Oscar and Lucinda bw-1988 Read online

  He had become a man of authority. He felt himself uncramped at last, free from the petty limitations of Mr d'Abbs's employ. He could say to one man, go, and he went, to another, come, and he came. He was conscious of standing straighter. He could feel the girth of his chest pressing against the buttons of his shirt. He employed tall men he knew he could control with the strength of his eyes. He was stern with them and unsmiling. He dispatched his overseer and bullock driver both with instruction that no beast he bought but that they both be in agreement. They took this order meekly, although they surely found it most distasteful. The bullock driver called him "Captain," Later this misunderstanding was to spread. Mr Jeffris engaged a storekeeper, two blacksmiths, a medical attendant, a collector of birds and a collector of plants (although these last two were entered on the paybook as "riflemen"), a groom, a trumpeter, two carpenters, a shoemaker, a cook.

  Miss Leplastrier did not query him on a single point.

  He borrowed two mountain barometers and entrusted one of these to the collector of birds and another to the collector of plants, telling them that it was to be their main duty whilst actually travelling to guard the safety of these barometers for he planned to go about this journey like a trigonometrist, knowing always, exactly, where he was in space, and he would not be, he told the red-necked, Belfast-born plant collector, like some fart-faced Irishman crashing through the undergrowth like a wombat.

  They would carry axes and they would be razor-sharp at all times, for there is nothing a surveyor despises more than a tree that obscures his trig point.

  Miss Leplastrier made a horse and sulky available to him so he might move about smartly. He was soon a familiar sight on the road out to Mort Bay, standing straight and flaying the poor animal to get a skip on. He was on his way to Harrison's shipyards where old Oliver Crawley, a wide, bow-legged shipwright with a white cataract on his left eye, was constructing two light whale boats, the smaller designed to fit inside the larger when the thwarts of the larger one were removed for travelling. The larger boat was then to be suspended within a frame of belts and canvases and the canvas most in contact with the boat was to be guarded with sheepskin and greased

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  hide, and this whole sling, of course, was to be fitted into the boat carriage, that machine which rolled silently through the tracks of Oscar Hopkins's nightmares.

  Mr Jeffris took each man, as he was engaged, to Anthony Hordern's store where they were kitted out, on account of Miss Leplastrier, with a suit of new clothing. There were strong grey twill trousers, a red woollen shirt which, when crossed with white braces, provided a military appearance. This was as Mr Jeffris had calculated it. He would require absolute obedience and he made it clear from the beginning.

  It was his intention that Oscar Hopkins also dress in this manner. It was important that he not place himself, as it were, above the law. And yet Mr Jeffris could not come at the matter directly. He could hardly demand it, and yet he could not countenance any exception to his rule. He broached the subject with Miss Leplastrier but she only laughed and said it was something he must discuss with Mr Hopkins. When she laughed like that he would like to put her on her back in bed. He bowed formally and said nothing, but he went to Hordern's, anyway, and bought the correct items of clothing in sizes he guessed would suit the stick-limbed Mr Smudge. He cantered back across the city and out to the Darling Harbour glassworks where he was told Mr Hopkins was "in preparation."

  He was amused at the idea of Mr Smudge preparing for anything. He had never, in all his experience, met anyone so mentally and physically unprepared for life. In the world that Mr Jeffris called the "real world," an imaginary place with neither parliaments nor factories, Mr Smudge would simply die. When he heard he was "preparing" he had a vision of him in baggy combinations, with pencil-thin arms, working with his dumbbells. Thus he arrived at the glassworks in an excellent humour, with his handsome dark eyes dancing and his teeth showing beneath the curtain of his moustache. He wore his wideshouldered, box-pleated coat and a pair of white cotton gloves. If the effect was eccentric, he was unaware of it. At this very moment there were sixteen men in Sydney whose only labour was to make his dream a reality. For I also am a man of authority, and I say to one man go, and he goeth, I say to another come and he cometh.

