The Oracles (20 page)

She addressed this letter to Dickie’s office, not his house, because she did not want him to get it until after she had left East Head on Wednesday morning. She ran down herself to post it in the pillar-box on the quay.

Upon her return the household was roused to a
whirlwind
of activity. It soon became clear that she was preparing for an absence of several months.

Ahmed and Annette were not merely delighted at the prospect of a long period of inactivity on board wages; they were in transports of relief. A private problem of their own was now likely to be solved. Annette was pregnant, a fact which they could not have hoped to conceal from Martha for very much longer. They turned to with a will, and accomplished miracles in the way of rapid packing.

As for Don, he was so much overjoyed to get out of East Head that he found it very hard to regret Martha’s timely indisposition. He hoped that it would not hurt her much and would keep them both away for a very long time. Upon the whole, it did not greatly perturb him; she had been ill all the morning, but she looked much better now. He had no doubt about the cause; these distressing symptoms had been brought on by Alan Wetherby’s letter, the contents of which he was, apparently, never to know. He had no wish to do so. Wetherby was a nasty specimen and his letter unlikely to make anybody feel good. People who cultivated his acquaintance must expect these shocks. Now perhaps it would never be necessary to hand the brute another Martini.

As Don bustled about, bringing his personal
possessions
from the boathouse, he hoped that he might not see the place again. He might even rebel if Martha threatened to bring him back. He said to himself, when he slammed and locked the door:

W
HATEVER’S
that?

On loan, it says.

But what on earth is it?

‘Apollo. By Conrad Swann. On loan to the Trustees.’

Oh,
him
!

Just like him, I should say.

We mustn’t laugh, I suppose.

No. I suppose not.

Well … I don’t know.

I don’t know, I’m sure.

I never can remember which is the heavier: 15 or 30 denier. I say, Muriel! Just look at that!

Oh, I’ve seen it. I saw it yesterday. But did you know they’ve got these new fish-net ones in Mason’s?

Is that supposed to be its head?

They say Mr. Wetherby says it’s marvellous.

My nephew, the one in the B.B.C., explained it to me.…

Well! You can’t say we aren’t up to date!

No, Mrs. Dale. We’re modern, anyway.

Oh, Nell? Where’s Martha? I thought she’d be down here by now. She said she was coming in this morning.

She’s ill. I rang up The Moorings. Some kind of indigestion, so Don said.

Fancy Martha! I can’t imagine her ill somehow.

Art doesn’t have to be beautiful any more, so my nephew says. Because artists can’t go on doing the same
things over and over again and they’ve done all the beautiful things already.

Are we allowed to laugh?

Goodness no! My dear!

There’s to be a picture and an article in this week’s
Gazette.
I shall send it to my sister in California. She loves getting the
Gazette.

I don’t suppose they have them like this in America.

Oh, I expect they do. It’s the same all over
everywhere
, nowadays. Art, I mean.

How can people like us know?

That’s what I say. If it looked like anything at all, then we’d know what we thought it was like.

The Americans are more modern than us. So they have it worse, I dare say.

Poor Them, in that case!

It takes a bit of getting used to, certainly.

We needn’t look at it if we don’t like.

Monica! What’s that thing there? I never noticed it before.

Oh … something or other.

Was it here always? I don’t seem to remember it.

I wouldn’t know. I expect so. Goodness! It’s nearly a quarter past! I must fly.

Mum! Mum! I don’t like that thing.

Geoffrey says of course he has his tongue in his cheek. Mr. Swann, I mean. He knows quite well it’s rubbish. But he wants to be in the swim.

Well, it makes me want to laugh.

You’d have thought those things would be beginning to get old-fashioned by now.

What I always say is they do them because they
can’t
do it properly.

Don’t be silly, Terry! It’s not alive.

Now, Miss Manders! You’re a great friend of Mr. Swann’s, aren’t you? Can you explain this to us?

Why, you see, it’s like something written in quite a new language. We can’t expect to understand it. I mean … well … it’s like a page written in Chinese.

