Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda

"How thin my wrist is," he told them. "This wrist God made for me." No one said anything.

"How could I smite you?"

He did not feel afraid. He felt a great clarity. He saw his own hand. He saw it in his mind's eye holding a shining white flower with five petals. The flower became a hand of cards.

"But I will play you poker and I will win. And you may know now, this money will be your gift to God's work in Boat Harbour."

A movement at his own table made him cast his eyes down. He saw the bugler had spilled his drink. The bugler's red lips were moving. The boy was praying. Oscar thought: I am drunk with laudanum. He also thought: I need a little sip. He put his hand to his jacket pocket where his bottle would normally be and then remembered-how disappointing this was; how angry it made him feel — that he had left the blessed thing in the wagon. His fingers found, instead, the crumpled envelope Lucinda had given him with which to reward Mr Jeffris. God put this in his hand.

He took the envelope out and held it aloft. "I have a pot of one hundred guineas."

"No," cried the loathsome Mr Jeffris from the bar. "I forbid it."

"I would shoot you dead," cried Oscar above the general noise, "and go to hell for it; and I am only saved for want of a weapon." He pushed the table forward so that the blacksmith's glass of seltzer was toppled over and both blacksmith and bugler struggled to free themselves from their tangled chairs. "You murderer," cried Oscar. He put his hand

A Christian Man

in his pocket. His pocket was empty. Mr Jeffris had drawn his sword and was moving towards him. No one tried to hold him back.

" "The Lord is my shepherd/ " said Oscar, his eyes bright, his back straight, " 'I shall not want. Thou prepares! a table for me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil.'

"

Mr Jeffris's hand grasped Oscar above the elbow and pulled him so hard that he cried out with pain. Mr Jeffris's blue-black hair was carefully brushed. His moustache was waxed. He smelt of the barber's shop.

"Out," shrieked Mr Jeffris. "Out now."

"I warn you," called Oscar. He was yanked from the tavern like a tooth. He left much laughter behind, but he did not hear it. He was aware only of his outrage, of his pain, his impotence, his hatred. He was hurled on to the bare ground. He was kicked. Many times. There were no witnesses to save him. He was afraid. He was a crab scuttling across the grim grey sand. He was a cur. There was a wagon. He crawled beneath its rancid axle. The boot followed him. The sword poked between the spokes of the wheel.

He prayed: Oh God, give me the means to smite Thy enemy.

102

A Christian Man

Percy Smith had always thought himself a good and Christian man. He did not say his prayers by rote. The envelopes he put inside the felt-lined plate in his parish church were fatter than the custom, not because he was wealthy but because he saw it as his duty. He was a gentle man. He was gentle with the animals he tended and went to unusual lengths to make sure they suffered as little as possible. He was faithful to his wife, and a loving and tender father to his baby girls.

But what he feared about his character was that all his tenderness

Oscar and Lucinda

was but the visible shadow of his cowardice. When he was gentle and kind to those who might suffer it was because he was one with them, and he was frightened.

He could not bear to hear the stories of Christ's crucifixion. Neither habit nor repetition dulled the pain of that spear in the side, the long, slow, thirsty agony of death. When a preacher held up to him the shining example of the Christian martyrs, he feared that he-in such a moment-would deny his God.

The journey under Mr Jeffris's leadership had confirmed all these fears he had about himself. He was a counterfeit and coward. He had tortured Oscar Hopkins with a funnel. He had not stood up to defend him. He had lowered his eyes and "yes, sirred" the little martinet. He had "gone along." He had persuaded himself it would do no harm. And he had sat there-how damnable this waswhile natives were slaughtered. And when Mr Hopkins had protested he had been one of those who tied him to a tree-on Jeffris's orders-so that he would cause no harm. All his anger and disgust, all that which should have decently gone outwards, was driven inwards and he found himself-this happy, optimistic, loving man-sharpening his axe, honing it, so it would be as sharp as a razor.

He did not think: A razor for my wrists. He thought no actual words. He worked the round whetstone on and on, tasting only the great deep well of evil from which he had drunk. When he had done the axe he began on the tomahawk.

He was seated thus, in the Ladies' Compartment, when he heard a cry and saw Mr Jeffris, sword raised high, booting Mr Hopkins in the backside and ribs. Mr Hopkins held an envelope which Mr Jeffris tried to snatch.

Mr Hopkins disappeared underneath the wagon. And then he was up beside the Ladies'

Compartment, trying to clamber up the steps.

"God help me," said Oscar Hopkins.

Mr Hopkins was almost in the wagon when Mr Jeffris took him by his shoulder. Percy Smith raised his tomahawk and brought it down on Mr Jeffris's upper arm. The head had not much weight. But Mr Smith was a strong man. He felt the bone cut. He felt the most immense satisfaction, a great shudder of something so close to pleasure you could not give it another name.

As Mr Jeffris stumbled back from the wagon, blood spurting through the fabric of his bright blue coat, Mr Smith saw that

Did I Not Murder?

