Oscar and Lucinda (21 page)

But now she was lonely, and aware of her isolation, and everyone's isolation one from the other. There was a Dutch lamp-it was made from black iron filigree and had a gracefully shaped white mantle-above a round walnut table with three legs. Beside this table sat Miss Malcolm, the governess. She was a pretty young thing, or had been not so long before. On the other side of the table sat Miss Shaddock with her needlework. While Miss Malcolm was light and wispy in her nature, Miss Shaddock was dark and heavy. And while Miss Malcolm gave the impression of greater innocence than her age would agree with, Miss Shaddock gave off an odour of foreboding, as if whatever venture was discussed must come to an unhappy ending. And yet Mr d'Abbs, leaning against his case of books, was obviously so contented, so pleased to have the company of Miss Shaddock, to value her every bit as much as Mr Calvitto who was now-Lucinda could hear his leather soles squeaking-beginning to stir from his reverie on the veranda.

133

^^«îg^^-WTîçp^^* JA*ï-*%?&*

Oscar and Lucinda

Mr d'Abbs collected people. It was his passion. It was a distinction that Captain Burrows had been killed whilst bravely defending isolated settlers, that Miss Malcolm was the sister of a tenor, that Miss Shaddock's needlework had been presented to the Prince of Wales. Every now and then Mr Horace Borrodaile would drop in. Once he had brought Mr Henry Parkes (Mr d'Abbs still held his IOU). Here was Mr Calvitto, now, standing at the open door and speaking authoritatively about the landscape.

Lucinda did not listen to Mr Calvitto immediately. There was a cow bogged in the mangrove mud flats below the house. No one in the room thought to rescue it. It was not their cow. They were waiting for Mrs Burrows to leave so they could play cards.

"Shouldn't we do something about the cow?" she asked Miss Malcolm, but Miss Malcolm, although she looked at her, did not seem interested in what she said. Lucinda was indignant, but did not know what to do. No one would look at her. She felt a great sense of boredom, of purposelessness, sweep over her. The beast bellowed. It knew it would die. Its own kind would not help it.

"Yes, yes," Mr Calvitto was saying to Miss Shaddock, "but it is not
'.
a Christian landscape." Mr Calvitto had sunken eyes and a doleful
\
countenance. He had black curly hair and a strong, wiry black beard. , At the back of all this, like lamps placed at the back of a long room, ' one was aware of his eyes glittering. He was like a man who had been robbed of something precious and is waiting for others to see the injustice so they might restore it to him. "It is not a Christian landscape at all."

"You are not a Christian," said Miss Shaddock, her voice shaking as it always did when the conversation took this turn.
\

"That is not the point, Irene," said Mrs Burrows.

"God made all the landscape," said Miss Shaddock. "Surely you be-: lieve that, Mildred?"

"Of course," said Mrs Burrows but turned to Mr Calvitto.

Lucinda was impatient that this conversation should continue. It was > hypocritical to proclaim your Christianity whilst this suffering
con-}
tinued. And yet she knew what Mr Calvitto meant. She had felt it herself, and her mind drifted to the back creek. In this place the water
\
had been dark and still, brown from tannin, cut by church-like motes j of sunlight. Here she had plucked her doll bald. Here she had wept ] when her papa died. Here she had seen two blacks standing as still | as trees. She was sixteen years old. She held her breath. There were! two more. Another two. This was in the years when the blacks
oM

A Game of Cards

Parramatta were defeated. Their trunks were brown with mud, cracked like iron bark. She was frightened, not that they would hurt her, it was a bigger fear than that. She turned and ran, ran across the flat green pasture with plovers shrieking above her, ran out into the sunlight where the yellow sap-bright fence posts, peeled of slippery bark, with round shiny backs and rough straight sides, were lying in a higgledy-piggledy pile on a bed of stringy bruised bark. She knew what Mr Calvitto meant. You could feel it in the still shadows along watercourses. She felt ghosts here, but not Christian ghosts, not John the Baptist or Jesus of Galilee. There were other spirits, other stories, slippery as shadows.

She would have liked to say so. She was capable of ordering her ideas and her thoughts and presenting them properly, but she knew that only Mr d'Abbs would welcome it. He was standing there, leaning against his bookcases, swilling his brandy balloon. He looked at her and winked again as if to say: "What a jolly show Calvitto makes. What fun, eh?" The beast in the mangroves bellowed. Lucinda thought: I should not be here.

