Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda

V7A

92

The Lord Is My Shepherd

Lucinda thought: Terrible things always happen on beautiful days. Nothing bad has ever happened to me on a rainy day. When they brought my papa home with his socks showing there were butcher-birds singing along the fences and king-fishers with chests like emeralds flying two inches above the surface of the creek. The sky was blue.

The sky was also blue in the week when her mama died, on the day Hasset sailed, and now, here, as they followed the wagons down to Semi-Circular Quay-she in her white hat and veil, he in the silly uniform that Jeff ris wished him in-it was a clear blueskied day. The uniform was too big around his chest and shoulders. It gathered and rucked. His braces were not tight. She thought of a poor creature she had seen in the street outside the Sydney asylum, a nurse on either side of him; he had a bare white neck so long you could not help but think of knives.

All her passion, all her intelligence, her discipline, her love had gone to produce nothing but a folly. She had not known this until she saw him in his humiliating suit. It would seem that he also knew this. There was a panic in his eyes, but now all these sixteen wagons would not be stopped. They were rolling like tumbrils through the public street of Sydney and urchins ran out of lanes hoorahing the procession. They called Mr Jeffris "Captain" and wanted to know if he was Captain Stuart. Mr Jeffris did not deign to answer them. His back was straight, his lips glistening. His horse was all impatience, eager to overleap the air. Lucinda felt an animosity towards the handsome chestnut she would not yet permit herself to feel towards the rider. T7<;

Oscar and Lucinda

The Lord is my shepherd

I shall not want

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

There was not a single black in the party, although Lucinda had directed that this be otherwise. Now Jeff ris clattered beside her shouting that there was no point recruiting the unhappy souls in the streets of Sydney. He would recruit his niggers when they were up country.

"I am offering a bonus," Lucinda called, digging into her purse. They were now moving along the bottom end of George Street. The trumpeter-he was riding in the wagon behind-made a loud discordant noise on his instrument.

"No trumpets," roared Jeffris, wheeling and rearing.

Why pay for trumpets then? Lucinda thought. "A bonus," she shouted, having to wave the crumpled white envelope at Mr Jeffris. She knew this was too weak and desperate. She saw how he despised her and she was frightened of what she had done.

She told Jeffris that Mr Hopkins would hand over the money when he had been safely delivered. She then gave Oscar the envelope and as she had offended and humiliated her friend. She saw how patronizing she had been. She could have wept. She thought: They will cut his throat and steal the money from him.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

"The Lord keep you safe," she said.

She gave him the scroll which was the formal document of their wager. He also pushed an envelope at her. And then he was down on the ground, away from her. She felt the cruel emptiness in her arms and her chest, as if she were nothing but an empty mould-she felt an ache in the places where he had, a moment before, pressed against her. She touched her shoulders with the tips of her fingers. She embraced the echo of his presence. She wrapped a rug around herself although it was not cold.

All around her the navvies swore and cursed the sap-heavy boxes, which contained nothing to equate with the crystal-pure, bat-winged structure of her dreams, but a lead-heavy folly, thirty hundredweight of cast-iron rods, five hundred and sixty-two glass sheets weighing two pounds each, twenty gross of nuts and bolts, sixty pounds of putty, five gallons of linseed oil. She saw him walk out on to a barge, then be escorted to its neighbour. There was a man on either side of him.

V7(.

93 Doggerel

The envelope Oscar gave Lucinda was bent in half, and then quarters, and then eighths. It was folded and refolded until, in its tired and grimy state, its simple address smudged, its corners dog-eared, it became a flimsy monument to all her misery.

That she did not open it was not forgetfulness. On the contrary, she was more aware of that envelope than anything else on her slow return to Longnose Point. She placed it on her kitchen table, leaned it against the brown-glazed tea-pot which still contained the cold soggy dregs of their last cup of tea. There were blow-flies in here as well. They crawled around the milky rim of two tea-cups, neither of which was empty. She picked up the envelope, but did not open it. She did not wish to weep. She dreaded the sound of her howling in an empty house. This noise was a living nightmare in her imagination. And she would not open the envelope because she imagined it contained all of those fine feelings of the heart that they had, both of them, so passionately hinted at.

So this is how it was not until Tuesday 15 March, a full six days after the party's departure, that Lucinda opened it.

In her hand she found this simple doggerel:

7 dare not hope, And yet I must That through this deed, I gain your trust.

"Oh, my darling," she cried out loud to the kitchen as she had never done when he stood in it.

"You had my trust, always."

She sat down heavily on the rung-backed chair but then, driven by a great shiver of passion, sprang up again, her face contorted, her hands clutching at the loose hair at the nape of her neck. vn

Oscar and Lucinda

"My God, you fool."

She walked to the window. She took out hairpins. She put them back in. The light from the harbour was as harsh and cold as chips of broken glass. She bit the knuckles of her hand. She screwed up her eyes and grunted: aaaah.

She had not cared about the church. The church had been conceived in a fever. It was not a celebration of sacred love, but of their own. Likewise this wager-she saw now, with her head pressed hard against the window pane, with her eyes tight shut, that she had only made this bet so that she might finally do what she had never managed to do upon a gaming table, that is to slough off the great guilty weight of her inheritance, drop it like a rusty armour she did not need, that she be light as a feather, as uncorrupted as an empty purse, unencumbered, naked, with her face pressed into the soft and secret place at the bottom of his graceful neck. With this ring I thee wed, with this body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.

"You knew," she said, walking to the sitting room, up the stairs. "You knew my heart. How could you misunderstand me to such an extent."

That very day she sent a messenger to find the party, but they had already departed from the expected track at Singleton and were pushing into unmapped country with the two blacks from the Wonnarua tribe.

94 %

Mr Smith

Mr Smith, Mr Percy Smith, he with the sandy hair and mild, blinking eye, Mr Borrodaile's friend, he who was forever removing llama hair from his trousers, Mr Smith had been engaged as a collector of animals for the expedition, and he had purchased, from his own funds, seven