Текст книги "Oscar and Lucinda"

Автор книги: Peter Carey

Соавторы: Peter Carey,Peter Carey
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to assume the responsibility for the harmony of the table. This, really, vvas his great talent. It had made him a good schoolmaster. It was born of his hatred of discord, his fear of loudness. The weakness, therefore, ended up a virtue, and he brought his sense of fairness to every social situation so that he would divide curiosity and attention like a good socialist, dividing them fairly according to the needs of the participants. As for himself, if you left aside the subject of horseracingwhich he imagined he had now abandoned-and the construction of the Leviathan-on which everybody at the table was well versed-he thought he had nothing worth saying on matters secular. He had found his pupils at Mr Colville's school to be more worldly than he was. "And what would you invest in, Miss Leplasrrier?" The question was quite innocent. He did not imagine she was in a position to invest in

anything.

Lucinda Leplastrier put her knife and fork together on her plate, the fork with its tines upwards. She knew her hair was a fright. She could feel it slipping from its clips. Her cheeks were burning but she forced herself to look slowly around the table, to take in every face before she spoke. She had taught herself this trick in Sydney. It was a sea anchor thrown out to slow her before the gale of her emotions, and although she did not actually feel it herself, it gave her an appearance of almost queenly dignity.

"I would invest," she said. She counted to three. She lost her place. "I would put my capital into something that I loved very much." "Very pretty," said Mr Borrodaile, and made a show of applauding. "Perhaps not loved' then, Mr Borrodaile, Let us say that I would invest in something from which I would derive innate pleasure. And if it were land, for instance, I would first find some land which would produce what I wished, and then I would prepare myself for good seasons and bad seasons, but I would cherish my land." "Dear girl. ," Lucinda made a little face which was born in that painful territory

between a wince and a smile.

"But mostly, Mr Hopkins," she said, to Oscar (who leaned forward and thus, although he wished no rudeness, was complicitous in excluding Mr Borrodaile), "I would advise someone with capital in accordance with what I understand the parable of the talents instructs us to. I would advise that they make something that was not there before. I do not like your tallow works, I must admit it, Mr Borrodaile." She returned her attention to him as she spoke. Her voice was soft, even regretful. "And this is not merely because they produce a most

Oscar and Lucinda

unpleasant odour, but because I have lived and worked at farming and I cannot bear to see a beast used for so base a thing, and now I am sure I have allowed you to call me silly and feminine."

"Dear girl, I have thought no such thing." But his hooded bloodshot eyes thought worse things and brought them out, one after the other, and displayed them. It was a private showing and Percy Smith was not aware of it-he smiled at Lucinda and shook his head in such an idiotic and patronizing way that she revised her good opinion of him immediately.

"The principle," said Oscar, inviting them all to join hands in some communion which they were-even Lucinda-now reluctant to approach, "the principle, Mr Borrodaile, is surely a good one."

"Oh, for God's sake," spluttered Mr Borrodaile, then tried to catch his blasphemy before it landed. His mouth, for a second, lay open like someone who has eaten food too hot and wishes to spit it out, expel it, anyway, but cannot do it from politeness. He could not take it back. He could only push on, hack his way forward, and not worry that he could not see where his next step would lead him. "I knew you were a clergyman when I saw you from behind. You see, it's in your walk." He swilled his burgundy.

"By criminee, 111 show you."

Lucinda sucked in her breath. Even Mr Smith accustomed by now to the erratic and energetic movements of his friend, his erupting passions, his hurts, slights, revenges, even Percy Smith, lining up his spoon and fork beside a most unseasonal plum pudding, looked alarmed. Mr Borrodaile was not deterred.

Oscar and Lucinda were both burning red, as if they were parties to an adultery. Mr Borrodaile stood with his back to the mirrored pillar, grinning idiotically. He gave the ends of his moustache a little tweak. He adjusted his shirt cuffs like a baritone about to sing. He was drunk, of course. He composed his face, but his face was not the point. The point was this: Mr Borrodaile would 'do' a walk.

He clasped his big hands together on his breast. He inclined his upper body backwards from the vertical. He sucked in his ruddy cheeks and raised his eyes like a choirboy in procession. He walked. He was a wooden doll with tangled strings. His legs jerked sideways then up. The upper body swung from side to side like the mainmast of a brig at anchor in a swell. The hands unclasped and clasped and then flew apart to grasp at-at what? A butterfly? A hope? A prayer?

