Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda

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1

Oscar and Lucinda

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 Halfsmiths 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 blueskied day, or relief, that Clarkson (who had a prim red nose and a small censorious mouth) seemed 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.

Arrival of Wardley-Fish (1)

"We sailed right past it." ' sr

"You tease." " r!;/-v <

"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 Rand wick.

"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 addedand 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 Rand wick 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.

"Oh, no," he said. "It is my friend," he said to Clarkson who nodded but did not seem to understand what was being said to him. "My friend," he said to little plump Maguire who rubbed his stomach as if he were being spoken to about a meal, or lack of a meal, but not this: that the man who should be dressed in a black cassock in a pulpit was here standing before them on a raft.

Oscar and Lucinda

"Hopkins," bellowed Wardley-Fish. He cupped his hands and called again: "Mr Oscar Hopkins."

"What chaps are these?" Maguire said. He had a little brass telescope he always carried with him on to the deck. Now he raised it and pointed it at the barges.

"It is my friend," said Wardley-Fish. "Mr Hopkins from the Randwick vicarage."

"Then wave," said Clarkson, setting the example himself. "Yoo-hoo," he cried in a mocking imitation of a woman. "Yoo-hoo, Mr Rand wick." He turned to Wardley-Fish. "Wave," he said.

"Your friend is leaving on an expedition to the inland. Wave, Fish, you will not see him for a year."

Wardley-Fish looked at Clarkson and knew that Clarkson did not like him, had not forgiven him, would not forgive him.

"Liar," said Wardley-Fish.

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Poppycock," revised Wardley-Fish who could not afford to waste time on this sort of petty discord but must find out, and rapidly at that, whether he was having his leg pulled or no.

'Is it someone famous?" asked Maguire, taking off his spectacles and readjusting the little telescope.

"Is it true?" asked Wardley-Fish, quietly, politely.

Clarkson poured himself rum but offered none. "You see that wagon there," he said, pointing with his eyedropper, "with its two boats fitted one inside the other? See that? Then tell me, Fish, why someone has a wagon like that, if they are not setting off to go exploring. And criminee, man, just look at them. Did you ever see such a lot of tin soldiers?" The barges were being pulled out across the water by a little steamboat. Wardley-Fish removed his jacket and laid it loosely across the rail. He took off his clerical collar and placed this across the jacket. He slipped the studs in his pocket.

No one took any notice of him, not even when he bellowed: "Mr Oscar Hopkins." Clarkson sipped his rum and cloves. Maguire leaned his belly against the rail and focused his telescope. Wardley-Fish clambered on to the rail and having first removed his shoes in full view of the Half smiths, Miss Masterson et ai, dived head first into Sydney Harbour. This was the "drowning man" who had a boathook driven into his breeches.

96

Arrival of Wardley-Fish (2)

The man who was saved from drowning had a backside like a horse and a bulk — so claimed Alfred Spinks, the deckhand who had so neatly hooked him-enough to cause a bloke a hernia. The hook got in the breeches without the gentleman's soft white bum getting so much as a scratch on it. The man was saved from drowning but did not want to bestow a reward. He was a New Chum of the lah-di-dah variety, a remittance man no doubt with nothing in his pockets and cheap rum on his breath.

Alfred Spinks, his spot of rescuing now done, stood in the wheelhouse with his foot shoved hard to bring the wheel round to the starboard. They would circle now while wall-eyed Captain Simmons-it was the leathery shrunken pilot with the silver beard-did a spot of questioning. It would be a rare old show, for Captain Simmons liked a reward as well as the next chap and he had a great aversion to New Chums and an even greater aversion to taking orders, and he was already turning his wall-eye towards the rescued man and his winking eye towards the appreciative Alfred Spinks.

The rescued man had a gold tooth and a mole on the edge of his fair beard which was easy to mistake for a shell-backed tick. "I will ask you one more time," the pommy said-you would think he was a frigging magistrate-"! will ask you one more time to deliver me to that place where the expedition barges are bound."

He was so bloody proper and dignified. It was a shame you could see his titty through his shirt. It was shocking that he had to cough and spit up all that smelly water. Captain Simmons lowered himself companionably beside the dripping man. Above his head the funnel farted black soot into the sky. "I was not aware," the pilot said, "you had a rank."

"A rank?"

"Yes, sir, a rank. An admiral, a vice-admiral, someone who is entitled — in certain circumstancesto give orders to the captain of a pilot boat."

Oscar and Lucinda

"I am a gentleman, you knave," said Wardley-Fish.

"You must not call me knave, sir. I am a captain."

This answer made Wardley-Fish narrow his eyes. If all of New South Wales was like this, why then, it was beyond toleration-nothing would get done. You could not argue with a man about whether he was a knave or not.

"I am a gentleman," he said.

"And I am a captain, and it's the other captain I must take you to visit, not go running you across the harbour."

"What other captain, man?"

"The Captain of the Sobraon, the Captain from whose authority you have thought to run away." Wardley-Fish sprang to his feet, but the blessed boat was so small there was nowhere to go. In two paces he was at the wheelhouse where he met the possum-bright eyes of Arthur Spinks. He looked up at the Sobraon but its decks were now crowded with faces, all carefully observing his public disgrace.

"I beg you, man," he hissed at Captain Simmons.

A smile stirred in the depths of Captain Simmons's silver beard. i "You do not look like a begging sort of man," said Captain Simmons, and began to tamp his tobacco with a broad black thumb.

Wardley-Fish cast another look towards the decks of the Sobraon. He caught the eye of Miss Masterson, she who, not five weeks before, he had imagined he was in love with. She did not avert her gaze, but neither did she smile. She looked down on him as if he were some species of marsupial rat.

The barges were now a quarter of a mile away. Wardley-Fish considered swimming but knew he was too drunk for it.

"Why do you take it to act so uncharitably?" he asked the captain. Captain Simmons thought that pretty rich: charity. But he said nothing.

"If you are a captain," said the gent, "you must be the slowest-witted captain on the sea. I told you once, I told your man here twice-I only wish to see my friend. He is over there. There he goes. I have travelled all the way from London to see him. And he is there, damn you, and you will not take me. Take me, please, I beg you," cried Wardley-Fish, but his manner, as the Captain had previously observed, was not that of a begging man.