The Wine-Dark Sea

by Robert Aickman

  None the less, Millie paused for a moment, and quite consciously.

  Much was at stake if her dream could be taken at all seriously.

  It could. Millie had advanced into the hall and the delivery had proved to consist of two accounts rendered and a packet with the school crest upon the envelope.

  Millie went back into the drawing room, and, sitting down, even straightened the crease in her jeans. Then, while in the locked room the abominable hubbub raged on, she calmly opened the boys’ reports.

  Reports they had been in her dream, and dire ones: at once a burden, but also, in certain ways, a release, or a faint hope of release. The actual packet proved, however, simply to contain a letter, together with some appeal forms for reconditioning the school chapel. The letter, addressed to Phineas, was from the deputy headmaster. Millie read it.

  Dear Mr. Morke,

  I know you will forgive my writing on behalf of the Headmaster, who has unfortunately been in Hospital since the middle of the Spring Term, as you may possibly have heard from your Sons.

  I very much regret to tell you that the Trustees, to whom the matter has been referred in the absence of the Headmaster, take the view that no useful purpose would be served by the return of your Sons to the School at the commencement of the Term now ahead, that is to say, the Autumn Term.

  It is the view of the Trustees, in which I am bound to say I fully concur, that the Boys are too physically mature to benefit from the ordinary course of Tuition in Class, however excellent. Perhaps they may be regarded as outside and beyond the normal school disciplines.

  In the circumstances, there would seem no advantage to our delivering the usual Reports upon the conduct of the Boys during the Summer Term, just past. Doubtless you will have drawn your own conclusions from the Reports relating to previous Terms, and will scarcely be surprised by the Decision which the Trustees have reached.

  It is the custom of the School to extend Best Wishes to all its Old Boys when finally they move towards New Fields of Endeavour; and I am sure that the Headmaster, with whom, as I understand, you are on terms of long-standing and personal friendship, would wish me to make no exception in the present cases.

  May I venture to remind you of the Outstanding Account in respect of the Boys’ attendance during the Summer Term, and including a number of important Extras? The Bursar requests me to take this opportunity of remarking that he would be most grateful for a settlement during the next seven days, as he is keeping his Books open for this single item, and is being pressed by the School’s Honorary Accountants. I am sure you will understand.

  Yours sincerely,

  PHILIP DE SODA

  (REVD. M.A., B.D.)

  Millie rose, unlocked the door, and re-entered the dining room, holding the letter high above her head.’

  ‘There are no reports, Phineas. ‘They’ve been expelled.’

  When the boys had been much younger, it might have availed to hold the letter up there, but now it was pointless, because they were far taller than she was, as well as in every way more brawny. The letter was out of her hands in a flash.

  It was very unlikely that they could understand it, and doubtful if they could even read all of it, but she herself had provided the clue, and at least they could take in the signature.

  ‘It’s the Sod!’ cried Angus. ‘The Sod wrote it.’

  ‘Give it here,’ commanded Rodney. Within seconds the floor was littered with tiny scraps of paper, and the boys were standing shoulder to shoulder against the world, completely obscuring the framed photograph of their mother on a horse.

  ‘What are you going to do now, Phineas?’ enquired Millie.

  Phineas was, as always, making a point of being undisturbed. He continued to chase the last particles of saturated muesli with his toy teaspoon.

  ‘Well?’ enquired Millie. ‘Our sons have been expelled from their school. You’ll have to do something with them.’

  ‘Was the term expulsion actually employed in the letter?’

  ‘Of course not. Schoolmasters don’t use it nowadays. They’re afraid of libel actions.’

  ‘Well then, we mustn’t exaggerate. It’s not at all uncommon for a headmaster to reach the view that a boy would fare better in some other school. Nowadays, there’s no question of a stigma at all. The change in itself is often entirely beneficial.’

  He drew a crispbread from the packet, broke it in half, returned one half to the packet, and began to break up the other into reasonably symmetrical pieces on his plate.

