The Oracles Page 25

  ‘But Dickie …’

  ‘I’m not going to talk about it. What do you think you’re doing? Raking all this up just when we … just when …’

  ‘I didn’t know anything about it till Allie told me.’

  ‘It’s no business of yours. I don’t want to hear a word more from you about it.’

  ‘All right. All right. You shan’t.’

  ‘That’s a good girl!’

  He smiled, relenting, and went on for the last stack of records.

  5

  AND now he is happy listening to the radio. Just because he is listening to his favourite music he is quite out of this world, and has managed to forget everything for a little while. He has to forget everything before he can be happy, because nothing in his life makes any sense to him. That is not happiness. He is not a happy man.

  This afternoon. And immediately afterwards I made him angry because I started to argue again, and he was very gloomy all through supper. But now, for a little while, he is quite in a rapture. That is how he lives his life: either miserable or quite in a rapture. Sitting there and listening, and seeing it all in his mind, because he knows it so well he can imagine it on the stage. And he smiles at me sometimes, because he knows I’m fond of Mozart too. He’s thinking it pays to be firm. He was firm with me, so I shut up, and now we are happily listening to Mozart together.

  I shall never be able to hear this music again without feeling sick. It will remind me of this terrible night when we were sitting here, and he was listening, and I was trying to find the courage to tell him.

  But I’ll let him enjoy it all to the end before I do. So now he is happy, looking at the score. He is listening to all those jokes and laughing at them. I never can like those bits where they just jabber, with little chords from the piano. Which bit is it? Those two men in a graveyard … I never know what it’s all about, jabbering away in Italian, but they seem to have to have it. Does anybody know what it’s about?

  There is no escape. Nothing can stop it. Nothing! Nothing!

  Whether I speak, or whether I don’t, this blow must fall on him now he’s written that letter. Nothing can save him. I can save the others. I can stop it from getting worse. But I can’t save Dickie.

  This afternoon. He was so pleased when he found it in his study. Now he will never be able to enjoy it again, or take a pride in it. He will never be able to think of Conrad Swann again without feeling humiliated.

  *

  Dickie sat up, his eyes bright. He was waiting for some special moment. He smiled across at Christina.

  A tremendous voice rang through the room, like the tolling of a great bell:

  DI RIDER FINIRAI PRIA DELL’ AURORA!

  Oh, that awful voice! It speaks suddenly in the graveyard. You won’t laugh tomorrow, it says, or something like that.

  Why couldn’t we laugh? Why couldn’t everybody laugh about it? Why should that rubbishy Thing have the power to bring such misery? Who is behind it? Is there some cruel person who has done it all on purpose? No! How could there be? Nobody. All an accident.

  It’s so unfair. Dickie never liked it. He saw through it. How could I know Martha would run away and leave poor Dickie to write her idiotic mistake in a letter to Mr. Swann?

  Perhaps Mr. Swann will forgive him. But he will never forgive himself for supposing that silly object was the work of a great artist—a man he thinks the world of. He never liked it, but that won’t make any difference. He will feel he ought to have known.

  Why is he smiling now? It must be another of our favourites … he remembers it all so much better than I do. A man and a woman.…

  Crudele! Ah no, mio bene!

  Oh yes! Yes! His favourite song of all, and mine too. He tells her she is cruel, and she says no, she is not. And it keeps breaking in all the time while she is arguing and making excuses for her behaviour, that lovely tune keeps breaking in, the tune she is going to have to sing to him. So at last she has to sing it because there is nothing else to say. So lovely! So lovely! He is in a dream listening to it.

  Tu ben sai quanto t’amai.

  You know, she says, you know how much I love you. Just that. She need say nothing else but that. She sings and he listens, and everything is all right.

  He will never forgive me. I should have thought that would be the worst. But it’s not. I wouldn’t mind what I had to bear if I could protect him from this.