But what good is that to us? I mean, if we see a page of Chinese we wouldn’t know what it said; it might only say that eggs are dearer this week.

Oooh! Stan! Whatever is it?

Statue or something. Mod’n.

Fancy anyone doing that on purpose! I heard about it yesterday in the Blue Kettle.

It’s not impossible to Learn Chinese.

Still, we’re all busy. Can’t we have it in English?

It wasn’t exactly meant for
us
to understand, perhaps, Miss Collier.

No, Rita. Nobody could of done that on purpose.

Why, Stan! Somebody must of. It’s a statue.

You don’t understand. You ask any electrician. There’s been a high-voltage discharge used, to get it that way.

We can get somebody who understands Chinese, and they can translate it.

Somebody who says they do. How are we to know?

I often wonder how much Martha Rawson …

Mr. Wetherby. He must know.

Hullo, Rhona! How’s your mother keeping?

She’s all right, thanks, Allie. What do you think of …

I think it’s the dog’s dinner, and you can tell Mr. Swann so, with my compliments.

My dear Allie! Conrad couldn’t care less.

Ah! Here it is! But … I don’t … I’d heard that Sir Gregory complained it was obscene!

Conrad is not trying to say anything to anybody.

Why, Stan! You mean they do all their statues that way now then? Electric? And don’t really know how they’ll come out?

May do. Looks like it. I’m not interested. Come along, if you want any coffee.

Conrad is just talking to himself. He doesn’t care a hoot if we overhear him or not.

Then I suppose it’s all right to laugh.

Obscene? You mean rude? Well, no, you can’t call it that, can you? Of course you can’t tell really what it’s meant to be. What all those sort of spokes are … or anything.

Only I wish he wouldn’t talk to himself in a public place.

Good morning, Mrs. Dale! I hear that Sir Gregory has been making trouble again. Just like him!

Isn’t it, Mrs. Prescott? He and Sam had quite a fussification.

If you want to laugh, Allie, nobody can stop you.

I should hope not. This is still a free country.

He said it was a disgrace to publicly exhibit it.

Well! My goodness! I hope Mr. Dale stood up to him.

After you’ve looked at it for a bit, I believe you begin to get something.

Get what?

Sam pointed out that this is a free country. There’s no law, Sam told him, to say what’s good art and what’s bad.

Get what, Miss Collier?

I don’t know. It gives me a kind of feeling.

There’s no law, not yet, to stop people laughing if they want to. Excuse me! There’s my mother.

Oh, there you are, Allie! Sorry we’re late. I went with Mrs. Selby to the dentist and we were kept.

Good morning, Mrs. Selby. I hope he didn’t hurt?

Oh no, he gave me a local. But my mouth feels a bit stiff. Is this
it
? Well!

Rhona says we may laugh if we like. We have Mr. Swann’s kind permission.

Well! I don’t know!

Mummie likes it, Mrs. Selby.

Mrs. Hughes! No! You don’t? Not really?

It’s nothing to do with Sir Gregory what we have, or don’t have, in the Pavilion. Chale Park doesn’t own this town any more.

I don’t pretend to understand these things, Mrs. Selby. But I think we ought to try and be broadminded. They mean something to the younger generation. We’ve got to accept it that the generations are different.

Every single improvement he’s tried to stop. Look at the trouble he’s making over the new convenience! He says we don’t need one, with all these motor-coaches coming through the town.

Personally, I think we are very broadminded to put it up at all, considering the stories that are going about.

I don’t believe all I hear. I’m sure some of those stories are very much exaggerated.

Sam says we actually need something like this in here. Something old-fashioned wouldn’t suit.

He and she and the husband used literally to live together. Even she doesn’t know which of those children …

Sssh! Take care!

What? Oh.… Hullo, Christina!

Hullo, everybody.

Brought all your little family, I see.

Yes. I promised them choc ices.

Ices? Oh, you lucky little things!