  Each of the boys now had his arm round the other’s shoulder, in the style of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. But they had no other resemblance to Tweedledum and Tweedledee

  ‘If you don’t do something, Uncle Stephen will,’ said Millie.

  The boys extended their thick red tongues at her, but Phineas’s eye was glancing at the Guardian which lay on the table for him alone to read and take to work.

  Millie went upstairs, locked the door of the bedroom, and began looking through her old address book. It had little to offer, apart from varying shades and intensities of nostalgia and regret.

  She lay down on her unmade bed, turning her back on Phineas’s unmade bed.

  She could not think while the boys were in the house, or, for different reasons, Phineas either.

  She could hear birds singing, and, from the next house, screeching music for early housewives. She knew that they were supposed to choose the records for themselves.

  Then, duly, there was a din of the boys leaving. At the moment their craze was to do something with dogs in the local wood – any dogs, as she understood it.

  She had no idea what it was that they did, nor did she wish to know. The wood was of course deserted on a weekday morning, apart from the usual misfits straying about, and unlikely to present much of a problem to boys such as Rodney and Angus.

  Millie gave it a little longer, lest she walk into Phineas then she unlocked the door and went down.

  Phineas had departed for work, with all the others. She had feared that the letter from Mr. de Soda might have held him back. She began to collect the torn pieces into a small plastic bag that was lying about, because she proposed to keep them. It was a surprisingly long job: she could not but remember that the mills of God tear exceeding small. Then she began to clear up, and, later, to wash up. She could count on a little tranquillity until the boys returned, raging for their midday meal.

  But the bell rang, and then there was that same flop from the letter-box: somewhat less menacing, however, when it is presumably a matter not of a postal delivery, but more probably of a harmless circular.

  Millie went out quite calmly. Duly, it was a publicity leaflet, a throwaway.

  Your Fortune is in your Hands

  Consult

  Thelma Modelle

  NOW

  Modern Palmistry

  Absolutely Private and Confidential

  Normally no need for an appointment

  Nothing spooky Nothing embarrassing

  4 The Parade

  ‘There is no reason why the human hand

  should not provide as good a guide to individual destiny as any other.’

  The concluding quotation was unascribed. Millie fancied that it came from Aldous Huxley. She seemed to remember encountering something of the kind when trying to read one of Huxley’s works at Oxford. The leaflet was inexpensively produced in simple black on simple white. It was quite small.

  Millie had almost finished her immediate chores. There was little incentive to embellish the tasks. She stuffed the bag of torn-up paper into her handbag, because she could think of nothing else to do with it at the moment and set forth for 4 The Parade. Reason and careful thought had proved alarmingly unfruitful. The moment had come to give the subliminal a trial; if that was the applicable word. An omen was an omen, and there were few of them.

  *

  Number 4 The Parade was her own fish shop, selling rough vegetables and packet cheese as well. She had never pr
eviously had occasion to heed the number. Upstairs had lived the rheumatism lady, who went round all the old folk in her little car. Millie was aware that lately the rheumatism lady had moved to a proper clinic, paid for by the ratepayers, because everyone was talking about it. Now at the foot of the stairs there was an arrow, with a curious curve in it pointing upwards, and the name THELMA MODELLE newly painted at the heart of it in grey. Plain THELMA would, perhaps, have been too much like an unregulated fairground; and changing times were rendering the title ‘Madame’ obsolete even in such cases as this. There was nothing to do but ascend.

  Thelma Modelle came out on to the little landing. Her jeans were pale green and she wore a sleeveless grey jumper which looked as if it were woven from used raffia. As promised, there was to be no attempt at formality or mystification.

  Thelma Modelle had a smooth dark brown mop, falling over one side of her angular, sallow face; and the enormous, rather empty eyes of the seer or pythoness.

  Indeed, at first she stared at Millie for a perceptibly long time without uttering a word.