  I understand him better now. Better than I did when we were happy. It isn’t that he will mind having made a stupid mistake. He is not conceited. But he is always searching for something. He is disappointed in his life. So he’s always searching for something that he can feel is more important than just his little life. He wants something that he can admire so much that it will make living worth while. And this … this will make a mockery of something he admires. He will feel it’s no use; there is no difference between true and false.

  Not even God can help, unless it’s to change Dickie into somebody different: somebody who wouldn’t mind so much. God can’t do that. It may be foolish of Dickie to mind so much, but that is the way he is made. Oh, you know, you know how much I love you.

  He never will. He doesn’t want to know. It would make him too sad if he knew. Everything is too late.

  *

  The music stopped for a moment. The great aria was over. For a few seconds, before the finale, there was no sound in the room save a faint humming from the radio.

  ‘Very fine,’ said Dickie. ‘But she wasn’t quite up to the second half, was she?’

  ‘No,’ said Christina, who had not heard a note of the second half.

  ‘We’ve got a terrific Commendatore, though. It’s going to be a wonderful finale. I’m feeling cold already, waiting for the moment when he comes in.’

  She jumped up and rushed upstairs to their bedroom. Even there the music pursued her faintly, as it poured from the radio in the room below. She flung herself down on the bed, her hands over her ears, lost in panic and desolation.

  The statue! she cried wildly to herself. The statue! Cowering as though she could hear it coming up the stairs. It was no accident. Something had been let loose; somebody was making use of this inane thing, this innocent bit of rubbish, which had already done so much harm and was bound to do more, because it was a fragment of falsity, and ought not to exist in the world for a single moment longer. To take it away, to destroy it, was the only remedy, but nobody would ever do such a thing unless she did it herself. Nothing could repair the damage already done, but the weapon could still be snatched from that mysterious, hostile hand.

  She ran downstairs and out to the garage, with no clear notion of what she meant to do. That might be manifest when she reached the Pavilion. The doors would be shut at eleven o’clock, but she still had twenty minutes.

  As she got the car out a scheme solidified. She would tell Mr. Beccles that Dickie had sent her to take it away. He would probably give it up; everybody seemed to think that Dickie had power to act for Conrad Swann. And then she would contrive to destroy it—bury it perhaps in some place where nobody would ever find it. To Dickie, to the world, she would announce that she had done this because she did not happen to like it; other people did such things, for she had read about them in the newspapers. They went into galleries and destroyed statues or pictures which they did not happen to like. They were mad people and everybody was shocked at them. Prison or a lunatic asylum was probably their lot, and might be hers. The whole town would condemn her; they would pity Dickie because he had a mad wife. Her life was in ruins but by doing this thing she felt as though she might draw all the retribution down upon herself and be the only one to pay, as she deserved to pay. The Thing would be no more; they should never find it or discover what she knew.

  The streets were nearly empty as she drove down to the Pavilion, for most of the cinemas finished their last houses soon after ten. In Market Square the country buses, brilliantly lighted oblongs, were drawn up in rows. Long queues were filling them
before they set off, up and down the coast, or inland, over the dark hills. The wind was getting up; the first autumn gales were beginning, and ragged clouds sailed across the moon. Upon the deserted Parade an endless line of lamps stretched away beside the sea-wall. A high tide boomed and dragged at the screaming shingle.

  She parked the car and went towards the Pavilion, which stood up, rectangular and aggressive, under the hurrying clouds. It was not yet shut. An unpleasant greenish light glowed through the ranks of Perspex doors. These vestibule lights had always caused controversy; they poured down from some concealed source, pervasively bright but unflattering to the faces of people coming out of the theatre hall.

  If Mr. Wetherby was a woman and had to make up, she thought, as she hurried toward the doors, he wouldn’t like having to look like a corpse.

  Alan Wetherby!

  An unidentified figure took a step out of the shadows in her mind. Whose name was invariably quoted as warrant for the Thing? Who had encouraged Martha to believe that it was wonderful? Did he know? He, of all people, was the best qualified to guess the truth. What part had he played in all this, and why had she not thought of him before?

