The Oracles (14 page)

‘
M
RS. HUGHES,
what do people mean, exactly, when they call anyone provincial?’

Mrs. Hughes could not immediately answer, for her mouth was full of pins. She and Christina were revolving round the Pattison dining-room table, pinning a paper pattern to some material.

‘They say it in such a sneering sort of way,’ continued Christina. ‘What right have they to?’

‘They’re silly,’ said Mrs. Hughes, taking the last pin out of her mouth.

This sort of conversation, this kind of enquiry into the exact meaning of a word, did not appeal to her. Nor, generally, did it appeal to Christina. One knew what one meant oneself, and one seldom said anything so unusual that other people were likely to be puzzled. Arguments are not polite, and sensible people take care to say things with which everybody can agree.

‘Look out, Christina! You’re pinning two left sleeves!’

‘No! … I am, though!’

This, also, was unlike Christina, who seldom made stupid mistakes. She began to pull the pins out angrily, tearing the paper pattern. Mrs. Hughes perceived that she was really provoked by sneers against provincialism. Not for a moment could it be supposed that she wished to discuss the topic by way of entertainment. There was some personal implication. The puzzled matron put down her scissors and tried to consider it.

‘Provincial? Well … you know how tiresome some people can be about their own town. They can’t talk about anything else; they aren’t interested. They only read the local paper and get it sent to them if they go away.’

‘There are some like that,’ agreed Christina.

‘My sister-in-law, the one who lives in the North,’ continued Mrs. Hughes, ‘she’s like that. We all had a holiday in Paris once, and really! Everything she saw reminded her of Yarnborough, or else they had it better in Yarnborough. And she puts on an accent and says things like: “Ah do like ma tea hot, sitha! I suppose it’s because Ah coom from Yarnbro!” As if anyone,
anywhere
, doesn’t like their tea hot. She got on my nerves so much I just couldn’t help telling her that I thought the people in Yarnborough were very rough and
inconsiderate
the time I was there. Getting on to the trams they pushed like a herd of cows. Even then she was quite self-satisfied. Oh, that’s our way in Yarnbro! You must take us as you find us.’

Christina followed this with an intent frown. Then she burst out:

‘Still, I don’t get this idea that people in London are so much better than we are. How are they better? I’ve been in London. I’ve stayed with my cousin in
Bayswater
. They hardly ever see any shows. They’ve never been to the British Museum, which I have. Of course the shops in Bond Street are wonderful. But they don’t shop in Bond Street. They shop in the same chain stores we do. They hardly ever go anywhere.’

‘I suppose there’s more going on in London,’ said Mrs. Hughes, who could not make head or tail of this tirade.

‘If there is, nobody in London seems to know about
it. They don’t know the names of their neighbours, or the girls in the shops, or the people in church! I think they lead very narrow lives compared to us. We know so many more people. When Mummie died everyone was sorry. Wherever I went they all looked at me so kindly, in the shops and the post office, and the policeman, even. They knew I’d lost my mother, and they knew Bobbins was on the way and she’d never see him, and they were sorry. People in London aren’t human.’

Christina made a wide indignant gesture and upset a box of pins upon the floor. She knelt down to collect them and added:

‘I’m not ashamed of loving my own town.
I
was glad, when I married, that I didn’t have to go away from all my friends.’

Light broke upon Mrs. Hughes. Dickie was at the bottom of all this. There had been some dispute. Instinctively she took Dickie’s side. Christina was a dear girl and would have been wholly admirable had she not admired herself so naïvely. Her self-complacency often irritated her friends; that it should have provoked Dickie was not very wonderful.

‘It doesn’t do to be too thin-skinned,’ she advised. ‘A little criticism sometimes is good for all of us.’

‘I’ve no ambition to be different from my friends,’ asserted Christina.

‘I daresay, dear. But perhaps not all of your friends are quite so pleased with themselves as you are.’

‘
What?
’

Christina sat up, looking dumbfounded. It was not ‘just like’ Mrs. Hughes to say anything so sharp.

‘You think I’m too pleased with myself?’

