The Oracles (16 page)

T
HE
party at Summersdown had been a nightmare, but Frank Archer’s brew provided a powerful anodyne. Martha’s sherry, at The Moorings, did nothing of the sort. After ten minutes of it Dickie escaped from the music-room into the garden. Courtesy demanded that he should hang about for a little longer before getting away, but he had seen quite enough of the Apollo. He could never like it. Things of that sort were above his head and he had been a fool to expect otherwise. No wistful staring, no elucidations from Martha, no intrinsic faith in Conrad, could exalt what he thought he saw.

The clamour of forty enthusiasts, shouting in the music-room, sank to a raucous murmur as he strode down the garden. Even in the distance it sounded unpleasant and he commented on this to an imaginary companion, a
doppelgänger
who filled a social gap in his life, and with whom he frequently had conversations. This friend could be a man or a woman. At the moment she was a woman, because he wanted one and his marriage bed was temporarily strewn with nettles. She strolled beside him and laughed at his jokes. What reason, he asked her, have we for supposing that John Milton would have agreed with us about Martha’s party? Oh, said she, taking it up at once. Oh! Milton? When does Milton talk about Apollo? Oh, I know!
Apollo
from
his
shrine
,
Can
no
more
divine
… No, darling. Think of the three lines just before:
The
oracles
are
dumb.
 
No
voice
or
hideous
hum
Rings
through
the
archéd
roof
in
words
deceiving!

Hideous hum! That’s it exactly. How clever of you, Dickie! But the oracles aren’t dumb, surely? Just listen to them! Hard at it explaining what the Apollo means.

The garden was shaped like a very long triangle. At its base stood The Moorings. Little grass grew there and no trees. The greater part of it consisted of crazy paving, intersected by pergolas. Rockeries rose here and there, like miniature mountains; the whole effect was hard and stony. There was no reason why any object should be where it was, and little had been done to it since old Tom Skipperton ordered it from a firm in Bristol. The original site had been waste land running by the river, a region of starved, salty soil and rushes. Nothing grew there easily, and Martha, who did not care much for nature, had left it as it was.

Dickie wandered along the twisting stone paths, seeking company. Several strangers were sitting upon the river wall. He got a glimpse of Carter, under a pergola, engaged, apparently, in ponderous flirtation with a man in suede shoes. Nell Manders was peering forlornly at some goldfish in a lead tank, but she hurried away when she saw Dickie. Ever since the
Summersdown
party she had been wondering what, exactly, she had said to him. Had she really told him that she would like to marry him although he was not a gentleman? If that was the case she had better keep out of his way for the rest of her life.

He strayed on, past the boathouse and down the triangle to its apex, where the garden walls met at a kind of look-out, a round tower which commanded a view of the river mouth and the marshes. Here sat a
woman whom he had met before, once or twice. Her name was Dottie Miller and she was married to a literary celebrity who lived in Ilfracombe. She had fine eyes and a concave face; her thick sandy fringe and her jutting chin were so prominent that her nose looked almost flat. He had never thought her pretty, but she managed to be striking, and he was glad to see her sitting on the stone seat which ran round the look-out. She wore a dress of black and green harlequin lozenges with a wide skirt and very little top; the black jacket which she had worn in the music-room lay on the seat beside her.

‘Hullo, Dickie!’ she said.

He had not supposed that they were Dickie and Dottie, but he had no objection. He went up the four steps to the look-out, bowed, and said:

‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume!’

She laughed loudly and gave him a look which
completely
unmarried him. This was refreshing. Most women nowadays looked at him as though he had no gender at all. He would have been rather shocked if the women of East Head had done otherwise, but Dottie came from Ilfracombe. He returned the look adequately and suggested that parties like this were not much in their line.

‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ she said. ‘But Edgar would come. Coo!’

He smiled. Coo struck him as naïve and charming. It was not one of Christina’s expletives; she would have thought it common. Sitting down beside her, he took a brief glance at her shoulders and then concentrated upon the view.

This was extensive but monotonous. On one side were mud-flats, boats and buoys. On the other were
reedy fields. In front was the line of the sea, but a thick heat haze obscured the distance. There was no horizon, and no coast of Wales, on this heavy afternoon. Behind them, half hidden by the rampart of The Moorings, rose the hills and roofs of the town. It was comparatively quiet. Seagulls occasionally squawked on the mud-flats and a distant band blared a hymn.

‘Why do we never meet nowadays?’ asked Dickie, coming back to Dottie’s shoulders.

‘I can answer that in two sentences. You never come to Ilfracombe. I never come to East Head.’

‘I think that’s rather sad,’ he decided.

‘Very sad. Life’s like that.’

A gust from the band echoed her words with sad music:

Bosom! thought Dickie, and stared thoughtfully at the gulls on the mud-flats. Presently he asked her what she did with herself all the year round in Ilfracombe.

‘Me? I look after Edgar and the offspring.’

‘Not really? Why, that’s what all the girls do in East Head. I’d hoped Ilfracombe was different.’

‘Why?’ asked Dottie, after a pause.

‘Because I have a hopeful nature.’

‘What did you hope the girls in Ilfracombe were doing?’

