A Handful of Dust Read online

  Tony returned in time for tea. He apologized for not being at home to greet his guest and almost immediately went out again to interview the agent in his study.

  Brenda asked about London and what parties there were. Beaver was particularly knowledgeable.

  “Polly Cockpurse is having one soon.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Are you coming up for it?”

  “I don’t expect so. We never go anywhere nowadays.”

  The jokes that had been going round for six weeks were all new to Brenda; they had become polished and perfected with repetition and Beaver was able to bring them out with good effect. He told her of numerous changes of alliance among her friends.

  “What’s happening to Mary and Simon?”

  “Oh, didn’t you know? That’s broken up.”

  “When?”

  “It began in Austria this summer…”

  “And Billy Angmering?”

  “He’s having a terrific walk out with a girl called Sheila Shrub.”

  “And the Helm-Hubbards?”

  “That marriage isn’t going too well either… Daisy has started a new restaurant. It’s going very well… and there’s a new night club called the Warren…”

  “Dear me,” Brenda said at last. “What fun everyone seems to be having.”

  After tea John Andrew was brought in and quickly usurped the conversation. “How do you do?” he said. “I didn’t know you were coming. Daddy said he had a weekend to himself for once. Do you hunt?”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “Ben says it stands to reason everyone ought to hunt who can afford to, for the good of the country.”

  “Perhaps I can’t afford to.”

  “Are you poor?”

  “Please, Mr. Beaver, you mustn’t let him bore you.”

  “Yes, very poor.”

  “Poor enough to call people tarts?”

  “Yes, quite poor enough.”

  “How did you get poor?”

  “I always have been.”

  “Oh.” John lost interest in this topic. “The gray horse at the farm has got worms.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Ben says so. Besides you’ve only got to look at his dung.”

  “Oh dear,” said Brenda, “what would nanny say if she heard you talking like that?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five. How old are you?”

  “What do you do?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “Well if I was you I’d do something and earn some money. Then you’d be able to hunt.”

  “But I shouldn’t be able to call people tarts.”

  “I don’t see any point in that anyway.”

  (Later in the nursery, while he was having supper, John said: “I think Mr. Beaver’s a very silly man, don’t you?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said nanny.

  “I think he’s the silliest man who’s ever been here.”

  “Comparisons are odious.”

  “There just isn’t anything nice about him. He’s got a silly voice and a silly face, silly eyes and silly nose,” John’s voice fell into a liturgical sing-song, “silly feet and silly toes, silly head and silly clothes…”

  “Now you eat up your supper,” said nanny.)

  *

  That evening before dinner Tony came up behind Brenda as she sat at her dressing table and made a face over her shoulder in the glass.

  “I feel rather guilty about Beaver—going off and leaving you like that. You were heavenly to him.”

  She said, “Oh it wasn’t bad really. He’s rather pathetic.”

  Further down the passage Beaver examined his room with the care of an experienced guest. There was no reading lamp. The ink pot was dry. The fire had been lit but had gone out. The bathroom, he had already discovered, was a great distance away, up a flight of turret steps. He did not at all like the look or feel of the bed; the springs were broken in the center and it creaked ominously when he lay down to try it. The return ticket, third class, had been eighteen shillings. Then there would be tips.

  *

  Owing to Tony’s feeling of guilt they had champagne for dinner, which neither he nor Brenda particularly liked. Nor, as it happened, did Beaver, but he was glad that it was there. It was decanted into a tall jug and was carried round the little table, between the three of them, as a pledge of hospitality. Afterwards they drove into Pigstanton to the Picturedrome, where there was a film Beaver had seen some months before. When they got back there was a grog tray and some sandwiches in the smoking room. They talked about the film but Beaver did not let on that he had seen it. Tony took him to the door of Sir Galahad.

  “I hope you sleep well.”

  “I’m sure I shall.”

  “D’you like to be called in the morning?”

  “May I ring?”

  “Certainly. Got everything you want?”

  “Yes thanks. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  But when he got back he said, “You know, I feel awful about Beaver.”

  “Oh Beaver’s all right,” said Brenda.

  But he was far from being comfortable and as he rolled patiently about the bed in quest of a position in which it was possible to go to sleep, he reflected that, since he had no intention of coming to the house again, he would give the butler nothing and only five shillings to the footman who was looking after him. Presently he adapted himself to the rugged topography of the mattress and dozed, fitfully, until morning. But the new day began dismally with the information that all the Sunday papers had already gone to her ladyship’s room.

  *

  Tony invariably wore a dark suit on Sundays and a stiff white collar. He went to church, where he sat in a large pitch pine pew, put in by his great-grandfather at the time of rebuilding the house, furnished with very high crimson hassocks and a fireplace, complete with iron grate and a little poker which his father used to rattle when any point in the sermon excited his disapproval. Since his father’s day a fire had not been laid there; Tony had it in mind to revive the practice next winter. On Christmas Day and Harvest Thanksgiving Tony read the lessons from the back of the brass eagle.

