The Oracles Read online

  ‘The committee,’ explained Martha, ‘will want very adroit handling. We must expect some stubborn opposition. I realise that, from some of the comments on the Apollo that I’ve heard, even from people who should know better. Luckily we have Mr. Meadowes back and I have hopes of Mrs. Hughes. But the others …’

  She threw out despairing hands.

  ‘Quite,’ said Dickie, who now realised what was in the wind. ‘You’ll never get them to consider anything so … so …’ He sought for a word which should not outrage them, ‘… so unconventional.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t despair. I think, we all think, that it will be so much more acceptable to them if it’s your suggestion, if you sponsor the proposal. You have such influence. They’ll listen to you. They always do.’

  ‘Oh no! No! I’m not at all the right person,’ exclaimed Dickie, recoiling.

  ‘You’re exactly the right person. Isn’t he?’

  Martha turned to the others. Their murmur of assent was not very enthusiastic, for three of them thought that Mr. Meadowes would be a better sponsor. They overlooked the fact that any proposal from Meadowes was liable to provoke an automatic resistance. He had a chilly, conceited voice, and a way of looking down his nose, which exasperated the mildest auditors. Martha, however, was aware of this. She knew that Dickie’s slight West-country burr would ring more pleasantly in the ears of his fellow townsmen.

  ‘I shouldn’t know what to say,’ began Dickie.

  ‘Of course you would. You’ll say that Conrad is a local man—emphasise that—with a considerable reputation. Mention the Venice award. Say that this is his finest work; you can quote Alan Wetherby. And point out that we shall get it for a tenth of what we should have to pay if we waited. They’ll all grasp that.’

  ‘But they won’t like or understand it, and I’m not qualified to tell them why they ought to.’

  ‘Mr. Meadowes or I will do that, when supporting you.’

  ‘You can tell them,’ put in Don suddenly, ‘how much you like it, even if you can’t tell them why.’

  No way out of it, thought Dickie. I must tell the truth.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t like it,’ he said.

  There was a general recoil, as though he had spat upon the floor, or perpetrated some other gross indecency. Carter gave a gruff chuckle. Once a cannibal, always a cannibal.

  ‘It’s my fault, I dare say,’ continued Dickie. ‘I don’t pretend to understand these things. I can’t see anything in it at all. It strikes me as it will probably strike most of the committee: ugly and senseless. So I’m not the person who should sponsor it.’

  Don gave an imperceptible nod. The others turned to Martha, as if asking what she had to say for her convert now.

  ‘I had no idea of this,’ she said accusingly. ‘I thought you admired Conrad’s work. Considering how enthusiastic you were over that very inferior example of it which … Why didn’t you tell me this when you saw the Apollo in the music-room?’

  ‘I didn’t think my opinion was of the slightest importance.’

  ‘Not of importance? When you had assured me of your support? I think you might have warned me that you had changed your mind.’

  Never, thought Dickie. I never assured you of my support. You don’t bounce me like this. I may have been a little too encouraging; Tina had flustered me. But …

  ‘I think,’ he said pleasantly, ‘that I only told you I wouldn’t oppose the suggestion upon the grounds that the Apollo is not a work of art.’

  ‘I should hope not!’ snapped Meadowes. ‘You know that Wetherby considers it Swann’s finest work?’

  ‘Yes. Oh yes.’

  In Dickie’s mind two convictions were locked in a sort of stranglehold. Wetherby liked the Apollo because he had superior taste. Wetherby must be an ass if he liked the Apollo. Doubt of Wetherby’s good faith might have resolved the conflict, but it did not occur to him; he still had a great respect for all the non-grocers.

  ‘I know so little about these things,’ he repeated.

  ‘Precisely,’ replied Meadowes. ‘So why not listen to those who do?’

  ‘I want to listen. I’m anxious to be convinced. But, until I am, I must … speak as I find, mustn’t I? Especially on this committee, where we are responsible for public money.’

