The Unsettled Dust Page 14

  Melvin had produced the knife once more with a view to hacking and slashing a path for them.

  ‘Truly, it’s not as dense as that,’ said Noelle. ‘A very little pushing will do it. You could almost get through in evening dress.’

  So, though the whole idea was Melvin’s, it was she who went ahead, while he made a more proper job of it.

  Duly, she was through the thicket in about ninety seconds, and in the next glade. As she expected, it was quiet there, reassuring; unlittered, because untracked. The trees were taller and more dignified. There was an element of natural architecture, an element of mystery. Foliage hid the sky, moss the ground.

  The moss was so deep and so apparently virgin as, in the exact present circumstances, to be suggestive. Noelle paddled through it across the width of the glade. The children might be temporarily out of touch with their parents, and she was fleetingly out of touch with Melvin, left further behind than mere yards would account for. She could not even hear his woodsmanship exercises; perhaps because she was not particularly listening for them.

  She entered the trees on the far side of the glade; not in the least overwhelming, all comforting to perfectly acceptable proportions. Beyond this, however, she was sure she had never penetrated; and she was very aware of it. She had no idea of what she might find, though she knew perfectly well how small was the scope. She was in momentary and diplomatic flight.

  She stopped. She had reached the end of the world already; even sooner than she had expected. It was marked by a tangle of wire: several different varieties and brands of wire; stretching between rotten leaning posts, with wood lice at their feet.

  There was a house, timbered but not thatched. The rather large windows were one and all filled with diamond panes. There was a squinting figure in artificial stone above the garden door. Much of the detail was monastic in style. There was a very neat, big-leafed hedge all round the rectangular garden, every item in which was perfect. The hedge was low enough for Noelle to see across it where it ran parallel with the world’s tangled boundary.

  A man was digging a hole in one of the garden beds. For the purpose, a quantity of blooms had been displaced, which now lay forlorn on the grass. Indeed, one might well define the new artifact not as a hole but as a trench. The man was in his braces and wore a shirt and tie, as if he were acting upon impulse. They seemed to be an elegant silk shirt, and a handsome moiré tie. His was the only figure in sight, except for a mammal of some kind which scuffled ceaselessly up and down in a small cage near the house. The man was concentrating on his work and a minute or two passed before there was any question of his looking up.

  As far as Noelle was concerned, it was unnecessary for him to look up. She knew quite well who he was. If the wires in front of her had been taut instead of tangled, she would have clutched at and clung to them.

  It had at no time so much as occurred to her that John Morley-Wingfield was so near a permanent neighbour. At least it explained whither he had so casually disappeared. Furthermore, if he possessed a house of the type before her, he almost certainly possessed a wife and a family also. Everything seemed unbelievably normal and familiar. There was even the pet in its cage.

  But still she could not move or look away. This it was to be turned into a pillar of salt, even if only provisionally, and even though Melvin must surely be coming up behind her, with a knife in one hand, a miniature axe in the other. Necessarily, the man before her, almost certainly unaccustomed to steady manual effort, would soon be taking a short breather.

  In an instant, he looked straight into Noelle’s eyes.

  Though his hair was hardly disarranged, his face was a confused mask, surrounding eyes filled with horror, eyes so large as to suggest that they would never again be their former size.

  Noelle turned and ran. She managed, as everyone does at such times, to avoid all the roots and briars and potholes. Within seconds, she was tripping back across the tranquil and unvisited glade. Within a minute, she was making a disturbance. She was calling, ‘Melvin! Melvin!’

  Melvin answered. ‘Here, curse it.’

  Before she could find him, she was out on the other side of the thicket. The children had at that very moment stopped playing and were strolling towards her.

  ‘What’s the matter, Mummy? Has something happened?’

  ‘I’m here,’ roared out Melvin, from among the bushes. ‘Blast it.’

  ‘I think your father may have hurt himself,’ said Noelle. ‘Let’s go and see if we can help, shall we?’