  But when he entered the glassworks he was not pleased (not pleased? He was furious) to see that they were, once again, unpacking the glass church and all the crates, which had been, at six o'clock last night, screwed tightly shut, now had their lids (A, B, C, D, etc.) stacked

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  A Man of Authority

  against the walls, and all the hessian bags, which had been lined up and laced tight, were now as empty as bladders on a slaughterhouse floor. The furnaces were cold and the glass blowers were at the boxes like children on Christmas morning while the biggest child of them all, the pale and excitable Mr Smudge, was calling out instructions in his fluting choirboy's voice. And they obeyed him! Oh, my God, thought Mr Jeffris, I cannot bear it. It was against the natural order, that a man like this should give orders to men like these, and not only be obeyed, but be willingly obeyed.

  '"No, no, Harry, no," the fool cried to Flood, the foundryman from! Leichhardt, "I must do it by myself without instruction." I He was incompetent. You could see he was incompetent. He had la little hessian bag labelled "Bl" from which he was removing the pieces of decorative cast-iron cresting, which was to run along the ridge of the roof. Why was he fiddling with this now? Was he not meant to be assembling a wall section?

  Jeffris looked towards the one person whom he most reluctantly admitted as "competent." She, who should be disapproving of all this, I sat complacently in the glass blower's wooden throne. She was a handisome little woman with dainty feet and slender ankles and it angered I Mr Jeffris that she should choose to lie in bed with this extraordinary I child. I As for the church itself, it was the silliest thing he had ever heard I of. He imagined it was the single-armed foundryman-he who was [always cooing over the bits and pieces with a measuring rod and I calliper-who had tricked her into it. What a fortune he must be makiing from her with all his little extra frills, his fiddly crests, his gay little ["terminals," his ornate railing, all of themMr Jeffris assumedI "specials" and therefore charged out at a premium. E Mr Jeffris did not like the church even when it was packed away. I And yet he could not help but admire Miss Leplastrier for the way she I looked after the details of her own deception. She was a great woman I for lists. He was the same. His whole life now was a series of lists and I he saw, in Lucinda Leplastrier, his equal in meticulous order. He also I thought this list-making of hers to be demeaning to him. It was he, las expedition leader, who should be in charge of packing the cargo. I Yet she stated, very clearly-her eyes meeting his full square while she I did so-that the responsibility was hers. She gave him a list of cargo I appended to which she had written, all in a strong clear hand,

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  directions on how each wagon was to be packed. The whole damn thing was like a jigsaw puzzle. The long, hessian-wrapped "barleysugar" columns must lie on the starboard whilst boxes

  "H" and "B"-being balanced in weight-must lie on the port. No box with a "2" suffix (A2, B2) could be packed over an axle, and so on. It took a full day to load, and now, just when everybody seemed happy, when the embarrassment had been covered with canvas and lashed down securely, the Hooting Boy had decided he must have the whole thing in pieces and go again. He was like a child who cannot leave his toys alone.

  He was not wearing combinations as Mr Jeffris had imagined when he thought of him

  "preparing." But the vision was very close to life. Oscar Hopkins was clad in a workman's boiler suit. His face was streaked with packing grease. He rubbed his hands together and returned Mr Jeffris's actor's smile.

  "I am in rehearsal, you see," he said. "There is no doubt I will require some assistance at Boat Harbour
, but it need not be skilled. I can glaze, you see. You must admit yourself surprised."

  "Indeed," said Mr Jeffris.

  "It is a tougher job than Latin verbs, I promise you."

  Mr Jeffris had all his spleen. He wedged the parcel containing Oscar's uniform underneath his arm and held his arms behind his back. He rocked on his toes and heels and while Oscar teetered on a ladder, and clambered on the empty spider web of glasshouse roof, he made small talk with Miss Leplastrier about a play he had seen at the Lyceum in Pitt Street. He admired the church, and was able to use his knowledge of trigonometry to flatter the design. And all the way he wished only that they would pack the thing away.

  Mr Jeffris did not like the church but he was certainly not without a sense of history. Each pane of glass, he thought, would travel through country where glass had never existed before, not once, in all time. These sheets would cut a new path in history. They would slice the white dustcovers of geography and reveal a map beneath, with rivers, mountains, and names, the streets of his birthplace, Bromley, married to the rivers of savage Australia.

