The Oracles (2 page)

N
OTHING
had happened. Nobody had been struck. No damage of any kind was reported on Sunday morning.

For this, and for her own preservation, Miss Agatha Byrne, aunt and housekeeper to Father Byrne, gave thanks at High Mass to an assortment of saints, under whose protection she had put herself during the night. But her gratitude was a little distracted by curiosity concerning a shock-headed child who knelt just in front of her. A good Catholic child ought not to come to church in so unkempt a state, with no head-covering save a duster, positively an old, dirty, checked duster, tied over elf locks. Such impropriety must be reproved.

When Mass was over she waited in the street for an opportunity to accost the girl and ask her name. She was answered with a suspicious scowl and a mutter:

‘Serafina Swann.’

‘A-ah!’

That explained everything. Those children! Miss Phipps, at the school in Harbour Street, had found ‘things’ in their heads.

‘And how old are you?’

‘Ten.’

‘You’re a Catholic then? Why haven’t I seen you at church before? You’ve been living here some time.’

‘I don’t know. I was frightened of the thunder.’

She knew her way through the Mass, thought Miss Byrne. Somebody must have taught her.

‘Who gave you that rosary?’ she asked.

The look which she got in reply startled her. She had been reproved! By a child of ten!

‘A dead person,’ said Serafina, with considerable dignity.

Miss Byrne was not accustomed to be snubbed by ragged urchins, but she had to pull herself together before continuing the inquisition.

‘And you’ve got a lot of little brothers and sisters, haven’t you? What age are they, now?’

‘Joe’s four. Dinah and Polly and Mike are seven.’

‘What! Triplets?’

‘No. Dinah is the oldest. She is three months older than Polly, and Polly is half an hour older than Mike.’

‘Hck!’ clucked Miss Byrne, unable at first to believe this.

After a moment’s reflection an explanation occurred to her which shocked her so much that she gave another cluck.

‘Hck! Well … I’m glad you came to church, Serafina. I’m sure you try to be a good little girl.’

Serafina stared. Nobody had suggested this idea to her for a very long time.

‘But, childie, you know you should tidy yourself a little before coming to Mass. It isn’t very respectful to come to church in a duster, is it?’

‘I haven’t got a hat.’

‘Oh dear! Is that so? Why, then … perhaps Our Lady might send you a little hat, one of these days. If she does, will you wash your face and comb your hair, dear?’

‘Oh yes. Oh, thank you!’

‘Because you could have done that today, couldn’t you, dear, even if you had no hat?’

Serafina scratched her leg and mumbled something about breakfast.

‘You cooked the breakfast? All by yourself?’

‘I do all the cooking.’

‘Ah, poor child!’ cried Miss Byrne, quite softened. ‘You do your best, I’m sure. Quite a little mother to them all, I’ll be bound! I’ll pray for you.’

‘Thank you. When will I get the hat?’

Miss Byrne was about to explain that prayers are more important than hats when an acquaintance, coming up to greet her, distracted her attention. The child
immediately
darted off.

A little hat can mean different things to different people. Miss Byrne had in mind something rescued from the jumble-sale cupboard. For Serafina the words conjured up a flowery vision with an eye-veil, like Mrs. Dickie Pattison’s Easter bonnet. She skipped home in a transport of complacency, no longer frightened by the distant growling thunder.

A little mother! Never before had it occurred to her to think of herself in so romantic a light. She perceived now that it was well earned. Who looked after the others, if she did not? Who saw to it that they were fed? Who dispensed justice among them? Who rang up the doctor when Mike got a bean in his nose?

For grown-up people Serafina felt, as a rule, very little respect. She made an exception in the case of Mrs. Pattison, with whom they had all made friends on the beach one day, when Dinah had cut her foot on a piece of broken glass. That kind, pretty lady had brought some Elastoplast out of her bag and dressed the cut. She was like nobody else. She told them stories and could play like a little girl; she had made a wonderful switchback in the sand for them, down which they had
rolled golf balls. Once they had gone to tea with her in her beautiful sparkling house. Even her little baby had his own basket, lined with blue, for his powder-puff and safety-pins.

