The Unsettled Dust (16 page)

As it happened, a surprising number of men seemed still to fall fractionally in love with Noelle, and to prefer dulcet and tender talk with her to such other things as might be on offer elsewhere. Noelle could never decide whether it was merely her appearance or something less primary that drew them. She often reflected upon how little she had to complain of.

*

Noelle had been perfectly truthful in saying that she couldn’t, as well as wouldn’t, make a promise. Melvin did sometimes return before his time. As far as she could tell, there was nothing unpleasant or ulterior about this. It seemed natural that Melvin should be blown hither and thither by the trade winds, because everyone else was. Gone are the days of
predictable
grind in the high-stooled counting house; settled for a lifetime. Business has changed completely, as businessmen always point out.

Besides, Judith or Agnes might be sent home from school early. That often occurred. And if she was in the house when one or the other of them arrived, she had to give much time either to listening to a tale of grievance and storm, or to anxious effort in trying to discover what this time could ever have happened.

But, when the moment came, the clock she had inherited from her father (he had been given it by his firm less than a year before his death) struck three, and the doorbell was shimmering before the last dull echo had faded.

The man was politely extending his hand. ‘My name is John Morley-Wingfield. With a hyphen, I fear I must admit. Let’s get that over to start with.’

His expression was serious, but not sad. His brown hair curled pleasantly, but not unduly, and was at perhaps its most impressive moment, fading in places, but not yet too seriously grey. His brown eyes were sympathetic without being sentimental. His garb was relaxed without being
perfunctory
.

For Noelle, hesitation would have served no purpose.

‘Do come in for a little,’ she said. ‘My children return from school in an hour.’

‘Are they doing well?’

‘Not very.’

She led him into the room which Melvin called the lounge and she called nothing in particular.

‘If you’ll sit down, I’ll bring us a cup of tea.’

‘We must keep enough time for our walk.’

She looked at him. ‘The wood’s not all that big. None of them are round here.’

He sat on the leathery, cushiony settee, and gazed at his brightly polished brown shoes. ‘I always think a wood is much the same, however big or small it is. Within reason, of course. The impact is the same. At least upon me.’

‘You don’t actually get lost in these particular woods,’ said Noelle. ‘You can’t.’

He glanced up at her. It was plain that he took all this for delay, wanted them to make a start.

‘I’ll hurry with the tea,’ said Noelle. ‘Will you be all right? Perhaps you’d care to look at this?’

She gave him the latest
Statist.
She did not remark that it was her husband who subscribed to it. The man, who had known her address, probably knew about her husband also.

‘Or this might be more cheerful.’

She held out a back number of the
National
Geographic
magazine.
It was Melvin too who subscribed to that, though he complained that he never had time to read it, so that the numbers always lay about unsorted until Noelle gave the children an armful for use as reinforcement in and around the sandpit.

Noelle went to the kitchen.

When she came back with the tray, the man was on his feet again, and looking restlessly at the books. They were, yet again, Melvin’s books. Noelle’s were upstairs, not all of them even unpacked, owing to shelf shortage.

‘Milk and sugar?’

‘A very little milk, please. No sugar.’

‘I know we
shouldn’t
,’ said Noelle.

He stooped over her so that she could hand him his cup. He had a faint but striking aroma, the smell of a pretty good club.

‘Careful,’ said Noelle.

He drifted, sipping, round the room, as if it had been full of people, or perhaps trees, and every settling place occupied, or, alternatively, gnarled and jagged.

He spoke. ‘You have the most wonderful hair.’ He was on the far side of the big television.

Noelle sat up a little, but said nothing.

‘And eyes.’

Noelle could not prevent herself dimpling almost
perceptibly
.

‘And figure. It would not be possible to imagine a shape more beautiful.’

One trouble was that Noelle simply did not know how true or untrue any of these statements were. She had always found it impossible to make up her mind. More precisely, she
sometimes
felt one thing, and sometimes almost the complete opposite. One had, if one could, to strike an average among the views expressed or implied by others; and others seemed to spend so much of their time dissimulating.

