The Oracles (4 page)

Nowadays, she reflected, they did not seem to laugh so often. They were not in love, like that, any more. They had settled down. She realised it with a faint pang, the same kind of regret which she sometimes felt for the lost joys of childhood. It was a pity that anything delightful had to end, but she did not want to go back. The present was a great deal more satisfying than the past, for now she had Bobbins.

Yet the regret lingered in her mind. When she went upstairs she kissed Dickie, and told him to have a good time at his party. As she did so, an unusually bright flash made her wince and start. Involuntarily she clung to him.

‘I oughtn’t to go,’ he murmured, holding her closer to him, aware of her fear. ‘You don’t really like it, whatever you may say. You hated it last night.’

But she was determined not to be selfish. At the back of her mind she knew that Bobbins was not, for him, so complete a compensation for that which they might have lost.

‘It was only that one awful flash and crack,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t believe something hadn’t happened. I don’t expect there’ll be another like that.’

He still held her, stirred by the appeal of a frightened woman.

‘Do I want to go to this party?’ he whispered. ‘I’ll come back early. Don’t be asleep when I come back.’

‘Oh, Dickie! What moments you choose for feeling sentimental!’

At that he released her, chilled, as he often was, by the limitations of her vocabulary. Had she always talked like this? Perhaps she had, in the days when they had laughed so much over poor Mr. and Mrs.
Huntingtower
, but he had not minded. He had not noticed. He had only heard the siren’s song.

He ran downstairs and she stood by the window to watch him go. The night and the storm were closing in. Below her lay the town, cowering down, flattening itself beneath clouds so huge and solid that they seemed to be fighting for room. They piled up, toppling, one upon another. They were pushed earthwards to hide the hills and the sea.

Dickie came briskly out of the house. He did not know that she was watching, so gave no parting wave, but got into his car and drove off, under that menacing sky. He looked spruce and handsome and pleased with himself.

Poor Dickie! she thought.

For no discernible reason she suddenly felt sorry for him, as she sometimes did when she watched him bustling about the business of life, especially if he seemed to be enjoying himself. That he should often be worried, anxious and disappointed struck her as more natural. Then she was sympathetic and tried to help him. It was his cheerfulness which made him seem forlorn—which had some mysterious power to wring a sigh from her.

E
VERY
set has its hangers-on—a sprinkling of
nondescript
enthusiasts who are suffered by their betters because they run errands and fetch the beer. These satellites may be useful, but they contribute no lustre to the constellation, and sometimes they bring it into disrepute. Within the charmed circle they are meek and mannerly; they sit upon the floor and air no opinions. Outside it they make up for this by assuming a borrowed prestige. They boast of their distinguished friends, and offer to the rabble their own version of the current dogma.

Martha Rawson had got three of them; Billy, Rhona and Nell. Billy was the most harmless, since he had a bad stammer and could repeat nothing that he heard. Rhona and Nell were both talkative and silly; they repeated, with considerable inaccuracy, everything that they heard. Rhona was a fat girl with a large nose; she lived near the harbour with a widowed mother, and worked in a folk-weaving centre which Martha had inaugurated. Nell had the misfortune to be the daughter of Sir Gregory Manders, the principal landowner of the district, a notoriously disagreeable man. He came of a quarrelsome line and was, moreover, obliged to live in an age which had divested him of nearly all the power enjoyed by his forebears. Unable to tyrannise, he still did his best to make himself a nuisance. Poor Nell had suffered all her life from his universal unpopularity and had been very short of friends until Martha took her up.

Sir Gregory disapproved of the acquaintance but could do nothing to prevent it save deny the use of his car to Nell whenever she went to see Martha. She therefore had to foot it on the night of the Summersdown party, and got down the hill from Chale Park in a series of panic rushes, since she was terrified of thunder. Rhona, whom she met by appointment in the town, did not like it either. They would not have missed the party for anything, but the walk up to Summersdown daunted them. They staggered for a little way through the empty streets, clinging to one another, and came to a halt outside the Cellar Bar of the Metropole Hotel. Rhona suggested that a drink might pull them together, but neither of them had any money.

‘Let’s go in,’ she suggested. ‘Somebody might stand us a drink. I can’t go on without one.’

‘Supposing they didn’t,’ suggested Nell. ‘We should look so silly, just standing wistfully there.’

Rhona, whose secret ambition it was to be thought a little devil, decided to face this risk. She pushed Nell down the steps into the bar, thrust her into the arms of the nearest man, and announced that her friend was fainting.

‘Could be,’ he agreed, surveying Nell’s white,
chinless
face. ‘You want a hearse?’

Nell had closed her eyes. She opened them at this and shut them again hastily, for his ugliness was really terrifying. He had a face like a gargoyle, crimson,
pug-nosed
, with abnormally protuberant eyes. Nobody in the bar had ever seen him before, but his appearance had already provoked comment.

‘A glass of water …’ she murmured.

‘Water,’ he told her, ‘is dangerous in a thunderstorm. Siddown and I’ll get you what the doctor ordered.’

