Dirty Dust

A strange story

Alison switched on the Dyson and began the ritual. Every surface must be made clean, every cobweb removed, every mark or scratch or spill abraded and polished. The children were playing in the bedroom and she could hear their shouts above the white noise. They were playing a video game she found incomprehensible called Fairy Flour. Or was it ‘flower’? The dust soon filled the machine; she emptied it a second time. “Where does it all come from?” she mused. Spider webs had accrued again and she brushed them off to be swallowed by another gently humming machine, a smaller version of the floor model and powered by batteries. The bathroom was next. Black mould around the sink and behind the toilet bowl. Spraying Killit-Now a new sponge expunged the latest stain and bleach completed the disinfection. The kitchen now. Curry sauce on the cooker, yellow turmeric discolouring the perfect whiteness of the surface, dripping down the sides, spreading to the washing machine rotating slowly, repete with muddied underwear, shirts and trousers, hoodies and long socks. On the clothes horse yesterday’s harvest dissicating in front of the dehumidifier. It was February in April.

Dr Khan’s face appeared on the screen. She had five minutes before his next patient after waiting nearly an hour. 3 minutes were taken up by complaints about the waiting time and the state of the NHS, one minute for her to voice her reasons for calling 111, one minute for the doctor to write a script which she received an hour later by Amazon-NHS drone. Benzodiazepines for insomnia, Sertraline and Fluoxetine for mood, Statins for cholesterol, Lactulose and Docusate for constipation, Lisdexamfetamine for combined OCD/ADHD. Alison wondered about the latter; was she a victim of one or the other or both? 

Key scraping lock, shoes scraping doormat, puffer on the clothes hook, up to the bedroom to change. A Tesco ready meal in the microwave and the ping telling her it was ready. 

“Lasagne, Peter” as he walked into the kitchen. “Oven chips. We’re out of ketchup”

“Doesn’t matter” as he sat down.

She called the children and they wolfed down the meat-pasta-cheese concoction born in a factory in Slough, rushed back to Fairy Dust level 3 - or was it Fairy Flower? - shouts echoing, receding.

“Pete, this place. It’s so dirty. Even the dust is dirty. The neighbours are dirty. I can’t wait to get out of here. We need our own place. Seriously.”

The adjunct to the hall had been the servant’s quarters and difficult to date with certainty. It was likely around 1820 to 1830. They’d moved in for economy, got their eyes on a new build on the road to Felixstowe. The hall was once in the countryside, now in the ever-encroaching town, underhung by trees, quiet, almost the country in the town if it weren’t for the racetrack misnamed as a road which sat below the branches. 
 
Peter finished his lasagne, poured a glass of wine, smiled over the table.

“A few more months, Alison. Norris has nearly finished the rendering and the roof is on.”

They’d moved to a new town within commuter reach of London on the East Coast line. The new build, almost part of a conurbation stretching from sea to town, was close to completion. The hall was temporary, cheap enough, near to the station, a location serenaded by wood pigeons, magpies, crows and gulls, sited up above the street. 

Since the twins had arrived Alison had been without work. Peter took in a decent salary. The mess, the dust, the thingness of it all, the matter out of place. Maybe reading books doesn’t always improve the mind. 

Peter reached into his backpack and brought out a box with a ribbon. “Go on, upwrap it. It’s a little helper we’re working on”. Alison undid the binding and opened the box, sliding the small object onto the table. “It’s a prototype close to commercial release. A new polymer bonded with nanotech and a flexible substrate. The exterior is active nano-particles designed to glue together, assemble and reassemble. The engine is an organic hub spliced with spider DNA and driven by advanced AI close to the precision of the operator and with a huge memory. Once it’s scoped a floor it won’t forget. I can’t quite explain how it works; I don’t know how the guys come up with this stuff”, he laughed. It was pink and blue and red, colours changing as it set to work. “It’s a cleaner. Latest tech. Organic, almost alive. Crazy but it does the job”. The box read Hygieia and was a prototype from Peter’s tech start-up. By now it was climbing up the wall, already swollen with dirt and dust way beyond its apparent capacity, making a low slurping noise. Reaching fullness it climbed onto the exterior of the kitchen bin and deposited its load. “Already programmed. I did it this afternoon, downloaded the layout, mapped the rooms.” Alison watched entranced. 

“Dad, what’s nanny technocracy?” asked the twins the next evening at dinner. Peter laughed, turned to Alison, raised an eyebrow. “For 13-year-olds they’re pretty bloody smart.” Looking down he continued. 

