The Unsettled Dust Page 13

  All the way there had, of course, been strewn rubbish, but at the terminal clearing there was considerably more of it.

  ‘How disgusting!’ said Noelle. ‘What a degradation!’

  ‘Don’t look at it,’ said the man, as before. ‘Look upwards. Look at the trees. Let’s sit down for a moment.’

  It could not be said that the sections of beech trunk lying about had been hollowed out by the authorities into picnic couches, but the said sections had undoubtedly been sliced and trimmed for public use, and arranged like scatter cushions in a television room. It must have taken weeks to do it, but Noelle was of course accustomed to the scene, and had long ago resolved not to let it upset her. She realised that the vast population of the world had everywhere to be accommodated. It was as if there were a war on always.

  Seated, the man began to cuddle her, and she to sink into it for the time available to her. They were sitting with their backs to the wood end and the farmland beyond. But, after a few moments – precious moments, perhaps – he unexpectedly took away his arm and rose to his feet.

  ‘Forgive me.’ he said. ‘I should like to explore for a little. You wait here. I’ll soon be back.’

  ‘How far are you going?’

  ‘Just into the next glade.’

  Naturally, she knew that it would be perfectly silly and embarrassing for her to say any more. Melvin often wandered off in that way for a few minutes, and had done it even when they were merely engaged. All men did it. Still, there was one thing she simply could not help pointing out.

  ‘I must go back in six minutes at the very most now.’ The constant care of children makes for exactitude in situations of that kind.

  He had taken several steps away before she had finished speaking. Now he stopped and half turned back towards her. He gazed at her for a perceptible period of time; then turned again, and resumed his course without speaking. Noelle had later to admit to herself that she had been aware at once of some difference between the man’s deportment and the deportment of men in general. It was almost as if the man slid or glided, so tutored was his gait.

  The man strode elegantly and effectively off into the woodland to her right. Here there was fairly dense brush and scrub, so that the man disappeared quite rapidly. Noelle could hear his brown shoes crushing the twigs and mast, no doubt scuffing the high polish. Presumably he was shoving through brushwood, but he seemed to advance very steadily, and soon there was no further sound from him.

  Noelle gave him four uneasy minutes, then rose in her turn. She called out, ‘I shall have to be going. I must go.’

  There was no response. There was no sign or sound of him.

  ‘Where are you?’

  Not even a woodpecker signalled.

  Noelle called out much more loudly. ‘John! John, I have to go.’

  That was the limit of possible action. She could not be expected to shout for the rest of the afternoon, to mount a one-woman search party. There could be no possible question of the man being lost, as she herself had already remarked.

  So there was only one thing for her to do. She walked quickly home, much confused in mind and feeling.

  When she had arrived, only a single aspiration was definable: that the man, having emerged from the wood in one way or another, would not reappear at her home when the children were having their tea.

  *

  He did not reappear. But Noelle remained in a state of jitters until she retired to her single bed.

  The next morning she telephoned Mut. She had not cared to do so while the children were in the house.

  ‘That man at your party. John Morley-Wingfield. Tell me about him.’

  ‘John Morley was a nineteenth-century politico, darling. He wrote the life of Gladstone. It’s a good book in its own way.’

  ‘I’m sure it is. But it’s a different man.’

  ‘It always is a different man, darling.’

  ‘I’m speaking of John Morley-Wingfield who was at your party.’

  ‘Never heard of him, darling. I don’t know half the people by name. Do you want me to ask Simon when he gets back?’

  ‘I think I do. Something rather funny has happened. I’ll tell you when I see you.’

  ‘What’s he look like?’

  ‘Suave and competent. Like a diplomat.’

  ‘At our party?’

  ‘I got on rather well with him.’

  ‘The trouble with you is you don’t know your own strength. Never mind. I’ve written down the name. I’ll ask Simon. But don’t expect much joy. Any news of Melvin?’