Mr Borrodaile perambulated, undulated, swayed and smiled for the

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entire length of the dining room, weaving daintily where architecture

– dictated.

The purser scraped back his chair and those in second class who had previously complained of Borrodaile's "shenanigans," now looked towards the officer expectantly, but he was not moving back his chair to arrest him, but rather to applaud. Mr Borrodaile was walking exactly like the red-haired clergyman, no, not "exactly." He was not like the chap at all, and yet he had its essence. His walk was to the original as a jiggling skeleton is to a dancing boy. Mr Borrodaile's big dimple-chinned face was red with pleasure. He strode along. He put his head back. He swung his arms. The applause was quickly general.

Oh, what a bully he must have been as a boy, thought Lucinda, seeing this most accurate performance, a performance which, in spite of her resolve to the contrary, made her smile. But she would not applaud it. Its intention was too cruel-to make all that was good and kind in the young man appear to be weak and somehow contemptible. She was ashamed of her smile and was therefore surprised, when she at last allowed herself to look at the subject of this mockery, to see that he was not only smiling broadly, but applauding as enthusiastically as the bullies at the purser's table.

He took her breath away. How confident he must be with himself. She resolved there and then that she would like to know him better.

"Well, well," said Oscar who was not as confident as Lucinda imagined but was, rather, protected by a curious blindness about himself. He could not avoid seeing what was comic and grotesque in Mr Borrodaile's walk, and yet it did not occur to him, not even for an instant, that these might be elements of his own physical self. He would never perceive himself as odd and could only see Mr Borrodaile's mannerisms as theatrical devices intended to convey an inner reality. Thus he saw the clasped hands merely as symbols to represent him as unworldly, the jerky legs as enthusiastic, the idiotic smile as kindly. And he was not displeased. Indeed he was touched that Mr Borrodaile should so readily perceive those qualities in his clay that he had so laboured to strengthen.

"Well, well," he said, leaning back in his chair and cracking his knuckles. 'It would seem we cannot keep our hearts secret from those who observe us keenly." He looked up at Mr Borrodaile who had come to stand, smirking, above his shoulder. "My congratulations, Mr Borrodaile, it is a great gift."

Mr Borrodaile could not help but feel irritated. He leaned forward

Oscar and Lucinda

and "borrowed" the parson's glass of wine and stood there smiling and sipping it without apology.

"A great gift," said Oscar, twisting his long neck so he might speak directly to Mr Borrodaile while, at the same time, avoid the portholes which ran along the wall behind him. "And I do not mean your performance-I am pretty well uneducated in theatrics and cannot judge it." Mr Borrodaile was discomforted. He replaced the parson's wine glass and moved to take up his proper seat and it was then that Oscar caught sight of what he had hirtherto succeeded in avoiding.

The sickening silk sheet of sea made a gagging ball in his throat.

He stopped speaking.

"Not the performance," prompted Mr Smith while Mr Borrodaile, realizing that he was at least being spoken to in a respectful and cornplimentary style, now took his seat politely and leaned forward attentively to hear what his victim had to say.

"I cannot judge it," said Oscar, calming the panic in his gagging throat with a little dry bread.

"But your sensitivity to the inner man, to those parts which we do not readily show the world, indeed which we often take great care to hide-this perspicacity, Mr Borrodaile, it is really admirable.";l

Mr Borrodaile looked very pleased. "i

Lucinda hid her delight in her water glass. »

"This is a gift," said Oscar, leaning forward, gesturing as if to hold a casket of some weight. "It is something which should not be used merely to amuse passengers on a long voyage. It is something a Christian should use in life."

As he spoke, Oscar became bigger and more eccentric than even Mr Borrodaile's impersonation might have allowed. He was, with excitement, embarrassment, a little wine, more of the character that WardleyFish loved, more like the schoolmaster sixty boys from Mr Colville's school would still remember in their dotage. He was animated. His long arms waved across the table, missing burgundy glasses and hock bottles, but only because his fellow diners removed them from the radius of his arms. His voice beame higher and took on the famous fluting tone. He looked from one face to the next, drawing them into the bubbling pot of his enthusiasm until they, too, felt that what they had witnessed was not a cruel mockery but an affirmation, an insight, a thing of much greater moment than they had at first realized. They polished it in retrospect, buffed, varnished it until it shone in their imaginations as a precious thing and its perpetrator-the rude and

7f1A

Phosphorescence (1) contemptuous Mr Borrodaile-was made, at least temporarily, into something fine.

