Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda

There was a long silence, a minute, perhaps two, before Theophilus Hopkins, FRS, began his prayer.

"Oh, Lord God," he began. His voice was tangled. He began again: "Oh, Lord God, this is my son."

The next pause was shorter, but felt more painful.

"These are his friends, and fellow voyagers."

You could hear Mrs Stratton's asthmatic breathing. She was swaying a little on her knees. Mr Stratton rubbed her back.

"Oh, Lord my God," said Oscar's father, the deep voice so broken that many did not hear the last words: "What can we do?"

Oscar and Lucinda

Then he was on his feet. He touched his son, so briefly, a brush so light Oscar would always wonder if he had not invented it himself. He walked up the stairs quickly and in pain. He went out of sight with a peculiar hobble: fast, short steps and a tightly screwed up face. The congregation rose slowly, and were not keen to meet each other's eye. Down on the wharf, Theophilus Hopkins prayed again. He stood before Leviathan and a crowd gathered around him. But the scales of the giant were fitted tight together and the sound of his voice did not reach the son who would not leave the promenade.

Oscar waited for his father to return. And while he waited, while it became clear, even to him, that his father had left forever, he could look nowhere but towards the busy bulkhead through which the old man had departed. A great pain took possession of his heart and clamped around his lungs so that although he stood, in the midst of his friends, with his red lips parted, no air came to rescue him.

He thought: I will never again look upon his wise old face.

He thought: I have been a poor son to leave him all alone. He embraced Mrs Stratton, shook hands with Wardley-Fish, Miss Clutterbuck, Mr Col ville and the pupils from the school. There was a great fuss of sirens, bells, fireworks. Lucinda, watching from above, wondered why the clergyman sat by himself on the bright red chaise-longue.

Oscar was caught in the web of his phobia in the geometrical centre of the ship. He imagined everyone had gone.

49

The System

Mr Stratton gave Oscar a fright. He pushed his face close up. He did not give a warning. He came creeping over the carpet with one last glass of complimentary sherry in his hand. The boy did not look up, but Mr Stratton did not imagine himself invisible. Quite the

The System

contrary. He was the only visitor left on the promenade. He had been requested, twice already, to leave the ship. He felt his defiance bathed in limelight.

He imagined the young man waiting for him. It was only natural in his view, for there were matters too long postponed which must be spoken of between them. He had expected them to be spoken of earlier, but as they had not been, they must be spoken of now. He was a man with a nervous respect for clocks and timetables. Bells, alarms, sirens, all had a direct effect upon his physiology. But he would not be cowed by sirens today. They could row him ashore if necessary. Mr Stratton sat on the settee three feet from Oscar. He placed his sherry on its back rail. He balanced it nicely there and really did not care that the alcohol might scar the varnish. Oscar did not see him. All Oscar could see was the image cast on his retina by his departed papa's face, most particularly that pennysized area of vulnerable skin beneath the eyes.

"You can no longer put me off," said Mr Stratton. He pushed his face up close to Oscar's. Oscar leapt a good two inches from his seat.

"Hooo," he said. <���•••

Mr Stratton's face stayed complacently where it was, although the hand which served it went back, searching blindly along the edge of the settee for its master's sherry. Oscar had remained very fond of both the Strattons and his pity for Mr Stratton had not diminished his feelings, quite the contrary, but today he was repulsed by the too-obvious signs of cunning he saw on the face which had once been-the past showed through the corruption of the present-so innocent and boyish.

Oscar was too preoccupied with the loss of his papa properly to grasp the clergyman's intention. He laid his hand on Mr Stratton's shoulder. "It's time," he said, "and a sad time too." But Mr Stratton's face had become tight with suspicion. It was a face that knew the world was not as it is commonly presented. It knew there were tricks and larks played everywhere, by bishops, provosts, kings, even rural deans. It was a face ripe for some heresy, one that would make even the Lord God of Hosts nothing but a vain and boastful demiurge whose claims to omnipotence were based on ignorance and pride.

"There has been enough of cat and mouse," said Mr Stratton, pinning his eyes to Oscar's, "you must tell me now."

When Oscar looked at Mr Stratton's eyes, he felt that he must never have done so before this moment, that he must have, through

Oscar and Lucinda

politeness, even squeamishness, have slid around them, knowing he would see only unhappiness there. Today he was not permitted to avoid them. They were blue and watery; the whites were yellow, veined, stained, like the porcelain basin at the Swan in Morley. Mr Stratton's hand brought the sherry glass to his mouth. The lower lip reached out to anticipate it. The foot of the glass came close to Oscar's nose.

"We have looked after your poor father," he said, "as best we could. We fed him when we could barely afford to feed ourselves and we could have no expectation of reward, at least not on this earth. Similarly, we looked after you. You could not imagine we had profit in mind," Mr Stratton laughed, a shallow noise made from old air at the back of the throat. "We educated you so you might bear witness. We did not think we were assisting a wealthy man." Mr Stratton looked around the promenade, underlining the opulence of their surroundings in a manner which, had it occurred upon the stage, would have been pure ham but which here, driven before the rough current of his hurt, served only to fill Oscar's heart with shame.

"I thank you," Oscar said, "I have always-"

"I have been thanked before," said Mr Stratton. "I cannot think that it has been beneficial to be taunted with fancy coffee or mysterious packets of currency." For a moment Oscar was angry. The amounts he had sent the Strattons had not been insubstantial.

"Naturally you wish to speak to me," said Mr Stratton. "You do not wish to taunt me any longer." And he opened his mouth a little as was his habit when waiting for someone to speak. The tip of his pink tongue flicked quickly across his sherry-sticky lips.

The sirens were blaring. They had changed their tempo and were now short, sharp, insistent, like dagger thrusts into taut white canvas.

"Now you will tell me, God help me. You cannot leave without it." He took Oscar's wrist and squeezed it. He would not let it go. It hurt. "How does a Christian clergyman acquire the funds to travel in such luxury? I am not a cadger. I do not come to you with a begging letter. I am sunk low enough, but not so low. You must tell me how it is you have managed."

"You would not find the story pretty."

"You need not worry about my sensibilities, little lad." He gave the wrist a harder squeeze and his mouth, for that moment, was twisted by the spasm of his anger. "My poverty does not allow them."

"You would not be proud of me."