  When service was over he stood for a few minutes at the porch chatting affably with the vicar’s sister and the people from the village. Then he returned home by a path across the fields which led to a side door in the walled garden; he visited the hot houses and picked himself a buttonhole, stopped by the gardeners’ cottages for a few words (the smell of Sunday dinners rising warm and overpowering from the little doorways) and then, rather solemnly, drank a glass of sherry in the library. That was the simple, mildly ceremonious order of his Sunday morning, which had evolved, more or less spontaneously, from the more severe practices of his parents; he adhered to it with great satisfaction. Brenda teased him whenever she caught him posing as an upright, God-fearing gentleman of the old school and Tony saw the joke, but this did not at all diminish the pleasure he derived from his weekly routine, or his annoyance when the presence of guests suspended it.

  For this reason his heart sank when, emerging from his study into the great hall at quarter to eleven, he met Beaver already dressed and prepared to be entertained; it was only a momentary vexation, however, for while he wished him good morning he noticed that his guest had an A.B.C. in his hands and was clearly looking out a train.

  “I hope you slept all right?”

  “Beautifully,” said Beaver, though his wan expression did not confirm the word.

  “I’m so glad. I always sleep well here myself. I say, I don’t like the look of that train guide. I hope you weren’t thinking of leaving us yet?”

  “Alas, I’ve got to get up tonight I’m afraid.”

  “Too bad. I’ve hardly seen you. The trains aren’t very good on Sundays. The best leaves at five-forty-five and gets up about nine. It stops a lot and there’s no restaurant car.”

  “That’ll do fine.”


  “Sure you can’t stay until tomorrow?”

  “Quite sure.”

  The church bells were ringing across the park.

  “Well, I’m just off to church. I don’t suppose you’d care to come.”

  Beaver always did what was expected of him when he was staying away, even on a visit as unsatisfactory as the present one. “Oh yes. I should like to very much.”

  “No, really, I shouldn’t, if I were you. You wouldn’t enjoy it. I only go because I more or less have to. You stay here. Brenda will be down directly. Ring for a drink when you feel like it.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  “See you later then.” Tony took his hat and stick from the lobby and let himself out. “Now I’ve behaved inhospitably to that young man again,” he reflected.

  The bells were clear and clamorous in the drive and Tony walked briskly towards them. Presently they ceased and gave place to a single note, warning the village that there was only five minutes to go before the organist started the first hymn.

  He caught up nanny and John, also on their way to church. John was in one of his rare, confidential moods; he put his small gloved hand into Tony’s and, without introduction, embarked upon a story which lasted them all the way to the church door; it dealt with the mule Peppermint who had drunk the company’s rum ration, near Wipers in 1917; it was told breathlessly, as John trotted to keep pace with his father. At the end, Tony said, “How very sad.”

  “Well, I thought it was sad too, but it isn’t. Ben said it made him laugh fit to bust his pants.”

  The bell had stopped and the organist was watching from behind his curtain for Tony’s arrival. He walked ahead up the aisle, nanny and John following. In the pew he occupied one of the armchairs; they sat on the bench at his back. He leaned forward for half a minute with his forehead on his hand, and as he sat back, the organist played the first bars of the hymn.

  “Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord…” The service followed its course. As Tony inhaled the agreeable, slightly musty atmosphere and performed the familiar motions of sitting, standing, and leaning forward, his thoughts drifted from subject to subject, among the events of the past week and his plans for the future. Occasionally some arresting phrase in the liturgy would recall him to his surroundings, but for the most part that morning he occupied himself with the question of bathrooms and lavatories, and of how more of them could best be introduced without disturbing the character of his house.

  The village postmaster took round the collecting bag. Tony put in his half-crown; John and nanny their pennies.

  The vicar climbed, with some effort, into the pulpit. He was an elderly man who had served in India most of his life. Tony’s father had given him the living at the instance of his dentist. He had a noble and sonorous voice and was reckoned the best preacher for many miles around.

  His sermons had been composed in his more active days for delivery at the garrison chapel; he had done nothing to adapt them to the changed conditions of his ministry and they mostly concluded with some reference to homes and dear ones far away. The villagers did not find this in any way surprising. Few of the things said in church seemed to have any particular reference to themselves. They enjoyed their vicar’s sermons very much and they knew that when he began about their distant homes, it was time to be dusting their knees and feeling for their umbrellas.

  “… And so as we stand here bareheaded at this solemn hour of the week,” he read, his powerful old voice swelling up for the peroration, “let us remember our Gracious Queen Empress in whose service we are here, and pray that she may long be spared to send us at her bidding to do our duty in the uttermost parts of the earth; and let us think of our dear ones far away and the homes we have left in her name, and remember that though miles of barren continent and leagues of ocean divide us, we are never so near to them as on these Sunday mornings, united with them across dune and mountain in our loyalty to our sovereign and thanksgiving for her welfare; one with them as proud subjects of her scepter and crown.”

