The Oracles

by Margaret Kennedy

Mr. Archer! thought Christina. The husband! How stupid of me not to have guessed. Well … he’s going to get a piece of my mind. His own children! Starving!

  They were conducted into a private room where Dinah, Mike, Polly and Joe, seated round a table, were silently stuffing themselves with roast chicken. Frank Archer sat in an armchair by the window. His assurance was equal to most situations, but he had not quite enough of it to bring these filthy brats into the public dining-room. He was looking out to sea, so as to avoid the spectacle of their table manners. When the new arrivals appeared he jumped up.

  ‘Hullo, Serafina!’ he said. ‘Mean of us not to wait for you, but we were all so hungry, and we didn’t know how long you’d be. Siddown. What’ll you have to start with? Soup? Grapefruit? Shrimp cocktail? Hors d’œuvres?’

  ‘Shrimp cocktail,’ said Serafina, sitting down.

  ‘Shrimp cocktail,’ he said, to the waiter, ‘and chicken to follow.’

  The prawn’s eyes then popped at Christina, who drew herself up haughtily and began on her dressing-down.

  ‘I don’t wish to intrude,’ she said, ‘but I’d like to be sure that proper arrangements are being made. I understand that all these children have been left alone and abandoned for nearly a fortnight with nothing to eat. That seems to me to be a very disgraceful thing, and I’d be glad to know that it won’t happen again. I was thinking of going to the police.’

  ‘Quite right, madam, quite right. Disgraceful is the word. My name is Archer. I’m the father of Polly and Mike.’

  He looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘I’m Mrs. Richard Pattison,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’

  He searched among his recollections and impressions of East Head and remembered the local yokel.

  ‘I believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting your husband.’

  Christina looked down her nose and was rewarded by the sight of her plastic apron. A thaw set in. She blushed deeply and snatched it off. Archer, enchanted, took it from her with a courtly bow and draped it over the back of a chair.

  ‘There’s a veranda just outside,’ he said, ‘with chairs, and a nice view of the sunset. It’s quite warm still. Perhaps you’ll take a glass of sherry with me out there, and I’ll try to set your mind at rest.’

  A glass of sherry would have been very welcome, but she refused it, remembering what he had done to the drinks at Summersdown. But he ordered two glasses all the same, and when they arrived they looked quite harmless.

  ‘It’s very, very good of you,’ he said, sitting down beside her, ‘to be so concerned about my children.’

  She tried to look as though their paternity was a fact in their disfavour.

  ‘I should be concerned about any children neglected like that,’ she said. ‘People can be put in prison for it. They ought to be.’

  He gave her a glance of respectful admiration. She turned away and contemplated the sunset.

  ‘I hadn’t,’ he said, ‘the least idea that they’d been abandoned like this. I’ve been in Italy. I didn’t know my wife was back in London till she spoke to me on the telephone this morning. She then seemed to be so vague about arrangements this end that I took the next train down. Cigarette?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘I’m taking them back to London on the nine o’clock train tonight, as I have an important engagement in Town tomorrow morning. They will sleep tonight at my house in Cheyne Walk. Tomorrow I shall ring up a reliable firm called Fairy Godmothers Ltd., with whom I have already had some dealings. They will provide some good lady who will look after the children for the day and buy them clothes. On Tuesday I shall escort them myself to a school which I’ve found for them near St. Albans.’

  ‘What kind of school?’ asked Christina of the sunset.

  ‘Oh … just a school, you know. For little children. A few boarders and the rest day scholars.’

  ‘Progressive?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘One of those places where they don’t teach them anything or look after them or make them go to bed. Just neglect them and say it’s education.’

  ‘Now why should I send them to a school like that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought you might.’

  ‘They’re terribly expensive, those schools,’ he protested. ‘If I thought neglect was education it would be much cheaper to leave them here.’

  She looked round quickly to see if he was laughing, but he had a perfectly straight face.

