Текст книги "Oscar and Lucinda"

Автор книги: Peter Carey

Соавторы: Peter Carey,Peter Carey
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 31 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

100

Oscar and Lucinda

far better, for on that occasion he had suffered a mild case of jitters, a looseness of the bowels which had been difficult to hide from men with a keen eye for weakness. Mr Smudge was "not talking" to him. So, he thought, we have our little tiff. And a smile, he could not help it, ruffled the smooth cloak of concern he had arranged on his handsome face. Mr Smudge had still not attended to his toilet. There was a sprinkling of ginger hair upon his chin and some black charcoal marks on his ears where he had been scratching his mosquito bites. He was a contrast to his cornpanion who was, as usual, neatly kitted out in fresh-washed twill and cotton. Yet you could not conclude from this that one had "character" whilst the other had not. They were a pair, in Jeffris's eyes, and he thought the "Ladies' Compartment" aptly named. Mr Jeffris had, perhaps, been too harsh with Mr Smudge. But the man was alive, was he not? He would be delivered as requested. He was not speared or poisoned by serpents. He had seen things no Sydney clerk would ever dream of seeing: life, death, savages. He had eaten snake and played the missionary. And now he should not be sitting on his car with his ramrod back, but should be throwing his hat in the air and offering to shout his protectors' drinks. They had guaranteed his place in history.

It was such a crisp, clear day and the ridge was almost as good as Her Majesty's highway. Mr Jeffris brought his stallion to a trot and rode beside the "Ladies' Compartment" for a piece. The view was splendid: the Bellinger estuary swept beneath them like an illustration to à fairy tale: strokes of aqua, gold, turquoise. Three pelicans thrust out their chests and glided on the air below.

"Well, Mr Hopkins," said Mr Jeffris, as he plucked a blood-bloated tick from his stallion's neck.

"What do you say to that?"

"To what?" the clergyman said abruptly, turning his haughty red face briefly towards his questioner before looking back again. Beside him, Mr Smith honed his axe, and hid his anger and self-loathing from

no one.

"What do you say," insisted Mr Jeffris, "to this, the countryside?"

"If it was my country, sir, I would be feared to see you coming." Mr Jeffris laughed, a harsh, impatient laugh.

"And I would pray to God to forgive you, and all of us who are of your party."

"It has been an education for you," said Mr Jeffris complacently. "That I can understand." Oscar said nothing. His anus itched beyond belief. He thought: If

400

Oscar at Bellinger Heads

I were a strong man I would leap on him now and commit the sin of murder.

"Churches are not carried by choirboys," said Mr Jeffris. "Neither has the Empire been built by angels," and he would have said more on the subject, for it was one he had a secret passion for, and his hand had just drifted to his broad moustache which he would stroke as he gathered in the strands of his defence, when he was interrupted by that bow-legged gentleman, the plant collector, who was, as usual, wanting to go cantering away from the main party, and wished to take the carpenter as "bodyguard." As it was Mr Jeffris's agreement that he had the rights of sale of all the plant collector's delicate drawings, he was more than pleased to humour him. The subjects of Empire and angels were forestalled by other calls on his attention, and finally he gave up. "We will drink," he shouted as he trotted back to settle some dispute that his brightly tattooed overseer was in the process of beginning. "We will drink champagne and send a message on the mail boat to Miss Leplastrier."

Oscar made a small noise, a little grunt of pain. In relationship to Miss Leplastrier, he felt only that he was a coward and complicitous in murder. As the wagon banged and thumped down the ridge into Bellingen Heads, its wooden brake squealing on the last steep drop, Oscar made a pair with his hunched and silent companion. He saw, in every blackened stump, every fallen log, in every shadow beneath a she-oak or turpentine, the same crumpled dark bodies, the frail and tender envelopes of human souls. He sought his laudanum. He imagined he could smell blood, and perhaps he could, for his own bandages were caked with it.

There were two taverns at Bellingen Heads and, discounting some grey neglected tents with dull, fat-leaved weeds growing along their perimeter drains, nothing else. The taverns faced each other across a sandy flat in the centre of which was a greenish-coloured waterhole surrounded by a ring of faeces. He and Mr Smith remained in their seat while the teams were unhitched and watered there, but when this lengthy business was at last completed Oscar climbed down.

