Antique Dust

by Robert Westall

  Suddenly, I was terrified for Reg and Greta. And not just for their tomato-plants, either. I didn’t know what to say, while his eyes bored into me.

  And then that strange blessed anger came to my rescue again. And I said words I didn’t understand myself. In a voice I didn’t recognize as my own.

  ‘You’re up against two of us now, Burridge. You won’t fool me again.’

  His eyes dropped. He said one word I couldn’t make out, heaved himself out of the chair, and stalked out of the house, leaving the rocker swinging. We stood silent, till we heard the front door slam.

  ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ I said, with an attempt at a laugh.

  ‘You were horrible to him.’

  ‘He wasn’t exactly nice to us.’

  ‘But you weren’t . . . you.’ Her face twisted up in bafflement.

  ‘Oh, I have hidden depths,’ I said, still trying to make a joke of it.

  ‘Have you?’ she said. ‘Is that why he called you Nevinson?’

  It was after that that I stopped worrying about Burridge, and started worrying about Nevinson. Or rather, some funny changes in my own behaviour.

  For myself, I’d have been content to let Burridge stew. He’d tried to do us an evil turn, but he’d paid in full. I had the impression we’d very nearly killed him. And I’m not one to bear a grudge; I was too happy with Linda and Tigger.

  But I found myself reading the local paper, with an eye cocked for Burridge’s doings. And every afternoon, about three, I’d get this urge to drive up and stare at the Ugly House, for no particular purpose. It was as insidious as the sight of a Mars bar to a slimmer, or a whisky to somebody on the wagon. Mostly, I fought the urge off; but once or twice it got too strong, and I’d make excuses to my staff. Once, the urge came on so strongly during an afternoon meeting of the Highways Committee that I broke into a cold sweat resisting it. Every night I had to pass the turn for the Ugly House on my way home, and unless I was concentrating very hard I took that turn without thinking, and was sitting in my car staring at the house before I realized. Not looking at the house as I normally would, looking for loose slates or leaking downspouts, but staring with a kind of blank avidness, like a cat at a mousehole, for any sign of Burridge. I said to Linda it was as if some other person was using my eyes as a television camera. I’d sit there, my body complaining it was hot, or hungry, or tired, but my eyes, with a life of their own, would go on searching for Burridge.

  This feeling I began to think of as ‘Nevinson’. That, and the terrible rages. I wondered, half idly, half terrified, whether I was going potty. I contemplated going to the doctor. But word gets round in a small town, and who wants a potty CTO? Linda let me talk it out of my system. She was a great support. It was she who suggested we look up Nevinson’s death in old copies of the local paper.

  He had died on the M1, a hundred miles from Besingfield, driving towards London. The evidence was scanty; it was after midnight and raining heavily, with little traffic. He had overtaken, in the fast lane, a car that had admitted to doing eighty. ‘Well over a ton,’ the other driver had said, ‘like all the devils in hell were after him. I saw him coming up behind and got out of the way quick. He was slewing all over the road, like there were two drunks inside, fighting for control of the wheel. Then he went straight into the bridge-support, straight as an arrow. Didn’t even brake – never saw his brake-lights go on.’

  The speedo had stuck at 129 m.p.h., when they prised it out of the wreckage.

  His wife did not know where he was going. She did not know where he had been all evening. He had left home as usual that morning, never rung her. She hadn’t worried unduly, or rung the police. Nevinson was often not home for dinner; out till all hours. His habits were erratic.

  He had no luggage; not even an overcoat. No London hotel had booked him in; no friend had been expecting him, though an appeal was made for people to come forward. But his suit, what was left of it, had been damp when they got him from the wreckage, as if he had been out in the rain, and his shoes were caked in yellow clay, as if he had been walking across some construction site. The clay was similar to that on several sites in the Besingfield district.

  There had been a tea-stain on his sleeve.

  Nevinson had never been known to drink tea.

  I looked up Mrs Nevinson in the phone-book. She was still living in the big house Nevinson had bought cheap from a contact in the construction industry. I rang her. She didn’t seem unduly surprised; but she’d rather we came round the following evening.