  ‘This school,’ he explained, ‘is kept by two elderly women and their young niece. One of the aunts used to be a nanny. The other was a kindergarten teacher. The niece is trained for nursery-school work. The children don’t smell. They are taught to read and write and say their prayers, and they go to bed at six o’clock.’

  ‘It sounds quite harmless,’ allowed Christina.

  There was a long pause. Nothing had as yet been said about the Swann children. Each waited for the other to begin, Christina in some astonishment, Archer with considerable amusement.

  ‘I hope your mind is at rest?’ he said at last. ‘I do wish you’d drink that sherry.’

  Christina looked again at the sherry and decided that she would. It was not as easy as she had supposed to scold him for neglecting the Swanns. He might not regard them as his responsibility. She sipped her sherry for a while before she ventured to ask what was to be done for the others.

  ‘The others?’ he said. ‘I’ve only got the twins.’

  ‘I mean … the little Swanns. Who is going to look after them?’

  This question appeared to surprise him.

  ‘I suppose some of Swann’s friends will,’ he suggested. ‘He seems to have a devoted band of friends here. What about those people … the Rawsons?’

  ‘The Rawsons!’

  She gave him an indignant account of the Rawsons’ behaviour.

  ‘They can’t have understood,’ he protested. ‘They can’t have known what they were doing.’

  ‘People ought to know what they’re doing,’ said Christina. ‘That’s an excuse I never listen to.’

  ‘Are you quite warm enough? Wouldn’t you like your … your little wrap?’

  She remembered the apron and became less truculent.

  ‘They threw Serafina out of their house,’ she said.

  ‘I expect she frightened them. She’s a terrible child.’

  ‘Excuse me, Mr. Archer, she’s a very brave child. I think she’s managed wonderfully, considering. I don’t know what would have happened to your two without her. They’d be dead by now, probably. You owe her quite a bit, I think.’

  ‘So what ought I to do?’

  ‘They mustn’t go back to that awful house. No water … no food … it makes me wild to think of it. They ought to go straight into a nice hot bath and then into good clean beds.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I expect they ought.’

  ‘So aren’t you going to do anything about it?’

  ‘My dear Mrs. Pattison, why should I?’

  ‘You can’t just leave them to starve.’

  ‘But I haven’t. I’ve given them a most expensive dinner. You think I ought to do more?’

  ‘Yes. I think you ought to find some nice person who will look after them till their father comes back.’

  ‘Oh? I see.’

  He gave an enquiring look at this nice person who had so obligingly presented herself. Until she turned up he had been desperate. He had almost decided to take the little Swanns to London too.

  ‘I can’t imagine anyone, anyone, knowing about it and not doing all they could,’ cried Christina.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said, feeling in his pocket for a cheque-book. ‘So we’d better get down to it. You find the nice person and I’ll find the cash.’

  ‘What? Me?’

  ‘You’re better equipped than I am. You know this town. And I really must leave by that train.’

  ‘I really don’t see that it’s my business.’

  He paused
in his cheque-writing to stare at her.

  ‘I thought you said you couldn’t imagine anyone. You mean you came here merely to lecture me?’

  ‘I … I …’

  He went on writing.

  ‘What would a nice person charge?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d have to work that out. They need clothes too. They haven’t a thing, and what they’re wearing ought to be burnt.’

  ‘Mrs.… Mrs.… what is your first name?’

  ‘Christina.’

  He completed the cheque and made an entry on the counterfoil. Conrad again. £100.

  ‘You’ll let me know immediately, won’t you, if there is any news of Swann? Here’s a card with my London address. I shall be in England for some months now. And here’s a cheque. It will do to go on with for a few weeks. You must write to me if and when you want more.’

  ‘It’s plenty for the moment,’ said Christina, taking the card and the cheque. ‘Anything that isn’t spent can be sent back to you. I shall have to take them to my house tonight. That’s what I shall have to do.’

  Archer, who had been determined that she should do this, gave a convincing start.

  ‘Not really? Dear me! I’m afraid that will give you rather a lot of trouble.’

