Oscar and Lucinda

by Peter Carey

  Lucinda looked at Oscar and pulled a face. Oscar blushed. She knew why he blushed and, in the midst of her growing irritation, was warmed by the heat of it. She smiled at Mr Ahearn who, seeing, but not understanding, the sleepy contentment in the girl’s face, was not only puzzled but also, a little, embarrassed.

  “It is this which makes this church impossible,” he said. He could see that the damned servant was listening to every word he said. “The Australian sun will scorch your congregation as though they were in hell itself.”

  “It was kind of you to come early to tell me this,” said Lucinda.

  “And have you become so sarcastic, Miss Leplastrier?”

  She was sarcastic, it was true. It was not an attractive quality. But she could not tolerate the satisfaction he had from finding fault in her design. He stood in judgement on her work as passionately as she had so short a time before, stood in judgement on Mr d’Abbs. She could not bear it, even if he were right.

  But he could not be right.

  It was far too late for him to be right.

  Oscar came forward and picked up the brandy bottle, using two fingers like tweezers to open its long neck. He carried it from the room. Lucinda opened her mouth as if she would say something in explanation, but then she shut it again.

  Mr Ahearn, however, did not seem to notice either Oscar or the bottle.

  “Who has ordered this?”

  “Ordered?” said Lucinda, anxious that he not attempt to find more faults, fearful that there were many there to find.

  “Commissioned, purchased, requested that you manufacture this?”

  He knew the answer was “no one.” But Lucinda said: “The Lord Jesus Christ.”

  Mr Ahearn hissed.

  “Whose glory it celebrates,” said Lucinda, wrapping her gown a little tighter.

  “The glory of God is not served by folly.”

  “There are circumstances where it is called folly to be wise.”

  “Do not banter with me,” said Chas Ahearn. “It is not practical. It is too hot to sit in. No congregation will pay for it.”

  She looked for Oscar in order that he might come to her defence but he had begun to stack cups and saucers in the scullery. “It is,” she decided, “to be built beneath a shady tree.”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks,” said Chas Ahearn, rising to his feet. He buttoned his long grey jacket and retrieved his wallet from the secret pocket where no Sydney footpad would ever find it. He took out his parable which, being late in the year, had become very frayed at the edges.

  “The Kingdom of Heaven,” said Lucinda, “is a man visiting a foreign country.”

  “Travelling into a far country.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Still, she took the piece of paper when it was offered to her. She had read it before. The paper smelled of boring afternoons in Parramatta.

  “But you do not know. You do not act as if you know.”

  “Yes, yes. My fortune is unearned. It is the fruit of your clever subdivision, and it was bought by the labour of my mother and my father and the blood of the blacks of the Dharuk. I have no right to it.”

  “The scripture says no such thing.”

  “Perhaps that is a lack in the scripture.”

  “It will be hot,” he said, retrieving his parable, “as hot as hell. The congregation will fry inside,” he said. “They will curse you. They will curse God’s name.”

  “Mr Ahearn, please do be calm.” Lucinda was not calm herself. “Mr Hopkins,” she called, “perhaps you would fetch Mr Ahearn a glass of brandy?”

  Mr Ahearn thought: “Mister? She calls her servant Mister.” His lips were showing small white bubbles at the sides and he was having a great deal of trouble fitting his parable back inside his wallet.

  “I have come to tell you this in respect of the wishes of your mother who was my client. You were given such a start in life, young lady. And I have tried my best to steer you right.” But this manner was not as his words. His voice was angry. There was something he did not understand at work within him, a rage so great he could not make his hands stay still. He saw himself tear up his parable. It was not symbolic. It was mechanical—the forces of agitation and rage at work. He could not bear this glass church, and yet he could not explain this, or any of his passions to himself. He saw himself, from a great distance, a tortoise-necked man with a quaking voice. He heard himself shout. He saw himself gently escorted from the sloth-house by the man who, he found out later that day, was not a servant at all, but a defrocked priest, the little harlot’s lover.

