Oscar and Lucinda

by Peter Carey

  54

  Phosphorescence (2)

  The sea rolled around Leviathan’s bows as white as milk, studded with bright sparkles of blue light. The milk curdled. The sea was marble with clear black water in between. A bucket was lowered. It banged and swayed and then was lost in darkness. The white clouds dispersed, but the sparkles remained. Then one of the points suddenly exploded. It was a flare beneath the water. The great ship floated in liquid light. The bucket had not yet reached the sea, Lucinda could see, in the luminescent sea, the most splendid globes of fire wheeling and careening like things from a prophecy.

  But she had no interest in spectacles. If spectacles had contented her she would have stayed alone in first class. She was thirsty for intelligence and kindness, and the phosphorescence had been merely an agent, a conduit for these emotions. Mr Hopkins had brought them both together, the spectacular and the personal, and she had liked, far more than any phenomenon, the way he had moved his hands, not like an Englishman at all. He seemed full of life, bursting out of himself. His collar stud was popped loose and Lucinda liked him for this almost as much as anything else.

  “Then let us go,” she had said, standing at the dining-room table. “Let us be Witness to the Miracle.” She had made herself sound ironic, but she had not felt in the least ironic.

  Then they were all up from the table at once, and out of the door and up the stairs, and she kept herself just ahead of Mr Borrodaile’s shepherding hand which felt it necessary to guide her through a doorway as if it might be a dangerous reef she would not otherwise have the wit to navigate. She did not look back. She had imagined Mr Hopkins still in the party.

  There were not sufficient passengers to crowd the deck, but the phosphorescence had exerted a pull, like a tide, and the inhabitants, against all the rules of rank and conduct, had been sucked up, or had swarmed into the warm night air, clustering beside the great water condensers amidships. There were stewards and cabin boys, engineers, the young lad who tended the animals, third-class passengers with voices born in Limehouse and Holborn, Liverpool and Manchester. It was only then, when she was wedged into this mass, that she discovered that Mr Hopkins was no longer of their party. She imagined this to be somehow her fault. She had been too forward again. She had frightened him away with her imperiousness. Her ironic manner had been offensive. She had not held herself in sufficiently, but why must she always hold herself back? They would have her tie a silk rope between her ankles so she would move in a fettered way. Even Dennis Hasset had tried to persuade her to shorten her stride. His excuse was the cut of her crinoline, but it was not, she suspected, his reason.

  She would obviously be wise to take his advice, to leash herself in. But she was everywhere leashed in, in any case. It was the condition of her adult life to feel it. She refused the conventions of whalebone and elastic, but still she was squeezed and blistered, pinched and hobbled.

  Lucinda was angry with the phosphorescence. She had jettisoned something much more valuable on its account. As she looked at the sea her upper lip diminished itself as if what she was was nothing but a fairground—whizzing lights, sickly sweetmeats, tawdry barkers. Mr Borrodaile was unpleasantly attentive. He said the globes of light were sea blubbers. She did not like to feel him bow his bulk when he wished to talk so closely into her ear. He had forgotten that he had heard this information from Mr Hopkins at the same time she had. She could not fathom the workings of his mind. For now he continued to regurgitate more of what he had ingested at the dinner table: he told her that the sea blubbers were called medusae, and that what appeared to be sparks were in reality entomastraca, although he did not say it quite correctly.

  “Entromysteriosa,” said Mr Borrodaile, not quietly either.

  But Mr Hopkins had not even bidden her good night. She could not think what she had done to deserve so gross an insult.

  The phosphorescence was wonderful, of course. How could it not be wonderful? But wonder, even wonder at one of God’s great miracles, cannot be sustained when one feels foolish and unhappy. Lucinda made herself stay on deck for a slow and dragging fifteen minutes before she declared herself satisfied with the phosphorescence.

  But Mr Smith would have her stay. He put his thumb and forefinger on the sleeve of her jacket, but did it in such a blinky, owl-like sort of way, that she could not be angry with his familiarity, indeed, was pleased to see that he at least thought of her kindly.