He gave no answer. None was needed. Idly he followed the hymn in his mind. He had sung it so often that he knew it by heart.

‘You can’t even make a limerick about Ilfracombe,’ complained Dottie.

‘No,’ he agreed, after trying. ‘Whereas East Head … just think of all the rhymes! Bred, wed, fed, dead, led, sped.…’

‘You’ve forgotten bed.’

‘No I haven’t. It was the first one which occurred to me. But I thought it a little obvious.

Dottie looked glum. She thought it a deplorable limerick and so did he. But he could not bring himself to tell her any dirty ones, although she had given him tacit permission to do so by raising the subject. It had been a hint that he might take liberties, a recognisable step in an adventure which had hitherto proceeded upon the usual lines.

She was dog stupid, thought Dickie, but would meet him more than halfway if he chose to start anything.

Anything they might start would soon become a bore. But there was a distinct stimulation in the thought of being a naughty boy with Dottie Miller, and a more attractive woman would not have filled the bill half so well. Dottie would merely be an accomplice. He had to spend a day in Porlock next week; he was certain that she would meet him for lunch there if he asked her. Later there might be other meetings: a brief, vicious, hard-hearted satisfaction, a temporary escape from boredom, which would impose no obligations upon
either of them. In some obscure way the need for it was connected with his disappointment in the music-room. He had reached a dead end there, and wanted to revenge himself upon those cheating hopes.

‘Dotted!’

A voice came bleating down the garden.

‘That’s Edgar!’ she murmured.

Edgar sounded anxious, as if wondering what she was up to. There was still time to mention Porlock. She was waiting. They might settle it in a quick, warm whisper, while the bleating voice drew nearer. He looked at her and saw that her eyes had suddenly filled with tears.

Poor Dottie! he thought. Poor girl!

The impulse died. One must not pity an accomplice. He said nothing.

She seemed to be aware that the moment was over. She turned her defenceless head away and stood up, smoothing her brilliant skirt. She looked childish and forlorn.

Edgar Miller came into view. He supported Dottie and the offspring by writing crime novels under a pseudonym, but his standing with Martha had been earned by his poetry, which did not sell. His appearance was romantic; Dickie had once told Christina that he must have ordered it from the same firm which supplied Tom Skipperton’s garden.
Literary
Gent
,
virile
,
bronzed
,
complete
with
pipe
, 59/6. Christina had laughed and said that he probably got it at half-price in a sale. (Christina’s laugh! Heard no more.)

A cloud of uncertainty lifted from the bronzed virile face when Miller saw what Dottie was up to. No situation could have been less secluded than the
look-out
, no company more harmless than that of Dickie
Pattison, a model family man, a pillar of society. Such unconcealed relief rather annoyed Dickie. So I don’t rate as a billy-goat? he thought. Well, I suppose not. Anybody’s wife is as safe as houses with me.

‘We ought to be going, dear,’ suggested Miller.

Dottie, shrugging herself into her little black jacket, said that she couldn’t agree with him more.

‘And how’s the Law?’ he condescendingly asked Dickie.

‘Too little of it,’ said Dickie. ‘Everybody has made a will and nobody seems to get into trouble nowadays.’

‘Ha! ha! Well … we must be getting along.’

The Millers departed. Dickie sat down again in the look-out and envied the hard-heartedness of naughty boys. To be sorry for people was a fatal encumbrance. He could feel no triumph in this decision, although he could not exactly regret it. Dottie might have been unwilling to let him go when he had had enough of it. The whole thing would have ended in squalor, misery and self-reproach.

He looked at his watch and saw that he might now quit The Moorings without incivility. But he lingered for a few minutes longer, leaning on the parapet, for it was not unpleasant occasionally to be alone. The tide was rising, and the river channel, meandering through the mud, was fuller. A yacht crept down towards the sea, her sails filling with a light evening breeze. He thought of Conrad, and of their day together, and wondered that he should have built so much upon it.

At last he set off up the garden again. Just beyond the boathouse he met Martha; she was running about like a sheep-dog bringing in strays, and she greeted him severely:

‘Oh, there you are, Mr. Pattison! Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

‘I was …’ began Dickie.

‘Come into the boathouse. I want a word with you about our little plot.’

What plot? wondered Dickie, as she pushed him into the boathouse.

‘Here he is!’ she announced triumphantly.

Four people were there: Don Rawson, Carter, and a couple called Meadowes who were among Martha’s most loyal supporters. Meadowes was a retired schoolmaster and served on the Selection Committee, but he had taken no part in the great fight over Sam Dale’s portrait because he and his wife had been abroad at the time. They had only just returned to East Head.

‘They’re all in the know,’ said Martha to Dickie. ‘I’ve told them about it, in strict confidence. We’re all such friends of Conrad’s that I thought we might take this opportunity to put our heads together.’

They were staring at Dickie as though he were some kind of converted cannibal. He had renounced the heresy that he knew what he liked and had received grace enough to like what he ought. Mrs. Meadowes smiled at him in warm congratulation. She was sure that he would never eat a missionary again. Her husband’s expression was less cordial; he could not so easily forget the murky past. Carter’s hostile glare suggested that she expected a relapse at any moment. Don looked blank; he balanced on the edge of a table and watched the scene.

‘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.’