The Unsettled Dust (12 page)

Rort smiled, too polite to express doubt. One could tell from his face that he thought the tale too preposterous to be worth powder and shot. ‘I expect they’d most of them done the same kind of thing to their serfs and servants in their time,’ he said; entering, as he saw it, into the spirit of the narrative.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said the old man. ‘All I know is that, speaking for myself, I wouldn’t have much truck with the people responsible for what I saw until they at least repudiate what they did then.’

‘If we followed that line of thought, we’d have a third world war,’ said Rort.

But the old man said nothing further; nor, after Dyson had thanked him (quite adroitly) on behalf of us all, did he or we return to the subject during the remainder of the course.

‘Naturally
I
don’t care, because I love you,’ said Curtis. ‘I’m thinking entirely of you.’

Nesta had always been given to believe that, whatever they might say to one, it was a woman’s appearance that men really cared about; and indeed she thought that she well understood their point of view. So understanding had she been in fact, that she had long regarded herself as truly resigned to the wintry consequences in her own case. She would not, therefore, ever have accepted Curtis’s proposal of marriage, had she not greatly, though as yet briefly, loved him. She had a temperamental distaste for extreme measures.

This trait of Nesta’s, and her experience of men, had
prevented
her discerning that Curtis was a far more desperate character. Having in his early twenties loved a woman of great beauty, he considered that he had learnt his lesson: beauty, although it had its place, was not to be lived with. He took it for granted that there were other values. He was horrified, therefore, to find himself now preoccupied, almost
unconsciously
at the start, with a stealthy campaign to persuade Nesta to do something about her looks. The campaign, he perceived, was being planned even before he proposed to her. This present suggestion was a climax.

‘I don’t really believe in it,’ said Nesta.

‘But, darling, how can you tell if you don’t put it to the test?’

Of course this was old stuff between them.

Nesta said nothing.

‘I don’t see that you have anything actually to
lose
,’
said Curtis.

‘I suppose I might lose you.’

‘Darling, please don’t be silly. I keep saying it’s
you
I’m thinking about.’

‘I wonder how I’ve managed until now?’

‘You’ve had no one to look after you.’

If she could have accepted that at anything like its face value, she would doubtless have at least tried to do what Curtis wanted. As it was (although she did not doubt that Curtis loved her in his own way), she did nothing. A date had been fixed for the marriage, and Nesta was afraid that if she took the step demanded of her, and it did not end in reasonable success, then Curtis would jilt her.

*

After the marriage, it became suddenly clear to Nesta that to the generally accepted rule about men Curtis was no
exception.
Curtis had gone about his plan cleverly enough to confuse her at a time when she so much wanted to be
confused
; but marriage cleared her mind like a rocket piercing a cloud and releasing a downpour. Possibly the worst symptom was that from the nuptial day Curtis had never referred to the matter. Apparently he had decided to accept her as she was. And since, having been long self-occluded, she was greatly wishful of change and adventure, she could not
welcome
his decision.

One trouble with Curtis’s previous attitude had always been its practical vagueness. As often with men in difficult and embarrassing contexts, he had urged action upon her with a persistency which indicated, she now saw, that latterly the subject was always in the front of his thoughts about her; but never making any very precise or feasible proposition. He would generalise about the importance and efficiency of beauty culture, and even, more than once, hint at plastic surgery; but at the smallest demur by Nesta would fall back upon an aloof irritability which she took to imply that
naturally
the details must be left to her. There was about him a suggestion that it was the least she could contribute. Why? Because she was a woman, she supposed. It was also the reason why she loved him.

One thing which marriage did for Nesta was to stoke up a romantic sensitivity which previously she had banked down with daily loads of dust and ashes. She acquired an
impersonal
dissatisfaction with a way of life which a year before she would have thought ecstatic if it were not that she would then have altogether excluded it from her thoughts as
impossible.
Curtis’s passion might be somewhat guarded, but it was neither infrequent nor frightening; his general consideration for her was admirable; and he provided her, starved as she was of affectionate outlet, with continuous opportunities to assist and look after him. Only he no longer suggested that she should seek advice about her appearance; no longer remarked that every woman did so or wasn’t a woman.

