Oscar and Lucinda Page 13

  Oscar remembered how lonely and lacklustre he had felt this morning. He had been cold, and miserable. Now he was warm inside Wardley-Fish’s coat. He was a boy comforted by the sweet-sour wrappings of a larger man, the tweed—prickly armour of an elder brother, uncle, father. He was “looked after” and was content—in the mud of Epsom—as a dog curled inside an armchair.

  He grinned at Wardley-Fish.

  “See. You have caught the germ,” said Wardley-Fish who saw in the grin the symptoms of his own hot condition. “You should not be here. I am corrupting you.”

  But Oscar did not feel at all corrupted. God had already spoken to him. Sure Blaze would win this race. Tonight he would have the money to pay his buttery account. He would buy long woollen socks and send two guineas and some coffee to Mr and Mrs Stratton. Perhaps he could open an account at Blackwell’s. He would like to purchase his own copy of Mr Paley’s Evidence.

  “Look at you,” said Wardley-Fish. “You look like a grinning scarecrow.”

  Oscar frowned. He had no sense of humour about his appearance. In fact he never had any real idea of it. He thought himself “quite plain and average” in build and physiognomy, and as for clothes, he now imagined himself quite reasonably, if humbly, dressed.

  “Of course,” he said at last, “I am wearing your coat. Doubtless it creates an odd effect.”

  Wardley-Fish looked at the Odd Bod’s wild red hair, his neat triangular face, his earnest praying-mantis hands clasped on his breast and—just when he began to laugh—saw that Oscar was not joking. The Odd Bod imagined himself quite normal.

  When they pushed through the crowd towards the paddock, Wardley-Fish was still laughing. He could not stop himself. He laughed while he made his bets. Oscar watched him, smiling. He thought the laugh to do with betting. Wardley-Fish placed his bets in total disregard for the system, going from bookmaker to bookmaker, laying everything on Madding Girl with tears streaming down his face.

  My great-grandfather watched him long enough to see how a bet was made and then, selecting Perce Gully, he laid three guineas on Sure Blaze at 9–1.

  My great-grandfather won his first bet. In the case histories of pathological gamblers you find the same story told time and time again.

  30

  Covetousness

  When Mr Stratton entered the comfortable rooms of his Oxford friends—and he was better connected than you would think, and better liked than you might imagine—he was like a dog in front of a fire, having crawled into a chair it knows forbidden it, but lying there anyway, farting, wheezing, affecting deafness. How he loved Oxford. How he loathed Hennacombe. How cruel was the contrast between them. He did not think his distinguished friends any better than himself. He drank their brandy with a clear conscience. He ate like a horse and allowed himself to accept small “loans”—a crown or two, nothing substantial, although Mr Temple liked to claim it would have been sufficient for an Oxford mansion had Stratton not frittered it all away on train tickets. Once he had been differentiated from his friends by his tendency towards High Seriousness. Now he was “poor Stratton” and they made the little loans as marks of gratitude, that it was he, not they, who had allowed himself to be mired in Devon by means of an unfortunate marriage—for it was Betty Stratton (the daughter of the controversial don) whom they blamed for the poor chap’s predicament.

  Hugh Stratton was not an Oxford Scholar but was a Scholar of Oxford. And as lonely civil servants in Hong Kong may know more about the goings on in Knightsbridge than anyone who really lives there, so it was with Hugh Stratton and Oxford. When he brought Oscar up to undergo his interview with Hawkins (the Provost of Oriel) he was also able to bring the news of a certain controversy about the election of Merton Fellows, which had travelled to Hennacombe more quickly than it had across the slippery red cobbles of Merton Street.

  Yet for all this intimacy with Oxford and its colleges, Hugh Stratton felt himself cast out. He could not so much as enter the echoing gatehouse of Oriel, could not even glimpse the lovely bright grass of the front quad, without thinking, “I cannot stay.”