  89

  Of the Devil

  Lust was an insect, a beetle, a worm. It slipped into his belly like the long pink parasites which had thrived in the intestines of the Strattons’s pigs, and he had tried to drown it with long clear draughts of tank water, with holy scriptures, with meditations upon hell.

  John wrote: “He that committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning.”

  In Galatians it is said: “If we live in the spirit, we also walk in the spirit.”

  But the mail from England said that the Reverend Mr Stratton had hanged himself from the rafters of his church while he who had corrupted him, the same Oscar Hopkins, the so-called servant of God, had seduced an honest woman, had pressed his lips against her tea-sweet mouth and felt the soft curve of her stomach against his loins.

  It had been three in the morning. He had come out to draw more water and had found her there, in her Chinese gown. His penis was a hard rod against the softness of her stomach. He felt Satan take his soul like an overripe peach with a yielding stalk.

  He kissed her dear, soft lips. He nuzzled her long white neck. He touched and broke away, touched and broke away, moaned and begged his God’s forgiveness while the clock in the kitchen struck the hour.

  He withdrew from her, made patting motions in the air with long outstretched fingers as if their passion was a silky beast between them that could be soothed and patted into docility.

  They went into the kitchen and drank tea. They did not discuss this thing, which Oscar, with extraordinary selfcentredness, saw as his responsibility. He did not think, She loves me. He thought, rather, I am seducing her.

  They talked earnestly about the glass church, although not of its faults or impracticalities. When his unholy passion rose in him Oscar used fear to still it. He thought of the boat carriage that Mr Jeffris was having built at Mort Bay. Mr Jeffris had described the carriage in the most minute detail, at this very kitchen table and Oscar had listened with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as if it were not a vehicle for carrying a boat, but a gallows or a set of stocks. Mr Jeffris was precise and fastidious. He was pleased to demonstrate this in the design of the boat carriage. The two boats were carried one inside the other, like two spoons. Each was suspended on canvas slings and such was the ingenious nature of the design that neither could ever rub against the other.

  The thing that made Mr Jeffris so proud served only to paralyze Oscar.

  He would be called to travel in a boat.

  Dear God, give me hard and difficult things. Give me a rocky path that I may not sin.

  Mr Jeffris loved to talk of rivers, mountains, trigonometry. He promised Oscar he would have him delivered to Boat Harbour, and do not fear. There was no risk from drowning.

  Oscar had not known about these rivers when he talked about going overland. The Hastings, the Clarence, the Macleay, these rivers now snaked through his dreams. They were miles wide, bruised and swollen by the rain.

  He was ill with fear at the thing he had begun. When he woke from sleep it was there to meet him, as cruel as death.

  He thought: I will drown.

  He thought: Dear God, take my soul into Thy safe-keeping.

  He thought: I love her. He thought: I am impure. In the kitchen they bit each other, dragged at their faces. They wedged themselves together against the door jamb like two clothes pegs.

  The Reverend Mr Stratton had hang
ed himself from the rafter above his pulpit. Wardley-Fish must already be in Sydney searching for his friend who was ashamed and hid from him.

  He lusted after a woman who loved another.

  He thought: God, do not have me lead her into sin.

  He thought: There is no God. There is nothing. I do not have to cross these six rivers. I do not have to travel with mad Jeffris with his compasses, his journals, his trained criminals, his dumb-bells, his picks, his carpenter, his saddler, his three brass chronometers. I am someone put backwards on a horse and paraded through the bush for ridicule. He was baggage, carried by Mr Jeffris, his ticket paid by Miss Leplastrier.

  But he had promised God he would do this.

  Although only because he wished Lucinda to love him.

  Did she not love him?

  Did she say so?

  No, she did not. She kissed his lips and made them as blue as ink, but when he had offered to marry her, on Christmas Day, she had fled, weeping, to her room.

  Why was this?

  Because she loved Hasset.

  Then why go through this danger, this risk, this crippling fear?

  So she would love him.

  Because he had promised God. So he would not be cast into hell.

