The Unsettled Dust (7 page)

Despite Blantyre’s reassurances, I was thereafter really afraid not only of Clamber Court, but of the two sisters as well. Fortunately, I had only four more nights to stay there; because my nights had become as forbidding as my days.

Driving back from seeing Blantyre, I actually came upon Olive on her horse, visibly now a rather elderly animal, though once, I had no doubt, a nice roan. Despite all the references to riding, I had never seen her mounted before, probably because I had always before driven about the countryside either too early or too late. The horse was
stepping
out slowly towards me, along a very minor road. The reins were quite loose in Olive’s hand. There seemed little chance of the desperate galloping and charging that Agnes had implied was Olive’s manner of equitation; though I could well believe that Olive was entirely capable of such things, perhaps even longed for them. Possibly it was what once she did, but did no more. The weather was as bleak as ever, with a bitter wind getting up under a cold sky, but Olive wore a sand-coloured shirt, open at the neck, and so old that, when I came up with her, I saw little tears in it. When first I saw her, she was looking up at the great, almost white, heavens while the horse found his own way. There was no reason why she should have taken any notice of my car, nowadays one of so many in the lanes, had I not slowed almost to a stop, because of the horse and because it was Olive. She met my eyes through the windscreen, even smiled a little, and raised her left hand in greeting, like a female centaur. She made no sign of stopping or speaking, but rode slowly on. I watched her for a few seconds through my rear window: noticing the small tears in her shirt, noticing and admiring the straightness of her back, the sleekness of her hair, the perfection of her posture.

Although I had stayed for a simple lunch with Blantyre, because he seemed lonely and pressed it upon me, and because it hardly seemed worth visiting the river for a short spell of failing light, I arrived back at Clamber Court much earlier than usual. Naturally, the grey Elizabeth looked surprised.

‘I’ve been visiting Mr. Blantyre, our local Representative,’ I said.

It was an explanation that was unlikely to be well received, and Elizabeth’s surprise duly changed to hostility and
suspicion
.

‘Aren’t we doing what they want?’ she asked.

‘Of course you are. I was only passing the time of day with him.’

But I cannot deny that, going along the familiar passage to my room, I felt very quavery. I even hesitated before opening my door. The room, however, was merely much lighter than it usually was when I came back to it.

An indefensible thought struck me. For the first time, I was more or less alone in the house and it was still daylight. I resolved to look about, starting with the room next to my own. Or at least to try the door. It was better, I thought, to know than not to know.

Still in my overcoat, I tiptoed back into the passage. There were little cold draughts, and I pushed back my own door as far as it would go. I did not want it to slam and bring upstairs the grey Elizabeth. I did not want it to make a noise of any kind or to shut me out.

The door of the next room was locked. It was only to be expected. I did something even more indefensible. I removed the key from the lock of my own door and tried it in the lock of the next door. My thought was that when the house had been built, an operation of this kind would have had small chance of success, but that the 1910 contractor who had plainly made big changes, might well have installed new locks that were not merely standard but identical. I was right. The lock stuck a bit, but I made the key turn. I did not just peek in, but threw the door wide open, though, at the same time, I did it as quietly as I could.

The room was entirely empty of furniture, but the air was charged with moving dust. It was almost as thick as the snow in those snowstorm glasses one used to buy from pedlars in Oxford Street. Moreover, it seemed to move in the same, slow, dreary swirl as moves the toy snow when the glass is reversed and the fall begins. There was a bitter wind outside the house, as I have said, and draughts inside it, but the room was fusty and stuffy, and I could not see how the March wind could explain everything.

Not that it mattered: at least to begin with; for through the wheeling dust I could see that at the window of the empty room a figure stood with its back to me, looking out towards the park.

It was Agnes, dressed in her day clothes; and I could see another key of the room lying on the window sill. She had locked herself in. I had been wrong in taking it for granted that at that hour she would every day be occupied with her committees and public works.