  He emerged into the quad and felt all the eyes of Oriel’s windows looking down on him. His shabby clothes proclaimed him a poor clergyman with no place here. He had red mud caked on his trouser turnups and the gentlemen of Oriel, encountering him as he cut across to the chapel, averted their eyes from him, but not so much, he imagined, as not to note the fine red capillaries that had begun, just this year, to show on his nose and cheeks.

  When he brought Oscar through these portals he stopped him here, in the middle of the path across the quad, to tell him that he was jealous of him. But as he did it with a wistful smile upon his face, Oscar had no way of guessing the extent of it. The young man understood him as he might understand any older man pining for his youth. He did guess the jagged edges of this jealousy which had lacerated Hugh Stratton, more on every day that passed, none more than at this moment when they stood inside the quad. One would stay. One would be cast out.

  But jealousy was not the only serpent stirring the muddy waters of Hugh Stratton’s unhappy soul. He could attempt to lay it by admitting it, but the other he could not even admit—the dreadful guilty truth was that he had made no provision for the cost of this education. When his wife had raised the question he had waved his handkerchief as if it were nothing but a march fly to be sent away. “I have told you. He can be a servitor.”

  “But have you written to Hawkins on the matter?”

  “I would not pester the Provost with such a matter.”

  “Then pester Temple or Fisher, but pester someone, dear Hugh, don’t you think you should?”

  He never did it and now he found there was no possibility of Oscar paying his way by taking a servitor’s position. Oriel already had enough young men who must, if not sing, then wait a table for their supper. If Oscar was to be a servitor he must wait his turn. In the meantime the bursar was assuming that the Strattons would foot the bill. Mr Stratton had not enlightened him, but it was put of the question. So when Hugh Stratton, continuing his interrupted walk across the rain-bright quad, led his protégé into that lovely little vaulted chapel where he had once—fair-haired, apple-cheeked—been so admired for the purity of his voice, he was not merely miserable with jealousy, teetering on the edge of grief, but also guilty about this financial matter, a thing he should not, so he felt, have to be guilty about at all. He had intended to take Oscar on a grand tour, a three-hour event he had, when imagining it, expected to be a pleasant experience for both of them. But now he had a blinding headache and he turned back at the door to the library and bade his protégé good bye and good luck.

  To Oscar, Mr Stratton’s moods would always be a mystery, so much so that he had ceased to try to fathom them. He knew that his mentor had planned to dine with his friend Mr Temple, but now, it seemed, he was going to the railway station. It had begun to rain again.

  “Your father must take responsibility,” the clergyman told Oscar as they sheltered in the gatehouse. “He cannot go scot-free.”

  Theophilus, unlike Oscar, would have the benefit of a full revelation of Mr Stratton’s thoughts on this matter, but he would not pay a penny towards sending his only son into the everlasting hellfire, and said so, plainly, not only to the pinched and put-upon clergyman, but also (in a passionate letter) to his son whom he implored to flee before it was too late.

  So it is in this context that one must understand the delivery of the coffee (the gift from Oscar after Sure Blaze’s victory) to the vicarage at Hennacombe. Never have eight ounces of coffee produced such an electric effect upon a constitution. Not four days after the fragrant little parcel had its twopence worth of stamps pasted on its smudged face but Oscar, looking out of his window and down into the St Mary’s Hall quadrangle before sitting down to his breakfast, saw none other than his patron, fastened up in his long black coat, limping (an accident with an axe) but limping quickly in the direction of Oscar’s staircase.

  He thought: m
y papa is dying. And indeed so convinced was he that his greatest fear (that his father would die without their reconciliation) had become a reality that he began immediately to fetch his big brown suitcase out from its hiding place in the window seat. He had this in his hand when he answered the Reverend Mr Stratton’s sharp, beak-like knock.

  The Reverend Mr Stratton had one of those faces that take some time to arrange themselves for the business of the day. In the mornings he could be expected to look tired and irritable. His colour, at this hour, was normally poor; his skin had no tone; the folds of his face—thin vertical lines like surgeons’ scars on either side of his mouth—were deeper, more pronounced. But on this morning his face was ahead of itself—it was flushed and tight, and the eyes had all the secret life (and yet none of the wateriness) they normally took from a sherry bottle.