  If there was no God?

  But he had bet there was a God. He had bet on Goodness. He had bet he would be rewarded in paradise. He had bet he would carry this jewel of a church through the horrid bush and have it in Boat Harbour by Easter.

  His life was riddled with sin and compromise. Mr Stratton had wrapped a rope around his neck and committed the sin of suicide. God forgive him. He was murdered by Oscar Hopkins’s system.

  He had posed as a holy man to Wardley-Fish. He had enticed him to Botany Bay and then hidden from him.

  He could not love his father enough. He had written “dearest papa” but he had been happiest when he was away from him. He had left this good and godly man to die alone and unloved except by his unlettered flock.

  Give me a hard journey, dear God. Deliver me from evil. Lead me not into temptation.

  And then, inside the scullery, at breakfast, he offered his bruised and swollen lips to Miss Leplastrier, and the devil played the tune, and then he saw, in the corner of his mind, the possibility that the glass church was just the devil’s trick. Mr Ahearn was right. It would be too hot. The congregation would curse Christ’s name.

  90

  A Reconciliation

  Mr d’Abbs had been to Miss Leplastrier’s office on four occasions before he found her, at last, inside. He had come up those three wide sets of stairs four times, rehearsed his little speech four times, but when he found her, on the fifth, the meeting did not progress as he had rehearsed it.

  His first thought was: Consumption.

  Her skin was very pale, stretched; it was shining, slightly blue, translucent. Her eyes seemed overly large, the whites not white but that bluish grey you find in certain porcelains. Her manner, in that bright, hot, sun-drenched room—all the windows open and papers smacking each other on a green felt board, and fluttering under glass-bottle paperweights—seemed too fast, too frantic to Mr d’Abbs who immediately forgot his speech, which was all to do with the lasting value of friendship, that it should not be thrown away through one simple misunderstanding, but that friendship was what he valued more than anything in life. Except that one might guess that he was using “friendship” when what he really meant was “companionship,” this was spoken truly. He had brought her a cribbage board and a signed edition of his friend Hill’s engravings of Pittwater. He had intended to make the speech and then give the gifts, but when he saw how she looked he was overcome by thoughts of her mortality, and he pressed the gifts on her without proper explanation of his feelings.

  He had dressed carefully in his splendid cream linen suit and his white straw hat. He had chosen the colours at least half-conscious of their symbolism: the blank page, the clean start, and if he had it in mind to say anything about Mr Jeffris, it was only as a by the by. But now, so disconcerted was he by Miss Leplastrier’s over-bright appearance, that he mentioned Jeffris when she was still opening his gifts.

  “Oh, by the by, Miss Leplastrier,” he said, closing one of her windows without thinking what he did. (He could not bear paper fluttering in a room.) “You do know about Mr Jeffris’s passion, do you not? It occurred to me that you might not. It is impertinent to mention it, were we not such old friends.”

  This was a dangerous tack to take, and he knew it. He could easily give the impression that he wished to sabotage her project and that he had come here, only pretending friendship, in order to assassinate the character of her trusted guide. And yet he could not protest friendship without telling her: Jeffris was a dangerous fellow, and although you could have him in your employ in an office where he might, like a guard dog on a leash, be at once frightening and useful, it would not be the same to entrust your life to his ambitions.

  When he mentioned Mr Jeffris’s passion he saw Lucinda tense and he feared he had “set her off” again.

  “Oh, Mr d’Abbs,” Lucinda sighed, then smiled (Mr d’Abbs thought: Her arms are thin, they were not so thin before). “Do tell me about Mr Jeffris, for I see you have come here with his ‘passion’ most particularly in mind.” And smiling very broadly, so broadly that Mr d’Abbs could easily have felt himself quite patronized, she sat herself behind her desk and folded her arms across her bosom.

  “Indeed,” said Mr d’Abbs, “it is not so.” There was no chair for him to sit on. He would have shut the second window, but he judged she would misinterpret it. “Quite the contrary. The reverse. I came here intent on keeping it under my hat. I thought: It is not my business, no more than how many windows you wish to have open. I really do take it very ill to be so uncharitably interpreted.”