But she had never called Serafina a little mother. The commendation of Miss Byrne opened up new vistas. What a pity that more people did not know about this! How glorious it would be when everybody knew! There she goes, they would say. There she goes, that sainted child! Where? Who? Why? Serafina Swann, to be sure, in her lovely little hat.

The house seemed to be deserted when she got home. It stood up bleakly under the heavy yellow sky, a mean, small box of a house, in a garden choked with weeds. All the doors and windows were wide open, as though the inhabitants had just rushed out in a panic and deserted it for ever. She did not go in because she knew that the others would probably be up at the tree.

This great oak tree was their favourite refuge and hiding-place. It stood higher than the house, in the middle of a meadow adjoining the back garden, and was more like a little town than a tree. Each child had a particular house, or branch—Serafina had even managed to contrive a sacking roof for hers. Their treasures and toys they kept in their houses, suspended in baskets.

The ascent was particularly enchanting. They could not have reached the lowest bough without the aid of a derelict ladder which they had found in the garage. Most of its lower rungs were gone, but they could achieve the upper by climbing on to an old green metal garden chair, which had been knocking about in the field ever since they came to Summersdown.

The greater part of their life was spent in this tree. Sometimes they fell out of it, but nobody had, as yet,
been seriously hurt. They would sit for hours in their houses, or climb slowly from branch to branch, visiting one another. They felt it to be a friendly place. Up there they were safe, especially in the summer, when the leaves were so thick as to hide them from anyone not standing immediately below. They were all, except Serafina, timid, low-spirited children, easily terrified, and with a mania for concealing themselves.

Nobody ever came to look for them in the field. Only cows gathered in the shade of the tree in hot weather, whisking their tails to drive the flies off, and sending up a reassuring cow smell to the children in Tree Town. Even Serafina, who had outgrown most of the tree games, felt a security and confidence up there which she missed in her wary, battling life below. And she was, therefore, a little unwilling to tell anybody about this refuge; Joe, in his innocence, had betrayed their secret to Mrs. Pattison, and invited her to tea in his tree house. There was nothing to be done, save welcome her when she came. Nor had the party gone off badly. She had admired it all very much, thoroughly appreciated the ingenuity of the chair and the ladder, paid a visit to every branch, and brought with her a contribution of lemonade and chocolate biscuits. But she belonged to the dangerous grown-up world, which Serafina
distrusted
. The people in it were not reasonable. They got themselves into the most mysterious predicaments and then made more hullabaloo about it than any child would dream of making. They seemed to believe that somebody would come and put everything right for them, if they made a great deal of fuss. Even Joe knew better than that. The little Swanns yelled and roared sometimes, if they hurt themselves, but only to relieve their feelings. They did not expect redress. Mrs.
Pattison, although she was so nice, did belong to that strange, untrustworthy race, and the tree did not seem so safe after she had been there.

The back garden was a long one, running uphill to the meadow. Serafina had only got halfway up when she heard Joe’s voice, plaintively hailing her.

‘Where are you?’ she called.

‘In the miggle of the pond.’

She ran round a hedge of rambler roses and found them all huddled together in a tank which had once been a lily-pond. To her angry enquiries they replied that they had gone there for safety, until she came home.

‘You said—you said yourself,’ said Polly, ‘that
they
can’t cross water.’

The worst of raising bogies is the difficulty of
dismissing
them. Serafina sighed. She ruled by terror, as many another little mother has done. Reassurance was not so easy.

‘Silly! They can’t come out in the daytime.’

Her subjects looked at one another.

‘Yes they can,’ whispered Mike at last.

‘There’s one now in the meadow,’ said Dinah.

‘He’s spoilt our tree,’ said Polly.

‘Spoilt our poor tree all quite dead,’ mourned Joe.

‘And he’s there still,’ said Mike. ‘We saw him. Hopping after us and shooting at us.’

Serafina’s spine began to crawl.

‘You mean … there’s a person in the meadow?’ she ventured.