  Melvin’s left hand was streaming with blood. It had always been one of the most individual things about them that he had less than the usual differentiation between right-handedness and left-handedness. In most matters he seemed able to use both left and right with equal results. Noelle had never before met anyone else like that.

  ‘We must just get you home as soon as possible and tie you up. You must lie down and rest, and Agnew and Judith will go to bed as quietly as mice.’

  ‘Why must we?’ asked Judith.

  But Agnew was good and helpful all the way back.

  *

  This time Noelle remained in a state of jitters for considerably longer than on the previous occasion; and her nerviness was exacerbated by the unexpected complications that followed Melvin’s mishap. He was required to remain at home and most of the time in bed, while his depleted system struggled with the toxins; and, all the time, but more and more vividly, he saw his position with the firm diminishing, receding, vanishing. The vision was so transparent to him that for much of the time Noelle could all too lucidly see it also.

  ‘But they can’t just get rid of you. It wouldn’t even be legal.’

  ‘They have ways and means. Make no mistake about that. We’re going to starve, Noelle. But do come over here first. Take that dress off.’

  *

  In the end, Mut telephoned. Melvin was in bed with a particularly demanding group of complications. In the strict and immediate context, his absence from the scene downstairs was merciful.

  ‘How’s Melvin going on?’

  ‘Not too good. He thinks the infection is poisoning his brain.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’ve simply no idea. It’s impossible to tell. It’s just one thing after another.’

  ‘You know that man you asked about. The one you said you met at our party?’

  ‘I certainly do,’ said Noelle. ‘Has Simon anything to say about him?’

  ‘Simon had never heard of him, but that doesn’t matter. The point is that I think you just got his name out of the paper. I think you were dreaming.’

  ‘Perhaps I really was,’ said Noelle. ‘But what makes you think so at this moment?’

  ‘There was a criminal of that name, and apparently his case keeps turning up. I’ve come across him in the cornflakes crime book. You know, you get a copy in exchange for the backs of the boxes. Simon collected them and sent them in. It’s the sort of thing you do if you’re a barrister. William Morley-Westall. He lived in Kensington Square.’

  ‘What name?’ asked Noelle faintly.

  ‘William Morley-Westall. The name you gave me.’

  ‘It wasn’t the name I gave you. It’s you who are in a state of muddle, Mut.’

  ‘I’m sure it was.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t. What happened in the end to your man, anyway?’

  ‘He was sent to Broadmoor. I expect he’s out by this time. Ages ago, in fact. They only keep them for a matter of months nowadays. Simon says it’s all wrong. But people are still arguing about the case. It’s in the news the whole time. I’m sure that’s where you saw it.’

  ‘I expect so, Mut. I haven’t much time to think about such things at the moment.’

  *

  But of course it was difficult to think much about anything else. Men and their dreams! One man driven to crime, obviously horrifying. The other prostrate with complications, and almost certainly dragging himself and his family to ruin.

/>   That disaster was not immediate, because there were scattered savings that could be drawn upon, but in the end Melvin had to be taken to hospital. Probably he would have been taken sooner, had there been room for him.

  Noelle began to read the jobs advertisements in the local paper, buying odd copies for the purpose, but not yet very systematically. She even found herself glancing at the offers and miniature proclamations in the window of the shop.

  Week followed week, and as it became more and more necessary to be sensible, it became more and more difficult. Noelle suspected that the doctors were baffled, though of course they never said so. Certainly she herself had begun to find life as a whole baffling as never before. It was all but impossible to decide how big a step it was appropriate to take.

  Judith had begun to ail in various different ways, two or three of them at a time; and had no difficulty in making plain that fundamentally the trouble lay in her anxieties about her daddy, and her doubts about her mummy. Agnew, on the other hand, had quietened down and become a quite nice little boy. It was as when a running bull calf ceases to be chivvied and goaded. Noelle began in small ways to confide in him; in trifles, positively to rely upon him. Previously she had never been able to speak to him, to endear herself, to trust him.

