A Handful of Dust

by Evelyn Waugh

  “This is going to be hell,” said Tony.

  It was ten minutes before Milly came. She emerged from the gloom with a porter in front carrying her suitcase and a child dragging back on her arm behind her. Milly’s wardrobe consisted mainly of evening dresses, for during the day she usually spent her time sitting before a gas fire in her dressing gown. She made an insignificant and rather respectable appearance.

  “Sorry if I’m late,” she said. “Winnie here couldn’t find her shoes. I brought her along too. I knew you wouldn’t mind really. She travels on a half ticket.”

  Winnie was a plain child with large gold-rimmed spectacles. When she spoke she revealed that two of her front teeth were missing.

  “I hope you don’t imagine she’s coming with us.”

  “Yes that’s the idea,” said Milly. “She won’t be any trouble—she’s got her puzzle.”

  Tony bent down to speak to the little girl. “Listen,” he said. “You don’t want to come to a nasty big hotel. You go with this kind gentleman here. He’ll take you to a shop and let you choose the biggest doll you can find and then he’ll drive you back in his motor to your home. You’ll like that, won’t you?”

  “No,” said Winnie. “I want to go to the seaside. I won’t go with that man. I don’t want a doll. I want to go to the seaside with my mummy.”

  Several people besides the detectives were beginning to take notice of the oddly assorted group.

  “Oh God!” said Tony, “I suppose she’s got to come.”

  The detectives followed at a distance down the platform. Tony settled his companions in a pullman car. “Look,” said Milly, “we’re traveling first class. Isn’t that fun? We can have tea.”

  “Can I have an ice?”

  “I don’t expect they’ve got an ice. But you can have some nice tea.”

  “But I want an ice.”

  “You shall have an ice when you get to Brighton. Now be a good girl and play with your puzzle or mother won’t take you to the seaside again.”

  “The Awful Child of popular fiction,” said Jock as he left Tony.

  Winnie sustained the part throughout the journey to Brighton. She was not inventive but she knew the classic routine thoroughly, even to such commonplace but alarming devices as breathing heavily, grunting and complaining of nausea.

  *

  Rooms at the hotel had been engaged for Tony by the solicitors. It was therefore a surprise to the reception clerk when Winnie arrived. “We have reserved in your name double and single communicating rooms, bathroom and sitting room,” he said. “We did not understand you were bringing your daughter. Will you require a further room?”

  “Oh, Winnie can come in with me,” said Milly.

  The two detectives who were standing nearby at the counter exchanged glances of disapproval.

  Tony wrote Mr. and Mrs. Last in the Visitors’ Book.

  “And daughter,” said the clerk with his finger on the place.

  Tony hesitated. “She is my niece,” he said, and inscribed her name on another line, as Miss Smith.

  The detective, registering below, remarked to his colleague, “He got out of that all right. Quite smart. But I don’t like the look of this case. Most irregular. Sets a nasty, respectable note bringing a kid into it. We’ve got the firm to consider. It doesn’t do them any good to get mixed up with the King’s Proctor.”

  “How about a quick one?” said his colleague indifferently.

  Upstairs, Winnie said, “Where’s the sea?”

  “Just there across the street.”

  “I want to go and see it.”

  “But it’s dark now, pet. You shall see it tomorrow.”

  “I want to see it tonight.”

  “You take her to see it now,” said Tony.

  “Sure you won’t be lonely?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “We won’t be long.”

  “That’s all right. You let her see it properly.”

  Tony went down to the bar where he was pleased to find the two detectives. He felt the need of male company. “Good evening,” he said.

  They looked at him askance. Everything in this case seemed to be happening as though with deliberate design to shock their professional feelings. “Good evening,” said the senior detective. “Nasty, raw evening.”

  “Have a drink.”

  Since Tony was paying their expenses in any case, the offer seemed superfluous but the junior detective brightened instinctively and said, “Don’t mind if I do.”

  “Come and sit down. I feel rather lonely.”