The prawn’s eyes travelled round the room and spied two chairs behind a table in a secluded corner. Timmy Hughes, the son of the Congregational minister, sat in one of them; he always kept out of sight, as much as possible, in the Cellar Bar because his father had
forbidden
him to go there. The other chair was empty. Nell was brought over and put into it and Timmy was ejected, to make room for Rhona.

‘Excuse me, George! Fainting ladies,’ said the stranger blandly.

‘It’s worked,’ whispered Rhona, as their cavalier went off to get drinks.

‘But he’s such a horrid-looking man, and he’s got a cockney accent.’

‘Don’t be so drear. Nothing can happen to the two of us.’

Rhona liked to bully Nell, whom she would have had to call Miss Manders in any other circle.

Their friend returned with three double whiskies, sat himself on the table in front of them, and suggested that they were easily scared.

‘Actually,’ said Rhona, nettled, ‘thunder happens to be the only thing I am scared of.’

This should have convinced him that she was a little devil, but he merely asked what she would do if she met a boa-constrictor. Nell, who had swallowed some whisky, and felt better, replied for her:

‘Actually I’ve always been rather fond of snakes. I had a grass snake once, but it got lost.’

He started and gave her a sharp look. She said
bin
rather than been, and
lawst
rather than lost. His accent might be cockney, but hers was exceptionally aristocratic. After thinking it over he advised them to go home, as soon as they had put their drinks back.

‘It’s a fierce night,’ he said, ‘and you’re both scared cuckoo. Where d’you live?’

Nell looked helplessly at Rhona.

‘Here and there,’ suggested Rhona, with a mysterious smile.

‘I see. Just a couple of little waifs. But you must be going somewhere. I’ve got a car coming. I’m waiting till they find one for me. I could drive you anywhere you want to go.’

‘Actually,’ said Nell, ‘we’re going to a party.’

‘A party, eh?’

He surveyed them from head to foot, taking note of their slacks and untidy horsetails.

‘
Gamine
get-up,’ he decided. ‘A wild, wild party?’

Nell was affronted by his manners but did not know how to snub him when she was drinking his whisky. She told him that it was not the sort of party he might expect in East Head.

‘Me, Gertie? I expect anything, anywhere, any time.’

Even Rhona began to feel that he must be sat on.

‘You mayn’t,’ she said coldly, ‘have heard of an Australian sculptor called Swann.’

At this his eyes popped more than ever.

‘Swann? Conrad Swann? It’s his party?’

‘You have heard of him? He lives here, you know. He’s a great friend of ours.’

This seemed to make an impression upon him. They told him all about the party. He listened with such an air of bewilderment that Nell kindly explained to him who Apollo was, and what would be wrong with a
representational
treatment.

‘Nobody’s seen it yet,’ she concluded. ‘Conrad never lets anybody see his stuff till it’s finished. So we’re all very excited.’

‘We?’ He showed signs of revival. ‘Who’s
we
?’

‘His friends here. A few people of his ilk.’

‘Ilk? What’s ilk? Some kind of shellfish?’

‘His sort, I mean.’

‘No. Look it up in Fowler’s
English
Usage,
I would.’

Nell gaped at him, disconcerted, and exclaimed:

‘I can’t make you out. I believe you knew who Apollo was, all the time.’

‘You aren’t at your brightest this evening, I expect. My fault, giving you whisky. If I’d made
you
out sooner, it would have been a mild sherry.’

‘So you think you’ve made us out?’ cried Rhona archly.

‘I think so. At first I took you for a couple of mysteries, as the wide boys say. Don’t look so flattered. They don’t mean what you mean.’

Rhona decided not to ask what the wide boys meant, but Nell did. He answered sharply:

‘Silly kids who don’t know how to look after
themselves
.’

‘You aren’t very polite,’ pouted Rhona.

‘Nothing to what I might have been. You were lucky to pick a family man like me. Your friend’s accent is a give-away.’

‘Why! What’s wrong with it?’

‘Nothing’s wrong with it. That’s the point. Not like mine. What do you make of mine, by the way? Don’t blush. A lot of people make the same mistake, but it isn’t cockney, as a matter of fact. Go on about Swann’s ilks.’

‘In Venice, last year …’ began Nell.

‘He won a prize for an outsize egg. I know.’

‘It was a Form,’ she told him in shocked tones. ‘But he’s getting rather out of that stage now.…’

She rummaged in the ragbag of her mind for a phrase and went on glibly:

‘He used to entirely surrender himself to his material and let it do things to him. Now he’s got much more dynamic.’

‘Loud cheers!’

‘He imposes himself on it now,’ put in Rhona. ‘There’s a sort of loving brutality …’

She broke off, uncertain whether Don Rawson had said this about Conrad, or whether someone else said it about someone else. Neither of them would have used such a phrase in Martha’s presence.

‘How come?’ asked their host. ‘What’s changed him?’

‘A more congenial atmosphere. He used to have a very stupid wife and a lot of children. But she’s dead. And now …’

Nell kicked Rhona under the table. Rhona shut up.

‘Children dead too?’ he asked with interest.

‘I mean he has friends now who really appreciate him.’

‘Meaning the ilks. Who are they? Give!’