Eight or nine months after she was married, Nesta for the first time gave the problem exact and businesslike
consideration
. As commonly happens after a long period of irresolution, an apparent answer, a seeming first step, stared her in the face immediately she started seriously to look for it. She went to the library of her mother’s club, where she read through the flowing advertisement columns of the fashion papers for women, papers which she would not have about the flat, lest Curtis misunderstand, and perhaps pity, her interest in them; and in one which was new to her (it was entitled ‘Flame’), she found a relevant intimation. Restrained, sensitive, civilised, promising nothing and alluding only to a consultation without obligation, it bespoke as much as could be hoped for, Nesta thought, in such a case, although placed somewhat unnoticeably in a corner of the penultimate page. There was an address to which enquirers were invited to write for an appointment. No telephone number was given, but it was not a matter about which Nesta would have telephoned.

The reply to Nesta’s letter was elegantly typed on thick paper, bearing at the top a representation, embossed in red, of a sleek, slightly formalised head and neck (a desirable looking creature, Nesta admitted, rubbing the raised surface with her finger); but the address was in a street, and indeed a part of the town, which were outside her restricted
topography
. The suggested appointment was for that morning. There was no need to confirm it, stated the letter; apparently in no doubt that Nesta would haste to attend. Nesta put the letter in the handbag. She decided in favour of a taxi.

It was a long journey and a disappointing landfall. They were high terrace houses of that kind which while apparently built for single families, and certainly very inconvenient to operate on any other basis, yet give the impression of never having been so occupied. Now, in this particular street, they appeared largely to be let out in single rooms for habitation by the elderly and disappointed. The presence of children playing on the pavement manifested both life’s renascence and the street’s continued social descent.

The house Nesta sought was in the middle of the row. Its knocker and letter box flap were polished and the lace curtains at its windows clean and lusciously draped; but the general effect was somehow still so cheerless that Nesta upon
beholding
it as she stepped out of the taxi, immediately decided to go home.

She hesitated for a moment, trying to assemble an
explanation.

‘Don’t yer like the look of it?’ enquired the driver.

Nesta turned to him. ‘No,’ she said, and regarded him seriously.

It seemed all that was needed.

‘’Op in. I’ll soon ’ave yer back ’ome.’

Nesta nodded.

But already the moment was gone. The front door of the house was open, and a woman advancing down the short strip of garden. Nesta was unequipped with the ruthlessness which might have enabled her to act on her impulse and bolt.

‘It was you who wrote to me?’

Again Nesta nodded. The woman was staring at her.

‘Make up your mind,’ enjoined the taxi-driver. He seemed to disapprove of the latest development. But Nesta was
looking
in her handbag.

‘I’m Mrs. de Milo. You made an appointment with me.’ It was a statement of fact.

‘Yes,’ said Nesta. ‘I think I’m in time.’ She had found the fare, but the taximan still seemed doubtful.

Mrs. de Milo made no reply, but stood staring at Nesta, as if minutely considering whether she for her part would take matters further. Mrs. de Milo was an ageless woman with a white smooth face, Grecian nose, and large but well shaped breasts. She wore an elegant white overall of medical aspect, gleaming with starch. Her black hair, very thick and
glistening
, was parted in the middle and drawn into a carefully composed bun.

‘Come in,’ said Mrs. de Milo, her mind apparently made up. ‘We can’t talk in the street.’

The taxi began to move off.

*

The effect that evening on Curtis was interesting. His expression when Peggy let him into the flat and he first saw Nesta was one which Nesta found it difficult to decide about, wrought up though she was to observe him minutely. Then he spoke.

