The Oracles (7 page)

T
HE
exertions of Sunday night, the task of keeping the party sweet, of sending it home fuddled but friendly, exhausted Frank Archer. He did not turn up in the Metropole dining-room until a quarter to eleven. With one pop of his grey eyes he quenched some suggestion from the waiter that breakfast was off, and ordered kidneys, which were not on the menu. They came. At half-past eleven he took a stroll round the town, which he had so far only seen by lightning flashes. It was a small town, and he very soon fetched up in front of its principal attraction—Alan Wetherby’s Marine Pavilion.

A long whistle escaped him as he took in it. Turning the corner of the parade and beholding the sea, he had unconsciously expected some cosy little pier with a domed shack at the end of it. There was nothing cosy about this severely functional structure. But they were all
exceedingly
proud of it. No town in England could boast of anything more up to the minute.

To get inside was no easy task. The engraved Perspex doors baffled him, as they baffled all visitors, and had baffled the townsfolk during the first week or two. There was a long row of them, immensely tall, through which glimpses could be got of the vestibule within and the shining sea beyond. He tugged and pushed and would have concluded that the place must be shut had he not beheld various strollers inside. Presently two old ladies came up and pushed a knob in the
steel frame-work, whereupon a whole door slid silently behind its neighbour, admitted them, and closed after them. He followed their example and got inside, wondering what would happen if the thing shut up again while somebody was standing in the doorway. Upon further investigation, however, he discovered two knobs. One of them held all the doors
permanently
open, when large crowds were going in and out. The other served scattered entrants on windy days. The whole contrivance prevented unnecessary draughts.

He found himself in a vestibule which ran the whole width of the building. Its northern wall, opposite the doors, was constructed entirely of glass, and looked over the Channel to Wales. Some thirty feet short of this glass wall the vestibule floor fell away into a double staircase, wide shallow steps, leading down to doors which gave on to the sea terrace. The view from the vestibule was thus deprived of all foreground. Air conditioning made the whole building a trifle overwarm. This clement, unstirred ambience struck Archer as unnatural; it provided too violent a contrast to the cold north light, the boisterous spectacle of wind and sea. He found himself perversely wishing for a draught or two, for some indication that Nature was too much for Wetherby. There was none. The outer world,
segregated
behind mammoth sheets of glass, might be seen but not felt.

On the right was another row of doors, leading into a hall which would seat two thousand people. On the left were various entrances to lounges, libraries and a café. The floor, a deep azure with a high polish, was made of some material which had obviously been poured upon it and allowed to set. It reflected the scene
like a mill-pond, but it was not slippery. Age, infirmity, and the toddler were safe upon it.

Between the two divisions of the staircase ran a long, low balustrade, and in front of it was a
semicircular
space filled with potted plants. Something was needed, he thought, to stick up in the middle of this—some piece of sculpture. East Head would, no doubt, get one in time, as up to the minute as its setting. He next poked his pug nose against the glass doors of the hall, which was dark and shrouded. Posters told him of forthcoming attractions. The East Head Players were shortly offering a performance in aid of the Lifeboat Fund.

A name on this announcement caught his eye. Richard Pattison! The local yokel? Could it be that the yokel was playing the part of the convict in
The
Bishop
’
s
Candlesticks
?
It could easily, mused Archer, for this part falls invariably to the pleasantest young fellow in town. This convict, this tough lone wolf, has an irresistible attraction for upright, eupeptic men who pass the offertory bag in church. How wistfully do they portray an ostracism which can never be theirs!
There
was
a
woman
… they mutter.
I
think
she
was
my
wife.
How wonderful not to be quite sure about it! And their undoubted wives, sitting in the front row of the
auditorium
, look decorously at their laps, hoping that this dangerous line may be got over without exciting giggles among their acquaintance. Archer knew all about small towns and their ways, for he had grown up in one, and it had possessed a dramatic society. He had played a few small parts himself, but looked far too much like a villain to be given the role of the convict. People
preferred
to laugh at him.

Having now mastered the spell of the doors, he released himself without difficulty on to the lower sea
terrace, whence steps led him to the beach. This was unattractive, a vast expanse of mud and slimy rocks. Wetherby’s Pavilion towered above it, and prisoners within, on various levels, peered out through glass walls at the sea. They looked small and helpless. In the Channel several coasters were bobbing up and down. The wind had freshened since the storm. The town, behind the Pavilion, sprawled up the twin humps of Bay Hill and Summersdown. Motor-coaches, like huge beetles, crept along the coastal road.

The beach was almost deserted save for a few groups of children, playing in the sparse patches of sand. Among them he presently recognized his own, trailing disconsolately over the mud with the three little Swanns. He decided not to accost them, since they did not seem to recognise him. He did not care for children. His own childhood had been so wretched that he flinched from any association which could remind him of it. He had nothing to say to Polly and Mike, save to apologise for begetting them and for having allowed them to be starved at East Head. He sighed, left the beach, and returned to the Metropole for lunch.

By two o’clock he was up at Summersdown. He judged that Elizabeth’s hangover would be, by now, sufficiently abated for rational conversation. The house had its customary deserted appearance. He went upstairs and found her moaning upon her bed.