"Come, Smith."

"Oh, God, man," said Percy Smith. "Surely you are not going to drink with them?" Oscar said: "I have already travelled with them."

Inside the tavern he placed his injured hands flat on a rough table. There was a smell here which was like a condensation of that slightly off odour, that blocked-drain smell which, mixed with salt air, was the

401

É

Oscar and Lucinda

distinctive odour of Sydney. There were small black flies everywhere. They climbed across his bandages, his face, across the lids of his eyes. He felt he had travelled to the very heart of New South Wales.

He did not wear his "uniform," but the shiny, frayed black suit he had worn as both clergyman and clerk. He had a collarless white shirt from which his long white neck sprouted to his staring crimson face and blooming ginger hair. He sat with his back very straight against the wall and held his hands together across his chest. He thought: I will smite them all. He trembled. He glared around the room at whiskered faces which not only stared back at him, but more often, laughed and pointed.

He said: "The pillars of society."

He thought: What would God have me do? He saw, in his mind, his father's face. He sighed. He was the subject of much curiosity. He himself felt only that he was in an evil place. He had no curiosity beyond that. Yet the little tavern was filled with curiosities. The bar was made from a single threefoot-wide plank of cedar. The walls had pennies and florins driven into place with six-inch nails. A couple seemed to be having sexual congress on the other side of the Tom curtain through which men – short, for the most part, broad and shovel-bearded, none of them too steady on their feet-would occasionally come and go.

While the day outside was clay-white, the inside was as dark and sooty as a painting above a fireplace. There was jostling going on around Mr Jeffris who seemed, in this environment, as white-skinned and genteel as an officer posing for his portrait.

The cedar cutters were insisting Jeffris must play cards with them. They spoke with humour, but if they were ready with a laugh and a wink they were also men whose faces spoke more of their cruelty and selfishness. These were faces that would "turn nasty" in a moment, and this information was, like a pitchfork, only partly hidden in the haystack of their laugh. Jeffris would be Captain Hackum if he had to, but he would not play them cards. He sent Moët et Chandon to Mr Hopkins's table and the blacksmith and the bugler to go and guard him. Oscar was unaware of all these currents. He was pressed by a crushing physical weight of evil. Mr Jeffris had been right: the Empire had not been built by choirboys. At that moment he was his father's son, and he would bring retribution on the wicked. He would burn the tavern down. It was this conflagration that gave his eyes their intensity. He did not wonder why

&m

Oscar at Bellingen Heads

anyone would drive a six-inch nail through the silver and copper images of the Queen but, rather, how one would leave them melted and twisted in the ash. His thoughts were of kindling, ashbuckets, Miss Leplastrier's fireplace. He had left his laudanum aboard the wagon. The blacksmith had signed the pledge and the bugler (who had only bugled once, as they crossed Sydney Harbour and had, for the rest, been called to obey the diverse and dangerous orders of Mr Jeffris), was of an age when he still cut himself with his razor and diluted his rum with lemonade. He was frightened, although not yet of anything in particular. The blacksmith was also nervous. The three did not speak to each other, but bunched, as you will see cattle in saleyards back their hindquarters against the rail until the auctioneer sends a rouster to prod them with his rod and make them run and skip and shit themselves before the buyers and sellers and those cagey souls who will not sell their stock until next week.

Mr Jeffris then excused his not playing poker on the grounds that, "This gentleman over here is a sky-pilot and it would cause him offence."

It is possible that Mr Jeffris was unaware of the degree to which the cloth was despised in that part of the country. He could not have known that Dennis Hasset's predecessor had drowned after being thrown in the Bellinger.

Oscar sat in the cold sticky envelope of his dirty skin and sipped his tepid champagne. Such was his disturbed state that he was not displeased to feel the heat of the cedar cutters' animus. He watched, and was watched. He had a nagging pain around his eyes that would only be cured by laudanum.

He was invited to step through the Tom curtain and "dip your wee white toe in the holy well." Several glasses of dark liquor were delivered by the publican's pale and pimple-faced wife with

"the compliments of Sir Roger Rogerer" or "Lord Pupslaughter," each glass being placed on Oscar's table in reverent silence, each announcement of the glass's donor being greeted with inordinate laughing and whistling.

