Crome Yellow (23 page)

On the terrace stood a knot of distinguished visitors. There was old Lord Moleyn, like a caricature of an English milord in a French comic paper: a long man, with a long nose and long, drooping moustaches and long teeth of old ivory, and lower down, absurdly, a short covert coat, and below that long, long legs cased in pearl-grey trousers – legs that bent unsteadily at the knee and gave a kind of sideways wobble as he walked. Beside him, short and thick-set, stood Mr Callamay, the venerable, conservative statesman, with a face like a Roman bust, and short white hair. Young girls didn't much like going for motor drives alone with Mr Callamay; and of old Lord Moleyn one wondered why he wasn't living in gilded exile on the island of Capri among the other distinguished persons who, for one reason or another, find it impossible to live in England. They were talking to Anne, laughing, the one profoundly, the other hootingly.

A black silk balloon towing a black-and-white striped parachute proved to be old Mrs Budge from the big house on the other side of the valley. She stood low on the ground, and the spikes of her black-and-white sunshade menaced the eyes of Priscilla Wimbush, who towered over her – a massive figure dressed in purple and topped with a queenly toque on which the nodding black plumes recalled the splendours of a first-class Parisian funeral.

Denis peeped at them discreetly from the window of the morning-room. His eyes were suddenly become innocent, childlike, unprejudiced. They seemed, these people, inconceivably fantastic. And yet they really existed, they functioned by themselves, they were conscious, they had minds. Moreover, he was like them. Could one believe it? But the evidence of the red notebook was conclusive.

It would have been polite to go and say, ‘How d'you do?' But at the moment Denis did not want to talk, could not
have talked. His soul was a tenuous, tremulous, pale membrane. He would keep its sensibility intact and virgin as long as he could. Cautiously he crept out by a side door and made his way down towards the park. His soul fluttered as he approached the noise and movement of the fair. He paused for a moment on the brink, then stepped in and was engulfed.

Hundreds of people, each with his own private face and all of them real, separate, alive: the thought was disquieting. He paid twopence and saw the Tattooed Woman; twopence more, the Largest Rat in the World. From the home of the Rat he emerged just in time to see a hydrogen-filled balloon break loose for home. A child howled up after it; but calmly, a perfect sphere of flushed opal, it mounted, mounted. Denis followed it with his eyes until it became lost on the blinding sunlight. If he could but send his soul to follow it! . . .

He sighed, stuck his steward's rosette in his buttonhole, and started to push his way, aimlessly but officially, through the crowd.

MR SCOGAN HAD
been accommodated in a little canvas hut. Dressed in a black shirt and a red bodice, with a yellow-and-red bandana handkerchief tied round his black wig, he looked – sharp-nosed, brown, and wrinkled – like the Bohemian hag of Frith's Derby Day. A placard pinned to the curtain of the doorway announced the presence within the tent of ‘Sesostris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana.' Seated at a table, Mr Scogan received his clients in mysterious silence, indicating with a movement of the finger that they were to sit down opposite him and to extend their hands for his inspection. He then examined the palm that was presented him, using a magnifying glass and a pair of horn spectacles. He had a terrifying way of shaking his head, frowning and clicking with his tongue as he looked at the lines. Sometimes he would whisper, as though to himself, ‘Terrible, terrible!' or ‘God preserve us!' sketching out the sign of the cross as he uttered the words. The clients who came in laughing grew suddenly grave; they began to take the witch seriously. She was a formidable-looking woman; could it be, was it possible, that there was something in this sort of thing after all? After all, they thought, as the hag shook her head over their hands, after all . . . And they waited, with an uncomfortably beating heart, for the oracle to speak. After a long and silent inspection, Mr Scogan would suddenly look up and ask, in a hoarse whisper, some horrifying question, such as, ‘Have you ever been hit on the head with a hammer by a young man with red hair?' When the answer was in the negative, which it could hardly fail to be, Mr Scogan would nod several times, saying, ‘I was afraid so. Everything is still to come, still to come, though it can't be very far off now.' Sometimes, after a long examination, he would just whisper, ‘Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise,' and refuse to divulge any details of a future too appalling to be envisaged without despair. Sesostris had a success of horror. People stood in a queue outside the witch's booth waiting for the privilege of hearing sentence pronounced upon them.

Denis, in the course of his round, looked with curiosity at this crowd of suppliants before the shrine of the oracle. He had a great desire to see how Mr Scogan played his part. The canvas booth was a rickety, ill-made structure. Between its walls and its sagging roof were long gaping chinks and crannies. Denis went to the tea-tent and borrowed a wooden bench and a small Union Jack. With these he hurried back to the booth of Sesostris. Setting down the bench at the back of the booth, he climbed up, and with a great air of busy efficiency began to tie the Union Jack to the top of one of the tent-poles. Through the crannies in the canvas he could see almost the whole of the interior of the tent. Mr Scogan's bandana-covered head was just below him; his terrifying whispers came clearly up. Denis looked and listened while the witch prophesied financial losses, death by apoplexy, destruction by air-raids in the next war.

‘Is there going to be another war?' asked the old lady to whom he had predicted this end.

‘Very soon,' said Mr Scogan, with an air of quiet confidence.

The old lady was succeeded by a girl dressed in white muslin, garnished with pink ribbons. She was wearing a broad hat, so that Denis could not see her face; but from her figure and the roundness of her bare arms he judged her young and pleasing. Mr Scogan looked at her hand then, whispered, ‘You are still virtuous.'

