Oscar and Lucinda Read online

  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:

  I 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.

  “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.

  94

  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 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 drowning—it 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 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 Jeffris—he 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?

  He had looked at Mr Jeffris’s face at that moment, on the barge, when he was asked if these orders were acceptable. He had been unable to hold the eyes. His soul had shrivelled like a leech in salt.

  At the first night’s camp, Mr Jeffris had made a speech around the campfire. He had told the party: “You can be raging boys at night, but, by God, you will be soldiers in the day.” And they were.

  Now on the second night, at Wiseman’s Ferry, the men were shouting raving drunk and Mr Smith half-expected one of them to shoot or hack or slash his way into the lighted tent where the leader worked upon his journals. That they did not was as much due to the type of men Mr Jeffris had selected as the force of his character. They were men who, no matter how they might glower or curse, enjoyed being “soldiers.” And Mr Jeffris’s leadership was such that you could believe this former clerk would murder a man for disobedience. His hand was never far from pistol and sword, and, indeed, he had drawn the latter at a creek crossing that day—a leafy little place with clear water running six inches deep across a sandy bed—and had sworn he would cut the hand off the carpenter and feed it to the dogs, and this merely because the carpenter had expressed the view that the cargo was “safe enough.” Mr Jeffris did not show a different character from the one he had revealed when wearing striped trousers in Mr d’Abbs office. He merely brought himself into keener focus. He drew his antique sword and called the man—he was a boy, really, with sandy hair and a newly sunburnt nose—“a frigging colonial frigging dog, a frigging lemon-sucking incompetent.” He would cut his hand off. By God he would. You watch him. He would feed it to him for his dinner. Etc.

  Now Mr Smith sat on a log next to the young clergyman and stared into the fire. He had been on several journeys of exploration, and this always was a time of day he enjoyed. There was no shortage of water here, and so he had washed his day’s clothes and hung them on a line he had rigged along the wagon where he and Oscar were carried as passengers. This was already dubbed by the overseer the “Ladies’ Compartment,” on account of the canvas awning provided them. Mr Smith now wore clean clothes. They were cool against the skin and still smelt of his wife’s ironing board.

  His companion had neither washed nor changed his clothes. He had been too shy to bathe naked in front of the other men and must now, surely, be in a state of some discomfort. So much did Mr Smith enjoy the feeling of clean linen against his skin, that he was made vicariously uncomfortable at that thought of Oscar Hopkins’s sweat-sticky garments. It had been hot travelling. The country was still very dry, and where ploughed, dusty. They had travelled half a day along a series of ridges still smouldering from bushfire. Tree roots w
ere still alight and, twice, burning branches crashed dangerously close to the party. He and Mr Hopkins had travelled with wet handkerchiefs on their faces but their skin, of course, was filthy from the smoke and ash. Percy Smith could not bear for his companion to sit in his filth.

  “It is a pleasant time for bathing,” he said. “The moon up over the water. I think there is nothing so pleasant. In fact I have a mind to bathe again. Old mother night,” he said, “throws a modest curtain on us.”

  Oscar said nothing.

  Two Scots were singing somewhere by the boat carriage:

  “I wae tae ye a tale o’ angel named Beggs,

  Came down ta earth, silk purse ‘tween ha legs.”

  Percy Smith was embarrassed on the clergyman’s account. He sipped his rum and water and stared at the fire.

  “Does your throat still pain you?”

  “Oh, it is not so bad.”

  “I have been thinking,” Percy Smith said, taking out his pipe and tobacco pouch, “that if I were to coat the funnel with wax it might not be so painful. But then I fear your fit will make you bite it, and a loose piece of wax could easily choke.”

  “I had no fit.”

  “But you have a phobia about the water.”

  “All my life. Yet when I mounted the barge I had no phobia. I was merely sad to leave one I loved so dearly.”

  “Mr Hopkins,” said Mr Smith, sending great plumes of blue smoke into the night, “Mr Hopkins, has the laudanum removed all memory from you?” And he laughed to show he did not mean it unkindly. “You forget.”

  “And what do I forget, Mr Smith?” The voice was cool and unfriendly.

