The Oracles (6 page)

‘You can go home, now, any time you like, old man.’

‘The thing about Conrad,’ said Dickie carefully, ‘is the thing. He knows how to enjoy himself. Nobody else does.’

‘Too right, old man. But go home now, I would.’

‘I don’t. So I got married. You got married.’

‘A very good wife,’ said Dickie. ‘Christina. You know her? Only thing to do if you don’t enjoy yourself. Get married.’

‘Your career!’ howled Carter. ‘As if we didn’t all know about that. Your career was packed up years before you raped Conrad.…’

Elizabeth flew at her. Frank hurried to them, exclaiming:

‘Now, now, now, girls! No rough stuff!’

Dickie continued his harangue to nobody in
particular
:

‘Very good life, very good wife, very good job. Nice town. I like everybody in this town. Only I don’t enjoy myself, somehow, solely and simply and solely.…’

Words eluded him. He had not meant to explain why he did not enjoy himself. That was not mysterious at all, although it was better not to think about it. He had never wanted to come back to East Head and would have told his father so, if his mother had not died just as he was about to insist upon his freedom. He had found it impossible to deal a second blow to the poor old man.
No, he did not want to talk about that. He wished to praise Conrad, and to explain that East Head would be quite bearable if such a man was living in it. Had he left East Head he could not have gone fishing with Conrad. He wanted to define the qualities which he had found so attractive, but all that he could manage to say was this:

‘He eats because he’s hungry and not because it’s dinnertime. And if he doesn’t want to be here he goes away. Quite right of him to go away tonight. He wouldn’t have enjoyed it. I don’t know anybody else like that. Very refreshing. I’m not like that. If Tina gave a party I shouldn’t go to Mexico.’

He pondered for awhile and added:

‘I shouldn’t want to. Tina’s parties … not so bad as this. Conrad,’ he told Frank, who was escorting Elizabeth out of the room, ‘is the only happy man I know.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Frank. ‘Steady, Liz.’

‘He eats when he’s hungry,’ began Dickie.

‘Does he? You’ve seen his kitchen. Right now I’m hoping he hasn’t got gastric ulcers.’

Frank and Elizabeth vanished. Dickie continued:

‘I wouldn’t go to Mexico. But I think it’s a very good thing to know a man who goes to Mexico when he doesn’t like it where he is. I like to meet people who are like other people. I know too many people who are like me. That’s why I get so bored.’

Nobody answered. He looked round in surprise and saw Nell Manders crying. Poor thing, he thought, she wants to go to Mexico. He went and sat down beside her.

‘Don’t cry,’ he said earnestly. ‘You’re quite young still. You haven’t made any mistakes yet. Your life isn’t settled.’

‘I’ve got no friends,’ sobbed Nell. ‘I’m so lonely.’

‘Nobody has any friends. I haven’t got any friends.’

‘Haven’t you? Why haven’t you got any friends?’

‘I don’t know. I had no time when it was the proper time. I didn’t mind it up there. Flying, I mean, where I was when I was young. I liked it. But it wasn’t a place, and you made friends and they didn’t come back. No. You have to be in a place. But after that I was too old.’

‘They don’t really like me. I thought it would be wonderful to know a lot of wonderful people. But they are very unkind to me. They aren’t my friends.’

‘In this place I haven’t any friends I chose for myself. I never did anything in my life I chose for
myself
. All … shettled for me. I believe if I could make just one …’ Dickie, with an effort, got the word out safely—
‘decision
… about anything at all, I should know who I am.’

‘But they don’t laugh at you. They don’t think you’re silly?’

‘No. They think I’m … sen-si-ble!’

‘Mexico wouldn’t make any difference,’ Dickie assured her. ‘We could get it here. All we want is
something
… first-hand. Everything’s been … done-before! I’m a product. I’d like to … mean-what-I-say-
sometimes
. I’d like to … do-things-for-reasons. Never thought it out, or found any … rea-sons. Know-
what-I
-mean?’

‘They didn’t give me any education,’ wailed Nell. ‘Did they give you any education?’

