The Unsettled Dust Read online

  ‘I strolled down to the waterfront of the northern lake, where I had never been before, though I had seen the water at the end of streets sloping that way. Most of the town was built on the two sides of one of the ridges I’ve mentioned. To go from one lake to the other, you had to go up and then down. This made the two sides of the town look different. The ridge also sloped downwards to the west, until it faded away altogether, and you came to the passage from one lake to the other. The steamers on the northern lake all went through this passage, or straits as you might say, and moored at the piers on the south side of the town. I remember all this quite clearly. Unilinna was a town of the size you could take in as a whole, at least if you were being trained in surveying. And you can get a very clear impression of a place if you are walking about it steadily for four days.

  ‘The northern waterfront really was rather a mangy place. There was a lakeside roadway of a kind, but it was narrow and very rough. The houses were either cut up into tenements or just standing empty. There were warehouses too, but not much look of trade. There was an odd feel about the area. I thought it was mainly that there were no kids playing in the streets, as you would have expected there to be. In fact, there was hardly anyone about at all. The whole place made me remember how little I knew about foreign countries. Also I had learnt from various things that had been said, about the terrible civil war in Finland, which had ended only a few years earlier.

  ‘But much the most interesting thing was the view out across the lake. About a third of a mile from the waterfront was a wooded island, and there was a wooden footbridge right across to it, starting from about a couple of hundred yards to the left of where I stood. I suppose the island was about half a mile long, or a little more. When I say it was a wooded island, I mean that, as far as I could see through the patches of mist, it appeared to be all thick trees from end to end. Not conifers either, but big, spreading trees that must have been planted for some particular reason. I thought at first that it might be a nature reservation, but I then noticed signs of more and more houses among the trees, chimney-stacks and ridges of roofs sticking out, and sometimes bits of the façades, where the sun caught them. There were also the remains of jetties for boats, so little left of them that you didn’t notice them at first. And, as far as I could see, certainly no boats, although in most parts of Finland you see boats all along any shore where there are houses. I set off to investigate further.

  ‘There was no one on the long footbridge, and it was in very bad repair. It was about six feet wide, with thick transverse planks and a stout wooden double railing on either side, but, even so, it struck me as quite dangerous to cross, because many of the planks were missing and many others loose or broken, and because long sections of handrail would obviously collapse under any kind of pressure. It didn’t matter much about the handrail, which would have come in only if there had been a crowd, and that seemed unlikely; but the planks really quite scared me, especially as there were patches of thick mist on the bridge, and a nasty current running underneath it towards the narrows over on my left where the ships went through. There was no question, but the way, of a ship going through where I was, because the bridge was only three or four feet above the water. When there had been boats at the little jetties, they must have been prevented by it from sailing right round the island. It struck me that the footbridge might often be under water, and that this could hardly have been good for it. The whole arrangement seemed rather inefficient, but a higher bridge would of course have cost much more and no doubt the island wasn’t thought worth it. All the same, I wondered how the people got on without bridge or boats, even though they were so close to the town.

  ‘Having dropped the nature reserve idea, I thought that the island might be a private housing estate and that at the far end of the bridge might be a locked gate or at least a notice that I shouldn’t understand. But there was nothing of that kind. From the end of the bridge three rough tracks led away, one round the southern shore of the island which I had been looking at, one round the northern shore, and one up on to the usual low but steep ridge which was the island’s backbone. There was no one about and no sound at all, probably because sound was muffled by the mist which seemed to be thicker now that I had reached the island, than it looked from the far shore, and very much colder. The mist had either descended on the district more heavily than on the previous evening, or else there was something about the island which made it cling there particularly. I thought it might be something to do with the thick trees. I looked back over the bridge and found that I could not see the other side, not even in patches. The mist was becoming a real fog. I even wondered whether I ought not to go back, but there seemed no sensible reason. I had left Mr. Purvis only twenty or thirty minutes before, and though I did not much like crossing the bridge, I did not seriously doubt that I could do it, and by now there seemed no reason why going back at once should be any more pleasant than going back after I had walked round the island. There was no question of night coming on as soon as that.

  ‘I picked the path which went up on to the ridge. I suppose I thought that the mist would lie heavier round the shores of the lake, and that I would get a better general idea of the island’s layout from the higher ground. Not that it was all that much higher: only the usual hundred feet or less. Nor did it make any difference to the big heavy trees. They grew so thickly along the ridge that when I got there, I found I could see very little. And they were all absolutely still in the cold mist.

  ‘I scrambled up the slope – it was only a mud-track, and it must have been terrible after rain – and when I reached the top, came almost at once upon a house, looking in the mist much bulkier than it probably was. It was built of wood, but was much more elaborate and fanciful than any of the houses I had so far seen in Finland. It was of a fanciful shape and plan, to begin with. It had been painted in several different colours. It had huge, carved barge-boards along the edges of the roof, and carvings in many other places too. Some of them struck me as rather quaint. But I didn’t have time to look at them properly. The whole house was badly out of repair. I doubted if it had been painted since before the war – the first war, you know, and the enormous bargeboards were crumbling away, quite dangerously, I thought. The garden was completely gone to ruin.

