The Unsettled Dust Page 2

  It was a big, square, dark red room, with a heavy dado, two windows looking down the long avenue, a modern double bed, and a general look of having been furnished by a good contractor in, perhaps, 1910.

  ‘Turn on the light, if you like,’ said Miss Brakespear; ‘unless you prefer the dusk, as I do. There’s a bathroom opposite. It’s all for you, because nowadays there’s never anyone else on this side of the house. My sister and I sleep at the other end. Elizabeth Craw, our housekeeper, sleeps upstairs, and the two girls in the village. You’ll find the whole house quiet for your work until the open season begins at Easter. Come down for a drink when you’re ready. In the music room to the left of the hall.’

  She strode away down the dark passage, leaving my bedroom door open. She had a rich and liquid voice, really rather beautiful; and a casual inflection which one felt never varied, no matter what she was saying or to whom. I noticed that she had not mentioned her mother, who was supposed to live somewhere in the house also.

  I shut the door and stood in the middle of the room waiting. I might well have been waiting for the twilight to become more like darkness, so that, even by Miss Brakespear’s standard, I could turn on the light with a good conscience. Then I realised how absurd this was, and pressed the switch. The result was disappointing. The only light in the room came from three rather faint bulbs attached to a brass frame which the 1910 contractor had suspended from the plaster rose in the centre of the coffered ceiling. They would effectively illumine neither a reader in bed nor a maker-up or report-writer at the heavy dressing table. I felt that from the park my room must look little more luminous than in the year the house was built.

  I unpacked a few things and stowed them away. I set my book hopefully by the side of the bed (Christopher Hussey’s The Picturesque, I see in my Diary that it was). I cased the room for heat of any kind. There was none. I wondered if I should change into something darker, but decided that I could decide while taking my drink, as it was still early enough to change after it, if that seemed appropriate. I crossed the passage to the bathroom.

  Here the electric light seemed a little stronger. I looked at my hands as one does after a journey, to see how travel-stained they are. They were filthy. I was astonished, and as I turned the tap of the washbasin (of course, there was nothing like that in my bedroom), I worried about having shaken hands with Miss Brakespear. Then I realised that the grime had spread from darker patches at the tips of my fingers, and that I had probably picked it up in my bedroom. And only then did I remember about the dust I had noticed on my previous visit to the house. The matter had not lately been in my mind. I remembered also about the memo on the subject which I had sent to old Blantyre, the impoverished country gentleman who acted as the Fund’s Regional Representative in that area. Thinking about it now, I was almost sure that Blantyre had never even sent an acknowledgement; so that, almost certainly, he had taken no action whatever. I let the water run and run, but it never ran hot.

  I remembered the beautiful music room quite well. As I stood in the dark hall outside the thick, closed door, I could just hear the sound of a piano within. Real music in the music room of a British mansion is today so rare that at first I took it for granted that the wireless had been turned on, but when I opened the door and entered, I saw that Miss Brakespear was herself playing. She did not stop when I walked in, but merely indicated with a movement of her head that I should sit down. The gesture seemed quite friendly but she did not smile. I suspected that Miss Brakespear smiled seldom. In here a big log fire burnt: the supply of logs, rough and knotty, being piled high in a vast, circular bin of chased brass, itself gleaming like a yellow furnace. I know nothing about music but it seemed to me that Miss Brakespear played the piano much as she talked; beautifully, but with a casualness that was not so much indifference as the reflection of melancholy and resignation. There was no music before her, and no light by which she could have read it: quite possibly she was improvising, though she seemed to my ignorance to be doing it with depth and fluency. I daresay this was nonsense on my part, but as she played on and on, I found that I was pleased to warm myself right through at rather long last, and to listen to her and watch her dim shape by the light of the fire. I could see that she was still wearing her riding clothes, with the tips of her boots on the pedals.

