Oscar and Lucinda bw-1988 Read online

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  Mrs Cousins

  death, but the cause in Mr Cousins's case had been Morton's Rum whilst Mr Ahearn was known to be a Rechabite teetotaller.

  Mr Ahearn said almost everything he had to say on the doorstep. He said it all clearly enough, but Mrs Cousins, trying to connect what he was saying with what he had written, took a little while before she understood him properly. He told her how the girlie (he did not say which one) had met with a "tragedy" and how he must "expedite"-he liked to use this word and it was noted by many, Mrs Cousins included, who had never heard it before-the matter of her estate. The

  "poor little girlie" was to be rich. Her late mama had wished the estate subdivided and he must carry this through immediately while he had the power to protect her interests. In the meantime it was most important (he could not stress this enough) that she be accommodated correctly, so if Mrs Cousins's establishment was full he would beg of her that she arrange for one of her young ladies to be accommodated elsewhere for the while. Miss Leplastrier, he said, still standing on the doorstep and twisting his beaverskin hat in his big hands, was most in need of Christian, nay, Anglican accommodation.

  Mrs Cousins invited him into her front room and-it being dim on the south side at this time of day-lit a lamp.

  Mrs Cousins was a handsome lady of forty-dark-haired, paleskinned, almond-eyed and-it was often remarked, although the observation was true more of opera than life-rather Spanish in appearance. She had a tiny waist which she was proud of but, being these days wary of being thought to advertise her charms, chose not to emphasize. She dressed well, but rather austerely. Her hair was tightly coiffured and had you accidentally touched her shoulder you would have been surprised to find that it, too, was tightly put together, as if all its muscles had been drawn into a mat. And yet, for all this tightness, the excessive rigidity of her spine, Chas Ahearn might have seen (he did not) that when she lit the lamp she revealed, as she set it on the piano top, the shadow of a willowy, more supple person. The supple person had once lived in Bendigo, Victoria, and had followed the dictates of her heart more than Bendigo judged wise or proper. In Bendigo she had been taught, most painfully, the value of propriety. She came to Parramatta to apply her knowledge.

  She listened to what Charles Ahearn said. And although she had once been a woman with a weakness for handsome men, she did not see Mr Ahearn (as one easily might, without being excessively cruel) as ugly. She responded to his dolefulness and solemnity. The effect was soothing, safe, like a good woollen worsted from Bradford.

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  And only when he wished to be reassured on the Anglican question did she feel agitated. She straightened her spine and put her shoulders back.

  Mrs Cousins believed in the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting. She had not been baptized in any church but attended the Church of England in Parramatta as though it were her right. It troubled her that she took communion without being confirmed. This was a sacrilege. She tried to live a Christian life, but this was perhaps not enough. She did not know how to correct the matter. She would wake in the middle of the night and think about it-suddenly all cold and damp with fear. And when Mr Ahearn mentioned the matter she was alarmed almost as much as if she had seen a face in the street from Bendigo. But she showed-apart from this excessive uprightness in her posture-none of this to Mr Ahearn. She poured him tea and assured him that she could accommodate the young lady without evicting anyone, that Miss Leplastrier would indeed attend an Anglican church and that she would see her steered carefully through the difficult shoals of Parramatta society.

  But when the orphan materialized wearing bloomers, Mrs Cousins was overcome with an urge-it was visceral, self-protective, a thing of muscle and blood, nothing as rarified as an idea-to put her hands on the girl's shoulders and push her back down the steps.

  26 Bloomers

  Amelia Bloomer had come to London in 1851 with her famous "rational costume." It was, as everybody knows, a pair of baggy trousers surmounted by a short skirt. It was worn in Melbourne quite early, but it did not seem to catch Elizabeth Leplastrier's attention until she actually saw a woman wearing the new rational dress in Church Street, Parramatta, in 1858. 80

  Bloomers

  Here, at last, was an antidote to the "obscene bustle" and the "crippling crinoline." From this time on both mother and daughter dressed in nothing else, and if this occasionally caused offence to street urchins in Parramatta, what else could you expect?

  Now Mrs Cousins knew nothing of Amelia Bloomer. She knew only what respectability required and this was not it. She took the girl up to her room and was dismayed to discover, in the suitcase the labourers had so gracelessly packed for her, another seven outfits of the same design in different colours. On the pretext of taking them for laundering, she removed the lot of them. She did not understand Miss Leplastrier's commitment to the fashion any more than she understood her hair (she assumed the short cut was the result of sickness). She called a dressmaker. Miss Leplastrier did not want a dressmaker. She was small, but wiry and determined. There were tears, locked doors, much upset in the house. Mrs Cousins was beside herself. The girl tried to rip the flouncing off her dress as an ignorant animal will tear the bandage from its leg. She would not go to her mother's funeral in a bustle. Mrs Cousins could not give back her bloomers. The girl did not go to the funeral, which was a small and sad affair in any case. She howled in her room all that day. You could hear her howling from the street. One of the young ladies, a Miss Knight from Surrey in England, left on the packet for Sydney and refused to pay for her accommodation from the date of Miss Leplastrier's arrival.