The young lady giggled and exclaimed, ‘Oh, lor'!'

‘But you will not remain so for long,' added Mr Scogan sepulchrally. The young lady giggled again. ‘Destiny, which interests itself in small things no less than in great, has announced the fact upon your hand.' Mr Scogan took up the magnifying-glass and began once more to examine the white palm. ‘Very interesting,' he said, as though to himself – ‘very interesting. It's as clear as day.' He was silent.

‘What's clear?' asked the girl.

‘I don't think I ought to tell you.' Mr Scogan shook his head; the pendulous brass ear-rings which he had screwed on to his ears tinkled.

‘Please, please!' she implored.

The witch seemed to ignore her remark. ‘Afterwards, it's not at all clear. The fates don't say whether you will settle
down to married life and have four children or whether you will try to go on the cinema and have none. They are only specific about this one rather crucial incident.'

‘What is it? What is it? Oh, do tell me!'

The white muslin figure leant eagerly forward.

Mr Scogan sighed. ‘Very well,' he said, ‘if you must know, you must know. But if anything untoward happens you must blame your own curiosity. Listen. Listen.' He lifted up a sharp, claw-nailed forefinger. ‘This is what the fates have written. Next Sunday afternoon at six o'clock you will be sitting on the second stile on the footpath that leads from the church to the lower road. At that moment a man will appear walking along the footpath.' Mr Scogan looked at her hand again as though to refresh his memory of the details of the scene. ‘A man,' he repeated – ‘a small man with a sharp nose, not exactly good looking nor precisely young, but fascinating.' He lingered hissingly over the word. ‘He will ask you, “Can you tell me the way to Paradise?” and you will answer, “Yes, I'll show you,” and walk with him down towards the little hazel copse. I cannot read what will happen after that.' There was a silence.

‘Is it really true?' asked white muslin.

The witch gave a shrug of the shoulders. ‘I merely tell you what I read in your hand. Good afternoon. That will be sixpence. Yes, I have change. Thank you. Good afternoon.'

Denis stepped down from the bench; tied insecurely and crookedly to the tent-pole, the Union Jack hung limp on the windless air. ‘If only I could do things like that!' he thought, as he carried the bench back to the tea-tent.

Anne was sitting behind a long table filling thick white cups from an urn. A neat pile of printed sheets lay before her on the table. Denis took one of them and looked at it affectionately. It was his poem. They had printed five hundred copies, and very nice the quarto broad-sheets looked.

‘Have you sold many?' he asked in a casual tone.

Anne put her head on one side deprecatingly. ‘Only three so far, I'm afraid. But I'm giving a free copy to everyone who spends more than a shilling on his tea. So in any case it's having a circulation.'

Denis made no reply, but walked slowly away. He looked
at the broadsheet in his hand and read the lines to himself relishingly as he walked along:

He folded the sheet carefully and put it in his pocket. The thing has its merits. Oh, decidedly, decidedly! But how unpleasant the crowd smelt! He lit a cigarette. The smell of cows was preferable. He passed through the gate in the park wall into the garden. The swimming-pool was a centre of noise and activity.

‘Second Heat in the Young Ladies' Championship.' It was the polite voice of Henry Wimbush. A crowd of sleek, seal-like figures in black bathing-dresses surrounded him. His grey bowler hat, smooth, round, and motionless in the midst of a moving sea, was an island of aristocratic calm.

Holding his tortoise-shell-rimmed pince-nez an inch or two in front of his eyes, he read out names from a list.

‘Miss Dolly Miles, Miss Rebecca Balister, Miss Doris Gabell . . .'

Five young persons ranged themselves on the brink. From their seats of honour at the other end of the pool, old Lord Moleyn and Mr Callamay looked on with eager interest.

Henry Wimbush raised his hand. There was an expectant silence. ‘When I say “Go,” go. Go!' he said. There was an almost simultaneous splash.

Denis pushed his way through the spectators. Somebody plucked him by the sleeve; he looked down. It was old Mrs Budge.

‘Delighted to see you again, Mr Stone,' she said in her rich, husky voice. She panted a little as she spoke, like a short-winded lap-dog. It was Mrs Budge who, having read in the
Daily Mirror
that the Government needed peach stones – what they needed them for she never knew – had made the collection of peach stones her peculiar ‘bit' of war work. She had thirty-six peach trees in her walled garden,
as well as four hot-houses in which trees could be forced, so that she was able to eat peaches practically the whole year round. In 1916 she ate 4200 peaches, and sent the stones to the Government. In 1917 the military authorities called up three of her gardeners, and what with this and the fact that it was a bad year for wall fruit, she only managed to eat 2900 peaches during that crucial period of the national destinies. In 1918 she did rather better, for between January 1st and the date of the Armistice she ate 3300 peaches. Since the Armistice she had relaxed her efforts; now she did not eat more than two or three peaches a day. Her constitution, she complained, had suffered; but it had suffered for a good cause.

Denis answered her greeting by a vague and polite noise.

‘So nice to see the young people enjoying themselves,' Mrs Budge went on. ‘And the old people too, for that matter. Look at old Lord Moleyn and dear Mr Callamay. Isn't it delightful to see the way they enjoy themselves?'

Denis looked. He wasn't sure whether it was so very delightful after all. Why didn't they go and watch the sack races? The two old gentlemen were engaged at the moment in congratulating the winner of the race; it seemed an act of supererogatory graciousness; for, after all, she had only won a heat.