  One night the telephone rang. It was well after eleven.

  ‘Get up please, darling,’ said Noelle to Agnew, whose unkempt head lay in her lap. ‘Just for a second.’

  Agnew responded quite obligingly.

  ‘Hullo. Oh it’s you, Mut.’

  ‘Come to a party on Friday. Sorry to be so late in asking you. It’ll be the usual people and the usual things.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d better, Mut.’

  ‘It’ll take you out of yourself.’

  ‘No, not really.’

  Agnew was gazing at her with big eyes, though less big than those other eyes, which she saw for so much of the time.

  ‘Thank you very much, none the less,’ said Noelle. ‘It’s sweet of you.’

  ‘How is Melvin, anyway?’

  ‘Worse, as far as I can tell. The doctors seem to be baffled.’

  ‘Quite seriously, Noelle, I suggest the time has come to fetch him back home. Where he is, it’s the blind leading the blind.’

  Agnew had crept up to her on the floor, and was nuzzling into her thigh.

  ‘I daresay you’re right, Mut. But you know how bad I am as a nurse. You’ll remember for yourself how hopeless I always was.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Mut. ‘In that case, I suggest you come to the party. At least, it will take your mind off.’

  ‘I’m not sure it will. It didn’t the last time.’

  Agnew took away his nose and cheek. He had very nearly suffocated himself.

  ‘You mean the mystery man. Simon’s got a new idea about him. From your description, he thinks he can only have been a man called John Martingale, who lives quite near you. He’s supposed to have a lovely garden.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Noelle. ‘There’s been far too much of one thing leading to another from it. I’ll try to tell you one day.’

  ‘I’m sure the whole thing’s a fantasy, as I said before.’

  ‘It is, and yet it isn’t,’ said Noelle.

  ‘Oh, it’s like that!’ said Mut. ‘Then come to our party and take your mind off two things. I think you need a big change.’

  ‘Thank you, Mut, but no. Really not. Please ask me next time.’

  ‘Well, of course I shall. The best possible about Melvin. And from Simon.’

  The impression made upon Noelle, as she put back the receiver, was that Agnew had drawn himself tightly together in the manner of a small soapstone idol, though a brightly coloured one. He was squatting there like a holy pussycat. Never once in previous years had she noticed anything so peculiar about him, not even when he had been a baby; so equivocal also.

  ‘Well, darling?’ she said to him, a little cautiously.

  He looked at her, and then crawled back to her. She caught him up, set him on her knee, and hugged him.

  Almost at once, the telephone rang again. Noelle clung on to Agnew, and managed to stretch out her arm, supposing it to be renewed supplications from her best friend, Mut.

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ she said, in Mut-like tones, and giving Agnew a squeeze.

  But it wasn’t Mut.

  ‘Is that Mrs. Corcoran?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Mrs. Melvin Corcoran?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you’ll remember me at the hospital. I’m sorry to say I have some bad news.’

  *

  There was a woman who lived about half a mile away named Kay Steiner. When Noelle had gone to parties in Melvin’s absence, Kay Steiner had almost always taken in the children for the night. They had seemed almost to like going to her. They managed, both of them, to praise the food and they both appeared to respond to her way with them. Mrs. Steiner had no children of her own, but she was not a widow, as might for much of the time have been supposed. It was merely that her husband, Franklin Steiner, was often away from home for long periods. Noelle fancied she had never been told what he did at these times, or at any other times, but he seemed nice enough in his own way when occasionally encountered. About Kay Steiner, there could be no doubt of any kind. Kay was a brick.

  After the funeral, attended by several people who had not been expected, and otherwise by hardly anyone whom the bereaved knew at all, Noelle had a quiet talk with the solicitor, who had remarked that it might be useful if the position of things were roughly indicated by him as soon as possible.