  From that time Lucinda ate in her room. This had never happened in Mrs Cousins's house before. It had been requested but never agreed to. Now she acquiesced and did not want the situation changed. When Miss Leplastrier emerged from her room at last, she was wearing bloomers. She had stolen them from the laundry and then, back in her room, locked them in her suitcase. It was impossible to introduce her anywhere. Mrs Cousins told Mr Ahearn all this. She went to his offices and spoke with him. She had not intended to weep, but weep she did. She feared for that more precious and fragile asset: her reputation. She wanted the young woman to be accommodated elsewhere. But Mr Ahearn spoke about the Good Samaritan. He recited all eight verses to her, ending thus: "Then said Jesus unto him Go and do thou likewise." Mrs Cousins promised to continue.

  But Lucinda did not know what to do in Parramatta. She tried to behave well, but as long as she would not wear the bustle it seemed no one would behave well towards her. She sat by her mother's grave until it was judged morbid and she was taken away. She then decided 81

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  that she would go back and live on the farm. She announced this to Mrs Cousins who was so relieved that she did not, as she should have, prevent her departure. She mentioned the dangers of larrikins and footpads and blacks, but without ever believing it would change the stubborn young woman's mind.

  It was only three miles. She was there within the hour. There were no footpads and the only people who troubled her were shearers who called rough things to her from high on their farting horses.

  She found surveyors with mattocks and axes clearing a sightline through her dew-bright orchard. Sweet white broken wood glistened in the sunlight. The axes stopped. They stared at her-a girl in emeraldgreen bloomers carrying a suitcase through the wet winter-grey grass. They smiled, having no idea how her heart raced, or what anger she felt-all the curdled love, the rage at death, look at the thistles in our pasture! — all focused on them in their blue shirts and bright white moleskin trousers.

  She hated them. It is the hate you reserve for a thing that can hurt you. There was a long-handled pitchfork standing in a pile of rotting mulch inside the orchard fence. She walked towards it. God knows what she might have done if Chas Ahearn, finally alerted to his client's escape by a guilty Mrs Cousins, had not come galloping up the road from Pa
rramatta in a jinker too unstable for such a high-speed chase. She turned to watch him work his way from one paddock to the next, straining and stretching at each gate, and, when he was at last beside her, at the top of the dam above the orchard, he was so out of breath that he could not speak but only lower himself from the jinker and press a sheaf of papers into her red-fingered, brown-mittened hands. And that is how Lucinda learned of her mother's betrayal, in a wheezing rush. Her suitcase, which she had held firmly by her side, she now stood carefully in the long wet grass. She took the plan of subdivision and tried to understand it. Mr Ahearn's breath whistled in her ear. The men were watching her. One whistled "The Wearing of the Green."

  "This is not my mama's signature," she said.

  Mr Ahearn did not answer. He smiled at her. It was inadequate. It was his way of showing pity. The dark man chopped a branch from the pear tree. He did it lazily, holding the axe in one hand. In the other hand he held a long white j stick. I

  "In six months' time, I could order you," she said. Her voice was; small, her shoulders rounded, and her eyes could not even hold his,

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  but slid off and down to the scarred red earth her papa had found for her.

  "I could order you," she repeated, but she had no confidence. Mr Ahearn steeled himself. He felt as he had once when, having run over a fox terrier, he had been forced to deliver the coup de grâce to the writhing, crippled creature. He did what he knew was right, which was to continue and not flinch.

  "You will thank me, one day when you are older."

  "Who has the cow?"

  Mr Ahearn blinked. "You will be wealthy," he said, "at least you have that consolation." She heard him. It made no sense. "The cow is stolen," she said, crying.

  "Dear little girl," he said.

  Her feet were wet and cold. The light was clear and sunny, but with no heat in it. It had the sharpness of a dream. The butcher-birds lined up and sang on the fence posts. The axe rang out again. The poultry had been stolen too, and all Mr Ahearn would say was that she was wealthy. She walked to the hut, carrying her own case. He followed her, wheezing, getting further and further behind. She remembered all this vividly, all her life, but what she did not recall were the circumstances which meant she could not have done otherwise. She imagined she had been too weak, had given up her farm too easily, had let herself be bullied into exile. There was a square of sunshine on the wooden step. She narrowed her eyes against it. Inside she saw (although she tried not to see anything but what she had come for) that someone had folded the blankets on her mother's bed.

  The jam jars were still rucked in their hiding places. She would have counted them, but she did not wish to be seen, so she opened her case and rolled up each jar in a different garment, stuffing a sleeve down a glass throat to stop spillage and noise. Then she walked back out into the sunshine and allowed herself to be persuaded into the jinker.

  On 7 May 1859, the five farms at Mitchell's Creek were sold at auction. On 10 May Lucinda Leplastrier turned eighteen.