  (“The Reverend Tendril ’e do speak uncommon ’igh of the Queen,” a gardener’s wife had once remarked to Tony.)

  After the choir had filed out, during the last hymn, the congregation crouched silently for a few seconds and then made for the door. There was no sign of recognition until they were outside among the graves; then there was an exchange of greetings, solicitous, cordial, garrulous.

  Tony spoke to the vet’s wife and Mr. Partridge from the shop; then he was joined by the vicar.

  “Lady Brenda is not ill, I hope?”

  “No, nothing serious.” This was the invariable formula when he appeared at Church without her. “A most interesting sermon, vicar.”

  “My dear boy, I’m delighted to hear you say so. It is one of my favorites. But have you never heard it before?”

  “No, I assure you.”

  “I haven’t used it here lately. When I am asked to supply elsewhere it is the one I invariably choose. Let me see now, I always make a note of the times I use it.” The old clergyman opened the manuscript book he was carrying. It had a limp black cover and the pages were yellow with age. “Ah yes, here we are. I preached it first in Jellalabad when the Coldstream Guards were there; then I used it in the Red Sea coming home from my fourth leave; then at Sidmouth… Mentone… Winchester… to the Girl Guides at their summer rally in 1921… the Church Stage Guild at Leicester… twice at Bournemouth during the winter of 1926 when poor Ada was so ill… No, I don’t seem to have used it here since 1911 when you would have been too young to enjoy it…”

  The vicar’s sister had engaged John in conversation. He was telling her the story of Peppermint: “… he’d have been all right, Ben says, if he had been able to cat the rum up, but mules can’t cat, neither can horses…”

  Nanny grasped him firmly and hurried him towards home. “How many times have I told you not to go repeating whatever Ben Hacket tells you? Miss Tendril didn’t want to hear about Peppermint. And don’t ever use that rude word ‘cat’ again.”

  “It only means to be sick.”

  “Well, Miss Tendril isn’t interested in being sick…”

  As the gathering between porch and lych gate began to disperse, Tony set off towards the gardens. There was a good choice of buttonholes in the hot houses; he picked lemon carnations with crinkled, crimson edges for himself and Beaver and a camellia for his wife.

  *

  Shafts of November sunshine streamed down from lancet and oriel, tinctured in green and gold, gules and azure by the emblazoned coats, broken by the leaded devices into countless points and patches of colored light. Brenda descended the great staircase step by step through alternations of dusk and rainbow. Both hands were occupied, holding to her breast a bag, a small hat, a half-finished panel of petit-point embroidery and a vast, disordered sheaf of Sunday newspapers, above which only her eyes and forehead appeared as though over a yashmak. Beaver emerged from the shadows below and stood at the foot of the stairs looking up at her.

  “I say, can’t I carry something?”

  “No thanks, I’ve got everything safe. How did you sleep?”

  “Beautifully.”

  “I bet you didn’t.”

  “Well, I’m not a very good sleeper.”

  “Next time you come you shall have a different room. But I daresay you won’t ever come again. People so seldom do. It is very sad because it’s such fun for us having them and we never make any new friends living down here.”

  “Tony’s gone to church.”

  “Yes, he likes that. He’ll be back soon. Let’s go out for a minute or two, it looks lovely.”

  When Tony came back they were sitting in the library. Beaver was telling Brenda’s fortune with cards. “… Now cut to me again,” he was saying, “and I’ll see if it’s any clearer… Oh yes… there is going to be a sudden death which will cause you great pleasure and profit. In fact you are going to kill someone. I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman… yes, a wo
man… then you are going to go on a long journey across the sea, marry six dark men and have eleven children, grow a beard and die.”

  “Beast. And all this time I’ve been thinking it was serious. Hullo, Tony, jolly church?”

  “Most enjoyable; how about some sherry?”

  When they were alone together, just before luncheon, he said, “Darling, you’re being heroic with Beaver.”

  “Oh, I quite enjoy coping—in fact I’m bitching him rather.”

  “So I saw. Well, I’ll look after him this afternoon and he’s going this evening.”

  “Is he? I’ll be quite sorry. You know that’s a difference between us, that when someone’s awful you just run away and hide, while I actually enjoy it—making up to them and showing off to myself how well I can do it. Besides, Beaver isn’t so bad. He’s quite like us in some ways.”

  “He’s not like me,” said Tony.

  *

  After luncheon Tony said, “Well, if it would really amuse you, we might go over the house. I know it isn’t fashionable to like this sort of architecture now—my Aunt Frances says it is an authentic Pecksniff—but I think it’s good of its kind.”

  It took them two hours. Beaver was well practiced in the art of being shown over houses; he had been brought up to it in fact, ever since he had begun to accompany his mother, whose hobby it had always been, and later, with changing circumstances, profession. He made apt and appreciative comments and greatly enhanced the pleasure Tony always took in exposing his treasures.