by Peter Carey
Half Theophilus’s congregation still believed that the sun danced when it rose on Easter morning, and many claimed to see a sheep dancing with it. This was a county where cockerels were still sacrificed at the winter solstice. Theophilus had himself recorded a wassailing where a naked boy was sat up an apple tree and made drunk (he thought) on toast soaked with cider. He had not come in search of pagan darkness. He had come to study the marine zoology, but now he was here he would bear witness to the miracle of the resurrection. He was dismayed, often, at the depth and complexity, the ancient fibrous warp, the veinous living wefts, of the darkness that surrounded him.
When he found pagan signs scratched on his path one morning, he recorded them in his notebooks, thus:
Theophilus imagined he recorded this in a scientific spirit, and even if he was meticulous in rendering the exact proportion of the sign, he was not a dispassionate observer. The sign frightened him. And just as he had seen a mockery of the crucifixion at the wassailing, he now saw a heathen assault upon the sanctity of the cross.
He could not leave it. He must tilt at it. But where to tilt he was not sure. He walked all the way to Morley, briskly, imagining he would find someone in the public house. It was Bargus he had in mind, he who had been a warrener and was now the sexton. But when he entered the Swan at Morley he found it completely empty. He turned around and walked back, four miles across the fields.
Theophilus was agitated at the time he had wasted. He was completing the illustrations for his Corals of Devon. He must produce two drawings every day, to meet his deadline. Today he had done no drawings, except this sacrilegious symbol. He was out of breath when he climbed over the stile at Hennacombe and saw Bargus sitting on the little stone bridge which was built acoss the stream there. He did not think himself a superstitious man, but this “coincidence” unnerved him.
Theophilus gave Bargus credit for some kind of power, which the old man would have been surprised to know. He was over seventy years old, short, broad-chested, with red cheeks and a snow-white, shovel-shaped beard. He was one of those men whose great business in life it is, a matter more important than any other, to be liked, and in this he had been generally successful.
When the gentleman thrust the notebook at him, he took it. He looked at the drawings of the markings, and then he looked at the other drawings as well. He admired the felicity of the sketches of ferns, furze, early violets, sweet oar—weed and then, smiling, but puzzled, he gave the book back.
“Very fine,” he said, and then set about stuffing his pipe. He had intended to save his last twist of tobacco for the inn, but he was discomforted. He did not know how to take the fellow’s death’s-head grin. He had never seen a grin like this. He thought, stuffing the pipe, “Why would the fellow grin at me in such a way?”
He looked up, squinting a little as if he might bring the meaning of the other’s smile into focus. It was getting cold quickly now the sun had gone. He made some comment about this.
“So,” said Theophilus, tapping his book, stamping the mud off his boots on the stone bridge, still grinning all the while. “You can make no sense of this?”
“Nor hide nor hair.”
“It is the Holy Cross?”
“Oh, aye,” said Bargus, who had thought it looked like a children’s game, “I do not doubt it.”
Theophilus bade him an abrupt good-day. He did not believe a word Bargus said. He was a pagan. He liked to lead a coffin three times around the granite cross at St Anne’s. He had walked before the coffin with his blue eyes blazing, his spade held out from him and down. When he said he did not understand, Theophilus saw this as certain proof he did.
But Bargus—who was now walking slowly across the path to the Swan at Morley with his pipe still unlit—was not the one who had made these signs, and Theophilus put away his notebook without guessing their true author.
Mrs Williams’s suspicions were better placed. She was walking to the post office at Morley—this was two days later—when she came across another set of what were now known locally as “witches’ markin’s.” She was rushing noisily along, a big-bummed, white-aproned figure on a long red hill. She wore the apron everywhere. In Morley they called her “Nurse.” She did not mind the title either.
Oscar was with her, counting the steps to the village. He walked alongside her, a little behind, scratching the line of their journey with a pointed stick.
Mrs Williams was never comfortable standing still. She found it nigh impossible. She had jumped and jiggled inside her mother’s womb and she had jumped and jiggled ever since. But when she came across these markings, she took a good long pause.
She would not have noticed Oscar’s face, would not have thought about it at all had he not suddenly begun to dance back and forth across the symbols, at once scratching at them with his dragging heel while he tried—the two aims were contradictory—to hop across them.
“Hopscotch,” he said shrilly.
Then she looked at his face. It was scarlet. His cheeks were flat, his top lip long, his lips drawn as if on a string. He would not meet her eyes and she suddenly felt very queer.
9
Throwing Lots
It was Oscar, of course, who had made the “witches’ markin’s.” They were a structure for divining the true will of God.
The stood for Theophilus who, in turn, represented the revelation as understood by the Plymouth Brethren and all that strict system of belief that Oscar had, until now, accepted without question.
This was the sign that said you could go to hell for eating pudding.
“Sq” was for the Baptists, being an abbreviation for the Squire who was their local representative. He had grown up believing the Baptists damned. But perhaps the God who smote his father looked upon the Squire with favour after all. The markings were a way of asking the question directly.
The VIII was the eight from Henry VIII and was a coded reference to the Reformation, a glance at the incredible possibility that the Catholic Church was not the creature of the anti-Christ, but the one true Church. Later Oscar feared his code was too obvious, so he added an X to make this square read XVIII.