  *

  In the event, there was no joy at all, because for some time nothing more was heard from Mut on the subject, and Noelle swiftly passed beyond the stage of wanting to know. She realised that one is often half picked up by men who soon think better of the idea, and for one or more of many different reasons, not all of them necessarily detrimental to oneself. Nothing in the least unusual had happened.

  Indeed, the only discernible upshot was that Noelle ceased to walk in the woods: not only in the particular wood opposite her front gate, but all the other woods in the district. Some of them in any case were mere struggling strips of scrubland and thorn bush: hardly worth visiting unless one was utterly desperate.

  But one Sunday, four or five months later, Melvin suggested that they go for a stroll with the children. It was because one car had been lent to a business friend, whose own had apparently been stolen; and Noelle had forgotten to licence the other. Melvin had been very forgiving, as he always was, always.

  ‘Just give me a minute or two to get kitted out,’ said Melvin.

  Noelle knew what that meant, and herself changed into tan trousers and a lumber jacket. The least she could do was co-operate in those supposedly secondary matters that so often proved to be primary. The children were dressed as pioneers already.

  Melvin, when he reappeared, eclipsed them all, as was natural. A casual looker-on could hardly have distinguished him from Wild Bill Hickock, especially as Melvin purchased most of his fun gear in the States or in Toronto.

  There could be no question of going anywhere but into the wood, because for anything else a motor would have been needed. The children were permitted to walk to and from school, because Noelle had put her foot down and refused to tie herself to driving them so short a distance four times a day, whatever the other mothers might do and say. Melvin in turn put his foot down when the possibility arose of the mites straggling along the highway at any other time.

  ‘Don’t forget it may rain,’ now said Melvin.

  Of course, Noelle had felt certain qualms from the outset, and as soon as they were among the silver birches, she rejoiced that at least she was so differently arrayed, all but in disguise. Moreover, the woods always felt quite different when one entered them with one’s entire family. The things that happened when one was with one’s family were amazingly unlike the things that happened when one was not. It was this fact that made the transition between the one state and the other always so upsetting.

  ‘Just wait till we meet a buffalo,’ said Melvin to the children.

  Agnes screamed with delight, but Judith hitched at her belt and looked cynical.

  ‘Got your lasso ready, son?’ asked Melvin.

  Agnes twirled it round his head and started leaping about among the tangled tree roots. Judith also began to run about, holding her arms in front of her above her head, and bringing them together at short intervals, as if she were catching butterflies, which she was not. There were no butterflies. There never were many.

  ‘I am dead to the world,’ said Melvin softly to Noelle, when the two children were at what could be regarded as a safe distance, short though that distance really was. ‘I’m fagged out.’ In the home circle, Melvin expressed himself conservatively, domestically. He never used the words he used at work.

  ‘You look a bit pale,’ said Noelle, without turning to him. She had noticed it ever since his return from Johannesburg the day before y
esterday. Pallor of any kind would be quite incompatible with his ranchhand rig.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, Noelle,’ he went on. She had always disallowed any contraction or distortion of her Christian name, or any nickname. ‘My head feels as if it will burst. I’ve felt sicker and sicker ever since that February bust-up in Edmonton.’

  To Noelle it seemed that Melvin went to Edmonton more often than to anywhere else, and that always it led to trouble, though that last time had doubtless been the worst of all, because Melvin had spoken of it ever since, shaking with rage and bafflement. Edmonton in Alberta, of course; not John Gilpin’s homely Edmonton.

  ‘You’d better lay up,’ said Noelle. ‘I expect we can afford it.’

  ‘No such thing,’ said Melvin, with what Noelle deemed an unreasonable darkness in his tone. He had never permitted Noelle to look for even a part-time job. It was one of those various things about which she was never sure whether she was glad or sorry. She knew that she somewhat lacked any very specific qualifications.

  ‘I can’t let up for a single day,’ said Melvin. I’d be shot out if I did. Make no mistake about that.’

  She supposed that there he must probably be right. Many of her local acquaintances already had husbands who had been declared redundant, as the usage now was.