“Remember the beach last month, when we were on holiday? The sandcastle?”

The twins smiled and looked at each other.

“Remember the wind blowing and the rain washing it away?”

The twins nodded.

Imagine the sand alive like you and mum and dad. It would be strong then and if it got in a fight with the wind and the rain it’d beat them. Do you know why?”

“It’s got a brain like us.”

“That’s right. Imagine the sand as a giant or a fairy or a kitten. Or people like us. Clever experts have found a way to glue the little grains together with the software controller; it can even change shape into anything.”

“A sand man, a sand dinosaur, a sandwich.”

“Yes, even a sandwich.”

“Crazy” as they ran to their bedroom for the night.

Alison’s ears hurt.

April turned to May and Dr Khan’s face and shoulders regarded her with his trademark serious frown as he pinged onto the screen for a five-minute update. For a moment it appeared he was unclothed then as he adjusted the backlight a Louis Vuitton shirt came into view.

“I see from my notes that the scaphoid fracture from last year is still bothering you. I’m going to prescribe something to dull the pain. Take it for a month and get back to me” 

The script reading Tramadol pinged into her inbox followed by the NHS-Amazon drone delivery. 

The height of summer and the dust grew deeper. Alison scrubbed, wielded the big and little Dysons, let loose Hygieia, which she now called Henry, and sprayed more Killit-Now. The inbox pinged and Dr Khan slipped into view. Alison rushed to the screen.

“The twins are ready for their vaccines against AIDS, HIV, gonorrhoea and syphilis, scrofula, scurvy, bubonic plague, the black death, leprosy, and cannabis. Oh yes, the new cannabis vaccine will stop them even starting. Science is a miracle; did you know a knife crime vaccine is close to coming on-market? Pop in on Friday at 3:00 with the twins.”

It was September now and dark clouds opened like a conjurors’ cloak. The rain unrelenting and the trains on the viaduct relentless. Alison’s sister had come to stay for a week, a break from the twins and, although she wouldn’t admit it, from Peter with his dispiriting optimism. That week the storm clouds were replaced by fluffy cumulus and the weakening sun shone on the sodden ground.

“Go for a walk, shake it all out in the fresh air. The twins want peanut butter and Marmite. I’ll check them. Go for a bloody walk, will you?”. Linda was the sensible one, up from that London. She knew things, so many things that Alison didn’t, a career woman in smart business attire without children. A gap of four years, not short enough to bond but long enough for resentment. The mournful cry after she’d been taken to visit her new sister after the c-section: “I don’t want that baby”. Her dad consoling her in the cafe afterwards. “Just you wait, Ali. You’ll be best friends. Another Chelsea bun?” Through her tears Alison nodded.

She endured the school years. Droning teacher speaking words which drifted past her like motes in a shaft of sunlight. English was the only lesson she understood. A late reader, she made up for lost time. By the time Big School came around she was filling exercise books with word definitions and etymons, reading RL Stevenson, LM Alcott, The Wind in the Willows, HG Wells. Later she began writing under the star of speculation, whole stories populated by impossible situations and improbable characters. Four years below her was Linda with a relentless drive, absorbing the lessons by effortless osmosis, taking it all in, Pavlovian. Alison staring out the window, the green fields beckoning, the piper at the gates of dawn awaiting on an ait.

In a campsite near Béziers her parents struggling to get the tent up before the Mistral. Huge cicadas seeking shelter, clustering on the canvas, tymbals droning like Tony Conrad’s violin. The hot wind hitting her upturned face, red sand smothering the sun, cheese and ham and those crisp baguettes bought from the boulangerie in the morning which turned into hard weapons by the evening. Her dad opening the second litre of cheap red and her mum fussing over the russet dust with an inadequate brush. The Sunbeam Alpine garbed incarnadine on the sere ground, a Provençal high summer, tent expanding and contacting as the pressure struck like a great beast breathing.

“The wind will blow it all away”, announced her dad, “make it all new”, as he cut another piece of Comté

“Make it old, more like”, chimed her mum. “Looks like the bloody Sahara out there.”

“The time wind, Sarah. The only constant is change”. He reclined and lit a cigarette. An amateur philosopher with a glass of table wine.

“Nonsense, Gerald. You’re filling the girl’s heads with your rubbish.”

The mass in Saint-Nazaire where the priestly incantation was felt rather than understood. Parents taking the sacrament and slurping down the wine, a visit to a bodega and the walls of Carcassonne. Linda walking ahead.

