Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey

He told her that his mantelpiece clock-a huge contraption with its brassy innards showing-was ten minutes fast. She did not doubt its gaudy unreliability and felt herself more reliably informed by the sky outside. She judged it almost six a.m. She had enjoyed herself, although not in that personal way she had enjoyed herself at Mr Borrodaile's table. On that occasion she had enjoyed him, and had allowed

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her mind to construct all sorts of pleasant fancies. She had thought him an angel painted by Mr Rossetti. This was before he showed himself so thoughtless. But rummy was a game you could play with perfect strangers, with a man in a mask, or even (she imagined) a clever machine. She had arrived with nothing and now she had nearly five pounds-it was all there in notes and coins in front of her. She had taken the money slowly, and she had found the process as satisfying as drawing bent nails from old timber. She had enjoyed it as much as she had enjoyed the dizzy lightness of losing at fan-tan. It did not once occur to her that she might be punishing him. She was not tired. She could not afford to be tired. She had time to go home and bathe before taking tea with Mr Rolls, a builder lately arrived from Melbourne. She began to gather in her winnings. The notes were larger in those days. You had something more substantial for your efforts. If you pulled out a pound no one would mistake it for your cigarette papers or-if you were not of that class-your calling card. It was at this moment, as Lucinda began to gather these triumphantly proportioned notes together, that Mr Judd pushed his ruddy face against the window. He had been a boxer in his youth and this had left his face a little out of balance, the nose a fraction to one side, the ears of independent character. When you knew him you found him strangely soft and, though his hands were likely scabbed on the back and horny on the palm, you would find him gentle around gentle subjects-I am thinking of music when I mention this. But it is easy enough to imagine that such a face, without introduction, might appear-I will not say murderous-frightening.

Lucinda should have made allowances for the glass. It was not plate, but crown, of uneven thickness and marred by a yellow tinge produced by chrome salts in the sand. You can say she should have reacted more scientifically. She did not. She saw a butcher's face with hairy eyebrows. She saw a pig snout of unnatural yellow. That the face was partly veiled by a patch of condensation did not make it seem less terrifying.

She could not scream.

She made a noise which may be crudely signified: "Erg." j

Oscar smiled uncertainly.

"Erg."

She made him nervous, anyway. She knew better Greek. She

•seemed well schooled in theology. She did not smile readily.

She played cards with a cool elegance and skill which shocked

him. He liked her smell. He did not know how to treat her,

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Serious Damage and when she stared at him and said "Erg," he became embarrassed.

"Well," he said, shuffling the cards. "Well, well, well." He did his fancy shuffle. He had taught himself this, although he had seen it done in a "hell" in Jermyn Street. There it had been done by a very frail and very drunk old actor who could, in shuffling cards, make a moving bridge one yard long. Oscar had taught himself this. It was, he supposed, a conversation piece. Mr Judd saw the bridge and could contain himself no more.

He banged.

Oscar's face then behaved as it had when Lucinda had called him "Crab." It lost its bones and colour. The muscles on his scalp contracted and pulled each hair to smart attention. He opened his mouth and Lucinda was treated this time, not to a clean pink tunnel and a little peak of epiglottis, but to some half-munched coconut macaroon suspended,

mid-mastication.

But then, of course, he turned and discovered Mr and Mrs Judd.

Lucinda could not credit what she saw him do. The unfriendly attitude of the intruders was perfectly clear, but the gangling vicar stood, wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, went to the window, unlocked it, and let them in. Well, they did not enter, not immediately, but the man's voice entered and she did not have time to separate it from her nightmare, could not decipher all the moral outrage, felt herself to be swamped by an alien wave of tobacco-smelling rage.

"Mr Judd," she heard her host say. "Mrs Judd. Please do come in." Come in? Lucinda was incredulous. Come in? Her hand was at her hat, feeling for the silver peasized knob that marked its end. She thought about the properties of glass, not its wont to go yellow when there were chrome salts in the sand, but its tendency to shatter, to make shards which lie upon a carpet in the shape of crescent moons, scimitars, stilettos, daggers, pig stickers, a jigsaw armoury waiting to be released from its captive sheet and nothing more needed by way of a key than a pebble, a coin, a lump of coal. "Please," said Oscar, clapping his hands and rubbing them. "Please

do come in."