  He did not say good morning, or explain how it was he happened to be in Oxford at that hour. Rather he took the empty suitcase from Oscar’s hands, seemed surprised at its lightness, and then put it down outside the door. He had no “intention” in this, unless it was that, in the midst of his confusion at being greeted by a young man holding a suitcase and, finding the suitcase empty, he judged the thing ready for the boxroom and put it in the passage where the scout might attend to it, although if this was what he thought, he did not know he thought it—his mind was aswim with imagined conspiracies; there was no room for a suitcase.

  Hugh Stratton said: “You have paid your buttery bill.”

  This was not said in a spirit of congratulation but, rather, accusation. He shook his head slowly, as if he were at once exhausted by but resigned to this example of the young man’s treachery.

  Oscar was, by now, quite accustomed to Hugh Stratton’s fretful moods, but they had not lost their power to disturb him and he was, as usual, reduced to a sort of paralysis, knowing that almost anything he said would make the matter worse.

  When Mr Stratton unbuttoned his coat Oscar held out his hand to take it from him, but the offer was not accepted. Mr Stratton draped the old-fashioned black gabardine on the end of the bed.

  “And drinking coffee,” said Mr Stratton, walking over to the table the scout had spread for breakfast. He lifted the lid of the tea-pot as if it were a clever disguise for secret luxuries.

  “Oh no,” said Oscar, “not coffee,” and looked unhappily at the cold tight skin that was forming across the top of his porridge. He was hungry. It was his normal condition.

  “Not?” said Mr Stratton. He squinted at the student, and then down into the pot. “Not?”

  “I hope you received your coffee.”

  “Oh, yes, we received it,” said Hugh Stratton, meaning nothing in particular by his emphasis on received, wishing only to give the impression that he knew what tricks were being played, whatever they were.

  “And very nice too,” he said, “forgetting” his wife’s request that he pass on her especial thanks for so thoughtful a gift.

  “How are things in Hennacombe?” asked Oscar.

  “I bring a question from it. It is this: do you have an income? Because if you do, young man, you have deceived me.”

  “Oh, no, Mr Stratton, please.”

  “Please nothing,” said Mr Stratton. “I would take it very ill if you had tricked me. No, thank you, I would rather stand.”

  “I have not tricked you,” said Oscar, pushing the hard-backed chair back against the breakfast table. “You have been too kind to me to deserve trickery.”

  “Then how do you send me coffee? Explain that. It is fifteen years since I could afford coffee, and now you, a poor creature who did not know his Athanasian Creed two years ago, a pauper who would beg to be made a servitor, now you are so gracious as to send me this luxury with no explanation.”

  “Dear Mr Stratton, it was because I love you both. I meant no offence.”

  At the mention of “love” Mr Stratton blinked. “And now I hear your buttery bill is paid,” he said.

  “I marvel at the sources of your intelligence,” said Oscar, meaning to flatter, then panicking in mid-sentence when he saw it could be construed as rude.

  Hugh Stratton stopped blinking. “I know everything,” he said. “If you walked to Kidlington to say your prayers then I would hear about it.”

  Oscar thought: He knows I have been gambling. Then he thought: No, he does not.

  Mr Stratton had the subject firmly and would not let it go but then, it seemed, neither did he know what to do with it. “I am losing my health and my sleep worrying about how you may be supported here. I have written letters to the men whom I have previously asked to donate funds for the restoration of St Anne’s. This is not wise of me. It damages me. It is a fine old church and I fear I have done its cause a great disservice. And then you send me coffee.”

  “Also: I pay my buttery bill. Surely this makes your worry less onerous?”

  “But how did you make money?” asked Hugh Stratton, screwing up his face and tucking his chin into his neck. “Where did it come from? Is it from your father?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Do not ‘of course not’ me, young man.”

  “Dear Mr Stratton, I only wish you not to worry. God will provide for me.”

  The Reverend Mr Stratton struck his brow with his fist. “Do not, I beg you, be so simple.”

  “Perhaps I am simple,” said Oscar stubbornly, “but I should like to take responsibility for my own bills. I would wish you to worry no longer.”