  We found her in the garden, busy with gloves and secateurs and a gardening trug. The setting sun was gilding everything; the garden seemed abnormally full of bees, until you saw the quality of the flowers. I have never seen a garden full of such huge blooms; hardly a patch of bare earth to be seen. If anything, they were over-lush, almost cocky in their splendour, a little wild-growing and overwhelming, as if we humans were only there on sufferance.

  Mrs Nevinson did not look like a four-month widow; she looked the picture of contentment, kneeling, secateurs poised, listening to the distant note of a bird, with her head cocked. Then she got up and took her gardening gloves off to greet us.

  My God, she was a beauty. Five foot ten, maybe taller. Slightly plump, in a way that made Linda in her jeans look boyish and inadequate. What my father would have called appreciatively ‘a big woman’. Ash-blonde hair, plaited up over her head. Rounded brow, upturned nose, gently rosy cheeks. Disappointingly, her blue eyes when she turned them on me were rather small.

  Still, she shook hands graciously enough, and took us to see her vegetable-garden. Again, I’ve never seen such vegetables. The bursting roundness of cabbage, turnip, marrow and tomato were disturbing, almost sexual. I suppose that should have warned me . . .

  She took us inside, offered us sherry or Martini. She did it gracefully, but as if she found them unreal toys. I felt she would have been more at home offering us parsnip wine, or last year’s elderberry. It was hard not to giggle. I kept on looking at her lushness, then taking quick, shamefaced glances back at Linda, who seemed to be becoming more disappointingly boyish all the time.

  Linda missed nothing: when she’d had enough of it, she said sharply, ‘Did it ever occur to you, Mrs Nevinson, that someone might have wished your husband harm?’

  ‘Harm?’ Mrs Nevinson drew out the syllable very long and Essex. ‘Now whatever did put that in your head?’

  She had all the surface airs of a lady, but underneath, the peasant showed.

  ‘That he might have been trying to get away from somebody when he crashed?’

  Her white forehead wrinkled. She couldn’t be more than twenty-six, yet she sat like a matron.

  ‘But there weren’t no one near him, ’cept the poor man that found him.’ She sounded a good deal more sorry for the poor man than for her dead husband.

  ‘There was a tea-stain on his sleeve when he crashed. Any idea how he got it?’

  Her small eyes flickered. Linda had hit the mark. Then she said, ‘No – he were more of a coffee-drinker really. Or gin. And whisky.’ It came out spitefully.

  ‘But he hadn’t been . . . drinking . . . when he crashed?’

  ‘No. He were stone-cold sober – for once.’

  ‘You don’t sound too fond of him,’ I said.

  ‘I weren’t.’ The accent was stronger now. ‘He got me pregnant, see? Then he wouldn’t marry me. Laughed at my dad, when my dad went to see him.’

  ‘So you went to Cunning Burridge about him?’

  ‘Oh, don’t look so shocked. Yes. What’s the point of trying to hide it? Half the town’ll have told you I went to Cunning Burridge.’

  ‘What did he do?’ asked Linda. Now she had genuine feminine curiosity in her voice, and Mrs Nevinson spoke entirely to her.

  ‘He give me a love-potion, didn’t he.’

  ‘A love-potion?’ Linda’s laugh was only half incredulous.

  ‘Yes, he did give me a love-potion for him, an’
I slipped it in his coffee at work, an’ he never noticed. An’ the same the next day and the next. Then he was mad for me, but I wouldn’t have him again, till we were wed. He was just usin’ me for his fun. It was time he paid.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘After a bit I left off the potion . . . he was wearin’ me out, day an’ night. I watched him come back to his senses. He used to wonder out loud why he done it. In front of me. He wasn’t the marryin’ sort, Nevinson. But we made him pay for his fun.’ She looked around her beautiful house, with a slow, serene smile. ‘Well insured, he was. I saw to that, afore I left off the potion. He cut up for a nice pile, when he went. He didn’t love me no more, by then. But he hadn’t bothered to make a will, so I got the lot. He was going to divorce me.’

  ‘Why . . . was he going to divorce you?’