  ‘It will,’ she said grimly. ‘But I couldn’t find anywhere else tonight, at this short notice.’

  He smiled benignly. He could, as he had told Elizabeth, sell anything to anybody, but he had never done a slicker deal than this. To have sold the little Swanns to so excellent a guardian, without moving from his chair, was a master stroke. She would, he was certain, never shirk any responsibility which she had undertaken. She was obviously an admirable woman. Had it not been for that little oversight about the apron he might have thought her almost oppressively admirable.

  ‘Have you room?’ he asked sympathetically.

  ‘Oh yes. The girls can have the guest-room. And Joe …’

  Suddenly she laughed. Archer sat up. What a delicious laugh! Admirable? This girl was a honey!

  ‘Joe‚’ she said, ‘can have a bed in … in a little room—it’s going to be a nursery, but at present it’s my husband’s dressing-room.’

  A strange light had come into her eyes; it was not, he thought, entirely the light of loving-kindness.

  ‘But won’t that be a great nuisance for him?’

  ‘He’s very fond of Mr. Swann.’

  ‘I see.’

  And she’ll larn him to be fond of Swann, thought Archer. She well may. People who love Conrad must accept the consequences.

  So I can’t surprise him, thought Christina. He always knows what I’m going to do next. He’s got a big surprise coming to him now, anyway. He’ll be furious, but he won’t be able to say a thing, not even that I’m not nice to his friends. Mr. Swann’s children, who all his other dear friends will do nothing for, because they think ridiculous ugly statues are more important than children. I always did want to get hold of those children and look after them a bit.

  She jumped up.

  ‘I’ll take them now, if they’ve finished their supper. The sooner they’re in bed the better. Thank you, Mr. Archer!’

  ‘Not at all. Thank you!’

  They beamed at one another, each with a pleasant sense of triumph. Christina thought that she had twisted him round her little finger; only a very short scolding had been needed to make him see his duty. He was quite easy to manage. Had she been at that stupid party she would never have allowed him to make everybody drunk.

  ‘You’ll let me know if you hear from Swann?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes. Mr. Archer … I do appreciate … I mean … I do see that anybody might think you had no particular cause for …’

  ‘Oh. I’m fond of him, you know. Like your husband.’

  ‘Are you? Oh, that’s … I mean, I’m glad. I mean, it’s nicer to do things for people if you are fond of them.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ he said, conducting her back to the sitting-room.

  All the children were sitting in a state of glazed repletion except Joe, who had gone to sleep with his head in a plate of ice-cream. Archer picked him up and carried him out to the car. In the lobby Christina remembered her apron and ran back for it. She found Polly and Mike sitting by themselves at the table, staring sadly in front of them with their pop eyes, waiting for something else to happen. With a pang of compunction she kissed them and told them that they were going to a lovely place where they would be very happy.

  ‘Who will be there?’ asked Mike doubtfully.

  ‘Kind people and a lot of nice children to play with. It’s all going to be quite different.’

  For the first time the twins displayed emotion.

  ‘I don’t want different,’ announced Polly.

  ‘People here is kind,’ gulped Mike. ‘We get shrimp cocktails. We have too got nice children to play with. Serafina and Dinah and Joe.’

  ‘We like it here,’ wailed Polly. ‘We have snails.’

  Tears made them look more hideous than usual. Christina was still trying to comfort them when Archer came back, having stowed all the Swanns away in her car. She shook hands with him and ran off, leaving him to still their mewing sobs as best he could. Her last glimpse of the Archers was so forlorn that she began to feel quite sorry for the man, wandering through the desert with a worthless wife and two ugly little children whom nobody could possibly want except Serafina and Dinah, who began to cry too when they realised that the twins had been taken from them.

  ‘People laugh at them‚’ howled Serafina. ‘People call them little horrors. We don’t. We lo-o-ove them.’

  Joe, waking up, joined in the chorus, bawling lustily.

