The Oracles

by Margaret Kennedy

  They were all listless and depressed. Their few toys and treasures had been destroyed with their tree, so that they had no resources and did not know what to do with themselves. On Monday they had gone down to the beach, but it was a long walk, and nobody felt inclined to repeat the entertainment. They hung about the house and garden and at last drifted into a sort of game: they caught snails and imprisoned them in matchboxes.

  This was perfectly satisfying to the younger children. They would have been content with it for weeks, for it made few physical or mental demands upon them. They had merely to find names for their captives, peer at them in their matchbox houses, and issue reports on their progress. But it was not enough for Serafina, who needed some livelier protection from boredom. She had nothing to do, nothing to read, and no company. The apathy which protected the others was impossible to her. Some nourishment for the mind she must have, and she preserved herself on a diet of fantasy. Without it, the facts by which she was surrounded would have been too much for her.

  Eventually she broke up the snail game with the announcement that a siege was going on. The whole house was surrounded by the Enemy, who had assembled in full force to release their comrade in the shed. The man who had turned off the water might have looked like a human, but he was really an Artefact in disguise and he had been sent by the Traitor.

  This was their name for Martha Rawson, with whom Serafina had a long-standing feud. From the very first their hostility had been declared and open. Martha had made no attempt to conceal her dismay when the little Swanns were presented to her. To take Conrad and his lady under her wing had been an attractive responsibility. The addition of Polly and Mike had not been so welcome. When, three months later, Serafina, Dinah and Joe had been returned to their father, because he had failed to pay for their board elsewhere, her comments had been bitter. These comments had been made in French, but Serafina had lived in France for much of her life and understood enough to resent them. Collecting what French she could remember, she had fired off her comments on Martha, which were abusive rather than apt.

  ‘Et pourtant elle pu fortement!’ she had shrieked, before being dragged from the room.

  Conrad and Elizabeth had laughed about it afterwards. They did sometimes laugh, there were a few cheerful moments, in those early days at Summersdown. It was only gradually that life had fallen into complete disintegration. Elizabeth had, at first, been rather kind to Serafina, never treating her as a child, but addressing her as an equal in misfortune. A sort of companionship had sprung up for a while. Elizabeth had interesting things to tell about the world, and life on the stage; she even gave Serafina a few lessons in elocution. But now she was always fuddled, and Conrad had been living, for months, so secluded a life in the studio that his final vanishing made very little difference to anybody.

  They were both, for some mysterious reason, in the power of the Traitor, who came and went at will, gave orders to everybody, and took a sinister interest in the Artefacts. She was always trying to get into the studio, unless Conrad locked her out. He had, so Elizabeth once said, to sing to her for his supper, although the children had never heard him do it. He never sang at all at Summersdown. In the old lost life, when everybody was happy and quite different, he used to sing beautifully. Now he did not even whistle. He had become increasingly silent as the siege grew more grievous.

  This notion of a siege had been present in Serafina’s mind for some months. It was not, alas, something which she had invented; she knew that it was real, but to describe it in these terms made it dramatic and therefore bearable.

  They had all been shut up in this house against their will, and there was no comprehensible reason for it. Elizabeth was as much a victim as anybody else. She hated being there. Once, when Serafina asked why she had been obliged to come, she had explained it all, very drearily, with a plenitude of physical detail. Everybody had to do it, she said, and she wished to God that it were otherwise, because doing it with Conrad had forced her to sacrifice everything else in life; but people could not help themselves, as Serafina would find out for herself some day. Serafina was sorry for them and glad that children did not have to do it. She felt that grown-up people were more to be pitied than children.

