Antique Dust

by Robert Westall

  Shadows were gathering; it was late; he had not come.

  Something was terribly, terribly wrong. He had never been late before, usually ridiculously early. The longer she sat, the more frantic she got. In the end she got back on her bicycle, shoving her tennis-racket into the large basket on the handlebars, and cycled to his house. If she just cycled past, saw the lights on, she would be reassured.

  She passed the gate; his car was in the drive; the house was in darkness. She turned the bike, and cycled back. She was so worried now that she would even brave the cold, leaden dragon’s wrath . . . all these weeks, little lost Maude had wanted her to feel sorry for the dragon, to understand. Little Maude had said that even the dragon had once been a baby . . .

  But it had been no good; the dragon had never been a baby; had never been kind, or friendly, or even happy. She was a total blot on the light; the world would be better off without her . . . what use was she, for all her money – fat, ugly thing?

  She cycled up the drive, rather wobbly, and rang the bell.

  No answer.

  But he never went anywhere except in his car! Had he had a heart attack? He was big; not young; he’d been pushing himself very hard . . .

  She crept round the side of the house, holding her breath, peering through the windows at the darkness inside, shading the glass with her hand.

  But when she reached the conservatory, he was plainly visible, among his beloved potted palms. Ready, wearing his tennis-whites, but leaning forward in one of the cast-iron chairs, his head in his hands.

  Was he ill? She tapped gently. He gave a start and reared upright, as if in terror of her. And his pale, staring-eyed face was spotted . . . all over, with dark brown. And so was the front of his tennis-whites. The dragon had thrown gravy all over him, ruining his clothes. That’s why he hadn’t come. But he might have let her know.

  She tapped again, more insistently. Slowly, like an old man, he rose, came across, and fiddled with the catch on the French windows.

  What was the matter with him? A bit of gravy . . .

  It wasn’t gravy; it was red. It was blood. His tongue, like a little child’s, came out and licked exploringly at a splash on his face.

  ‘What? Where?’

  He nodded limply, in the direction of the hall and staircase. She walked through.

  He’d done it all right. The vast bulk of the dragon, in a vile purple afternoon-frock, was sprawled at the foot of the staircase. Her skirt had ridden up, revealing pillar-like legs that had always been hideous and were more hideous now. The top of her head was crushed in like an egg, and an African knobkerry, pulled from the wall, lay beside her, thick with matted blood and hair.

  In that moment, she should have screamed. But, the spectacles cool and reassuring against her chest, she did not scream. Instead, her eyes noticed very clearly that the knob on top of the staircase newel-post was nearly the same diameter as the knobkerry he had used . . .

  She felt what for him? No longer lust, certainly. Rage, at his unplanned spontaneous clumsiness, that had ruined everything. Disgust at his pathetic total collapse. A certain pity . . . and a rush of realization that if he came to trial, the cause of the quarrel between him and the dragon would certainly come out in court. Her whole future would be ruined. The papers . . . she would be painted a scarlet woman . . .

  She walked slowly up the stairs, her eyes scheming, clear, conniving . . . She took hold of the landing banister-rail directly above the knob on the newel-post, and began to pull at it. It was not very securely fastened to the wall. It began to sway from side to side, under her urgent hands . . .

  ‘Yes, that will do for now, I think, madam.’ Inspector Groves, her father’s friend and a keen member of the Archaeological Society, closed his official notebook with a snap. ‘Thank you for all you’ve done. A sad accident to a well-liked lady.’

  He led her out into the hall. The body of the dragon had been removed; and the matted hair and blood that Maude had so carefully removed from the knobkerry and transferred to the knob of the newel-post. And the broken banister, that had lain so convincingly under the dragon by the time the police arrived.

  ‘That handrail was always loose,’ said Maude. ‘I must have warned her about it a dozen times.’

  ‘And she was a big woman,’ said Inspector Groves, ‘a heavy woman. It’s a sad blow for him. I thought he took it very hard. I’ve seldom seen a man collapse like that . . . though it’s a shocking accident, of course. Think he’ll be all right? I was all for sending him to hospital . . .’

  ‘Daddy’ll have him at our house by this time. And that doctor gave him some pretty heavy sedation. He’ll sleep the clock round. We’ll look after him, Inspector, don’t worry.’