And Bobbins! Hullo, Bobbins? Hullo! Hullo! How’s old Mr. Pattison, dear?

He seems a bit better, thank you. But Dr. Browning won’t let him get up just yet. His heart isn’t too good.

Much wiser just to keep him quiet. Hullo, Bobbins! Well! There’s a lovely smile! Peak-oh! Peak-oh!

As Sam says, we must keep up with the times. I say! Are those children
those
children?

Yes. You wouldn’t know them, would you? A wonderful difference since Christie took them on.

They still look rather peculiar, though. Sort of white and scared. Look at them now; you’d think they’d seen a ghost.

What’s your opinion, Christina?

I’m not talking, Mrs. Selby. Little pitchers have long ears.

Oh yes, quite. And Dickie? What does he think?

Oh, he’s cagey. Won’t say. I know what he really thinks, but he’s got a thing about all this modern art, in case it turns out that Bobbins thinks it’s wizard.

Bobbins!

Peak-oh! Peak-oh! Yes, Christina, that’s just the point. The younger generation is going to like all sorts of things we don’t.

I dare say, Mrs. Hughes. But that’s not to say they’re going to like this.

Serafina! I want to whisper.
How
did
…

Sssh!
Don’t
talk.
Don’t
say
anything.
It’s
dangerous.

I mean, why should we surround ourselves with
things we think are awful because Bobbins may be going to like something we can’t understand? Whatever we have, he’ll probably call it old-fashioned and throw it out. So we might as well please ourselves. We’ll be laughed at when we’re dead, anyway.

Serafina!
That
did
be
our
ole
chair,
din’t
it?

Sssh!

It’s the insecurity. It’s natural the children should see things differently. They’ve had such a different
background
… growing up in the raids.…

You’re getting the generations mixed up, Mummie. Bobbins never heard a bomb in his life.

But
it
did!

Yes, Mrs. Hughes. Being in a raid might have upset Mr. Swann so much he had to get it out of his system this way. But by the time Bobbins is grown up he’ll either be dead or safer than we are, if you know what I mean. So this is just what he won’t cotton to.

AAAH! AAA-OOOO! Serafina pinched me!

Serafina! How can you?

Ahoo! Ahoo! Ahoo!

Ha! ha! Ha! ha! Ha!

He! he! He! he!

Ahoo! Ahoo! Ahoo!

Just hark at those people laughing!

Oh, they’re just trippers, off a motor-coach. They wouldn’t appreciate …

Ahoo! Ahoo!

Stop it, Joe! You aren’t all that much hurt. Come along and have your choc ice. You can wheel Bobbins, if you’re careful.

Let me! Let me!

No, Serafina. It’s Joe’s turn. Gently now.

Can I wheel him genkly right into the caffy?

Yes. Bye bye, Mrs. Hughes. Bye bye, Mrs. Selby. Be seeing you, Allie. A great blessing not having any steps in here, isn’t it? For the prams, I mean. That’s one thing they did manage to think of. No, Joe! Not so fast!

Poor Christina! She’s got her work cut out!

She’s wonderful to take it on.

Just like her. When isn’t she wonderful?

Don’t be catty, Allie.

Saucer of milk for Mrs. Newman. All right. But none of
us
could have done it half so well, could we? Hullo, Mrs. Browning! We don’t see you in here often.

Hullo, Allie! Good morning, Mrs. Hughes. I just came to see … Oh! My goodness!

First aid for Mrs. Browning! Help! Ho!

I’d heard rumours. Well!

Lovely, isn’t it?

I must say … I can’t see … I’d heard rumours that it was … well …
you
know
?

It was Sir Gregory said that.

Well … I’m disappointed.…

Ha! Ha! ha!

Allie!

Allie, you are dreadful. I didn’t mean … what is it exactly?

Nobody knows. Everybody says all sorts of things.

It’s mad.

It’s revolting.

Mr. Wetherby says it’s good.

We mustn’t laugh.

We’re old-fashioned.

It’s a hoax.

I don’t know, I’m sure.

