Oscar and Lucinda bw-1988

by Peter Carey

  "He was left-handed, like yourself," said Mr d'Abbs, recreating his brother contorted around his pen. "But they changed him over, you see. He was perhaps a little.old when they tried, for although my mater was a determined woman, it never really took. It mattered not so greatly to my brother, but for you, sir, in your previous profession. ." Oscar blushed bright and painful red at the memory of his "profession." He had thought it a secret in this context. Now he bowed his head under the weight of the shame. "Yes," he said, making himself look Mr d'Abbs in the eye, "it is a great inconvenience." Mr d'Abbs named this look a "glare." He thought it quite alarming. Oscar smiled.

  Mr d'Abbs found a cigar in his drawer. It was crumbly, decidedly crumbly. He brought it out anyway and placed it on the blotter. "An inconvenience, sir. Indeed, a great inconvenience. I knew a parson in Basingstoke who was left-handed and could never hold a living, for once they saw him hold the sacrament in his left hand, they would not have him, and they would be off to the bishop, clipclop, and back again with a new chap."

  Oscar saw Mr Judd riding off down the road, Mrs Judd behind on a big-bellied sway-back. Clipclop.

  "Ah, now you smile, you see, but I warrant you never had a living in the English countryside." "I never did."

  "I know you never did, sir. You would not have smiled had you done so. I met a witch in Mousehole, in Cornwall. She shook hands with me as though she were a man. You could not be a left-handed parson in those parts. You know your Latin? Sinister?" "Sinister, sinistu, sinistu, sinistrum, sinistris." "Sinistartorium, said Mr D'Abbs. He got his left hand into his drawer. He found the cigar clipper. "The ablative?" Mr d'Abbs did not answer, but he looked up, he appeared most

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  pleased. "Well/' he said, "there is no Latin here, although my head clerk, Mr Jeffris, has a fondness for the classics. But what will we do with you? You smudge. I may possibly tolerate you, but Jeffris is a fiend. He will box your ears. No, sir, I am not assuming the poetic. I describe the action. It is prehistoric. It is proof of the ape in us if ever I saw it. One moment a civilized man and the next an animal. And yet he is such a genius at this work that I must permit him, for a good clerk is the secret of any successful practice. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It is the poor clerks with their celluloid cuffs who allow us gentlemen time for our club or leisure to dine at Government House. It is the clerks, sir, and I am not a radical. My observation is scientific. My task is to stand at the wheel, to tip the rudder a smidgin this way, a fraction that, and yet what will I do? Are you up to the job? It is different work from praying." Oscar could think of no way to answer such a question. He rubbed his hair. He found a piece of twig in it, caught there from his morning walk on Longnose Point. He pulled it out and looked at it-a gum twig three inches long.

  "I hope you are up to it," said Mr d'Abbs, gazing at the twig and cocking his head. There was a little silence. Oscar put the twig in his pocket.

  "I hope you are up to it, because if there is one thing more unpleasant than employing a man-and you probably won't see that, in your position, eh, that the act of employment is itself unpleasant?if there is one thing more unpleasant than employing a man, it is telling him that he can be employed no more."

  Mr d'Abbs's leather chair was new and slippery and he had, whilst talking, slipped down in it, but now he sat up, fussed with his lapels, tugged at his silk tie and placed his corduroy elbows on the desk.

  "You would not believe the scenes this little room has witnessed, Mr Hopkins. Men you would imagine civilized, men from Merton and Oriel, astronomers, masters of poetics-they have sat there, exactly where you sit and have threatened attacks on me, my chldren, my property. Gentlemen, too, or so they pretended, and next thing you know they are threatening me with litigation and saying they have friends in Government House and so on. And it does not matter that I have long before, well before, had a calm chat with just as I am having one with you, that I have explained the unpleasantness and worry. It all makes no difference in the end. But, please, write this down when you leave here today. Make a note of what I say to you, and when 292

  Heads or Tails

  Mr Jeffris finds that you do not meet his standards and you feel the inclination to throw a brick through my bedroom window, refer to your notes."

  It was only when Mr d'Abbs stood up and held out his hand that Oscar realized he had been employed as a clerk. He should have been happy, but he was not. He felt no elation, only anxiety as to what would befall him.

  "Well," said Mr d'Abbs and picked up the bell from his desk. He swung it, and he hoped the impression was that he swung it gaily. He did not, however, feel at all gay. For now he would have to endure Mr Jeffris's revenge for employing the chap. There would be days, perhaps months, of doors slammed, papers thrown, compressed lips, monosyllabic answers, a series of jarring chords and drumbeats, which would lead, in the end, to the scarecrow's dismissal. He put the bell back on his desk and looked at his new clerk. The fellow was tapping his left foot and jiggling the coins in his right pocket-a combination of activities which gave him an unusual stance, the pelvis forward, the right shoulder dropped down, and the whole of this topped by a gruesome smile, the intention of which was not at all clear.