  There would be pain in this journey, and most likely death. Mr Jeffris knew it now. He felt the axe in his hands, the cut scrub, the harsh saw-teeth of mountains giving up their exact latitude to his theodolites. There would be pain like this wax-skinned girlie boy had never known, and if he was afeared of water he was afeared of the wrong thing entirely.

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  The Lord Is My Shepherd

  Lucinda thought: Terrible things always happen on beautiful days. Nothing bad has ever happened to me on a rainy day. When they brought my papa home with his socks showing there were butcher-birds singing along the fences and king-fishers with chests like emeralds flying two inches above the surface of the creek. The sky was blue.

  The sky was also blue in the week when her mama died, on the day Hasset sailed, and now, here, as they followed the wagons down to Semi-Circular Quay-she in her white hat and veil, he in the silly uniform that Jeff ris wished him in-it was a clear blueskied day. The uniform was too big around his chest and shoulders. It gathered and rucked. His braces were not tight. She thought of a poor creature she had seen in the street outside the Sydney asylum, a nurse on either side of him; he had a bare white neck so long you could not help but think of knives.

  All her passion, all her intelligence, her discipline, her love had gone to produce nothing but a folly. She had not known this until she saw him in his humiliating suit. It would seem that he also knew this. There was a panic in his eyes, but now all these sixteen wagons would not be stopped. They were rolling like tumbrils through the public street of Sydney and urchins ran out of lanes hoorahing the procession. They called Mr Jeffris "Captain" and wanted to know if he was Captain Stuart. Mr Jeffris did not deign to answer them. His back was straight, his lips glistening. His horse was all impatience, eager to overleap the air. Lucinda felt an animosity towards the handsome chestnut she would not yet permit herself to feel towards the rider. T7<;

  Oscar and Lucinda

  The Lord is my shepherd

  I shall not want

  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures

  He leadeth me beside the still waters.

  There was not a single black in the party, although Lucinda had directed that this be otherwise. Now Jeff ris clattered beside her shouting that there was no point recruiting the unhappy souls in the streets of Sydney. He would recruit his niggers when they were up country.

  "I am offering a bonus," Lucinda called, digging into her purse. They were now moving along the bottom end of George Street. The trumpeter-he was riding in the wagon behind-made a loud discordant noise on his instrument.

  "No trumpets," roared Jeffris, wheeling and rearing.

  Why pay for trumpets then? Lucinda thought. "A bonus," she shouted, having to wave the crumpled white envelope at Mr Jeffris. She knew this was too weak and desperate. She saw how he despised her and she was frightened of what she had done.

  She told Jeffris that Mr Hopkins would hand over the money when he had been safely delivered. She then gave Oscar the envelope and as she had offended and humiliated her friend. She saw how patronizing she had been. She could have wept. She thought: They will cut his throat and steal the money from him.

  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

  "The Lord keep you safe," she said.

  She gave him the scroll which was the formal document of their wager. He also pushed an envelope at her. And then he was down on the ground, away from her. She felt the cruel emptiness in her arms and her chest, as if she were nothing but an empty mould-she felt an ache in the places where he had, a moment before, pressed against her. She touched her shoulders with the tips of her fingers. She embraced the echo of his presence. She wrapped a rug around herself although it was not cold.

  All around her the navvies swore and cursed the sap-heavy boxes, which contained nothing to equate with the crystal-pure, bat-winged structure of her dreams, but a lead-heavy folly, thirty hundredweight of cast-iron rods, five hundred and sixty-two glass sheets weighing two pounds each, twenty gross of nuts and bolts, sixty pounds of putty, five gallons of linseed oil. She saw him walk out on to a barge, then be escorted to its neighbour. There was a man on either side of him.

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  93 Doggerel

  The envelope Oscar gave Lucinda was bent in half, and then quarters, and then eighths. It was folded and refolded until, in its tired and grimy state, its simple address smudged, its corners dog-eared, it became a flimsy monument to all her misery.