Mr Hopkins had hefted the axe.

Mr Hopkins stood with his feet astride, the axe held incorrectly, the two white hands too close together. His face was blazing red. His mouth open. As the clergyman brought the axe up above his head, Mr Smith thought: He will hurt himself, he does it wrong.

"Hi," screamed Oscar Hopkins.

He brought the hate-bright axe down in the middle of Mr Jeffris's glistening, brilliantined head. And then his hands sprung loose from the handle. They were quivering and clapping. Mr Jeffris slumped to his knees and then tilted forward in the direction indicated by the ash axe handle. The blade was three inches into his skull which split around the orbit of his left eye. All the drinkers were inside the tavern. Mr Smith noted this before he did a thing. Then he took the blanket from the seat and wrapped it around the quaking Hopkins. He brought him forcefully to the ground and there, without thinking why or what he was doing, he swaddled him as though he were a little child. He stilled the thrashing limbs by force. He held him bodily across his knees and parted him.

103

Did I Not Murder?

"Mr Smith, did I not murder a man?" .'•'. •• ' ' >

"We did, we did." " '

"Then tell me, pray, why this dreadful levity? And why are we here? And where is our party?" Oscar had awoken on the morning of the day after the one in which Mr Smith had wrapped him in his blanket. It had taken some time to loosen himself from his sweaty swaddle, but when he was outside the familiar stained canvas walls of the tent, he discovered, not the scene of his nightmare, but a cool blue stretch of the Bellinger River, a wide, still sheet of water at a place where a rough little wharf had

Oscar and Lucinda

been constructed. At the wharf were moored two barges, or rather (because they were long craft with square-sawn bows), lighters. It was here that he found Percy Smith, a clean white shirt upon his back, busily hammering and sawing. He had already constructed an open platform across the two lighters.

"Our 'party' is at this moment going south in pursuit of Mr Jeff ris," called Percy Smith, bestowing upon Oscar a cheerful grin and running his hand through his short hair so that it stood up at the back in a cocky's crest. "They now think him nought but an oiler. They want their pay, and so they've gone to relieve him of it."

"Oh, Lord," said Oscar, and groaned, holding his head in his hands. Mr Smith put his hammer in his belt and sprang up the bound sapling ladder to the wharf.

"Whoa," he said. "Whoa, Neddy."

"Oh, God, " said Oscar, unconscious of where he walked, stumbling on piles of bearers which were stacked about his feet. "Oh, dear God, what have we done?"

"Ssh," said Percy Smith, guiding his friend back through the tangle of hessian bags and beams, off the wharf to solid ground.

"Ssh, you must not fear."

"I have killed a man."

"Your Maker will forgive you."

A shudder passed through Oscar's thin white body. Percy Smith felt it, and knew it for what it was. He was not without symptoms of the same variety, and yet what he felt, for the most part-he begged God forgive him-was exhilaration.

He felt so light. When he came across the wharf to Oscar he could have skipped.

'The Lord was his Maker, too," said Oscar severely.

"Look," said Percy Smith, "we are alive. He is dead. Give thanks to God for our deliverance." Percy Smith held Oscar by the arm and led him to a log beside the smoky camphre. He found some little sticks and leaves and, in a moment, had a blaze going. "They were nice enough to leave us tea and sugar and a billy. For the rest, they were in too much of a hurry."

"My church," cried Oscar, struggling to his feet.

"They did not take your church."

Oscar looked around him wildly and Percy Smith could not help laughing.

"Oh," said Oscar screwing up his white face into a crumpled page of irritation, "you are a madman."

Ana

Did I Not Murder?

"Your church is here," cooed Mr Smith. "Your church is here, my reverend sir. Indeed it is."

"It is no good to me here, fool," cried Oscar, standing straight up from his log and brandishing the finger-thin stick with which he had been poking into the little fire. "It must be in Boat Harbour. I have murdered the man who might get it there. And you, you-" he sighed. "Oh, dear." He sat down again. "I cannot blame you, Mr Smith, and what does any of this matter now when we are likely to be arrested?"

"Dear Mr Hopkins, please do be more cheerful."

"Cheerful!" shrieked Oscar.

"You are a regular little rosella. Look at you-burnt crimson and shrieking from the treetops. If there were troopers here they would soon know where to find us. But there are no troopers in the district."

"No police?"

"And even if there were a herd of Sydney constables, I bet you your laudanum bottle they would be too slow for Percy Smith. You should be proud to know me."

"Oh," Oscar said, "I am far worse."

"Do not 'worse' me, Hopkins. The knave was buried before a soul came out to see the sunlight. Congratulate me."

"Oh, I am sorry, Mr Smith, I cannot."

"Then have some johnnycake. It is a shame you were not awake to enjoy it hot." Oscar sipped his tea while Mr Smith watched him. "Who would have known me for a murderer?" he said. "I would not have recognized it in myself. Think of my poor mother, when she suckled me. ." He stopped and gazed into the smoke.