  ‘Normally I should have supposed the house to be empty, but that was not so. There was a fence round the garden, a heavy wooden paling, something with the weight and solidity of the wooden railing across the footbridge. Even so, there were gaps in it, and there was also a gate, which was lower than the rest of the fence. I had been creeping along the fence looking through the gaps, but it was across the top of the gate that I saw a woman sitting among the long grass and in all that mist. She was not a young girl, but she had very fair hair, tied up at the back of the head. She wore a loose brown dress and she was doing something with a machine of some kind, not spinning but possibly weaving, or possibly something quite different. I don’t know what it was, but it seemed to me a very odd time and place to do it. I had only one quick look, because the woman caught my eye on the instant, as if she had been waiting for me to come into view, and stared back at me. I could see quite plainly that her eyes were a very bright blue, and that was just about all I did see with any certainty. I could have sworn that she was frightened, and I suppose it was fairly reasonable that she should be, especially if she had heard me shuffling along her fence. I wanted, above all, not to get into a scene, because of course of the language. So I got away as quickly as I could without actually running. I hesitated even to glance back, because I thought the woman might have come to the gate or be looking over it, but in the end I did, and there was nothing; only the high black paling, and the falling-down house looked huger and vaguer than ever in the mist.

  ‘Then I came upon another house. Like the first one, it was on the south side of the ridge walk, but the trees were so thick that it could have made little difference in either case from a prospect point of view. This second ho
use was quite different from the first, something unusual in Finland to start with, because in Finland the houses are much more alike than they are here. It is the same in many foreign countries, as you will all know. This house was a neat, classical affair, built in white stone, with a columned portico like a Greek temple. It was all on one storey, but it occupied quite an area, and was no mere bungalow in the usual sense. The only trouble was that it was in the same state of ruin. The garden couldn’t have been attended to in any way for years; some of the stones in the house walls had big splits in them, which suggested something wrong with the builder in the first place; and at least one of the portico columns had fallen right over, as if it really had been an old temple in Greece. As something to come upon in all that mist and quietness, it really was depressing.

  ‘But there appeared to be some who did not necessarily think so. Because in several of the windows there were faint lights, so that once again the house was occupied. They had probably lighted up against the mist rather than against the night, so had not bothered to draw the curtains, as people don’t at such times. If, of course, it was ever necessary to draw the curtains in that place. If, for that matter, there were curtains to be drawn, with, obviously, so little money around. I could easily have investigated further, as this time there was no wooden paling, but a low iron fence, now unpainted rusty, and broken down, but very special and ornamental when it was first put up. But I didn’t investigate further. I walked on. I daresay I should again have thought about walking back if it had not been that I feared to pass the woman who was working the machine in her garden. And it was not only because of the language difficulty that I feared it. The whole business was really very queer. So I continued ahead.

  ‘Again there was quite a gap between the houses, which seemed to have been dotted about the tracks in the woodland wherever the fancy struck, but before long I came to the third one. This was a tall brick affair with Italian details; rather the kind of thing you can still see in places like Sydenham and Stoke Newington – ‘gentlemen’s villas’, they used to be called, rather handsome and often very well built. I suppose the style began in the Italian countryside, but nowadays we connect it with cities, and it seemed very out of place among all those forest trees. They were actually growing in through the upper windows. This house, I thought, really was empty. I could see no sign of life about it at all and it was even farther gone than the others. As a matter of fact, I didn’t care for it; looming up half-ruined in the mist, with the branches of the trees breaking through the upper windows. It made you think of squelchy, white creatures scudding about the rotten floors, and brightly coloured funguses sprouting on the walls. But I was held as well as frightened, and hung about for a bit wondering whether I dared take a closer look. The front door was at the top of a flight of steps, just like Sydenham, and I could see the remains of a paved path leading to the broken-down gate where I stood. As I shifted around outside, I realised that once again the house was not empty at all. It couldn’t be, because someone had come out of the front door. There was what I might call a big, tall, black figure standing on the top step.

  ‘I hadn’t heard the door open, or heard anything else for that matter, but the mist seemed to kill all sound, as I’ve said, and I was growing quite accustomed to not hearing much. Nor had I seen the figure appear. I had been gazing around at the whole scene, noting this and that, and there was quite a lot to gaze at, and to think about. I’d seen the last of the sun when I crossed the bridge, but, all the same, there was still plenty of light in a misty sort of way, and I could see the black figure at the top of the steps really quite clearly. Properly, the dusk had hardly even begun. I call it a black figure: not only was it black from top to bottom, but it seemed to me both taller and wider than an average figure – considerably taller and considerably wider. All the same, it was a human figure (lest you be thinking something else): I could see the big white face.

  ‘But that was just about all I did see. This time I took to my heels and I’m not ashamed to say so. Each one of you would have done the same, believe me.’

  The old man paused. He must have been right about us too, because, rather curiously I thought, no one said a word. Even the man behind the bar leaned across it like a trick waxwork, his chin propped on his forearm. The old man continued.