On the Dieppe to Newhaven ferry a bad oyster moved Alison between berth and bathroom and back again; mollusc as hallucinogen.  

Alison went out for a walk. A stairway with uneven steps led down to the road and the shops below; she stepped gingerly over the gathering leaves through the door to the street. Since moving to the hall she had hardly left the place. Took the twins to St. Mary’s until they could walk unsupervised, ordered groceries from Pied Piper drone delivery. Down on the street warm late autumn wind brushed her face. The few cars moved silently and in perfect order. Down the hill then up onto the road above. A sign on Khartoum Road pointed to the cemetery. Houses in this part of the town all looked the same. Red brick, slate roofs, tidy gardens or decorative gravel as pebbly lawns. Cars parked outside looking all the same apart from colour-schemes of red and black and grey. No distinguishing markers. On the corner of Dunkirk Road and Balaclava Street she passed Fishcotheque. She fancied a bag of fish and chips but resisted the urge. On the beach at Castell de Recuerdo swinging between mum and dad, photos to prove it, before “she” came along. Sitting in the high-chair low-chair with dad spooning baby mush. Running down the big big hill in the park shouting “daddy, catch me!” as he swept her up and twirled her around, both laughing, can of beer set aside. Solar flares, snow in the winter and sun in the summer, holidays in Swanage and Wells-next-the Sea and the South of France. Christmas and birthdays. The accident and Aunt Lucy’s neat house where she was taught the meaning of gratitude. 

She strode on. Over the railway bridge and into the cemetery. Autumn grass parched and the last of the swallows abandoning their nests under the weakening heat. Sun-drunk she sat on a bench for a long time adrift and dreaming. Cawing crows landed on gravestones and shouted their claim to the necropolis.

Alison passed the Fishcotheque heading back to Spring Road and turned left into Kyiv Avenue. The streets and houses indistinguishable. Left again onto Starmer Street then a trudge along New Empire Road leading to Fishcotheque again. In Shop ‘n’ Park she bought peanut butter and Marmite and under-the-counter cigarettes. Below was the way back past the allotment and onto the main road. Turning the corner the frontage of Fishcotheque. This must be wrong. Right onto Blair Way past the deserted church, right again down John Lennon Lane, and Fishcotheque, lights ablazing as the night drew close.

“Alison?” Peter on his way back from the train station.

“Oh, Peter, I went for a walk and got a bit lost.”

He led her back to the hall.

“Please tell me you haven’t left the twins alone. God knows what they’ll get up to.”

“No, no, Linda’s here, she’s with them.”

Their shoes slipped on the leaf mulch.

“Norris says the solar panels will cost more than the estimate. You really need to get a job. The twins aren’t babies anymore”

Insurance companies, solicitors, start-ups, call centres, customer service, retail, restaurants, coffee shops, pulling pints in pubs.

“You know I can’t deal with people, Peter. I just can’t do it. Of course I want to work but all the work is with people. There must be jobs without people.” 

“Alison, please be reasonable. We need the money. You have all the time in the world and I’m out to work every day. You can’t shut yourself away for ever.”

“I’ve nearly finished the book, Peter. I’m tying it all up. You know that.” 

“Ever since we met you’ve been writing this book.” His voice rose. “For fuck’s sake, Ali, you’re in a dream. Fifteen fucking years. You’re so bloody self-absorbed” 

Nothing in reply. They walked up the stairs to the Hall, late autumn sunlight dappling steps and the comfrey wilting as winter came in like a fox out of the woods. She’d never really been an assertive character; once she’d read her personality profile after answering a series of questions online. “Agreeable. A people-pleaser. Avoids conflict”. She remembered her parents arguing, shouting, the long uncomfortable silences and how she’d tried to mediate by going back and forth between them as if carrying messages from dug-outs between two opposing forces in a war. Perhaps she was attracted to Peter by his disinterest and detachment and practicality. They’d met in a bookshop near King’s Cross, her messiness and armful of books attracting his attention. “Can I help you?” like a customer service advisor in a call centre. Alison paid for the books she would never read and followed him into The Feathers where they ordered pints of London Pride. They were married within a month.

Clumsy attempts to make love that night, his grunting in simulation of passion, the attention on his own pleasure, the bull soon snoring with his back to her. Alison lay awake staring at the ceiling lit by bright moonlight for what seemed like hours.

October turned to November, Peter opened the fireplace, logs crackled, and cherrywood smoke drifted lazily around the Hall. By now the twins had stopped talking to her, had stopped talking to anyone except to each other. Stooping outside their room with the door locked from inside, straining her ears, Alison heard them talking.