  I shall, too, she thought. What a mess of a man! Clinging to her, crying like a baby, while she commanded his brute strength to do what was required. All men were weak, weak. But the worst was past. The fatal evidence was dispersing.

  ‘Can I give you a lift, madam?’

  ‘No – I’ve got my bicycle. If my light works.’

  ‘What’s that you’ve got in your bike-basket – oh, spare tennis things!’

  ‘We were going to play. That’s why I called.’

  ‘A rare shock for you, her falling like that, and you in the very next room . . .’

  ‘We were just talking . . . I heard her call out as she fell.’

  Just at that moment, a dog came trotting along the pavement, out of the gloom, in the busy way dogs do. By the bicycle it stopped, sniffed eagerly upwards at the basket.

  Maude stood frozen as the Inspector moved forward. But he only kicked mildly at the dog. ‘Gerraway, you brute.’

  ‘It’s the smell of . . . sweat he’s after, I suppose,’ said Maude, delicately.

  The dog howled in pain and departed. The Inspector drove off past her with a wave, and Maude cycled home, only a little fatigued.

  It was autumn. The wind had plastered wet yellow leaves along the bottom of Mr Hazlitt’s repaired window. Mr Hazlitt and Maude were sitting drinking tea, as dusk fell. They were very close now; Mr Hazlitt was a proper man. He would do as a husband.

  ‘Any news of poor old Dewhurst?’ asked Mr Hazlitt.

  ‘Had a card two days ago. He’s landed in New Zealand. Went as soon as he got probate. Sold up the lot.’

  ‘Don’t blame him,’ said Mr Hazlitt. ‘Think I’d do the same. This town would always be full of memories – he would expect to see her on every corner. Lucky they had no children.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maude.

  Mr Hazlitt switched on the shop-light, and it winked on the gold chain round her neck that held the spectacles. ‘What is that thing you wear round your neck?’ He reached across with the privilege of a fiancé and pulled up the spectacles . . . removed them.

  And immediately went frantic, more frantic than he had been about his window.

  ‘Why, Maude, where did you get these? They’re old . . . really old . . . hand-made . . . hand-ground lenses. Why, these are the kind of spectacles they wore in Hans Holbein’s time . . . if they’re genuine . . . fifteenth, early sixteenth century . . .’ He pulled out a little round black jeweller’s lens and screwed it in his eye. ‘There’s a goldsmith’s mark . . . and a little salamander . . . a salamander stamped into the gold.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Maude weakly. The removal of the spectacles from round her neck was having a very strange effect on her. Suddenly she was her old self again; shy, diffident, half blind, helpless, terrified at the memory of the things she had done.

  ‘A salamander, Maude. Symbol of the old royal family of France . . . why, Maude, Catherine de Medici could have worn these spectacles.’

  ‘Who’s she?’ Maude managed to ask tentatively.

  ‘Who’s she? Only the Queen of France. The poisoner, you remember. Formidable woman. When I went to Blois, five years ago, they showed us the hidden wall-cabinet where she kept her poisons. What tales these spectacles might tell! I must send them to the Science
Museum . . . they’ll know. You don’t mind, do you? I expect they’ll pay you a great deal of money for them. Where on earth did you get them? Family heirloom or something?’

  ‘I bought them at Woolworth’s,’ said Maude, and broke into frantic weeping at all she had done.

  ‘There, there,’ said Mr Hazlitt, hugging her as any good fiancé should. ‘You’re a funny one – you’re not the same woman two minutes running. I shall have to get used to coping. How many women are there inside you, Maude?’

  Maude continued weeping.

  How was she going to put all this to Father Whitstable?

  Portland Bill

  In the April of 1964, my wife and I took a few days off. I grow restless in the spring; every year the first wind-torn daffodils seem to promise something I will never find. My wife knows me in this mood, wise woman, and comes along as well. We share a snug world of fleeting sunshine, resting on the back of winter; of half-timbered cottages and a roaring fire after a massive meal; and, often, of breaking the ice on the pitcher-and-ewer set on our dressing-table. Having the money to live in style, we enjoy being poor for a few days. A hard-up courting couple on a guilty weekend. Dorinda even has a brass wedding-ring she wears for the occasion, to tantalize the nosier landladies. Even our Mercedes doesn’t totally spoil the illusion . . . and we return half quieted, half satisfied.