  They were all, however, afflicted by a growing solitude, by gathering shadows. Laughter ebbed and disappeared. They were on a little island which kept growing smaller; the compass and scope of life continually diminished. With the loss of the tree, and the departure of Conrad, they seemed to be completely cut off. He, at least, had constituted a slender bridge between the past and the present. He had been there, and now he was here—the only surviving possession that they had, greatly changed, as they all were changed, but a symbol of continuity. In the past he had talked and laughed and played games with them. Here he was haggard, silent, and generally invisible. But he still had the same kind voice. When, in extremity, she appealed to him he never refused what help he could give, although it was often pitifully inadequate. His sad eyes, meeting hers, apologised for their common helplessness.

  Something like a siege was certainly going on and it was getting worse. She commanded that sentries should be posted all round the house, to ward off further invasions. The others objected to this interruption of the snail game but were easily overruled. Serafina patrolled the fortress and received reports.

  Nobody else came during the morning except Lobster Charlie. She ran up to Elizabeth for instructions, since Charlie expected cash down and they were generally obliged to send him away, although they all liked lobsters. Today, however, the omens were favourable. Elizabeth was actually up and dressed. She did not ask how the hell she was to pay for lobsters. She told Serafina to buy two, and she took a great deal of money, pounds and pounds, fastened with a rubber ring, out of her handbag. One note was extracted. As she gave it to Serafina she said:

  ‘If you want any more for anything, you’ll find it in this little drawer in my dressing table. I’ll leave some there. Are you looking? This little drawer. I’ll put some money into it.’

  Serafina stared. This was a change. Elizabeth seldom had any money, and it was usually impossible to get so much as sixpence out of her.

  Changes, in Serafina’s experience, were not for the better. She looked anxiously round the room, which was littered with clothes. A half-filled suitcase caught her eye.

  ‘Are you going away?’ she demanded.

  Elizabeth started and hesitated before she said:

  ‘God no! What put that into your head?’

  ‘You’re packing.’

  ‘No I’m not. I’m only looking over my things. Get along and buy the lobsters. You can keep the change for sweets if you like.’

  But she is going, thought Serafina, as she ran downstairs. Who will come then? Who will come to take us away?

  She had little trust in grown-up people but she still retained some crumbs of faith in certain natural laws. Children, so she believed, were never left alone, quite alone, in a house. She had never heard of that happening. There was always some older person, of very little use perhaps, but a symbol of responsibility. Orphans were put into orphanages because it was impossible that children should be in a house alone. Conrad had gone. Elizabeth was going. Somebody, therefore, was bound to come. Her spirits rose. Perhaps the siege was over.

  For a fraction of a second she glanced at the thought that it might all have been a mistake. They might begoing right back, to home, to … but she winced away from it. No fantasy, no daydream, could include that possibility. She could pretend many things, but not that. Dead! There was nothing to be done with that word except forget it, and forget a morning long ago when the house had been full of people saying it. Dead, dead, dead! And at Mrs. Parker’s, to whom they were then taken, people kept saying it too: Poor little things! Their mother is dead, dead, dead! It sounded what it was, a sickening final thud.

  She bought the lobsters and they all had a lovely but indigestible dinner. The siege really seemed to be less oppressive un
til Joe discovered that he had been sitting on his favourite snail. He bawled so loudly that Elizabeth came down, complaining that she could not hear herself think, and asking why the hell they could not go off and play in their tree?

  There was a shocked silence. They felt embarrassed, as though she had asked some indecent question. Before anybody could think of an answer her attention was diverted:

  ‘Look out! That child is going to be sick!’

  Joe, between grief and lobster, which never agreed with him, had begun to retch. Everybody dispersed hastily, lest the spectacle should make them sick too. He was left to his fate in the kitchen. But Serafina went afterwards to help him, since he was too small to clear up the mess adequately. She filled the scrub bucket at the pump and, holding her nose, she mopped the kitchen floor, while Joe hiccupped sadly over the snail, squashed so flat in his little matchbox house.

  ‘Do you think it hurt him, Serafina?’

  ‘Horribly,’ snapped Serafina.

  ‘Has he gone to Heaven?’

  ‘No. To Purgatory, for ten thousand million years.’