Lucinda, who had begun by thinking Mr Hopkins merely clever, was, when she saw there was no guile in this enthusiasm, so moved by his goodness that her eyes watered. Mr Borrodaile was also moved, but in a different way, and for a little while-half an hour or so-he was a different person. He showed an interest in the feelings and opinions of his fellow passengers. And his eyes, when they looked at Lucinda Leplastrier, no longer showed those cold instruments, like surgeons' tools, that he had displayed so nastily (snapping open the case: There!

See!) so short a time before.

There was phosphorescence beside the ship. It was announced by the head steward, and there was a scramble for the deck where the spectacle could be properly enjoyed and that was how Oscar, not wishing the party to break up, turned the full blaze of this enthusiasm to the subject of phosphorescence without ever once looking over his shoulder at the glowing vision which filled the portholes of the dining room.

53

Ph^iorescence (1)

He could see which way his conversation would lead his dinner cornpanions: surely, inevitably up the stairs and into the warm night to which his phobia denied him access. The more he held them with his descriptions, his explanations, the more he was ensuring that they would finally leave him so they might witness this miracle he was so

brilliantly evoking.

To Miss Leplastrier (she spoke with the delectable top lip and bright and curious eyes) he spoke most of all and when, at last, the push of his enthusiasms joined with the pull of his phenomenon, and they rose in a body from the table, he also rose. And although he did not

Oscar and Lucinda

promise he would accompany them up on to the deck, neither did he indicate that he could not, and whilst a court of law would declare he had not misled the party as to his intention, the courts of heaven would not be so easily deceived.

At the bottom of the grand slippery staircase which led to the upper deck, he quietly left the noisy company and felt himself like a sad and ugly creature in a fairytale, one for ever exiled from the light and cornpelled to skulk, pale, big-eyed, sweat-shiny in the dark steel nether regions.

Phosphorescence (2)

The sea rolled around Leviathan's bows as white as milk, studded with bright sparkles of blue light. The milk curdled. The sea was marble with clear black water in between. A bucket was lowered. It banged and swayed and then was lost in darkness. The white clouds dispersed, but the sparkles remained. Then one of the points suddenly exploded. It was a flare beneath the water. The great ship floated in liquid light. The bucket had not yet reached the sea. Lucinda could see, in the luminescent sea, the most splendid globes of fire wheeling and careening like things from a prophecy.

But she had no interest in spectacles. If spectacles had contented her she would have stayed alone in first class. She was thirsty for intelligence and kindness, and the phosphorescence had been merely an agent, a conduit for these emotions. Mr Hopkins had brought them both together, the spectacular and the personal, and she had liked, far more than any phenomenon, the way he had moved his hands, not like an Englishman at all. He seemed full of life, bursting out of himself. His collar stud was popped loose and Lucinda liked him for this almost as much as anything else.

"Then let us go," she had said, standing at the dining-room table. 208

Phosphorescence (2)

"Let us be Witness to the Miracle." She had made herself sound ironic, but she had not felt in the least ironic.

Then they were all up from the table at once, and out of the door and up,the stairs, and she kept herself just ahead of Mr Borrodaile's shepherding hand which felt it necessary to guide her through a doorway as if it might be a dangerous reef she would not otherwise have the wit to navigate. She did not look back. She had imagined Mr Hopkins still in the party. There were not sufficient passengers to crowd the deck, but the phosphorescence had exerted a pull, like a tide, and the inhabitants, against all the rules of rank and conduct, had been sucked up, or had swarmed into the warm night air, clustering beside the great water condensers amidships. There were stewards and cabin boys, engineers, the young lad who tended the animals, third-class passengers with voices born in Limehouse and Holborn, Liverpool and Manchester. It was only then, when she was wedged into this mass, that she discovered that Mr Hopkins was no longer of their party. She imagined this to be somehow her fault. She had been too forward again. She had frightened him away with her imperiousness. Her ironic manner had been offensive. She had not held herself in sufficiently, but why must she always hold herself back? They would have her tie a silk rope between her ankles so she would move in a fettered way. Even Dennis Hasset had tried to persuade her to shorten her stride. His excuse was the cut of her crinoline, but it was not, she suspected, his reason.

