Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda

184

The System

"Would not? Am not. Oh, I pray You, stop him prattling."

"If I were to tell you and my papa were to hear of it, it would be a torture beyond his toleration."

"You have my word he never shall," said Hugh Stratton and, seeing that Oscar still hesitated,

"oh, dear Oscar, you must accept my word."

"I have gambled," said Oscar, "as you long ago suspected."

"So," said Mr Stratton, and let out some air, "gambled."

"I think the ship is moving."

"You have a system, then? Is that what it is called?"

"A system?"

"Yes, a system. Temple has explained them to me. You have a system and you will write it down for me."

And, indeed, he was selecting, from the over-full pocket of his shiny coat, a used envelope and a stubby pencil which he now managed to push at Oscar without ever once letting go his painful hold on the wrist.

"It is not so simple. It is not a thing you can just write down. We have left it too late." Mr Stratum's hand relaxed its grip on the wrist and his jaw was slack and all the skin on his face seemed lifeless and crushed, a second-hand substance from the bottom shelf in the scullery. Oscar wished to retrieve his wrist, but did not.

"Write it down, boy, please, I beg of you."

He did not know what it was he was asking. It was not possible. The charts and tables that made up the system were contained in sixteen black clothbound journals. They were at once as neat as the boxes of buttons he had classified in his father's house, all ruled with columns and divisions, and, at the same time, smudged and blotted. His hand was a poor servant to his mind-the first was a grub whilst the second was a fastidious fellow with white cuffs on his sleeves and a tyrant for having everything in its place.

These notebooks were in his trunk. They would be worth nothing to him in New South Wales. Surely there was time to run to his cabin and thrust them into Mr Stratum's hands. The clergyman would not understand them, of course, but the explanation could be conducted by mail and what was important was the gift. For the books did prove that a man could make a good living at the track if he should apply himself with Christian industry. But no, he could not relinquish them.

He did not know why he could not. He had not expected to be asked, and when it happened he felt not generosity, but anger and confusion.

Oscar and Lucinda

The books were so intimately involved with his life, were his life, his obsession, his diaries, his communion with his God, his tie to the monster who must be fed. They were private. They were secret. They were five years' work. He had travelled all over the south of England recording the coded information therein. He had assembled a history which, blots and smudges aside, was superior to any bookmaker at Tattersall's-the record of five hundred and twenty-five racehorses, positions, weights, whether rising in class or in weight, distances of race, conditions of track, etc, etc. And although he did not bet on mares or fillies, he had the information on them just the same.

"Please, I ask you to leave me, Mr Stratton," said Oscar gently. "You hold a very dangerous secret and can therefore be confident I will write to you from New South Wales. I will tell you how I have achieved it."

He was a miser. He was unchristian. He must give away the books. Even if he had owed the Strattons nothing, he should give away the books. But he was a weasel, cunning with excuses, with substitutes.

"I will send the letter to you by return post from Sydney. I give you my solemn word before God. And you are quite right that I have been thoughtless and unkind in not thinking of your situation. I feared only that you would inform my papa."

Hugh Stratton held the gaze of the young man's clear eyes/not quite daring to trust them.

"Write it down."

"It is not so simple. I cannot." '

"You swear before God?"

"I do."

What did he swear? Simply that he could not transcribe the books in five minutes. This was true, quite true, but he had become too clever at this weaseling kind of "truth," which was not a truth at all.

"Is it horses?"

Give him the books. Give them.

"It is."

Mr Stratton let go the wrists. He nodded. He opened his mouth to say something, but the sirens triumphed. He nodded once more, then again. He was making a dangerous decision on how to fund his betting programme. He ran up the stairs, grimacing with the pain in his sciatic nerve. At the top of the stairs he called out something but Oscar did not hear. He was examining the bright red bracelet Mr Stratton had imprinted on his skin. He sat in the sumptuous cavern of the secondclass promenade, alone with this new knowledge of his corruption.

50 Pachinko

In order that I exist, two gamblers, one Obsessive, the other Compulsive, must meet. A door must open at a certain time. Opposite the door, a red plush settee is necessary. The Obsessive, the one with six bound volumes of eight hundred and eighty pages, ten columns per page, must sit on this red settee, the Book of Common Prayer open on his rumpled lap. The Compulsive gambler must feel herself propelled forward from the open doorway. She must travel towards the Obsessive and say an untruth (although she can have no prior knowledge of her own speech): "I am in the habit of making my confession."

But even this, a conclusion which requires, of the active party, a journey as complex as that of a stainless steel Pachinko ball (rolling along grooved metal tunnels, sloping down, twisting sideways, down into the belly of Leviathan, up, sideways, up, up, and out of the door to face the red settee) might not have taken place if the ventilation system of Leviathan had not displayed a single eccentricity of which its designers had been totally unaware. The eccentricity was this: it carried conversation from one stateroom to another, and that was how Lucinda was haunted by the sounds of bored stewards playing cards all night. They were not in the stateroom next to hers. That was empty, as were all the other first-class staterooms which she had imagined, when looking at the shipping company's brochures, would supply her with companionship for the voyage. (There were Bavarians in Imperial first class, but these were separated by a silken blue rope.) The stewards were several empty staterooms along, and such was the design of the ventilators that had they been closer, she might not have heard them at all. Their conversations were perfectly transmitted, as if every one of them had a voice tube of his own.

She could not read because of it. It was not the noise. It was the subject matter. Now, she thought, it is Tuppenny they play, now Blind

Oscar and Lucinda

Jack, now poker. The cockney with the high voice is the best player. She liked him. She imagined him with sandy, spiky hair and a habit of screwing up his eyes. He would grin a lot. Sometimes he would suck a match. He would give away no secrets. There was another one who always spoke more quickly when his hand was good. This one was from Liverpool. He was, of all of them, the most worried by his new job. He was previously chief steward of the Sobraon and Lucinda would have learned, if she had not known already, that the Sobraon was a wellregarded ship. This man's chief had been so outraged that he would depart his post for another ship that he had said that the chief steward would never be signed on again by him, "Not," he kept repeating, "under no circumstances whatever."