  ‘Well, come in,’ she said at last, as if there had been some demur.

  They were in the rheumatism lady’s small sitting room, though already it looked much more run down. The rheumatism lady’s little water-colours had been replaced by wall cards bearing emblems of the zodiac; somewhat stained, and by no means a complete set. There was a round black table in the centre of things, with two black composition chairs opposite one another.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Thelma Modelle, still a little petulantly, ‘and call me Thelma.’

  Millie sat, as one does at such times; but Thelma continued to stand. She was observing Millie.

  ‘Would you prefer to smoke?’

  ‘I’ve given it up. My husband made me stop it.’

  ‘Then why are you carrying a packet of Players in your handbag?’

  Millie felt that she had turned pale and puce at the same time.

  ‘It’s an unopened packet. I suppose you can see that too.’

  ‘One thing I can’t see is why you’re here. What are you looking for?’

  ‘Your leaflet came through my door. Just this moment, in fact. So will you please read my palm, or whatever it is you do?’ Millie extended her hand across the table.

  ‘That’s the wrong one,’ said Thelma. ‘But never mind. It would be no good with you in any case. I’ll see what the cards have to say.’

  She picked up a working pack from the mantel behind her. Millie would have supposed there would be shuffling, perhaps cutting, certainly a careful and symmetrical laying out. But all Thelma did was chuck six or seven apparently random cards across the surface of the table.

  ‘You’re in trouble right enough,’ said Thelma.

  ‘What sort of trouble?’ asked Millie steadily.

  ‘You’ll know the details best.’

  ‘What’s going to happen about it?’

  ‘It’s going to get worse.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it’s bound to do that.’

  ‘I should try running away, if I were you. Hide. Change your name. Change your appearance. Change everything.’

  ‘Join the raggle-taggle gypsies, in fact?’ After all, one must at times seek some proportion in things.

  ‘Please!’ exclaimed Thelma. ‘I am a gypsy.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ But that was wrong too. ‘I wasn’t meaning to be rude.’

  ‘The gypsies wouldn’t have you.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ But Millie was by now hardly surprised, hardly capable of surprise.

  ‘You’re marked.’

  ‘In what way? How am I marked? You don’t mean that lacrosse accident?’

  ‘No. Not that.’

  Millie reflected silently for a moment. If Thelma Modelle would sit down, as consultants normally do, it could be that much easier.

  Millie spoke again. ‘Please tell me more.’

  ‘The cards won’t go any further.’

  ‘Well, something else then.’ After all, there was a crystal on the mantel too, though Millie had never seen one in her life before (it was smaller than she had supposed); and some sort of large, shapeless thing leaning against the wall.

  ‘If you want to know more, it will have to be sex.’

  Millie had heard at Oxford of ‘sex magic’ and its alleged dangers.

  ‘I don’t think I want that,’ she said.

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ said Thelma rather nastily. ‘I shouldn’t advise you to find out more anyway.’

  ‘Why ever not? Is it really as terrible as all that?’

  ‘It might make you mad.’

  The familiar Shakespearian phrase was really too much. Millie rose to her feet.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  Thelma’s expression had become very odd.

  ‘No money. Just look in again. While you still have time of your own.’

  ‘You’ve made a mistake there,’ said Millie. ‘The boys aren’t going back. They’ve been expelled.’

  ‘I’ve never claimed to be right every time.’

  Millie managed to smile a little. ‘Please take some money. I have profited by your frankness.’

  ‘Not from you,’ said Thelma. ‘I’ve told you what you can do.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Millie.

  ‘You can come and live here if you’ve nowhere else to go.’

  ‘I can go to my Uncle Stephen. Actually he’s pressing me.’

  ‘You can do whatever you like,’ said Thelma.

  There was a scuffing up the stairs, and another client appeared. It was Dawn Mulcaster, mature, frustrated, and twittery as ever. She and Millie exchanged very faint smiles but no words. Millie sped downwards.

