Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda

The Reverend Dennis Hasset got his salt. He was not accustomed to shopping. He was surprised at how much salt you got for a

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ha'penny. There was no way you could slip this into your pocket. It was a hefty bag and must be held under the arm. He did so, marching down Hyde Street while the government clerk, a huge fellow with hefty hands and a cowed spirit that made him bend forward and bow his neck, clucked and fussed and postulated this and that about this strange glass church. The Reverend Mr Hasset was plotting a way to get the salt in contact with the leeches. He was therefore disappointed to see that a crowd had gathered at the wharf. This would make the operation that much more difficult.

He listened to the clerk as they pressed through to the river. As usual, most of the crowd were drunk. They smelt loathsome: unwashed clothing, rum, vomit. Hell itself could smell no worse than this. Dennis Hasset opened his bag of salt and took a fistful.

It was then that he saw the church. He thought so many things at once. That it was a miracle, a spider web, a broken thing, a tragedy, a dream like something constructed for George in and then assaulted in a fit of rage. He thought: It has been hit with hail. He thought: it has been salvaged from a wreck out at The Heads. He thought: it was a mistake to triangulate those tall panes of glass when a Roman arch would be much more graceful. He thought: Lucinda. It was the latter thought that made the mole on his back turn hot and itchy because he had never, in all his letters, bothered to tell her that he was now a married man and soon to be the father of a child.

In the face of this crazed image of Lucinda's passion, he was numb with panic. His mole was driving him crazy with its itching. He held his salt. He stood with the most of his weight on the foot that did not have the leeches. He waited for Lucinda to emerge from between the barleysugar columns. He could not see through the glass itself-it had become, with all the splintering, almost opaque. He tucked the bag of salt under his arm and fixed a smile on his face, but as H. M. McCracken's leaky old lighters were moored to the bollards on the wharf, the figure that emerged from the church's wooden door was not that of Lucinda Leplastrier, but a gaunt collarless burnt-ghost figure who marched towards him carrying a little suitcase like a hat-box.

"Sir," said Oscar and held out his hand.

Dennis Hasset's hand, alas, was filled with salt. He opened it, by way of explanation. The burnt man stared at it and laughed; it was not a normal laugh but a dry noise like a cough.

"The Reverend Mr Hasset?"

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Arrival of Anglican Church at Boat Harb°ur

There was something very dangerous about this staring man. His green-eyed gaze was too intense. He would not rel<*se his hold on Dennis Hasset's eyes, not even for a second.

"Yes," said Dennis Hasset.

"Then I have the pleasure, sir, to present this splen<*id church to you. It is a gift to the Christians of Boat Harbour fr" m th «most wonderful woman in New South Wales." The ghost seemed oblivious to the splintered state of the church. "I tell you now, without reserve," he roared, "I envy you. This woman loves you.'

Dennis Hasset felt ill. He wished to withdraw. All the godless of Boat Harbour pressed their thick necks and cauliflowerears forward. He stooped and poured his fistful of salt into his sow- The madman was now crying. His face was as di^X and tattered as the bandages around his wrists.

"How you can stand there," Oscar said, "when U& ^plastrier pines in Sydney, why, it is quite beyond my comprehen

The salt in Dennis Hasset's sock was as painful as ground glass. He thought: When, oh Lord, will my past follies stop returning to torment me?

He put his hand on the shoulder of the weeping man-He intended Christian charity, but felt only an alien body as W* and bony as a suit of armour. It was then, wondering how he could stop the germs of scandal which were already multiplying around him, that he saw Miriam Chadwick's bright green riding costume

"Mrs Chadwick," he said, "I wonder could you assist us?" Thus, while Percy Smith was busy shifting his mo°nn8 in accordance with the wishes of the government inspector, Denn» s Hasset and Miriam Chadwick escorted Oscar Hopkins up the rutted track to Hyde Street. Both men limped a little, one from an injury mcurred upon a journey, the other on account of blood-red salt grinding against a naked high-arched foot. At the Hyde Street corner, Dennis Hasset requested that Oscar excuse them both. He left him standing, still weep'°8'.ln the shelter of the post office while he conferred with Mrs Chadw«*

whose large, dark brown eyes, so obviously filled with charity &the weeping man, moved him greatly.

"Miriam," he said, "you must help me, please-I "just hurry to my wife before she hears all this puffed up by gossip5' Would you be the good Samaritan? Here is a crown. Buy him bandages and mercurochrome. Here is the key to the meeting roo"1-You can lock the door and keep the busybodies out. Look after nim-He is in such a

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sorry state, poor beggar. Can you manage this? Will Mrs Trevis permit you?"

