Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda

She smiled at Oscar. He smiled back. He rested his left ankle across his knee. He jiggled it, but he did not knock the table and she did not notice.

At two-thirty the game turned again. He pushed through, bluffing to victory three hands in a row. He was breathing through his mouth. There was perspiration on his forehead but she took this to be produced by the excitement of the game.

Thou Rulest the Raging of the Sea

He observed that the ship, although large, seemed to move as one would imagine a small ship to move. He remarked on the size of the sea. It was such a large thing, he said. " 'Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?' " He smiled, showing the neat, ordered set of his lower teeth. She smiled. She had no appreciation of his phobia. He raised his betting. A crown to see her. There was a tremor in his voice it would have taken Mrs Williams to explain.

The game had changed. It was no longer still and calm. Lucinda no longer played leaning back. She bent forward. She rubbed her neck. She was making a small red spot, just from friction. Oscar was pale. He played with a sort of clipped breathlessness. His foot tapped against the table leg. She minded this not at all. He took her for two pounds and five shillings. She raised the betting again. She was so light, almost giddy. She confessed her happiness out loud. She hardly noticed the pitching of the ship. Her hat case tumbled off its rack and a vase of paper flowers-left carelessly on a side table, slipped and rolled-not breaking-across the floor. It was three twenty-three. The first wave washed across the deck. They turned ("Hoo," said Oscar) to see the next wave-its white head towering over them like a ghost in the night. It was frightening. Lucinda found it frightening. She made some silly comment and turned to see her partner, white-faced with terror, his mouth open, crouched over the table trying to pick up cards without looking at them. He was not handling these cards as a card-player might, but like a savage. He was cramming them into his pocket. He made a repetitive noise-"Uh-uh-uh-uh"-that came from the back of his throat, the top of his stomach.

The wave smashed across the deck. You could feel the weight of it in your vital organs.

"Uh-uh-uh." He crumpled up more cards. She was angry with him. They were her Wetherby Suprêmes, from Hare's in Old Bond

Street.

"I have led you astray," he said. He was standing now, gripping the edge of the table. He was not looking at her. He was pulling a paper parcel from his pocket. As he pulled it out he produced a shower of the crumpled playing cards.

The parcel, of course, was his caul.

The ship reared and crashed down so far you could feel your stomach

Oscar and Lucinda

falling after it had landed. You would not think so large a thing could be tossed so far. On the bridge it took ten men to steer the rearing beast.

Through the din (creaking, groaning, a slamming door) she could hear bells ringing. He said: "You must forgive me."

The vase rolled past her feet. She had time to wonder that such an ugly thing should not break, would probably survive a shipwreck when everything beautiful and useful was sunk to the bottom. She picked up the vase. She held it in her lap. The clergyman was banging his thigh with his clenched fist.

"Yes," she shouted, "yes, of course, I forgive you." But she did not understand him. She did not put the two together, the cards and the storm. It did not occur to her that one might be the cause and the other the effect. It did not occur to her to think in so primitive a manner. She could not guess that a man who knew that phosphorescence was produced by sea blubbers could also believe that this storm was a sign from God. But Oscar knew he should not have gambled just for pleasure. He knew his defence of gambling had been displeasing to God. He knew he had led the young woman into sin. Waves slapped the face of the ship. Water surged across its high deck. The mighty Leviathan reared and rolled sideways across the cliff face of the storm.

"Oh, dear," said Oscar, "I am afraid."

The portholes could be opened with a little winding handle. He clutched his caul to his chest and lurched uphill to get there. Then he stood, facing down into the dark pit of the sea while he forced himself to do the thing he dreaded most-unwind the handle.

Lucinda thought he wished to be ill. She stumbled down the sloping floor to help him. Then she saw what he was doing-putting her Wetherby Suprêmes out the window, posting jacks and queens like letters.

"No," she yelled into his ear. She scrabbled at his hands and tried to pull away from the porthole. His lips were moving. His eyes were shut. She scratched the back of his hands but could not stop him. She saved a two of clubs and a five of diamonds. Her emotions were confused anger, sympathy, alarm. He turned to look at her and she saw his eyes wandering in their gaze. He clutched at her. She was frightened and stepped back, and he fell into a swoon at her feet. She did not know how ill he was. She was not even sure what had happened. She felt his pulse and would have loosened his collar except

I

224

Cape Town to Pinchgut

she did not know how. She tried to find the stud, but his neck felt warm, unduly intimate. It was wrong to be angry, but she was angry, about her cards, about the blanket which he had dragged off the card table. The room looked as if a scandal had been committed there. She picked up the money and the blanket. She was thrown against the wall twice. She got the blanket back on to her bed and smoothed it as well as she was able.