The was code for “A” which stood for Anglican. He almost did not put it in at all, but there was nothing else to put there in its place. He knew the Church of England to be most powerful in the world outside, but in Hennacombe it was an object of pity. No one could consider the Reverend Mr Stratton a suitable guide for the difficult path to salvation. He could not even pluck poultry without tearing its flesh. When Oscar had made these four squares, he added a “tail” of two more squares to make his system look like a child’s game. He put a zero in the first square because it was nothing, and an omega at the next because it was the end. And then seeing he had the alpha and omega of Revelation 1:8, a quotation made by accident, he knew it was not an accident at all, and that what others might call chance or coincidence, he knew to be the word and blessing of God.
At the head he made another square and left it empty. This was a form of reverence.
The first of these markings was the one his father had recorded in his notebook. Oscar had made it on the little path leading above the western side of the beginning of the combe. He had made it, shivering, just near an old wooden bench, its slats half-rotten and overgrown with ivy. It was afternoon, about three o’clock, and the day already nearly drowned by darkness. A northern gale was blowing, but it was not this that made him shiver. He felt himself, quite literally, teetering on the edge of eternity. Old leaves rushed across the path, formed parties, were sundered and scattered. He was fourteen years old. His mind was filled with death, damnation, paradise. He marked out his system with a special yellow stone he had chosen from the millions on the beach. He should have been washing the milk pail in the stream below. He could hear it rattle on the rocks as the wind caught it. He worked with the special stone. It was no more than an inch and a half long and shaped, as his face was, a little like a heart. He was not aware of this coincidence. H
e did not, in any case, accept the notion of coincidence. He squatted, drawing, moving backwards, his teeth chattering.
When he had all the symbols down he stood with his heels against the omega square, facing away, towards the smell of the sea.
He then said these words from the Book of Judges, silently, without moving his lips: “And he said unto him, If now I have found grace in Thy sight, then show me a sign that Thou talkest to me.”
There was rain in the wind now. It stung his face. He took his yellow stone, his “tor,” and threw it over his shoulder.
It landed on alpha.
He stood, with his shoulders bent, peering at it. He stood for a long time, his heart heavy. It could not be true. But it must be true. If it was true, he could not live in his father’s house. He must live in an Anglican house. He stooped quickly, picked up the stone, and put it in his pocket.
He wore a long oilskin coat, of the same burnt-toast material as his father’s jacket. But being cut down from something else, the pockets were close to the ground. He tried to get something from one of these large pockets, but it would not come. He walked, awkwardly, his hand still in his pocket, down near the hem, and perched himself on the edge of the ivy-covered seat. He heard the milk pail tumble further down the stream. He tugged at the pocket. A rolled-up handkerchief came out. He retrieved this. Next there was a pencil, and finally a bulky notebook.
As the rain was now heavy he undid the front of his oilskin and held it out—this made a sort of tent within which he could record the result. He wrote: “1st Monday aft. Epiphany: Alpha.” Then he put the book, the pencil, the tor and the ball of handkerchief back into his pocket and, having scrubbed at his “hopscotch” markings in a desultory sort of way, rushed down the bank to rescue the milk pail. He scrubbed it out quickly, shivering, and climbed the slippery mulch-soft bank to the path.
He ran home, counting. He had to pass the Anglican vicarage. His knees clicked. He made faces against the click and the rain. He wished to be home by the fire in the clean, lime-cold cottage where his father and he frightened Mrs Williams by discussing famous murders in calm and adult detail. They were closest then. Afterwards his father would give him a sharp hug and rub his beard across his cheek, making him giggle and squirm. This was called a “dry shave.” It was an expression of love.
But God had chosen alpha. There was no way he could talk to his father about this.
It was one hundred and twenty-five paces from the markings to the Anglican privet hedge. The hedge was patchy and broken like the beard of a sick man. Oscar caught his breath there. Through the hedge he could see the back of the house where the Anglican and his wife were trying to kill a pig with no help from a butcher. The pig should have been killed in the weeks after All Hallows, not now. They stuck it in the cheek. The pig shrieked. Oscar’s face contorted. The Anglican took the pig sticker from the Anglican’s wife; his hands were red, not from blood, from mud, from slippery red mud from the wet pig. The clergyman stabbed a number of times. His face was screwed up more than Oscar’s. At last the boy heard the rattle of wind from the pig’s windpipe. He unclenched his hands and saw that his nails had made crescent moons in the fleshy part of his palms.
It was not possible that these were God’s servants. And yet they must be.
“That the Lord called Samuel: and he answered. Here am I.” The Anglican could not have heard, but he saw him, somehow, standing there.
“Go away,” said the Reverend Mr Stratton. He threw a muddied fir cone at him. “You horrid child, go home.”
Oscar went home and hid his book.
10
False Instruction
Oscar had his new divining “tor” in his pocket.
