The Unsettled Dust (32 page)

‘Tell me about your sister,’ said Stephen. He realised that it was growing dark as well as chilly.

‘She’s not like
me
. You wouldn’t like her.’

Stephen knew that ordinary, normal girls always responded much like that.

He smiled at Nell. ‘But what is she like?’

‘She’s made quite differently. You wouldn’t care for her.’

‘Has she a name?’

‘Of a sort.’

‘What do you and your father call her?’

‘We call her different things at different times. You’re cold.’

She was a human, after all, Stephen thought.

She herself had very little to put on. Two fairly light
garments
, a pair of stout socks, her solid shoes.

They went downstairs.

‘Would you care to borrow my sweater?’ asked Stephen. ‘Until tomorrow?’

She made no reply, but simply stared at him through the dusk in the downstairs room, the living place, the parlour, the
salon
.

‘Take it,’ said Stephen. It was a heavy garment. Elizabeth had spent nearly four months knitting it continuously, while slowly recovering from her very first disintegration. It was in thick complex stitches and meant to last for ever. When
staying
with Harewood, Stephen wore it constantly.

Nell took the sweater but did not put it on. She was still staring at him. At such a moment her grey-green eyes were almost luminous.

‘We’ll meet again tomorrow,’ said Stephen firmly. ‘We’ll settle down here tomorrow. I must say something to my brother and sister-in-law, and I don’t care what happens after that. Not now. At least I
do
care. I care very much. As you well know.’

‘It’s risky,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he replied, because it was necessary to evade all discussion. ‘Yes, but it can’t be helped. You come as early as you can, and I’ll arrive with some provisions for us. We really need some blankets too, and some candles. I’ll see if I can borrow a Land Rover from one of the farms.’ He trusted that his confidence and his firm, practical actions would override all doubts.

‘I may be stopped,’ she said. ‘My father can’t read books but he can read minds. He does it all the time.’

‘You must run away from him,’ said Stephen firmly. ‘We’ll stay here for a little, and then you can come back to London with me.’

She made no comment on that, but simply repeated, ‘My father can read
my
mind. I only have to be in the same room with him. He’s frightening.’

Her attitude to her father seemed to have changed considerably. It was the experience of love, Stephen supposed: first love.

‘Obviously, you must try to be in a
different
room as much as possible. It’s only for one more night. We’ve known each other now for two days.’

‘There’s only one room.’

Stephen had known that such would be her rejoinder.

He well knew also that his behaviour might seem
unromantic
and even cold-hearted. But the compulsion upon him could not be plainer: if he did not return to the rectory tonight, Harriet, weakly aided by Harewood, would have the police after him; dogs would be scurrying across the moors, as if after Hercules, and perhaps searchlights sweeping also. Nothing could more fatally upset any hope of a quiet and enduring compact with such a one as Nell. He was bound for a rough scene with Harriet and Harewood as it was. It being now long past teatime, he would be lucky if Harriet had not taken action before he could reappear. Speed was vital and, furthermore, little of the situation could be explained with any candour to Nell. First, she would simply not understand what he said (even though within her range she was shrewd enough, often shrewder than he). Second, in so far as she did understand, she would panic and vanish. And he had no means of tracking her down at all. She was as shy about her abode as about the mark on her body; though doubtless with as little reason, or so Stephen hoped. He recognised that parting from her at all might be as unwise as it would be painful, but it was the lesser peril. He could not take her to London tonight, or to anywhere, because there was no accessible transport. Not nowadays. He could not take her to the rectory, where Harriet might make Harewood lay an anathema upon her. They could not stay in the moorland house without food or warmth.

‘I’ll walk with you to the top of the dough,’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘It’s not there I live.’

‘Where then?’ he asked at once.

‘Not that way at all.’

‘Will you get there?’

She nodded: in exactly what spirit it was hard to say.

He refrained from enquiring how she would explain the absence of specimens for her father. Two or three stones dragged from the walls of the house they were in might serve the purpose in any case, he thought: outside and inside were almost equally mossed, lichened, adorned, encumbered.

