by Peter Carey
She came finally to a small kitchen of the tea-and-toast type. There were two doors. She chose the right-hand one. Ahead of her was a red-headed clergyman sitting on a plush red settee. It was the second-class promenade. She felt herself “nabbed,” “caught in the act.” She thought it undignified to turn back. She held up her head and straightened her shoulders. She came forward. She walked directly towards him. She introduced herself to him, and when he said his name, she did not hold it.
“I am in the habit,” she said, “of making a confession.”
“Quite,” he said.
“Perhaps this is not a practice you approve of.”
“No, no,” he said, “of course not.”
“I wonder, then,” she blurted, “if you might oblige me at a time convenient to you.” And then, not quite knowing what she had done, and certainly not why, she fled to those regions of the ship where Oscar dare not follow.
The sea looked like a dreary waste of waters. To the east she could see the smudged ambivalence which was Cape Finisterre. The great smokestacks above her head poured forth the contents of the stomach of the ship, black effluent into the chamber of the sky.
51
Mr Borrodaile and Mr Smith
Mr Borrodaile of Ultimo and Mr Smith of the Acclimatization Society often watched the young clergyman. He had sat at the same place every day for fourteen days, and even now when it was warm enough for Mr Borrodaile to set himself up with a hammock on the deck, the Glue-pot did not move. He would not come up on deck to see Tenerife although—he admitted it freely—he had never been away from England before. In Tenerife Harbour he sat exactly as he had in the middle of the Bay of Biscay, with his Bible on his lap and his lips—Mr Borrodaile noted it first—moving. Mr Borrodaile imagined the parson moved his lips because he read his Bible, but Percy Smith, although he thought it best to not contest the big fellow’s opinion, knew the parson must be praying—he was too well educated to read in such a way. (Mr Borrodaile, who was worth ten thousand pounds, moved his lips when reading. Mr Smith had seen him do it.)
“He’s a queer one, no doubt,” said the tweed-jacketed, mutton-chopped, cleft-chinned Mr Borrodaile, the same one who had thrown ship’s biscuits down the ventilators.
“He is and all,” said Percy Smith, but not unkindly. Mr Smith was a shortish man (the top of his head did not reach Mr Borrodaile’s shoulder) but broad, with strong arms showing under his rolled-up sleeves and a sense about him that his thighs and calves would be the same. He had a slight roll to his walk, a farmer’s gait, and this rather rural air was somehow endorsed by the profusion of colourless hairs around his ears—they gave him a sandy warthoggish quality, quite cosy really. Yet he was, for all his rural appearance (the animal hairs forever on his jacket, the odour of his charges about him), a cultured man, and if the culture had been acquired piecemeal, by the light of tallow candles, he was no less cultured for all that.
Percy Smith had talked a lot to the clergyman, but he had not yet asked him why he always sat in the same spot or why he would not come to view the windmills of Santa Cruz. They had discussed Darwin. Mr Smith had been surprised to find a clergyman unruffled by the subject. He was still delighted with Oscar’s observation—he had made a note of it in his diary—that if Darwin was in error, then God must have placed dinosaur fossils on earth to puzzle homo sapiens. It was not just what he said, but the way he said it. There was a lightness, a transparency in his manner which seemed to Mr Smith—who was, for all his fervour for things Australian, sentimental about “Home”—representative of all that was sweet and cultured and cultivated in “Dear Old England.” Mr Smith could not reproduce Oscar’s manner, and when he repeated the clergyman’s observation to Mr Borrodaile, he did not seem to strike the right note. He looked up at Mr Borrodaile and waited for a response. Mr Smith blinked, he could not help it—no matter how intently he held a gaze he always gave the impression of timidity.
Mr Borrodaile grunted and began to talk about a beast he had shot at Cowpastures. It had been, the wet-lipped Mr Borrodaile insisted, a devil. Mr Smith did not quite grasp what position this devil would support in the argument. This embarrassed him, so although he nodded and held the big man’s eye, he blinked more furiously than ever.