So much time passed while I just gazed through the
terrifying
dust at Agnes’s motionless back that I really thought I might succeed in shutting the door and getting away. But exactly as I was nerving myself to move, and to move quietly, Agnes turned and looked at me.

‘I know it’s no longer our house, my sister’s and mine,’ she said, ‘but still you are our guest, Mr. Oxenhope, even if only in a sense.’

‘I apologise,’ I said. ‘I had no idea the room was not empty. I have been seeing Mr. Blantyre today. Unfortunately, he’s not very well, and there are one or two things I thought I should check on his behalf, before the house opens to the public.’

‘Of course it is what we expect and have become
accustomed
to. I am not complaining. What else would you like to see? The key of your room doesn’t open every door.’

‘I don’t think any of the other little items will involve keys,’ I replied, ‘though thank you very much. As for this room, I only wanted to make sure it was empty, because we should like to store a few things in it.’

‘There are other empty rooms in the house,’ said Agnes, ‘and I am sure we can spare this one.’

‘All the same, I do apologise again for not speaking to you first. It was simply that I had a little time on my hands, as today I haven’t visited the river.’

‘It is no longer our house,’ said Agnes, ‘so that, strictly speaking, there is no obligation on you to ask us about anything. Has Mr. Blantyre any criticisms of my housekeeping?’

‘None,’ I assured her. ‘We agreed that it is one of the best maintained of all the Fund’s many properties.’

And, interestingly enough, the dust had by then ceased to swirl, though I am sure it still lay thick on the room floor, the floors of the other rooms, the passages, the stairs, the
furniture
, and all our hearts.

‘May I buy you a drink, sir?’ Dyson asked the old man politely. ‘You look as if you had seen a ghost.’

The old man was indeed very pale and he clung a little to the bar, but he smiled slightly at Dyson’s way of putting it. ‘In my mind’s eye perhaps,’ he replied. ‘Thank you. May I make it a small whisky?’

‘I’d say it’s a miracle you’re here at all, let alone safe and sound,’ said the man behind the bar, who had been staring out of the window at the back, and had seen what had
happened
. ‘There’ve been many of our customers who weren’t. Most dangerous road in the west country that is now. There’s even been talk of closing the house before some lorry knocks into it and closes it for us.’

“Bout time the whole village was redeveloped,’ said Rort, ‘judging by some of the places we’ve seen.’ It was not a tactful remark, but Rort was far from consciousness of offence. He always assumed that his standards were shared by the vast majority, had they the honesty to admit it.

Before picking up the whisky Dyson had bought him, the old man did something most unexpected: one might say that he crossed himself, but he did it in a queer, backwards way that I had never seen before. He then downed the whisky in one gulp.

Not being myself a Catholic, or an authority on ritual, I might have thought that I was deceived about the old man’s gesture, but Gamble, who was always the most observant among us of what was said or done, asked the old man a question: ‘Does that exorcise the ghost in your mind’s eye?’

‘Ghosts,’ said the old man quietly but amiably. ‘Ghosts in the plural. But I have no wish to exorcise them, even if
exorcism
were possible or relevant. Whereas it is neither.’

‘Tell us about exorcism,’ said Dyson.

‘Exorcism may only be attempted upon licence from an archbishop, and in any case is applicable only when a person is believed to be possessed by a devil. That is not my case. There was nothing diabolical about my escape, I assure you.’

‘But there
was
something supernatural?’ responded Gamble; often a little too much the cross-examining barrister when all the circumstances were considered.

‘Yes,’ said the old man in his quiet and simple way. ‘At least
I
think so. It was connected with this.’ He put his fingers in his bottom left waistcoat pocket and produced a coin or medal. It was dull rather than bright as it lay on his palm in the dim light of the bar; and a fraction smaller, I should say, than a penny.

The barman got in first. ‘Can I hold it?’

‘Certainly,’ said the old man, passing it over. ‘But it has no intrinsic value.’

‘Just a lucky charm?’ asked the barman.