They would have liked to give, but whisky had clouded their ideas and impeded their powers of description. They boasted a little about Alan Wetherby and his Marine Pavilion, and quoted Martha extensively.

‘This Martha,’ he said at last, ‘is, I take it, Head Ilk. Money?’

‘Why, yes,’ said Nell, surprised. ‘She has got a great deal of money. How did you guess?’

‘Money talks and so does she, apparently. Is it from her you got this line about Conrad’s loving brutality?’

‘Couldn’t I have thought of it myself?’ asked Rhona.

‘No, Gertie. You never!’

‘Why do you call us Gertie?’

‘Always call girls Gertie when I don’t know their names.’

A face appeared in the doorway and stared round the cellar. He seemed to be aware of this, although his back was turned to it.

‘That’s my car come, I think,’ he said. ‘They’ve taken their time finding one. Come along. I’ll drive you there.’

They rose and Nell swayed unsteadily. He glanced at her, put a hand under her elbow, and steered her out of the bar. His skill in doing so was remarkable; it looked like gallantry and masked the fact that she really needed support.

A large hired car was waiting outside, in the
flickering
street. The girls flinched; they had forgotten the storm. He pushed them into the car, sat down between them, and put an arm round each of their waists. As they set off through the crackling glare he advised them to hide their heads on his shoulders.

‘I can’t make out,’ complained Nell, as she did so, ‘whether you’re a gentleman or not.’

‘I’m what your old man probably calls a bounder, as you’ll find out before you’re much older. But don’t worry. I don’t take advantage of mysteries in taxis, especially when they come in pairs. Are you quite sure, now, that you’ve mentioned everyone who’ll be at this party?’

‘There’s a local yokel coming,’ said Rhona, ‘whom Conrad insisted on asking. Conrad does like the most ghastly people sometimes. He’s such a simple person. But Martha is quite glad to ask him. She means to bend him to her will.’

‘Convert him to loving brutality, you mean?’

‘He’s just a little local solicitor—an utterly provincial type. Complete satisfied with himself and East Head and has no outside interests. But he’s on a committee with Martha, for buying a work of art with some money that was left over from the War Memorial Fund, because the site was presented, so they didn’t have to buy it. The committee eats out of his hand, so Martha thinks it’s just as well to butter him up a bit.’

‘Unfortunately his wife is coming too,’ put in Nell. ‘Martha didn’t mean to ask her, but found that she had.’

‘We’ve all got to take turns to talk to her in words of one syllable,’ said Rhona. ‘She’s got a baby and we can ask if it has any teeth, you know. People like that! They don’t live. They merely exist.’

‘And that’s everybody?’

‘That’s everybody.’

‘Swann lives all alone, does he?’

There was a pause. Nell said icily that they were not discussing Conrad’s private life.

‘So I’ve noticed. What’s wrong with it?’

‘Nothing. But … he’s a very simple person.…’

‘Is that the theme song of the ilks? Too right! He must be. Very, very, very simple, poor chap. Now open your eyes, because I think we’re there. We’ve stopped at a gate and there’s a lot of cars outside it.’

He helped them out into the dangerous night. A flash revealed the house and the garden path. They felt their way towards the door.

‘It’s all dark!’ exclaimed Rhona.

‘Lights off everywhere,’ he explained. ‘The street lighting went off just as we started. You’d have seen if you hadn’t had your eyes shut.’

‘But it’s quiet,’ said Nell. ‘Perhaps the party has been put off. But then … all those cars are there!’

A faint glow from a ground-floor window was now visible. He took a few steps that way, looked into the room, and then returned to the girls with his report.

‘A party all right. All sitting round a solitary candle. Come along. We don’t knock, or don’t we? Walk in, I should think.’

‘Oh no,’ cried Nell, drawing back. ‘You can’t.’

He insisted that he was coming too, and ignored their flustered protests, declaring at last that he had been invited.

‘But you don’t know Martha!’ they both exclaimed.

‘I know Conrad. I’m his oldest friend. Honest I am. I’ve known him since he was a babby. Don’t you notice the accent? I’d have thought you would. He’s “Austrilian” too.’

‘Oh! Oh!’ shrieked Nell. ‘Now I know what you meant.…’

‘When I said I was no gent? Too right! But don’t worry. You’ve told me everything I came to find out, and saved me a lot of trouble.’

‘You gave us drink,’ stormed Rhona, ‘and made us talk.…’

A head was suddenly thrust through the lighted window, and a voice demanded:

‘Who is that? Who is yelling out there?’

It was a hauntingly beautiful voice, but its exquisite diction was a little blurred.

‘It’s Rhona and me … and … and a friend of Conrad’s.…’

‘Go away! I don’t want you. I don’t want anybody. The party is off, I tell you. Conrad isn’t here. He’s in Mexico. Walked out on me and gone to Mexico,’ sang the lovely voice. ‘If it’s a surprise to me, why shouldn’t it be a surprise to you? No need for a lot of people
coming and insisting, and insisting, and sitting here, and sitting, and insisting. I never asked them. But they won’t go away. If they insist, then I insist. We’ll see who can insist the longest.’