  Now that she had thought of him, she knew. He was the person behind it all; he had let it happen deliberately. And she knew why: it was his idea of a joke, his way of enjoying himself. He liked to make people feel small and foolish. He was looking forward to a grand spectacle of general humiliation.

  But he should not have it. For all his cleverness he had not reckoned with mad Mrs. Pattison.

  She went slowly through the doors. There had been a picture shown in the hall, but the audience had all departed a quarter of an hour before. The vestibule was empty, its glassy blue floor streaming away to that transparent north wall and gleams of moonlight on tossing waves. She had never seen it thus before, and was, for the first time, impressed by its beauty. Even the strange light, emanating stealthily from the fabric, was beautiful in a cruel way; nobody else was there, no corpse face looked at her, and this light was at peace with emptiness.

  Treading with fearful steps over her own reflection, soaring walls and arched roof below and above her, she approached the space at the head of the stairs. The light revealed dahlias and chrysanthemums and a square block of marble in the middle of them. It was the pedestal upon which the Thing had stood.

  She stared, blinked, looked away, and stared again. The pedestal was empty. The Thing had gone.

  In that merciless light, amidst so many deceiving reflections, she could not immediately believe her own eyes. It was some seconds before her brains received the message.

  Gone.

  The vestibule echoed with a series of clangs. A young man had come out of the hall and was shutting its doors. He said a word or two to an usherette who came out with him, and they laughed before she hurried off into the wind and the night. Their laughter rang away under the roof as Christina hurried down towards the hall doors. These echoes were also only apparent when the place was empty.

  The young man was Mr. Beccles’ factotum and his name was Ernest. Nobody knew his surname. He looked a little startled when she came up to him, for he had thought the vestibule to be empty.

  ‘Where’s that thing gone?’ she demanded. ‘That thing they had in the middle of the flowers?’

  ‘Why, it’s there still,’ he said, with a glance toward the stairhead.

  ‘No it’s not. The stone is there. The statue has gone.’

  He took a step or two in that direction, gaped, and exclaimed:

  ‘That’s funny! It was there this afternoon.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Between five and six it was there still.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He reflected and declared:

  ‘S’matter of fact, I am. There was a coach party in, and one feller was there taking pictures with this little camera, size of a button. I noticed that.’

  After further reflection he gave judgment:

  ‘Somebody must’ve taken it away.’

  ‘How could they? Without you seeing?’

  ‘That’s right. They couldn’t.’

  ‘You’ve been out here all the time since six?’

  ‘Naw. Seven to eight I was getting me supper in the canteen. But Mr. Beccles, he was out here then. P’raps he knows.’

  She glanced at the glass door into Mr. Beccles’ office. It was locked and dark.

  ‘He’s gone home this half-hour,’ said Ernest. ‘But it must of happened when I was off, see? Funny I didn’t notice.’

  ‘Who could it have been?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, Mrs. Pattison. But it must of been somebody entitled to take it, or Mr. Beccles, he wouldn’t of let it go.’

  Ernest glanced meaningly at the clock over the café entrance. Nobody could ever read this clock, which had no hands and no numerals, but the glance signified that he wanted to shut the main doors and go home.

  ‘Very queer,’ said Christina. ‘Good night, Ernest.’

  ‘Good night, Mrs. Pattison.’

  They both took another stare at the empty flowerbed. Then she went out into the darkness. The rising gale caught and buffeted her as she emerged from the shelter of the building. A light mist of spray blew over the sea-wall into her face.

  6

  ‘CONRAD!’

  ‘Yes, Frank?’

  ‘Have you been listening?’

  ‘Yes, Frank.’

  ‘What have I been saying?’

  ‘That I mustn’t laugh,’ said Conrad piously. ‘Can we have some more marmalade?’

  Archer snapped his fingers at the head waiter and pointed to the marmalade dish. This was his third descent upon the Metropole, and he was, by now, regarded with some awe. More marmalade was brought immediately.