‘Goodnight, Nell. We’ll meet tomorrow morning. Here.’ He really had to go. Harriet was made anxious by the slightest irregularity, and when she became anxious, she became
frenzied
. His present irregularity was by no means slight already; assuredly not slight by Harriet’s standards.

To his great relief, Nell nodded again. She had still not put on his sweater.

‘In a few days’ time, we’ll go to London. We’ll be together always.’ He could hardly believe his own ears listening to his own voice saying such things. After all this time! After Elizabeth! After so much inner peace and convinced adoration and asking for nothing more! After the fearful illness!

They parted with kisses but with little drama. Nell sped off into what the map depicted as virtual void.

‘All the same,’ Stephen reflected, ‘I must look at the map again. I’ll try to borrow Harewood’s dividers.’

He pushed back through the heather, rejoicing in his sense of direction, among so many other things to rejoice about, and began lumbering down the track homewards. The light was now so poor that he walked faster and faster; faster even than he had ascended. In the end, he was running uncontrollably.

*

Therefore, his heart was already pounding when he
discovered 
that the rectory was in confusion; though, at the rectory, even confusion had a slightly wan quality.

During the afternoon, Harriet had had a seizure of some kind, and during the evening had been taken off in a public ambulance.

‘What time did it happen?’ asked Stephen. He knew from all too much experience that it was the kind of thing that people did ask.

‘I don’t really know, Stephen,’ replied Harewood. ‘I was in my specimens room reading the
Journal
, and I fear that a considerable time may have passed before I came upon her. I was too distressed to look at my watch even then. Besides, between ourselves, my watch loses rather badly.’

Though Stephen tried to help in some way, the improvised evening meal was upsetting. Harriet had planned rissoles sautéed in ghee, but neither of the men really knew how to cook with ghee. The homemade Congress Pudding was nothing less than nauseous. Very probably, some decisive final touches had been omitted.

‘You see how it is, young Stephen,’ said Harewood, after they had munched miserably but briefly. ‘The prognosis cannot be described as hopeful. I may have to give up the living.’

‘You can’t possibly do that, Harewood, whatever happens. There is Father’s memory to think about. I’m sure I should think about him more often myself.’ Stephen’s thoughts were, in fact, upon quite specially different topics.

‘I don’t wish to go, I assure you, Stephen. I’ve been very happy here.’

The statement surprised Stephen, but was of course thoroughly welcome and appropriate.

‘There is always prayer, Harewood.’

‘Yes, Stephen, indeed. I may well have been remiss. That might explain much.’

They had been unable to discover where Harriet hid the coffee, so sat for moments in reverent and reflective silence, one on either side of the bleak table: a gift from the nearest branch of the Free India League.

Stephen embarked upon a tentative démarche. ‘I need hardly say that I don’t want to leave you in the lurch.’

‘It speaks for itself that there can be no question of that.’

Stephen drew in a quantity of air. To put it absolutely plainly, I feel that for a spell you would be better off at this time without me around to clutter up the place and make endless demands.’

For a second time within hours, Stephen recognised quite clearly that his line of procedure could well be seen as
cold-blooded;
but, for a second time, he was acting under extreme compulsion – compulsion more extreme than he had expected ever again to encounter, at least on the hither side of the Styx.

‘I should never deem you to be doing that, young Stephen. Blood is at all times, even the most embarrassing times, thicker than water. It was Cardinal Newman, by the way, who first said that; a prelate of a different soteriology.’

Stephen simply did not believe it, but he said nothing. Harewood often came forward with such assertions, but they were almost invariably erroneous. Stephen sometimes doubted whether Harewood could be completely relied upon even in the context of his private speciality, the lichens.

‘I think I had better leave tomorrow morning and so reduce the load for a span. I am sure Doreen will appreciate it.’ Doreen was the intermittent help; a little brash, where in former days no doubt she would have been a little simple. Stephen had always supposed that brashness might make it more possible to serve Harriet. Doreen had been deserted, childless, by her young husband; but there had been a proper divorce. Harewood was supposed to be taking a keen interest in Doreen, who was no longer in her absolutely first youth.