  “But the bucket is not here, Miss Leplastrier. You must not leave until you have seen the bucket demonstrated.”

  “Do stay,” said Mr Borrodaile, but she could feel that she had, by moving away from his whispering mouth, exhausted his good will towards her.

  “But what is in the bucket is only what is in the sea, surely?” Lucinda said. “There is no extra ingredient.”

  “Wait,” said Mr Smith. “Look, here it comes.”

  “Make way,” said Mr Borrodaile.

  He stood on Lucinda’s foot. The pain was quite excruciating, but she said nothing. She could not bear the possibility of fuss, the likelihood that he would, when apologizing, put his big hand on her arm or shoulder.

  There was much jostling as the bucket was brought on to the deck. She was smaller than everyone. They pressed around her, and Lucinda, who had come to second class wishing to feel and smell her kind around her, was oppressed and choked by all these bodies. She squeezed her way to the front, more to escape the rich odours of humanity than to view the bucket’s contents. It contained a great number of flashing bodies.

  “Go on, Smith,” said the harsh voice of Mr Borrodaile.

  “In a minute, Borrodaile,” said Percy Smith. His tone betrayed more independence than was his want. “I am waiting for the engineer.”

  “I am the engineer,” said a man beside Lucinda who smelt strongly, not of oil but whisky.

  The engineer held out the bottle with a ground-glass stopper. Mr Smith leaned across Lucinda’s shoulder and took it. He moved into the small clear space next to the dull zinc—colored bucket and, having unstoppered the glass vessel, sought Lucinda amongst the audience. “H2S04,” he declared. “Sulphuric acid.” He knelt, and dropped a little acid into the bucket. “Quick,” he said, stepping back. “Quick and lively now.”

  Lucinda was pushed so hard she could not have avoided the “demonstration” if she had wished to. The bright points in the bucket grew bright, some white, some yellow, but all intense, like tiny stars suddenly blooming in the heavens. They then flickered, faded, died. The bucket became dark.

  “You see, Borradaile,” called Mr Smith, “that proves it.”

  Lucinda thought: You dull man. You would murder God through the dullness of your imagination.

  She squeezed herself backwards and—with Mr Borrodaile’s loud voice asserting that nothing was proven—walked along the empty part of the deck towards her even emptier cabin. She looked up to find the North Star but the Leviathan had drawn a belching black blanket across the sky and the heavens were as dead as the inside of a bucket. She thought: I do not like factories. Am I still living my life to please my mama? She entered the first-class promenade and, without realizing what she would see there, looked down into the second-class promenade.

  She saw Oscar Hopkins sitting—ostentatiously she imagined—by himself. When he waved at her, she pretended not to have seen him.

  55

  Jealousy

  What Wardley-Fish said in Cremorne Gardens was true: he did not fit. His very position, alone in the second-class promenade, advertised the fact. He was a queer bird, a stork, a mantis, a gawk, an Odd Bod. He was afraid of water. He was separated from life itself. He sat on his settee like a fellow in a bath—chair and had the wonders of the oceans reduced so they might be brought to him in an ugly fire bucket.

  Mr Smith came down the stairs quite drunk and tried to put a single medusa in a glass of gin. He claimed it was a famous drink in America. The creature flashed bright yellow—a shriek of light—and died.

  Mr Smith t
old Oscar he was “poor company” and went off to play poker with Mr Borrodaile and the engineer. The stewards took the bucket away and sponged the carpet.

  Oscar was, in many respects, a humble man. But he also had the mental habits of a Dissenter who knows himself saved when the rest of his neighbours are damned. So no matter what ascendancy Mr Borrodaile, for instance, might have over him at the dinner table, Oscar felt himself, in his secret heart, to be “above” him. And it offended him, offended him beyond toleration, that such a man might walk up the stairs to witness the phosphorescence when he, who knew more about the phenomenon than anyone else aboard the ship, could not.