“Upon my word,” said Percy Smith and then began, assiduously, to dust his knees.
Mr Borrodaile thought: A dog with fleas.
At the other end of the promenade, Oscar sat in his seat. He had his Tacitus with him. He had his Bible and his Book of Common Prayer. He had a bottle of Florida water, a tea-cup and a saucer and a copy of Punch and these he placed on the velvet plush seat which, with no proper table having been provided, was, due to such prolonged and unbroken habitation, looking as soiled and sweaty as the incumbent whose carrot—coloured hair had become wildly screwed and tightly curled in the steamy atmosphere.
There were passengers who, like people recently fallen in love, must matchmake for everyone around them. The parson did not know what sunsets he was missing. They brought them to him, also their zephyrs, their balmy breezes, their enthusiasm for a hammock beneath the night sky. The Northern Star was still visible but soon it would disappear from their lives, perhaps for ever. The young man with the fine-boned, china-white face smiled and nodded and his green eyes rested carefully, not intrusively, but respectfully, upon their burnt and passionate faces. He smiled and nodded, but was inexplicably resigned to sweating inside his suit. This stubbornness made some people quite cross, but Oscar had other side-effects of his phobia to contend with, and the most pressing was this: what size were the windows in Miss Leplastrier’s stateroom?
He had promised to hear her confession, but then a steward had informed him that the windows in the first-class staterooms were so big “you can see all the way to Japan.” This was exactly the type of view he must not have. He felt giddy even imagining it.
And yet he had promised. Two days had passed, and the unresolved obligation rested heavily upon him.
There were many Anglicans, the majority, who had held confession to be a very Puseyite idea, by which they meant it was popish and therefore wrong. But the sacrament was in the Book of Common Prayer and although he had never offered it to a stranger, he had often undertaken the service for poor Wardley-Fish who would periodically become so beset by his own sins that he would fall into a debilitating depression from which trough he could contemplate nothing but the damnation of his soul. Oscar had therefore come to see the sacrament of confession as an act of love, like nursing a sick friend, and although it often involved what was bad-smelling (the soul’s secretions could be no less disturbing than the body’s wastes) there was a profound satisfaction to be obtained from the service thus offered.
He did not, in the case of Miss Leplastrier, expect to have his charity so tested. He could not imagine her sins amounting to more than a little pride or covetousness. He would be pleased to offer her God’s peace, but he could not do it if the windows were as large and giddy as he now feared.
His cowardice so tortured his mind that he was relieved when Mr Borrodaile came and offered him diversion by speaking of the tariffs between the colonies. He could more easily ignore the peripheral vision of Miss Leplastrier promenading above him on the first-class deck—he imagined her looking down on him, waiting for him to bring her that peace that passeth all understanding.
Mr Borrodaile said it was an outrage that the people who lived in Wodonga should have to pay duty to get an item up from Melbourne. Oscar did not understand either the politics or the geography. This was not apparent to Mr Borrodaile who was not the sort to ask a lot of questions. He had no questions at all; although much to tell.
He told Oscar he had shot a devil at Cowpastures. He described its coat and the contents of its stomach. He said that clergy were needed in New South Wales, that there were whole areas, dubbed “parishes” on the government maps, where the people grew up godless, the children never saw a school, and the blasphemies and curses were shocking even to
a man of the world like himself.
If Oscar had a thought to convert the blacks, he would be better off not to waste his time. The most remarkable fact about these “chaps” was their total absence of religious belief. Every other nation, Mr Borrodaile asserted, rubbing the odd little plateau at the bridge of his aquiline nose—like the arm of a leather chair, this part of his nose appeared shiny from wear—every other nation, no matter how savage, had some deities or idols of wood or stone, but the Australian blacks believed in nothing but a devil-devil which they thought would eat them. He had all this, not as hearsay, but from a black he had named “Bullock” on account of his demeanour.
