Oscar and Lucinda (57 page)

Oscar and Lucinda

grandchild, to a stranger in a coffee palace, and even the best paper will not withstand this, and so Mr Ahearn had, over the years, got himself into the habit of transcribing the parable on to a new piece of paper on every New Year's Day. He would begin: "For the kingdom of heaven is a man travelling into a far country ..." and work slowly and painstakingly until, just as his wife was laying the roast potatoes out on a bed of brown paper and popping them back into the kookaburra oven, he would, with much satisfaction, transcribe: "And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." And thus, as Chas Ahearn folded the piece of paper into four between the thick pincers of his nails, a new year would begin. What talents he had been given, he had used. He was a man of property but a careful man, a Christian man, and if the Lord had seen fit to bestow on Lucinda Leplastrier an amount of capital equal to the sum of all his lifetime's labour, he had not been resentful of this. But he had watched her. He had watched her carefully, sometimes from close by, but more normally from a distance, via rumour and hearsay. He watched her as he might have watched a stranger's child playing with a crystal glass. In other words, it was not his right to say anything but he sat, on edge, waiting for the crash, hoping perhaps to catch the glass between the child's hand and the floor, unable to rest or read a newspaper for fear of what might happen. He had not approved of the purchase of the glassworks. He had thought it impulsive, illconsidered. But when he heard about the glass church, he was beside himself. He was angry. He could not help this anger, but he was now making this journey, not to chide her or vent his spleen, but to avert the crash. It was his Christian duty.

He came, at last, along the rocky ridge past Birchgrove House, a solid enough property which she would have been wise to purchase herself. He had told her so, four years ago. He had directions from a farmhand knee-deep in pig mire. The man pointed down through the orchard to a small half-painted cottage above the western side of the peninsula. He had burrs caught in his socks and in his trousers. There were burrs caught even in his shoelaces. The pasture was in poor condition, and Chas Ahearn, observing the burrs, the state of the sheds, fences, the piebald cottage, could not help himself valuing the property. If it had been his he would have had surveyor's pegs dotted like cribbage pegs throughout the orchard. The gate all but fell off the cottage fence. What this gate was meant 358

A Lecture Based upon a Parable

to keep in or out was not exactly clear. There was a cow tethered in its front garden. Mr Ahearn checked his gold fob watch. It was a gift from the Parramatta Benevolent Society of which he had been chairman for twenty years. He did his jacket up around his cardigan and knocked loudly on the door.

The servant was a fright. He had never seen such a servant, not even at Parramatta where every second one was a murderer. He had coal dust on his hands, and on his face. His hair was unruly, sticking out in all directions and although his beard was not heavy, the early sun, cutting in from the direction of The Heads, showed the orange stubble on his skin. His eyes were red and the left one smudged about with black.

"Is your mistress at home?"

He was informed she was still abed. This information was delivered in a voice so well educated that it confused Mr Ahearn a little, but not for long: he decided he was an actor, and having leapt to this conclusion, he clung to it.

He told the servant he would wait, but if he himself had not made to move towards the passageway, it is doubtful he would have been invited in. He was taken to the kitchen with the explanation it was "cosy." As the day was unpleasantly hot and humid Mr Ahearn could see nothing in this "cosy" but a convict form of clever rudeness. It was chaps like this who allowed Englishmen to write such patronizing accounts of their visits to the colony. And what a feast of sneering could be had here. The house was not clean. The kitchen was practically disemboweled. There were empty pots with burned bottoms and if these appeared to Lucinda as symbols of recklessness and joy, they were not perceived as such by Mr Ahearn. There was an item of female clothing strung across a chair like a fisherman's net. A bottle of brandy sat next to a small potted plant. A single tracery of cobweb ran across a sparkling clean glass window. A drawing board was propped on a workbench, which had, until recently, occupied a space more suited to it, inside the garden shed. On the drawing board he found evidence of the folly he had come to stop. Mr Ahearn sat heavily, leaning forward, his hat in his left hand, while the right hand wiped and smoothed and patted his head.