  I am not sure how much time passed in this way; but certainly it was quite dark outside the uncurtained windows, when the door opened and a third person stood there. It was another woman. I could not see her at all clearly, but I could see the shape of her dress and the outline of her hair. She stood for a while with the door still open behind her. Miss Brakespear went on playing, as if in a trance with herself. Then the newcomer shut the door and turned on the light: more effective lighting than in the rooms above. At once, Miss Brakespear broke off.

  ‘Dreaming?’ asked the newcomer; none too agreeably, I thought.

  Miss Brakespear made no direct reply. ‘Agnes,’ she said, ‘this is Mr. Oxenhope, at once our landlord and our guest. Mr. Oxenhope, let me introduce my sister, Agnes.’

  The other Miss Brakespear (hereafter I must call them Olive and Agnes, though I do not find it comes very naturally) seemed little interested. ‘How do you do?’ she said in an offhand way from the door.

  ‘How do you do?’ I replied.

  Now that the lights were on, I glanced about for dust.

  ‘You really are a fool,’ said Agnes to her sister, and walked over to the fire. One could have said she spoke in affectionate derision, as is the way within a family (the alternative commonly being silence); but I might rather have called it habitual derision, accepted derision.

  Olive closed the piano and got up. At that exact distance from me, and by fairly strong artificial light, her neck, inside the open collar of her dark shirt, looked more withered and less shapely than I had thought. ‘How did the meeting go?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Exactly as expected,’ replied Agnes, standing before the blaze, her feet slightly apart, her hands behind her back. She was of an entirely different physical type from her sister: a squarish, fattish woman at about my height, with a thickening face and neck, dark eyes and abundant dark hair in a style more fashionable than her sister’s. She wore a plain dress in thick, purple wool, and black, high-heeled shoes. She might have been described by an enemy as too heavily made up, but that is a difficult problem for a woman of her build and period of life: even though I should not have cared to assess her exact age within a range of perhaps twenty years. As will be gathered, she seemed very much more the customary Englishwoman than her sister; and she had something of the frustration and suppressed, long-lost feeling that goes with the customary Englishwoman, however banal the customary manifestation of it. When one spends one’s time going round the different properties of the Historic Structures Fund, one grows to learn the essential characteristics of the customary Englishwoman.

  Olive had unlocked an ebony and ivory cabinet and was getting us drinks. There was no further reference to the meeting that had been mentioned. Indeed, there was silence. I knew that it was for me to help things along, but I could think of nothing to say. Agnes saved me the trouble.

  ‘What are you feeling for?’ she asked.

  It seemed appallingly observant of her.

  ‘I thought I’d dropped my handkerchief,’ I improvised, perhaps more readily than convincingly.

  ‘Mr. Oxenhope’s visit has nothing to do with the house,’ said Olive conciliatingly. It was excellently intended, no doubt, but the form of words suggested that she too had cottoned on. Because I had, of course, been feeling (as Agnes had put it) for dust. And, what was more, I had been doing it without being aware of it. Needless to say, it was very discourteous of me, socially speaking.

  ‘And his gropings have nothing to do with his handkerchief,’ said Agnes drily. ‘With either of his handkerchiefs: the one in his sleeve or the pretty one in his breast pocket. Do you carry three handkerchiefs, Mr. Oxenhope?’

  ‘N
o,’ I replied calmly. ‘We were sitting here in the dark and I thought the handkerchief had fallen out of my sleeve.’

  ‘I believe you, Mr. Oxenhope. Sitting in the dark is the only thing my sister really likes doing.’

  ‘Not altogether,’ said Olive. ‘As you might guess, I like riding too. Do you ride?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’ As a matter of fact, I had thought of trying to take it up when I began to realise what my work with the Fund would be like, but Hamish Haythorn had strongly advised me against it, saying that it was a mistake to meet the tenants on their own ground. I have since wondered whether Haythorn’s view was not affected by the fact that he could neither ride himself nor be conceived as capable of it. But no doubt this was mere malice on my part.