She would obviously be wise to take his advice, to leash herself in. But she was everywhere leashed in, in any case. It was the condition of her adult life to feel it. She refused the conventions of whalebone and elastic, but still she was squeezed and blistered, pinched and hobbled.

Lucinda was angry with the phosphorescence. She had jettisoned something much more valuable on its account. As she looked at the sea her upper lip diminished itself as if what she was was nothing but a fairground-whizzing lights, sickly sweetmeats, tawdry barkers. Mr Borrodaile was unpleasantly attentive. He said the globes of light were sea blubbers. She did not like to feel him bow his bulk when he wished to talk so closely into her ear. He had forgotten that he had heard this information from Mr Hopkins at the same time she had. She could not fathom the workings of his mind. For now he continued to regurgitate more of what he had ingested at the dinner table: he told her that the sea blubbers were called medusae, and that what appeared to be sparks were

tna

Oscar and Lucinda

in reality entomastraca, although he did not say it quite correctly.

"Entromysteriosa," said Mr Borrodaile, not quietly either. But Mr Hopkins had not even bidden her good night. She could not think what she had done to deserve so gross an insult.

The phosphorescence was wonderful, of course. How could it not be wonderful? But wonder, even wonder at one of God's great miracles, cannot be sustained when one feels foolish and unhappy. Luanda made herself stay on deck for a slow and dragging fifteen minutes before she declared herself satisfied with the phosphorescence.

But Mr Smith would have her stay. He put his thumb and forefinger on the sleeve of her jacket, but did it in such a blinky, owl-like sort of way, that she could not be angry with his familiarity, indeed, was pleased to see that he at least thought of her kindly.

"But the bucket is not here, Miss Leplastrier. You must not leave until you have seen the bucket demonstrated."

"Do stay," said Mr Borrodaile, but she could feel that she had, by moving away from his whispering mouth, exhausted his good will towards her.

"But what is in the bucket is only what is in the sea, surely?" Lucinda said. "There is no extra ingredient."

"Wait," said Mr Smith. "Look, here it comes."

"Make way," said Mr Borrodaile.

He stood on Luanda's foot. The pain was quite excruciating, but she said nothing. She could not bear the possibility of fuss, the likelihood that he would, when apologizing, put his big hand on her arm or shoulder.

There was much jostling as the bucket was brought on to the deck. She was smaller than everyone. They pressed around her, and Lucinda, who had come to second class wishing to feel and smell her kind around her, was oppressed and choked by all these bodies. She squeezed her way to the front, more to escape the rich odours of humanity than to view the bucket's contents. It contained a great number of flashing bodies.

"Go on, Smith," said the harsh voice of Mr Borrodaile.

"In a minute, Borrodaile," said Percy Smith. His tone betrayed more independence than was his want. "I am waiting for the engineer."

"I am the engineer," said a man beside Lucinda who smelt strongly, not of oil but whisky. The engineer held out the bottle with a ground-glass stopper. Mr Smith leaned across Lucinda's shoulder and took it. He moved into the small clear space next to the dull zinc-colored bucket and, having

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Jealousy

unstoppered the glass vessel, sought Lucinda amongst the audience. "H2SO4/" he declared.

"Sulphuric acid." He knelt, and dropped a little acid into the bucket. "Quick," he said, stepping back. "Quick and lively now."

Lucinda was pushed so hard she could not have avoided the "demonstration" if she had wished to. The bright points in the bucket grew bright, some white, some yellow, but all intense, like tiny stars suddenly blooming in the heavens. They then flickered, faded, died. The bucket became dark.

"You see, Borradaile," called Mr Smith, "that proves it." Lucinda thought: You dull man. You would murder God through the dullness of your imagination.

She squeezed herself backwards and-with Mr Borrodaile's loud voice asserting that nothing was proven-walked along the empty part of the deck towards her even emptier cabin. She looked up to find the North Star but the Leviathan had drawn a belching black blanket across the sky and the heavens were as dead as the inside of a bucket. She thought: I do not like factories. Am I still living my life to please my mama? She entered the first-class promenade and, without realizing what she would see there, looked down into the second-class promenade. She saw Oscar Hopkins sitting-ostentatiously she imagined-by himself. When he waved at her, she pretended not to have seen him.