‘Have a chocolate finger?’ she said, extending the plate towards him at the full length of her arm. She was wearing a dress with delicate short sleeves. After all, it was August. Melvin particularly hated August in Pittsburgh, where now he was supposed to be.

‘Nothing to eat, thank you.’

The man was ranging between the Astronaut’s Globe and the pile of skiing journals.

‘I like your dress.’

‘It’s very simple.’

‘You have wonderful taste.’

‘Stop being so civil, please.’

‘You seem to me quite perfect.’

‘Well, I’m not.’ But she made no further reference to any specific defect.

‘Have some more tea? Bring me your cup.’

He traversed the Eskimo-style carpet with measured, springy tread.

‘Then we must go,’ he said. ‘We really must. I want to see you in your proper element.’

She handed up the refilled cup without looking at him. ‘You’re right about one thing,’ she said. ‘I do love our woods. I only wish they were larger.’

‘You love all music too,’ said the man, standing over her.

‘Yes.’

‘And the last moments before sunset in the countryside?’

‘Yes,’

‘And being alone in a quiet spot at noon?’

‘I usually have the children’s meal to prepare.’

‘And wearing real silk next to your skin?’

‘I am not sure that I ever have.’

He dashed the cup back on the tray quite sharply. Noelle could see that it was far from empty.

‘Let’s go. Let’s go now.’

She walked out with him just as she was. He followed her down the crazy concrete path, mildly multi-coloured. The reason why the gate groaned was that the children liked the noise. They swung backwards and forwards on it for hours, and threw fits at the idea of the hinges being oiled.

She crossed the road with the man, surprised that there was no whizzing traffic. All life had eased off for a moment. They ascended the worn, earth slope into the wood.

‘You be guide,’ said the man.

‘I keep telling you, it’s not the New Forest.’

‘It’s far more attractive.’

As it happened, Noelle almost agreed with that; or at least knew what the man might have meant. Melvin and she took the children to the New Forest each year, camping at one of the official sites; and each year she found the New Forest a disappointment.

‘You fill the wood with wonder,’ said the man.

‘We just go straight ahead, you know,’ said Noelle. ‘Really there’s not much else. All the other paths come to nothing. They’re simply beaten down by the kids.’

‘And by the wild things,’ said the man.

‘I don’t think so.’

They were walking side by side now, among the silver birches, and it was true that the voice of the world was
becoming
much drowsier, the voice of nature more express. It was, of course, a Tuesday: probably the best day for such an
enterprise
.

‘Will you permit me to put my arm round your waist?’ asked the man.

‘I suppose so,’ said Noelle.

He did it perfectly; neither limply, nor with adolescent
tenacity
. Noelle began to fall into sympathetic dissolution. She had a clear thirty-five minutes before her.

‘The beeches begin here,’ she said. ‘Some of them are
supposed
to be very old. Nothing will grow around their roots.’

‘That clears the way for us,’ said the man.

Hitherto, the path had gone gently upwards, but now it had reached the small ridge and begun to descend. Noelle knew that here the wood widened out. None the less, the broad and beaten track led nowhere, because at the far end of the wood lay private property, heavily farmed, and with the right of way long closed and lost, doubtless through
insufficient
public resistance at the time. Noelle, if asked, would have been very unsure who owned the wood. It seemed to exist in its own right.

‘Glorious trees,’ said the man. ‘And you are the spirit of them.’ He was looking up into the high and heavy branches. His grasp of Noelle was growing neither tighter nor looser: admirable. They walked slowly on.

‘That’s the end,’ said Noelle, pointing ahead with her free arm.

Two or three hundred yards before them, the wood ended in a moderate-sized dell or clearing; probably no more than the work of all the people who at this point had rotated and gone back on their tracks, returned up the slope.

‘I keep telling you how small the wood is,’ said Noelle. ‘Not much bigger than a tent.’

‘Never mind,’ said the man, gently. ‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing like that matters.’

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.