You could feel the atmosphere becoming overloaded and had the tavern been a living organism it would soon have suffered a shiver of retro-peristalsis and spewed its poisonous contents out into the green shit-littered waterhole. But the tavern was inert, constructed from twofoot-diameter posts of Bellinger River turpentine, these being buried four feet down in the sandy soil. Mr Jeffris had not come this far to die in a tavern brawl. He fiddled with his sword hilt. The publican picked up a claw hammer and was

Ani

Oscar and Lucinda

smacking its heavy head into the fleshy palm of his large hand. It was then-at the moment when everyone seemed to have focused on this hammer-that Oscar felt himself rising to his feet. He had not planned to. It was as if the pressure of his outrage could no longer be accommodated by the bent pipe of his body. He rose without a plan, but with the clear knowledge that retribution must be meted out to these blasphemers. He could not stand straight, but at an angle, and thus must prop his long arms out on the table.

There was a silence in the tavern. A woman was crying softly on the other side of the Tom curtain.

Oscar thought: What would God have me do?

Everyone seemed to move and breathe very slowly. A freakishly large red-bearded man raised a glass to his glistening lips. Oscar thought: Like the hand of a clock. He held up his own hand. He watched, as they watched, as his wrist emerged-a living thing-from the frayed shell of his sleeve.

"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.

"Do not stew on it."

Oscar cupped his tea in his hand and looked around their campsite. Percy Smith watched him narrowly.

"You must not dwell on it."

"And where is the church on which account so much blood has been spilt?"

"It is all around you. Do you not recognize a pane of glass?" And indeed there were parts of the iron and glass church-all with their little labels flapping like manila leaves-scattered in neat piles all around the campsite and out on the wharf as well.

"I thought you were going to trip on the mullions." ….',• r

"Oh," said Oscar softly, "oh dearie me.":

"Do not dearie me." «t j

"Oh, Lord."

AfQ

Oscar and Lucinda

"Oh, nonsense." •'••

"And where are all the crates? And how will we. .?"

" 'Say not the struggle nought availeth, ' " said Percy Smith. " 'Our struggles and our hopes are vain.' How does it go? You have seen the crates."

"Smith/' said Oscar, "I beg you, I am in no state for silly puzzles."

"Then listen to me, and do not stew. I have rented these two lighters on the wharf. They are not, individually, big enough to carry the church, so I have done the mathematics. Now your church is fifty feet long and twenty-five feet wide."

'Twenty-two feet and six inches."

"Good. And all these bits and pieces weigh twelve tons, as you have told me often enough. And to support twelve tons on the water we will need barges to displace two hundred and forty cubic feet. And these chaps here, these ones will do this. We can take the church upriver on the tide. I have arranged for help in the construction. Two men can pole and row to keep the barge in the centre-stream. I figure we can be there in two days."

"And then we must construct the church."

"Not then," said Percy Smith. He stood up. He began to stride around the fire. "Not then, now, here. On the barge. You see, I have worked it out. We will enter Boat Harbour in glory. Can you imagine it? Can you see the look on their godless faces? A crystal vision. My oh my. Can you see it, Mr Hopkins? What a visitation it would be to see God's temple come to them upon the water."

"Mr Smith, I am tired."

"Do not be tired, my Reverend Jolly-man," said Percy Smith. "Lean on me. I am a practical man. I have the base plate already constructed on the water. It is a simple matter."

"But what will happen at the other end?"

"Why, dear Mr Hopkins, listen to this. I asked myself the same question. It is easy enough, I thought, to get this glass church built on water, but what will happen at the other end? And the answer is this. I have twelve wooden joists laid across the two barges. You must have seen them. But you did not, of course. You were Macbeth in a dream. I have been busy. I have twelve joists across, you see. When we are at Boat Harbour I will have twenty-four men lift the church by these joists and they can carry it. You should congratulate me."

'Twenty-four would not be enough. They must carry half a ton each."

"Then forty-eight or ninety-six. It doesn't matter. These towns are always full of men wanting to prove their strength. We will have them carry it up the main street like a float in a procession."

Mary Magdalene

"Mr Smith, why are you like this?",

"You would not like the answer, Mr Hopkins." v

"Tell me anyway."