  ‘Just as well for you,’ said Agnes. ‘Going riding with my sister is an act of desperation.’

  ‘I’m sorry all the same,’ I said, looking at Olive as I spoke, and trying to meet her eyes, because, self-sufficient though she seemed, I was growing sorry for her, as well as for myself.

  ‘Sherry?’ asked Olive, either avoiding my glance or being unaware of my intention. ‘Or gin?’ Or pascado? Pascado is an aperitif that Agnes brings back from one of her committees. It is Elizabethan and based on quince juice. Or would you prefer a whisky?’

  I thought that I had better make some effort to appease Agnes, so volunteered for the pascado.

  ‘Very few people like it,’ said Agnes.

  The evening continued to be uneasy.

  The sisters were, at the least, utterly bored with one another. Such communication as they attempted was confined to jibing and belittlement. As at the start, most of the attacking seemed to come from Agnes; but I thought this might have been partly because Olive gave the impression of having years ago said all she had to say, and of by now preferring to sit in silence. Later that evening it seemed to me, however, that Olive on several occasions struck home on her own; though Agnes each time behaved as if she were too stupid to understand. It might have been the fact of the matter, but I doubted it. The sisters had obviously been committed to this form of exercise for years, and every sentence and every small action had overtones and undertones soaring and sinking beyond the apprehension of any outsider. I, of course, attempted intermittently to make ‘general conversation’, but Agnes was antagonistic, and Olive, though perfectly polite, was indifferent and world-weary. One might have said that Olive knew it all already, but I doubted whether she really did. I suspected that she fought off knowing, and that it was really Agnes who knew much more. One often finds this with women of Agnes’s type. I perhaps make it all sound as if I was having a dreadful time, and it is certainly true that I was not enjoying myself; but by then I was surprisingly accustomed to such family sessions in the houses I visited. I had found them to be common: perhaps as patrician standards merge with plebeian ones, and there is less opportunity for the graces of entertainment as distinct from the utilities. The new conditions take different people in different ways, but are seldom to the advantage of the guests.

  There seemed to be no question of any clothes being changed for dinner. When we entered the dining-room, the big, polished table was as dusty, beneath the shaded candles, as it had been when I saw it two years earlier in the sunlight; and the tall, grey woman who stood there waiting for us, was recognisably she who had watched my writing on it with my ringer. Supposing that Agnes would be observing me, I tried to avoid all reaction.

  Dinner was good and the wine excellent, but conversation there was almost none. The presence of the grey servant (still, by the way, in a grey nylon wrapper) seemed to prevent the sisters even from bickering. I felt that very little ever went into the house: not even ordinary news, let alone what are called ideas. It would be very difficult for the Brakespear sisters to have many friends. Apart from foodstuffs and practicalities, I felt that almost nothing and nobody entered but the public visitors in summer: by definition aloof and alien; merely staring in through the bars, and, even then, uncomprehending of everything that mattered, even when (occasionally) qualified to discriminate between Meissen and Nymphenburg.

  And, as I had seen for myself, the visitors to Clamber Court, though, according to Haythorn, increasing slightly in number, were powerless to dispel the dust. On the dining-room table it was so thick it marked my cuffs. I observed circles left in it by platters or glasses that had been removed, became inconspicuous within minutes, and by the time the meal was finished, had almost vanished, though not quite, when one carried the exact spot in one’s mind and looked keenly. But the fare was fine. In very few of the Fund houses, if any, had I been offered such wine (let alone anywhere else). I knew this even though I was by no means a connoisseur; little more than of music.

  Back in the music room after dinner, a wry discussion started about the ethics of coursing. I could contribute little. The sisters disagreed about reafforestation, and later about the flowers that were being planted for the benefit of the summer visitors. My views were hardly sought. I imagine that Agnes would have despised them and Olive pitied them. Ultimately, Agnes said she must get on with the accounts, and sat by the fire making entries in a black book, with a pile of bills and receipts on the floor at her feet. ‘You won’t mind being treated as one of the family,’ she had said to me before starting this labour.