This was not the yellow “tor” he had begun with, but a new one, a red oxide of a colour his father would (should he be given a chance) have told him was caput mortem, or death’s head. His father appropriated everything by naming it, whether he was asked or not. He had discovered the yellow divining “tor.” He had come out on to the flagstones by the cellar door when Oscar was bathing. (It was the custom that they bathed outside, in all weather. It was intended to strengthen the constitution.) Oscar was pouring cold water from the big zinc ladle, huffing, puffing, rubbing his narrow chest and stamping his feet. There was a peg on the wall where Oscar was meant to hang his clothes. He preferred to lay them on the lip of the well. His father came out to wash, saw the shirt and knickerbockers on the well, picked them up, hung the shirt on the peg, and proceeded to go through the pockets of the knickerbockers. This was not prying. There was no such category. His father examined all the little pieces his son had collected in the day. He held them between thumb and forefinger, as if they were the contents of the gut of some fish he wished to study.
The notebook was hidden, but he found the yellow “tor.” For reasons he did not explain he placed the “tor” in his pocket. He did not say that he was “confiscating” it. He expressed no opinion. He slipped it into his dressing-gown pocket and it was difficult to know if he were absent-minded or censorious. Oscar, feeling himself blushing, turned away, presenting the walls of his bony shoulder blades.
Nothing was said about the “tor” in prayers.
On the next morning the stone was on the breakfast table. It sat at his place, an accusation. Oscar’s heart raced. He thought himself discovered. He was wearing a greasy jersey of a type that fishermen in that area wear. Suddenly he was very hot inside it.
“A pretty stone,” Theophilus said, after Oscar said grace.
“Yes, Father.”
“Where did you find it?”
Theophilus was sprinkling sugar on his porridge. He had a sweet tooth. He sprinkled sugar quite gaily, giving no sign of the terrible anxiety that gripped him. There was something wrong. Something terribly wrong. He had taken the stone, pathetically, so he might be close to the boy. But now he could not think of anything to say. It was a stupid question he asked, but he had no other.
Oscar did not want to answer the question. He felt it was not innocent. Even if it was innocent, he could not tell him. With this very stone, God had told him that his father was in grievous error.
His father would not tolerate any questioning of his faith. He imagined God spoke to him. Oscar was moved to pity by his misunderstanding. But he could not, not even in his imagination, find a way to tell his father why he had been smitten.
Every day Oscar had thrown lots. The tor continued to land on and not on . He wished he were a pig, that he had no mortal soul, that he be made into sausages and eaten, and released from the terrible pressure of eternity. He could not even look his father in the eye.
His father asked him where he had found the stone. Oscar did not know what he meant. He stirred his tea. The window beside the small round table was steamed up. Outside, the brown bracken was drowned in fog.
His father did not seem to notice the lack of answer, and yet his eyes were strange. Dear God, lift the scales from his eyes. Lift the scales from his eyes now.
“Do you know the name of the colour?” his father asked.
Oscar did not wish it named. He was angry at his father for what he was about to do.
“It is Indian Yellow.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Mrs Williams filled the toast rack, one slice in every second space, according to her master’s strict instruction. She found it painful to be with them. She made a remark about the fog. They did not answer her. One of Croucher’s ewes had been taken by someone’s dog in the night, but this news had no effect. She had been with them in the days when they were a complete family, not this awkward lurching thing with one of its limbs cut off, out of balance and bumping into things in broad daylight. They were painful to be with. She went to the kitchen where she could not hear them.
“It is called Indian Yellow for a very good reason,” said Theophilus, taking a slice of toast and testing it, squeezing it between thumb and forefinger to make sure that it had not, in spite of the careful racking
arrangement, become soggy. “For a very interesting reason.”
Oscar looked up, but was embarrassed by something in his father’s eyes. The look was soft and pleading. It did not belong in that hard, black-bearded face, did not suit the tone of voice. Oscar knew this look. He had seen it before. It was a will-o’-the-wisp. If you tried to run towards it, it retreated; if you embraced it, it turned to distance in your arms. You could not hold it, that soft and lovely centre in his father’s feelings.
“I name it Indian Yellow because it is the same colour as the pigment in my colour box named Indian Yellow and this is made by a rather curious process. From pee-pee,” his father said.
Oscar looked up. His father made a funny face. Pee-pee was the intimate word. It was odd that he said “pee-pee” in a place he would have normally used “urine.” Oscar looked down, away from the demands of his father’s eyes.
Dear God, let him see.
But he knew his father would not see. He was filled with stubbornness and pride and could not hear God’s voice.
Dear God, do not send me to the Anglicans.
“From the pee-pee of cows that have been fed on the leaves of the mango tree.”
The tablecloth was white. The yellow stone sat on it, beside the little green sugar bowl. It was named Indian Yellow and was now useless. Oscar did not bother to put it back in his pocket, and Mrs Williams, when she was cleaning up, slipped the stone into Theophilus’s aquarium.
A week later Theophilus discussed pee-pee again, although this time he used the proper word for it. This was in connection with a particularly large agaric he had sketched last year and of which was now preparing a finished illustration. He called Oscar from his Greek composition and the boy, pleased to be rescued from his smudgy work, was also wary of what was required of him. He could not allow himself to love his papa. He held his feelings away from him, at arm’s length, fearful lest he be flooded with pity.