Lucinda removed her hat and held the pin behind her back. Oscar stepped back and both Judds, the second one with great difficultyshe was not only portly but impeded by skirts-stepped from the veranda, across the sill, and into the sitting room.

Oscar watched all this with almost as much astonishment as Lucinda. He had hardly been aware, so nervous was he, of what he had been saying. And although it is true that he invited the Judds in and that,

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Oscar and Lucinda

when he made the invitation, he was standing on one side of an open window and they on the other, he had not intended that they treat his window as their door. And yet-and he admitted this to himself later when he sat, groaning and punching his left hand with his right, in judgement on himself-it was he who had stepped backwards, and the stepping back was, in a sense, like moving a magnet back from a nail in that you must, if you know anything about the natural sciences, expect the nail to follow and it is no good-his father would have told him as muchprotesting your innocence when you know it is a law, a law without a name, but a law of physics none the less: when you have such a concentration of energy with all its vectors angled at you, and if you say "come in" and step back at the same time, the object of your attention will-it is like water on an inclined planefollow the line of least resistance and come right in. Now Mr Judd was unaware that he was obeying a law of physics. He knew nothing about physics at all. He knew about jute and hessian, about chaff and oats, about yokes, bows, bullock chains, the length of grass on the roadside between Sydney and Yass, but he was ignorant of the forces that propelled him. When he found himself standing on the vicar's Quality Bradford First Wool carpet, he was mortified. He looked down at his boots and saw the right one not properly laced and the left one with leaf-mould clinging to it and then he looked and saw his wife-God help me-trying to follow him. That was so like her. It was so exactly like her. Why could she not be aware of the picture she made? She was all backside and bosom and her poor little legs were too plump and short to get up to the sill, but there was no retreating now-he had to help her in. Mr Judd was angry with his wife, but he would not show it in public and he offered her extreme solicitude and did his best to help effect a dignified crossing. When she was, at last, standing inside he made sure her dress was properly rearranged before he thought about anything else. Thus he found himself, a manly man, fussing at her skirts like a dressmaker. For a moment he was at a loss, to see the figure he cut. Then the habits of a lifetime reasserted themselves and he did what he always did when caught at a disadvantage-he attacked.

"I'd not be the sort of fellow comes climbing through a window," he said. "And you should know that of me by now. But I'll tell you this, sir-we will not have it! We will not. All we want is our Handel. It is nothing but the glory of God, you don't see that. But 'Be not drunk with wine/ " he had not meant to quote, but the words came to him.

Serious Damage

He could see no wine. It was not wine he was quoting. " 'Be not drunk with wine/ " he looked at the cards. They were in full view, and money too. " 'Wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.' "

This produced a silence. They all stood with red faces and tried to understand their situation. Oscar thought "handle." There was a cold draught from the open window.

"You gambled," Mr Judd said, and he shook a surprisingly dainty finger at the clergyman.

"It is true, Mr Judd," said Oscar. He hugged his thin chest and then rubbed his hands. "I have gambled. I am sorry if it has caused offence."

"It's no good denying it."

"I'm not denying it."

"Don't you think the Almighty has an ear? Don't you imagine he'd like our hymns of praise?" "Oh yes, indeed, Mr Judd. Indeed."

"Then you should not be gambling, sir. It is a folly and a sin." Lucinda was unsure of what was happening. She no longer thought these people murderers, but she thought the situation to be most unstable. The man looked violent, and the woman seemed to think it her wifely duty to transmit, silently, an equal level of anger towards her. She glowered and moved her feet beneath her skirts, just like a cow bailed up for milking. Lucinda stood up.

"It does seem to me," Oscar was saying, "that we have the threads of quite different concerns involved in this upset."

Lucinda said nothing. She thought his conciliatory tone quite inappropriate.? ï,

"Upset?" said Mr Judd. "I am not upset." <. s-TS,',"'•••

"She is slipping out," said Mrs Judd.

"On the one hand, you have the issue of my gambling. On the other you have, it would seem, a love of music." '.

"Of sacred music. Sacred music."

"She is putting on her hat." ••'..'••:..:.?•»:

"She is my guest, Mrs Judd."

"A pretty name for it.";;?

"Mrs Judd," warned Mr Judd.