"What I do not understand about you, Mr Calvitto," Miss Malcolm said, "is how you live." She did not say "without faith" but everyone understood the meaning of her question. But Mrs Burrows began to rise, and whether this was intended to prevent the answering of the question or no, this is what it did. She made a small exclamation of pain, holding her bony back.

"Your business would be more prosperous," Mrs Burrows said, "if you were earlier in bed." Did this mean that Mrs Burrows knew about their gambling? Miss Malcolm turned her head a sharp, fast ten degrees to catch Miss Shaddock's eye. Miss Shaddock's eye remained steadfastly on her needlework but her white plump neck turned slowly red.

"Stay the night," said Mr d'Abbs. "I will have a bed made up for you."

"Please," said Mrs d'Abbs who had, until now, remained still and silent, her knitting in her lap (it always upset Miss Shaddock to see how
slowly
Mrs d'Abbs knitted)-they were, none of them, none except Lucinda who was new and did not count, sympathetic to Mrs d'Abbs. "Please
do
stay."

Thank you, no, Mr Calvitto will drive me home." 'We will deliver Miss Leplastrier to her hotel," said Mrs Burrows,

Banging her shawl. "Ox ^"' no, said Lucinda looking to Mr d'Abbs for help. "Not yet." 135

Oscar and Lucinda

Mr d'Abbs raised an eyebrow. Miss Shaddock looked over her rimless spectacles, frowning. There had been too much passion in this outburst.

"Mmmmm," said Mrs Burrows. It was a technique she had. It suggested she knew things.

"We are not right for you," said a great booming male voice from the doorway. "We are below you, Mrs Burrows. You would not be seen
dead
with us. And who can blame you?"

"Nonsense," shouted Mr d'Abbs, obviously very pleased.

"You think me a scoundrel," said the newcomer to Mrs Burrows who, whilst departing with Mr Calvitto, managed to look at once severe, but also pleased to be teased in such a way.

"Fig, you are a rogue," said Mr d'Abbs, making a face at the pink-cheeked bald-headed man with the tight, round little paunch. The face, a crumpled-up grimace, begged Mr Fig to be quiet for just a moment.

"Has the second sitting begun?" asked Mr Fig, winking hugely and miming card shuffling while Mrs Burrows was helped into her coat.

"You must away," he said to Lucinda, wagging a finger and sucking in his cheeks in what was a very poor imitation of the woman who was now-at last, Miss Malcolm's shoulders lost their tense edge-leaving the house. "This is a madhouse," said Mr Fig with relish. Mrs d'Abbs stood up. She tucked her knitting in the hatbox she used for that purpose. Lucinda did not hear what she said.

"Accepted, Henny," said Mr d'Abbs to his wife.

Lucinda was sorry that Mrs d'Abbs should slink away like this, put her arms around her breast, round her shoulders, and be so apologetic with her body while all the time-anyone with half a soul could see it-her eyes were filled with a grey and watery fury.

She did not like the things that happened in her house. She therefore had a right to put a stop to them. Her husband had an obligation to support her. If he were one quarter of the good fellow he pretended to be, he would feel it to be no sacrifice. Yet even whilst Lucinda was incensed on Mrs d'Abbs's behalf she also acknowledged that she wished to play cards, to empty her purse upon the table, and therefore she must be one of those whose will kept Mrs d'Abbs's shoulders rounded, for if she stood up straight she would, surely, send Miss Malcolm off to prepare her lessons for the morrow, Miss Shaddock home to her rooms in

A Duck to Water

Macquarie Street, and tell Mr Fig to return when he was sober.

Mrs d'Abbs, of course, did none of these things. She kissed her husband on the cheek and nodded and smiled agreeably before taking herself off to bed.

Lucinda rose from her chair and went to Mr d'Abbs who was removing the cards from their hiding place in the bookcase.

"Are you feeling lucky?" he asked her.

'Indeed, yes," said Lucinda, "but the poor beast is most unfortunate."

"Fig," called Mr d'Abbs, "you should hear the names you are being called." "No, no," said Lucinda, laughing. "Mr Fig, it is not true. There is a beast caught in the mud flats."

"Yes?" said Mr d'Abbs.

"I wondered if perhaps you might send a man to free it."

Mr d'Abbs looked at her and blinked. Lucinda was embarrassed. She had offended him in some way, but could not see how.

"I will see to it immediately," said Mr d'Abbs, but although he smiled, Lucinda did not feel easy.

"I hope I have not spoken out of turn."

