The Oracles Read online

  Yours ever,

  Conrad.

  ‘Well,’ she said, giving the letter back, ‘it reads to me as if he’s going crackers.’

  ‘It struck me that way. Where’s he gone, do you think?’

  ‘He’s been talking a lot about Mexico.’

  ‘Oh, be your age! It’d be a wonder if he had the price of a ticket to Bristol. When did you last see him?’

  She screwed up her eyes, trying to remember.

  ‘Oh God! I don’t know. I don’t believe I’ve seen him since Thursday, when he asked me for half a crown.’

  ‘Where does he sleep, then?’

  ‘In the studio, more often than not.’

  ‘It didn’t strike you that he was going out of his mind?’

  ‘God no!’ she cried, startled. ‘I mean, I’ve thought he was mad for months. But … but … you don’t really think …’

  ‘This letter,’ he said, striking the pages with a thick forefinger, ‘frightens me. The spelling mistakes are not normal, even for Conrad. It sounds to me as if he’s going cuckoo, though he’s making a fight for it. Now he’s disappeared. I’m wondering if he mayn’t have lost his memory and be wandering about.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus! What a mess! But you don’t mean really mad. Not delusions. It’s quite a reasonable letter.’

  ‘Perhaps I should have said a nervous breakdown.’

  ‘Nonsense. Conrad is not that type. He’s too primitive, too virile.’

  ‘Primitive virile types get very bad ones, if they get them at all.’

  ‘Oh no! I’ve had three myself. They never affected my spelling. I merely got so I couldn’t stop crying.’

  ‘You were taken in time. I mean to start looking for him at once, as discreetly as I can. We don’t want a lot of publicity. Can you think of anything to help me? Where would he go?’

  ‘Oh dear! I’ve been so miserable myself lately I’ve hardly noticed what was happening to anybody else.’

  ‘You never do that, even when you aren’t miserable.’

  ‘You’re much fonder of him than you ever were of me.’

  ‘If I’d ever been any fonder of you than I once was, Liz, it’s I who’d be in the bin by now. You don’t deserve more.’

  She made such a violent gesture of impatience that she nearly upset the coffee tray.

  ‘All my life,’ she wailed, ‘I’ve given love and never had any. Nobody has loved me. Not as I mean it. Look at Conrad! Look at what I gave up for him … for this. This! Oh, I can’t tell you, I just can’t tell you, what it’s been. The squalor. The loneliness. Nobody to speak to. Literally nobody. Conrad always working. I don’t call those friends of his human beings. I’d have kicked that bitch Martha out of the house months ago if we hadn’t depended, absolutely depended, on her for our dinner. Why do these things have to happen to me? Why does nobody love me? It’s the last straw, lying here, listening to you going on about your precious Conrad, as if it was all my fault.’

  ‘I don’t say it was all your fault. I shouldn’t have brought him to Cheyne Walk. But I never thought you’d take a fancy to him. He’s no oil painting, and you usen’t to like him.’

  Elizabeth cheered up a little, as she recalled a past which had, at least, been dramatic.

  ‘Oh, it was just one of those things,’ she mused. ‘It all flared up in a minute. I came in one evening; I’d been to a party … such a dull party …’

  ‘You told me all about it at the time.’

  ‘And of course Conrad was—is—wonderful in a way. He …’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘At least you can’t accuse me of concealing things.’

  ‘I don’t. But you must agree, now, that running off with him was the worst day’s work you ever did in your life.’

  ‘For me perhaps,’ she snapped. ‘He’s all right. I don’t seem to have come between you.’

  He walked up and down, considering the tasks before him.

  ‘First things first,’ he decided. ‘Now I’m here I’ll see this Apollo. Where is it? Brush up your brains, like a good girl, and tell me.’

  ‘I suppose the Apollo must be still in the shed, next to the garage. He put it there for the lorry to come and take it to Gressington. Martha sees to all that.’

  ‘His letter gives me authority. If I don’t think it does him credit, it shan’t go.’