"Ill not be stopped," said Mrs Judd. "I have never heard of such a hypocrite. Yes, a hypocrite. We made him lovely vestments. You will not wear them, isn't that true? You think God would rather see you looking like a crow.".•••.-

Oscar and Lucinda

"I wear-" said Oscar, but was stopped from saying more.

"You dress like a scarecrow," said Mr Judd.

"I will not be stopped. He dresses like a scarecrow," she agreed, "and throws out our Messiah, and here he is with cards and women in the temple, and-" she looked backwards to the open window, and stopped a moment. "And here we are," she said at last. These last three words seemed to signify that she had, against the current of her natural good manners, been induced-it was witchcraft, perhaps-to climb through her employer's window and stand on expensive carpet in muddy shoes.

Lucinda had retreated from the draught and was warming herself against the fire. It is true that she had put on her hat, but not because she wished to leave, but because she was returning her hatpin to its proper place. She would not need that type of weapon.

"You are a rude woman," she said, "and you are a rude man." Mrs Judd opened her mouth. Mr Judd stood on his wife's foot. Mrs Judd's mouth stayed open and her head jerked sharply sideways as she tried to read her husband's face.

' You imagine," Lucinda pulled her skirt tight against her legs until she felt them burning, "that you are civilized, but you are like savages with toppers and tails. You are not civilized at all, and if gambling is a sin it is less of a sin than the one you have just committed. You should pray to God to forgive you for your rudeness."

Oscar was aghast to hear such patrician arrogance from a women he had seen, half an hour before, light a cigarette and draw the blue smoke up into her flaring nostrils (an action he found sensual in the extreme). He would have apologized to the Judds but he did not have the opportunity.

"You may leave," said Lucinda.

And the Judds, indeed, made uncertainly towards the door.

"Through the window," said Lucinda.

And the Judds left through the window. Lucinda had them shut it after them. She watched themit was not quite light-walk down the long mustard-yellow driveway. She could see them both talking at once.

She began laughing then. It was not a simple laugh, and was occasioned as much by her surprise at herself (how angry she must be at Sydney) as by delight in her own mischievousness. And her face, laughing, was lovely. For the first time inside the vicarage she was herself, unguarded, open-faced, and you could see the young girl and imagine her in the days on the farm near Parramarta. She looked pretty,

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but Oscar did not see this for he was sitting back on an ugly green chair with his hands plunged into his unruly rusty hair.

"Oh dear," he said. "I'm done for."

And then Lucinda was like an athlete who, with her body warm, has ripped a muscle and not felt it. As she cooled, she stiffened, and felt-it hurt more than you would think possible-the damage. 69

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Bishop Dancer's office-his entire house-was being redecorated. He could not bear to be around the place. He did not like to hear his wife hallooing for some tradesman, the sudden draughts from unavoidably open windows, the equally unavoidable sawing and hammering. It was an irritation to be there and he could not effect his business courteously. Particularly this business. This was how it came about that Bishop Dancer lunched with the Dean of St Andrew's and his wife. He did not much care for the dean, but he needed to borrow an office and the dean's office was the only one available which would bring with it the proper tone. 'Tone," you might correctly guess, was not a thing that a man like Dancer would normally concern himself with. He had the strength to carry his own "tone" without borrowing it from the dean's heavy desk and velvet drapery. But in this case he had been defeated. The office he required was one in whichthere was no avoiding it-he might effect his own surrender to the Randwick vestry. He did not like to lose at all, but he particularly disliked losing to people like this-jumped-up shopkeepers and stable hands, rag and bone men who would once have acknowledged their calling with three hats worn on top of each other but now dressed up in clothing of the classes they used to serve. Sometimes he thought of Sydney as an orphan's party with a dressing-up box. What a grotesque sight he found

Oscar and Lucinda

it-piemen affecting the dress of gentlemen, ladies' maids with glass tiaras. They were out there now, in the anteroom of the dean's office. Mr Allcock with his top hat and shiny breeches, Mr Judd, Mr Henry, and their leader, Mr Graham, MP, the well-known Puseyite. The bishop stayed at table, although the table was by now for the most part empty. He wished to make a demonstration to the dean, but the dean was apprehensive. He had invited the bishop to lunch from courtesy. He had watched him drink an entire bottle of his best claret and now he was nervous of the consequences.