A little plain speaking, thought Mrs. Hughes, might be a kindness in the end. She had feared lately that something
was amiss in the Pattison household. Now she was sure of it. If she did not speak to Christina like a mother nobody else would. Not that Christina’s own mother would ever have administered a dressing-down. That doting woman’s uncritical adulation had been
responsible
for most of the trouble.

‘Well, you’ve got a tremendously good opinion of yourself, haven’t you? And you make no secret of it. It’s not to be wondered at. You’ve never been checked or criticised. You’ve always lived among people who praised and petted you. I’m not saying you don’t deserve praise. You’ve always been successful; head girl at the High School and quite the belle of East Head till you married. But you seem to think you’re perfect, and it annoys people.’

‘Just what have I said or done, Mrs. Hughes, that you take me up like this?’

‘I suppose it was Dickie who upset you, by calling you provincial?’

Christina flushed and said nothing. She crawled about, collecting pins.

‘I don’t say it was kind of him. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said it. But you ought to ask yourself what
provocation
you gave him.’

He had none, thought Christina. Only a hangover.

‘I’ve known you both since you were babies and I’m very fond of you. I was delighted when you married. But I did just wonder if Dickie had done as well for himself as he deserved. You seemed to think the luck was all on his side. Most girls improve a lot after they marry. I wondered if you’d think there was any room for improvement.’

You think he’d have done better to marry Allie, thought Christina. But she did not say so. The
knowledge 
that she had refrained from making so catty a remark did much to restore her composure. It was funny really! Her mulish expression exasperated Mrs. Hughes into more acerbity than was quite prudent. When gentle people brace themselves to scold they often go too far.

‘You never seem to grow up. You’re still the same complacent little thing you were in High School. It quite shocks me to hear the way you order Dickie about. No wonder he snaps! I don’t want to be disagreeable. But I do think you’re making a terrible mistake. When people marry they … they both change a little, and grow up together, and help each other to face life. But they must be ready to alter their points of view to suit each other. A married couple … they aren’t just two people. They can be one person, in a sort of way; a kinder, wiser person than either of them could have been alone, because two people’s experience has been put into it. They help each other not to make mistakes. But if one of them won’t change, and thinks they’re perfect already, then it isn’t as happy a marriage as it might have been. You don’t know what problems mayn’t come to Dickie that you could help him to solve if you are truly at one with him. A woman is sometimes much shrewder than a man.’

Christina had now collected all the pins and was standing, icily patient, on the other side of the table. She had made up her mind what to say and said it, as soon as Mrs. Hughes came to a pause.

‘Thank you, Mrs. Hughes. If you’ve quite finished, shall we get on with our cutting out?’

‘Oh, I’ve finished. You needn’t think I like preaching sermons, Christina. But I can’t bear to see you making a big mistake which you’ll regret later on.’

Since Christina made no reply to this they continued their work in silence.

So Allie feeds her husband out of a tin from Monday to Saturday, thought Christina, and Timmie is always in and out of the Cellar Bar, so she takes it out on me. She must be very worried over her own children, poor thing, to burst out like this. I shan’t let it annoy me. She has always been very kind and we must bear with people when they are upset. Thank goodness I’m not the sort of person to bear a grudge and fly out over little things.

The soothing sense of her own tolerance enabled her, after a while, to make some pleasant remark. Her friend eagerly responded. Their work continued in apparent amity until half-past four, when they broke off for tea.

They brought Bobbins in from his perambulator
outside
the window and put him in his play-pen. Just as they began to clear the table there were sounds in the hall; Dickie had come in and was talking to someone. Christina ran out to see who it was. Quite a commotion seemed to be going on; they all went chattering into the lounge. Mrs. Hughes, who was chirruping to Bobbins, thought she could distinguish Martha Rawson’s voice—fluting, monotonous and inescapable. Presently
Christina
reappeared.

‘Is that Martha Rawson?’

‘Yes. And know what? Dickie’s asked her to tea! It’s lucky I made a cake.’

Christina dived into her sideboard and extracted a number of green baize bags containing her silver tea service. It was, of course, brilliantly polished, but she began rubbing the pieces over with a bit of chamois leather.

‘In that case,’ said Mrs. Hughes, ‘I’ll slip off.’