When Lucinda came downstairs to receive him, she found that he had taken it upon himself to remove the drawing from the place where she had left it so carefully pinned. He held it against the window pane, and was kneeling on her three-legged stool with his big sweaty nose (on which his wire-rimmed spectacles were precariously perched)

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Oscar and Lucinda

pressed close to it. He was caught in
flagrante delicto.
He had no time to rearrange his face. His mouth was open, but his forehead creased, as if wonder and censoriousness were there lined up for battle.

He did not greet her formally. In fact he began as if she had, just a moment before, left him with an invitation to inspect her plan. He made no apology for the early hour but rather held out her plan to her as if it were a table napkin he had finished with, and she a woman with nothing better to do than take it to the laundry.

Oscar stood in the doorway and watched. He was quite insensitive to Mr Ahearn's rudeness. He saw only what he imagined Mr Ahearn must see-that in this room, two hours before, he had kissed Miss Leplastrier on her soft and pliant mouth. Lust was visible. Mr Ahearn should surely see it.

"Where will the vicar change into his vestments?" Mr Ahearn demanded. "Where will he blow his nose in private? When he is late, he will be on show, like a fish in an aquarium, and what will you do," asked Mr Ahearn, seating himself upon the three-legged stool, "about the heat?" Lucinda knew it impolite to greet the old goose in her gown, and yet she wished him witness to it. She was a free woman, and she dared stand before her visitor, uncorseted, with burnt pots and unwashed plates around her. She had kissed her lodger's mouth and held him hard against her loins. She stood thus before Mr Chas Ahearn and refused to be ashamed.

"A fatal flaw," intoned Mr Ahearn. "A cardinal error." Lucinda looked at Oscar and pulled a face. Oscar blushed. She knew why he blushed and, in the midst of her growing irritation, was warmed by the heat of it. She smiled at Mr Ahearn who, seeing, but not understanding, the sleepy contentment in the girl's face, was not only puzzled but also, a little, embarrassed.

"It is this which makes this church impossible," he said. He could see that the damned servant was listening to every word he said. "The Australian sun will scorch your congregation as though they were in hell itself."

"It was kind of you to come early to tell me this," said Lucinda.

"And have you become so sarcastic, Miss Leplastrier?"

She was sarcastic, it was true. It was not an attractive quality. But she could not tolerate the satisfaction he had from finding fault in her design. He stood in judgement on her work as passionately as she had so short a time before, stood in judgement on Mr d'Abbs. She could not bear it, even if he were right.

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A Lecture Based upon a Parable

But he could not be right.

It was far too late for him to be right.

Oscar came forward and picked up the brandy bottle, using two fingers like tweezers to open its long neck. He carried it from the room. Lucinda opened her mouth as if she would say something in explanation, but then she shut it again.

Mr Ahearn, however, did not seem to notice either Oscar or the bottle.

"Who has ordered this?"

"Ordered?" said Lucinda, anxious that he not attempt to fmd more faults, fearful that there were many there to fmd.

"Commissioned, purchased, requested that you manufacture this?" He knew the answer was "no one." But Lucinda said: "The Lord Jesus Christ." Mr Ahearn hissed.

"Whose glory it celebrates," said Lucinda, wrapping her gown a little tighter.

"The glory of God is not served by folly."

"There are circumstances where it is called folly to be wise."

"Do not banter with me," said Chas Ahearn. "It is not practical. It is too hot to sit in. No congregation will pay for it."

She looked for Oscar in order that he might come to her defence but he had begun to stack cups and saucers in the scullery. "It is," she decided, "to be built beneath a shady tree."

"Oh, fiddlesticks," said Chas Ahearn, rising to his feet. He buttoned his long grey jacket and retrieved his wallet from the secret pocket where no Sydney footpad would ever find it. He took out his parable which, being late in the year, had become very frayed at the edges.

"The Kingdom of Heaven," said Lucinda, "is a man visiting a foreign country."

"Travelling
into a
far
country."

"Yes, I know."

Still, she took the piece of paper when it was offered to her. She had read it before. The paper smelled of boring afternoons in Parramatta.