A fluttering sigh of dissent rose from the woebegone group. It was not, they gave her to understand,
a
person.

‘Not … not …’

Far away a long roll of thunder seemed to answer
her. Joe suddenly dashed out of the tank and butted his head into Serafina’s stomach, yelling at the top of his voice:

‘An Arfitax!’

Everybody cried Ssh! It was extremely dangerous to refer to the Enemy by name. Grown-up people might babble lightheartedly about Artefacts, but they did everything differently.

‘I don’t believe it,’ quavered Serafina.

To believe it would bring the skies toppling down.

The whole mythology of the Artefacts had been, as she knew in her saner moments, her own invention. Of course she was afraid of the things; she always ran past the studio as fast as she could. Even grown-up people were afraid of them. A charwoman, who came sometimes, called them wicked-looking things. And Dr. Browning, when he took the bean out of Mike’s nose, had peered through the studio window and declared that he should not like to meet any of them in a wood on a dark night. They looked very frightening, especially those which had some faint resemblance to human beings. But she knew, perfectly well, that they could not really think, and had no life. They were not
real
,
as she put it to herself. Her father made them. People sometimes bought them; for what purpose she could not imagine. They must be very wicked people. It was not possible for Artefacts to get out of the studio and attack the Swanns. If she had ever encouraged the others to think that they could, it was only as a means of keeping order. The idea had presented itself when Mike once asked if they could be in the house; she had answered quickly that they might come, if he did not do as she told him.

From this beginning the cult had grown and ramified. It was half a game, half a religion, mingling enjoyment
with terror, until they had almost come to depend on it. Perpetual warfare raged betwixt the Artefacts and the Swanns, and, in this drama, Serafina played the part of witch-doctor. She knew the habits of the creatures; she knew how to propitiate and defeat them. She could distinguish between an Artefact and a milder type of demon, known as a Form, also an inhabitant of the studio, but less malign and sometimes actually upon the side of the Swanns. It was by her spells and
incantations
that these creatures were
sent
to
the
shed
,
a kind of condemned cell next door to the garage, which was the ultimate fate of Artefacts and Forms alike. Once they were put there, all was over with them. Within a day or two men would come with a van or lorry and drag the occupant of the shed away to his doom. Sometimes a great many men came. Last year six of them had been needed to remove an egg-shaped Form, so large that the shed door could not be quite closed upon it. The Swanns had rather an affection for it, and were sorry to see it go off to execution. Dinah had cried until Serafina produced the theory that the men were good, and were secretly helping it to escape. One of them had said that it was going to Venice, which was a beautiful place, full of churches and holy people.

Mike and Dinah believed it all. Joe believed as much as he could understand. Polly, who was sharper than the rest, had lately displayed some signs of
scepticism
, but she was thoroughly frightened now.

‘It really is,’ she persisted. ‘Go up to the meadow and look. He’s there still.’

They had all come out of the tank by now and they followed Serafina up to the field, lagging a little way behind her, ready to fly at a moment’s notice.

The first thing which she comprehended, when she
reached the meadow, was the ruin which had fallen upon their tree. It really was destroyed—split from top to bottom and partially burnt. It looked terrifying enough, in that strange yellow light, with the thunder always growling around the hills.

Then she saw the THING, and cried out in terror:

‘Jesus-Mary-Joseph!’

She could not run away. She could not move. She had to stand there, petrified. If this could happen, anything could happen.

It stood just beneath the blasted tree—it was the worst that she had ever seen. In hue it was a smouldering red and it was about her height. One long thin leg it had, and a great flat foot. The head was very small, a
pear-shaped
blob at the end of a twisted neck. It had no arms, but, as Mike said, it was shooting at them. Spikes of different lengths stuck out from it, like wicked arrows.

At the moment it was motionless, but it was obviously just about to move. On its one long leg it could come hopping faster than anybody could run. It seemed to quiver slightly, as it stood there looking at them, jeering at them, boasting of what it had done—could do. It was the very embodiment of evil.

‘Pray for us! Pray for us! Now and in the hour …’