The Unsettled Dust

by Robert Aickman

  ‘Take them out,’ repeated Madame A. in her commanding way.

  I gingerly detached a random dress on its hanger. It was a workaday, woollen garment. Even in the poor light, the signs of wear were evident.

  That point made silently between us, Madame A. showed impatience with my timid choice. She herself drew out an evening gown in pale satin.

  ‘Marvellous, exquisite, incomparable,’ she exclaimed stridently. I think that if she had been tall enough, she would have held the dress against her own body, as the saleswomen so curiously do in shops; but, as it was, she could only hold it out at the end of her long arms, so that most of it flowed across the dark red carpet like a train. ‘Kneel down and examine it.’ I hesitated. ‘Kneel,’ cried Madame A. more peremptorily.

  I knelt and picked up the bottom hem of the dress. Now I was down on the floor, I noticed a big dark patch which the dark carpet was not dark enough to hide.

  ‘Lift the dress to your face,’ ordered Madame A. I did so. It was a wonderful sensation. I felt myself enveloped in a complex silky nebula. The owner, the wearer of that elegant garment, began, even though entirely without definition, to be much more present to me than Madame A.

  Madame A. dropped the dress and on the instant was holding out another in the same way. It also was a long dress. It was made of what I believe is called georgette, and was in some kind of mottled orange and red.

  The pale satin dress lay on the floor between us.

  ‘Kneel on it. Tread on it,’ directed Madame A., seeing me about to circumvent it. ‘Chrysothème would approve.’

  I was unable to do such a thing, and crawled round the edges of the satin dress to the georgette dress. Immediately I reached the georgette dress, Madame A. threw it adroitly over my head, so that I had a ridiculous minute or two extricating myself. I could not but notice, and more than just notice, that the georgette retained a most enchanting scent. Her scent made the wearer of the dress more real to me than ever.

  Away to my left, Madame A. now extended a third long dress; this time in dark blue taffeta, very slender and skimpy.

  ‘You could almost wear it yourself,’ cackled Madame A. ‘You like wearing blue and you are thin enough.’ I had, of course, not told her that I liked wearing blue, but I suppose it was obvious.

  Madame A. twisted round a chair with her foot and laid the dress on it, with the low top hanging abandonedly over the back of it.

  ‘Why don’t you kiss it?’ asked Madame A., jeering slightly.

  Kneeling at the foot of the chair, I realised that my lips were only slightly above the edge of the seat. To refuse would be more foolish than to comply. I lowered my face and pressed my lips against the dress. Madame A. might be ridiculing me, but I felt now that my true concern was with that other who wore the dresses.

  When I looked up, Madame A. was actually standing on another chair (there were only two in the room, both originally in the corners, both heavy, dark, and elaborate). She was holding up a short dress in black velvet. She said nothing, and I admit that, without bidding, I darted towards her and pressed the wonderful fabric against my face.

  ‘The moon,’ gurgled Madame A., pointing to the pale satin dress on the floor. ‘And the night.’ She flapped the black velvet up and down and from side to side. It too smelt adorably. I clutched at it to keep it still and found that it was quite limp, inert in my grasp.

  Madame A. had leapt off the chair with one flop, like a leprechaun.

  ‘Do you like my adopted daughter’s clothes?’

  ‘They are beautiful.’

  ‘Chrysothème has perfect taste.’ Madame A.’s tone was entirely conventional. I was still sniffing the velvet dress. ‘You must see the lingerie,’ Madame A. added, merely as if to confirm the claim she had just made.

  She crossed to the chest at the left of the curtained window and lifted the unlocked lid. ‘Come,’ said Madame A.

  The big chest was full of soft underclothes in various colours; not ordered like the dresses, but tangled and clinging apparently at random.

  I suppose I just stood and stared. And the same scent was rising hypnotically from the chest.

  ‘Take off your blue jacket,’ said Madame A., almost with solemnity. ‘Roll up your blue sleeves, and plunge in your white arms.’

  Without question, I did what she said.

  ‘Sink your face in them.’

  I hardly needed to be instructed. The scent was intoxicating in itself.

