Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda

She listened to what Charles Ahearn said. And although she had once been a woman with a weakness for handsome men, she did not see Mr Ahearn (as one easily might, without being excessively cruel) as ugly. She responded to his dolefulness and solemnity. The effect was soothing, safe, like a good woollen worsted from Bradford.

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And only when he wished to be reassured on the Anglican question did she feel agitated. She straightened her spine and put her shoulders back.

Mrs Cousins believed in the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting. She had not been baptized in any church but attended the Church of England in Parramatta as though it were her right. It troubled her that she took communion without being confirmed. This was a sacrilege. She tried to live a Christian life, but this was perhaps not enough. She did not know how to correct the matter. She would wake in the middle of the night and think about it-suddenly all cold and damp with fear. And when Mr Ahearn mentioned the matter she was alarmed almost as much as if she had seen a face in the street from Bendigo. But she showed-apart from this excessive uprightness in her posture-none of this to Mr Ahearn. She poured him tea and assured him that she could accommodate the young lady without evicting anyone, that Miss Leplastrier would indeed attend an Anglican church and that she would see her steered carefully through the difficult shoals of Parramatta society.

But when the orphan materialized wearing bloomers, Mrs Cousins was overcome with an urge-it was visceral, self-protective, a thing of muscle and blood, nothing as rarified as an idea-to put her hands on the girl's shoulders and push her back down the steps.

26 Bloomers

Amelia Bloomer had come to London in 1851 with her famous "rational costume." It was, as everybody knows, a pair of baggy trousers surmounted by a short skirt. It was worn in Melbourne quite early, but it did not seem to catch Elizabeth Leplastrier's attention until she actually saw a woman wearing the new rational dress in Church Street, Parramatta, in 1858. 80

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Here, at last, was an antidote to the "obscene bustle" and the "crippling crinoline." From this time on both mother and daughter dressed in nothing else, and if this occasionally caused offence to street urchins in Parramatta, what else could you expect?

Now Mrs Cousins knew nothing of Amelia Bloomer. She knew only what respectability required and this was not it. She took the girl up to her room and was dismayed to discover, in the suitcase the labourers had so gracelessly packed for her, another seven outfits of the same design in different colours. On the pretext of taking them for laundering, she removed the lot of them. She did not understand Miss Leplastrier's commitment to the fashion any more than she understood her hair (she assumed the short cut was the result of sickness). She called a dressmaker. Miss Leplastrier did not want a dressmaker. She was small, but wiry and determined. There were tears, locked doors, much upset in the house. Mrs Cousins was beside herself. The girl tried to rip the flouncing off her dress as an ignorant animal will tear the bandage from its leg. She would not go to her mother's funeral in a bustle. Mrs Cousins could not give back her bloomers. The girl did not go to the funeral, which was a small and sad affair in any case. She howled in her room all that day. You could hear her howling from the street. One of the young ladies, a Miss Knight from Surrey in England, left on the packet for Sydney and refused to pay for her accommodation from the date of Miss Leplastrier's arrival.

From that time Lucinda ate in her room. This had never happened in Mrs Cousins's house before. It had been requested but never agreed to. Now she acquiesced and did not want the situation changed. When Miss Leplastrier emerged from her room at last, she was wearing bloomers. She had stolen them from the laundry and then, back in her room, locked them in her suitcase. It was impossible to introduce her anywhere. Mrs Cousins told Mr Ahearn all this. She went to his offices and spoke with him. She had not intended to weep, but weep she did. She feared for that more precious and fragile asset: her reputation. She wanted the young woman to be accommodated elsewhere. But Mr Ahearn spoke about the Good Samaritan. He recited all eight verses to her, ending thus: "Then said Jesus unto him Go and do thou likewise." Mrs Cousins promised to continue.

But Lucinda did not know what to do in Parramatta. She tried to behave well, but as long as she would not wear the bustle it seemed no one would behave well towards her. She sat by her mother's grave until it was judged morbid and she was taken away. She then decided 81

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that she would go back and live on the farm. She announced this to Mrs Cousins who was so relieved that she did not, as she should have, prevent her departure. She mentioned the dangers of larrikins and footpads and blacks, but without ever believing it would change the stubborn young woman's mind.

It was only three miles. She was there within the hour. There were no footpads and the only people who troubled her were shearers who called rough things to her from high on their farting horses.

She found surveyors with mattocks and axes clearing a sightline through her dew-bright orchard. Sweet white broken wood glistened in the sunlight. The axes stopped. They stared at her-a girl in emeraldgreen bloomers carrying a suitcase through the wet winter-grey grass. They smiled, having no idea how her heart raced, or what anger she felt-all the curdled love, the rage at death, look at the thistles in our pasture! — all focused on them in their blue shirts and bright white moleskin trousers.

She hated them. It is the hate you reserve for a thing that can hurt you. There was a long-handled pitchfork standing in a pile of rotting mulch inside the orchard fence. She walked towards it. God knows what she might have done if Chas Ahearn, finally alerted to his client's escape by a guilty Mrs Cousins, had not come galloping up the road from Parramatta in a jinker too unstable for such a high-speed chase. She turned to watch him work his way from one paddock to the next, straining and stretching at each gate, and, when he was at last beside her, at the top of the dam above the orchard, he was so out of breath that he could not speak but only lower himself from the jinker and press a sheaf of papers into her red-fingered, brown-mittened hands. And that is how Lucinda learned of her mother's betrayal, in a wheezing rush. Her suitcase, which she had held firmly by her side, she now stood carefully in the long wet grass. She took the plan of subdivision and tried to understand it. Mr Ahearn's breath whistled in her ear. The men were watching her. One whistled "The Wearing of the Green."

"This is not my mama's signature," she said.

Mr Ahearn did not answer. He smiled at her. It was inadequate. It was his way of showing pity. The dark man chopped a branch from the pear tree. He did it lazily, holding the axe in one hand. In the other hand he held a long white j stick. I

"In six months' time, I could order you," she said. Her voice was; small, her shoulders rounded, and her eyes could not even hold his, \

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but slid off and down to the scarred red earth her papa had found for her.

"I could order you," she repeated, but she had no confidence. Mr Ahearn steeled himself. He felt as he had once when, having run over a fox terrier, he had been forced to deliver the coup de grâce to the writhing, crippled creature. He did what he knew was right, which was to continue and not flinch.

"You will thank me, one day when you are older."

"Who has the cow?"

Mr Ahearn blinked. "You will be wealthy," he said, "at least you have that consolation." She heard him. It made no sense. "The cow is stolen," she said, crying.