The Oracles (21 page)

‘A protection,’ he said, nodding. ‘A natural
protection
. But will it last?’

‘Oh yes. People don’t alter.’

‘They’re being undermined, though. That’s it. Undermined. Very crafty. Very crafty. Very crafty.…’

It was of no use to argue. She decided to dispute nothing, and listened to him. He maintained this mysterious manner as though he were revealing some dangerous secret. Between each sentence was a pause while he sought for words.

‘It’s done cheerfully. It’s encouraging and reassuring, so that people are ready to believe it. But all the while this terrible idea is being planted in our minds. This idea of ourselves as very small and weak and stupid. This idea that we don’t know what we are doing, and can’t know, and can’t help it. And the bait is this: that we don’t have to be sorry for what we do. We don’t have to think that there are any wicked people. Nobody is strong enough, or clever enough, to be wicked. So there is to be no remorse. No remorse. No guilt. They offer to rid us of our guilt.’

‘But who are they then?’ exclaimed Ivy.

It was nonsense. She knew that it was nonsense. But he spoke with so much conviction that she was shaken.

‘I don’t know. They hide. You never see them. But they must be there, or all this wouldn’t be happening. I felt it coming on for years. But I knew it, I knew it, in that fearful place.’

‘The place you ran away from when you came here?’

‘No. Before that. About a year before Maddy died.’

He was silent, collecting his thoughts. After a while he resumed:

‘They attacked our sadness. Although it is natural for people to be sad. They have been always. You can see that if you read history books. And that is a very clever thing to do: to suggest that we can’t bear sadness. Sorrow and guilt. We listen to people who offer to take those away from us, because we think we want to be rid
of them. But when we have given up sorrow we have given up all our greatness. Sorrow is our right. There can be no joy without it. Don’t you think so?’

‘It says in the Bible: Blessed are they that mourn,’ agreed Ivy with a sigh. ‘But then it says: For they shall be comforted. I sometimes wonder what that means.’

She thought again of her own unwillingness to forget grief, and his acceptance of it. Their relationship, which had in it so much of comfort, seemed to have sprung from sorrow.

‘No joy,’ he said. ‘Only pleasure, perhaps, which is something quite different. Joy and sorrow could not live in that place, but there was a great deal of pleasure, I suppose. Did you go there?’

‘I don’t quite know what place you mean, dear.’

‘Oh, it was a horrible place. Horrible! Maddy and I went because I wanted to see the glass. I was interested in working glass. We didn’t know what it was going to be like. They had a lot of little paper windmills everywhere.’

He shuddered, pulled a piece of bracken, and began tearing it to pieces.

‘In the middle of it,’ he said, ‘there was a huge dark place full of voices.
Not
human
voices
. We had to creep along and see what was shown, and hear what was told. The first thing we saw was an enormous telescope. It was a cheat. Nothing could be seen through it. If they had wanted us to see more, they might have given us a smaller one, through which we could have looked at the stars. But they didn’t want us to see more. They didn’t mean us to ask for more.’

This telescope explained everything. Ivy realised that he was talking about the Twentieth Century Exhibition, held in Gressington some three years
earlier. She and her parents had gone to see it, in a motor-coach, because everybody seemed to be going. It was reputed to be painlessly educational and designed to cheer people up, since it only exhibited the more
hopeful
aspects of twentieth-century civilisation.

Although it was but a small affair, it had attracted a good deal of attention. The largest public park in Gressington had been decorated with sculpture,
attractive
cardboard cut-outs, kiosks, milk-bars, and
sideshows
of various kinds. In the centre stood a vast globular construction, a round world, designed by Alan Wetherby, and entitled the Palace of Progress. A
complete
tour of it took a couple of hours, nor was it possible to curtail the experience, for movement inside it could only take place in one direction. An endless queue, shuffling in by one gangplank and out by another, was obliged to inspect tier upon tier of galleries—up, up, up—down, down, down—before getting away.

The exhibits were all intended to reassure the
Common
Man, by presenting him with a gratifying picture of what he was really up to. Most of them were concerned with his conquest of Nature. Egalitarian touchiness was uniformly respected; great names were seldom
mentioned
, nor were many heroes set up for veneration. All this, it was implied, had been achieved by nobody in particular. The arts, and the unpredictable phenomena of inspiration, received a few vague and somewhat facetious tributes. The inequitable distribution of genius, the erratic proclivities of the Uncommon Man, do not easily lend themselves to charts, graphs, diagrams and working models—the Common Man can be more easily persuaded that he will shortly, thanks to his own ingenuity, set off for Mars than he can be convinced that he ever wrote
Hamlet.
A discreet cruciform object,
in a secluded corner, bore a placard which
broad-mindedly
complimented him upon his resourcefulness in having invented God.

