Dusty Answer

WHEN Judith was eighteen, she saw that the house next door, empty for years, was getting ready again. Gardeners mowed and mowed, and rolled and rolled the tennis-court; and planted tulips and forget-me-nots in the stone urns that bordered the lawn at the river’s edge. The ivy’s long fingers were torn away from the windows, and the solid grey stone front made prim and trim. When the blinds went up and the familiar oval mirror-backs once more stared from the bedroom windows it seemed as if the long time of emptiness had never been, and that the next-door children must still be there with their grandmother,—mysterious and thrilling children who came and went, and were all cousins except two who were brothers, and all boys except one, who was a girl; and who dropped over the peach-tree wall into Judith’s garden with invitations to tea and hide-and-seek.

But in truth all was different now. The grandmother had died soon after she heard Charlie was killed. He had been her favourite, her darling one. He had, astoundingly, married the girl Mariella when they were both nineteen, and he just going to the front. He had been killed directly, and some months afterwards Mariella had had a baby.

Mariella was twenty-two years old now, Charlie’s widow with a child Charlie had begotten. It seemed fantastic when you looked back and remembered them both. The grandmother had left the house to Mariella, and she was coming back to live there and have a gay time now that the war was well over and Charlie (so you supposed) forgotten.

The night of full moon came, warm and starry. As she swam towards the willows at the far edge of the next-door garden,—her usual goal—she saw lights in the windows. The long house spread itself peacefully under the moon, throwing out its muffled warmth of lamplight like a quiet smile.

So they had come.

Somebody might be in the garden,—on the river even. She clung close under the bank, by a willow stump, not daring to move, feeling her strength ebb from her.

Then all at once their forms, their voices were near her. Somebody started to play a nocturne of Fauré: Julian. Before her she saw someone tall, in a pale frock, walking along the lawn: Mariella. A moment after a man’s figure came from the shadows and joined hers. Which was he? The twin glow of their cigarettes went ahead of them as they paced slowly, arm in arm, across the lawn, just as Charlie and Mariella had often paced in the dreams.

They were so near they must in a moment look down and see her; but they passed on a few steps and then paused, looking out over the river, and up at the resplendent moon. The piano stopped, and soon another figure came and joined them. They were three tall shadows: their faces were indistinguishable.

‘Hullo!’ said the small clear unchanged voice of Mariella, ‘I can’t understand your music, Julian. Nor can Martin, can you, Martin?’

‘Shall we dance?’

He looked surprised.

‘All right. Certainly. Just let me cool down a bit.’

He was not in any hurry. He sat on the table and watched Marietta’s neatly moving feet.

‘She’s good at her stuff,’ he said.

‘Do you adore dancing?’

‘Well, I don’t know that I adore it. It’s fun once in a way.’

‘It seems funny not to be mad about a thing if you can do it so beautifully.’

He looked at her with amusement.

She must remember not to ask Roddy if he adored things. His secret life went on in a place where such states of feeling were unknown.

‘Shall we?’ he said at last.

She was not going to be able to do it; the rhythm had gone out of her limbs. He was going to be too good for her and she would stumble and he would get disgusted and not dance with her any more....

After a few moments of anguish, suddenly she could, after all. Long light movements flowed from her body.

Roddy looked down.

‘But you can dance,’ he said.

‘I told you I could. You didn’t believe me.’

He laughed.

‘You don’t mean to tell me you’ve never danced before?’

‘Never.’

‘Swear?’

‘Cross my heart.’

‘But of course,’ said Roddy, ‘you couldn’t help dancing, such a beautiful mover as you.’

He had really said that! She lifted her face and glowed at him: life was too, too rich.

The music came to an end. Roddy stood still with his arm round her waist and called imperiously to Martin for another tune.

The river had an enchanted beauty and stillness in the half-light. It was moon-coloured, with a dying flush in it; faint opal flickers lit the ripples that broke away on either side of the canoe.

‘It won’t be dark enough for a while, yet,’ said Roddy.

‘They’ll wonder where I am.’

‘Why? Didn’t you tell them?’

‘They didn’t know I’d slip off so soon.’

She blushed. It really looked as if Roddy had come early in order to have a little time alone with her. He would not say so; but he twinkled and smiled so gaily that she smiled back at him, as if giving him secret for delightful secret.

‘They’ll tease me,’ he declared.

‘No. Will they?’

‘Yes, I assure you——’

‘How silly!’

‘Isn’t it? Do you know, they’ll suspect us of the most desperate flirtation on this exquisite secluded river.’

‘Will they?’ She was troubled.

‘What common minds! As if a man couldn’t be alone with a girl without making love to her.’

‘Oh, I do agree, Roddy.’

He threw back his head and laughed silently: he had been laughing all the time. And it had seemed for a moment that Roddy was prepared for the first time in her memory to have a little serious conversation.

‘Oh, Roddy, how you do laugh at me!’

‘I can’t help it, Judy. You are so incredibly solemn. You don’t mind, do you? Please don’t mind. I adore people who make me laugh.’

The night was dark, with a piercing wind and a faint flurry of snow in the air. Roddy drove at a great pace, and she sat beside him in silence, her shoulder touching his.

‘Cold?’ he said suddenly.

‘No, I don’t feel—anything.’

All of life was concentrated in her dark beating mind: her body was insensible to the weather. She saw the gates of College fly past. Its lights gleamed and were gone; and she could not speak. On they went, the long straight empty road flung before them in small lengths by the headlights and rolled up into nothingness behind them, cast away for ever.

He stopped the car suddenly.

‘Where’s this place?’

‘I think we’ve passed it long ago.’

The wind took her small voice away from him. He leaned towards her.

‘What?’

She turned to him.

‘I think we’ve passed it long ago.’

‘I think we have.’

Silence. The great wind blowing through illimitable deeps of night lifted and whirled her beyond time and space. She saw his hand lying on the wheel—a pale blur; and her own crept out and lay beside it; and she stared at them both. He watched her hand fall beside his and did not move a hair’s breadth nearer to touch it. He and she were alone together. No need for speech or movement. Their hands would lie motionless, side by side, for ever and ever.

She heard him laugh softly; and as he laughed her hand came quickly to her lap.

‘Well, what d’you want to do?’ he said very low.

‘I don’t want to go back.’