"Dear Dennis," said Miriam Chad wick, who was at once delighted to have exactly what she wished and outraged that a man who had (not long ago either) cruelly spurned her, should now beg favours of her. "Dear Dennis, you must hurry home to Elizabeth and leave this wounded soul to me."

She accepted the large brass key, the crown piece, and the Tom bag of salt which Dennis Hasset thrust into her bosom. And then my greatgrandmother took Oscar Hopkins by the arm and walked very slowly, oblivious to the stares, to the meeting hall above the cobbler's shop. There she locked the door and began her ministrations.

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When Oscar Hopkins and Miriam Chadwick came down the stairs to the cobbler's shop at last, it was to announce their impending marriage.

There was a small wet stain on the back of my great-grandmother's green silk riding habit. This was remarked on-how could it not bebut nothing was ever said out loud, and, in any case, Miriam had plied the young traveller with Mr Hammond's expensive emollients and creams, with stinging iodine, blue-red mercurochrome, bright yellow "Healing Ointment," had rubbed him with so many healing dyes that he soon looked like a tropical fish in his father's aquarium; with so many wet and greasy substances about, no one could be surprised if Miriam also spilled a wee drop on her clothing.

Oscar, when at last he opened the heavy cedar door at the top of the stairs above the cobbler's, had the stunned and slightly vacant air you might see in some one rescued from a burning house. As he walked down the loud, uncarpeted stairs, he felt his sin declared to all the world. '

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I love Lucinda Leplastrier. ,

The cobbler was working at his bench. Oscar could not meet his gaze. He Ipoked instead at a pair of dancing pumps hanging from the door. To these he nodded.

He had fornicated in God's temple, he who had judged the cedar cutters at Urunga. All my life, he thought, I have sought the devil's murmuring in my ear, have let him persuade me that it is holy that I bet, that I abandon my father, that I draw poor Stratton into the morass, and all the while I am armoured by conceit. I play the saint. When Miss Leplastrier and I were most passionately engaged, I imagined it was I who restrained us from sin, I who ensured our chastity until that happy day (today, today I might have written to her in triumph) when she might have seen what I am and accepted my proposal that we stand as bride and bridegroom in God's sight. But it was not I. And the proof is here: that the moment a ministering hand is placed on that part of my anatomy, the minute, the instant it is touched, the first time in all its life-why, then, I fail the test. And find my Christianity to be but a spiderweb, so easily it is brushed aside. And I am a dog in the street prepared to be crushed by a waggon's wheel in order to let its beastly nature have its head. I cannot even justify my act by calling out "love, love, I did it for love." His punishment was that he must marry this woman he had cornpromised. It did not occur to him that it was she who had compromised him. He must marry her. He took the laudanum from his pocket and sipped it in the deep shadowed doorway of the cobbler's shop. The street was lined with bullock waggons all loaded with logs as thick as four big men. The air was fat and warm and syrupy, sweet with forest sap, urine, brandy. There were yellow dogs and yellow clay earth littered with furry bark.

Oscar's eyes remained focused in the middle distance. He sucked in his cheeks, biting them harder than he knew. He limped beside my great grandmother as they set about this business, each equally determined that the job be done properly, and yet with a definite distance between them, like allies in a business venture, or the captains of opposing cricket teams. They posted the banns. It was done in fifteen minutes. They went to Bernie Lovell and each rewrote their wills. It took half an hour. They went to the offices of the Courier-Sun and filled out a little form for the advertisement which announced their engagement.

Only when my great-grandmother saw he did not write "Reverend" in their engagement notice, did she suspect he might not be a clergyman. She certainly had no idea that he was now the owner of

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a glass church in Sydney and a fortune of ten thousand pounds.

Oscar had forgotten this himself. He was sick at heart, preoccupied by what he had lost, not gained. All he could think was that the glass church was the devil's work, that it had been the agent of murder and fornication. The only clear thing he could think, the only thing he could hear above the raging passions of his beating heart, was how he could destroy the hateful thing. It was just five o'clock, and the government clerks were already dosing their shutters for the day, when he began to bid her goodbye. She had employment to return to, and although he should have seen the word "Governess" on both her will and the marriage banns, he had not; her employment remained a mystery to him. Like two strangers introduced to business partnership by medium of a newspaper advertisement, they agreed to meet at the post office at ten o'clock upon the morrow. He saw her on to her pony which she had tethered in the government paddock. He must have known, already, that he would not commit himself to her in any but a legalistic way, for he felt only mild dismay to see how she treated the animal. He made the motion of doffing his hat to her, although he had no hat, having given the same to Kumbaingiri Billy's father's sister. He held open the gate of the government paddock, and when the pony and its rider had passed through, he walked thoughtfully down towards the river, dragging a stick behind him, scratching a line in the baked clay track and thus-his route marked by this fine erratic line-he disappeared for ever from my great-grandmother's life.