  Joe howled in despair, and her conscience smote her. It was very cruel to torment him because she was wretched herself. She went to the cupboard and found a small mustard tin, emptied the contents into a saucer, rinsed it, and gave it to him.

  ‘Here’s a lovely house that won’t squash,’ she said, ‘and you can put quite a big snail in it. You can keep guard down by the shed, if you like; there are lots of big snails there.’

  Joe immediately cheered up and decided to call the big snail Harold.

  The other sentries were dismissed to their posts and Serafina patrolled the path in the front garden. The Enemy was certainly on the move; there was the smell of danger in the air. She was not in the least surprised to see the Traitor coming up the path.

  They glared at one another but did not speak. The Traitor marched into the house, where she had some kind of altercation with Elizabeth. Their angry voices were audible, even out in the garden.

  Serafina amused herself by doing a smart sentry-go between the front door and the gate.

  Suddenly, within a matter of seconds, she became weary of the Artefact game, outgrew it, and discarded it for ever.

  It was no help and it was not true. Those things were merely things; they could supply no more drama. Yet without drama she felt totally unprotected. It was as though she had been thrust out of some refuge which, with considerable valour, she had constructed for herself. The door had been locked behind her. The Traitor was a menace, not because she was leagued with imaginary bogies, but for some much worse, much more mysterious reason. There was a siege, but children doing sentry-go could not hope to raise it. These evils were real; they were as dreadful and final as her mother’s death had been, and there was as little to be done about it.

  Desolate, at the end of her resources, she wandered away from the house and up into the meadow. She lay down in the long grass, not far from the blasted stump of their tree. She had thought that she might be going to cry, but no tears came. She wished that she could be nothing; not dead, but just nothing at all. Eternal life was the last thing to be desired.

  Presently Joe came into the field. Since she had abandoned the game she did not ask for any report of his observations by the shed. He was carrying on a long conversation with Harold, now established in the mustard-tin house. As she watched him she remembered him suddenly as a baby, in a high chair, opening his mouth like a bird for the spoonfulls which their mother put into it. She saw her mother too, more clearly than usual—the dark hair in a smooth bun on the back of her neck, and an absentminded expression on her face. She had been feeding Joe and thinking of something else.

  Serafina writhed and rolled and drummed her heels on the ground. The ache at her heart was intolerable; it was physical agony. If she could not appease it she would die. She called to Joe and, when he came, pulled him down beside her. She hugged him and covered him with kisses.

  ‘You’re cuggling me!’ observed Joe in dispassionate surprise.

  Caresses were no part of Serafina’s technique as a little mother. She had given and received very few since she came to Summersdown. Joe liked it. He submittedhimself to these unaccustomed endearments with a pleased sensuous smile.

  ‘Mrs. Pattison cuggles Bobbins,’ he remembered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘After his barf. Tell about Bobbins.’

  He had seen all these wonders himself but he liked to hear them described.

  ‘He has a little basket, lined with blue,’ said Serafina. ‘And a brush and a powder-puff, with little blue birds on them.’

  ‘I sawn it, din’t I?’

  ‘You had a basket like that too, when you were a baby.’

  ‘I bemember. So I did.’

  ‘Oh no, you couldn’t remember. You were only a tiny, tiny little baby.’

  ‘I do bemember. I were sick in it.’

  ‘You were not sick. Nobody was sick in our home.’

  ‘I so were sick.’

  ‘Don’t contradict, or I shall thump you.’

  Joe rolled away from her and had a peep at Harold, who had also, he declared, been sick.

  Eased by this little conversation, but strangely exhausted, Serafina fell asleep. She did not wake for a long time. The sun crept across the pale afternoon sky, and the shadows in the meadow lengthened. She lay in the grass, safe from her sorrows.

  While she slept Elizabeth deserted them, slipping quietly out of the house with a suitcase, to catch the four o’clock train to London. Nobody saw her go except Polly, whom she encountered on the stairs.