  He had watched the dinner party ascend the stairs as he had once watched pagan singing and dancing at the summer solstice in Hennacombe. He had been jealous then, seeing old women with big bonnets twirl and laugh while he must sit hidden behind a tree. He had felt the same emotions watching his father in the sea. Even when he was afraid of the water, even at the moment he was most in terror of it, he was slashed and whipped by jealousy.

  He had seen Miss Leplastrier on the promenade. He had waved, but being short-sighted, could not be sure of her response. He could not bear the thought that he had driven her from him. He told himself he was honour bound to hear her confession and it was this, not the vision of her large eyes or her pretty upper lip, which he admitted to himself as he rose at last from his plush velvet seat and made his way unsteadily towards his cabin.

  He took out his set of brushes and his hand mirror from the little cedar drawer. He brushed hard at his wiry red hair and tried to make it appear more civilized, but the more he brushed, the more it stuck out sideways. When he had finished his toilet, the top of his head resembled the foliage of a windblown tree. He located the lost collar stud and remedied it. He noticed the beginnings of a small pimple on his nose. He found a porcelain pot of pomatum (intended to subdue hair), opened it, sniffed it, and closed it up again.

  He opened the soldering box and took out the wrapped caul. He crammed this in the side pocket of his jacket. It did not do anything to diminish his phobia. He then set out to ascend the stairs to the first-class promenade. Once he was up there he enquired of Miss Leplastrier’s stateroom so dolefully that the steward who escorted him there imagined not a phobia but a serious spiritual crisis.

  56

  Lure

  Lucinda took her pack of cards and shuffled them. Their waxing was bright and new and the inks shone bright beneath, like coloured stones in an aquarium. She stood in front of the pretty walnut table and dealt herself a hand for poker. She stood hard against the table, its edge pressing her thigh. She splayed the five cards, face down, then turned one over with her fingernail. King of spades. She turned it back. Her hands were actually aching. She pressed them hard together. She walked around the table and stood opposite the five splayed cards. She dealt five more. She cut the pack. She turned up a three of diamonds. She stood looking at the table. If she had been seated at the place the cards suggested she might have looked across her opponent’s shoulder at the moonlit millpond of the sea. But had she actually played those cards, the sea would not exist. Nothing would exist but that small spherical world of which the cut pack was the exact geometrical centre.

  She walked to her bureau. It was a definite walk with nothing dreamy about it. She took her purse from the bureau drawer. She carried it to the table. She spilled its contents on to the table—big pennies, chunky sovereigns, pound notes, a single “fiver.”

  She walked around the room then, circling the table in her stockinged feet.

  There were men playing cards in earshot. Let them see they were not alone in their passion. She tugged a cord, a red rope with a gold tassel on its end. This was to summon a steward. But when the steward came, his eyes refused to see the lovely lure she had constructed for him. He left the stateroom and returned with tea things on a silver tray. He did not avoid her gaze, nor did he meet it especially. He wished the young lady a pleasant good night.

  She had made a fool of herself twice in one day.

  57

  Confession

  When she found Mr Hopkins standing in her doorway, the first thing she thought, when thought came, was—the cards. She had laid them as a bait, but not for him, for anyone but him. But there was a moment, before this, when she did not think at all. Her mouth echoed the open door.

  And then she thought: The cards. He must not see the cards, or money either. There were coins and notes, a fiver as purple as a bishop’s vest—it was such a luminous colour, like flowering lasiandra, signalling invitations to stumble-footed insects which would help it mate without knowing what they did. All this was calculated to catch the eye, but not this eye, another one.

  She thought: What a dear face. The extreme delicacy and refinement of the face impressed itself on her. She did not, not yet, question the propriety of this visit, unchaperoned to her room; that would come in a moment, and with it anxiety, like a draught of hot whisky. She had completely forgotten her request for confession. She saw only the very pleasant man she had feared driven away by her forwardness.