Dickie did not answer. She continued:

‘I went to a rotten school. They were all going to be debs at my school, but it costs too much. Daddy hasn’t got any money. Our class hasn’t got any money any more, you know. So he thinks I can get married without any clothes.’

‘A product,’ said Dickie, who had arrived at the answer to her question about his education. ‘I came off the … ass-em-bly belt!’

He thought this very witty and laughed.

‘How can I get married? There isn’t anybody of our class round here that isn’t married already, or else they marry a girl with clothes.’

‘Don’t get married,’ Dickie warned her. ‘Great mistake. Ties you. Gets very dull after a bit.’

‘My own class bores me. I’m not a snob. Why do people have to be gentlemen? Conrad’s not a gentleman. You’re not a gentleman. I wouldn’t mind marrying somebody like you a bit. I could have a little house and I could cook.’

‘No. Don’t cook. Mistake. Too much cooking. We are not all but stomachs.’

Don had changed his song, and shed his careful European accent. In spite of Martha’s protest, he had returned to his boyhood and a sing-song in his home town.

‘No, Don! Not funny! Merely adolesh … adol … we don’t think that’s funny. No! Not-at-all!’

‘Look at Martha!’ crowed Rhona, coming up to them. ‘Ha, ha! Martha’s pickled.’

Dickie frowned. Even in his cups he was a good fellow.

‘Don’t!’ he said. ‘Not nice. Never like to see it. Not a woman. Mustn’t laugh at her.’

‘She laughs at you. She calls you the local yokel.’

Dickie shook his head slowly.

‘Mistake,’ he said. ‘Yokel’s a farmer. Must be somebody else.’

‘She only asked you because she wants to sell
Conrad
’s work.’

‘He wouldn’t. A farmer wouldn’t. Only in Holland.’

‘I’m not talking about farmers.’

‘Used to go to these fairs and spend thousands of pounds buying pictures. Farmers did. Dutch farmers. Dutch pictures. Not in this century, though. Pity.’

‘You’ve got to tell all the yokels that Conrad is wizard. They’ll listen to you.’

‘How would I know? Greatest artist in the world … very-bad-artist … f’rall I know. I couldn’t … tell
anybody
anything.’

Oblivion was fast advancing upon him, but he made a last effort to explain himself:

‘I don’t know … anything-at-all. Don’t know if … Martha-knows … any-thing-at-all. Don’t know if
anybody
knows anything. Except Tina. My wife. You know Tina? She knows … everything-she-knows. Quite sure of it. Got her own ideas, Tina. Where’d I get ideas? Do I … have-any-ideas? Ideas … off the counter … off the … chain … store … counter.…’

Rhona’s face grew very large and shrank again. He suggested that they should go and look for some ideas as soon as it had stopped raining.
Good
ideas, not
chain-store
ideas. Very nice, the rain sounded, a soothing whisper everywhere and cool drops falling on his face. It was much better than the thunder and the singing.

He liked it, and argued with Frank about getting into the car, because he preferred to sit on the path in the rain and did not feel inclined to drive home. But the car was a very good car. It took him home of its own accord. He had only to get into the back with Nell and go to sleep, while she told Frank how to get to Chale Park.

‘It isn’t at Chale,’ he murmured. ‘It’s in the shed.’

‘We’re taking Gertie home first.’

The car rushed forward into the rain which was roaring and drumming all over the world. It got to a place where the noise was fainter—a mere background to a loud ticking, like the clock in his hall.
Tick-tock,
tick-tock!
Engine trouble, he thought, opening one eye. But it was really the clock after all. He was at home. He was lying beside the umbrella stand.

Tina’s white face hovered over him. She was crying. Poor Tina! Nobody had told her that the storm was over. Nobody had told her about the rain.

T
HE
rain stopped before dawn. The sun rose upon a land refreshed, upon harvest fields and
birdsong
.

These first notes of joy roused the man. He groaned, sat up, and looked round him. The place was
unfamiliar
. He was sure that he had never seen it before. His glance fell upon rough wooden walls, a wheelbarrow, a scythe, and some birch brooms stacked in a corner. Through the open door he saw grass and sunlight. He had been lying on a hard earth floor, and how he came there he knew not. He knew nothing save that he was cold, hungry and weak.

