Peter Carey: Oscar and Lucinda

"And that is when it came to me," said Miriam, smiling sweetly, "that we might make a present of my dear little church to them. Mr Field says he has no shortage of corrugated iron, and as for the walls, he explained to me how he would fix weatherboards to it."

"How clever of him," said Dennis Hasset sourly.

"Well," said Miriam, "indeed it is. You cannot just nail a

A Cheque amidst Her Petticoat

board on to a cast-iron frame." — ;

"I never thought of it," said Dennis Hasset. This was play-acting. A weatherboard could be secured, just as glass could, on the wooden mullions.

"Spare me your wit then, Mr Vicar, and if you are so wise in these worldly things, tell me how you would fix a weatherboard to the walls of the church."

Dennis Hasset smiled at her in a way which, in any other context, would be taken to be friendly.

"With fencing wire," Miriam said. "Like a stockyard fence. But if you are wise in these country matters, you will know how to do it. But, then again, you will not need to. The Gleniffer Anglicans will be here tomorrow. There has been so much trouble with white ant they are pleased to have a cast-iron frame. But, Mr Hasset, you look disappointed."

"As you know," he said, "I had rather hoped I would at last have a church here."

"Then we must get up a fête, and raise some money," Miriam said. "But you cannot ask me to worship in my husband's tomb."

"Still, I am disappointed."

"Your Sundays will certainly be very busy."

"I do not complain about God's work, but rather that the church was intended for me. But, but," he held his hand up as if to hold off her fury, "the courts said otherwise."

"Miss Leplastrier must have been most fond of you."

"We were friends, yes." i — '

"As she was obviously fond of my husband."

Husband? How is he husband? '

"She has been in correspondence with me again. I must say I admire

• her frankness." ' "v: :•:>; ••<'-.

"Oh?" '••••\^Ji'<.-,A-,

"You are not aware of our correspondence? She does not keep you informed? And yet I understood from her when we met outside the court in Sydney that you had a detailed correspondence. Indeed, she knew so much about our little town."

"Come, Miriam, what has she said." He held out his hand to the letter that Miriam was unfolding.

"It is not gentlemanly to pry into the private correspondence of young ladies. But I will read you little pieces. She writes: 'I made a bet in order that I keep my beloved safe.' I take that ill, Dennis, that she call him Ijeloved.' I think that poor taste. What say you?"

"She was fond of him?":s<,,

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Oscar and Lucinda

"She seems fond of almost everyone. But let me read some more: 'I beg you, please, as one woman to another, to not do this to me. I am astounded to see these words come off the tip of my own pen, but still they come. Let us not have our fears make us greedy.' Our fears, "said Miriam,

"make us greedy. Really, I can't think what she means. 'When I walk the streets of Sydney I realize I cannot bear to be an impoverished woman here. Please, Mrs Chad wick, if you have any Christian charity at all, you will allow me to keep some small percentage of my fortune.' " Miriam then folded the letter and placed it in her bag.

"So," she said.

Dennis Hasset's lips parted and his eyes narrowed a fraction.

"So," he said, "and what do you reply?"

"I replied sympathetically, of course. How could I not be sympathetic, I who have spent half her life in mourning rags, as I am again. I have an intimate knowledge of the poor woman's situation. It is I, after all, who was brought to this town through ill-fortune, was shipwrecked, and although a governess have had to suffer the indignity of a life better suited to an Irish servant. I know, better than she knows, what her situation must mean to her."

"And your response?"

"I worked as a servant," Miriam repeated. "I set fires. I milked cows when I should be teaching them their Shakespeare and their Milton."

"And you would have her do the same.",-^ , t

: "Dennis, you think me hard." — .

; "Mrs Chadwick," he said. -,

"Hopkins," she corrected.

"Mrs Hopkins," he said, "let us not be enemies."

"Mr Hasset, you are in such a rush to be friends you are stamping on my feet. Have I not said I will donate my little church to your Gleniffer Anglicans?"

"Indeed you have."

"Why then, I am dispatching today my cheque to Miss Leplastrier. It is not a fortune, but certainly should be some assistance to her in her present needç." It was this cheque which occasioned the short letter from Lucinda to Miriam which was unearthed nearly half a century later amongst Miriam's darned and fretted-over petticoats. By the time it was found, her letter was as fragile as the body of a long-dead dragon-fly. Its juice was dry. It was history. Lucinda was known for more important things than her passion for a nervous clergyman. She was famous, or famous at least amongst students of the Australian labour movement. One could look at

458

Songs about Thistles

this letter and know that its implicit pain and panic would be but a sharp jab in the long and fruitful journey of her life. One could view it as the last thing before her real life could begin. But in 1865, Lucinda could not be so disengaged and she had written with passionate downstrokes on poor quality paper which was speckled like a plover's egg, and spotted with dark blue patches where the paper drank over-thirstily of the ink. It was a letter written by a weary woman with red eyes and scalded arms, an employee of Mr Edward Jason's Druitt Street pickle factory.

"Dear Mrs Chad wick," Lucinda wrote. "There is no disputing that you are a thief, but a thief, I think, made so by fear and weakness and as I too understand the terror you have felt in your soul to contemplate a woman's life alone in New South Wales, then I forgive you." Miriam's cheque, for ten guineas, was enclosed.

Lucinda wrote no return address upon her envelope, but she was certainly no longer at Longnose Point for when, in June of 1865, WardleyFish came out to Whitfield's Farm in search of Odd Bod, he found the little cottage deserted and not so much as a blanket or button to provide a clue as to what passions had brought his friend to inhabit this damp and sorry place. It was a rainy, overcast day with wind driving across Snails Bay from the south. Wardley-Fish stood on the spine of rock. His beard was soaked. His eyes were narrowed against the wind and water. The only brightness on that long peninsula came from Borrodaile's shiny red surveyor's stakes which dotted the earth as regularly as pegs upon a cribbage board.

110

Songs about Thistles

:%'

After only one hundred and twenty years this church, the one in which my mother sang "Holy, Holy, Holy," the one of which my father was so jealous, the one my great-grandfather assembled, shining clear, like heaven itself, on the Bellinger River, this church

Oscar and Lucinda

has been carted away. It was not of any use.