  Conrad fell upon it, for he was very hungry. They had been out to sea before breakfast that morning. Moreover, he was in tearing spirits; to find that he could return to East Head without uneasiness was an immense stimulant.

  ‘And why,’ asked Archer, ‘mustn’t you laugh?’

  ‘Because it would do a lot of damage to your reputation if this story got out,’ said Conrad promptly.

  ‘Yours, old man. Yours. Your reputation.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  This was true. Their reputations were inextricably involved.

  ‘So you’ll keep a straight face till we get home?’

  ‘I’ll try. But I think it’s very funny.’

  ‘Funny my arse! A lot too funny. That’s the trouble.’

  ‘Can I tell Ivy when we get home?’

  ‘You’ll tell nobody. You’ll keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking.’

  ‘All right. But I don’t see why you should take me along, in that case. I’d much rather go for another sail.’

  ‘I take you along because I don’t trust you out of my sight for five minutes, until we’re clear of this town. I’m beginning to understand why it drove you crackers.’

  ‘Perhaps Pattison might like to come for a sail. It’s Sunday, so he’ll be free.’

  Frank gave Conrad a murderous look.

  ‘I know you’re a very, very simple person,’ he observed.

  This jibe went home. It was not one which Conrad wished to recall. He winced and protested.

  ‘Then don’t treat me as if I was Martha Rawson,’ continued Frank. ‘Pattison is going to need careful handling. We’re in the dark. There’ve been some very queer doings here. We’ve got to walk on eggshells till we find out how come Mrs. P. knew and he didn’t.’

  ‘Huh! Huh! Huh!’

  ‘Don’t laugh, damn you.’

  ‘Sorry. But we aren’t sure she knows, are we?’

  ‘I’m ninety per cent sure. Every single question we asked, the children fetched up with Aunt Chris. Joe wouldn’t have remembered if Aunt Chris hadn’t given him a chocolate biscuit. What got her so interested? Serafina told Aunt Chris a lie: said there was nothing in the shed. Why should Aunt Chris ask, if she hadn’t smelt
a rat? Obviously she was on to it.’

  ‘I expect she laughed,’ mused Conrad wistfully.

  ‘She might. But she didn’t hand the joke on to hubby. Why not? Why did she let him write that letter?’

  ‘We can ask her.’

  ‘If we get a chance. I must sniff about and see how the land lies. If only she’ll go on holding her tongue we may get by, for I don’t believe anybody else knows.’

  ‘I think you’re taking it all too seriously.’

  ‘You do? I’m going to have nightmares about it for the rest of my life. When I think! If I hadn’t come down here the week-end of the storm and seen that thing, we’d be in the soup. I’d forgotten all about it till you showed me Pattison’s letter.’

  ‘Huh! Huh! Huh!’

  ‘Now look here!’

  Conrad pulled himself together and swallowed his laughter. He twisted his face into an unaccustomed scowl which he kept up for the rest of breakfast and on all the way to the Pattisons’ house. He had a good deal of brow to knit, and he looked so fierce that Frank had to remind him they were not on a lynching party.

  Christina, who was upstairs, heard the gate click. She looked out of the window to see this disconcerting pair rolling up the path, side by side. They were formidable, and had always been so, ever since they descended upon Europe, a couple of grotesque adolescents from out back in Boogie Woogie or wherever it was. They looked more like men from some other planet than migrants from any known continent. Conrad wore corduroys and a tweed jacket. Frank’s suit came from Savile Row. But these garments looked as incongruous on them as does fancy dress upon a civilised man. It was impossible to imagine what clothes they should have been wearing.

  As they drew nearer she saw that terrible scowl and felt giddy with fright. Everything must have come out. She stumbled across to the bed and sat on it for a moment, trying to get her breath.

  The door bell chimed. She heard Dickie go along the hall to answer it, and knew that she must be there, beside him, to face whatever was coming, to draw their fire, if possible. She rushed down the stairs as Dickie opened the door.