  ‘Please yourself. I couldn’t care …’

  ‘Then I’ll find a school for the twins. I’ll send for them. It mayn’t be for a week or two, though, as I have to go to Rome on Wednesday. Meanwhile … you’ll want something to carry on with, I imagine.’

  He took out his wallet and extracted a thick wad of notes.

  ‘If I thought you cared a bean for me,’ she said, ‘I’d throw it back in your face. But this is all part of looking after Conrad, isn’t it?’

  She gave him one of her rare smiles, sweet and candid. As always, he was disarmed by it.

  ‘Thank you,’ she added.

  ‘You’d better count them.’

  ‘Why? You can tell me how much it is. I’m sure you know.’

  ‘You take the trouble to count them.’

  Slowly, for the notes stuck together and her fingers were all thumbs this morning, she began to strew her eiderdown with his largesse. Her cheeks flushed slightly with pleasure at the sight of so much plenty, and her hair swung forward, hiding hollows and shadows. It was not the bright soft hair that it had once been, and it needed washing. But there was, for a moment, a look upon her which recalled the lovely, gifted, hapless creature whom he had married fourteen years ago.

  She must be all of thirty-five, he thought, and she looks fifty. She’s gone a long way downhill in two years. Could I ever have done anything …?

  He knew that he never could, although he might have done better for himself had he divorced and forgotten her thirteen years before. Her egotism was not a normal or curable failing; it was a disease which must eventually destroy her. If he blamed himself for anything, it was for his self-deception during a middle period, when he had tried to believe that they were settling down at last. He had been fool enough to accept her theory that she needed a child, and obliged her with two, which was one too many, since she regarded twins as a very bad joke. They should never have been born and the time was at hand when he ought to take them away from her.

  ‘That’s better than a poke in the eye,’ she said as she joyfully bundled up the notes. ‘You can afford it, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes. I can afford it.’

  ‘How are you getting along these days? You’ve got a nice girl-friend, I hope?’

  ‘Kind of you. I get along all right.’

  ‘I never can understand why you don’t divorce me.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Girl-friends get swelled heads if a man is free.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Some sense in that. Nobody can drag you to the altar. Frank! It may be a dream … but I’ve a dim recollection that you said something last night about selling Cheyne Walk.’

  ‘I did. But I won’t if you’d rather I didn’t. The Grays are there, caretaking.’

  She looked thoughtful. After a while she said slowly:

  ‘Then, if you’re not there, and I wanted to come up and see about getting a job …’

  ‘Go there by all means. The Grays will look after you.’

  ‘Oh dear! It Would have been so nice for me and Conrad …’

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Not for you and Conrad. That I shouldn’t have allowed. Now I’m off. Goodbye.’

  He had got as far as the door when she called him back.

  ‘Just why,’ she demanded fiercely, ‘are you so demented about Conrad? What is it all about? I’ve never been able to understand it. Good heavens! If I didn’t know you both so well I’d have thought you must be queer.’

  ‘Queerer than you can possibly think.’

  Elizabeth, he well knew, was as likely to master the calculus as to grasp the idea of a disinterested attachmen
t.

  ‘We’ve been friends for a very long time,’ he suggested.

  ‘Oh, I know. Ever since your boyhoods, out-back in Boogie Woogie, or wherever it was you came from. But you weren’t born that way? Or were you? When did it start?’

  ‘I suppose it was because he liked me. Very few people do, you know.’

  ‘Oh, Frank!’

  But her protest was perfunctory. He had spoken the truth. Very few people did like him.

  ‘It’s because you expect them not to,’ she said. ‘You mind too much about your face.’

  ‘I daresay. It’s stupid. But I began so young I can’t get out of the habit. I was a revoltingly hideous child and I lived among people who made no bones about telling me so. I only had to poke my little mug round the door to send everybody into stitches. And I had these teeth. Stuck straight out of my face like a shelf. At least I got that fixed as soon as I had some cash.’

  ‘Why … you must have been worse than our twins!’

  ‘Much worse. You did your bit to tone them down. I was a monster. And I minded.’

  ‘I suppose you did. You’re damned sensitive really.’