  ‘Love them, tear them, possess them,’ admonished Madame A.

  All of which I daresay I did to the best of my ability. Certainly time passed.

  I began to shiver. After all, I had left a very over-heated room.

  I found that all my muscles were stiff with kneeling; and I supposed with concentration too. I could hardly rise to my feet in order to rescue my jacket. As I rolled down my shirt-sleeves, I became aware that the hairs on my forearms really were standing on end. They seemed quite barbed and sharp.

  ‘Blue boy!’ exclaimed Madame A., waiting for me to make the next move.

  I made it. I shut the lid of the chest.

  ‘The other chest contains souvenirs,’ said Madame A., dragging at the neckline of her dress.

  I shook my head. I was still shaking all over, and could no longer smell that wonderful scent. When one is very cold, the sense of smell departs.

  And at that moment, for the first time, I really apprehended the one picture, which hung above the wide bed in the corner. Despite the bad light, it seemed familiar. I went over to it, and putting one knee on the bed, leant towards it. Now I was certain. The picture was by me.

  But there were two especially strange things. Though I was quite certain that the picture could only be mine (my talent may be circumscribed, but it is distinctive), I could not remember ever having painted it, and there were things about it which could at no time have been put there by me. Artists, in their later years, do sometimes forget their own works, but I was, and am, sure that this could never happen in my case. My pictures are not of a kind to be forgotten by the painter. Much worse was the fact that, for example, the central figure which I might have painted as an angel, had somehow become more like a clown. It was hard to say why this was, but, as I looked at it, I felt it irresistibly.

  My attack of shivering was turning to nausea, as one often finds. I felt that I was in danger of making a final fool of myself by being actually sick on the floor.

  ‘Quite right,’ said Madame A., regarding the picture with her vague eyes, and speaking as she had spoken in the other room. ‘Not a painter at all. Would have done better as a sweeper out of cabinets, wouldn’t you agree, or as fetcher and carrier in a horse-meat market? It is kept in here because Chrysothème has no time for pictures, no time at all.’

  It would have been absurd and undignified to argue. Nor could I be sure that she was clear in her mind as to who I was.

  ‘Thank you, madame,’ I said, ‘for receiving me. I must detain you no longer.’

  ‘A souvenir,’ she cried. ‘At least leave me a souvenir.’

  I saw that she held a quite large pair of silvery scissors.

  I did not feel at all like leaving even a lock of my hair in Madame A.’s keeping.

  I opened the bedroom door, and began to retreat. I was trying to think of a phrase or two that would cover my precipitancy with a glaze of convention, but then I saw that, squatted on the single golden light that hung by a golden chain from the golden ceiling of the landing, was a tiny fluffy animal; so very small that it might almost have been a dark furry insect with unusually distinct pale eyes. Moreover, the door into the big, hot room on my left was, of course, still open. I was overcome. I merely took to my heels; clattering idiotically down the bare, slippery staircase. I was lucky not to slide headlong.

  ‘Mais, monsieur!’

  I was struggling in the dark with the many handles, chains, and catches of the front door. It seemed likely that I should be unable to open it.

  ‘Mais
, monsieur!’ Madame A. was lumbering down after me. But suddenly the door was open. Now that I could be sure I was not trapped, a small concession to good manners was possible.

  ‘Good-night, madame,’ I said in English. ‘And thank you again.’

  She made a vague snatch in my direction with the big, silvery scissors. They positively flashed in the light from the street lamp outside. She was like a squat granny seeing off a child with a gesture of mock aggression. ‘Begone,’ she might have said; or, alternatively, ‘Come back at once’: but I did not wait to hear Madame A. say anything more. Soon I found that I was walking down the populous Chausée d’Ixelles, still vibrating, and every now and then looking over one shoulder or the other.

  Within twenty-four hours I perceived clearly enough that there could have been no dog, no little animal squatted on the lantern, no picture over the bed, and probably no adopted daughter. That hardly needed saying. The trouble was, and is, that this obvious truth only makes things worse. Indeed, it is precisely where the real trouble begins. What is to become of me? What will happen to me next? What can I do? What am I?