For a while he drifted upon the brink of the dream from which he had awakened. He did not wish to recapture it, although he was aware that it held
something
important which he ought not to relinquish. Deliberately he chose to let it go, and, in a matter of seconds, all memory evaporated. A blank curtain descended upon everything that had preceded this awakening. He was nothing. He had nothing save gnawing hunger and aching limbs.

Presently he rose and left the place. The early sun shone on wet grass and many tall thin stones which rose up on all sides, at haphazard, throwing strange shadows. For a time the shadows occupied him, but he did not like the stones. Then, turning, he saw a building. The shed, in which he had spent the night, leant against it, in a nettled hollow. This building also offended him. 
There was a solid squareness about the main part of it which accorded ill with the stumpy cone above it. He turned his eyes away. A picture came into his mind: bacon on a plate. He wanted that, but, in this place of stones and grass, there did not seem to be any.

A cock crew triumphantly, and he moved towards the sound as though to a summons. But at one point he turned aside to examine a stone that he liked. It was close to the wall, half hidden in long grass, but it had a better shape than the others and the top of it curved gracefully. There were words on it and his heart warmed as he read them, for he knew that a hand like his own had cut them.

The cock crew again and he went on, through a
lychgate
into a sleeping village street. There was no food here, but there was a noise which promised food, had always signified food. He knew that much, although as yet he made no effort to name the round, smooth, warm shapes which it evoked. This noise had arisen in the same direction in which the cock was crowing:

CHOOK! Chook-chook-chook. CHOOK! Chook, chook, chook.…

He found a narrow lane leading towards it, between two thatched cottages. Wooden fences railed off gardens. Beyond them was a meadow full of hen-houses. He climbed a gate and found what he wanted in a
nesting-box
behind one of them. They were warm and smooth and brown. He broke the shells and almost laughed with pleasure as they slid down his throat. Five minutes later, feeling much better, he climbed the gate, regained
the lane, and wandered back to the street. This was very wide. A strip of grass, planted with pollarded trees, separated the cottages on either side from the road. In the grass he found something that attracted him—two blocks of stone, side by side, one twice the height of the other. He liked their proportions, and sat down upon the lower stone. The climbing sun began to warm his stiff limbs.

Now that his physical discomforts were assuaged the mental blank became a more distressing evil. He wanted to escape from the past, to leave it as far behind him as possible. But he did not know how to advance or where to go. To give a name to anything, even to himself, was to look backwards. He flinched from any name, any word, which was not offered to him
here
.

The village was waking up and, with it, the sounds of early morning. A dog barked. A pump handle squeaked and whined. Doves cooed on a thatched roof. Some doors were opened and curtains were drawn back from windows. There were, besides, many faint, indefinable sounds—thuds, clanks, humming, far-off voices, the whole orchestra of life tuning up. One or two people went down the street and cast looks askance at the queer tramp sitting on the old horse-block. But he sat on, motionless, until his ear was greeted by a fresh sound, familiar, reassuring, as much an answer to his needs as the cluck of the hen had been.

Chip
…
chip
…
chip-chip
…
chip
…
chip-chip-chip
…
chip.
…

He saw the stone, the chisel, the hammer and the hands that held them. He rose and went in search of these things, over the soft wet grass, past the houses. As he went, the sound grew louder:

Chip-chip
…
chip
…
chip
.…

The stone, the chisel, the hammer, the hands and the mind too. A man was thinking. Each pause meant thought, a pondering before the next blow. Ah, blessed sound! The earliest, the first sound. He knew now where to go. This was home.

Some way down the street two wooden gates were open upon a yard. A board over the wall announced:

The yard was full of stone blocks, piled up and leaning against one another. There were several sheds and, at the far end, a dwelling-house. In front of the largest shed, close to the gate, sat an old man chipping away at a long smooth stone beam, supported on trestles. The wanderer watched him over the wall. Everything here was familiar; the stones, some rough hewn, some blank, the order amidst confusion, the sheds, the tools, all belonged to a safe world on the far side of that black dream. If only … if only he could be inside there, be that man, sitting on that bench, doing that thing. But there was a difficulty about it. A barrier, a danger, kept him outside the wall.