  Mrs Nevinson smiled, as she might have smiled at the question of a five-year-old. ‘Some kind friend told him what I’d a-done with Burridge. He went mad. Then he started gunnin’ for Burridge. That’s when he thought up the access-road to the hypermarket. He tricked the Council, see. The plan o’ the access-road he showed ’em didn’t show them the road goin’ right through Cunning’s house. None of ’em could read a map anyway. But they’d-a never voted for knockin’ down Cunning’s home if they’d known. But once they’d voted, they couldn’t un-vote it, see? It was just pure spite, Mr Dobson. That road could just as easy have gone through Rufus’s yard. Can’t you see to it? Won’t do you no harm to have Cunning Burridge grateful. He do be a reasonable man, if he’s not provoked. Nevinson provoked him.’

  ‘So Nevinson died, with a tea-stain on his sleeve,’ I said.

  Again those small eyes flickered, but did not drop.

  ‘Drunken pig . . . fit for neither man nor beast.’

  ‘So you went to see Burridge about him again.’

  ‘No need.’ She smiled. ‘He’d provoked Cunning enough already.’ It wasn’t a nice smile.

  ‘How do you know so much?’

  ‘I do be a friend of Cunning’s. The whole town do know anyway.’ But there was a smugness in her smile . . . the fruitfulness of the whole garden.

  ‘You’re . . . his mistress,’ said Linda, her voice bleak with disgust. ‘That old man . . .’

  ‘Don’t you speak of that old man!’ Suddenly Mrs Nevinson’s face was equally bleak. ‘I been a-walkin’ in the country wi’ that old man. When he walks in the fields, the hares come and eat from his hand. Burridge knows, and he knows what women like, too. And I’m not the only one . . .’

  She sat back, smug, fulfilled, beautiful in her assurance.

  ‘Do you know what you’ve just said?’ I asked, coldly.

  She looked back equally coldly. ‘Sayin’s one thing; provin’s something else. Try going to the police, Mr Dobson. Probably lock you up in the loony-bin. There’s a lot round here has reason to be grateful to Cunning. And one or two policemen among them . . . There’s more of us than there is of you, Mr Dobson. You’d do well to remember that.’ She cocked her head. ‘There’s young Nevinson, a-cryin’ for a feed.’ She stirred her large, shapely breasts, in a way that said quite clearly that she was feeding him herself. ‘Impatient, the Nevinsons are!’

  ‘This . . . is one Nevinson you approve of?’ There was as much anxiety as sarcasm in my voice.

  ‘Some days I do, and some I don’t,’ she said, stretching lazily. ‘Some days he reminds me of our family . . . and some days he reminds me of Nevinson. There’s plenty of time to make my mind up . . . accidents can happen. You have to be careful, don’t you, Mrs Dobson?’

  ‘We have no children,’ said Linda, shortly. But, like me, she took it as a threat.

  After that we had no desire to linger, even though she asked us to stay and have something to eat. Especially after she’d asked us to have something to eat.

  I saw nothing of Burridge; but the pressure he was putting on was everywhere. Councillors came to see me in my office when I was alone. Some were smooth about it; some ended up pretty nasty. But Labour, Tory or Independent, they said the same thing. Forget Burridge’s house, or your days in Besingfield are numbered.

  Then the Chief Executive had me in his office to meet the representative of the hypermarket company, who was worried that the access-road might not be finished in time. After the hypermarket man had gone, the Chief Executive was pretty blunt too. Go through Rufus’s yard, or get out. The pressure built up like a thunderstorm. And strangely enough, the worst of it was Tetley’s bald head.

  Where he’d rubbed the rat grease on, a blue-black shadow was growing across it. When I went over, pretending to ask him something, I saw it was bristles of hair.

  ‘Go on,’ said Tetley. ‘Feel it if you like. I’m going to have a better head of hair than you. What did you think Burridge was? A party conjuror doing a few tricks for the kids at Christmas?’

  Reg Totton urged me to give up on the Ugly House for my own sake; he was the only one concerned for me. When I said the law must take its course, he told me to be careful what I ate.

  I asked him what the hell he meant. He just stared out of the window and said nothing.

  My application to join Besingfield Rotary Club was turned down, though the Chief Executive had said it would be a doddle. And it turned out that the local golf club had no vacancies after all . . .

  Soon, it wasn’t just Burridge who was crossing the street to avoid speaking to me. I got pretty lonely.

  But I still had Linda and Tigger.