Oscar could not help casting covert glances at Mr Borrodaile’s large black shoes. He had never seen a pair so big. Mr Borrodaile also had large and violent hands protruding from his striped starched cuffs. He chewed his nails, right to the quick. Oscar watched the hands fold and rearrange themselves. Mr Borrodaile said there was opium and gambling in Sydney. He held Oscar’s eyes when he said this, insisting on something Oscar could not fathom. His eyes were hooded; the whites had a damaged, bloodshot appearance. There were bars, Mr Borrodaile said dolefully, with “gay girlies.” He said, also, that it was a practical place and that Oscar would soon have his face burnt red unless he took care to keep a hat on. He said it would do no harm to have some grace said at dinner and it was high time “Your Reverence” stopped sitting by himself; and then he announced he was soon to take a stroll on deck, that two circuits made the mile, that it was no good asking “Your Reverence” who gave new meaning to the term Glue-pot for it looked as if he were not only a Glue-pot himself but that he had also (“Ho ho”) sat on one.
Mr Borrodaile collected Mr Smith (who had been dozing in a club chair), relieved him of his London Illustrated News (which had lain like a nursery blanket across his wide chest) and set off up the stairs to see if they might spot a flying fish.
Oscar imagined himself watched by the pretty lady in first class. He arranged himself in a certain way which he hoped conveyed authority. He crossed a leg, straightened his back, and turned the pages of his book at regular intervals. He would ask Mr Smith to investigate the size of the first-class windows on his behalf. Oscar stared at his Tacitus and waited. He stared at the page for perhaps twenty minutes until he heard Mr Smith’s soft colonial vowels.
“Hello, Parson, still at your studies?”
He threw himself down beside Oscar who retrieved his Florida water just in time.
“By Jove, Borrodaile sets a pace,” Percy Smith wiped his sweat-red brow with a handkerchief. “He is still up there. I would say he has a five—foot stride. He left me by the bow.”
“And when you pace,” Oscar asked, putting his book away, “do you pace past the first-class cabins?”
“Oh, I dare say we do, but it’s such a cracking pace,” Percy Smith laughed, “it is all pretty much of a blur and I would not know what I was passing with those great long legs of his. I am not criticizing. It is admirable. But I’m afraid I’m a disappointment to him in this heat. Now you,” he said, tapping Oscar’s shin, “have got the right configuration. He has his eye on you. He will get you on the deck with him, I guarantee you.”
“Oh, no.”
“He has mentioned it,” teased Mr Smith.
“Good grief.”
“He has compared my legs unfavourably with yours.”
“In length perhaps, not strength.”
“In strength, too.”
“He is mistook.”
“In strength, in every respect,” smiled Percy Smith. “No, I am afraid you have been chosen. I have been retired. If I were a horse I fear I would be shot.”
“But I cannot go on deck, Mr Smith. It is quite impossible.”
“When you refused him cards, he understood you. He told me he had a great respect for you. But he is a man of strong feelings, and he’s just as likely to take your refusal as a slur of some sort. But perhaps I am wrong. I have only just made his acquaintance. But he is an emotional chap. I can vouch for that. He told me his grandmother was a beauty from Spain, so that perhaps explains it.”
“Yes,” said Oscar, “but the fact that it is impossible for me to walk on deck has nothing, nothing whatever, to do with Mr Borrodaile.”
“Mr Borrodaile would not see it that way,” said Percy Smith and may—it was hard to tell—have suggested something critical of Mr Borrodaile in his censored smile.
There was a dogged quality in Oscar which, in the midst of all his nervous excitements, plodded stubbornly onwards in the face of difficulties. This left him no time to see Mr Smith’s treasonous smile. “But,” he said, “I have an ailment.”
When Percy Smith heard that the parson had an ailment he tucked his chin down into his neck; his sandy brows pressed down heavily on his gentle blue eyes; he folded his big scratched arms across his chest.
“And it is because of this ailment,” said Oscar, beginning to open and shut his hands as if they were hinged lids, “that I would ask you to describe for me the size of the first-class windows.”
“Portholes,” corrected Percy Smith. “But what is this condition?” Even while he asked this, he was leaping to a conclusion—there was only one reason for looking through a first-class window. There was only one passenger in first-class and she had—Mr Borrodaile had remarked on the feature with disturbing enthusiasm—a very pretty sweep from her back to her backside.