  They took their drinks to a table out of hearing of the barman. “Mr. Last, sir, this is all wrong,” said the senior detective. “You haven’t no business to recognize us at all. I don’t know what they’d say at the office.”

  “Best respects,” said the junior detective.

  “This is Mr. James, my colleague,” said the senior detective. “My name is Blenkinsop. James is new to this kind of work.”

  “So am I,” said Tony.

  “A pity we’ve such a nasty week-end for the job,” said Blenkinsop, “very damp and blowy. Gets me in the joints.”

  “Tell me,” said Tony. “Is it usual to bring children on an expedition of this kind?”

  “It is not.”

  “I thought it couldn’t be.”

  “Since you ask me, Mr. Last, I regard it as most irregular and injudicious. It looks wrong, and cases of this kind depend very much on making the right impression. Of course as far as James and me are concerned, the matter is O.K. There won’t be a word about it in our evidence. But you can’t trust the servants. You might very likely happen to strike one who was new to the courts, who’d blurt it out, and then where would we be? I don’t like it, Mr. Last, and that’s the truth.”

  “You can’t feel more strongly about it than I do.”

  “Fond of kids myself,” said James, who was new to this kind of work. “How about one with us?”

  “Tell me,” said Tony, when they had been at their table some little time. “You must have observed numerous couples in your time, qualifying for a divorce; tell me, how do they get through their day?”

  “It’s easier in the summer,” said Blenkinsop, “the young ladies usually bathe and the gentlemen read the papers on the esplanade; some goes for motor drives and some just hangs around the bar. They’re mostly glad when Monday comes.”

  *

  Milly and her child were in the sitting room when Tony came up.

  “I’ve ordered an ice,” said Milly.

  “Quite right.”

  “I want late dinner. I want late dinner.”

  “No, dear, not late dinner. You have an ice up here.”

  Tony returned to the bar. “Mr. James,” he said. “Did I understand you to say you were fond of children?”

  “Yes, in their right place.”

  “You wouldn’t I suppose consider dining tonight with the little girl who has accompanied me? I should take it as a great kindness.”

  “Oh no, sir, hardly that.”

  “You would not find me ungrateful.”

  “Well, sir, I don’t like to appear unobliging, but it’s not part of my duties.”

  He seemed to be wavering but Blenkinsop interposed. “Quite out of the question, sir.”

  When Tony left them Blenkinsop spoke from the depth of his experience; it was the first job that he and James had been on together, and he felt under some obligation to put his junior wise. “Our trouble is always the same—to make the clients realize that divorce is a serious matter.”

  *

  Eventually extravagant promises for the morrow, two or three ices and the slight depression induced by them, persuaded Winnie to go to bed.

  “How are we going to sleep?” asked Milly.

  “Oh, just as you like.”

  “Just as you like.”

  “Well, perhaps Winnie would be happier with you… she’ll have to go into the other room tomorrow morning when they bring
in breakfast, of course.”

  So she was tucked up in a corner of the double bed and to Tony’s surprise was asleep before they went down to dinner.

  A change of clothes brought to both Tony and Milly a change of temper. She, in her best evening frock, backless and vermilion, her face newly done and her bleached curls brushed out, her feet in high red shoes, some bracelets on her wrists, a dab of scent behind the large sham pearls in her ears, shook off the cares of domesticity and was once more in uniform, reporting for duty, a legionary ordered for active service after the enervating restraints of a winter in barracks; and Tony, filling his cigar case before the mirror, and slipping it into the pocket of his dinner jacket, reminded himself that phantasmagoric, and even gruesome as the situation might seem to him, he was nevertheless a host, so that he knocked at the communicating door and passed with a calm manner into his guest’s room; for a month now he had lived in a world suddenly bereft of order; it was as though the whole reasonable and decent constitution of things, the sum of all he had experienced or learned to expect, were an inconspicuous, inconsiderable object mislaid somewhere on the dressing table; no outrageous circumstance in which he found himself, no new, mad thing brought to his notice, could add a jot to the all-encompassing chaos that shrieked about his ears. He smiled at Milly from the doorway. “Charming,” he said, “perfectly charming. Shall we go down to dinner?”