Ivy’s impressions of her visit to this place were
confused
, for she had found it exhausting. She knew that she must have seen a great deal, because she had, for two hours, inspected brightly illuminated objects and listened to very simple explanations by loudspeakers. She remembered best a giant model of the human brain thinking a thought. It had looked uncommonly like tripe and had pulsated in a nauseating way. But she could never forget it because it had provoked her father into making an awkward scene. He had demanded loudly what thought this brain was supposed to be thinking; one thought, he maintained, can be much more important than another, and an exhibit which ignored this point was an insult to the public. He stood there, fuming, while the loudspeaker, again and again, repeated its jocular and condescending little commentary. The people behind wanted to get on and could not, as long as Frank Toombs remained, outraged and stationary, in front of the brain. Some grumbled. Others suggested unseemly and flippant answers to Frank’s question. The thoughts ascribed to this brain were getting quite out of hand when an official turned up and peremptorily moved them all on.

‘Why are you laughing?’ asked Conrad in surprise.

‘I was thinking of Dad,’ said Ivy. ‘We all went to that place, that Palace of Progress, and he was awful! He groused from start to finish. He said it was nothing but a kindergarten and they were treating us all like kids. Well, it was, in a way. Everything done up to look like a sort of toy. But they meant it to be educational.’

He looked at her doubtfully.

‘Who were they?’ he asked.

‘The people who got it up? I forget. They were all very famous, educated people. You don’t think they meant any harm, surely? You don’t think they were wicked?’

‘I knew one. I met him afterwards. I’m sure he meant harm. It was harmful to treat people like that. Your father was right. It was like a terrible toyshop. That dummy telescope!’

He seemed to be as much aggrieved over the telescope as Toombs had been over the brain. His objections, although more violent and incoherent, were upon the same lines. But Toombs had merely been irritated, whereas Benbow had been deeply disturbed. He looked upon the whole exhibition as evidence of some organised and deliberate attack on human dignity. He complained again that he had never been able to ‘see people’ properly in consequence. He seemed to have brooded over the experience until it had become an obsession. The loudspeakers, in particular, had horrified him.

‘Man! they kept on saying. Man! But they were really persuading us that there is no such person. We are not to see him any more when we walk down the street. They pretended to be talking about us, but they were not. Thought and knowledge don’t belong to us any more. All they offered was little jokes and a few hints about what is being done by people with no names and no faces. They hid themselves and shouted, so that we couldn’t ask questions even if we had wanted to.’

‘Dad asked questions all right. Don’t get so excited, dear. They were only records. They made records beforehand. See?’

‘How could they know beforehand what we might want to ask? They must really believe that we are
worthless, imbecile creatures. Those records were made by people who secretly despise us.’

‘No. They were very nice ladies and gentlemen. Why should they want to do us harm?’

‘I don’t say it was intentional. That’s the trouble. You see, this … this attack was first made on educated, intellectual people. They have lost their faith in man. They sincerely despise him; so now they can’t help spreading it among us—the idea that we are despicable. They find it impossible to connect the thought of us with the thought of anything great. Did you notice the sculpture, outside in those gardens?’

‘If I did, I don’t remember it. Time we all got out we were dead to the world.’

‘There were groups of men and women and children. Very large. Huge. To hide the fact that we were being made to feel small. They had the faces of idiots, cheerful and trusting, and not worried about anything. They all had very thick legs. Nobody hungry. Nobody sad. Nobody thinking. Nobody noble. And then amongst them these vast
Things!
Shapes! Thought, they were called, and Knowledge, and Truth, and Courage, and all that sort of thing. But not in human form. No greatness must be shown in human form any more. Only imbecility.’

‘You really think they did it on purpose?’

‘Who is behind it then? Who is the enemy? Who wants to convince us that we are all idiots?’

‘Perhaps it’s Satan,’ she suggested, feeling that she had better humour him.

‘Satan?’ He looked startled. ‘You mean … you believe in the Devil?’

‘I’m Church of England,’ said Ivy cautiously. ‘But they do say he’s the enemy of mankind, don’t they?
They’re always talking about the crafts and assaults of the Devil.’

‘Perhaps you’re right. But hardly anybody believes in the Devil nowadays.’

‘I think it’s much better than getting suspicious of people and calling them enemies. I must say, I think it’s very unjust of you to have it in, like this, for those poor people just because they went and got up an exhibition.’