“worromot niaga sdoow eht ot og ll’ew”

“eh t’now, ereht eb ll’eh?”

“ereht eb ll’eh. loohcs retfa”

“wonk mum seod?”

“gnihtyna wonk t’nseod ehs”

In the morning she tried to piece together flashes of the dream. She had followed the twins into a wood past a crude sign reading “No Entry” where they wandered resolute to a clearing in which sat a creature half-goat half-man. Peering from behind the bole of an oak she watched the creature rise and greet them, clutching its phallus and howling into the evening air as the leaves fell about them. 

Alison had tried to shout but was voiceless. She moved into the glade and with every step she grew more distant until the scene took on the aspect of a camera obscura or a dolly zoom in a film. The creature looked up as she took hold of each twin’s hand. She ran with them through an unfamiliar city of night, past basketball courts and into dead ends, maybugs thronging the street lights. A wire fence in front blocking the way. They tried to climb the obstruction but it was too high, too high. 

“Alison! For god’s sakes wake up. You’ve been making weird noises all night and I have to get to work. Alison!” He shook her and she awakened from deep REM sleep with glazed eyes. Coffee in the kitchen and cereal for the twins. Peter had already left as she walked to St Marys and deposited the twins into the care of Miss Capra. Back in the Hall Henry was diligently climbing the wall yet the dust seemed no less. If anything it had accumulated on the window-sills, on the the doors, on the tables and chairs. Peter had taken Henry in for a software upgrade and it now scampered up and down the walls and ceiling, crossing the floor with renewed vigour with slurping sound lessened, moved to the kitchen to deposit another load of detritus and dust, wreck and wrack. Alison went back to bed and sank into sleep. The twins were playing football after school and then had music practice. She opened a bottle of Pinot and started on the washing-up, staring out the window as the day darkened and the river fog descended. Dampness crept through the walls despite the crackle of logs. 

Emerging from the pine trees a figure took shape out of the grey and moved towards her. Dressed in fustian with a flat cap covering the hair, face like a waxwork, the figure stood outside the window staring implacably and pointed to the front door. As though in a trance she opened it and he walked in. Riverine dead crabby odour, droplets falling on the kitchen floor, ozone.

“I lived here when it were a proper hall and old Bulstrode ran the show. I were passing by and thought myself lost. New dwellings, missus, new roads. Used to be a lake down there with flamingos and all sorts.”

“Served that solicitor what owned it. Done the gardens and the wife done the dinners.”

Alison stared at the stranger as he continued. “Lived here with Ali and the kids. It were alright for a while till they went missing in the woods, they did. We searched and searched… You must’ve read it? It were in all the papers. Now you’re here and I took a fancy to see how the old place had gone.”

“Would you like a cup of tea?” murmered Alison. “You must be cold.”

“I’m cold as clay, missus, but I’ll be on me way now. I seen what I wanted to see. Long walk down to the river.”

She let him out and watched as he shambled down the drive and onto the road leading into town. Swallowed by the fog it seemed two smaller figures merged and reemerged and forms became distinct. The twins approached the house. They handed over a note signed by Miss Capra; music practice cancelled due to inclement weather conditions. Apologies. Peter followed soon after.

The microwave pinged. “I’ve made paella” as she took out the plastic container marked Sainsbury’s. The twins wolfed it down without a word and stomped into their room. Peter turned to her.

“We can’t go on like this, Ali. The government grant hasn’t come through. The punters don’t like AI, bloody ignorant fools. We have to cut back. You need to get a job. Do you hear me? Alison, can you hear me? Ali?”

As she washed up the dishes and stared vacantly outside the window, two identical figures took shape and stood under the pines, girls dressed in blue serge with white aprons, their hair under snow-white caps. They moved without moving and their faces were blank, devoid of expression. She placed the dishes in the drying rack as they began to move jerkily towards the house as if in a film spliced and edited. The wind rose and the trees hummed. She moved as a somnolent to the door and opened it in blank welcome. 

“Will you walk with us, missus? Will you walk with us awhile?”

The time wind rushed in and howled through the house, the rafters whistled, the fireplace growled. Peter and the twins stood in the corridor as the blast swept through the house, swirled around them and, in front of her eyes, abraded and eroded their forms like statues in a desert until they lay in scattered heaps on the floor like islets of sand, like matter out of place. 

Alison looked down at her hands as blue veins rose behind spreading liver spots and skin wrinkled as though in a video on fast forward.

Henry scuttled over and began to tidy up the dirty dust.