‘No, Mrs. Hughes. I asked you to tea and I didn’t ask her. It seems she blew into the office to tell Dickie how much she admired him in
The
Bishop
’
s
Candle
sticks
.
And then she asks if he thinks I’ll give her my recipe for Polish borsch. It seems the Idens told her I can make it, and she’s gushing about it like a geyser. So Dickie falls for all this and brings her along, since he’s coming home to tea himself.’

‘Cooking!’ marvelled Mrs. Hughes. ‘That’s new. I wonder if that’s to be her latest craze.’

‘Let’s hope not!’ said Christina. ‘Poor us, if Martha starts on cooking. She’ll want to get laws passed to stop us eating what we like.’

‘Bobbins needs changing. Shall I …’

‘Oh, if you would! I have to cut cucumber
sandwiches
. All this would happen on my busy day.’

Christina took the silver into the kitchen, set a tray with her best china, found a lace tea-cloth, and went into the lounge. Martha and Dickie were hard at it. They scarcely noticed her as she got out the tea-table and put up the flaps. Dickie was looking crestfallen.

‘I don’t see how an abstract can be sentimental,’ he protested.

‘Oh, but Mr. Pethwick’s artefact isn’t exactly an abstract, is it? It has definite associations. It represents something: an explosion.’

‘Yes. But how can an explosion be sentimental?’

‘All Conrad’s work in that period had just the least taint of sentimentality. Just a little too deliberately agreeable somehow. It’s a tendency he’s quite thrown off now.’

‘I suppose I haven’t seen enough to judge.’

‘No,’ agreed Martha. ‘But the central truth about
an explosion is its terror. If Conrad were to do anything of that sort now, it would frighten you. You’d want to run from it. Now his Apollo …’

Christina returned to the kitchen. Mrs. Hughes, having changed Bobbins and put on the kettle, was now cutting cucumber sandwiches.

‘Poor Dickie!’ reported Christina, with callous glee. ‘He’s made a mistake. That statue Mr. Pethwick gave him, the one that Mr. Swann did—well, he thought it was
good
. But it’s turned out to be
bad
. He’s looking so apologetic.’

‘Where is it?’ asked Mrs. Hughes. ‘Have you got it here?’

‘No. It’s in a packing-case down at Dale’s warehouse. And perhaps it can stay there, now it’s turned out to be bad. Martha says what’s wrong is that it doesn’t make everybody run away.’

The kettle boiled and they took the rest of this elaborate tea into the lounge. Martha was so much absorbed in her subject that she barely greeted Mrs. Hughes. She turned again to Dickie and said:

‘So we decided not to send it to Gressington after all. It’s rather a wonderful colour, by the way. I don’t know how to describe it. Like … like dried blood.…’

‘Quite my favourite colour,’ murmured Christina, as she poured out the tea.

It was said so softly that Martha did not catch it. The other two did, and Dickie flushed angrily.

Mrs. Hughes wished that she had not upset Christina by that little scolding. She would not have done so had she known that this trial to Christina’s patience was about to occur. Only a saint could put up with Martha, who was behaving very rudely herself, talking only to Dickie, and refusing, in a superior manner, to eat
anything
.
Christina was beginning to look so aggressive that Mrs. Hughes intervened hastily with enquiries after old Mr. Pattison, who was still in bed.

They were safe while they kept to this topic, but neither Dickie nor Mrs. Hughes could spin it out for very long, since there was nothing much the matter with the old man. Martha fidgeted and awaited an opportunity to sidle back on to her hobby-horse. At the first pause she turned to Christina and congratulated her upon the acquisition of a Swann. It must, she said, have been a wonderful surprise.

‘Yes,’ agreed Christina. ‘We never expected it. But Mr. Pethwick is a very keyhotic man, don’t you think?’

Neither Martha nor Mrs. Hughes could make
anything
of this queer word. Dickie averted speculation by plunging into an incoherent account of the difficulties he was having in the sale of Brinstock. From there he proceeded to the housing situation in general. Mrs. Hughes supported him, for it was plain that Christina and Martha must not be allowed to converse. Together they shook their heads over subsidised rents and agreed that the new council building estate was too far from the shops.