  The matter was settled for the moment by Agnew falling over, his feet and legs entangled in his lariat, as if he’d been a steer.

  Noelle hoicked him up. She had the readiness of experience, as with an acrobat or exhibition wrestler.

  ‘No bones broken’, she said, stroking Agnew’s stylishly unbarbered locks. ‘No blood spilt. No nasty bruise.’ One could not really know about the last, but it was the thing one said, and very possibly the utterance terminated the danger.

  Judith was still running about catching phantom moths. She was a lissom, leggy little girl, but already deep, much as Noelle herself was deep.

  ‘You was riding the range,’ said Melvin, stabbing Agnew between the shoulders with mock manliness. ‘You’ve had a spill, but you’re up again, and riding high.’

  ‘It was the silly rope,’ said Agnew.

  ‘Ride on, cowboy,’ directed Melvin, patriarchal, example-setting.

  ‘Why should he?’ enquired Judith at some distance and to no one in particular, no one short of the universe.

  ‘Get going,’ called out Melvin. ‘Show ‘em. Prove it.’

  Agnew looked doubtful, but began once more to plunge about. Fortunately, they had now reached the beeches, where the roots, though thicker, were for that reason more noticeable. Agnew had begun to use his lasso as if it were a fishing line. All the pockets in the roots were full of fish. Some of them actually did contain a little water. It had been raining on and off for many weeks. Noelle had been going everywhere in a stylish mackintosh.

  ‘I’m nearing the end of the line,’ said Melvin to Noelle. ‘Something will just have to give, or I shall break.’

  The two children began running down the slope to the cleared space at the end, where everyone turned and went back up again. The relatively long-limbed Judith, relatively unencumbered with miniature ranch gear, arrived easily first. She started an Ashanti dance she had seen on colour television at school.

  Noelle’s heart began to sink further and to beat faster with every descending step. She had, as usual, forgotten how all courage leaves one when the peril, whatever it be, is really close in time or space or both.

  ‘I’ve thought of applying for a transfer,’ said Melvin. ‘I haven’t told you, because I didn’t want to worry you.’ He was trying to struggle out of his trapper’s jerkin, though the weather was no warmer than it had been, and Noelle felt chillier every minute.

  They were all assembled in the clearing. The circumambient litter was now sodden, much of it eaten away by enormous, conjectural rats. There was no other human being visible, or even audible; doubtless owing to the unsettled forecast.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing else to do but go back,’ said Noelle almost immediately.

  ‘No!!!’ At school the children had learned the trick of negating loudly in unison.

  ‘Let’s sit down for a moment,’ said Melvin.

  ‘It’s all too soggy,’ protested Noelle.

  ‘I’ve got The Frontiersman from last time,’ proclaimed Melvin, producing it from the rustler’s pocket in his cast-off jerkin. ‘I’ll rip it up and we can take half each. I never have time to read it anyway.’

  ‘We can’t sit among so much litter. It’s disgusting. It’s degrading.’

  But Melvin was settled on one of the adapted tree trunks and was chivalrously holding out the bigger portion of the bisected journal.

  ‘Just for a moment, Noelle,’ he said wistfully, all but smiling at her. ‘I need to get back some part of my sanity.’

  So she slumped on the trunk beside him. She tried hard to keep her bottom on the small, thin package. ‘Don’t go too far away,’ she said to the children. ‘We’re only stopping here for a minute.’

  Melvin had drawn his lumberjack’s knife, and was running his finger along the blade. His gaze was at once concentrated and absent-minded. Fortunately, the blade was unlikely to be very sharp.

  ‘I often dream of what it should have been like,’ said Melvin. ‘On some island. Our island. You in a grass skirt, me in a leopard skin, perhaps a snow leopard skin, sun all the time, and breadfruit to chew, and mangoes, and coconuts, and flying fish. All day and all night the throbbing of the surf on the reef, and every now and then a distant schooner to wave to. Birds of paradise sweeping from palm tree to palm tree. Monkeys chattering and swinging. Loving you on the warm sand in the darkness beneath the Southern Cross.’