  Their rooms were on the first floor. Step by step, with her hand on his arm, they descended the staircase into the bright hall below.

  “Cheer up,” said Milly. “You have a tongue sandwich. That’ll make you talk.”

  “Sorry, am I being a bore?”

  “I was only joking. You are a serious boy, aren’t you?”

  In spite of the savage weather the hotel seemed full of week-end visitors. More were arriving through the swing doors, their eyes moist and their cheeks rigid from the icy cold outside.

  “Yids,” explained Milly superfluously. “Still it’s nice to get a change from the club once in a while.”

  One of the new arrivals was a friend of Milly’s. He was supervising the collection of his luggage. Anywhere else he would have been a noticeable figure, for he wore a large fur coat and a beret; under the coat appeared tartan stockings and black and white shoes. “Take ’em up and get ’em unpacked and quick about it,” he said. He was a stout little young man. His companion, also in furs, was staring resentfully at one of the showcases that embellished the hall.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake,” she said.

  Milly and the young man greeted each other. “This is Dan,” she said.

  “Well, well, well,” said Dan, “what next?”

  “Do I get a drink?” said Dan’s girl.

  “Baby, you do, if I have to get it myself. Won’t you two join us, or are we de trop?”

  They went together into the glittering lounge. “I’m cold like hell,” said Baby.

  Dan had taken off his greatcoat and revealed a suit of smooth, purplish plus fours, and a silk shirt of a pattern Tony might have chosen for pajamas. “We’ll soon warm you up,” he said.

  “This place stinks of yids,” said Baby.

  “I always think that’s the sign of a good hotel, don’t you?” said Tony.

  “Like hell,” said Baby.

  “You mustn’t mind Baby, she’s cold,” Dan explained.

  “Who wouldn’t be, in your lousy car?”

  They had some cocktails. Then Dan and Baby went to their room; they must doll up, they explained, as they were going to a party given by a friend of Dan’s, at a place of his near there. Tony and Milly went in to dinner. “He’s a very nice boy,” she said, “and comes to the club a lot. We get all sorts there, but Dan’s one of the decent ones. I was going to have gone abroad with him once but in the end he couldn’t get away.”

  “His girl didn’t seem to like us much.”

  “Oh, she was cold.”

  Tony did not find conversation easy at dinner. At first he commented on their neighbors as he would have done if he had been dining with Brenda at Espinosa’s. “That’s a pretty girl in the corner.”

  “I wonder you don’t go and join her, dear,” said Milly testily.

  “Look at that woman’s diamonds. Do you think they can be real?”

  “Why don’t you ask her, if you’re so interested?”

  “That’s an interesting type—the dark woman dancing.”

  “I’m sure she’d be delighted to hear it.”

  Presently Tony realized that it was not etiquette in Milly’s world to express interest in women, other than the one you were with.

  They drank champagne. So also, Tony noticed with displeasure, did the two detectives. He would have something to say about that when their bill for expenses came in. It was not as though they had been accommodating in the matter of Winnie. All the time, at the back of his mind, he was worrying with the problem of what they could possibly do after dinner, but it was solved for him, just as he was lighting his cigar, by the appearance of Dan from the other side of the dining room. “Look here,” he said, “if you two aren’t doing anything special, why don’t you join up with us and come to the party at my friend’s place. You’ll like it. He always gives one the best of everything.”

  “Oh do let’s,” said Milly.

  Dan’s evening clothes were made of blue cloth that was supposed to appear black in artificial light; for some reason, however, they remained very blue.

  So Milly and Tony went to Dan’s friend’s place and had the best of everything. There was a party of twenty or thirty people, all more or less like Dan. Dan’s friend was most hospitable. When he was not fiddling with the wireless, which gave trouble off and on throughout the evening, he was sauntering among his guests refilling their glasses. “This stuff’s all right,” he said, showing the label, “it won’t hurt you. It’s the right stuff.”

  They had a lot of the right stuff.