  ‘Everybody goes away‚’ cried Dinah. ‘Mummy and Conrad and Elizabeth and Polly and Mike.’

  Their tears were still flowing when they reached Bay Hill. Christina was disappointed. She had looked forward to seeing Dickie’s face when they all came trooping in and he learnt what happened to people who were fond of Swann. But she had pictured Dickie as the only person in the scene who was not smiling and contented; his dismay should have been a contrast to her own motherly common sense and the children’s rapture at the prospect of a hot bath and clean beds. To herd these wailing infants into the house was not quite so satisfactory; she felt that they had taken the wind out of her sails.

  5

  ‘I HAPPEN to believe Serafina,’ said Christina. ‘And I’ve no time to argue about it on a Monday morning. Will you give me your soiled collars, please?’

  Dickie went into the little room where he kept his clothes and was confronted by Joe, majestically enthroned, according to the morning ritual in all well-managed nurseries.

  ‘I’m doin’ my business like a good boy,’ stated Joe.

  ‘I should have thought,’ said Dickie, hunting for his collars, ‘that you might have gone next door.’

  ‘Dinah’s next door.’

  Like hell she is, thought Dickie. Dinah had been locked up next door for the last twenty minutes, as he knew to his cost.

  ‘She’s constlipated,’ explained Joe. ‘We’re all constlipated. Aunt Chris says she isn’t surprised. She’s going to give us something for it that tastes like chocklick. Are you constlipated?’

  ‘I’m going to be,’ prophesied Dickie.

  In the bedroom Christina was swiftly stripping and folding up sheets. He gave her the collars.

  ‘I’m sure Serafina means to speak the truth,’ he said. ‘But it’s monstrous to accept this story about the Rawsons on her bare word. They’re Swann’s most intimate friends. She seems to be muddled about a lot of things. She told you that her mother had gone to Korea.’

  ‘That woman is not her mother.’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’

  ‘It just shows how little you and the Rawsons care about those children. I at least know who their mother was.’

  ‘So do I. It was a slip of the tongue and you know it. Wait a minute, Tina! Don’t go!’


  ‘It’s my washing-day. It’s Monday. In the provinces …’

  ‘I’m going to ring the Rawsons up.’

  ‘Do. I can’t stop you.’

  ‘Until we’ve got their side of it you are not to go about spreading this ridiculous story.’

  ‘I don’t see anything ridiculous in it.’

  ‘Do you hear me? You’re to hold your tongue till I’ve got at the true facts. It may turn out to have been a mistake.’

  ‘You think it’s a nuisance having the children, so you want to make out that it wasn’t necessary.’

  ‘You and Archer had no business to settle it like that between you. Why didn’t you get in touch with me?’

  ‘I can’t see that you’ll suffer much. You’ll be out all day and I’ll have them in bed by the time you’re home. I know it’s all rather a muddle this first morning, but I’ll get it straightened out.’

  ‘I’m not talking about the inconvenience.…’

  ‘I’m only pointing out that I settled it with Mr. Archer because I’m the one who’ll have to cope. You don’t think I took on three extra children just for fun? If I’m willing …’

  ‘I know. I know. It’s noble of you.’

  The generosity and unselfishness of Christina’s conduct were very confusing to Dickie. In any other circumstances he would have applauded them warmly. But now they merely made it more difficult to explain that she was in the wrong. He believed that she knew this perfectly well, and found it hard to keep his temper. With a great effort he smiled and said:

  ‘Of course, darling, if it turns out that the Cygnets have no other refuge …’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The little Swanns.’

  ‘Funny. Tell Martha. She’ll roar.’

  ‘Oh!’ He gave it up. ‘You’re impossible. You understand me quite well and you won’t … I’m simply telling you this. You are not to say that Martha turned a starving child from her door.’

  ‘I’m to say exactly what you say? How medevial!’

  ‘Not at all. I say medieval. If you prefer medevial, say it by all means. It does credit to the High School.…’

  ‘I knew quite well, only I wasn’t thinking. No need to start cracks about my education.…’