She looked at her watch and added:

‘We ought to be going, or we’ll miss the bus back. I’ve been shopping in Beremouth, remember.’

‘Would your mother mind if we got married?’

‘She’d create from here to Kingdom Come. But I’m not going to marry you, Conrad, until you’re properly back in your seven senses.’

It was the first time that she had ever called him by his name. They were both aware of the challenge which it implied.

‘I am in my seven senses,’ he protested.

‘No, you’re not. You haven’t answered two questions I asked you before you started all this about
Gressington
just to get away from it. And there’s another one. There’s somebody I haven’t heard about yet. Somebody you never mention.’

He got up again and looked down at Hodden Beach.

‘I don’t think I’ll come back by bus,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll try to get to the sea, and walk home tonight.’

‘Please yourself. Where’s my handbag? Perhaps it’s just as well we shouldn’t arrive back by the same bus. And I’m never likely to go to Hodden Beach with you, or anywhere else, till you’ve answered my questions. From now on, Conrad, you’ve got to stand on your own legs.’

‘Shan’t you bring me tea in the mornings any more?’

‘No. I shan’t bring you tea in the mornings any more.’

He smiled at her. They both knew that she would.

‘You haven’t been alone these last two years,’ she insisted. ‘Who was she, Conrad?’

The smile vanished. He turned and made off down the hill, throwing two words over his shoulder as he went:

‘Frank’s wife.’

J
UST
before dawn Christina heard a car drive up quietly and stop outside the gate. She was at the window in a moment. It was their car, looking strange and different, as everything did in that light, in the tender, mournful clarity which is neither night nor day.

The town, the sea, the hills, had the same unfamiliar aspect; they slept, the whole world slept, as though
unwilling
ever to wake again. High up in the sky, over Summersdown, the first rosy clouds heralded the inevitable recall. Only the dead may sleep on, untroubled and at peace, while dawn breaks, and those who have looked upon death during the night turn again to the task of living.

Presently Dickie got out of the car and shut the door very quietly so as not to wake people still sleeping, for so short a time, behind their drawn curtains. There was a remote dignity in his bearing as he walked slowly up the path. For a few hours it would set him apart from other men, until the mystery which he had beheld should be obliterated by the clamour and bustle of the day. He was not yet a mourner, able to name a loss—not yet a bereaved son, interviewing undertakers and sending telegrams to distant cousins. Returning to his house, in this limpid quiet, he was simply humanity, reconciled for a while to its end.

Poor Dickie! she thought. But she knew that he was not, at that moment, poor Dickie.

She ran downstairs. They met in the hall.

‘All over‚’ he said.

‘I know. I saw. I saw you coming back.’

He stood looking at her blankly, as though uncertain where to go next.

‘Go up and rest a little,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll bring you some tea.’

He plodded upstairs. She put on a kettle in the kitchen while the dawn light grew stronger.

The dear old man! He had been so kind, so kind always. Sad! Sad! But natural. Old men die. This one had died with little pain, with less suffering than is the lot of many. He had only been very ill for a couple of days and had never known that he was dying. His beloved Dickie had been beside him. But sad … sad … that people should have to grow old and die, and never hear the birds any more, the birds now sleepily chirping in the garden.

When she took the tray upstairs Dickie was lying on their bed. He had removed his shoes but had not stripped off the candlewick counterpane. At any other time she would have made him get up while she folded it away, for it was one of her treasures. She let it pass, however, after a glance at his withdrawn face. Silently she poured out a cup of tea and gave it to him.

‘Was it … how was it?’ she ventured to ask, after a while.

‘Peaceful. In his sleep, they said. But I think he knew. He had my hand. He gave it a little squeeze just before he went.’

He drank half a cup of tea and then looked at her as if realising for the first time that she could not have gone to bed that night. She was wearing a dark-grey suit.

‘Have you been up all night?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I waited. I waited up. I didn’t want to be asleep when you came back.’

‘Where’s Bobbins?’ he asked, looking round the room.

‘Serafina and Dinah have got him. I moved his cot in there. They’ve been so sweet, trying to save me trouble.’

She poured herself out a cup and sat down on the bed beside him.

‘I’m very sorry I couldn’t be with you,’ she said.

‘You couldn’t have left the children.’

‘No. But I was sorry not to be able to be with you.’

It would have made no difference, as she knew, had she been with him, but she would have wished to be there. A husband and wife ought to go through these things together. Life was not so bad, death more
endurable
, when they faced it side by side. To go through things together was one of the reasons why people married.

