The Oracles (17 page)

‘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.’

S
ERAFINA
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:

‘It was on the kitchen table,’ said Serafina. ‘They must have 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.

Mr. Archer! thought Christina. The husband! How stupid of me not to have guessed. Well … he’s going to get a piece of my mind. His own children! Starving!

They were conducted into a private room where Dinah, Mike, Polly and Joe, seated round a table, were silently stuffing themselves with roast chicken. Frank Archer sat in an armchair by the window. His assurance was equal to most situations, but he had not quite enough of it to bring these filthy brats into the public dining-room. He was looking out to sea, so as to avoid the spectacle of their table manners. When the new arrivals appeared he jumped up.

‘Hullo, Serafina!’ he said. ‘Mean of us not to wait for you, but we were all so hungry, and we didn’t know how long you’d be. Siddown. What’ll you have to start with? Soup? Grapefruit? Shrimp cocktail? Hors d’œuvres?’

‘Shrimp cocktail,’ said Serafina, sitting down.

‘Shrimp cocktail,’ he said, to the waiter, ‘and chicken to follow.’

The prawn’s eyes then popped at Christina, who drew herself up haughtily and began on her dressing-down.

‘I don’t wish to intrude,’ she said, ‘but I’d like to be sure that proper arrangements are being made. I
understand
that all these children have been left alone and abandoned for nearly a fortnight with nothing to eat. That seems to me to be a very disgraceful thing, and I’d be glad to know that it won’t happen again. I was thinking of going to the police.’

‘Quite right, madam, quite right. Disgraceful is the word. My name is Archer. I’m the father of Polly and Mike.’

He looked at her enquiringly.

‘I’m Mrs. Richard Pattison,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

He searched among his recollections and impressions of East Head and remembered the local yokel.

‘I believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting your husband.’

Christina looked down her nose and was rewarded by the sight of her plastic apron. A thaw set in. She blushed deeply and snatched it off. Archer, enchanted, took it from her with a courtly bow and draped it over the back of a chair.

‘There’s a veranda just outside,’ he said, ‘with chairs, and a nice view of the sunset. It’s quite warm still. Perhaps you’ll take a glass of sherry with me out there, and I’ll try to set your mind at rest.’

A glass of sherry would have been very welcome, but she refused it, remembering what he had done to the drinks at Summersdown. But he ordered two glasses all the same, and when they arrived they looked quite harmless.

‘It’s very, very good of you,’ he said, sitting down beside her, ‘to be so concerned about my children.’

She tried to look as though their paternity was a fact in their disfavour.

‘I should be concerned about any children neglected like that,’ she said. ‘People can be put in prison for it. They ought to be.’

He gave her a glance of respectful admiration. She turned away and contemplated the sunset.

‘I hadn’t,’ he said, ‘the least idea that they’d been abandoned like this. I’ve been in Italy. I didn’t know my wife was back in London till she spoke to me on the telephone this morning. She then seemed to be so vague about arrangements this end that I took the next train down. Cigarette?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘I’m taking them back to London on the nine o’clock train tonight, as I have an important engagement in Town tomorrow morning. They will sleep tonight at my house in Cheyne Walk. Tomorrow I shall ring up a reliable firm called Fairy Godmothers Ltd., with whom I have already had some dealings. They will provide some good lady who will look after the children for the day and buy them clothes. On Tuesday I shall escort them myself to a school which I’ve found for them near St. Albans.’

‘What kind of school?’ asked Christina of the sunset.

‘Oh … just a school, you know. For little children. A few boarders and the rest day scholars.’

‘Progressive?’

‘What’s that?’

‘One of those places where they don’t teach them anything or look after them or make them go to bed. Just neglect them and say it’s education.’

‘Now why should I send them to a school like that?’

‘I don’t know. I thought you might.’

‘They’re terribly expensive, those schools,’ he
protested
. ‘If I thought neglect was education it would be much cheaper to leave them here.’

She looked round quickly to see if he was laughing, but he had a perfectly straight face.

‘This school,’ he explained, ‘is kept by two elderly women and their young niece. One of the aunts used to be a nanny. The other was a kindergarten teacher. The niece is trained for nursery-school work. The children don’t smell. They are taught to read and write and say their prayers, and they go to bed at six o’clock.’

‘It sounds quite harmless,’ allowed Christina.

There was a long pause. Nothing had as yet been said
about the Swann children. Each waited for the other to begin, Christina in some astonishment, Archer with considerable amusement.

‘I hope your mind is at rest?’ he said at last. ‘I do wish you’d drink that sherry.’

Christina looked again at the sherry and decided that she would. It was not as easy as she had supposed to scold him for neglecting the Swanns. He might not regard them as his responsibility. She sipped her sherry for a while before she ventured to ask what was to be done for the others.

‘The others?’ he said. ‘I’ve only got the twins.’

‘I mean … the little Swanns. Who is going to look after them?’

This question appeared to surprise him.

‘I suppose some of Swann’s friends will,’ he
suggested
. ‘He seems to have a devoted band of friends here. What about those people … the Rawsons?’

‘The Rawsons!’

She gave him an indignant account of the Rawsons’ behaviour.

‘They can’t have understood,’ he protested. ‘They can’t have known what they were doing.’

‘People ought to know what they’re doing,’ said Christina. ‘That’s an excuse I never listen to.’

‘Are you quite warm enough? Wouldn’t you like your … your little wrap?’

She remembered the apron and became less truculent.

‘They threw Serafina out of their house,’ she said.

‘I expect she frightened them. She’s a terrible child.’

‘Excuse me, Mr. Archer, she’s a very brave child. I think she’s managed wonderfully, considering. I don’t know what would have happened to your two without
her. They’d be dead by now, probably. You owe her quite a bit, I think.’

‘So what ought I to do?’

‘They mustn’t go back to that awful house. No water … no food … it makes me wild to think of it. They ought to go straight into a nice hot bath and then into good clean beds.’

‘Yes. Yes. I expect they ought.’

‘So aren’t you going to do anything about it?’

‘My dear Mrs. Pattison, why should I?’

‘You can’t just leave them to starve.’

‘But I haven’t. I’ve given them a most expensive dinner. You think I ought to do more?’

‘Yes. I think you ought to find some nice person who will look after them till their father comes back.’

‘Oh? I see.’

He gave an enquiring look at this nice person who had so obligingly presented herself. Until she turned up he had been desperate. He had almost decided to take the little Swanns to London too.

‘I can’t imagine anyone,
anyone,
knowing about it and not doing all they could,’ cried Christina.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said, feeling in his pocket for a cheque-book. ‘So we’d better get down to it. You find the nice person and I’ll find the cash.’

‘What? Me?’

‘You’re better equipped than I am. You know this town. And I really must leave by that train.’

‘I really don’t see that it’s my business.’

He paused in his cheque-writing to stare at her.

‘I thought you said you couldn’t imagine
anyone.
You mean you came here merely to lecture me?’

‘I … I …’

He went on writing.

‘What would a nice person charge?’ he asked.