The Unsettled Dust (17 page)

Indeed, the only discernible upshot was that Noelle ceased to walk in the woods: not only in the particular wood opposite her front gate, but all the other woods in the district. Some of them in any case were mere struggling strips of scrubland and thorn bush: hardly worth visiting unless one was utterly desperate.

But one Sunday, four or five months later, Melvin suggested that they go for a stroll with the children. It was because one car had been lent to a business friend, whose own had apparently been stolen; and Noelle had forgotten to licence the other. Melvin had been very forgiving, as he always was, always.

‘Just give me a minute or two to get kitted out,’ said Melvin.

Noelle knew what that meant, and herself changed into tan trousers and a lumber jacket. The least she could do was
co-operate
in those supposedly secondary matters that so often proved to be primary. The children were dressed as pioneers already.

Melvin, when he reappeared, eclipsed them all, as was natural. A casual looker-on could hardly have distinguished him from Wild Bill Hickock, especially as Melvin purchased most of his fun gear in the States or in Toronto.

There could be no question of going anywhere but into the wood, because for anything else a motor would have been needed. The children were permitted to walk to and from school, because Noelle had put her foot down and refused to tie herself to driving them so short a distance four times a day, whatever the other mothers might do and say. Melvin in turn put his foot down when the possibility arose of the mites straggling along the highway at any other time.

‘Don’t forget it may rain,’ now said Melvin.

Of course, Noelle had felt certain qualms from the outset, and as soon as they were among the silver birches, she rejoiced that at least she was so differently arrayed, all but in disguise. Moreover, the woods always felt quite different when one entered them with one’s entire family. The things that happened when one was with one’s family were
amazingly
unlike the things that happened when one was not. It was this fact that made the transition between the one state and the other always so upsetting.

‘Just wait till we meet a buffalo,’ said Melvin to the children.

Agnes screamed with delight, but Judith hitched at her belt and looked cynical.

‘Got your lasso ready, son?’ asked Melvin.

Agnes twirled it round his head and started leaping about among the tangled tree roots. Judith also began to run about, holding her arms in front of her above her head, and bringing them together at short intervals, as if she were catching
butterflies
, which she was not. There were no butterflies. There never were many.

‘I am dead to the world,’ said Melvin softly to Noelle, when the two children were at what could be regarded as a safe distance, short though that distance really was. ‘I’m fagged out.’ In the home circle, Melvin expressed himself
conservatively
, domestically. He never used the words he used at work.

‘You look a bit pale,’ said Noelle, without turning to him. She had noticed it ever since his return from Johannesburg the day before yesterday. Pallor of any kind would be quite incompatible with his ranchhand rig.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, Noelle,’ he went on. She had always disallowed any contraction or distortion of her Christian name, or any nickname. ‘My head feels as if it will burst. I’ve felt sicker and sicker ever since that February bust-up in Edmonton.’

To Noelle it seemed that Melvin went to Edmonton more often than to anywhere else, and that always it led to trouble, though that last time had doubtless been the worst of all, because Melvin had spoken of it ever since, shaking with rage and bafflement. Edmonton in Alberta, of course; not John Gilpin’s homely Edmonton.

‘You’d better lay up,’ said Noelle. ‘I expect we can afford it.’

‘No such thing,’ said Melvin, with what Noelle deemed an unreasonable darkness in his tone. He had never permitted Noelle to look for even a part-time job. It was one of those various things about which she was never sure whether she was glad or sorry. She knew that she somewhat lacked any very specific qualifications.

‘I can’t let up for a single day,’ said Melvin. I’d be shot out if I did. Make no mistake about that.’

She supposed that there he must probably be right. Many of her local acquaintances already had husbands who had been declared redundant, as the usage now was.

The matter was settled for the moment by Agnew falling over, his feet and legs entangled in his lariat, as if he’d been a steer.

Noelle hoicked him up. She had the readiness of experience, as with an acrobat or exhibition wrestler.

‘No bones broken’, she said, stroking Agnew’s stylishly unbarbered locks. ‘No blood spilt. No nasty bruise.’ One could not really know about the last, but it was the thing one said, and very possibly the utterance terminated the danger.

Judith was still running about catching phantom moths. She was a lissom, leggy little girl, but already deep, much as Noelle herself was deep.

‘You was riding the range,’ said Melvin, stabbing Agnew between the shoulders with mock manliness. ‘You’ve had a spill, but you’re up again, and riding high.’

‘It was the silly rope,’ said Agnew.

‘Ride on, cowboy,’ directed Melvin, patriarchal,
example-setting.

‘Why should he?’ enquired Judith at some distance and to no one in particular, no one short of the universe.

‘Get going,’ called out Melvin. ‘Show ‘em. Prove it.’

Agnew looked doubtful, but began once more to plunge about. Fortunately, they had now reached the beeches, where the roots, though thicker, were for that reason more
noticeable
. Agnew had begun to use his lasso as if it were a fishing line. All the pockets in the roots were full of fish. Some of them actually did contain a little water. It had been raining on and off for many weeks. Noelle had been going everywhere in a stylish mackintosh.

‘I’m nearing the end of the line,’ said Melvin to Noelle. ‘Something will just have to give, or I shall break.’

The two children began running down the slope to the cleared space at the end, where everyone turned and went back up again. The relatively long-limbed Judith, relatively unencumbered with miniature ranch gear, arrived easily first. She started an Ashanti dance she had seen on colour television at school.

Noelle’s heart began to sink further and to beat faster with every descending step. She had, as usual, forgotten how all courage leaves one when the peril, whatever it be, is really close in time or space or both.

‘I’ve thought of applying for a transfer,’ said Melvin. ‘I haven’t told you, because I didn’t want to worry you.’ He was trying to struggle out of his trapper’s jerkin, though the weather was no warmer than it had been, and Noelle felt chillier every minute.