"I am like this because we killed an evil man," said Percy Smith. "It has done me a power of good. I cannot tell you."

"And do you feel no shame?"

"Oh, yes, of course. And guilt, but I will tell you, in truth, that I have felt more sorrow to have slain a beast. That is something you never become accustomed to. You take care to make your knife sharp and to make the killing quick, but the moment always comes when you look that poor beast in the eye, and you can ask other farmers the same question and if they are honest they will tell you the truth-it is a dreadful thing. But this man was cruel. I am glad we killed him. I could not have borne to be a jellyfish one more day."

"And what of the Commandment we have broken?"

"I am sure the Almighty does not have a mind like a railway clerk."

"By which you mean?"

"He is not a puffed-up little toad in the government offices. He knows you are not a bad man." Oscar reached his hand into his pocket and found his laudanum was in its proper place.

"You should wash," said Percy Smith. "I have some soap."

"Yes," said Oscar. He did not believe any of the things Percy Smith said about God. 104

Mary Magdalene

Kumbaingiri Billy was not in that tavern or any other tavern, ever. But the woman on the other side of the Tom curtain was his father's sister and she had been abducted by cedar cutters about a year before that time and was as reduced and miserable as any human being might

Oscar and Lucinda

ever be. Kumbaingiri Billy's father's sister was about twenty years old. She said the tavern was very quiet when Oscar made his speech. She said he had a face that was Tom and peeling like the trunks of the paperbarks which grow in swampy land around the Bellinger. She saw great unhappiness there, said Kumbaingiri Billy, but that unhappiness, he reckoned, was most likely her own.

This young woman was a witness to the murder. It was she who showed Percy Smith the cesspit which was to be Mr Jeffris's final resting place. It was she who took him down along the river to the decaying homestead of H. M. McCracken and stood outside, scratching her long thin legs, while Percy Smith haggled with McCracken about a fair rent for his leaky lighters. She saw Oscar awake. She heard all the arguments about murder. She was squatting in the bush some five yards from them. She was very taken with Oscar. She thought him a good man. When he finished his damper she came out of the bush and told him there were two men she could get to help them with their building.

She saw the glass church built upon those lighters.

Kumbaingiri Billy knew the story. He said: "He moved fast, that man with the red face and the red hair. My aunty named him 'Bushfire' for the way he leapt from place to place on that barge, burning red, dancing in his own firelight. They got the columns up the first daythey were twistycurly things like rope, like the corkscrew on a can opener. These columns were black and greasy. The grease was black too. It made the white chaps into blackfellows. They braced these columns off with saplings. They could not use nails, of course. They tied the saplings on with rope. Then they got the trusses assembled on the wharf. There was no fancy stuff in the trusses. There was plenty of fancy stuff, but that came later-all this fancy iron like the houses down in Lawson Street-all this went around the bottom of the walls. There was other stuff along the top, a real cocky's crest it was, but the trusses were dead plain. They assembled them on the wharf and then they waited for the tide to go down. They waited. They had a smoke. Round about lunch time the tide went down. The top of the walls came level with the wharf and then this Mr Hopkins yelled out: 'Right you are.' They slid the trusses out and fixed them on. Mr Hopkins would not go out on the roof, but, by golly he was not shy to give those fellows orders. He called to them, you do this, you do that, you be careful, better not drop that thing and break it. They started two days before Palm Sunday. They worked on the sabbath too. That was the day they began to cover the iron with glass. They were working for a bet, or

Miriam

so I he'ard later, and this is why they broke the sabbath. They started at the bottom and moved from left to right, tap-tap. They must have used some metal clips, I reckon, to keep the glass in. This was when my aunty saw glass. My word, she was tickled by it. She had only seen glass in booze bottles until that day. She saw glass could be good. She had not thought this before. When she saw this glass church built she became a Christian. This was the day Jesus first came to the Bellinger. She saw Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Paul, and Jonah-all that mob she never knew before. She saw your great-grandfather was a brave man. She saw he had a halo like one of those saints. She saw that when it was night he shivered – not from cold, but from a sort of holy happiness. He told her: "You will live in paradise.' He christened her Mary, for Magdalene. It was a damn silly name for a Kumbaingiri and if you want my opinion, Bob, it was ignorant to talk to us Kooris in that way."