The Oracles

by Margaret Kennedy

  She rang the bell and nerved herself to confront the enemy. A heathen person in a turban opened the door. She had not expected this, and stood dumbly staring until he asked what she wanted. It was reassuring to find that he could speak English, but there was something alarming about his intonation. It was soft and sinister, not the speech of a fellow creature.

  ‘I want to see Mrs. Rawson,’ she managed to say.

  ‘She is engaged.’

  This puzzled Serafina, who had thought that the Traitor was married. Then she understood.

  ‘I’ll wait till she comes out.’

  ‘She can’t see you. She is busy.’

  ‘It’s very important. What is she doing?’

  ‘You want …?’

  ‘I want some food,’ said Serafina, indicating her bucket.

  He looked at it and a queer spark flashed for a moment in his black eyes. He’s cruel, thought Serafina. He’s a murderer.

  ‘Mrs. Rawson,’ he said, ‘gives nothing to beggars.’

  The door was slammed in her face.

  A strain of persistency in Serafina had probably ensured the survival of the Swann children. She never thought of retreat. After a few minutes she rang the bell again. The door opened:

  ‘I want to see Mrs.…’

  It slammed again. Further assaults upon the bell were ignored.

  There was, however, a knocker, an elaborate affair in wrought iron. Nobody ever used it, since the bells at The Moorings were never out of order. It was there for ornament but it was capable of producing a tremendous racket. A dozen bangs on it brought a sound of voices arguing on the other side of the door. Serafina did not intend to be shut out this time. As soon as the door opened she darted into the house. The heathen caught her and tried to thrust her out, but was checked by the Traitor’s husband, who said:

  ‘No, Ahmed! Wait a minute.’ And then, to Serafina: ‘What is all this? If you go on making this noise we shall have to send for the police.’

  ‘I want to see Mrs. Rawson.’

  ‘You’ve been told. You can’t see her. In any case, she never gives to people at the door.’

  ‘I couldn’t help being at the door when he kept on keeping me outside it.’

  The heathen was pinching her and she turned to say:

  ‘If you make any bruises on me I shall tell the Society for the Promotion of Cruelty to Children.’

  Her voice and manner startled Don Rawson. He had not recognised her in that hat, but he realised now that she could not be a tramp. He told Ahmed not to be so rough with her, and asked her who she was.

  ‘I’m Serafina Swann. I’ve come for our supper.’

  ‘Your supper? Did my wife invite you …?’

  ‘No,’ interrupted Serafina impatiently. ‘Not here. But she always gives us our supper. I’ve brought a bucket to take it back in. It’s outside on the step.’

  ‘What sort of supper?’ asked Don, bewildered.

  ‘Food. FOOD! What you put in your mouth and swallow.’

  Serafina yelled this in exasperation, maddened by a smell of cooking, which hung faintly about the hall.

  Don looked at Ahmed and asked if any orders had been given. Ahmed shook his head.

  ‘It’s not true,’ he murmured. ‘Nobody come here for food.’

  ‘I really don’t think …’ began Don.

  He was quite at a loss, and unwilling to disturb Martha by referring the matter to her. She had sent him out to deal with it when the din on the knocker began, since she had quite enough on her hands, doing the honours of the Apollo to forty people.

  ‘Come back later on,’ he suggested.

  ‘I want it now. We’re hungry.’

  ‘Did Elizabeth send you?’

  ‘No. She’s not there. I came of my own accord. Children have to eat too, don’t they?’

  ‘My dear child, this is nonsense. If your father or your … or Elizabeth want anything, they let us know. We can’t have you children coming down here like this.’

  ‘You mean you’ll give it to them and not to us!’ cried Serafina, in horror. ‘But what are we to do, then? If you want me to sing for it, I’ll sing. I can sing.’

  In a high sobbing voice she began to sing Annie Laurie, which was the first tune that occurred to her.

  Martha burst out of the music-room in a towering rage.

  ‘It’s Serafina Swann,’ said Don helplessly.