We ought to like it, I suppose.

Who is Sir Gregory to lay down the law to us?

Mr. Swann is a local man.

The younger generation is different.

But what
is
it?

I don’t know.

‘
B
IRDS
flying!’ said Ivy. ‘That’s early. Means a hard winter, so they say.’

Lying on her back, she could see nothing save bracken fronds over her head, a hazy blue sky, and a wedge-shaped flight of birds, travelling
southwards
.

Benbow lifted his head from her breast to look at them too. Then he scrambled to his feet in order to watch them better.

‘What birds are they?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Some kind of geese, I should think. They fly high, don’t they? Every year they come—a little later than this, though, generally—and fly away over the sea. I’ve never seen them except hereabouts.’

She sat up herself and shook some dried bracken from her hair.

Now she could see the world below, the steep fall of the hill, the flat floor of harvest fields, the distant sea. It was a hot day and not very clear. The sea and sky merged in a pale shimmer. Between the fields and the coast there was a long narrow strip of inland water and, beyond it, a rampart of pebbled beach where nobody ever went and where nothing grew except sea-poppies.

Benbow watched the birds eagerly until he could see them no longer. Then he too looked downwards and asked if she had ever been on that beach.

‘On Hodden? No. There’s nothing to see there, only stones. You can’t bathe; the sea sucks you down,
even in a dead calm. You could wander for miles there and not see a soul. Coastguard, he goes. Nobody else.’

‘I should like to go sometime.’

‘Well, you could, if you take the bus we came by today and go on to Friar’s Barton, just down below there. Then you could walk over the fields. But I don’t know how you’d get across Hodden Water.’

‘We’ll go and find out, shall we?’

He sat down again beside her, picked a harebell, and began to examine it as though he had never seen one before. But that was his way, she had noticed. He looked at things more than most people did.

‘Depends,’ she said.

If he did not ask what she meant she would leave it alone. The time might not have come. He scrutinised the harebell and stuck it in his buttonhole.

‘It depends?’ he repeated.

‘It’s not so easy,’ said Ivy. ‘My mother, she thinks I’m shopping in Beremouth.’

‘And you don’t like to deceive her?’

‘No. Nor upset her, either, by telling her the truth. Unless it’s for an important reason.’

‘But you have an important reason, haven’t you?’

‘That’s what I don’t know yet. If I knew how important it is to you, then I’d know if it was important to me.’

There was a slight quiver in her voice. She had risked so much for him and she was not quite sure of the issue. But he answered at once:

‘It’s very important to me. I want to marry you. Surely you know that?’

‘I suppose I do,’ said Ivy quietly.

He took her brown, capable hand and held it for a
moment against his cheek. Then he kissed it and began to twist her wedding ring round her finger.

With a pang of dismay she realised that she would have to take this ring off if she married Benbow. She still called him Benbow, even in her thoughts, although she had got him to tell her his former name. She was sure that she could never marry anybody else, but not even for him could she take off poor Bill’s ring and put it away as though something had been wiped off a slate. To do so seemed like a sort of treason; it was a denial that there had ever been such a person as Bill. Death had dissolved her vows, but it had not quenched her love for him, although she now loved Benbow too, without feeling herself unfaithful to the dead. But what did widows do with their rings when they remarried? Didn’t they kill a man all over again when they took his ring off?

The problem was solved for her by Benbow, who said:

‘It doesn’t seem quite right that you should ever take this off, even if you do marry me. You don’t want to, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Then don’t. I’ll get one; I believe we have to have one for the ceremony. You must take this off just for that day and let me give you mine. Afterwards you can wear this again and put mine away in some little box.’

This was just like Benbow. He gave everyone their place, she thought, even the dead. Any other man would have been jealous of that first love, would have wanted her to obliterate all that she could not share with him. She had refused several offers for that very reason, and had expected never to marry again. She could not possibly forget Bill. But Benbow was the least possessive
creature she had ever encountered; he accepted her grief as part of herself and would never ask her to
dismiss
those memories of young love and lost happiness. She could live with him at ease, and perfectly herself.