‘You will be rather more dependent upon Doreen for a time,’ added Stephen.

‘I suppose that may well be,’ said Harewood. Stephen
fancied
that his brother almost smiled. He quite saw that he might have thought so because of the ideas in his own mind, at which he himself was smiling continuously.

‘You must do whatever you think best for all concerned, Stephen,’ said Harewood. ‘Including, of course, your
sister-in-law,
dear Harriet.’

‘I think I should go now and perhaps come back a little later.’

‘As you will, Stephen. I have always recognised that you have a mind trained both academically and by your work. I am a much less co-ordinated spirit. Oh yes, I know it well. I should rely very much upon your judgement in almost any serious matter.’

Circumstanced as at the moment he was, Stephen almost blushed.

But Harewood made things all right by adding, ‘Except perhaps in certain matters of the spirit which, in the nature of things, lie quite particularly between my Maker and myself alone.’

‘Oh, naturally,’ said Stephen.

‘Otherwise,’ continued Harewood, ‘and now that Harriet is unavailable – for very short time only, we must hope – it is upon you, Stephen, that I propose to rely foremost, in many pressing concerns of this world.’

Beyond doubt, Harewood now was not all but smiling. He was smiling nearly at full strength. He explained this immediately.

‘My catarrh seems very much better,’ he said. ‘I might consider setting forth in splendour one of these days. Seeking specimens, I mean.’

Stephen plunged upon impulse.

‘It may seem a bit odd in the circumstances, but I should be glad to have the use of a Land Rover. There’s a building up on the moors I should like to look at again before I go, and it’s too far to walk in the time. There’s a perfectly good track to quite near it. Is there anyone you know of in the parish who would lend me such a thing? Just for an hour or two, of course.’

Hare wood responded at once. ‘You might try Tom Jarrold. I regret to say that he’s usually too drunk to drive. Indeed, one could never guarantee that his vehicle will even leave the ground.’

Possibly it was not exactly the right reference, but what an excellent and informed parish priest Harewood was suddenly proving to be!

Harewood had reopened the latest number of the
Journal,
which he had been sitting on in the chair all the time. His perusal had of course been interrupted by the afternoon’s events.

‘Don’t feel called upon to stop talking,’ said Harewood. ‘I can read and listen at the same time perfectly well.’

Stephen reflected that the attempt had not often been made when Harriet had been in the room.

‘I don’t think there’s anything more to say at the moment. We seem to have settled everything that
can
be settled.’

‘I shall be depending upon you in many different matters, remember,’ said Harewood, but without looking up from the speckled diagrams.

*

As soon as Stephen turned on the hanging light in his
bedroom
, he noticed the new patch on the wallpaper; if only because it was immediately above his bed. The wallpaper had always been lowering anyway. He was the more certain that the particular path was new because, naturally, he made his own bed each morning, which involved daily confrontation with that particular surface. Of course there had always been the other such patches among the marks on the walls.

Still, the new arrival was undoubtedly among the reasons why Stephen slept very little that night, even though, in his own estimation, he needed sleep so badly. There again, however, few do sleep in the first phase of what is felt to be a reciprocated relationship; equally fulfilling and perilous, always deceptive, and always somewhere known to be. The mixed ingredients of the last two days churned within Stephen, as in Harriet’s battered cookpot; one rising as another fell. He was treating Hare wood as he himself would not wish to be treated; and who could tell what had really led to Harriet’s collapse?

In the end, bliss drove out bewilderment, and seemed the one thing sure, as perhaps it was.

*

Later still, when daylight was all too visible through the frail curtains, Stephen half-dreamed that he was lying inert on some surface he could not define and that Nell was
administering
water to him from a chalice. But the chalice, doubtless a consecrated object to begin with, and certainly of fairest silver from the Spanish mines, was blotched and blemished. Stephen wanted to turn away, to close his eyes properly, to expostulate, but could do none of these things. As Nell gently kissed his brow, he awoke fully with a compelling thirst. He had heard of people waking thirsty in the night, but to himself he could not remember it ever before happening. He had never lived like that.