‘More a token. The visible symbol of an invisible grace.’

‘My mother has one. Given her when she married my father, by my gran, who got it from the gypsies. I suppose these marks are the Romany?’

‘No,’ said the old man. ‘That’s Russian.’

‘Have another drink,’ said Gamble, ‘and tell us about Russia.’

‘Tell us the whole story,’ said Dyson.

We were really all there to learn about fisheries: agricultural and icthyological students, prospective economists and sociologists, one or two sportsmen and aspirants to tweedy journalism, all male and all young; plus the one old man, retired, and representative of a type often to be found on such courses, often, I fear, regarded by the rest of us as more or less a nuisance. We were all boarded out on the villagers. After our substantial teas, we assembled together every
evening
at this battered little pub because the competitive
establishment
was flashy and perceptibly dearer. It was now our third night. Hitherto, the old man had spoken hardly at all. His years had cast a certain constraint upon us, but he had arrived late and left soon, and, in any case, most of us were so brimming with fish-talk and career-talk that his presence inhibited us little. I myself had supposed that he seemed genuinely pleased just to listen to us. The men who ran the course did not fraternise with us in the evenings. In any case, most of them were housed with the flashy competitor.

One reason for the old man’s near-accident had been the failing light. As he went on talking, darkness fell and the night wind off the sea began to creep under the door and across the stone flags. Infrequently, a solitary villager appeared, quietly ordered his drink, and settled to listening with us. One suspected that the presence of our group in the bar every evening was tending to keep out the regulars.

‘Not Russia,’ said the old man. ‘I’ve never been there, though I’ve known Russians – in a way. It was in Finland that I knew them.’ He was looking at his recovered token.

‘Surely Russians are rather unpopular in Finland?’ asked Gamble.

Rort was about to speak, probably in dialectical
contradiction
, but the old man began his story, ignoring Gamble.

‘Until I retired I was an estate agent and surveyor. At the time I am talking about, I was little more than a clerk, working for a firm called Purvis and Co. I was supposed to be learning the business, and Mr. Purvis was very keen that I should, because he knew my father and because he had no sons of his own. He did everything he could for me; then and for a long time afterwards. I owe Mr. Purvis a great deal. When he died prematurely in 1933, I inherited most of his business. Of course, I was a qualified surveyor by then, and quite
competent
to handle everything that arose. Ten years earlier, I knew nothing.

‘In 1923, Purvis and Co. had a client with an interest in a Finnish timber plantation. He was in the trade in a big way, with large offices down in the east end of London, but he wanted his son to have experience of all sides of the business, and for this reason proposed to lease a house in Finland for six months and actually move over there with his wife and the boy. I should mention that the wife was Finnish herself. The man’s name was Danziger, so his own forebears may all have come from the Baltic also. I never set eyes on the elder Danzigers because Mr. Purvis used to go to see them instead of them coming to see him, but I met the son several times. Later it struck me that he had all the wildness and toughness I saw in the Finns, but none of the steadiness and application. He might have done better as a militiaman in the Winter War than as a merchant. But of course the Winter War came much later than the time I am talking about, and as a matter of fact young Danziger was already dead before it happened.

‘The nearest town to the particular timber plantation was a place called Unilinna. Mr. Purvis had been asked to go there himself, have a look round for a suitable house, and, if he found one, try to get hold of it. He asked me if I would like to come with him, but said that the firm could not afford to pay my fare, especially as I was such a junior. I was so pleased that I talked my father into paying for me, and, as a matter of fact, I think that this was just the main reason why Mr. Purvis had chosen me. He knew that my father could manage it, where the fathers of some of the other juniors probably couldn’t. Mr. Purvis knew better than most that shrewd
economies
like that often make all the difference to the success of a business. He needed someone amenable in Finland to take notes and hold the tape. Later, it might have been different. I grew very much into Mr. Purvis’s confidence, and I am sure that he would have picked me anyway.