  I remember I got home late that night. Ken Wright’s secretary had rung up from British Waterways. One of the drain bridges was badly cracked; its footings had given way. Could I meet him there urgently? I drove down to the canal at Earisbury; but Earisbury is a warren of minor roads, and there are about ten canal bridges, and they’re supposed to have number-plates on them, but most have fallen off over the years. Suffice it to say that I spent three frustrating hours, and never a sign of a cracked bridge or Ken Wright. I didn’t bother to go back to the office but drove straight home, hot and tired. It was getting on for dusk, and I saw the house-lights shining down through the orchard.

  Tigger met me in the garden, told me all his day’s news, then ran ahead, patting at the front door with his paw.

  I let him in; all the lights were on (Linda has a transatlantic disrespect for electricity bills). There was a record running on the record-player – my favourite LP of John Williams. And the most fantastic smell coming from the kitchen.

  ‘Linda?’ I went through to the lounge. ‘Linda?’ I called upstairs.

  There was the sound of someone splashing in the bathroom, and her usual kind of humming. I nearly went upstairs to say hello, but the smell from the kitchen was too intriguing.

  A small army of Cornish pasties lay cooling on a wire tray on the broad window-sill next to the stove. It wasn’t something she’d ever tried before, but she was still enjoying coming to terms with English cooking. And the nice thing about Linda was that she didn’t mind me helping myself. I mean, she counted them afterwards in a mocking way, but she loved me doing it really.

  I’d just picked one up, and put the end of it in my mouth, when the phone rang. Cursing, I put it down on the kitchen table, went out into the hall and picked up the phone.

  ‘Hi!’ It was Linda. Her voice sounded crackly and far away.

  ‘Where are you?’ I shouted, completely baffled.

  ‘London. At Aunt Lou’s. They telegrammed me she was ill. I rang you at the office, but they couldn’t reach you.’

  ‘How is the old darling?’

  ‘That’s the baffling thing, Dave. Her flat’s locked up; they say she’s gone to Venice for a fortnight. I remember now she wrote and told me she was going.’

  ‘But . . . but . . . you’re in the bath . . . upstairs.’

  ‘Dave, are you crazy or something?’

  ‘Hold on.’ I dropped the phone and ran upstairs. The house was full of her presence, her perfume. If she was in London, who had put the LP o
n, who had baked the pasties, still warm from the oven? Who was in the bathroom? Still splashing and humming, in that inimitable way?

  The door was locked; I smashed it down.

  The bath was dry and empty. A small red tape-recorder lay on the green plastic seat of the bathroom stool, the spools turning. It was Linda’s voice all right . . . I banged it off and ran back downstairs. What the hell was going on? If she was in London, who’d baked the pasties?

  Then I remembered Reg Totton telling me to be careful what I ate.

  I ran to the kitchen. All the pasties were gone; only the smell lingered. I stared transfixed at my own reflection in the kitchen window, against the darkening night outside, wondering if I was going mad.

  Then I pushed at the closed window. It opened at the touch of my finger; the catch wasn’t fastened. Open the window, take away the pasties . . .

  Even the one I’d left on the table? Gone too; but not so completely. Only as far as the floor. Half of it still lay there, in the midst of a scatter of broken pieces and crumbs.

  Tigger, hungry, had struck again.

  ‘Tigger, Tigger!’ Suddenly I was terrified. I ran from room to room, calling. I couldn’t see him anywhere, till I heard a faint mew.

  He was huddled up in the dark space under the kitchen cupboard. I dragged him out and he fought me, and desperately crawled back again into the dark. The second time, his struggles were weaker, and I was able to hold on to him. He kept on shaking his old head, as if there was something he couldn’t quite believe. His mouth was a little open, and his protruding tongue wasn’t its usual healthy colour. His eyes were wide, the pupils unusually large. And they had a dull film over them.

  I somehow knew he was dying. I ran for the phone again, to ring the vet. But as I ran, he died, wetting himself in a great scalding stream down the front of my shirt. I laid him gently on the table. He was already gone, just a bundle of fur, ruffled in a way he would never have allowed in life.

  When I finally reached the phone again and saw it was already off the hook, I realized I still had Linda on the other end. She was amused and slightly baffled.