  ‘She said,’ reported Polly, ‘that she is going to Korea, and somebody is coming to take us away to a lovely place. And there’s some money in the little drawer in her dressing table. She said to remind you.’

  For the rest of the day they were constantly looking out for this person to come. The sun set. Night fell. At last they straggled up to bed. Nobody had come.

  ‘They’ll come tomorrow,’ prophesied Serafina confidently.

  Fear had begun to flutter inside her, but she was not going to let the others know that. If nobody came tomorrow she decided that she would take some of that money and buy peaches and cream and tinned chicken. This alluring prospect had power to hold fear at bay for a little while. She was even able to hope that nobody would come until she had spent all that lovely money. Not yet would she investigate the possibility that nobody would ever come, that they had been betrayed and abandoned, that everybody in the world had forgotten about them.

  5

  THE river Dare flows into the Bristol Channel on the west side of the town. Here are quays and jetties; here the sand is dotted with boats at low tide. Buoys mark a clear channel of deep water which runs, at one point, close under a long spit of land.

  This was the site chosen by old Tom Skipperton for The Moorings. It looked like the yachtsman’s paradise which he had intended it to be, and Martha found it difficult to improve. She would have pulled it down, had she been able to bully Alan Wetherby into designing her a new house for nothing. But he was obstinate and ungrateful, and so she had to put up with her father’s gables and half-timbering.

  Inside she had torn down a great deal of pitch-pine panelling; she had abolished the main staircase and thrown several rooms into one. This was called the music-room. It had a Bechstein on a dais, a totem pole, and some furniture which felt more comfortable than it looked. A spiral steel staircase, somewhat resembling a helter-skelter at a fair, rose from this room to the upper floors.

  The whole effect never satisfied her. She was always changing the position of the totem pole, which persisted in looking as though it had just arrived and was waiting to be put into its proper place. Wetherby unkindly told her that she had not got a room at all, merely four walls containing so many cubic feet of space.

  She had, in addition, her own study, known as the book-room. To Don she had given the old boathouse, now converted into a studio, si
nce sailing made her seasick. He was supposed to work there and was despatched to it every day, immediately after lunch.

  Sometimes he did do a little work. More often he read detective novels. Had his etchings ever meant very much to him he would not have married Martha. They had failed to support him and he liked comfort. He had all the whisky he wanted, in the boathouse cupboard, and a plentiful supply of whodunnits.

  Upon this Tuesday afternoon, however, he felt restless, distracted by that inward eye which now so seldom blessed his solitude. Little seemed to catch it at East Head, although he had made numerous studies of boats lying on the sand. Today it had been caught, had been opened, and would not shut again. This had befallen him just as they were leaving the Pavilion. Martha had darted off to discuss something with Mr. Beccles, the manager. Don, while waiting for her, had strolled down on to the sea terrace. While there he had noticed a particular arrangement of people, reflections and shadows, on the beach. Somehow they were dramatically disposed. But this pattern occurred in a void. There was nothing to contain it. Sky, sea and beach stretched endlessly in all directions. To do anything with it he must …

  He thought about it for the greater part of the afternoon, and drank a good deal of whisky while he was thinking. Just as a solution occurred to him Martha’s bell, shrilling suddenly, recalled him to the house. It connected The Moorings with the studio, but she never rang it without good cause, for she took his work very seriously.

  He swore, and wondered why she should invariably hit upon the few occasions when he was really working. As he walked up the garden path he was aware that he had, in his preoccupation, put down rather a lot of whisky. The tide was high and washed against the garden wall. The wind blew in soft, short gusts. He felt mournful.

  A door led from the garden into the music-room, which was empty. All the fluorescent tubes under the ceiling had been turned on, although it was still full daylight. A table stood ready with drinks and glasses. Somebody must be coming for a cocktail and that was why he had been summoned. There were three glasses. He had better begin to mix some Martinis.