  ‘Mr. Pattison!’ said Martha solemnly. ‘Here is a work of complete integrity. It makes no compromise, no concession, to what the public may demand, or think that it likes. To state his secret, private vision is all that concerns Conrad. Can’t you understand?’

  ‘That,’ put in Carter, ‘is something which you can’t expect anybody to understand but us, Martha. The artists are the only honest people.’

  Dickie smiled at them. The fact that Martha had tried to bounce him, now that it was revealed, did much to restore his composure. He had, at first, been sorry to disappoint her and he was still regretful at having to stand in Swann’s way. But he was not to be bullied, and knew how to hold his own with people who tried. Nor was he now in danger of losing his temper. A tussle of this sort rather raised his spirits.

  His equanimity daunted them a little, as it had daunted Sir Gregory Manders in the fight over the sewage disposal scheme. Martha adopted a more conciliatory tone.

  ‘If only,’ she said, ‘you could … could …’

  Don intervened again.

  ‘Assume a virtue if you have it not,’ he suggested. ‘You want to admire the thing. You know you ought to. Perhaps you will, eventually. Why not stretch a point?’

  Don and Dickie looked at one another.

  ‘And what,’ Dickie asked them, ‘about my … integrity?’

  He did not like to use such a pretentious word about himself, but could not resist the temptation to make them jump.

  He did. Carter gave an audible gasp of protest. What could a little provincial solicitor mean by talking about his integrity?

  ‘Perhaps,’ suggested Martha gently, ‘we attach rather a special meaning to that word.’

  ‘I see,’ said Dickie. ‘Let’s say common honesty.’

  ‘Common honesty?’ queried Mr. Meadowes, smiling a little, as if he found the expression a contradiction in terms.

  ‘Telling the truth,’ explained Dickie. ‘Saying what you mean and meaning what you say. Sticking to your bargains.’

  ‘You mean purely moral integrity?’ said Martha, impatiently. ‘There are other loyalties.…’

  ‘Swann has his,’ agreed Dickie. ‘I think I must be allowed to have mine. I don’t think the town had any purchase of this sort in mind when we were entrusted …’

  ‘The town will lynch us later on,’ interrupted Meadowes, ‘when it realises what an opportunity we’ve missed. We shall go down to history as dolts and dunderheads.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Martha. ‘I happen to know that the town is far from satisfied with the committee. I often think there is more liberality, more perception, among simple working people than there is among those who ought to be choosing for them and guiding them. Sometimes, just instinctively, they know. Only nobody listens to them.’

  Like the Dandawa, thought Dickie, and their sacred fish. The poor black boobs said it fell from heaven, and nobody listened.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that the town ought to have an opportunity of judging. I’ve a very good mind to arrange a public exhibition before we put forward our proposal.’

  There was a stir of surprise and alarm. It was a dangerous move, and Martha knew it, but Dickie’s unexpected obstinacy had destroyed her chances of bouncing the committee. The pressure of public opinion was now her only hope. Few people on the committee would court unpopularity by resisting a widespread demand. It would not, she believed, be impossible to create and stimulate discontent with the committee. The odds were against her, but she was inclined to take them.

  ‘I must think about it,’ she said. ‘But in that case I must ask you all to treat what’s been said here as confidential. I should just want the people to see the Apollo, and judge,
before my proposal goes before the committee. Can I rely on your discretion, Mr. Pattison?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dickie. ‘I think a public exhibition would be a very good idea.’

  It would, he thought, put an end to the whole business.

  ‘But it’s too much to hope that you won’t crab it, though,’ muttered Carter.

  At that his temper began to slip.

  ‘I haven’t the slightest desire to crab it, Mrs. Hobhouse. I don’t ask that the majority should support Mrs. Rawson. But there ought to be some respectable backing among the people who are, after all, paying for it. If there is, I agree that we should be justified in going ahead of popular taste. But if there is none, I think it is too soon to buy a work like this, however much we may be abused and derided later on.’