  On Ascension Day she travelled on Mr Sol Myer's steamer down to Sydney. She would also blame herself for this "flight." She often imagined her life would have been happier had she stayed, perhaps bought part of Mitchell's Creek herself, but the older Lucinda forgot that the younger one had an itchy impatience to grasp what her mother

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  Oscar andlttcinda

  that he misunderstood him. He neard a "two" instead of a "one." In any case, when he banged his cane onthe "sported" door he was banging at the wrong address. Wardley-Fish banged hard. He won^d what illicit activity might make West lock up like this, tie bange
  The Odd Bod peered around fris only partiy Opened oak, blinking, nervously. Wardley-Fish understood the reason for ^s nervousness. The Odd Bod had had water poured into his b«nfusecj ancj nervc,us. Wardley-Fish had never seen an Onel room ^ ^,3^ Chough it was not just cold empty space between objects that defined its worrying personality. It was like stepping into a cell in, say, Spam _ some country you had never visited. There was nothing famili^ nothing one would expect at home, no port on the mantel, no rugs, HO paintings of game or romantic girls soaring high on swings. There was a bed, a very plain desk, a hard ash chair with a straight back. It was schoianv/ and yet not-there were few books on the shelves. It was neat, but there were what one could only call "heaps" of things scattered here and there-papers, clothingThere was a brown felt-covered board leaning against one wall on which the Odd Bod had tacked charts: all m;»nner of scholarly information drawn into small square boxes. The bo*es were most precjse The information inside the boxes was smudged an(j gpjde^ the work not of *n academician but of a small and muddy beetle. On the mantel was displayed a wooden tray, tilted on an angle> ^ a display of fishing tactf6

  «A

  The Odd Bod

  in a high-street shop. Wardley-Fish had heard about this tray. It was famous as far as Trinity. The tray contained his mother's buttons.

  There was no fire in the grate. The remains of a very bleak breakfast was on the tray. WardleyFish was shocked. The Odd Bod looked so frail and white, so obliging and yet so lonely. He wished to be kind to him in some way but could not think now.

  "I say, Odd Bod, do you like a flutter?" And then, having offered this, he regretted it. He would not feel comfortable in the Odd Bod's company. He would not like it to be known. Oscar was trying to provide his visitor with a chair. He heard "flutter" and thought it pertained to heart, to nerves, to upset, and indeed the banging on the oak had frightened him and he had only opened it to save having it Tom down once more. And yet, meeting the ale-breathing WardleyFish, he was only half-cowed. Wardley-Fish belonged to a fast set, none of whom were very bright. Oscar, who had not until now been academically distinguished, still judged himself to be above this lot of wealthy gentlemen. He was fearful, superior, and also touched by the large man's awkward kindness. He pushed the chair towards his visitor. "What flutter, Fish? If it is slang I am not yet familiar with it."

  Wardley-Fish sat, then saw his host had nowhere to sit, and so stood himself. It was ludicrous to imagine the Odd Bod would have a flutter. He had no cash to flutter with. Further, he was of a very literal and Evangelical persuasion. Evangelicals were always most upset by gambling. Wardley-Fish edged towards the door.

  But Oscar was so delighted to see his visitor's obvious good intentions that he was determined to make a friend of him. This was an exercise of pure will. It did not feel natural or easy.

  "Please, Fish, explain to me."

  Wardley-Fish stood still. "It is all connected with the racetrack," he said reluctantly. Oscar nodded.

  "You know what a racetrack is?"

  Oscar perched on the edge of his bed so that Wardley-Fish might be persuaded to sit. (This succeeded.) "A track," he said, "where one conducts athletic contests." e *"en smiled, or produced a bud of a smile, a tightly compressed ^ginning. Fish found this oddly attractive.

  ^ is for horses," Wardley-Fish said.

  anc
y," saj
  Oscar and Lucinda

  "The contests are held between horses. Odd Bod, you really do know, don't you?" It was the smile that made Wardley-Fish imagine he might be having his leg pulled, but the smile was produced by nothing more than the pleasure of an unexpected visitor. (He wondered if he should light a fire irrespective of expense.)

  "And which part of this race involves the flutter?"

  There was too much to be explained. The gulf was too great. Time was getting on. If West was not here, he must be upstairs. If he was asleep, he would take time to wake up. Wardley-Fish was overcome with impatience. It made him sound gruff: "A wager, a bet, a flutter." He stood up. Then he felt he had been rude. He had not intended to bark like that. "You know what a bet is," he said, this time more softly than he had meant.

  "Actually," said Oscar Hopkins, "no, I don't."

  Wardley-Fish saw that this could go on all day. He did not wish to hurt the chap's feelings (he had a tender face and seemed as though he would be easily hurt) but neither did he wish to miss his day at the track. "You give money to chaps and if the horse you like is the one that wins, why then, they give you double your money back, or treble, or whatever."

  "Bless me."

  "Do not mock me."

  "No, Fish, no. I swear to you. It is new to me. I thought you would have known, for what is called my 'ignorance' seems to be a popular topic in this college. I was raised very much out of the way, in a little village in Devon. We were concerned with botany and marine biology." ("And buttons," thought Wardley-Fish, but kept his face straight.)

  "We did not go in for fluttering, but I must say I rather like the sound of it." All of this was most disturbing to Wardley-Fish. He felt as if he were involved in something wrong and he wished only to stop it. "Now look here, Odd Bod."

  "Perhaps you could call me Hopkins."