Oscar and Lucinda Page 11

  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.

  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 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 emerald—green 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 Parramatta 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 stick.

  “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, 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 tucked 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 called “the working world,” a term which made the daughter see vague and rather frightening pictures like the ones engraved on N. G. Nixey’s Stove Black: factories, smokestacks, soot, the Empire.

  On Ascension Day she wore a Garibaldi hat and a dress with a bustle. She had her jars of coins wrapped up inside her case and a bank draft for the entire sum of her fortune in her green-beaded, netted purse.

  27

  The Odd Bodr />
  It was Wardley-Fish’s opinion that Mr Temple, his tutor, was a low-grade suck-up. And it is not unduly psychological to imagine that it was this, the tutor’s smarminess, which made Wardley-Fish to completely “forget” to attend the breakfast in the tutor’s rooms. He did not merely forget it in the morning. He forgot it the night before—ten minutes after discussing it with his would-be host—when he instructed his scout to bring him a breakfast of Yorkshire pie, plovers’ eggs, grilled turkey leg, pickles, and a large tankard of ale to wash it down. And it was only when he had eaten this breakfast—there was mustard too, but I forgot to mention it—and had settled himself in front of his grate and had called for a second tankard that he “remembered” he had promised to breakfast with his tutor.

  “Blast,” he said.

  An odd word for Wardley-Fish. It was the sort of word he might use if he imagined God was listening.

  In any case he did not look cynically or self-critically or even self-indulgently at his “forgetting.” The psychological view did not occur to him. He did not interpret in any way at all. He gazed out through the drizzled glass to the vague outline of the roof above the second quad and reflected that his scout would by now be in the buttery drawing his ale. It was too late to stop this, so he would wait for the ale, drink it, and then consider what he should do.

  Wardley-Fish did not go in for interpretation. It made him feel uncomfortable. This was the tutor’s passion, a passion almost the equal of his interest in anyone whose father was in Debrett’s, had a thousand acres or a seat in the Cabinet. Mr Temple’s breakfasts made Wardley-Fish turn silent and sour. He would become taciturn, and then sullen. He would glower around the room, imagine insults, and go away convinced that every undergraduate in Oriel knew him as stupid, good for nothing better than a third and a living in the corner of some High-Tory bishopric.

  At length the scout brought him the ale. Wardley-Fish barely saw him. Only after he had left did he think of him and only because, due to some olfactory echo, he caught a delayed whiff of urine and knew the frantic little fellow had been running too fast again—he had splashed one of his slops buckets on his trouser turn-ups.

  When he had finished his second tankard he decided what he had known he would decide all along, i.e., to hell with Temple and his claret-stained whiskers. He would find his friend Bishop and go shooting at Oxley. He then noticed it was still before eight, and that Bishop would be asleep. He therefore had the scout bring him a third tankard. There were races at Epsom today. This also had slipped his mind. It was the drizzle outside the window and the promise of a heavy track that made him think of it at all. Now all the lethargy was gone. There was nothing more important than that he get to Epsom for the start of the card. Bishop would be no good for this. Bishop was a boring chap to go to a race with—his passion was for animals, not mathematics. No, it was West he would want. West had become a puritan of late, but could be talked around. He had the gambler’s disease, and all his theology did was make him less comfortable with himself. As for Wardley-Fish, he had been corrupted from birth. He was his father’s son. He got his pomade and slicked down his hair. He was a good-looking young man with broad shoulders and a strong neck. He kept his fair beard neatly trimmed so it did nothing to hide the strong line of his chin, the attractive mouth, or the distinctive mole on his cheek. He smiled at himself with satisfaction. He lifted his tankard, tried to quaff it in one gulp, spilled ale on his beard, did the job in three, wiped the froth from his moustache, shouted for the scout to tell him he would not require the usual full commons at lunchtime, and ran—his hands still in his pockets—down the stairs and across to St Mary’s Hall where he hoped he would find West.

  He was about to mount the usual staircase when he remembered West had taken better rooms across the way. He had trouble finding the scout for this new staircase and when he did he was in such a hurry that he misunderstood him. He heard a “two” instead of a “one.” In any case, when he banged his cane on the “sported” door he was banging at the wrong address.

  Wardley-Fish banged hard. He wondered what illicit activity might make West lock up like this. He banged furiously. He made a couple of deep indentations which are probably still there, beneath the paint they apply at Oriel every twenty years, layer on layer, like papier-mâché until the doors take on a slightly melted look, like chocolate left above a fireplace.

  He heard the door being fiddled with and gave it two good hard thwacks and then he saw: not West, by Jove. No, it was the Odd Bod.

  The Odd Bod peered around his only partly opened oak, blinking, nervously.

  Wardley-Fish understood the reason for this nervousness. The Odd Bod had had water poured into his bed because he did not run along the towpath in support of the Oriel crew. On another occasion his room had been made the venue for a rat hunt. The rats were delivered by someone knocking just as Ian Wardley-Fish had knocked. These rats were perhaps in a bird cage, perhaps in a basket, most likely in a sack. They were dumped on the floor, released, and then attacked by men with hockey sticks. The Odd Bod, meanwhile, had stood on his bed, his lips moving soundlessly.

  Wardley-Fish apologized. He had no wish to cause the poor little beggar any more fright. It was West he wanted. He tried to explain this, but the Odd Bod was stepping back, inviting him in, although—it was quite obvious—he was still confused and nervous.

  Wardley-Fish had never seen an Oriel room so bare, although it was not just cold empty space between objects that defined its worrying personality. It was like stepping into a cell in, say, Spain—some country you had never visited. There was nothing familiar, nothing one would expect at home, no port on the mantel, no rugs, no 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 scholarly, 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, clothing. There was a brown felt—covered board leaning against one wall on which the Odd Bod had tacked charts: all manner of scholarly information drawn into small square boxes. The boxes were most precise. The information inside the boxes was smudged and spidery, the work not of an academician but of a small and muddy beetle. On the mantel was displayed a wooden tray, tilted on an angle, like a display of fishing tackle 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. Wardley-Fish 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 torn down once more. And yet, meeting the ale—breathing Wardley-Fish, 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.”

  He then smiled, or produced a bud of a smile, a tightly compressed beginning. Fish found this oddly attractive.

  “It is for horses,” Wardley-Fish said.

  “Fancy,” said Oscar, and smiled again. The smile could have been misinterpreted as knowing.

  “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.”