‘Is it really you?’ she asked, peering at him with bloodshot eyes. ‘I thought you were there last night.… Oh Christ! My head!’

‘I’ll get you some coffee,’ he suggested.

The kitchen looked even dirtier by daylight. He managed to brew some coffee and took it upstairs on a tray. She was now sitting up, a little recovered, haggard,
yellow and waspish, but as reasonable as he could ever hope to find her.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked, as he gave her a cup. ‘I don’t remember a thing, not a damn thing about last night. I was terribly upset. Conrad has left me. Did I tell you?’

‘Frequently. Do you think he’s gone for good?’

‘I wouldn’t know. I couldn’t care less if he has. It’s been all packed up between Conrad and me for some time. It was the way he went that upset me.’

This had a familiar ring. No man had ever gone in a way which did not upset her. Presently she added:

‘But you, Frank? What are you doing here? You’ve left it rather late, haven’t you, if you’ve come to fetch me home?’

As she spoke, hope flickered in her sad eyes. She longed to hear that he wanted her back.

‘I came,’ he said, ‘because Conrad wrote and asked me to come. Quite a long letter. The longest I’ve ever had from him.’

‘He never! It takes him all day to write a postcard.’

‘He wrote it three weeks ago. But I only got it on Saturday. I’ve been in the States and my mail was kept for me. I came at once. But before I show you the letter …’

‘All about me, I suppose.’

‘Barely a word about you. But before we get on to that, I want to say something about the twins. I’ve seen them. I think they’d do better in school.’

‘I daresay they would. But do you mean that Conrad …’

‘So I’ll fix that, shall I? Find a school and make all the arrangements. And when I send for them you’ll let them go without kicking up a fuss, see?’

‘All right. But you may as well know that what you pay me for their keep is damn all we any of us have to live on.’

‘I had that idea. It was meant for two, not five.’

‘Too right, as you would say. But I never expected that Conrad’s children would be dumped on us. It quite spoilt the pattern. What I’ll do for money now I don’t know, if Conrad has really skipped. He could always raise the wind with the Rawsons. I suppose I’d better go back to the stage.’

There was a pause. They both knew that she could not. Her reputation for unreliability outweighed her undoubted talent, and she was most unlikely to get a job. She had fallen behind. She was growing old. Her
box-office
appeal was as outmoded as her oaths and her slang.

‘So that’s one thing settled,’ he said at last. ‘Now … Conrad’s letter. You’d better read it.’

He proffered her several sheets of expensive notepaper.

‘Funny!’ she exclaimed, taking them. ‘I’ve lived with him for two years, and I don’t believe I’ve ever read a letter of his. He’s got nice writing, hasn’t he? Beautiful! How odd.’

‘Not at all. He never has any difficulty in using his hands. It’s words that bother him. Who lives at The Moorings?’

He pointed to the address on the notepaper.

‘The Rawsons. Why … did you think we lived there?’

‘No. I supposed he’d pinched some letter paper from rich friends, and I wondered if he has any, except the Rawsons.’

Elizabeth began to read the letter. While she did so he wondered how soon he might expect her back at
Cheyne Walk. Some pretence at getting a job seemed to be essential to her self-respect. But she would eventually turn to him for shelter, countenance and protection, and he would not refuse it, although he never intended to live with her again. He felt obscurely responsible for her troubles, since he had never loved her as much as he loved Conrad.

‘Well,’ she said, giving the letter back, ‘it reads to me as if he’s going crackers.’

‘It struck me that way. Where’s he gone, do you think?’

‘He’s been talking a lot about Mexico.’

‘Oh, be your age! It’d be a wonder if he had the price of a ticket to Bristol. When did you last see him?’

She screwed up her eyes, trying to remember.

‘Oh God! I don’t know. I don’t believe I’ve seen him since Thursday, when he asked me for half a crown.’

‘Where does he sleep, then?’

‘In the studio, more often than not.’

‘It didn’t strike you that he was going out of his mind?’

‘God no!’ she cried, startled. ‘I mean, I’ve thought he was mad for months. But … but … you don’t really think …’

‘This letter,’ he said, striking the pages with a thick forefinger, ‘frightens me. The spelling mistakes are not normal, even for Conrad. It sounds to me as if he’s going cuckoo, though he’s making a fight for it. Now he’s disappeared. I’m wondering if he mayn’t have lost his memory and be wandering about.’

‘Sweet Jesus! What a mess! But you don’t mean really mad. Not delusions. It’s quite a reasonable letter.’

‘Perhaps I should have said a nervous breakdown.’

‘Nonsense. Conrad is not that type. He’s too
primitive
, too virile.’

‘Primitive virile types get very bad ones, if they get them at all.’

‘Oh no! I’ve had three myself. They never affected my spelling. I merely got so I couldn’t stop crying.’

‘You were taken in time. I mean to start looking for him at once, as discreetly as I can. We don’t want a lot of publicity. Can you think of anything to help me? Where would he go?’

‘Oh dear! I’ve been so miserable myself lately I’ve hardly noticed what was happening to anybody else.’

‘You never do that, even when you aren’t miserable.’

‘You’re much fonder of him than you ever were of me.’

‘If I’d ever been any fonder of you than I once was, Liz, it’s I who’d be in the bin by now. You don’t deserve more.’