55

Jealousy

What Wardley-Fish said in Cremorne Gardens was true: he did not fit. His very position, alone in the second-class promenade, advertised the fact. He was a queer bird, a stork, a mantis, a gawk, an Odd Bod. He was afraid of water. He was separated from life itself. He sat on his settee like a fellow in a bath-chair and had the wonders of the oceans

Oscar and Luanda

reduced so they might be brought to him in an ugly fire bucket.

Mr Smith came down the stairs quite drunk and tried to put a single medusa in a glass of gin. He claimed it was a famous drink in America. The creature flashed bright yellow-a shriek of lightand died. Mr Smith told Oscar he was "poor company" and went off to play poker with Mr Borrodaile and the engineer. The stewards took the bucket away and sponged the carpet. Oscar was, in many respects, a humble man. But he also had the mental habits of a Dissenter who knows himself saved when the rest of his neighbours are damned. So no matter what ascendancy Mr Borrodaile, for instance, might have over him at the dinner table, Oscar felt himself, in his secret heart, to be "above" him. And it offended him, offended him beyond toleration, that such a man might walk up the stairs to witness the phosphorescence when he, who knew more about the phenomenon than anyone else aboard the ship, could not. He had watched the dinner party ascend the stairs as he had once watched pagan singing and dancing at the summer solstice in Hennacombe. He had been jealous then, seeing old women with big bonnets twirl and laugh while he must sit hidden behind a tree. He had felt the same emotions watching his father in the sea. Even when he was afraid of the water, even at the moment he was most in terror of it, he was slashed and whipped by jealousy. He had seen Miss Leplastrier on the promenade. He had waved, but being short-sighted, could not be sure of her response. He could not bear the thought that he had driven her from him. He told himself he was honour bound to hear her confession and it was this, not the vision of her large eyes or her pretty upper lip, which he admitted to himself as he rose at last from his plush velvet seat and made his way unsteadily towards his cabin.

He took out his set of brushes and his hand mirror from the little cedar drawer. He brushed hard at his wiry red hair and tried to make it appear more civilized, but the more he brushed, the more it stuck out sideways. When he had finished his toilet, the top of his head resembled the foliage of a windblown tree. He located the lost collar stud and remedied it. He noticed the beginnings of a small pimple on his nose. He found a porcelain pot of pomatum (intended to subdue hair), opened it, sniffed it, and closed it up again.

He opened the soldering box and took out the wrapped caul. He crammed this in the side pocket of his jacket. It did not do anything to diminish his phobia. He then set out to ascend the stairs to the

Lure

first-class promenade. Once he was up there he enquired of Miss Leplastrier's stateroom so dolefully that the steward who escorted him there imagined not a phobia but a serious spiritual crisis.

56 Lure

Lucinda took her pack of cards and shuffled them. Their waxing was bright and new and the inks shone bright beneath, like coloured stones in an aquarium. She stood in front of the pretty walnut table and dealt herself a hand for poker. She stood hard against the table, its edge pressing her thigh. She splayed the five cards, face down, then turned one over with her fingernail. King of spades. She turned it back. Her hands were actually aching. She pressed them hard together. She walked around the table and stood opposite the five splayed cards. She dealt five more. She cut the pack. She turned up a three of diamonds. She stood looking at the table. If she had been seated at the place the cards suggested she might have looked across her opponent's shoulder at the moonlit millpond of the sea. But had she actually played those cards, the sea would not exist. Nothing would exist but that small spherical world of which the cut pack was the exact geometrical centre.

