The Oracles Read Online Free PDF Page A

enough, but when it came to actually criticising me … “Ow, Mrs. Pattison! I wonder why you bother!” Some people! The most awful thing they can imagine is having to take a lot of trouble over anything. How canyou get anything good if you think saving trouble is more important than what you want to do? But people like Rita! As long as food isn’t downright uneatable, as long as it doesn’t poison you, they think: It’s good enough! It’ll do. It’ll get by. They don’t know what good is.’
    Dickie nodded amiably. He had heard this indictment of Rita before, and was a little tired of it. But he listened without protest, just as Christina listened to him when he complained of his clerk.
    Christina was a lovely girl. Her sweet mouth, high cheekbones, and slanting eyes would, he sometimes thought, have delighted Botticelli. He listened and nodded, his thoughts straying elsewhere, while she chattered on. Anybody looking at them through the window, unable to hear the conversation, might have been excused for supposing that he hearkened to the siren’s song.
    ‘So I said to her, I said: Now, Rita! Is there anything … anything in the world you would take trouble for? In your own house, I mean; or over your clothes or anything? No, she said. She didn’t believe in ever taking any more trouble than she had to. And that meant just enough so that she could say: It’s not too bad! I can’t stand people who don’t even know they’re lazy. So I said: Bye-bye, Rita! You needn’t come after the end of this week. So now she’s washing up in the Blue Kettle. Which is why I never go there. I know what Rita’s washing up is like, thank you.’
    Dickie nodded for the dozenth time, and tried not to see that she was frightened of the lightning, because, if he had to see it, he would not be able to go to the party with a clear conscience. He was still managing not to see it when he went upstairs to change into his best suit.
    Bobbins slept soundly in his cot at the foot of their bed. He had kicked off his coverings and lay coiled up with his fists under his chin. Dickie wondered if he would get curvature of the spine, but when he called over the banisters, to ask if it was all right, Christina said that it was.
    ‘It’s the ante-natal attitude,’ she called, as she carried a tray into the kitchen. ‘The book says so. Normal at his age.’
    She did not say that it might be a symptom of retarded development, if it persisted too long, because she did not want to have Dickie ringing up the doctor if Bobbins did not drop the ante-natal attitude on the very night of the correct birthday. ‘Dr. Browning! Dr. Browning! My son has got retarded development!’ Dickie, she considered, took books more seriously than he need. He did not seem to realise that they all say different things, and are always changing what they say. Sensible people merely select what suits them, out of books; they use their own judgment.
    She smiled as she shook soap powder into a basin. She was remembering the book which had accompanied them on their honeymoon. Mrs. Hughes, the minister’s wife, had given it to them; it was a bright, aseptic little book about the technique of a happy marriage. Christina had refused to look at it, but Dickie read it from cover to cover with earnest attention. The wonder was that he did not actually take it to bed with him, and at last she protested. What could this book have to tell him which he did not know already? She was not the first woman in his life; conscience had driven him to confess as much, when they were engaged.
    ‘I’ve never been married before,’ he explained. ‘This book describes how a girl feels when … when she’sa bride. It says that some brides are very shy, and the man makes mistakes, and never finds out until it’s too late. So the marriage is wrecked.’
    ‘Oh dear! How sad! Poor things! Oh, I do think life is sad. Well, darling, next time you want to have a read in this sa-ad book, you must