Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

He watches the march past of the dead for what seems like hours, and is transfixed by the infinite number of them. He worries about the cat.

More tanks and aeroplanes pass by, and the burned-out skeleton of a Zeppelin, two hundred yards long, pulled through the stones by those who must have been its crew. It should not have fitted in the tunnel, but somehow it did.

The dead have taken no notice of him. He tries to identify anyone he knew, perhaps Ashbridge and his brothers, perhaps those who left empty chairs in the mess week after week for months.

Suddenly one of the corpses turns its head and looks at him. Perhaps it is someone who knows him, but is unrecognisable with so few patches of dried leather left on the bones.

Death has looked at him, and he is abruptly terrified. ‘This is a dream,’ he tells himself, ‘you must wake up now.’ It is the rational part of himself intervening to save him from the horror and terror, as it always does when this nightmare strikes.

‘This is a dream, you must wake up now,’ says his rational soul, but he cannot wake up. All night, on the side of a stony hill in an indigo-and-charcoal world, he watches the dead emerge from the mouth of the tunnel. The march past is ceaseless, and has not ceased by the time he wakes.

When he does wake, still worrying about the small ginger cat, he thinks, ‘I have not seen them all yet. I can’t stop until I’ve seen them all. Tomorrow night perhaps I’ll see the rest.’ The fear has left him, and been replaced by curiosity. He wonders how many more there are, how many more nights will pass before all have been counted in.

CAPTAIN FAIRHEAD AND Sophie got on so well that Rosie very soon lost her dark suspicions about Fairhead’s attachment to Ash.

Sophie was not a conventionally pretty girl. She was slight and had little bust to speak of, she was small and energetic, and her legs did not seem to come out of her hips at quite the right angle. She had a pointed face with thin lips, and her head was framed by an impressive bush of frizzy hair that was impossible to control in the manner of the times. In old age, when it would become as white as snow, it would grow into a magnificent and refulgent halo that made her seem like a frail creature from Faery, but at the time when Captain Fairhead fell in love with her it had the same shiny chestnut colour as Rosie’s. Fairhead was not such a fool as to think that love is only a matter of compatible souls, and he often wondered what it was that so attracted him and kept him awake at night with terrible longing.

‘The tip of your nose moves when you speak,’ he said to her one day, ‘and it moves in a slightly different way according to your facial expression.’

‘You’ve been observing me,’ she said. ‘How very underhand. From now on I shall make every effort to become invisible, except when you are not looking.’

She smiled at him mischievously, and he realised that what made her adorable was that she was more than the sum of her parts. She was animated and funny, and had the natural transient radiance of youth, of course, but she had developed an entire language of facial expressions that was perpetually amusing and interesting. She would pull a face to express whatever emotion she intended to convey, but she did it as a good actor would when mimicking a bad one for the amusement of other actors. She rolled her eyes, waggled her head, stuck her tongue out and flared her nostrils. She had a completely charming gesture which consisted in putting the tip of her forefinger to her nose when adopting a puzzled expression, and another one when looking into the distance, when she would put her circled fingers to her eyes in imitation of binoculars. She liked to hold conversations between her left and right hands, ventriloquising with her mouth whilst her fingers and thumbs took it in turns to talk. Captain Fairhead was enchanted. It made him feel happy just to be in her presence, and at night when he tried to sleep he was no longer tormented by the looming faces of the countless dead that he had seen off across the Styx, but was taken over instead by recent happy memories of Sophie and her quirky ways.

One day he was seated with Rosie in the conservatory, as it was not quite pleasant enough to be out on the lawn, and he said, ‘Miss McCosh, may I ask you a question?’

‘If it’s one I can answer, I shall,’ replied Rosie.

‘It is a somewhat delicate matter. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘It’s about Sophie, isn’t it?’

‘You are very astute, Miss McCosh.’

‘I think that in private you should begin to call me Rosie. In preparation for the future.’

‘The future?’

‘Well, forgive me if I mightily jump the gun, as Ash used to say, but I am certain that if you asked her, she would say yes.’

‘Gracious me! Certain?’

Rosie nodded. ‘Don’t ask me how I know. I wouldn’t want to divulge things said in confidence and in private. But I have had conversations.’

‘Conversations?’ repeated Fairhead.

‘Yes. Conversations.’

‘I am completely overwhelmed. I hardly know what to say. I am ten years older than she is, and not one fraction as amusing. Do you think I can make her happy?’

‘I am sure you can, dear Captain, but whether you actually will or not is another question. And don’t forget that you have to ask Father.’

‘Do you think he will be … sympathetic?’

‘He’ll ask you to become a Mahommedan and marry all of us. That’s what he said to Ash. He loves his old jokes. He likes to pretend that he’s longing to get us off his hands. Your quest for Sophie’s hand has caused you to be here so often that he has become immensely fond of you. As we all have.’

‘Dear me, I’ve been coming too often.’

‘Of course not. We knew perfectly well what it was all about.’

I’ve brought a book for you,’ said the chaplain. ‘It’s been quite the rage for some time. I thought you’d like to read it. It might give you much consolation. I trust you haven’t read it already.’

Rosie took the book and looked at the front cover: Raymond or Life and Death by Sir Oliver Lodge.

‘He’s a formidable scientist,’ said Fairhead. ‘Nobody’s fool. When it came out in 1916, everyone was talking about it. And more recently that one by Sir Hereward Carrington. Do you know it? I’ll lend them to you if you like.’

‘Thank you, I would like to read it.’

‘I have been very impressed by Lodge’s book,’ said Fairhead. He paused. ‘It gives us the strongest grounds for hope.’

‘We have the promise of the Lord,’ said Rosie, mildly reproaching him.

‘I know this may be somewhat unorthodox,’ said Captain Fairhead, ‘but I have heard of a very successful medium in Merton, and I wondered if I could interest you and your sisters in accompanying me. As I say, it might be very consoling.’

‘I don’t think I should. I’m sure the rector would forbid it.’

‘Why should you ask him? I am a priest myself. What could be better for one’s faith than proof of the afterlife?’

‘Well,’ said Rosie, ‘it seems to me that the kind of afterlife supposedly proved by a medium isn’t the same as the one promised us by the Lord. I fear it may be very bad for one’s faith.’

Later on, at sunset, Rosie looked out of the window from her bedroom on the first floor, and saw shadows at the far end of the orchard, underneath the tree where Bouncer was buried. She opened the window softly, and heard giggles and hushings. She felt a wave of pleasure coming over her, to think of Sophie finding happiness with such a good man, and at the same time she felt a painful nostalgia for the time when an equal happiness had been in prospect for herself and she and Ash had been clasped together under that same tree, when Bouncer still lived. She also thought about the time when Daniel Pitt had taken her in his arms to comfort her, and how nice it had been to be embraced again.