  But other things beside the Mercedes can spoil the illusion. We were driving west from Wareham, Dorset, when my wife suddenly smacked her palm to her forehead and gave that muted female shriek that is a mixture of discovery, exasperation and new endeavour.

  Had I not remembered, she asked, that Claire Farnaby had settled somewhere near Wareham after her marriage? Since I knew my wife had been at Roedean with Claire, I made muted impossibility-noises: about the time, the weather, and our need to reach our destination before midnight. I might as well have saved my breath to cool my porridge. Claire, I was informed, would be heartbroken if she ever found out we’d been her way and not looked her up.

  I pointed out that discretion on my wife’s part would ensure Claire’s eternal safety from grief . . . but my wife said ‘Stop!’ in a voice that brooked no argument, and was out of the car, across the road and into a red telephone-box almost before the Merc had pulled to a standstill. I watched her dial a number, thumb in directory. Saw her speak, wait, and then a grin of manic glee crossed her face that banished all hope. Within ten minutes of the phone call, we were sitting down over pre-lunch drinks in a very presentable Stuart manor house.

  Had I been left alone with Claire Farnaby, I would doubtless have spent a most enjoyable time. She had elegant legs, what we used to call a pert nose, and large brown eyes of real warmth. Undoubtedly a very cultured and intelligent young woman; as was Dorinda, my wife. But they had been at Roe­dean together, and that was enough to banish all sense. We ate to the sound of belly-laughs and feverish inquiries as to what Fluffy Rossiter thought she was up to, writing for the Telegraph. Worse, as time passed a sort of mutual shorthand revived between them, so that a line of dialogue as short as ‘You remember the time she fed Tiddum’s cat . . . ?’ could send them into gusts of laughter for several minutes. Their cheeks became more and more flushed; their legs were flung out in a manner more suited to shin-pads than mini-skirts. Given the economy of such dialogue, there was no reason why the session shouldn’t drag on for several weeks. In the end I began to prowl the long dining-room, losing myself in the set of twelve Chippendale chairs, the Regency sideboard with its brass rail and urns intact, the little oil by Cuyp, the fine circular array of naval cutlasses over the high fireplace . . .

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Dorinda, when she finally noticed what I was doing. ‘We’d better let him off the leash, Claire, or he’ll be making you an offer for something.’

  ‘He can make me an offer any time,’ said Claire, with an undertone indicating that she, at least, was tiring of lacrosse-sticks, starting to see a wider world beyond the dorms of Roedean.

  ‘Why don’t you go for a drive, darling?’ said Dorinda. ‘Work off your lunch. Chat up some of your little competitors and find a bargain? You’ll only get the hump if you stay here with us. Come and pick me up about four? That’s all right, isn’t it?’ The last remark was addressed to Claire.

  ‘Yes . . . yes,’ said Claire, half closing her eyes momentarily at the prospect of another two hours of ‘Esprit de corps, Number Four’.

  An enormous cold rage seized me. Oh, the waste of good things! The waste of a whole day of our holiday; of the chance to enjoy Claire Farnaby’s mind, Claire Farnaby’s furniture, Claire Farnaby’s elegant legs. And being grandly dismissed as if I were the boot-boy. Oh, the bloodiness of marriage, of being tied to somebody else’s insane and piffling desires.

  ‘I’ll go and take a look at Portland Bill,’ I said bleakly, as I let Claire help me on with my coat.

  I only knew Portland Bill from the weather forecasts, but Portland Island could not have suited my bleak mood better. A ghostly place, built entirely from the stone it stands on. And that stone, unlike the warm, golden Ham stone of Claire’s manor, is pale grey, nearly white. Grey walls, grey slate roofs, grey roads. Mostly, for some reason, the doors and windows are painted white. It looks bleached, like a black-and-white telly once you’ve got used to colour. And the grey roads are ground by the traffic into a fine, grey, powdery dust that blights the very green of the thin, starving grass to greyness.

  And since the island contains the austerities of a naval barracks, a prison and a Borstal, and much of the rest is working quarries, still chewing inexorably away at the ground they stand on, it is as bleak to the spirit as to the eyes.