  ‘Food! Food! Food!’ screamed Serafina. ‘I want some food. I won’t go away till I’ve got some food. I’ve sung for it. You expect people to sing for their supper, don’t you? But I did sing. And I’ll sing and sing and sing until …’

  Martha seized her far more roughly than Ahmed had done, and shook her till she was giddy. This invasion was the last straw and it sounded like a deliberate piece of insolence on the part of Elizabeth.

  ‘Get out!’ she commanded. ‘Go away! I’m not doing a thing more for any of you. Understand? I’ve had enough of you.’

  The door was still open. She flung Serafina out of it and slammed it. A terrific hammering immediately began on the knocker.

  ‘Don’t take any further notice,’ she said to Don and Ahmed. ‘Let her get tired of it and go away.’

  Serafina thumped until her arms ached. She then sat down beside her bucket to rest a little. Get in she would. She was not going back to the others without food.

  They would never open the door. To get in by stealth was the only alternative. The windows on the road side of the house were high up, but there was some wistaria which might give a foothold. She put down her bucket and began to scramble up towards a small window which opened on a tilting slant. As she got near to it a great clamour reached her ears. A lot of people were talking and screaming and shouting in there.

  At last she was level with the window-sill. Clutching the wistaria trunk with one arm and bracing her feet against it, she leaned sideways to look. Inside, below her, she could see clouds of cigarette smoke and a lot of heads. The noise was terrific. Then her eyes fell upon a sort of platform; upon it stood … THE THING!

  In the utmost terror and confusion she slithered to the ground again, picked up her bucket, and fled. Panic so overpowered her that she was running past the band on the jetty before she knew where she must go, and remembered the one person in this terrible town who had been kind to her.

  3

  THE party at Summersdown had been a nightmare, but Frank Archer’s brew provided a powerful anodyne. Martha’s sherry, at The Moorings, did nothing of the sort. After ten minutes of it Dickie escaped from the music-room into the garden. Courtesy demanded that he should hang about for a little longer before getting away, but he had seen quite enough of the Apollo. He could never like it. Things of that sort were above his head and he had been a fool to expect otherwise. No wistful staring, no elucidations from Martha, no intrinsic faith in Conrad, could exalt what he thought he saw.

  The clamour of forty enthusiasts, shouting in the music-room, sank to a raucous murmur as he strode down the garden. Even in the distance it sounded unpleasant and he commented on this to an imaginary companion, a doppelgänger who filled a social gap in his life, and with whom he frequently had conversations. This friend could be a man or a woman. At the moment she was a woman, because he wanted one and his marriage bed was temporarily strewn with nettles. She strolled beside him and laughed at his jokes. What reason, he asked her, have we for supposing that John Milton would have agreed with us about Martha’s party? Oh, said she, taking it up at once. Oh! Milton? When does Milton talk about Apollo? Oh, I know! Apollo from his shrine, Can no more divine … No, darling. Think of the three lines just before: The oracles are dumb. No voice or hideous hum Rings through the archéd roof in words deceiving!

  Hideous hum! That’s it exactly. How clever of you, Dickie! But the oracles aren’t dumb, surely? Just listen to them! Hard at it explaining what the Apollo means.

  The garden was shaped like a very long triangle. At its base stood The Moorings. Little grass grew ther
e and no trees. The greater part of it consisted of crazy paving, intersected by pergolas. Rockeries rose here and there, like miniature mountains; the whole effect was hard and stony. There was no reason why any object should be where it was, and little had been done to it since old Tom Skipperton ordered it from a firm in Bristol. The original site had been waste land running by the river, a region of starved, salty soil and rushes. Nothing grew there easily, and Martha, who did not care much for nature, had left it as it was.

  Dickie wandered along the twisting stone paths, seeking company. Several strangers were sitting upon the river wall. He got a glimpse of Carter, under a pergola, engaged, apparently, in ponderous flirtation with a man in suede shoes. Nell Manders was peering forlornly at some goldfish in a lead tank, but she hurried away when she saw Dickie. Ever since the Summersdown party she had been wondering what, exactly, she had said to him. Had she really told him that she would like to marry him although he was not a gentleman? If that was the case she had better keep out of his way for the rest of her life.