  He pulled up, aware that he had been provoked into saying too much. The less he said, the better he could preserve his liberty of action.

  ‘And are we not respectable?’ demanded Carter.

  ‘I should be happier,’ he said, ‘if the suggestion was supported by a few people who were not personal friends of Swann. And now … really I’m afraid I must …’

  No effort was made to detain him. He had as good as cooked a missionary before their eyes. Don, however, escorted him off the premises and unlocked a little door in the garden wall which gave access to the road. Before they parted Dickie suddenly asked him if he liked the Apollo himself.

  ‘No,’ said Don, who was filled with envy at Dickie’s honesty. ‘I take your view. I think it’s ridiculous.’

  ‘You don’t think there could possibly be a mistake?’

  ‘A mistake?’

  ‘I mean … could it be anybody else’s work?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I don’t think it could possibly be.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like Swann somehow,’ complained Dickie. ‘Of course it looks like … I’ve seen a lot of contemporary stuff that looks rather like it … I don’t know enough to know good from bad. I suppose some is good and some is bad. All I know is that this … this doesn’t look like Swann.’

  Don nodded, and checked the impulse to suggest that Swann might have gone mad. Martha would never forgive him if he did that. He said goodbye and hurried back to the boathouse.

  Dickie drove disconsolately home. The afternoon had battered him. Martha’s behaviour obliged him to think ill of her, and he disliked having to do so. But the more he thought over her manœuvres, the more unscrupulous he found them. She had tried to rush him into compliance and she had used very unfair weapons. Not only had she attempted to exploit his goodwill towards Swann, she had taken advantage of his probable reluctance, as her guest, to challenge or criticise her taste. Moreover, she had endeavoured to confuse him, by suggesting that he had committed himself and forcing him to contradict her in public. There was an appearance of premeditation in the whole assault which he did not relish at all. She was a dangerous woman and he wished to have no more dealings with her. He would have liked to talk it over with Christina, but that, at the moment, would not be easy.

  Christina was standing at their gate when he got home, and she had somebody with her, a ragged child in floods of tears. They were both carrying heavy baskets of what looked like food. As he got out of the car she was thrusting the child and the baskets into the back. Then, with an indignant glare, she turned on him.

  ‘Your supper,’ she said, ‘is in the fridge. Salmon mousse and blackberry fool. There’s a salad in the dining-room, and some Brie cheese. Coffee is all put ready. Will you lift Bobbins at nine o’clock if I’m not back?’

  ‘But where are you going?’ he exclaimed, as she pushed him out of the way and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  ‘To see after something that I think is important, although you and Martha Rawson don’t.’

  4

  SERAFINA did not often shed tears, but when she did she outwept Niobe. Having started, she could not stop; kindness, promises of help, baskets of food, were of no avail. She felt herself to be beyond the reach of consolation and sobbed steadily during the whole drive up to Summersdown.

  Christina also was greatly agitated. Her pity and concern for the children were genuine, but her strongest feeling was one of indignation. She wanted to punish the people who had been responsible for this; she hoped that Elizabeth might be put in prison for it. As for the Rawsons … here a certain element of satisfaction tempered emotion which might otherwise have been too painful. She was not sorry to have such a good case against Martha, for her conscience had been troubling her ever since that tea-party. Now she could feel that her conduct had been justified. Martha Rawson was a fiend who turned starving children from her door. It was a positive duty to be rude to her.

  ‘Now, Serafina,’ she said, when they got out of the car at Summersdown, ‘you must stop crying, dear, or you’ll upset the others. It’s all over, you know. All over. It won’t happen again.’

  Serafina struggled and gulped.

  ‘From now on,’ continued Christina, ‘everything is going to be all right. I’ll see that it is. You’ll have nothing more to bear. I promise. You believe me, don’t you? I promise.’

