I was ridiculous in my own eyes because I had declared myself – shewn all my cards and lost.

  Now I have become sane again.

  Looking beck on it all, I think (with surprise) that I was mistaken. It never would have done. You were not for me, or I for you. I never could have made you passionate – and that was essential. You were all dark within. If anything flashed in you it flashed hidden: you never would have let me warm all myself at you. I see now how you would have given me nothing but the polite, faintly curious attention which I have had from you since our first meeting. It would have been a tedious game trying to knock a spark out of you. I should soon have wearied of it. But before that I should have hurt you. I am not an unaccomplished mental sadist. It would not have done either of us much good.

  About Martin: I thought you would like to know. They found his body on the beach two days later; and took him home end buried him beside hits father. He had been cheerful all the time, enjoying his sailing; end went out in high spirits on the day of the accident. You must not grieve about him. He doesn’t know he was young and loved life end now can’t love it any more. He won’t get old and past loving it. He’ll never miss dead friends and lovers and long in vain to follow them. Fortunate Martin to die before he wanted to … But there! These are empty consolations. I also loved my Martin. We shall never see him again. It’s little comfort to tell ourselves we shall stop missing him when we’re dead too. I am told his mother is calm and courageous, fortified by a complete faith in a loving God. Roddy I saw at the funeral, but had little speech with. He looked unhappy. A brief note I had from him yesterday, concerning the disposal of some of Martin’s things, remarks that it is easily the worst thing that’s ever happened. This is the only comment he has made or is likely to make – to me at least. He will get over it. He is now in Scotland with friends, shooting.
I give you these tidings of him because I surmise that – you will like to have them. But I know nothing of all that … nor do I wish to know…

  Ah, Judith, in spite of all I am very romantic and sentimental, and I say to myself that I have my memories; and they cannot be taken from me. You were very charming, very kind and tolerant. We did some good things together – good vivid things: though I suppose the fact of my physical presence never made them to you what yours made them to me: a superb excitement and intoxication. Twenty years hence when you’re long since married and have indulged your deplorable philoprogenitiveness, and are stout, Judith, stout, comfortable, domestic, I shall write one sentence upon a blank page and send it to you:

  Do you remember an inn, Miranda,

  Do you remember an inn?

  and perhaps – for one instant – you will stir in your fat and almost, almost remember? … But no! There spoke indeed the sentimental egoist. For the inns you remember will not be those you visited with me; and you have made it clear – haven’t you? – that I may never call you Miranda. Besides, for my own part, like enough I shall by then have forgotten the amenities of bathing and omelette-eating and motoring by night, and disremembered all my apt quotations. You will be a placid matron and I a gaunt, stringy and withered madman: one of the kind with livid faces and blazing eyes, who dog young women down lonely lanes. So never more, Miranda, never more …

  I read this through, my Judith, and I say to myself: words, words, words! And I think: for whom, for whom shall the close dark wrappings of your mind be laid aside and all the flame come leaping out? I sit and consider how in all these years I never so much as kindled a little glow to warm my hands at; and dream of how happily things might have fallen out if I hadn’t been as I am, and all had been different; and I feel lonely and wonder what I shall do without you. Don’t for God’s sake pity me. I shall forget you. But oh, Judith! you were a pleasure: never quite real. And still, still persists this ridiculous feeling that I should like to do something for you. There is nothing, I suppose?

  Next month I go to Russia. For what purpose? I know not. To hear some music, and learn a smattering of the language; to write newspaper articles (‘Impressions of an Unprejudiced and Unofficial Wanderer’), to pick up a few acquaintances, to forget you; to contract, perchance, some disease and die of it … At all events, to Russia I go. Farewell.

  J.F.

  2

  That night she woke from a deep sleep and knew that Martin was dead: not an object of horror tossed about decaying by the waves; not a thing alive somewhere in some nightmare form, appalled at its own death, watching, accusing, reproaching, desiring, reading the secrets of her heart; not a Martin going on obliviously in another, beatific life – but a dead man whose end had chanced upon him swiftly and mercifully, whose bones were in their grave beside his father’s, quietly mingling with the earth he loved. Martin had not died out of spite, or because her crookedness and Roddy’s had somehow wrought upon him like an evil charm and driven him to be drowned. He had been in high spirits, full of interests in which she had never played a part and so could never spoil; and in the midst of his enjoyment he had died. Drowning was a good death, so people said. Now neither happiness nor unhappiness was possible to him any more: that was all death meant. He had loved her, and now she was nothing to him; he was insensible to her remorse and her regrets. She dared at last to sink in that deep well of sorrow; but its waters were pure now, and in the end she drew herself from them refreshed. Tomorrow she would be able to write to Martin’s mother.

  3

  She wrote, briefly; and when she had finished, the paper was spotted here and there with irrepressible hot tears; but they were for Martin’s mother. She would never shed any more for Martin now.

  She dried her eyes and wrote to Julian.

