Free The Oracles by Margaret Kennedy

into a double staircase, wide shallow steps, leading down to doors which gave on to the sea terrace. The view from the vestibule was thus deprived of all foreground. Air conditioning made the whole building a trifle overwarm. This clement, unstirred ambience struck Archer as unnatural; it provided too violent a contrast to the cold north light, the boisterous spectacle of wind and sea. He found himself perversely wishing for a draught or two, for some indication that Nature was too much for Wetherby. There was none. The outer world, segregated behind mammoth sheets of glass, might be seen but not felt.
    On the right was another row of doors, leading into a hall which would seat two thousand people. On the left were various entrances to lounges, libraries and a café. The floor, a deep azure with a high polish, was made of some material which had obviously been poured upon it and allowed to set. It reflected the scenelike a mill-pond, but it was not slippery. Age, infirmity, and the toddler were safe upon it.
    Between the two divisions of the staircase ran a long, low balustrade, and in front of it was a semicircular space filled with potted plants. Something was needed, he thought, to stick up in the middle of this—some piece of sculpture. East Head would, no doubt, get one in time, as up to the minute as its setting. He next poked his pug nose against the glass doors of the hall, which was dark and shrouded. Posters told him of forthcoming attractions. The East Head Players were shortly offering a performance in aid of the Lifeboat Fund.
    A name on this announcement caught his eye. Richard Pattison! The local yokel? Could it be that the yokel was playing the part of the convict in The Bishop ’ s Candlesticks ?It could easily, mused Archer, for this part falls invariably to the pleasantest young fellow in town. This convict, this tough lone wolf, has an irresistible attraction for upright, eupeptic men who pass the offertory bag in church. How wistfully do they portray an ostracism which can never be theirs! There was a woman … they mutter. I think she was my wife. How wonderful not to be quite sure about it! And their undoubted wives, sitting in the front row of the auditorium , look decorously at their laps, hoping that this dangerous line may be got over without exciting giggles among their acquaintance. Archer knew all about small towns and their ways, for he had grown up in one, and it had possessed a dramatic society. He had played a few small parts himself, but looked far too much like a villain to be given the role of the convict. People preferred to laugh at him.
    Having now mastered the spell of the doors, he released himself without difficulty on to the lower seaterrace, whence steps led him to the beach. This was unattractive, a vast expanse of mud and slimy rocks. Wetherby’s Pavilion towered above it, and prisoners within, on various levels, peered out through glass walls at the sea. They looked small and helpless. In the Channel several coasters were bobbing up and down. The wind had freshened since the storm. The town, behind the Pavilion, sprawled up the twin humps of Bay Hill and Summersdown. Motor-coaches, like huge beetles, crept along the coastal road.
    The beach was almost deserted save for a few groups of children, playing in the sparse patches of sand. Among them he presently recognized his own, trailing disconsolately over the mud with the three little Swanns. He decided not to accost them, since they did not seem to recognise him. He did not care for children. His own childhood had been so wretched that he flinched from any association which could remind him of it. He had nothing to say to Polly and Mike, save to apologise for begetting them and for having allowed them to be starved at East Head. He sighed, left the beach, and returned to the Metropole for lunch.
    By two o’clock he was up at Summersdown. He judged that Elizabeth’s hangover would be, by now, sufficiently abated for rational