The Oracles (27 page)

It was a regrettably sentimental number, hackneyed and out of fashion, which he often played because he knew why it would always go down. His patrons, while affecting to despise it, listened; it sounded difficult to play but it was really a very easy piece and a large
number
of them had once played it themselves. The memory of this achievement gave them a certain satisfaction, although they shook their heads and raised their
eyebrows
.
It had been, upon the whole, their most
successful
piece.

‘Oh,’ said Christina, putting down her little green glass. ‘Liszt! I know this.’

Her eyes clouded with memories. She was on the school platform at East Head, in her white organdie. Ten years ago! After that year she had given up learning the piano. Home! Home!

‘It’s got something,’ allowed Dickie. ‘But it hits below the belt.’

‘I played it once.’

And were you killed i’ th’ Capitol? he asked his
doppelgänger,
who would take the allusion.

This faceless comrade was now a man, and likely to remain one. Dickie no longer yearned for sympathetic female companionship. He would still have said that his marriage had been a mistake, but he could say so
without
any very painful implications. The worst effects of it had been weathered and had worn off. He could now live with it very comfortably; he and Christina had grown sensible, they had learnt how to get along
together
, they had settled down. He did not want any other wife. He had made a mistake, but he had, upon the whole, done very well for himself, could scarcely have done better. They would never quite understand one another, but he preferred that they should not. To understand Christina fully would be to acknowledge himself the object of a love, passionate and disinterested, which he had never, perhaps, deserved, and which he was powerless to return. He could give her gratitude, respect and affection, but love was not his to command, once he had lost it. That she no longer depended upon it, but lived merely to see him happy, was the most disturbing possibility of all; it exalted her to a stature
with which he could not hope to compete, and gave a dire meaning to the conjecture that they were
ill-matched
. He took refuge in the belief that they had settled down.

This tune, he told his other self, hits below the belt because it has the nostalgic cadence; three notes down in the diatonic scale.
Soh!
Me!
Doh!
All the great nostalgic tunes are built up upon those three notes.
Forty
Years
On.
Linden
Baum.
Home
Sweet
Home.
Swanee
River.
Dulce
Domum.
Sing those three
downward
notes to people and they will sigh. Look at Christina! Sodden with sentimentality. But only in the West, objected the
doppelgänger.
If we were Chinks, the nostalgic cadence wouldn’t mean a thing.

Dickie dropped the conversation. An imaginary friend can always be shut up when we have had enough of him. He began instead to consider what he should say to Sir Miles tomorrow morning. It was a great advantage that they had met already, in such pleasant circumstances. He reflected, with a grin, that Sir Miles was also the owner of a Swann, sold to him by Archer. But he would not mention this link tomorrow. Oh no! Not for many years would he venture to talk about his own Swann; not until his professional capacities had been proved and accepted. A queer fellow, Swann! Attractive, but a little silly. Having spent months upon a particular work, he took a sudden dislike to it and dropped it into the Bristol Channel.

Liszt, after some noisy agitation, had got back to the nostalgic cadence, with an augmented diddle-diddle in the bass. Mummie was sitting in the front row,
remembered
Christina. Everybody I knew was there.

Dickie, smiling at his memories, sat up and straightened his waistcoat. There was upon his face an upshot light
of years to come. For a moment he looked older, harder and more assured. Hope and regret, anguish and solace, were no longer to roam unchecked across his nights and days. They were to be kept henceforth in their proper kennels, recognised and ruled, brought firmly to heel by the appointed man.

THE END