  He asked if their talk could be attended also by Mr. Mullings, who was an executor. Noelle had several times entertained Melvin’s friend, Ted Mullings, to dinner or supper, and put him up subsequently for the night, and she knew that the other executor, who was rather elderly, had been included simply for form. Ted Mullings had already played a prominent part at the funeral, to which he had driven all the way in his Jaguar from his home near Sandgate, having taken a day off from business for the purpose.

  At the end of the discussion, which was quite short, the future stretching before Noelle and the two children seemed just about as open as it could possibly be. She would have to create an entirely new world for the three of them. Noelle looked white. What Americans call ‘challenge’ never brought out the best in her.

  They had all had a first tea after the funeral itself, but, during the little talk with the legal people, Kay Steiner had been quietly preparing a small second one, for consumption before the men went their ways.

  Trying to lap down her fifth or sixth cup of tea, Noelle reflected that in less than three weeks she would be thirty-eight. Kay Steiner did not know this, though of course Mut did, who, however, would never tell, or never tell the truth. The two children knew the date, and celebrated it, naturally, but had not been told the full facts. Now, perhaps, they need not know for a long time. Noelle also reflected how strange it was to be dressed quite ordinarily for her husband’s requiem.

  Anyone could see that she was worn out. Kind Kay suggested that she take in Judith and Agnew for a few days, so that Noelle would have time to find her feet. The children were not in the room at the time, and Noelle accepted with hardly a demur. Judith had been weeping excessively, and was now lying down. Agnew had been looking paler and more mature every moment.

  There was resistance at the time of departure, but Kay dealt with it skilfully, and Ted Mullings offered a ride to Kay’s house in his gamboge Jaguar. Agnew stepped in ahead of everyone, but Judith declined furiously to go at all, and had to be dragged all the way on foot by Kay, while Agnew waited on her doorstep, as Ted Mullings had to be on his way back to his wife in Kent.

  The solicitor had a quantity of work to take home, especially as he had been away from the office for so much of the day; and thereafter Noelle was alone in the house. She had declined Kay’s offer to take her in also for that one night at least. She had much
thinking to do, and solitude might help the process, though she was far from sure whether or not it would.

  It was autumn and she threw the remains of the funeral baked meats into the fire. Melvin had always insisted upon as many open grates as possible, and today one of them had been put into use. Noelle regularly had to stand over the daily woman, Clarice, while it was done. Noelle disliked such sustained exercises in authority exceedingly.

  Her father’s clock struck six. Noelle felt like midnight, but at least there was a reasonable amount of time for all the thinking she would have to do; all the bricks she would have to make without straw, without the right kind of experience, or the proper temperament.

  She could scarcely make herself another cup of tea; scarcely just yet even want another cup. She picked up a boomerang with which Melvin had returned from Darwin. Melvin had admitted that he had only bought it in a shop, but it had been a special shop. The boomerang was not a commercially produced plaything, he had said, but a real weapon. Ever since, it had lain on his desk. Noelle handled it wistfully. The house was of course packed with all kinds of things that would have to be disposed of somehow; and profitably, if at all possible. Not even Melvin’s life assurance had proved to be of a kind best suited to the circumstances as they had turned out. Noelle realised that she really must start thinking at once. Her situation was considerably better than that in which many widows found themselves. She knew that well.

  *

  But the bell rang.

  Noelle looked at her father’s clock. It was not yet ten minutes past six. Doubtless someone had left something behind. Instantly, it occurred to Noelle that she herself had been left behind. She flushed for a second and managed to open the door.

  The man from the house on the other side of the wood was standing there. Naturally, he showed no sign of the disarray in which Noelle had last seen him. His eyes were quite unstaring. This time he even wore a hat, though he swept it off as the door opened. He spoke at once.

  ‘I was so sorry to hear of your great loss. I did not think it right to intrude upon the funeral, but I wish to say how much I should like to do anything I can which might help you. It seems to me the sort of thing that should be said as soon as possible. So here I am to say it, and to say that I really mean it. Perhaps you would permit me to think for you about the many matters that must arise?’