  Quite often Dan’s friend noticed that Tony seemed to be out of the party. Then he would come across and put his hand on Tony’s shoulder. “I’m so glad Dan brought you,” he would say. “Hope you’re getting all you want. Delighted to see you. Come again when there isn’t a crowd and see over the place. Interested in roses?”

  “Yes, I like them very much.”

  “Come when the roses are out. You’d like that if you’re interested in roses. Damn that radio, it’s going wonky again.”

  Tony wondered whether he was as amiable when people he did not know were brought over unexpectedly to Hetton.

  At one stage in the evening he found himself sitting on a sofa with Dan, who said, “Nice kid, Milly.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll tell you a thing I’ve noticed about her. She attracts quite a different type from the other girls. People like you and me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You wouldn’t think she had a daughter of eight, would you?”

  “No, it’s very surprising.”

  “I didn’t know for ages. Then I was taking her to Dieppe for the weekend and she wanted to bring the child along too. Of course that put the kibosh on it, but I’ve always liked Milly just the same. You can trust her to behave anywhere.” He said this with a sour glance towards Baby, who was full of the right stuff and showing it.

  It was after three before the party broke up. Dan’s friend renewed his invitation to come again when the roses were out. “I doubt if you’ll find a better show of roses anywhere in the south of England,” he said.

  Dan drove them back to the hotel. Baby sat beside him in front, disposed to be quarrelsome. “Where were you?” she kept asking. “Never saw you all the evening. Where did you get to? Where were you hiding? I call it a lousy way to take a girl out.”

  Tony and Milly sat at the back. From habit and exhaustion she put her head on his shoulder and her hand in his. When they reached their rooms, however, she said, “Go quietly. We don’t want to wake Winnie.”

  For an hour or so Tony lay in the warm li
ttle bedroom, reviewing over and over again the incidents of the last three months; then he too fell asleep.

  *

  He was awakened by Winnie. “Mother’s still asleep,” she said.

  Tony looked at his watch. “So I should think,” he said. It was quarter past seven. “Go back to bed.”

  “No, I’m dressed. Let’s go out.”

  She went to the window and pulled back the curtains, filling the room with glacial morning light. “It’s hardly raining at all,” she said.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to go on the pier.”

  “It won’t be open yet.”

  “Well, I want to go down to the sea. Come on.”

  Tony knew that he would not get to sleep again that morning. “All right. You go and wait while I dress.”

  “I’ll wait here. Mother snores so.”

  Twenty minutes later they went downstairs into the hall where aproned waiters were piling up the furniture and brushing the carpets. A keen wind met them as they emerged from the swing door. The asphalt promenade was wet with spray and rain. Two or three female figures were scudding along, bowed to the wind, prayer books clutched in their gloved hands. Four or five rugged old men were hobbling down to bathe, hissing like hostlers. “Oh come on,” said Winnie.

  They went down to the beach and stumbled painfully across the shingle to the margin of the sea. Winnie threw some stones. The bathers were in the water now; some of them had dogs who swam snorting beside them.

  “Why don’t you bathe?” asked Winnie.

  “Far too cold.”

  “But they’re bathing. I want to.”

  “You must ask your mother.”

  “I believe you’re afraid. Can you swim?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, why don’t you? Bet you can’t.”

  “All right. I can’t.”

  “Then why did you say you could? Fibber.”

  They walked along the shingle. Winnie slithered about astride a backwater. “Now my knickers are wet,” she said.

  “Better come back and change.”

  “It feels horrible. Let’s go and have breakfast.”

  The hotel did not, as a rule, cater for guests who breakfasted downstairs at eight o’clock on Sunday morning. It took a long time before anything could be got ready. There were no ices, much to Winnie’s annoyance. She ate grapefruit and kippers and scrambled eggs on toast, complaining fitfully about her wet clothing. After breakfast Tony sent her upstairs to change and, himself, smoked a pipe in the lounge and glanced over the Sunday papers. Here at nine o’clock he was interrupted by the arrival of Blenkinsop. “We missed you last night,” he said.