  He strayed on, past the boathouse and down the triangle to its apex, where the garden walls met at a kind of look-out, a round tower which commanded a view of the river mouth and the marshes. Here sat a woman whom he had met before, once or twice. Her name was Dottie Miller and she was married to a literary celebrity who lived in Ilfracombe. She had fine eyes and a concave face; her thick sandy fringe and her jutting chin were so prominent that her nose looked almost flat. He had never thought her pretty, but she managed to be striking, and he was glad to see her sitting on the stone seat which ran round the look-out. She wore a dress of black and green harlequin lozenges with a wide skirt and very little top; the black jacket which she had worn in the music-room lay on the seat beside her.

  ‘Hullo, Dickie!’ she said.

  He had not supposed that they were Dickie and Dottie, but he had no objection. He went up the four steps to the look-out, bowed, and said:

  ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume!’

  She laughed loudly and gave him a look which completely unmarried him. This was refreshing. Most women nowadays looked at him as though he had no gender at all. He would have been rather shocked if the women of East Head had done otherwise, but Dottie came from Ilfracombe. He returned the look adequately and suggested that parties like this were not much in their line.

  ‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ she said. ‘But Edgar would come. Coo!’

  He smiled. Coo struck him as naïve and charming. It was not one of Christina’s expletives; she would have thought it common. Sitting down beside her, he took a brief glance at her shoulders and then concentrated upon the view.

  This was extensive but monotonous. On one side were mud-flats, boats and buoys. On the other were reedy fields. In front was the line of the sea, but a thick heat haze obscured the distance. There was no horizon, and no coast of Wales, on this heavy afternoon. Behind them, half hidden by the rampart of The Moorings, rose the hills and roofs of the town. It was comparatively quiet. Seagulls occasionally squawked on the mud-flats and a distant band blared a hymn.

  ‘Why do we never meet nowadays?’ asked Dickie, coming back to Dottie’s shoulders.

  ‘I can answer that in two sentences. You never come to Ilfracombe. I never come to East Head.’

  ‘I think that’s rather sad,’ he decided.

  ‘Very sad. Life’s like that.’

  A gust from the band echoed her words with sad music:

  Jesu, Lover of my soul,

  Let me to Thy Bosom fly!

  Bosom! thought Dickie, and stared thoughtfully at the gulls on the mud-flats. Presently he asked her what she did with herself all the year round in Ilfracombe.

  ‘Me? I look after Edgar and the offspring.’

  ‘Not really? Why, that’s what all the girls do in East Head. I’d hoped Ilfracombe was different.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Dottie, after a pause.

  ‘Because I have a hopeful nature.’

  ‘What did you hope the girls in Ilfracombe were doing?’

  He gave no answer. None was needed. Idly he followed the hymn in his mind. He had sung it so often that he knew it by heart.

  Cover my defenceless head

  With the shadow of Thy wing.

  ‘You can’t even make a limerick about Ilfracombe,’ complained Dottie.

  ‘No,’ he agreed, after trying. ‘Whereas East Head … just think of all the rhymes! Bred, wed, fed, dead, led, sped.…’

  ‘You’ve forgotten bed.’

  ‘No I haven’t. It was the first one which occurred to me. But I thought it a little obvious.

  ‘Of respectable men in East Head

  There is not very much to be said:

  They are bred, they are wed,

  They are fed, they are dead,

  And they dread to be led from East Head.’

  Dottie looked glum. She thought it a deplorable limerick and so did he. But he could not bring himself to tell her any dirty ones, although she had given him tacit permission to do so by raising the subject. It had been a hint that he might take liberties, a recognisable step in an adventure which had hitherto proceeded upon the usual lines.

  She was dog stupid, thought Dickie, but would meet him more than halfway if he chose to start anything.

  Anything they might start would soon become a bore. But there was a distinct stimulation in the thought of being a naughty boy with Dottie Miller, and a more attractive woman would not have filled the bill half so well. Dottie would merely be an accomplice. He had to spend a day in Porlock next week; he was certain that she would meet him for lunch there if he asked her. Later there might be other meetings: a brief, vicious, hard-hearted satisfaction, a temporary escape from boredom, which would impose no obligations upon either of them. In some obscure way the need for it was connected with his disappointment in the music-room. He had reached a dead end there, and wanted to revenge himself upon those cheating hopes.