  Mr Smith thought: He will not easily forgive me for what I must do to him. Yet he, too, is in the maniac’s power. We are both in the same boat. He must forgive me. It is intolerable he should not.

  Mr Smith said: “You forget I found you in a fit. Your teeth were clenched. Your face was red as butcher’s meat. Your eyes had rolled and your veins were like worms lying on your brow.”

  “You found me thus, oh account of that ‘person’ whom we stupidly engaged to deliver this cargo,” Oscar hissed. “It was he who assaulted me and pushed me down and forced this ‘medicine’ upon me.”

  “He has a great responsibility,” said Percy Smith. “He fears you will throw yourself into the water.”

  “He fears he will lose his bonus. But he will not lose me. I will not allow myself to be lost. I have much to live for.”

  “Do you forget it was I who introduced her to our table?”

  “I am sorry …”

  “Your ‘much-to-live-for.’ Do you remember who it was who arranged her invitation to Mr Borrodaile’s table?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Oscar, and Mr Smith was pleased to hear the voice, at last, lighten.

  “You have that to thank me for.”

  “Indeed.”

  A moment later, Oscar said: “I have never seen men behave like this.”

  Percy Smith was not sure exactly what he referred to, whether he meant Mr Jeffris himself or the men who wrestled with each other by the edge of the fire or those dancing a drunken jig around the overseer’s grey tent. There was also, of course—and this was quite normal—much profanity in the night.

  “I fear I am not suited to this life,” the clergyman said. “There is a cruel feel to it. Indeed, it is extraordinary that one can go through life and know so little of it. I suppose much of it is like this.”

  “Oh, aye,” said Percy Smith, and sighed. “Oh, aye.”

  “You need give me no medicine tomorrow. It does not agree with me.”

  Percy Smith said nothing.

  “Strictly speaking,” Oscar said, “Mr Jeffris is in my employ.” He stood up. For a moment it seemed that he would walk to Mr Jeffris’s tent. Indeed he took a step in the direction of that tent, which glowed with the light of three lanterns. But then he stopped and Percy Smith stood to see what it was had halted him: it was the carpenter, he who had been threatened with amputation. He was kneeling in the outer circle of firelight and thus, with his fair hair touching the ground, was allowing himself to be penetrated by the overseer.

  “May God save you,” said Oscar Hopkins. He said it in a high clear voice. It cut across the campsite with that clean slice you hear in whip-birds in dense bush.

  In a moment there would be a general eruption of laughter, an ugly noise which could contain, within its chaos, noises like doors slamming, donkeys braying. But for a moment, everything was very quiet.

  95

  Arrival of Wardley-Fish (1)

  Four weeks out from Home, Ian Wardley-Fish had looked into his silver-backed mirror and seen, above the unblemished white of his clerical collar, a gross and thick-lipped man with weak and watery bloodshot eyes, a buffoon who—even whilst standing in the dock before his Better Self—tried to grin and joke his way to acceptance; but it would not do. Wardley-Fish placed his mirror upon the washstand and, having wedged his bulk between washstand and bed, kneeled upon his cabin floor. He vowed to God that he would henceforth forswear not only cards and alcohol and smutty talk, but also that he would acquit himself with dignity, that he would eschew the company of Messrs Clarkson and Maguire, those two “gentlemen” with whom he had, not three hours previously, been pleased to recite sixteen verses of “Eskimo Nell.”

  His head hurt terribly. He had drunk a thing which Clarkson, an agent of some type in Sydney, called Squatter’s Punch. It was made with grenadine, champagne and a particularly foul colonial rum, which Clarkson, who was addicted to the stuff, had carried with him to London. Maguire, being from Belfast, claimed he could drink anything, but had been defeated by the Squatter’s Punch. Wardley-Fish was playing the “Modern Man of God.” He had outdone himself last night.

  He had also, again, said unflattering things about his ex-fiancée’s knees. He had said these things before. He had said it was the image of these knees—glimpsed accidentally in a moment on the Serpentine—that had made the marriage impossible to him. This was not true. But in his cups he had enjoyed drawing gross pictures for Maguire and Clarkson. They thought him exceedingly modern. But he would do this no more, and with his stomach rebelling against the smell of his own chamber-pot, he promised God he would henceforth behave as both a Christian and a gentleman.