She should call the ship's doctor, but it was four o'clock in the morning. Surely he would wake in a moment? She sat and waited.

Oscar did wake, but he was not able to leave her stateroom unassisted. She had had to call two stewards, just before dawn, and it had been their unenviable job-the ship was now pitching and rolling to a disappointing degree, and walking was therefore difficult-to carry the rigid man from the spinster's stateroom, down the stairs and put him to bed in his own quarters. n 60

Cape JJbWtv to Rn$igut

The scene was witnessed by Mr Borrodaile, or so he claimed, for he was able, at breakfast the next morning, to paint a very detailed picture of the scandal for the rather queasy and waxyskinned Mr Smith. The Captain also visited Lucinda, and perhaps his manner was contaminated by the knowledge that his great ship was a failure in bad weather-he had one helmsman in sick bay with a broken arm-but he behaved in a censorious and snobbish way, Lucinda thought, just like a glove salesman in Harrod's who feels he should not be called to wait upon colonials. Lucinda was hurt by all of this, but she could tolerate it. She hardened her heart against all the ship except Mr Hopkins and set herself to wait for his recovery. She expected, as a matter of course, that he would apologize, and she looked forward to the moment when she

Oscar and Lucinda

could say, and sincerely too, that there was nothing to apologize for. It was the Captain who should apologize, and if she had had the power she would have made him. She had a vindictive part to her character, which she recognized and was not proud of. It had started as a tiny thing, but grown larger with the nourishment provided by men like the Captain, and the sniggering Borrodaile whom she met, clad in sou'wester, his grinning lackey at his side, on the rolling, slippery poop deck.

After this she would not go on deck again. Neither, or course, was she free to seek out Mr Hopkins herself, and although his visit to her would not save her reputation, at least he could offer his support and friendship.

It stayed rough down the coast of Africa, and although she understood why this might keep Mr Hopkins in his cabin, by the time she had been five days a prisoner in her stateroom, she felt herself deserving a proper apology.

He did not come.

She took her meals in her room which, for all the grey skies and green cat's-eye-coloured sea, was most unpleasantly hot.

She escaped ashore in Cape Town, and endured the self-righteous "tsk-tsk" of a Mrs Penhaligon (the wife of a Cornish farmer) but she still did not sight Mr Hopkins. Out of Cape Town the weather was rough again and Oscar stayed out of sight, cooped up, green and moaning. He was attended by a steward with the comic name of Sidebottom. He had his caul between his fingers so persistently that it soon became, through the twin agencies of perspiration and agitation, a most unpleasant piece of matter. His stomach could hold no more than beef tea and dry toast. He read his Bible when his eyes could bear the dancing print. He prayed. He promised God that he would never bet again.

My great-grandfather did not manage to emerge from his cabin until the Pinchgut cannons saluted the great ship's entrance into Sydney Harbour, and Lucinda Leplastrier, released at last from the most unpleasant voyage of her life, saw him sitting in the geometrical centre of the ship, on a red plush settee, in the second-class promenade.

He looked up and smiled, but Lucinda had waited so long for that smile that it became, when it arrived, like something which has preoccupied one during a fever-it produced an unpleasant effect, evoking all the twisting tyrannies of an illness which one has, at last, escaped from.;-,. < 7)(.

61

A Business Principle

Owning a business is like having chooks. You cannot go away and leave them, indefinitely, in the care of neighbours. You can buy an automatic feeder, and there are many good ones on the marketyou will see them advertised in the back pages of the Weekly Times. You can arrange for your friend or your neighbour to "keep an eye on them" for a night or two, and no harm done. But do not expect to be away six months or a year and then return to find your hens in good condition. You will have mite and pullorum rampant, the water run out, your best layer dead from a dog, your rooster wounded by goannas-the list is not intended to be exact, merely an indication, but the point is, you cannot do it. And if you want to see Venice, Florence and the Old World, then first eat your chooks, or sell them, and then you will know you will have nothing worse to come back to than a chookyard full of rank

weed.

Lucinda did not know this. Or if she did, she managed to pretend that she did not. She was off to London to be married (although she fully intended that she would-God knows how-return. She imagined a certain type of husband who would make this possible). She thought she could leave the country for a year and entrust the Prince Rupert's Glassworks to the care of others. Note the plural. This compounded the error, for if there is anything worse than leaving your business in the care of one person, it is leaving it in the care of two and if there is anything worse than two people, it is to do what Lucinda Leplastrier did-she left her business in the care of three people, and only one of them with any practical experience of glass.