Oscar and Lucinda Page 41

  It was this that lay behind the dangerous wager he now planned to undertake in the dining room of the Oriental Hotel.

  There were only two other tables occupied in the cavernous black-and-white-tiled dining room. A farming family occupied a table pushed gracelessly against a fluted pillar. A single gentleman in a frock coat sat beside a window; he read from a chapbook while he ate.

  Lucinda was not hungry. She ordered as Oscar did. Her mind was occupied with the problem of how to undo delicately the clever knitting of her lies concerning Dennis Hasset. She could not concentrate on anything as ordinary as food.

  She thought: This is what it is like when you love a man. She watched him as he buttered his bread and cut it into nine small squares. Should not this hitherto alien act now feel dear to her?

  “Do you know what I envy you?” she said. “It is that you are not constrained.”

  She meant: The way you walk, walk in here, your clothes like that, and do not give a hoot what opinion the waiters or the diners may have of you.

  He smiled, his piece of bread held between thumb and forefinger.

  “You do not mind who sees you or who hears you or what they think of you. You know your own value, I think, and this puts you in a strong position.”

  “And you?”

  “Oh,” she rearranged a small pin in her hair. “I am too careful.”

  He thought about this for a moment or two while he chewed his bread, and as he had the habit of chewing thirty-two times, this gave him the appearance of great sagacity whereas he was merely wondering, whilst he counted, whether he should disagree with her own assessment of herself and cite her Pak-Ah-Pu and wonder if this was, really Miss Leplastrier, the habit of a careful woman.

  But he said instead: “It does no harm to be careful.”

  They sat in silence. He seemed not to be discomforted by it. She was. The silence made her so-called love for Dennis Hasset seem too heavy and insurmountable an obstruction. It made her feel dull. It made her too aware of the waiters watching them. She did not like the Oriental Hotel with its crawling adoration of wealth. She began to resent the dining room and think how she would never have come here on her own initiative.

  “What a lovely place it is,” he said, gazing around.

  She thought: Do not be irritated and do not judge. He is not Them and he is not You. He is himself, uniquely so. When he admires, he admires as someone who cannot afford this luxury, not as someone who takes it as their right. Be like your papa who would want to know how the fluted pillars were made and what sort of fish that man is eating, and where it was caught and whether it is sweet to taste.

  “Shall I tell you my idea?” he asked her.

  “Oh, yes, do please.”

  “It involves glass.”

  “A subject close to my heart.”

  “We sometimes guard the things close to our hearts.”

  She did not look at him. She said: “You do not need to tread so carefully with me.”

  “Yes,” he said unhappily. He saw no invitation to intimacy in this. His preconceptions made such an interpretation impossible and so he understood her back to front.

  Lucinda heard his tone. She thought: I have been too bold. I am always in too much of a rush.

  “And,” she said, working against the current of a depression which now rose up and seemed destined to take possession of her mood, “of glass, tell me, what was your idea?”

  The waiter brought their consommé, not in a soup plate, in a deep bowl. Did he always have consommé? She had always thought it food for invalids.

  “You could manufacture conservatories.”

  “Is this your idea?” she asked, her heart now truly leaden.

  “Oh, no,” he grinned.

  “I would loathe,” she smiled, “to manufacture conservatories.”

  They both looked at each other, their soup spoons raised above their bowls. In that moment she felt ridiculously happy. She felt he loved her after all. She could not stop smiling. “So what,” she said, laughing, “is your idea?”

  He sipped his soup. He had a nice sipping mouth. She liked the way it came to meet the spoon. She desired the mouth. She breathed out very quietly.

  “You must tell me,” she said.

  “Indeed.”

  But he did not tell her. Instead he bent over his soup bowl and went at it with speed. Once, half—way through, he looked up and raised an eyebrow. Lucinda felt that mixture of irritation and affection so well known to Wardley-Fish.

  “There,” he said, wiping his mouth with a fastidiousness perhaps induced by the quality of the napkin, “now I can speak without my soup going cold.”

  “You are a practical man,” she laughed. She felt a little unreal—a thrumming sensation behind her eyes.

  “In some respects, yes, I am,” he said. “How does your correspondent enjoy his living in Boat Harbour?”

  She shut her eyes against the question’s slap. She was shocked to feel its cold hostility. And even though hostility was not intended, she was not mistaken in detecting it.

  She straightened her cutlery. She said: “Well enough.”

  “And does he have a church built yet?”

  She thought: Fool, fool, do you think I care for Hasset?

  She said: “They hold service in a room above a cobbler’s. They threw his predecessor into the river.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “they will do the same with him.”

  Oscar looked up sharply, but Lucinda was finishing her soup. When he at last saw her face it was like a room swept clean of meaning.

  A waiter took away their bowls.

  Oscar said: “Mr Hasset should have a church.”

  She did not wish to discuss Hasset. She said nothing.