“Portholes seems the wrong term. I have heard they are quite large, but my condition has prevented me discovering the truth for myself.”
“You tease me like a girl. Is it meant to be a guessing game we play now?”
“I am sorry, but I find it quite embarrassing.”
“It does not concern a young lady by any chance?” Percy Smith was not smiling. But he bit his lower lip and his sandy eyebrows no longer pressed upon his eyes so heavily.
Oscar felt the rush of blood to his ears; he felt it gather in great hot pools, one in each lobe. “Oh, no,” he said. He really looked quite prudish. “It is nothing ungentlemanly. I really only wish to know the dimensions of the windows. It is the seascape, you see, that actually concerns me. It is the quantity of sea …”
“The quantity of sea?”
“The quantity, yes, of sea, of water, that would be on view from a first-class cabin.”
He looked quite cross. He picked a fleck of spilt gravy from his rumpled thigh, “It is a professional matter, Mr Smith, please do not laugh at me. It is not an amour.”
“Now, now, friend Parson,” said Mr Smith and stroked Oscar on the shoulder as if he were a nervous beast who must be quieted. “I do not give a tinker’s curse. I am a quiet enough man, I know, but just as I know you are not a wowser, you must see that I am not one either.”
Oscar had never heard the term before, but he had other more important misunderstandings on his mind.
“But first,” said Percy Smith, now picking the animal hairs off his own jacket, “you must unclench your teeth a little and listen to me. Are you listening?”
“Of course, but your smile suggests you know something you could not know.”
“I tell you, young man, relax yourself. There will be nothing done on your behalf today. But tomorrow, perhaps, and then you will no longer need to moon like a certain Montague beneath the window of a Capulet.”
Their conversation was cut short by Mr Borrodaile who returned to fetch Mr Smith for a game of quoits up on deck. As it was to be played “penny a poke” Mr Borrodaile assumed, quite loudly, that the Glue-pot would not be interested.
52
Montaigne
Mr Borrodaile did not like a woman at his table. It constrained and restricted the natural flow of conversation. It meant that almost every door was temporarily locked before you. You were shackled, chained to your place, with nothing to talk about. Nothing? Well, what? Flowers? The children’s health? The problem of one more maid got above herself or off to marry the footman? But a man could not, if he were
a gentleman, discuss politics (because they knew nothing of it) or question God (because this frightened them). Business was not suitable, nor were sporting matters, and the bottle, which might otherwise move back and forth so gaily, stayed in its place upon the sideboard and could not be sent upon its proper business.
So when Mr Borrodaile strolled into the second-class dining room, two snorts under his belt, as light and pearly as the southern evening light, he was put out of countenance to see at his table, not only the young parson (whom he had invited himself) but the young woman from first class whom Mr Smith had taken upon himself to introduce into their company. He had known, of course; Mr Smith had informed him of his presumption. But he had forgotten. He had forgotten totally. Now, of course, he remembered, and all that well-being he had so carefully nurtured in his measured stride around the deck, the long deep breaths of ozone, the equally satisfying inhalation of good cognac, all of it just went.
He sat down in silence. He was a large man and knew his silence to be heavy. He put on his “cut-downs” and examined the menu. He affected not to hear their good evening. He looked around to find the wine steward, looking also for the perpetrator of this blunder, who was, the nervous nelly, checking his charges ‘tween decks. The purser—a hearty chap, too—had been placed amongst the teetotal Cornish farmers.
He heard the clergyman—wrists like a girl, voice all reedy like a flute—enquire of the woman about the book she had been reading.
“Montaigne,” she said.
Mr Borrodaile felt his neck go prickly, as though two or three grass ticks had settled home at once. As with grass ticks, he did not scratch, but took his large fingers to the source of irritation—and found nothing there but skin.
“Ah, yes,” the parson said, folding his white fingers and nodding his head in a parody of prayer, “ah, yes, Montaigne.”