  BIND YOUR HAIR

  No one seemed able to fathom Clarinda Hartley. She had a small but fastidious flat near Church Street, Kensington; and a responsible job in a large non-committal commercial organisation. No one who knew her now had ever known her in any other residence or any other job. She entertained a little, never more or less over the years; went out not infrequently with men; and for her holidays simply disappeared, returning with brief referees to foreign parts. No one seemed to know her really well; and in the course of time there came to be wide differences of opinion about her age, and recurrent speculation about her emotional life. The latter topic was not made less urgent by a certain distinction in her appearance, and also in her manner. She was very tall (a great handicap, of course, in the opinion of many) and well-shaped; she had very fair, very fine, very abundant hair, to which plainly she gave much attention; her face had interesting planes (for those who could appreciate them), but also soft curves, which went with her hair. She had a memorable voice: high-pitched, but gentle. She was in fact, thirty-two. Everyone was greatly surprised when she announced her engagement to Dudley Carstairs.

  Or rather it was Carstairs who announced it. He could not keep it to himself as long as there was anyone within earshot who was ignorant of it; and well might be elated, because his capture followed a campaign of several years’ continuance, and supported by few sweeping advantages. He worked in the same office as Clarinda, and in a not unsatisfactory position for his thirty years; and was in every way a thoroughly presentable person: but even in the office there were a number of others like him, and it would have seemed possible that Clarinda could have further extended her range of choice by going outside.

  The week-end after the engagement Dudley arranged for her to spend with him and his parents in Northamptonshire. Mr. Carstairs Senior had held an important position on the administrative side of the Northampton boot and shoe industry; and when he retired upon a fair pension had settled in a small but comfortable house in one of the remote parts of a county where the remote parts are surprisingly many and extensive. Mr. Carstairs had been a pioneer in this particular, because others similarly placed had tended upon retirement to emigrate to the Sussex coast or the New Forest; but his initiative, as often happens in such cases, had been imitated, until the little village in which he had settled was now largely populated by retired industrial executives and portions of their families.

  Clarinda would have been grateful for more time in which to adjust herself to Dudley in the capacity of accepted lover; but Dudley somehow did not seem to see himself in that capacity, and to be reluctant in any way to defer Clarinda’s full involvement with her new family position. Clarinda having said yes to what was believed to be the major question, smiled slightly and said yes to the minor.

  Mr. Carstairs Senior met them at Roade station.

  ‘Hullo, Dad.’ The two men gazed at one another’s shoes, not wanting to embrace and hesitating to shake hands. Mr. Carstairs was smiling, benignly expectant. Plainly he was one who considered that life had treated him well. Almost, one believed, he was ready to accept his son’s choice of a bride as, for him, joy’s crown of joy.

  ‘Dad. This is Clarinda.’

  ‘I say, my boy…’

  Outside the station was a grey Standard, in which Mr. Carstairs drove them many miles to the west. Already the sun was sinking. Soon after they arrived they had settled down, with Mrs. Carstairs and Dudley’s sister Elizabeth, to crumpets in the long winter dusk. Elizabeth had a secretarial position in Leamington, and bicycled there and back every day. All of them were charmed with Clarinda. She exceeded their highest, and perhaps not very confident, hopes.

  Clarinda responded to their happy approval of her, and smiled at Dudley’s extreme pleasure at being home. An iced cake had been baked for her specially, and she wondered whether these particular gilt-edged cups were in daily use. They neither asked her questions, nor talked mainly about themselves: they all made a warm-hearted, not unskilful effort to make her feel completely one with them from the outset. She and Elizabeth discovered a common interest in the theatre (shared only in a lesser degree by Dudley).

  ‘But Leamington’s so stuffy that no one’s ever made a theatre pay there.’

  ‘Not since the war,’ said Mr. Carstairs in affectionate qualification.

  ‘Not since the first war,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Is Leamington the nearest town?’ asked Clarinda.

  ‘It’s the nearest as the crow flies, or as Elizabeth cycles,’ said Dudley, ‘but it’s not the quickest when you’re coming from London. Narrow lanes all the way.’