  Portland Bill, on the southern tip, is bleakest of all. A bare rock plateau on which nothing blooms but crisp-bags and fleeing, ragged, wind-blown polythene, wire fences and parked cars. Seaward hung a grey mist that the eternal wind breached from time to time, letting in a cold white sun. And standing tall, striped red and white like a frozen jester, like a great phallic barber’s-pole, was the lighthouse.

  It bellowed at the hovering fog like a nervous bully; and the echo, bouncing back off the fog, seemed to shout faintly back. That shouting voice destroyed conversation, thought, on the whole cliff-top. One was either shuddering at the body-breaking impact of it, or waiting cowering in the intervals of silence for the next blow.

  Perverse, I walked around the shaped tower to where the mouth of the foghorn pointed, to where it would do its worst; and waited.

  The shock of sound was unbelievable; it made the bones vibrate within my flesh. Yet I walked on, endeavouring to withstand it.

  The ground-rock wasn’t clean, like that of a Hebridean island. It had been nibbled at by many feet, as mice nibble at cheese, leaving a trail of grey crumbs to be ground into mere grey dust. A huge jagged boulder, twice human height, was lying on the flatness at the tip of the cliff, carrying a rusting iron plaque dedicating the place to Thomas Hardy. Hardy lay right in the teeth of the foghorn’s blast. But his shade was not there; how he would have hated it.

  Yet it was the place for a shade . . .

  Reaching the cliff-edge, I gasped. In every crevice offering shelter from the wind, on every rock-platform descending to the stony sea, sat holidaymakers in deck-chairs, beach-bags and thermos-flasks beside them, as if they sat on a warm golden beach. And there was no sand at all . . .

  Mainly, they were brown, hard-wrinkled pensioners who had come by ancient, highly polished cars, bringing their own deckchairs to save money. They were wrapped up in over­coats, tucked deep into tartan rugs, determined to enjoy Easter Sunday as was their right. Ardent worshippers of a sun that came and went like a ghost.

  The cross-Channel ferry was emerging from the harbour, her siren shouting back at the lighthouse like another bully, blustery in red funnel and black hull and bold white lettering on her side. Then, slowly, the encroaching mist stole the life and substance from her; she faded, faded and died, becoming another ghost.

  I liked it al
l better and better; it’s a rare luxury in this life when the outside world so perfectly echoes your inner mood.

  I drifted on to the wooden café, perched like an empty matchbox on a stony table. It lived by keeping up the spirits, and the illusions, of the pensioners – with tea and coffee at sixpence a cup, and hot Oxo, and celluloid windmills chattering themselves to pieces in the never-ending wind. Everything for the beach was available – buckets and spades, where there was no sand; plastic beachballs, where there was no place to play football without the hungry wind snatching them and whirling them out to sea, to float and roll across the waves and be swallowed by the greyness that had swallowed the ferry. I laughed at the pointless madness of it all.

  And then I saw the woman watching me.

  She was tall and thin, in trousers and a well-cut tweed coat, holding the collar up with one hand to keep the cold from her throat. Her long, straight, honey-coloured hair flapped round her face like a flag in the wind. I noticed she wore cherry-coloured brogues on her feet – once as polished as conkers, but now scuffed and scarred white from climbing on the rocks.

  There was a song I’d always liked, from the musical ‘South Pacific’:

  Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger,

  You may see a stranger, across a crowded room . . .

  I saw my enchanted stranger through a vista of tough old pensioners, busy spinning out their cups of tea, checking their change, and turning up their collars against the wind. She hovered on the fringe, with them, but not of them. A million pounds away from them; she would not count pounds as they counted pennies . . .

  It was extraordinary, the way her bright blue eyes, watching me, seemed to annihilate the twenty yards between us. With that kind of invitation, who could have resisted walking over?

  As I squeezed between the last pairs of pensioners, she turned on her heel and began to stroll away in front of me. I loved the arrogance of that; her certainty that I would follow. It went with the quality of her tweed coat, the narrow elegance of her hips and bottom beneath it, that had never heard of starch and stodge, the long lithe legs that had plenty of leisure to swim and play tennis at the club . . . You don’t survive as a dealer long without getting an eye for class, in a chair, a racehorse or a woman.