  ‘Conrad liked my looks. Positively liked them! When we were about twelve he made a putty head of me, an excellent likeness, eyes, teeth, everything, yet extremely agreeable somehow. Was I grateful? I felt I could bear my face. It was one of the first heads he did; he’d begun by doing animals. I thought him a genius, naturally. I pushed him into thinking he wanted to go to Europe. They told us that a genius always starves. So we got it all worked out. He was to make heads. I was to make a lot of money and buy them.’

  She sighed and gave him another of her smiles.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come across with that,’ she said, ‘after all these years. Poor little you! And the teeth too. I could cry. But funny, because it all worked out. I suppose you’d never have been an art dealer if it hadn’t been for Conrad.’

  ‘Never. I’d have made a packet some other way, I suppose. An ugly man can sell anything to anybody. But it’s Conrad’s doing that I don’t think Giorgione must be some kind of cheese.’

  She laughed and waved him a friendly farewell.

  We are more intimate now, he thought, as he went out to the shed, than we ever were. I couldn’t have told her that when I loved her. Heaven knows what I’ll tell her when she’s in the bin and I go to see her—how I’ll bare my soul during her lucid intervals. Truth among the ruins …

  2

  ON Monday evening The Bishop’s Candlesticks was to be rehearsed at the Pattisons’ house. Dickie and Christina had supper early; it was the first solid meal that he had been able to eat that day, for his hangover had been severe and he had not been able to go to the office.

  The town was ringing with accounts of the party, which outshone the storm as a topic for discussion. Neighbours in Summersdown had been awakened at three o’clock in the morning by people shouting and singing in the road. Various stories were going about. Loyalty to Conrad was somewhat relaxed among his adherents and not all of them observed Martha’s ban upon gossip. They had been promised the Apollo and had been given, instead, headaches of varying severity. But their recollections were hazy. All agreed that a terrific orgy had taken place and that Elizabeth’s husband was responsible for it. Some said that he had forced his way into the house and thrown out Conrad. Others asserted that Conrad had run away for fear of a horsewhipping. Those who had left before the end were quite positive that they had not seen the Apollo. One or two, among the more persistent revellers, believed that they had, but could give no clear account of it. Nobody knew for certain whether it had been Martha who made all that noise in the road, but everybody hoped that it might have been.

  On any other day in the week Christina would have heard all this in the morning over a cup of coffee in the Pavilion. But Monday was her washing day and she heard no news until the afternoon when her friend, Allie Newman, ran in for a few minutes. Allie was the wife of Dr. Browning’s partner and the sister of Timmy Hughes, that furtive frequenter of the Cellar Bar. Her parents had been very intimate with Christina’s mother; the two girls had been ‘best friends’ from their cradles. Nothing had disturbed their alliance until Dickie returned to East Head. Nor were they much divided during the years when they sighed for him in vain. A good many other girls were in the same boat and they could all suffer together without any sense of rivalry. But then Christina got him. Despite his obvious determination to remain a free man, he began to listen to her when she laughed. Allie observed it, and immediately married young Dr. Newman, of whom she was reasonably fond, because she could not endure the idea of walking up the aisle as Christina’s bridesmaid. Christina was very well aware of this, and walked up the aisle as Allie’s bridesmaid with perfect complacency. They still believed themselves to be friends. But Allie was the last person from whom Christina wanted to hear details of this horrible party—the last person to whom she liked to confess that Dickie had come home very late—well, yes, as drunk as a lord—that he had a terrible hangover, and had, so far, told her nothing about it.

  ‘Aren’t they awful!’ said Allie sympathetically. ‘I get it when Paddy comes home after a Masonic dinner.’

  Her grimace suggested that all husbands are alike and that Christina had not done so very much better for herself than anybody else. Christina writhed and resolved to take it out of Dickie.

  He could not, in any case, have told her much, because he remembered very little. He was desperately ashamed of himself. He had been drunk before, once or twice in his life, but only upon excusable occasions and never since his marriage. It shocked him deeply to think that his wife should have been obliged to put him to bed—that he had left her all alone and frightened for hours while he made a beast of himself. She had, he felt, every right to be furious and he was most anxious to apologise, if allowed an opportunity. He got none. She would not even permit him to say that his conduct had been bestial. Not at all. If he must know what she thought when she found him lying on the mat, he had better understand that a man in such a condition is generally rather pathetic. No, she was not angry. She was sorry for him. He need say no more about it.