  Oscar did not like to think of Hasset either. It was the first time he had spoken the name out loud. When he said it he saw a hoe or a mattock, neither of them implements he had any fondness for. and yet he must say the name for he had an idea involving it, an idea that involved such a dreadful laceration of his own feelings that it is really hard to credit. And yet it was all born out of habits of mind produced by Christianity: that if you sacrificed yourself you would somehow attain the object of your desires. It was a knife of an idea, a cruel instrument of sacrifice, but also one of great beauty, silvery, curved, dancing with light. The odds were surely stacked against him, and had it been a horse rather than a woman’s heart he would never have bet on it, not even for a place.

  “And what would his feelings be, do you imagine,” he said, “if, when Mr Hasset awoke one morning, he looked out of his window and saw a church?”

  Lucinda opened her mouth to reply.

  “Made of glass,” said my great-grandfather. (See! This is the sort of man I am!)

  It was at this point that the waiter brought the flounder. They said yes or no to tartare sauce, watched vegetables being spooned on to their plates, accepted spinach, rejected squash, and hardly knew what they were doing. All their emotions were fused together in this glass vision in which they saw that which cannot be seen—wonder, joy, the transparent traceries of angels dancing. They were smiling at each other in such a way as to be almost indecent and the chef poked his head around the door to see what he had heard reported by the waiter.

  The fish’s flesh was white and moist. She lifted it carefully from its skeleton, and then replaced it.

  “But what would one intend?” she asked, her voice very level and cautious. “What would one intend with such a gift?”

  He hardly knew what he intended. That he be a perfect friend to her, that he show himself above jealousy, that she employ him, that he help her assemble this flawless thing, that he possess it in some way, that he be permitted to be a party to the manufacture of a prism, a prayer to God, that the prayer be made from glass and she would, therefore, because of it, love him. He could not see this glass church in his mind’s eye without smiling. It had a force of its own. He looked at it as I once sa
w my own father, standing in a shiny-floored corridor in the Sydney Museum of Arts and Science, staring at a china cup inside a case.

  “It would be a lovely thing,” he said.

  “Yes, I see that.”

  He would not look her in the eye.

  “Such a gift,” she said, “would not be personal?” she meant personal as having to do with her and Hasset. So preoccupied was she with this problem that she did not even imagine the possibility of ambiguity.

  “Oh, no,” he said, “not personal.” He thought she meant personal as between him and her; he was embarrassed to have his scheme so clearly apprehended. “Oh, no, most definitely not.”

  “Do we understand each other?”

  “Yes.” He looked her straight in the eye and she saw, then, the strength in him. He was so light and frail, so soft in his manner, that it was always a surprise to see this, the steel armature of his soul. She thought about kissing and then she pushed the matter firmly from her mind. She would not frighten him away.

  “Yes,” she said, “it would be a lovely thing.” She had never dared to imagine anything so commercially senseless. She would be laughed at by all the whiskered sages of church and business. She thought: He is mad; I am mad. But when she objected, what she said was not in tune with her spirit which skipped impatiently ahead like a reckless little stone sent dancing across a river.

  “But it is hardly practical, Mr Hopkins.”

  “It is a dangerous word,” he said, smiling, entranced by her upper lip.

  “Which word is that?”

  “Practical. It is the word they use in Sydney when they wish to do something damaging to the spirit. Excuse me, you must think me rude.”

  “No, no, although you must not hold me responsible for Sydney.”

  “I never struck the term so much at Home. But here, you know, it is a word dull men use when they wish to hide the poverty of their imagination. But would you say it was ‘practical’ to sing hymns, to give glory to God, to pray, to fast? And what is the practical purpose of a church? For if it is only to provide shelter for Christians—and my dear papa would take this view—then it is better to have your congregation gather in cobblers’ rooms. But if your church, no matter how small, is also a celebration of God, then I would say I was the most practical man you have spoken to all year.”

  “And there would be nothing personal in its intention?”

  “Do I appear a rogue?”

  “No,” she smiled, “you do not,” and because he made her smile she did not think it a puzzling answer to her question. “Your fish …” She meant that his fish was cold, uneaten, although he still held a knife and fork as he had from the beginning.

  “My fish does not matter. My fish is dead, but we are alive. We are gamblers in the noble sense. We believe all eternity awaits us. And am I wrong in supposing that you could pack a church in crates and transport it by cart? It is like the stairs at the library. It is what they call prefabricated. It comes in pieces. It has nuts and bolts and so on.”

  “Or by ship?”

  “You could transport an entire cathedral and assemble it across the mountains. Can you imagine a glass cathedral?”

  She could. She saw its steeples, domes, its flying buttresses, motes of dust, shafts of light. “Mr Hopkins, we are mad to think of it.”

  “Not mad, I pray not mad. But the sheer joy of contemplating it is hard to contain.”

  She thought: I cannot separate love from glass; I must be just a little mad.

  He said: “I think it is this feeling that you are tempted to call madness, but there is a more accurate description…but I will embarrass you …”

  “You need not protect me.”

  “I embarrass myself. However…it is ecstasy we are feeling.”

  She nodded, smiling, her eyes swimming. “But also mad.”