  Even as he made the vow he feared he had not the strength to keep it, and yet he did, well past the time when he had the queasiness of his stomach to assist him.

  His earlier “shenanigans” had attracted a great deal of attention, and his period of reform was therefore quite luminous in its effect. Indeed, by the time the Sobraon heeled over for its last long straight tack into Sydney Harbour, the Powells and Half-smiths and even Miss Masterson were all beginning to bid him good day and smile in that special fond way one reserves for those who have regained the fold.

  And yet you would be surprised at the damage a man can do in the distance between the high wild cliffs that guard the entrance to Sydney harbour and the placid waters at Semi-Circular Quay. The distance is three nautical miles, no more.

  The problem was that Wardley-Fish liked to be liked. It was a weakness, he knew, but having cut Clarkson and Maguire without explanation, and having ignored them completely for so many weeks, he wished to make his peace with them.

  He could not hope to achieve this reconciliation and then refuse Clarkson’s offer of a glass of rum. This rum was a very personal matter with Clarkson. It was not something he would entrust to a steward. It must be dispensed from a silver flask and have a dash of cloves cordial added with an eyedropper. Now Wardley-Fish was a big man and built—with his powerful haunches and hefty backside—not unlike a sturdy pottery jug. In normal circumstances he held his liquor well and yet on this occasion, drinking rum at the rails of the Sobraon, it took only two noggins to make his speech quite slurry. Perhaps it was excitement, to be at last in Sydney Harbour on this glorious blue-skied day, or relief, that Clarkson (who had a prim red nose and a small censorious mouth) s
eemed so ready to accept him, once again, as a friend. But when he remarked that he would soon be dining at the Randwick vicarage, he said “vicarrish.”

  “You are drunk,” said Clarkson, not pleased. “Blow me, I cannot see the point for the life of me. You cut us cold when there is fun to be had, and now you go on a bender when, who knows, maybe your bishop is waiting at the quay.”

  “I have no bishop.”

  “You have no Randwick vicarage either,” said Clarkson, consulting his gold watch as he always did when he wished to give authority to himself. “The Randwick vicarage is burnt to the ground.”

  “No,” said Wardley-Fish, his mouth wide open.

  “We sailed right past it.”

  “You tease.”

  “No, I swear,” said Clarkson who was already enjoying the power of the Pure Merino over the New Chum. “Surely you saw it.” And he pointed back towards Watson’s Bay which is a good six miles from Randwick.

  “Look at your face,” said Maguire.

  “Look at your own, you rascal,” said Wardley-Fish. “I know when my leg is being pulled.” And he accepted more rum—held his glass steady while the little drops of cloves cordial were added—and could not understand why this lie should make his heart beat so wildly. He thought: I wonder will I see the dear Odd Bod tonight. He will be all settled in his manse with some old Mrs Williams giving him orders and telling him to sit up straight at table before she serves him. It is Saturday today. I will wait till the morrow. I will wait. I will go to his church and listen to his sermon. He will look down into the faces and see me sitting there. Yes, yes, that is what I will do.

  There was plenty of wind in the harbour, but they had half the canvas bound and buttoned and were proceeding slowly. Wardley-Fish was suddenly overcome with impatience. He wished to be ashore. He wished to be asleep. He wished to wake and find it the morrow and be seated in the Randwick congregation. He accepted a fourth glass. The cloves improved the flavour, there was no doubt of that. He looked down over the side and saw the pilot who had joined their ship outside The Heads was leaving before he reached the quay. The pilot boat nuzzled alongside to receive him. As the wiry grey-bearded man landed on his own deck again, Wardley-Fish looked up and saw, not twenty yards beyond the pilot boat, a whole series of barges being towed off the wharf. It was set up for an expedition—horses, carts, men dressed up like soldiers, a little Gilbert and Sullivan chappie with a huge dress sword strapped to his belt. And by his side Wardley-Fish saw this horrid puzzle, this vision, of the person he was waiting so impatiently to see—the Odd Bod—his chicken neck sticking out of a horrible red shirt, his narrow chest criss-crossed by silly braces.