  That she did not open it was not forgetfulness. On the contrary, she was more aware of that envelope than anything else on her slow return to Longnose Point. She placed it on her kitchen table, leaned it against the brown-glazed tea-pot which still contained the cold soggy dregs of their last cup of tea. There were blow-flies in here as well. They crawled around the milky rim of two tea-cups, neither of which was empty. She picked up the envelope, but did not open it. She did not wish to weep. She dreaded the sound of her howling in an empty house. This noise was a living nightmare in her imagination. And she would not open the envelope because she imagined it contained all of those fine feelings of the heart that they had, both of them, so passionately hinted at.

  So this is how it was not until Tuesday 15 March, a full six days after the party's departure, that Lucinda opened it.

  In her hand she found this simple doggerel:

  7 dare not hope, And yet I must That through this deed, I gain your trust.

  "Oh, my darling," she cried out loud to the kitchen as she had never done when he stood in it.

  "You had my trust, always."

  She sat down heavily on the rung-backed chair but then, driven by a great shiver of passion, sprang up again, her face contorted, her hands clutching at the loose hair at the nape of her neck. vn

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  "My God, you fool."

  She walked to the window. She took out hairpins. She put them back in. The light from the harbour was as harsh and cold as chips of broken glass. She bit the knuckles of her hand. She screwed up her eyes and grunted: aaaah.

  She had not cared about the church. The church had been conceived in a fever. It was not a celebration of sacred love, but of their own. Likewise this wager-she saw now, with her head pressed hard against the window pane, with her eyes tight shut, that she had only made this bet so that she might finally do what she had never managed to do upon a gaming table, that is to slough off the great guilty weight of her inheritance, drop it like a rusty armour she did not need, that she be light as a feather, as uncorrupted as an empty purse, unencumbered, naked, with her face pressed into the soft and secret place at the bottom of his graceful neck. With this ring I thee wed, with this body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.

  "You knew," she said, walking to the sitting room, up the stairs. "You knew my heart. How could you misunderstand
me to such an extent."

  That very day she sent a messenger to find the party, but they had already departed from the expected track at Singleton and were pushing into unmapped country with the two blacks from the Wonnarua tribe.

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  Mr Smith

  Mr Smith, Mr Percy Smith, he with the sandy hair and mild, blinking eye, Mr Borrodaile's friend, he who was forever removing llama hair from his trousers, Mr Smith had been engaged as a collector of animals for the expedition, and he had purchased, from his own funds, seven

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  Mr Smith

  octavo volumes of one hundred pages in each in which to record his findings, together with sixteen crates containing empty bottles, cork, paper, wax, etc. He had a barrel of formaldehyde and another of spirits together with other instruments, many of which he had, again purchased especially for this journey, which he understood was to enter that teeming semi-tropical country which the cedar cutters had named, typically, "The Big Scrub." But he had gone no further than a chain out from Semi-Circular Quay when the leader of the expedition, without being aware of his acquaintance with the Reverend Mr Hopkins, appointed him the tatter's keeper and told him, while all the rest of the men were more concerned with a passenger who had leapt from the deck of the berthing Sobraon and seemed intent on drowningit was the pilot boat that saved him in any case-that he should regard all other duties as second to this one. So while the pilot's deckhand forced a boat hook through the swimming man's breeches, Mr Smith assisted Mr Jeffris in inserting a metal funnel between Oscar Hopkins's clenched teeth. The funnel had last seen service inside the jaws of a dying Derby hog. It had not since been sterilized, but Mr Jeffris would not hear of such a nicety-he was already administering the first dose of laudanum which he had, he I claimed, purchased by the gallon jar for this specific purpose. It was then, with the treacly green liquid running down Mr Hopkins's pointed chin, with the shadow of the Sobraon's sails falling across his extraordinary passionate face, that Mr Jeffrishe who had been so dedicated, nay fanatical about the importance of professionally collecting fauna coolly, without apology, revised his duties. He put it to him thus: "You are to supervise him at all times. You are not to let him out of your sight. If you wipe your arse-hole, you will have one eye on him. While you have your hand upon your roger, you will have the other hand around his ankle. Where there are rivers to be forded, you will be advised, where possible, of the impending crossing, and you will administer five fluid ounces of the laudanum." Percy Smith thought: I am a weak man to agree to this. How can they always seek me out, and why do I smile at them and nod my head?