  “No, no, no.” He banged his fist on the table. The cutlery jumped. The gentleman with the chapbook stood up and left. He said something, more than three words, less then twenty, but it does not matter what it was and did not matter at the time.

  “And you,” Lucinda said, “would it be amusing for you to assist me in this endeavour?”

  “I am a practical man,” said Oscar, giggling.

  She paused, not knowing if he meant it ironically or literally. “But perhaps you might assist me none the less.”

  “With pleasure,” said Oscar, who, now he had part of what he had coveted, was guilty and uneasy, as if he had stolen something from her.

  “Can you imagine Hasset’s face?”

  The face she meant to conjure up was astonished, gawp-mouthed, sad to have been excluded from the manufacture of such a miracle. But the face Oscar saw was a man whose love has been rekindled. That was the risk inherent in the venture.

  “But it is you, dear lady,” Oscar said, “who must see his face. For it is you, surely, who must deliver it to him.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “But surely …” he protested, his heart already lightening.

  “Oh, no, I cannot leave the works.”

  “You would not …”

  “It is quite impossible,” she said sternly. “They are only just recovering from my last absence.”

  “Then I shall,” cried Oscar, “on your behalf.”

  Lucinda did not understand the source of his jubilation. She frowned, wondering if the balloon of their dream was not about to be pricked.

  “It is approached by sea,” she said. She remembered, although she had no wish to, his behaviour in the storm aboard the Leviathan.

  “Then I shall go by land,” he grinned, and clasped his hands contentedly and dropped “But, Mr Hopkins, I do not think you understand.”

  He thought: It is difficult, yes, and dangerous. It is a bet against the odds, but if I am the adventurer then the odds, surely, must be swinging in my favour.

  His smiling face made Lucinda fear for him. He was so frail, and white. He brought his fingers together and flexed them underneath his pointed chin. He could not imagine—she knew he could not—what this countryside was like. He used soft words like brook and lane and copse. He could not imagine its saw-toothed savagery.

  “I will be your messenger.”

  “Mr Hopkins, please, no.”

  “You think it outside my scope?” asked Oscar. He was not offended, and the reason he was not offended was that there was no room in his soul for such a thing. His body was awash with all those chemicals he had hitherto found only at the racetrack.

  “Say it,” he said. “You think it beyond my scope.”

  “There is no shame in that,” she said, and reached across to pat his sleeve.

  “There is no truth in it either,” he said jubilantly, feeling a caress in the pat. “I wager you I can do it. You may nominate the date.”

  His face was very pale yet also very bright. The skin was taut, the eyes were glistening and fixed on hers. She thought it best to take her hand away.

  “Mr Hopkins, I like you too much to encourage you to injury.”

  “But I must.”

  “Come, please, this is madness now.,”

  “I must,” he said quietly. “It would mean a great deal to me.” It was then she knew that he loved her. “You are doing this for me?”

  It was not a question he wished to be asked. He felt his own silence humming in his ears. He would not look at her.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Do you think I wish you dead?”

  “I am too happy to wish for death,” he said. “I have no intention of becoming dead. Mr Judd, for instance—and I know you do not care for him …”

  “Care for him?”

  “But I take him as an example. Mr Judd makes journeys like this all the time. I am prepared to wager you I can have the glass church in Boat Harbour by, say, Good Friday.”

  He had no basis for this date. He plucked it from the air. It felt appropriate. He had no idea how long the church might take to manufacture. This aspect of his wager, the fin
ancial part, was of no interest to him.

  “And what can you bet?” she asked.

  He saw her face change as she spoke. Her eyes became sleepy-lidded, and her lower lip pouted.

  “Ten guineas.”

  “It is not enough.”

  “What is enough?”

  She opened her mouth and closed it. It was so quiet in the dining room Oscar heard the noise of the skin of her lips as they separated.

  He placed his hands palm down on the table. “What is enough?” he repeated.

  “Your inheritance,” said Lucinda quietly. She had not bet in two weeks but she had never, in all her life, made a bet like the one she was about to make with Oscar Hopkins.

  “My father may live until he’s one hundred. He is not a rich man, anyway.”

  “It makes no difference.”

  “And you would bet?”

  “The same.”

  “The same amount?”

  “The same. My inheritance.”

  “You already have it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your works.”

  “Yes. Everything.”

  “You wager all that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you are mad,” said Oscar. “You are mad, not I. For heaven’s sake.” He scratched his head and looked around the dining room, surprised to find it empty. He felt himself the subject of her passion and yet (she loves Hasset) did not understand it.

  “Five weeks,” he said, “without even a game of penny poker, and now this.”

  Lucinda smiled at him. She felt light. She would have him taken care of. She would employ the best tracker, an explorer, a surveyor. They would carry him safely, and they would bring him back. He would win. She would lose. She would give him all the armour she had hitherto used to keep herself safe. She was mad. She was pleased to be mad. She loved him. She would be looked after.

  “Sleep on it,” she said. “There is no requirement that you accept.”

  “But I must go.”