There was nothing to be done for him yet. Later on she might say words of consolation; she could remind him of the happiness which he had always given to his father, and of the old man’s delight in his first
grandchild
. Later on she could take her part in the many things which must be done. Just now he needed no comfort.

Her own weariness overcame her. She lay down on the bed by his side and gazed, as he did, at the bright clouds beyond the window.

‘I keep seeing him lying there,’ said Dickie suddenly, ‘and at the same time I keep seeing him standing at the gate of The Rowans—oh, it must have been a long time ago. When I was a boy. Turning round and calling to me. I was late for something; church, I expect. A long time ago. Yet it seems as … as fresh as the other.’

‘I know,’ said Christina. ‘It was the same when Mummie died. All the old times seemed so near, as if they were still happening. It made one feel as if there’s no such thing as time, really.’

He turned his head and looked at her with faint surprise, as though he had not expected such a comment from her.

‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘it’s the same for everybody when their last parent goes.’

‘Yes. Everybody.’

The word seemed to go on in her tired brain like a distant murmur of waves: everybody … everybody.…

‘I’ve got a lot I ought to see to,’ he remembered.

‘Plenty of time, dear. Rest a bit longer.’

His black shoes hurt him, she remembered. They were a size too small. She must make him get another pair before the funeral, because he would have to stand for a long time afterwards, shaking hands with people. It would be a big funeral. The whole town would come. There was much to be foreseen; much to be done.

Perhaps I am hard-hearted to start remembering those things so soon, she thought. But it’s not my father, and I am less sensitive than Dickie. He is thinking about death now. Only death. He feels things so. It’s funny. He must have seen a lot of dead people in the war. I suppose there wasn’t time to think then. It’s when people think that they feel. Dickie thinks a lot, so he feels the more. I won’t bother him about shoes, and things like that, till he can attend to it.

She looked round at him and saw that he had dropped off to sleep.

So that’s good, she thought tenderly. That’s good for him, to get a little sleep, my darling Dickie. It’s lucky for him he has me to look after him. I will try harder to
make him happy. Never mean or petty. I won’t think about that, because it is all over and we can forget it. We can’t help being angry sometimes; that’s human. But we need not be petty. That we must struggle against; that is the saddest thing to have to remember. And the curtains in the lounge here will do nicely for his new study at The Rowans.

Now that’s hard-hearted! To be thinking of curtains already. I am very sad. I shall miss the dear old man very much. His twinkling eyes when he peeped round the door the day Bobbins was born! Oh, I shall miss him very much. I shall always remember him. And I shall tell the children about him, so they’ll remember him, even after we are dead. He shan’t be forgotten.

Dickie shall have exactly the curtains he likes in his new study. I won’t decide everything without consulting him. He shall have all the room he wants for his books. What he’d really like is to have that thing that Mr. Pethwick … Oh dear! Thinking of that makes me remember
the
other
!

Why can’t somebody take it away from there, where I have to see it every time I go to the café? Reminding me! How mean I was, not telling him, and I never can now. He says it’s got to stay there till an authorised person takes it away. I heard him going along the path with the watering-can; I’m ashamed to think how mean and petty I was. Nobody will ever know I knew, though; even if it all comes out. A point from which we can’t get back, he said. Thank heaven we didn’t get that far, and it’s all over now. I can’t think why I ever let myself get into such a state. What was it all about?
A
poor
little
briary
bush!
He was whistling that song going down the path … when I didn’t tell him …
and
that
will
never
be
,
be
,
be
… that man who never came back …
Edward … Edward … never came back any more.…

Her eyelids fluttered and she too fell asleep.

As the first sunbeam shot over Summersdown, Mrs. Hughes came padding softly along the road and let herself into the house with a latch-key that Christina had given to her. She knew what had happened, for Dr. Browning had rung her up before he left The Rowans, as he had promised to do.

Her eyes were full of tears for the loss of a lifelong friend. But she was confident that he had gone to a better place and her mind was occupied with plans for helping the bereaved household. She also was thinking about shoes.

The little house was silent and sleeping. She crept upstairs and found their bedroom door ajar. Peeping in, she saw them both, lying on their bed side by side, fast asleep, their young faces shadowed with fatigue.

In their dark suits, upon the yellow counterpane, they reminded her of something that she had seen once: two spars of wood washed up at haphazard on the beach, to lie like companions until the next tide came and swept them apart again for ever. It was as though they lay there together by chance, and only for a little while.

She stole away on tip-toe and went downstairs to prepare for breakfast. Tears were rolling down her cheeks now; she knew not whether she wept for the living or for the dead.