She walked to her bureau. It was a definite walk with nothing dreamy about it. She took her purse from the bureau drawer. She carried it to the table. She spilled its contents on to the tablebig pennies, chunky sovereigns, pound notes, a single "fiver." She walked around the room then, circling the table in her stockinged feet. There were men playing cards in earshot. Let them see they were not alone in their passion. She tugged a cord, a red rope with a gold tassel on its end. This was to summon a steward. But when the steward came, his eyes refused to see the lovely lure she had constructed for him. He left the stateroom and returned with tea things on a silver

Oscar and Lucinda

tray. He did not avoid her gaze, nor did he meet it especially. He wished the young lady a pleasant good night. She had made a fool of herself twice in one day. 57 Confession

When she found Mr Hopkins standing in her doorway, the first thing she thought, when thought came, was-the cards. She had laid them as a bait, but not for him, for anyone but him. But there was a moment, before this, when she did not think at all. Her mouth echoed the open door. And then she thought: The cards. He must not see the cards, or money either. There were coins and notes, a fiver as purple as a bishop's vest-it was such a luminous colour, like flowering lasiandra, signalling invitations to stumble-footed insects which would help it mate without knowing what they did. All this was calculated to catch the eye, but not this eye, another one. She thought: What a dear face. The extreme delicacy and refinement of the face impressed itself on her. She did not, not yet, question the propriety of this visit, unchaperoned to her room; that would come in a moment, and with it anxiety, like a draught of hot whisky. She had completely forgotten her request for confession. She saw only the very pleasant man she had feared driven away by her forwardness.

"Do come in." These were the only words that either of them spoke. She tried to lead him into the curved corner of the stateroom, further from the game of poker. She thought to point out the luminescent sea. She knew herself favoured with 'landscape windows" and thought to make a conversation of the fact. But he literally turned his back upon them, and moved like a crab in the opposite direction, finding his way into a chair like a blind man, at the very table she did not wish him to sit.

She was aghast, too much in terror about having her vice discovered

01A

Confession

to think his behaviour peculiar. She noticed perspiration on his brow, but it did not come to her mind until much later, when the incident was over.

She thought it odd he did not excuse himself for sitting while she stayed standing. "You must excuse me," he said instead, "for not corning earlier." She smiled and bowed her head. She remained standing so that his eyes, in looking up at her, would not fall upon what was on the table in front of him. He had seen already. He must have seen already. And yet, it seemed, he had not. What was he talking about? Coming earlier? On deck? She wondered if she might find a cloth to throw across the table.

"You see," he said, "I have a phobia about the ocean. It is something I have suffered from since very young. My father is a naturalist, you know, and was in the ocean all the time, and I with him, too, when I was a little chap."

"I see." She did not see. He was agitated and sweating, but she did not notice. She was like someone hearing Spanish when she expected Greek. He had picked up a card from the table and was toying with it.

'In any event I developed a nervousness about it, like the nervousness some get with heights. So to accompany you on deck this evening, or to come up here, with all this glass-to hear your confessionwell, I feared it was more than I could manage."

But she could not confess to him. She wished only his good opinion.

"This is not known to Mr Smith or Mr Borrodaile," he said.

"Frankly, I would prefer they did not hear it. But I owe you an apology for not answering your call to confession when, as you see, I was capable of coming all the time.''

But she must not confess. She wished he would put down the card. (Surely he knew what it was.) She repeated what she had heard from George Lewes, although she did it at ten times his lumbering speed that the Queen had been praying with Presbyterians at Crathie and was becoming passionate about the dangers of genuflexion and confessions. So confession was, she argued, unwise.

"Ah, yes," he said, "the Queen. And yet, you see," (and here he bounced his leg beneath the little table so you might actually hear the coins jingling) "it is not enough she does not like it, because the Church of England has it written into the prayer book and it will take more than the Queen, more than our Lord-it will take an Act of Parliament-to get it out again. I do not support this way of running things, Miss Leplastrier, but you may confess as you

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wish and know yourself completely free from heresy."

Oscar had a tiny prayer book, just three inches high and two inches across. He was flipping this open in a practiced way, as though he heard confessions every day.

Lucinda was now in a panic. She could not confess to this young man. She could see his wristslong white bridges to beautifully shaped hands-and a little bruised shin showing between rumpled sock and trouser turn-up. He had a heart-shaped face, like an angel by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She could not confess to him, and yet the ceremony had already started. He had a soft burr of West Country in his vowels. She thought she had no voice at all. It was time for her to speak. She heard a voice out on the deck. It was the Belgians crying for their Pomeranian. She clasped the back of the chair in her hands. She felt her voice very small. She watched his shoe and shin protruding like a branch from beneath the table. The shoe bounced up and down. The shoe did not match the sacrament, but when she looked up and saw his hair like the hair of angels and very still, limpid grey-green eyes, she confessed. She talked so quietly he had to lean forward to hear her.