"But you
do not know.
You do not act as if you know."

"Yes, yes. My fortune is unearned. It is the fruit of your clever subdivision, and it was bought by the labour of my mother and my father and the blood of the blacks of the Dharuk. I have no right to it."

"The scripture says no such thing."

"Perhaps that is a lack in the scripture." :"

Oscar and Lucinda

"It will be hot," he said, retrieving his parable, "as hot as hell. The congregation will fry inside," he said. "They will curse you. They will curse God's name."

"Mr Ahearn, please do be calm." Lucinda was not calm herself. "Mr Hopkins," she called,

"perhaps you would fetch Mr Ahearn a glass of brandy?"

Mr Ahearn thought:
"Mister?
She calls her servant Mister." His lips were showing small white bubbles at the sides and he was having a great deal of trouble fitting his parable back inside his wallet.

"I have come to tell you this in respect of the wishes of your mother who was my client. You were given such a start in life, young lady. And I have tried my best to steer you right." But this manner was not as his words. His voice was angry. There was something he did not understand at work within him, a rage so great he could not make his hands stay still. He saw himself tear up his parable. It was not symbolic. It was mechanical-the forces of agitation and rage at work. He could not bear this glass church, and yet he could not explain this, or any of his passions to himself. He saw himself, from a great distance, a tortoise-necked man with a quaking voice. He heard himself shout. He saw himself gently escorted from the sloth-house by the man who, he found out later that day, was not a servant at all, but a defrocked priest, the little harlot's lover. 89

Of the Devil

Lust was an insect, a beetle, a worm. It slipped into his belly like the long pink parasites which had thrived in the intestines of the Strattons's pigs, and he had tried to drown it with long clear draughts of tank water, with holy scriptures, with meditations upon hell. John wrote: "He that committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning."

Of the
Devil

In Galatians it is said: "If we live in the spirit, we also walk in the spirit." But the mail from England said that the Reverend Mr Stratton had hanged himself from the rafters of his church while he who had corrupted him, the same Oscar Hopkins, the so-called servant of God, had seduced an honest woman, had pressed his lips against her teasweet mouth and felt the soft curve of her stomach against his loins.

It had been three in the morning. He had come out to draw more water and had found her there, in her Chinese gown. His penis was a hard rod against the softness of her stomach. He felt Satan take his soul like an overripe peach with a yielding stalk.

He kissed her dear, soft lips. He nuzzled her long white neck. He touched and broke away, touched and broke away, moaned and begged his God's forgiveness while the clock in the kitchen struck the hour.

He withdrew from her, made patting motions in the air with long outstretched fingers as if their passion was a silky beast between them that could be soothed and patted into docility. They went into the kitchen and drank tea. They did not discuss this thing, which Oscar, with extraordinary selfcentredness, saw as his responsibility. He did not think, She loves me. He thought, rather, I am seducing her.

They talked earnestly about the glass church, although not of its faults or impracticalities. When his unholy passion rose in him Oscar used fear to still it. He thought of the boat carriage that Mr Jeffris was having built at Mort Bay. Mr Jeffris had described the carriage in the most minute detail, at this very kitchen table and Oscar had listened with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as if it were not a vehicle for carrying a boat, but a gallows or a set of stocks. Mr Jeffris was precise and fastidious. He was pleased to demonstrate this in the design of the boat carriage. The two boats were carried one inside the other, like two spoons. Each was suspended on canvas slings and such was the ingenious nature of the design that neither could ever rub against the other.

The thing that made Mr Jeffris so proud served only to paralyze Oscar. He would be called to travel in a boat.

Dear God, give me hard and difficult things. Give me a rocky path that I may not sin. Mr Jeffris loved to talk of rivers, mountains, trigonometry. He Promised Oscar he would have him delivered to Boat Harbour, and do not fear. There was no risk from drowning. >•..; .;.,••<

Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar had not known about these rivers when he talked about going overland. The Hastings, the Clarence, the Macleay, these rivers now snaked through his dreams. They were miles wide, bruised and swollen by the rain.