  My dear,

  I was extraordinarily glad to get your letter. I thought I had lost you as well as everybody else. You have done something for me, Julian: the thing I thought no one and nothing could do. You have made my imagination stop shrieking like a fiend in hell about Martin. It’s not only what you so wisely say about a young man’s death: it’s the knowing that he was found again, and buried in the earth as he wanted to be: that he isn’t a derelict, our beloved Martin, in the unfriendly sea. It has all stopped being monstrous to me; it is a natural grief and now I can bear to live again. He was in love with me and I was unkind to him and longed too late to tell him I never meant to be. That was the trouble. But it is all over now.

  Thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you have told me of Martin – and of Roddy whom I shall never see again, to whom I may not write and say how I grieve for his sake. You have done a great thing for me: so now it will be easier than ever – won’t it? – to dismiss me from your mind.

  Ah Julian, you wrote to me in a softened mood. Now you are regretting it, perhaps, or laughing at yourself and me. No, it never would have done. You imagined me: you say so yourself. Thank your stars you were spared the boringness, or worse, of seeing me come true. What coils and glooms and sickened moods poor Martin perhaps saved us! But I hope and believe we’d have ended it and parted, laughing, before we’d even thought of crying. I wish you much success and joy with all the not-impossibles who are to follow me.

  What a year this has been, and how we grow up! Shall I really never see you again? It would be bathos after the elegant farewells we are now exchanging: but it may happen.

  My harmless Julian, you would not dog a fly – let alone young women in lonely lanes. I do like you very much and I have the greatest respect for the high quality of your morals, and if I die a widow with lots of children I shall bequeath them all to you to bring up. You will have so many of your own that a few more will make no difference. Think how happy you’ll be instructing, admonishing and advising them.

  What of Peter and of Mariella? – sad, strange, lovable Mariella and her child? Their pathos weighs upon me; but I can do nothing. Only you can, Julian. I should have liked news of them. Rumour has it that the house next door is to be put up for sale.

  I am all uprooted, and don’t know what I shall do. I must begin to make plans. I suppose I shall never emerge from obscurity in any way. I used to think it a certainty that I should. I see you smile unkindly.

  Yes, I will be Miranda to you, Julian. What we shared meant as much to me, in a different way, as it did to you; and it will never come again.

  Perhaps there will never be any more inns, with anybody, in my life. Enchantment has vanished from the world. Perhaps it will never come back, save in memory. Perhaps I shared with you the last gleam I shall have of it.

  Judith.

  4

  Martin’s mother answered, in a large, old-fashioned feminine handwriting, by return of post.

  Dear Judith,

  Of course I remember you. I do not forget pretty and charming people with sweet voices; and as a friend of Martin’s you are dear to me, as all his friends are, because they were responsible for so much of his happiness.

  It was kind of you to write. I miss my darling boy every moment of the day. Never was a better son born. But he would not have wished me to grieve, and so I try not to. He is in God’s keeping and I feel him very near to me; please God there will not be many years in store for me before he and I and his dear father are reunited.

  It is a great comfort to think how happy his life was. His nature was all sun, and from his birth till the day he was taken from us I verily believe not a cloud came over him. Should not that console us?

  Thank you again, dear Judith, and believe that Martin’s mother remembers you affectionately.

  Eleanor Fyfe.

  ‘Not a cloud came over him.’ She would believe that and smile, ageing, stricken, lonely as she was, till her life’s end.

  Perhaps after all it was so. Perhaps he had not allowed one woman’s petty favours and denials to make a shadow across the
large and perpetual sunshine of his way. How little, after all, they had been together, how few words exchanged; how insignificant a figure she must have been, when all was said and done, among all the figures in his thousands of days!

  Slowly, the darkness was lifting. Soon now, Jennifer’s letter must come, and a new beginning dawn out of this end of all things.

  5

  It came, one morning when the first gale had started to sweep in upon the season’s painted picture; a day when lights, shadows, leaves and wings of birds moved, flew, shone, flickered, paused in a restless harmony.

  Darling,

  Something makes me write to you now. I have often nearly started and then given it up, but now it feels as if I must, it feels rather like an evening that perhaps you don’t remember but I do, when I had to come and see you after not having been able to for ages – that time you were ill.

  I have felt such a sort of disgrace to myself, and you, and College, and English girlhood, going away like that, that I decided I’d better keep quiet for a bit. I couldn’t write. But now I must. Have you been waiting and waiting for a letter, and thinking I’d forgotten you? Darling, I haven’t forgotten you. Perhaps you’ve forgotten me. But I don’t think so. It is most damnably difficult writing to you. As you see, this is more illegible even than usual with the effort. College does seem so far away. Higher Education for Women never did me any good – except it gave me you and you are an angel and so lovely. I feel very old and different. You remember my hair – you liked it – I have had it all cut off. Just because Geraldine’s was short I thought I must have mine the same. Just like me. Mother can’t get over it, she now thinks my morals are past praying about, which is a step in the right direction. It all waves and curls and it is marvellous to be without the weight of it and the bloody hairpins prodding my scalp under hats. I thought getting rid of it would be a good way to cut off the past as well. I thought I’d be a different person, more adapted to Geraldine, if I did it. And anyway I couldn’t bear her brushing it after you. You remember Geraldine. It was because of her I left College.