  Olive suggested that I might care to look for a book in the library. It was well known to be a very fine library, largely assembled by a Lord St. Adrian of the early eighteenth century and hardly disturbed since. But I said that I was in the middle of a book I had brought with me, and that I might fetch it down from my bedroom in a moment. I made no further move, because I always have difficulty in reading when in the company of others, let alone the company of strangers. Instead, I turned over the pages of Country Life and Field, dusty back numbers of which lay about the room, looking almost unopened. They would have to be burnt or stacked before the public season opened.

  Olive merely sat in front of the fire, with her long legs stretched towards it. Her eyes remained open, but almost expressionless; too resigned, I thought, even to look sad. I was sure that she would have returned to the piano, if Agnes had not been there. Olive was by no means in her first youth, but there was something appealing about her, and, though it may not be a suitable comment for even this confidential record, I thought, by no means for the first time in such surroundings, what an odd way it was for people of opposite sexes to spend the evening, when, after all, there was nothing ahead that any of us could be sure of but infirmity, illness, and death. It is strange that people train themselves so carefully to go to waste so prematurely.

  Every now and then, Agnes wondered sharply whether I would mind adding something up or working something out for her; and surprisingly bristly some of these small tasks of hers proved to be. Olive never even sighed. In the end, the grey servant appeared (the sisters addressed her as ‘Elizabeth’) and brought in a large bowl of fruit.

  ‘What time would you like breakfast?’ Agnes asked me.

  ‘What time would suit you best?’ I responded politely.

  ‘Elizabeth will bring it to your room,’ said Agnes. ‘We go our own ways.’

  I suggested a time and the grey servant departed.

  ‘I understand that you’ll be fully occupied throughout the day?’ asked Agnes.

  ‘Very fully,’ I replied, remembering what I was there for and in for.

  ‘Then we shall see you as tonight?’

  I expressed assent and gratification.

  Over oranges and apples, the evening ended. Agnes ate nothing, but, as well as an apple, I accepted from Olive a whisky, and she herself consumed a noticeably stronger one. Already, on our first evening together, we were running out of generalities.

  ‘More whisky?’ asked Olive after a munching silence.

  I accepted, though it was unlike me. She refilled my glass to the same strength as her own. The curious dust lay all around me in the warm light.

  There was so
me clattering with bolts and chains, some checking of locks and hasps: all Agnes’s work.

  ‘Don’t wait,’ she said, but we did, and all ascended the stairs together.

  The sisters turned to the right, where I turned to the left, but I had not even shut the door of my imperfectly lighted room when I heard familiar steps approaching along the passage, and Olive stood in the doorway.

  ‘I just came to say I’m sorry we’re so dull.’ She spoke in her usual non-committal voice, but softly; perhaps so that Agnes could have no chance of overhearing.

  ‘I’m sorry I don’t ride,’ I said; and I still think it was clever of me to think of it so quickly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Olive. ‘It’s a pity. Especially when we can do so little to entertain you. The company of two middle-aged sisters who don’t get on isn’t much fun.’

  ‘I don’t see you as middle-aged at all,’ I replied. Whether I did or not, I saw Olive as most attractive, especially at that moment, when she stood slender and poetical in my doorway, and both of us were about to go to bed.

  But she made no response. She did not even smile. There was merely a moment’s silence between us.

  Then she said, ‘I apologise for us. Goodnight,’ and walked quickly away.

  I found myself thinking of her for a long time, and being kept from sleep by the thought.

  *

  My breakfast arrived at the exact moment I had named. The grey factotum woke me when she knocked. Having fallen asleep belatedly, I had then slept deeply. It seemed very cold. Without thinking about it, I swept the dust off the polished bedside table with my pyjama sleeve. Then I realised that the grey Elizabeth, who was putting down my tray on the table, might take my action as a slight.