  The look which she got in answer to this was most disturbing. It was almost compassionate, as though Serafina pitied the simplicity which could offer such a promise. That child, she thought, as they walked together up the path, knows too much. She knows more than a child ought to know. She knows more than … more than … Christina was upon the verge of thinking: She knows more than I do! But that was nonsense. How could a child know more than a woman of twenty-five, a wife and a mother? What could she know? What secret lay behind that look? That nothing is safe?

  For an instant Christina flinched and hesitated upon the threshold of the house, as if unwilling to enter it. A desolate uncertainty invaded her, even when she thought of her home and Dickie and Bobbins, and of all the security which she had taken as much for granted as the air she breathed. Anything can happen to us, she thought. Anything! And that’s what Serafina knows. I promised she should have nothing more to bear. I don’t know what I’m going to have to bear myself, yet.

  Serafina had run into the house, calling to the others. No answer came.

  ‘They must have gone up the garden,’ she said. ‘I’ll fetch them.’

  She ran off, her shouts dying away as she turned the corner of the house. Christina still lingered in the doorway, fighting this inexplicable depression. Five minutes ago she had been perfectly sure of her own future. Now she was sure of nothing. She wanted to rush home and make certain that Dickie and Bobbins were still there. That bright beloved place no longer stood at the centre of the universe, sheltered and unshaken, a stronghold from whence the unfortunate, the culpable and the foolish might be admonished or consoled. It was no more than a solitary shack, surviving on a boundless desert, spared as yet, but spared only by chance. Anything might sweep it away, and send her forth to wander, no better equipped against calamity than anybody else. How could she help the helpless? They knew more about the inclement world than she did.

  There was a movement inside the house. Serafina had come in again by the kitchen door, still shouting for the others. Then there was a startled cry and silence.

  Anything! Anything! thought Christina, forcing herself to go inside.

  ‘Mrs. Pattison! Oh, Mrs. Pattison!’

  Serafina met her in the hall. She was triumphantly waving a piece of paper.

  ‘They’ve come! The person’s come! They’ve left a letter.’

  ‘What person?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know who. But they’ve left a letter. Look!’

  She thrust the paper into Christina’s hand. This single promise redeemed meant more to her than any number of new ones. Upon the paper a few words were scrawled:

  SERAFINA!

  All gone to eat at the Metropole Hotel. Come along down and join us as soon as possible.

  F.A.

  ‘It was on the kitchen table,’ said Serafina. ‘They must hav
e put it for me to find. Wasn’t it a clever idea?’

  ‘But who on earth can it be?’

  ‘It must be somebody rich. The Metropole is very expensive. Do you think we’re going to live there now?’

  ‘Well, thank goodness somebody has turned up. I’ll drive you down and find out what’s been settled.’

  ‘Shall we take the baskets back? We shan’t need them if we’re going to live with a rich person.’

  ‘Put them back in the car. We’ll see.’

  The drama of all this banished Christina’s depression. On the drive down to the Metropole she made up her mind that she would interview this belated protector, make sure that everything was now on a satisfactory footing, and rebuke him or her for not having come before.

  ‘You could leave that hat behind in the car, couldn’t you?’ she suggested, as they arrived at the hotel.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Serafina, ‘but I have my reasons for perpetually wearing it. Religious reasons.’

  Christina could not argue over this, although she did not relish having to enter those magnificent portals in such company, and felt that Serafina might look less conspicuous without the hat. We can but be thrown out, she thought, advancing as boldly as she could towards the dining-room, and completely unaware that she was still wearing the flowered plastic apron in which she bathed Bobbins. Ever since Serafina’s arrival upon her doorstep she had been agitated and not quite herself. She had been so anxious to get food to those children that she had rushed out of the house, just as she was, as soon as Dickie brought the car home.

  Before they reached the dining-room a waiter darted from a side door, as though he had been on the look-out for them. With a glance at the hat, he suggested that they belonged to Mr. Archer’s party and led them off down a corridor.