  ‘Beautiful,’ said Noelle, gently taking his hand. ‘I’d like that.’

  Melvin looked at her doubtfully. Agnew often had just that same look, inherited or acquired.

  ‘I mean it. Truly,’ said Noelle softly. ‘I’d like it too. But we have to be practical.’ She could not help squirming a little on the tiny, extemporised cushion.

  ‘Do we? Must we?’ He was drawing the lumber knife across the back of his hand.

  ‘Of course we must, darling. I’m sure we can work something out together. Something practical.’

  She always said that, and she would have been sincerely pleased if it had ever proved possible. What happened every time in actuality was that she had nearly expired of combined boredom and nausea before Melvin had made any real progress in describing the full details of the particular crisis. She never doubted that Melvin’s business life was truly terrible. One trouble was that a terrible life is less fulfilling to others than a happy life.

  He squeezed her hand. ‘If the men in white coats don’t come for me first,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll keep them away,’ she replied softly. ‘I’ll distract their attention.’

  Inevitably, the children, forbidden to go far, were enjoying themselves among the litter. They were investigating discarded food and drink cans, deciphering sodden letterpress, speculating about indelicate proprietary utilities. Really they were only a few feet away. All along, surreptitiousness had been enforced upon the parental intimacies.

  ‘You’d distract anyone’s attention, Noelle,’ said Melvin, almost whispering.

  Noelle looked away from his fatigued face and glanced for a moment towards the thicker foliage to the right of the clearing.

  ‘I’d like you to distract mine this very moment,’ said Melvin, sotto voce.

  ‘We must be practical, said Noelle.

  Melvin threw the knife into the ground, though it failed to enter, and merely lay horizontally, adding to the litter.

  ‘Children!’ he called out. ‘Run away and play for a bit.’

  Noelle rose. ‘No, don’t,’ she called to them.

  Confused, the children came to a standstill before reaching the thicket towards which they had started charging. They began to play ‘Triangles’ on the rough ground. It was a game that everyone was play
ing and involved much darting about in a small area. Preferably, there should of course have been more players, but Agnew and Judith were still young enough to improvise. The game was something like ‘Rounders’, an elementary version of it.

  ‘We can’t possibly,’ said Noelle to Melvin. She sat down again beside him. ‘We’ll stay just a few more minutes, so that the children can have a run about, and I’ll see if I can get them to bed a little earlier than usual.’

  ‘I want you now,’ said Melvin

  Noelle smiled at him, but said nothing. Though she rather fancied herself as a backwoods girl, she really preferred Melvin in one of his executive suits. At the time of Watteau and Fragonard, people played in the woods wearing wigs, panniers, and flowered silk from Lyon. They carried ribboned crooks.

  ‘Now,’ said Melvin. He picked up the knife and reattached it to its thong. ‘Let’s get lost in the forest. The kids won’t even notice for a long time.’

  Melvin often had whims of that kind. Noelle supposed them to be outlets for the pressure under which so much of his life was passed.

  He rose to his feet and pulled Noelle to hers. ‘Let’s see how lost we can get.’

  She had found it best at such moments to go along with him as far as was practicable. At the moment, it was quite true that the children seemed absorbed in their running and tumbling. ‘Triangles’ is a far more physically demanding game than, say, ‘Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses’. The children seemed not even to notice their gaucho parents departing across the worn clearing; exactly as Melvin had said. And, after all, there was no real reason why Noelle should not enter those bushes.

  ‘I don’t think we shall get lost,’ she said. ‘It’s just into the next glade.’

  ‘Have you been there?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Then how do you know? When we stray from the warpath, we enter the impenetrable rain forest.’

  All the same, Noelle did know. She had a precise mental picture of what it was like on the other side of the bushes. She always had had. She must have been there some time, though she could not remember the circumstances.

  ‘It’s impossible to get lost in these woods,’ she said. ‘Or in any of the other woods round here,’