  ‘Fortunately we’ve got our own friends by now in the village,’ said Mrs. Carstairs. ‘I’ve asked some of them in for drinks, so that you can meet them at once.’

  And indeed almost immediately the bell rang, and the first of the visitors was upon them. Mr. Carstairs went round the room putting on lights and drawing the curtains. Every now and then he gave some jocular direction to Dudley, who was complementarily engaged. A domestic servant of some kind, referred to by Mrs. Carstairs as ‘Our local woman,’ had removed the remains of tea; and by the time Elizabeth had borne in a tray of drinks, three more visitors had added themselves to the first two.

  ‘Can I help?’ Clarinda had said.

  ‘No,’ the Carstairs family had replied. ‘Certainly not. Not yet.’

  Altogether there were eleven visitors, only two of whom were under forty. All eleven of them Clarinda liked very much less than she liked the Carstairs family. Then just as several of them were showing signs of departure, a twelfth arrived; who made a considerable change. A woman of medium height and in early middle age, she had a lined and sallow face, but an alert expression and large, deeply set black eyes. She had untidy, shoulder-length, black hair which tended to separate itself into distinct compact strands. Her only make-up appeared to be an exceptionally vivid lipstick, abundantly applied to her large square mouth. She entered in a luxuriant fur coat, but at once cast if off, so that it lay on the floor, and appeared in a black corduroy skirt and a black silk blouse, cut low, and with long tight sleeves. On her feet were heelless golden slippers.

  ‘I’ve been so busy.’ She seized both of Mrs. Carstair’s hands. Her voice was very deep and melodious, but marred by a certain hoarseness, or uncertainty of timbre. ‘Where is she?’

  Mrs. Carstairs was smiling amiably as ever; but all conversation in the room had stopped.

  ‘Do go on talking.’ The newcomer addressed the party at random. She had now observed Clarinda. ‘Introduce me,’ she said to Mrs. Carstairs, as if her hostess were being a little slow with her duties. ‘Or am I too late?’ Her sudden quick smile was possibly artificial but certainly bewitching. For a second, various men in the room missed the thread of their resumed conversations.

  ‘Of course you’re not too late,’ said Mrs. Carstairs. Then she ma
de the introduction. ‘Clarinda Hartley. Mrs. Pagani.’

  ‘Nothing whatever to do with the restaurant,’ said Mrs. Pagani.

  ‘How do you do?’ said Clarinda.

  Mrs. Pagani had a firm and even but somewhat bony handshake. She was wearing several large rings, with heavy stones in them, and round her neck a big fat locket on a thick golden chain.

  By now Mrs. Carstairs had brought Mrs. Pagani a drink. ‘Here’s to the future,’ said Mrs. Pagani, looking into Clarinda’s eyes. As soon as Mrs. Carstairs had turned away, she drained the glass.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Clarinda, falling in with the illusion.

  Mrs. Pagani stretched out an arm (Clarinda noticed that her arms, in their tight black sleeves, were uncommonly long) and pulled up a chair, upon which she sat. Clarinda noticed also that when she was seated, her hips too looked bony and obtrusive. Altogether Mrs. Pagani gave an impression of unusual physical power, only partly concealed by her conventional clothes. It was as if suddenly she might arise and tear down the house.

  ‘You cannot imagine,’ said Mrs. Pagani, ‘how much it means to me to have someone new in the village, especially someone more or less my own age. Or perhaps you can?’

  ‘But I’m not going to live here,’ said Clarinda, clutching hold of the main point.

  ‘Well, of course not. But there’ll be frequent week-ends. Whatever else may be said for or against Dudley, he’s devoted to his home.’

  Clarinda nodded thoughtfully. She was aware that everyone’s eyes were upon them, and realised that Mrs. Pagani had so far acknowledged the presence of none of the other guests, well though she must presumably know them.

  ‘Who would want to know any of these people?’ enquired Mrs. Pagani in a husky, telepathic, undertone.

  One trouble was that Clarinda rather agreed with her.

  ‘Why do you live here?’

  ‘I can’t live in towns. And in the country people are the same wherever you go. Most people, I mean. You don’t live in the country for the local society.’