‘I’ll make you a little box,’ he added. ‘I’ll get some gold from somewhere and make it myself.’

‘Aren’t you going on a bit fast?’ enquired Ivy. ‘I haven’t said yet that I’ll marry you.’

‘You’ve not made up your mind?’

‘You and your boxes! You needn’t start getting gold from anywhere until you’ve answered three questions.’

‘Questions?’ said he, frowning.

‘First, about the children. I’m willing to look after them. I’d like to. But where are they?’

He would not give a direct answer to this. He merely said:

‘I’ll get hold of them and bring them here. I must think of some way to get them here.’

His evasion assured her that the children must be in that place from which he had run away when he came to Coombe Bassett. Had they been anywhere else he would have told her so by now. But of that place he was determined never to think or speak. It must, she thought, have upset him in his nerves very badly. She had got everything fairly straight up to Maddy’s death; after that came a two-years gap concerning which he was mute.

‘You remember all about it now, dear, don’t you?’ she asked, more gently.

‘I can’t quite remember how I got here. All the rest … it’s like something packed away. I could think of it. But I don’t want to.’

‘Still, I don’t see how we can get much further till you’ve thought a bit. I’ve done more for you than I
ought, perhaps. I wanted to help you. But that’s no use if you won’t help yourself. Married or not, you owe it to yourself to get quite all right. Quite like other people, I mean.’

‘I am helping myself. I’m quite all right if I don’t think about anything except just what I’m doing at the moment.’

‘That’s all very well till you start thinking ahead, which you’re bound to do if you want to get married. Once you think ahead you must think back. I know it’s hard. You’ve had trouble. So have I. When they brought my Pam home to me, that day … oh, that day! … I kept thinking I shall never forget this. Never! But I wouldn’t want to forget it really. It’s life.’

He nodded in agreement, and after a while continued:

‘You see, I got quite wrong somehow. Like a train derailed. I couldn’t go on without an accident. My work … I couldn’t see people any more. So I went right back and started again.’

This she understood very well. In her father’s yard he had returned to a point which took him out of his difficulties by ante-dating them. He had sought an earlier time and place—his own boyhood and a
stonemason’s
yard in the Antipodes. In future he meant to call himself Benbow. That might have been possible, she believed, had he come to Europe alone. He might erase that disastrous excursion and start afresh, were it not for the other who had come with him.

Yet she hesitated before asking her second question. She knew it to be the most dangerous of all.

‘And what happened to Frank?’ she demanded.

‘Ivy!
’

He leapt to his feet and looked as though he was going to run away.

‘Because he always mattered most to you, didn’t he?’

More than Maddy did, she thought. More than I shall. But that’s natural, sometimes, when two men are great friends. Like David and Jonathan.

‘He’s not dead?’ she pursued.

‘No.’

‘You quarrelled?’

He looked puzzled, as though genuinely uncertain of the answer to that. After a while he said:

‘I wrote him a letter. He didn’t answer.’

‘Probably got lost in the post,’ said Ivy.

‘No. I don’t think so. Anyway … I shall never see him again. Don’t talk about it, Ivy.’

‘All right, I won’t. But it’s something you’ve got to get over, isn’t it? You can’t do that by all this Benbow business, and pretending that half your life, almost, never happened at all.’

He nodded, turned away, and set off walking very fast along the ridge of the hill. She made no attempt to go after him. This dangerous moment had not gone off too badly. He might refuse to think. He might prefer to remain but half a man for the rest of his life. In that case she would still marry him, but she must face the fact that she was marrying a kind of cripple. To look after him would be better than nothing, since she loved him, and half a loaf is better than no bread. She still hoped, however, for a nobler fate than that.

She must wait. She sat on the hill and watched a threshing machine at work in a field below. The whirring noise of it came up to her on the still air, and faint shouts from the men who tended it.