"Of course not, of course not." But the truth was that he could not bear to be given what he thought were "orders" in his own home and although he went through an elaborate mime of leaving the room to order Jack the gardener to attend to it, he did no such thing at all. 38

A Duck to Water

"Ha-ha," Lucinda said. "You have beaten me, Mr Fig."

"I have, Miss Leplastrier," said Fig who had recently appeared in the "Ethiopian Concert" at the Balmain School of Arts. Then he had aroused much mirth with his impression of a nigger tickettaker, but

4

Oscar and Lucinda

now he rounded his vowels and rolled his r's. "I have robbed you blind," he said. "I have bailed you up and relieved you of your doubloons and ducats."

"Beaten," said Lucinda, "but I promise you I am not defeated." Mr d'Abbs liked Lucinda now. He liked her pluck, the way she laughed. He liked her plump lower lip, her sleepy eyelids, the feeling that she would be capable of the most unspeakable recklessness. Her upper lip was almost irresistible as it stretched and tightened-it was a charming little twitch -whenever she was excited.

"Shall
we
all take a trip together?" he said. He was less calculating that he might appear. He gathered the cards in across the grey blanket he had spread across the walnut table for their game. "Harry Briggs has brought a steamer. He will hire it out to us. We could take her up to Pittwater."

"Oh, yes," said Miss Shaddock. "Oh, I do so like Pittwater." Miss Malcolm stared at Miss Shaddock with a dreamy, dazed, slightly contemptuous expression. Mr d'Abbs understood what secret this expression advertised. Soon he would be forced to dismiss Miss Malcolm from his service.

Miss Leplastrier took the cards from Fig and shuffled them. Two weeks earlier she would have spilled them everywhere, but she had taken to the game like a duck to water. He found it both comic and endearing to see a pretty woman shuffle with the finesse of a croupier in a club. It was ten minutes past two o'clock. Lucinda was not in the tiniest bit sleepy. She took a sip of lukewarm cinnamon punch and began to deal another hand.

Miss Malcolm yawned.

"Have you had enough of cards?" asked Mr Fig, but would not address the question directly to Mr d'Abbs.

"Oh, please," said Lucinda, "let us play one more hand."

"You have already lost three guineas," said Miss Malcolm. Her tone was not friendly. She looked at Lucinda with the same heavy-eyed contemptuous expression she had bestowed on Miss Shaddock.

"One more," declared Mr d'Abbs, looking at Miss Malcolm through visibly narrowed eyes. "A chance for Miss Leplastrier to win her money back."

Lucinda dealt a card to Miss Shaddock. It slid across its fellows, and sailed through the air. Miss Shaddock snatched at it but sent it flying towards Lucinda. It bounced off Luanda's shoulder and fell at her feet. Lucinda leaned to pick it up.

A Duck to Water

She did not allow herself to see the suit of the card, but she did see that Mr Fig had taken off his boot. He had his leg stretched beneath the table. His stockinged foot was somewhere in amongst Miss Malcolm's skirts. Lucinda noted it with far less degree of shock than might be thought likely. She thought only: My mama would think this household horrid. She answered the question about her losses.

"One more game," she begged.

"Like a duck to water," said Mr d'Abbs.

Lucinda knew she would win this hand because she had dealt it. She knew she could control the cards with the strength of her will and there, now, here, the proof: four red threes and a two of spades. She could discard the spades and have a king. She would do this now. It was not a king. It did not matter. She would win

anyway.

I am rich, she thought. I can do what I like. It is only pennies. It is only a little fun. My mama would not condemn me to loneliness

forever.

Tomorrow she would have won or lost, but whatever happened, hap piness would be denied her. She could be happy now, not then. For if she won, she would know herself a robber. She was already rich. She had wealth she had not earned. To wish for more was sinful, greedy. But if she lost, it would be worse. Then she would feel not remorse, but terror. Her money was her cloak, her armour. She was a miser, counting it, feeling panic to be parted from it. She knew this already. She would go running to the Woollahra vicarage with her tail between her legs. She would read her Bible and attend Evensong. But now she was drunk on the game and only wanted more of it. The cards were sharp and clear, their blues pure ultramarine, their reds a brilliant carmine like the hearts of popish effigies. She saw the expression in Miss Malcolm's eyes. She heard the beast bellow from the mud flats. She patted her neck and felt her palm licked by loose, untidy flames of hair. The sight of her! It would drive her mama to a brushing frenzy, but Lucinda did not care about anything except cards and how to get the next hand moving.