  The curious thing was that, though nothing could have been more depressing and foreboding than Thelma’s insights, yet Millie felt noticeably more buoyant than on her outward journey. As in the matter she had last night dreamed of, the burden was at the same time a release, or a faint hope of release. She was even able to muse smilingly upon a fortune-teller’s obvious need of a receptionist; and upon the positively comical discrepancy between this particular fortune-teller’s publicity and her performance. Perhaps the discrepancy was mainly in tone. All the same, surely the interview had been ‘spooky’ in the extreme? Dawn Mulcaster would certainly be finding it so. Millie felt that she had done better than Dawn was likely to be doing. In fairness to Thelma Modelle’s publicity person, Millie had to acknowledge that she did not feel in the least ‘embarrassed’.

  She stopped in the street for a moment. A more precise thought had struck her. Her cut finger was completely healed. Somehow she had even parted with the unpleasant bandage. She smiled, and continued homewards.

  The boys stormed back, wolfed their food without a word to Millie, and stormed out again.

  Millie washed up after the three of them; circulated round The Parade and The Avenue, shopping, meditating; put together two totally different evening meals; and then went upstairs to lie on her bed, in order to prepare for another confrontation with Phineas. She must keep up the pressure or go mad, as Thelma Modelle had predicted.

  Indeed, when Millie fell asleep, she found she was dreaming of Thelma’s establishment, where she, Millie, now appeared to have a job of some kind, as she was seated at the toilet table in what had been the rheumatism lady’s bathroom, and sorting through hundreds, perhaps thousands, of invoices in the desperate hope of finding her own. The invoices were on paper of different sizes and textures, and in many different handwritings, mostly illegible. Millie was amazed by the mental processes that must lie behind the ways in which many of the bills were laid out. Only those which had been drafted by Uncle Stephen were fully orderly. When Millie awoke, it occurred to her to wonder whether Thelma herself could write at all, or whether she relied mainly on bluff, as did Rodney and Angus though no one ever dared to mention it.

  There was the noise of creeping about downstairs. Then Phineas’s voice floated up the stair
well: ‘Millie!’ She shrivelled. ‘Millie, where are you?’

  It was far, far too early for his return. Could he have lost his job? That might be yet another burden which was not a burden entirely, but very faintly a forerunner.

  Millie threw off the eiderdown, pulled on a jacket, and sauntered downstairs.

  Phineas was positively prancing from room to room. It was impossible that he could have been promoted, because, in his position, there was no real promotion. His step seemed light and gay, as with the man in the ballad.

  ‘I’ve been adopted!’ cried Phineas, unable to contain himself until she had reached the ground floor, terra firma.

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘As Liberal candidate, of course. At North Zero.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘It’s in Cornwall and Andrew MacAndrew says I should have every chance.’

  She had been perfectly well aware that Phineas was frequenting the local Liberal Association and bringing their literature home. It was one of various activities of his that resulted in her being so often alone with the boys.

  ‘Does the Party find the money for your deposit, or do you have to do it?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea. I haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘Perhaps the boys can go down and canvass for you?’

  ‘They’re too young, as you can perfectly well imagine for yourself. I’m afraid I shall have to sacrifice much of my family life, and leave the boys more in the hands of their mother. I notice that you haven’t congratulated me, Millie.’

  ‘If it’s what you want, I’m pleased for you, Phineas. Provided, that is, that you find a new school for the boys before you set out.’

  ‘I haven’t been able to think much about that, as you can imagine. I feel it is something their mother can perfectly well do for them, if the necessity should arise.’

  ‘I can and shall do nothing of the kind, Phineas. Finding a school for boys like that is the father’s job. I mean it, Phineas.’

  She was almost glowing with resolution. She realised that to display moral qualities demands practice, just as much as intellectual and manual qualities. She had never really attended when, down the years, such truths had been hammered into her. But she also knew that much of her relied upon the boys being out of the house.