  ‘Dotted!’

  A voice came bleating down the garden.

  ‘That’s Edgar!’ she murmured.

  Edgar sounded anxious, as if wondering what she was up to. There was still time to mention Porlock. She was waiting. They might settle it in a quick, warm whisper, while the bleating voice drew nearer. He looked at her and saw that her eyes had suddenly filled with tears.

  Poor Dottie! he thought. Poor girl!

  The impulse died. One must not pity an accomplice. He said nothing.

  She seemed to be aware that the moment was over. She turned her defenceless head away and stood up, smoothing her brilliant skirt. She looked childish and forlorn.

  Edgar Miller came into view. He supported Dottie and the offspring by writing crime novels under a pseudonym, but his standing with Martha had been earned by his poetry, which did not sell. His appearance was romantic; Dickie had once told Christina that he must have ordered it from the same firm which supplied Tom Skipperton’s garden. Literary Gent, virile, bronzed, complete with pipe, 59/6. Christina had laughed and said that he probably got it at half-price in a sale. (Christina’s laugh! Heard no more.)

  A cloud of uncertainty lifted from the bronzed virile face when Miller saw what Dottie was up to. No situation could have been less secluded than the look-out, no company more harmless than that of Dickie Pattison, a model family man, a pillar of society. Such unconcealed relief rather annoyed Dickie. So I don’t rate as a billy-goat? he thought. Well, I suppose not. Anybody’s wife is as safe as houses with me.

  ‘We ought to be going, dear,’ suggested Miller.

  Dottie, shrugging herself into her little black jacket, said that she couldn’t agree with him more.

  ‘And how’s the Law?’ he condescendingly asked Dickie.

  ‘Too little of it,’ said Dickie. ‘Everybody has made a will and nobody seems to get into trouble nowadays.’

  ‘Ha! ha! Well … we must be getting along.’

  The Millers departed. Dickie sat down again in the look-out and envied the hard-hea
rtedness of naughty boys. To be sorry for people was a fatal encumbrance. He could feel no triumph in this decision, although he could not exactly regret it. Dottie might have been unwilling to let him go when he had had enough of it. The whole thing would have ended in squalor, misery and self-reproach.

  He looked at his watch and saw that he might now quit The Moorings without incivility. But he lingered for a few minutes longer, leaning on the parapet, for it was not unpleasant occasionally to be alone. The tide was rising, and the river channel, meandering through the mud, was fuller. A yacht crept down towards the sea, her sails filling with a light evening breeze. He thought of Conrad, and of their day together, and wondered that he should have built so much upon it.

  At last he set off up the garden again. Just beyond the boathouse he met Martha; she was running about like a sheep-dog bringing in strays, and she greeted him severely:

  ‘Oh, there you are, Mr. Pattison! Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

  ‘I was …’ began Dickie.

  ‘Come into the boathouse. I want a word with you about our little plot.’

  What plot? wondered Dickie, as she pushed him into the boathouse.

  ‘Here he is!’ she announced triumphantly.

  Four people were there: Don Rawson, Carter, and a couple called Meadowes who were among Martha’s most loyal supporters. Meadowes was a retired schoolmaster and served on the Selection Committee, but he had taken no part in the great fight over Sam Dale’s portrait because he and his wife had been abroad at the time. They had only just returned to East Head.

  ‘They’re all in the know,’ said Martha to Dickie. ‘I’ve told them about it, in strict confidence. We’re all such friends of Conrad’s that I thought we might take this opportunity to put our heads together.’

  They were staring at Dickie as though he were some kind of converted cannibal. He had renounced the heresy that he knew what he liked and had received grace enough to like what he ought. Mrs. Meadowes smiled at him in warm congratulation. She was sure that he would never eat a missionary again. Her husband’s expression was less cordial; he could not so easily forget the murky past. Carter’s hostile glare suggested that she expected a relapse at any moment. Don looked blank; he balanced on the edge of a table and watched the scene.