  “Do come in.” These were the only words that either of them spoke. She tried to lead him into the curved corner of the stateroom, further from the game of poker. She thought to point out the luminescent sea. She knew herself favoured with “landscape windows” and thought to make a conversation of the fact. But he literally turned his back upon them, and moved like a crab in the opposite direction, finding his way into a chair like a blind man, at the very table she did not wish him to sit.

  She was aghast, too much in terror about having her vice discovered to think his behaviour peculiar. She noticed perspiration on his brow, but it did not come to her mind until much later, when the incident was over.

  She thought it odd he did not excuse himself for sitting while she stayed standing. “You must excuse me,” he said instead, “for not coming earlier.”

  She smiled and bowed her head. She remained standing so that his eyes, in looking up at her, would not fall upon what was on the table in front of him. He had seen already. He must have seen already. And yet, it seemed, he had not. What was he talking about? Coming earlier? On deck? She wondered if she might find a cloth to throw across the table.

  “You see,” he said, “I have a phobia about the ocean. It is something I have suffered from since very young. My father is a naturalist, you know, and was in the ocean all the time, and I with him, too, when I was a little chap.”

  “I see.” She did not see. He was agitated and sweating, but she did not notice. She was like someone hearing Spanish when she expected Greek. He had picked up a card from the table and was toying with it.

  “In any event I developed a nervousness about it, like the nervousness some get with heights. So to accompany you on deck this evening, or to come up here, with all this glass—to hear your confession—well, I feared it was more than I could manage.”

  But she could not confess to him. She wished only his good opinion.

  “This is not known to Mr Smith or Mr Borrodaile,” he said.

  “Frankly, I would prefer they did not hear it. But I owe you an apology for not answering your call to confession when, as you see, I was capable of coming all the time.”

  But she must not confess. She wished he would put down the card. (Surely he knew what it was.) She repeated what she had heard from George Lewes, although she did it at ten times his lumbering speed—that the Queen had been praying with Presbyterians at Crathie and was becoming passionate about the dangers of genuflexion and confessions. So confession was, she argued, unwise.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, “the Queen. And yet, you see,” (and here he bounced his leg beneath the little table so you might actually hear the coins jingling) “it is not enough she does not like it, because the Church of England has it written into the prayer book and it will take more than the Queen, more than our Lord—it will take an Act of Parliament—to get it out again. I do not support this way of runnin
g things, Miss Leplastrier, but you may confess as you wish and know yourself completely free from heresy.”

  Oscar had a tiny prayer book, just three inches high and two inches across. He was flipping this open in a practiced way, as though he heard confessions every day.

  Lucinda was now in a panic. She could not confess to this young man. She could see his wrists—long white bridges to beautifully shaped hands—and a little bruised shin showing between rumpled sock and trouser turn-up. He had a heart-shaped face, like an angel by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She could not confess to him, and yet the ceremony had already started. He had a soft burr of West Country in his vowels. She thought she had no voice at all.

  It was time for her to speak. She heard a voice out on the deck. It was the Belgians crying for their Pomeranian. She clasped the back of the chair in her hands. She felt her voice very small. She watched his shoe and shin protruding like a branch from beneath the table. The shoe bounced up and down. The shoe did not match the sacrament, but when she looked up and saw his hair like the hair of angels and very still, limpid grey-green eyes, she confessed. She talked so quietly he had to lean forward to hear her.

  It was a little silver voice you could fit in a thimble. It did not match the things it said. The shoe stopped bouncing. The penitent had closed her heavy lids across her eyes. She spoke swiftly but quietly, in a silvery sort of rush.

  She confessed that she had attended rooms in Drury Lane for the purposes of playing fan-tan (although she had fled when stared at).

  She confessed to playing a common dice game on a train full of “racing types,” and although she had not gone to the races, she had boarded this train, having read that such things occurred in such trains, for the express purpose of playing dice. She had been asked to leave the game because her sex was apparently repulsive to the patrons.