‘Darling!’

She would not smile.

‘Darling, I thought for one moment –.’

Still she left him to define.

‘All the same … You do
look
different?’

She perceived. Curtis’s initial response had been nothing less than complete non-recognition. Although she had been standing in shadow it was startlingly more than she had reckoned upon.

She did not go to him, but rather drew back a step.

‘I’ve altered my hair style.’

‘I’ll say you have.’ He was almost peering at her. ‘Why?’

‘I wanted a change.’

His face lightened somewhat.

‘Anything you want, darling.’

Peggy asked if she should bring in soup. It was amusing that Peggy had never seemed even to notice the innovation.

‘Give me a minute of time to change,’ said Curtis, as he always did. When alone with Nesta, he dined in one of his older suits.

Nesta turned and, full in the light, looked at herself yet again in the expensive, but not very beautiful hanging glass which had been her father-in-law’s wedding present.

*

Nine days later (Nesta had begun to keep a diary) Curtis, without explanation or precedent, suddenly, in the middle of dinner, began to make a scene.

They had been eating for some time in silence, when Curtis, his fish unfinished, crashed down his knife and fork and bawled out: ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, Nesta?’

One change in Nesta seemed to be that her nerves were growing stronger, so that she no longer trembled before the unexpected, as she had hitherto tended to do. Now she looked Curtis in the eyes. ‘Nothing is the matter with me that I know of.’ Her look changed as she added, ‘I’m sorry the dinner isn’t better. You know it’s Peggy’s night out.’

‘You’re a better cook than Peggy any day.’ It was hard to believe, notwithstanding, that indifferently cooked fish was responsible for Curtis’s remarkable wrath.

‘I expect I didn’t stick closely enough to the directions.’

‘Why have you messed up your hands like that?’

It was, in fact, the first time she had worn brightly coloured nail varnish.

‘Do you like it?’ She stretched out her hands across the table. It was true that they now looked unlike the hands of a capable cook.

‘It makes me sick.’

Nesta slowly withdrew her hands and placed them in her lap.

‘It’s hideous. Besides, it’s vulgar. Never do it again.’

None the less, now that the cause of his fury was exposed, the fury was ebbing, the more quickly for its violence.

‘After all they’re
my
hands.’

Curtis was stricken by her placidity.

‘Don’t do it again, there’s a good girl.’

‘I think if s nice.’

‘Oh darling, it’s not. It’s horrible.’

Nesta remembered having read in some cynical book that although a woman’s appearance is what a man most cares about, yet, too often, the more she does about it the less he cares for the result and for her.

*

Curtis had assumed that Nesta would discontinue the notion. When he was proved wrong, the thing became a small obsession with him. By bed and by board, Nesta’s painted hands seemed to be deflecting him, warding him off. He had assuredly never realised that he cared so very much about carmine finger nails.

It was in his behaviour to Nesta, in acts of omission, that his distaste found expression; for after the first outburst, he seldom returned to the subject in words. He was ashamed and uncomprehending; and felt compelled secretly to agree with Nesta that her hands were her own. Also he felt that he lost status by his concern with something so unimportant. He apprehended hostility to Nesta creeping into and about him like a snake; and was dismayed.

For Nesta, in her insensitiveness to his needs and impulses, it seemed to him that the manicuring of her nails had become a main business of her life. Every evening she seemed to be plying a battery of small instruments infinitely sharp, and unpleasantly surgical in aspect; or, in the alternative,
endlessly
filing. The distinctive gritty sound of Nesta filing her nails became to his nerves in their emotional aspect what the dentist’s drill was in their physical aspect. Once he found words to suggest that, instead of in the evening, she tend her nails during the day when he was out of the house; but later he divined that already she had been tending them by day also. Even apart from his antipathy to coloured nails, it was a disquieting revelation. It disgusted him in itself, as if Nesta had acquired a pathological obsession.