Plans for the future occupied her mind. She owned a cottage in the village which was let furnished; she had
lived there until the death of her child, after which she had gone to her parents for the sake of company. This little house would do nicely for herself and Benbow. Her tenant, a retired schoolteacher, was leaving, anyway, in the New Year and would probably be ready to turn out at Michaelmas if it suited Ivy better. Those
children
must be brought to Coombe Bassett. Benbow could go on working for her father, who would welcome the prospect of keeping so good a man. There would be some trouble at home; her mother would violently oppose the project, but the storm would blow over if everybody was sensible.

They would be a little short of money. She would lose her widow’s pension if she remarried, and she could no longer earn large wages by going out, at intervals, to resident posts. But she had a nice little sum laid by and would be getting allowances for the two younger children. Daily work in the village might be possible; there were several ladies who would be glad to employ her. Serafina and Dinah would be in school and off her hands for most of the day, but if Joe was only four she must leave him with her mother when she went out to work. A lot of fuss her mother would make, but she would take him all right, and spoil him,
probably
, to a shocking degree.

They would get along perfectly well. Many a family of five had less to live on than the wages Benbow was getting. Moreover, if he took it into his head to turn any more door-stops into cats, there might be some profit in it. He had, she gathered, sold such things before, or, rather, the lost Frank had sold them for him. She would not go on at him to do any more unless he felt like it; if he did, she might show them to Mr. Headley and ask his advice about selling them. Mr. Headley
knew about such things and valued good work; he would know what sort of shop would be likely to buy them.

But if he gets quite all right again, she thought … and realised that all these plans were made for a Benbow who was not quite all right. Should that other return, that whole man whom she was so anxious to recall, she must pay for it by some measure of uncertainty as to the future. For that man’s needs she could not prepare so confidently, nor could she foresee the life which they might lead. She only knew that she would be ready to follow him anywhere, and would rather do so, to the ends of the earth, than make a home in Coombe Bassett for Benbow who dared not face the past.

He had gone quite far away, to the end of the ridge. Now he was striding back in a great hurry. She thought that he must have decided to tell her everything, but when he got nearer she saw that she had been wrong. There was no resolution in his face. He was excited and harassed; he must have looked like that before he ran away. She had never seen him in such agitation. He flung himself down on the grass beside her, gave her a wild look, and exclaimed:

‘I must tell you something. I’ve never spoken of it to anybody. I’ll tell you, Ivy. I’ll tell what was driving me … driving me …’

He looked round suspiciously, as if afraid that they might be overheard. Then he confided, almost in a whisper:

‘Something very horrible and dangerous is happening. We have enemies. Hidden enemies. Nobody knows about it. Nobody is going to notice in time.’

Oh dear! she thought. I oughtn’t to have stirred him up. It was too soon.

‘We are all being persuaded to despair,’ he continued,
in the same low, shaken voice. ‘We are being convinced that we are worthless. It’s being done very cleverly. People don’t see how clever it is. They think it’s an improvement. Have you noticed?’

‘Can’t say I have,’ she replied placidly. ‘Nobody’s tried to convince me I’m worthless. I’d like to see them do it.’

‘They don’t say it openly. But it’s going on
everywhere
, all the time. I began to notice it before Maddy died. Maddy dying, and everything that has happened since, have nothing to do with it really. I didn’t
understand
what was happening, though, till one day, when I was in a great dark place full of voices. I had felt it before, you understand? I had begun to feel anxious. I had stopped being able to see people; I couldn’t be sure what they were. As if a curtain had come down. I used to think: How can I get out of this? I used to go up to the quarries and watch the blasting, and think: How can we escape from this? Have you ever felt like that?’

‘I get in the dumps sometimes.’

‘No, it’s not like that. After a while I realised that we are all gradually being brought to think less of ourselves. It’s not merely being attempted. It’s succeeding.’

‘Honestly, Benbow, I think you’re wrong. People don’t believe they’re worthless. Not the people I know, anyway. What’s wrong with most of them is they think they’re worth a lot more than they are.’

He considered this with frowning attention.