  ‘I ran on, past more houses, I don’t know how many, which I didn’t stop to examine, but which certainly gave no obvious sign of life. Running and walking fast, I reached the other end of the ridge and slithered down the lumpy mud slope to the lake shore at the far side of the island. At this point it struck me to wonder why the tracks through the woodland were not completely overgrown, with so few people about. This gave me a new fright. When you get into that frame of mind, almost everything in the world can seem frightening.’

  Dyson interrupted. ‘I expect the Finlanders went across at weekends and ploughed the place up.’

  ‘No,’ said the old man. ‘The Finns didn’t. I don’t to this day know what the answer was.’

  ‘Please go on, sir,’ said Dyson.

  ‘It was much the same at the end of the island as it had been at the footbridge end. There were simply the other ends of the same three tracks: the one along the ridge, and the one along each shore. By now I had more or less confirmed that there was no other way off the island than the footbridge. It was true that I hadn’t seen the north shore, but I knew that it faced the open lake, whole square miles of water. There couldn’t be a bridge there. I had to go back.

  ‘I chose the southern shore. I couldn’t return along the ridge, and I had lost the taste for exploration. I already had some idea what the south side of the island was like, because I had seen quite a lot of it through the mist from the mainland, and with the sun shining on it too. Mostly trees and broken-down landing places, as you’ll recall. I admit that about the north shore a thought in my mind was that no one lived close opposite it on the mainland, so that no one could see at all easily what went on there. I daresay it was an absurd thing to think. I’m sure it was. But of course the island had got on my nerves.

  ‘As I walked along the lakeside, stepping out pretty fast, I saw the same big houses continued here too, all set back among the trees, so that they hardly made the most of their position, which was really a very fine one, especially if the sun should come out. The houses were all locked up, but did not seem to be quite so neglected as the houses on the ridge. Pretty clearly, they had been designed as summer residences, and yet it was summer now, more or less, and there was no one about. Of course, it was hard to be certain, in the light of my experiences, that there was no one inside any of the houses, but I had no intention of trying to make sure. At the best of times, to pass by a lot of empty houses is a sad proceeding. It makes you think all the wrong thoughts. Especially when you’re young, and not used to such thoughts. And most of all when the empty houses are set in a beautiful spot. That’s the worst thing of all.

  ‘Curiously enough, however, it was just about then, when I was feeling lower and lower, that the idea came to me: why might not one of these houses suit Mr. Danziger? By which I mean I thought that buying the whole island for development might appeal to Mr. Danziger, with a nice house for himself thrown in, a house with a lot of character, quiet, yet near the town and the timber plantation, if only the bridge was repaired, which could easily have been done, or so it seemed to me. I knew that Mr. Danziger had gone in for several developments of this kind in different countries. I was quite cheered up by my own cleverness, quite carried away by the idea. I thought there might be something in it for me personally. It was my own discovery, and nothing to do with Mr. Kirkontorni or Mr. Purvis. The outstanding speculation… No doubt I thought also that it would enable me to get my own back on the island. I daresay that was my real motive all the time. I am sorry that it should have been so.’

  ‘At that stage it was rather understandable,’ observed Dyson.

  ‘At that stage perhaps it was,’ acknowledged the old man. �
��And yet no one and nothing on the island had done me any harm. I was no more than a raw lad trespassing; not perhaps in the full legal sense, but assuredly pushing in where I wasn’t wanted. Trespassing, and not equipped to understand. What right of complaint had I?’

  ‘What happened next?’ asked Jay.

  ‘I was striding along, all but forgetting the things that had upset me, and working out a lot of nonsense about putting up small, modern houses on the island and what I could hope to get out of it for myself, when I came upon a house where there was a crowd of folk at home, and, what was more, and to judge by the noise, giving some kind of a party. There were lights on inside the house, though they looked yellow and rather dim, as room lights always do when seen from the daylight outside, but I stared in, and could see a quite a mass of people bobbing about and enjoying themselves. I suppose they were twenty or thirty yards away, down the length of the garden in front of the house. The garden was completely gone to seed like all the others. The party looked pretty peculiar too. You know how it is when you see a lot of strangers enjoying themselves inside a room at a little distance, when they don’t know you’re looking in at them. And, of course, this lot were foreigners as well. They were wearing all kinds of gay clothes in very bright colours, and really seemed to be beating it up. They were too far away for me to hear very much, especially as all the windows were tight shut, as they usually are abroad. I rather imagine that they were double windows too; to keep out the winter snow and cold. That was quite the usual thing in Finland. One thing I wondered about was the light; whether gas or electricity could be laid on to the island. It might be useful to know. I craned about but couldn’t see. I was too far away, and the lights themselves seemed to be out of my line of vision.

  ‘That jolly party took a further small weight off my mind, as you may be able to imagine, but what was my surprise to find that the next house was giving a party too, and the next after that. I looked in at both of them but couldn’t see any more than in the first house, in fact rather less, because these two houses were set even further back among the trees, and further away from the path I was on. Every time there seemed to be a good-sized crowd, and of all ages, including plenty of children. It was just like Christmas, especially with all that mist, and now with dusk coming down in a big way. It occurred to me that it must really be some kind of national celebration. I wouldn’t have expected to know what.