  “Your father is paying.”

  “I swear to you he is not,” said Oscar who was due to leave for Epsom in fifteen minutes. Wardley-Fish’s binoculars sat on the ledge beside the breakfast table, but they were of even less consequence than a suitcase.

  “Then how,” the clergyman hissed, “are you paying?”

  Oscar felt obliged to tell the truth, was about to do so, but then he thought: He will take the gossip back to Hennacombe and use it against my papa in some way.

  “You are up to no good,” said Hugh Stratton. “For all I know you are a member of a betting ring. There was one in my time, three Hons too, and they were all of them sent down. You must promise me you would never be involved in such a thing. I am raising money for my little church’s restoration in Oxford. I cannot have my name brought low.”

  “My dear patron,” said Oscar, allowing himself to touch Mr Stratton on his rigid shoulder, “there is no need for such a promise.”

  There were heavy steps upon the stair. Oscar thought: It is Fish. But the steps passed on. It was not Fish.

  “No need,” said Oscar, “at all.”

  Hugh Stratton narrowed his eyes and stared fiercely at his protégé. If Oscar had not known him he would have imagined himself hated, but in a moment the gaunt face became loose and floppy and a small pink tongue came out to dampen the dry white corners of the mouth.

  “You are a good boy, Oscar,” he said. “You must not think that I imagine otherwise.”

  31

  Ascension Day

  There was something wrong with Lucinda’s dress. She did not know what it was, but it attracted attention. She had no confidence in the stupid fashion which bespoke mincing and vapidity. But her own judgement was of no use in the matter and she had purchased in accordance with the preferences of Chas Ahearn and his lavender-water wife. Even now, on the day of departure, they would not let her be but shepherded her, the one huffing and blowing, the other wobbling on her ankles and complaining about the dangerous timbering on the wharf. People stared and she assumed it was the dress. A larrikin threw a rock to fright her with its splash. She was in a fright anyway. She needed neither larrikins nor Ahearns to make it any worse. She had her inheritance, her parents’ lives rendered down as whole sheep are rendered down to tallow, something living and breathing that has become reduced to a piece of paper, a bank draft she could carry in this silly beaded purse and which, in the words of Mrs Ahearn, would “have you married in a jiff, and to the best in all the colony, a judge, a gov
ernor, yes, indeed, I mean to say.”

  Mr Ahearn thought that wishing for a governor went too far. Mrs Ahearn thought not. Their excitement made them quite insensitive to the feelings of the young heiress whose eyes were slitted to contain her anger. How dare they. They would dress her up in silly frippery and never once think how her Papa and Mama had worried and fretted over every penny. This money did not belong to them, or to her either. The money was stolen from the land. The land was stolen from the blacks. She could not have it. It was thirty pieces of silver. She would give it to the church. Indeed, she tried. She made a written offer to the Baptist Church but the minister, instead of accepting, visited Mr Anglican Ahearn and together they conspired that she should keep it. And she wished to keep it. She was alone in the world, orphaned, unprotected. She trusted nothing so much as she trusted that money, which she wished, fiercely, passionately, to keep, even while she tried to give it away. There was no one she could talk to about her feelings. She was pinned and crippled by her loneliness. In the afternoons she lay in her bed. There was a spring coiled tight across her chest. She held her arms straight and rigid by her side, like a trap waiting to be triggered.

  Lucinda Leplastrier was leaving Parramatta and going to Sydney. She was going against the most passionate advice, but she could not bear to be in Parramatta any more. Everyone wished to steer her this way and that, have her sit down, stand up, while all the time they smirked and thought her simple. She thought her simple. She thanked her God in heaven that she had money and was not at their mercy. And now there was this one final series of misunderstandings and she would be gone. Her crinoline cage bumped and swayed against the pressure of Mrs Ahearn’s wobbly-ankled perambulations. Everyone encouraged her to see this crinoline as an “improvement.” She thought them ignorant. The impracticality of the garment made her angry. She also had a silly hat. No wonder they stared at her.