They were all assembled in the clearing. The circumambient litter was now sodden, much of it eaten away by enormous, conjectural rats. There was no other human being visible, or even audible; doubtless owing to the unsettled forecast.

‘Well, there’s nothing else to do but go back,’ said Noelle almost immediately.

‘No!!!’ At school the children had learned the trick of
negating
loudly in unison.

‘Let’s sit down for a moment,’ said Melvin.

‘It’s all too soggy,’ protested Noelle.

‘I’ve got
The
Frontiersman
from last time,’ proclaimed Melvin, producing it from the rustler’s pocket in his cast-off jerkin. ‘I’ll rip it up and we can take half each. I never have time to read it anyway.’

‘We can’t sit among so much litter. It’s disgusting. It’s degrading.’

But Melvin was settled on one of the adapted tree trunks and was chivalrously holding out the bigger portion of the bisected journal.

‘Just for a moment, Noelle,’ he said wistfully, all but smiling at her. ‘I need to get back some part of my sanity.’

So she slumped on the trunk beside him. She tried hard to keep her bottom on the small, thin package. ‘Don’t go too far away,’ she said to the children. ‘We’re only stopping here for a minute.’

Melvin had drawn his lumberjack’s knife, and was running his finger along the blade. His gaze was at once concentrated and absent-minded. Fortunately, the blade was unlikely to be very sharp.

‘I often dream of what it
should
have been like,’ said Melvin. ‘On some island. Our island. You in a grass skirt, me in a leopard skin, perhaps a snow leopard skin, sun all the time, and breadfruit to chew, and mangoes, and coconuts, and flying fish. All day and all night the throbbing of the surf on the reef, and every now and then a distant schooner to wave to. Birds of paradise sweeping from palm tree to palm tree. Monkeys chattering and swinging. Loving you on the warm sand in the darkness beneath the Southern Cross.’

‘Beautiful,’ said Noelle, gently taking his hand. ‘I’d like that.’

Melvin looked at her doubtfully. Agnew often had just that same look, inherited or acquired.

‘I mean it. Truly,’ said Noelle softly. ‘I’d like it too. But we have to be practical.’ She could not help squirming a little on the tiny, extemporised cushion.

‘Do we? Must we?’ He was drawing the lumber knife across the back of his hand.

‘Of course we must, darling. I’m sure we can work
something
out together. Something practical.’

She always said that, and she would have been sincerely pleased if it had ever proved possible. What happened every time in actuality was that she had nearly expired of combined boredom and nausea before Melvin had made any real
progress
in describing the full details of the particular crisis. She never doubted that Melvin’s business life was truly terrible. One trouble was that a terrible life is less fulfilling to others than a happy life.

He squeezed her hand. ‘If the men in white coats don’t come for me first,’ he said.

‘I’ll keep them away,’ she replied softly. ‘I’ll distract their attention.’

Inevitably, the children, forbidden to go far, were enjoying themselves among the litter. They were investigating
discarded 
food and drink cans, deciphering sodden letterpress, speculating about indelicate proprietary utilities. Really they were only a few feet away. All along, surreptitiousness had been enforced upon the parental intimacies.

‘You’d distract anyone’s attention, Noelle,’ said Melvin, almost whispering.

Noelle looked away from his fatigued face and glanced for a moment towards the thicker foliage to the right of the clearing.

‘I’d like you to distract mine this very moment,’ said Melvin,
sotto
voce.

‘We must be
practical,
said Noelle.

Melvin threw the knife into the ground, though it failed to enter, and merely lay horizontally, adding to the litter.

‘Children!’ he called out. ‘Run away and play for a bit.’

Noelle rose. ‘No, don’t,’ she called to them.

Confused, the children came to a standstill before reaching the thicket towards which they had started charging. They began to play ‘Triangles’ on the rough ground. It was a game that everyone was playing and involved much darting about in a small area. Preferably, there should of course have been more players, but Agnew and Judith were still young enough to improvise. The game was something like ‘Rounders’, an elementary version of it.

‘We can’t possibly,’ said Noelle to Melvin. She sat down again beside him. ‘We’ll stay just a few more minutes, so that the children can have a run about, and I’ll see if I can get them to bed a little earlier than usual.’

‘I want you
now
,’ said Melvin

Noelle smiled at him, but said nothing. Though she rather fancied herself as a backwoods girl, she really preferred Melvin in one of his executive suits. At the time of Watteau and Fragonard, people played in the woods wearing wigs, panniers, and flowered silk from Lyon. They carried ribboned crooks.

‘Now,’
said Melvin. He picked up the knife and reattached it to its thong. ‘Let’s get lost in the forest. The kids won’t even notice for a long time.’

Melvin often had whims of that kind. Noelle supposed them to be outlets for the pressure under which so much of his life was passed.

He rose to his feet and pulled Noelle to hers. ‘Let’s see how lost we can get.’

She had found it best at such moments to go along with him as far as was practicable. At the moment, it was quite true that the children seemed absorbed in their running and tumbling. ‘Triangles’ is a far more physically demanding game than, say, ‘Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses’. The children seemed not even to notice their gaucho parents departing across the worn clearing; exactly as Melvin had said. And, after all, there was no real reason why Noelle should not enter those bushes.

‘I don’t think we shall get lost,’ she said. ‘It’s just into the next glade.’

‘Have you been there?’

‘Not really.’

‘Then how do you know? When we stray from the warpath, we enter the impenetrable rain forest.’

All the same, Noelle did know. She had a precise mental picture of what it was like on the other side of the bushes. She always had had. She must have been there some time, though she could not remember the circumstances.

‘It’s impossible to get lost in these woods,’ she said. ‘Or in any of the other woods round here,’

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.