  Free and full forgiveness is the good woman’s most formidable weapon. Nothing makes a man feel smaller; yet few husbands have the brutality, or the strength of mind, to reject it. Christina was aware of its essential unfairness, but she was really very angry.

  By suppertime he had recovered enough to enjoy his food. Throughout the meal they talked warily about a rock garden which they planned to make. It was not until they got to their caramel custard that the passions, raging beneath this calm domesticity, got out of hand.

  A pebble, dislodged, set off an avalanche. Dickie had no interest whatever in the queer behaviour of Sam Dale’s sister-in-law. She was a very dull woman, but she came from London and did strange things. Now, according to Allie Newman, she was sending her husband and children to a guesthouse, for three weeks, while she went into a nursing-home for a minor operation.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Dickie. ‘If they have no maid. The children are too young to cook, and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘She could manage!’ cried Christina. ‘Neighbours would help. Why! When Bobbins was born you never had to go out to a single meal. I had everything arranged beforehand.’

  Dickie remembered. His home, when Bobbins was born, had been invaded by relays of neighbours who hid his razors, mixed up his books, and were for ever offering him cups of tea. He would much rather have eaten out.

  ‘We’d have all gone in and helped,’ said Christina. ‘She could have worked it out.’

  ‘But why should she put you to such unnecessary trouble?’ objected Dickie. ‘You’re all very busy women. In an emergency you’d help, of course. But how much simpler just to go to a guesthouse and not make these demands on friends.’

  ‘Dickie! Think of the expense!’

  ‘Oh, I expect they can afford it. Ted Dale is doing very well. And, anyway, that�
�s their business.’

  ‘It isn’t only the money. It looks so queer. Any other woman would be ashamed to do it. As if she couldn’t manage.… You don’t understand. Men don’t.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘I suppose it’s what they do in London. It looks very funny to us. We don’t do it. It’s never been done here.’

  For all Dickie cared, Mrs. Ted Dale might throw her family into the sea. He was so little prepared to lose his temper that his habitual guard was relaxed. The words popped out before he knew what he had said.

  ‘Must we be so provincial?’

  ‘What?’

  Christina looked bewildered.

  Now he had done it. After months of self-control, fully aware that such a question would be futile and dangerous, he had asked it.

  ‘What do you mean? Provincial?’ she asked, flushing.

  ‘Oh … forget it! Sorry! I daresay you’re quite right. Hadn’t we better clear? We’ve got to move the furniture in the … er … sitting-room.’

  He had hesitated because she preferred to call this room the lounge. At happier moments they had argued, joked about it; they had compromised by calling it the front room, the best room, or the parlour, when they were in a merry mood. Just now he wished to placate her, but he did not really like lounge, and could not bring himself to say it.

  ‘I don’t want to be anything but what I am,’ stated Christina. ‘I live in the provinces. I was born in the provinces. I don’t want to pretend otherwise. I see nothing to be ashamed of.’

  ‘So I’m answered,’ said Dickie. ‘I said must you? You say you must.’

  ‘You said must we! You’re just as provincial, but you’re ashamed of it for some reason.’

  Dickie stacked the dishes in silence and carried them into the kitchen. He could say nothing to get them out of this quandary; any attempt to define the dreadful word would be dangerous. He must just wait until the storm blew over.

  The Pattison kitchen so little resembled the Swann kitchen as to deserve a different name altogether. It was a pleasant, orderly place. Christina had stamped herself upon it, for it was the scene of her adventures and her triumphs. The pots and pans were cherished; they were her private and prized implements. Her cookery books did not toss about untidily in the dresser drawer. They were arranged upon a little shelf, and with them were several notebooks into which she had copied recipes in her neat, immature handwriting. There was a smell of herbs and spices and the subtle memory of many excellent meals.