A voice called from the house:

‘Frank!’

This, too, was a word of safety. It belonged to the place and had been shouted before in that other yard.
Frank
!
he said to himself.
Frank
!

The old man took no notice. He continued to chip, pause, and chip again until a rosy-cheeked young woman came from the house.

‘Oh, Dad! Your bacon’s getting cold.’

Bacon
,
thought the listener behind the wall.

‘In a minute, my girl.’

‘Mum’s creating. She says you didn’t ought to work before breakfast, not at your age.’

‘All very well. I promised Wednesday. Got to be done Wednesday. Not my fault I’m single-handed.’

The old man put down his tools on the bench beside him, got up, and flexed his arms.

‘They’re coming for her Wednesday,’ he said, nodding at the stone. ‘Be trouble if she ain’t done.’

The young woman stood beside him and looked at it.

‘Looks nice,’ she commented.

‘Not so dusty. Wish they’d left a inch wider space each end, though. ’Twould have looked better that way, to my mind. But Mr. Simms, he would know best.’

‘What’s it say? That bit you’ve done?’

‘That’s poetry. Says: There is no room for death.’

She sighed and nodded, and then said:

‘I wish they could have got the licence sooner. So few of the boys remember them now. The boys now were only babies when they went away.’

‘Boys! Ooagh!’ the old man groaned in disgust. ‘Boys fair give me the sick, these days. Not one of ’em wants to learn a fine decent trade. Why’m I
single-handed
? Who’ll do the job when I’m gone? Work with their hands? Not for Joseph! Clerks! That’s what they want to be.…’

‘Fra-ank!’ came the cry from the house.

‘All right, Maggie! Coming!’

As the pair moved off down the yard he was saying:

‘Though there’s premiums offered—premiums, mind you—for any lad that’s willing to learn.…’

Now the yard was empty. Now the stool was waiting. Now the hammer and chisels lay idle on the bench.

Inch by inch the watcher crept in until he stood in front of the stone. He smiled as he read it, for the clear
cutting of the letters delighted him. All was as it should be, or very nearly. The old man had been right; an inch more space at either end would have been better. The stone exclaimed, as though the words were part of it:

The lettering had been completed as far as
locum.

The man picked up a chisel and held it in his hand, staring at it. As yet he had called nothing by name. But a name now came to him and he whispered it as he fingered the chisel.

‘My Redeemer …’

At last he sat down upon the stool. For a long while he looked at the stone. As he considered it he began to whistle. He could not have put words to the tune, but it had been in the back of his mind ever since he left the churchyard:
I
know
that
my
Redeemer
liveth
.…

Picking up the hammer, he began upon the
s
in
sed.

Chip … chip … chip-chip …
and
He
shall
stand
… chip … chip-chip …
at
the
latter
day
… chip … chip …
upon
the
earth.

The letter sprang out of the stone. It lived there.

Footsteps passed to and fro outside the yard gates. A car or two drove past. All the village was now wide awake. A wireless loud speaker echoed from an adjoining house with the eight o’clock news. He worked on,
concentrated, absorbed, until a furious voice behind him demanded what he was doing. He sprang to his feet and confronted the old man.

‘This.…’ he said, indicating the stone.

Frank Toombs looked at it and whistled himself. It was, as he saw at once, a very nice bit of work.

‘And who might give you leave to do such a thing?’ he asked, more gently.

There was a long pause. The answer sounded like a question.

‘Frank? …’

‘What d’you mean? I never …’

They stared at each other.

Toombs saw that this man, although he had obviously slept rough, was no tramp. His hands were working hands. His splendid head, the great forehead, the beetling brows and haggard eyes reminded Toombs of a picture he had seen, some old picture somewhere of a great man. A tramp with a brain-box like that would bear signs of drink and degeneration. This man was very pale. He looked ill. But he was no waster.

‘Who are you?’ demanded Toombs. ‘What’s your name?’

This was the danger point. This was the gulf which had to be crossed. But a bridge now presented itself. The answer was easy. It was given without a moment’s hesitation:

‘Benbow.’