  “Forgive me.”

  “You do not wish to be forgiven, you little scallywag. You completely lack the conventional sense of sin, upon my word I swear it is true.”

  “Indeed?” said Lucinda, quite pleased to be misunderstood in this particular way.

  “Indeed, you have no shame. You are pure will, and I noted this in you when you first came into my office. You hold your chin high.” (He thought: You can see the blood vessels in her neck; her lower lip is distinctly blue; these are not good signs.) “I said to Fig, it does not matter what the gossips say, she is above gossips.”

  Oh, that this were true.

  “And what,” she asked, “do the gossips say about Mr Jeffris?”

  “See,” said Mr d’Abbs with genuine admiration, “that is the other thing I always said about you—that you would not be diverted.”

  “So,” said Lucinda, knowing herself flattered and surprised to enjoy such falsehood so immensely.

  “So it is not gossip, but, please, really.” He felt silly standing in front of her. He came to sit on the edge of the desk, but the desk was a trifle taller than the beginning of his bottom, and having attempted, with one or two discreet little hops which made him look a little like a mynah bird in a cage, he contented himself with leaning. “Really, it is most important that you know—he will use you.”

  “And I him,” said Lucinda, but felt, even while she professed such certainty, the sort of panic and anger which Mr Ahearn had produced when he called the church a “folly.”

  “He cares only to make a name for himself with his trigonometry and explorations. He courted Mrs Burrows—what a pair, imagine it, eh?-so Miss Malcolm tells me, until he had everything transcribed from her husband’s journals and then he courted her no more.”

  “I do not imagine Mrs Burrows would be so easily used.”

  “Mrs Burrows is not the tough old thing she pretends to be. And what do you mean with that little smile, but never mind. The point is: you wish Mr Hopkins to be delivered safely.”

  It was cruel to speak to her like this. She said: “Mr Jeffris’s trigonometry and explorations would seem the perfect qualifications.”

  “Mr Je
ffris,” said Mr d’Abbs, finally getting his backside on to the desk, “is a man in love with danger.”

  “You must realize, Mr d’Abbs, that I have interviewed Mr Jeffris at some length. We are engaged in this project,” she gestured towards the sheets of paper which were pinned, as regular as the bricks of a wall, to the green felt board, “together. I find him to be fastidious.”

  “You are fastidious,” said Mr D’Abbs. “Therefore he is fastidious. He is an actor. His performance will vary with his audience. If you wish to know him as I do you must hear him speak when he is alone with men. With women he is a different creature entirely. His every story, when he is with his own sex, ends with some chap fainting or hollering in horror when they see how brave old Jeffris had got himself bloodied or broken in some way. And now you have supplied him with the funds and he has a little army and he is out to make a name for himself.”

  “Mr d’Abbs,” Lucinda said, “admit it: you have come to frighten me.”

  “I swear no.”

  “It was most ill mannered of me to steal away your clerk. Although I did not steal him. It was not my intention to steal, but still I can understand you might wish to punish me. This is why you speak to me like this.”

  “No,” said Mr d’Abbs, waving his hands violently, “no, no, no. That is the past. I came to say nothing, to patch up our quarrel, and then I thought my silence hypocritical.”

  “Then what would you have me do?”

  “Oh, please,” said Mr d’Abbs. “Cancel the whole damn thing. It is too silly for words and you will make yourself a laughing stock.”

  Then he saw he had gone too far. He saw her face close against him, and he suddenly lacked the courage for the continued assault.

  “Of course,” he said, “I am a skeptic. It is probably a corollary of my age.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I am peeved, of course, to have lost a damn good clerk. You must allow for that.”

  “I do,” said Lucinda with some relief.

  “And after that I wish only that our friendship be maintained. My wife says she is sorry not to have made a closer friend of you. She was so taken with you. She begs me to patch up my difference with you.”