  Oscar had very few coins in his pocket. There were two pennies, great big coins-six would make an ounce-and three threepencescoins so light you would never feel their weight in an empty pocket. Now he pulled out a penny and looked at it. He did this so innocuously that Mr d'Abbs, who was staring at him, imagined that the simpleton was merely curious to see what had been making the din in his pocket. Mr d'Abbs hardly thought about it. But when the lopsided clerk jerked the penny in the air and caught it-snap-Mr d'Abbs thought about it then, by Jove he did. But as the only thing the action resembled was a person tossing heads or tails and, even though this might fit the character of a gambler, it did not match his demeanour, nor did it sit with the situation, the office, the interview, the money in the safe, the cigar in the drawer, the clerks next door, and so even when Oscar examined the coin on the back of his hand, Mr d'Abbs concluded that it was simply a nervous habit, like jiggling a leg or pulling sticks out of your head, unfortunate, but no more than the sort of eccentricity Miss Leplastrier would find-who could doubt it? — a positive recommendation of character. He sighed.

  Oscar heard the sigh. He let it stand for the one he would like to make. The penny was a sign from God.

  Heads.

  He had to take the job.

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  Mr Jeffris did not biff him. He had expected to be biffed and yet he was not, not all the time he worked there. Neither did he see any of the other clerks-there were twenty of them in that long thin roomreceive anything more than-and this was in one case only-a sharp tug to the nose and as this assault was inflicted on the very youngest of the clerks and occasioned great laughter, even from the victim, it might not seem, in the telling, so bad a thing.

  And yet there was about that room an almost unbearable tension, and if there was no actual biffing, one lived with the possibility of a biffing and it was this, Oscar thought when the whole nightmare was ended, that made working under Mr Jeffris such a tiring business that no sooner had he eaten his evening meal than he wished to sleep and would, if circumstances permitted, go a full ten hours without stirring.

  His muscles were kept tense and tight all day, and yet no one threatened, and there was not a word to say on the subject of biffing. There were, in fact, very few words said on any subject at all, and although Mr Jeffris did not declare a policy to him, it was obvious after the first hour that he did not wish one clerk to talk to another and Oscar had the feeling, on entering the office, that it was not unlike an omnibus in which people travel every day and the passengers, having become familiar with each other, may exchange a nod (or perhaps not) but will not really acknowledge their community until there is a tragedy or a humorous mishap. When this arrives they will express thei
r solidarity through laughter. Oscar provided an opportunity almost immediately.

  Mr d'Abbs had rung the bell, not gaily at all, but sharply, nervously. He had introduced Mr Jeffris who did not, on first impression, seem in the least prehistoric. As for being proof of the ape in man, Oscar could not see it. Mr Jeffris was a young man, no older than Oscar, with the moustache and bearing of a Guards officer although, being just a fraction shorter than Mr d'Abbs, he was too small to have met the

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  Mr Smudge

  physical requirements. He had jet-black hair and apart from the moustache-a thicker, deeper one than Mr d'Abbs-was cleanshaven. He had a dimpled chin and a blue cast to his very white skin. Mr Jeffris did not smile, but he did not scowl. He hardly moved his face at all, and yet he communicated the most colossal and even dangerous passion. It was all in there, expressed in the gap between the angry intensity in the eyes and the very still, leashed-in quality of the muscled body.

  Mr Jeffris was very civil to Mr Hopkins. He led him into the clerks' room. This was a long office with a big stove in the middle. The black chimney traced an unexpectedly long route on its way to the wall, a long dog-leg, and you could see by the way the desks were arranged along its route, that it gave off a much-desired heat in winter and that, in its journey from hot to cold, it also indicated the rank of the clerk, Mr Jeffris being close to the stove and the youngest clerks well away. Oscar noticed the eccentricity of the flue, but did not understand it. He was more surprised by the expensive mauve and brown wallpaper (on the one hand) and the bare paint-speckled floor (on the other). It did not quite fit, and although no one bothered to tell him, it was because the previous tenants, very successful lawyers, had taken their carpet with them. The thing that made the greatest impression; on Oscar was the depth of the room which only had five windows, all of them at the Sussex Street end, and so he was surprised to be led towards the light and to be given a desk next to the window from: where he had a view, not only of the interesting iron-wheeled, cobblestoned goings-on in Sussex Street itself, but the muddled little jig; saw pieces of Darling Harbour which were visible at the end of two alleyways across the way. He could see the smokestack of Prince Rupert's Glassworks, too.

  When he was shown this desk Oscar feared that he was being unduly favoured. He did not wish to make enemies so easily.

  "But this, surely," he said to Mr Jeffris, "is far too fine a desk for me?" He said this in a whisper, for the room was very quiet, but just the same it produced a nasty roar of laughter. There was scraping of chairs, coughing, snorts, wheezes, a barnyard. Oscar's cheeks went flat like potters'

  clay slapped hard with a paddle. He looked at Mr Jeffris who was biting his moustache. Then he looked at the other clerks who had already stopped. No one looked his way. He thought: I will not put up with this rudeness.:

  Then he thought: I must. The fine spider-web capillaries in his cheeks were awash with blood. 295

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  He sat at his desk, finding something in its sticky wax surface that was repellent to his fingers. He clasped his hands in his lap. The urge to stand up and walk away was still very strong. It came on him in waves like stomach-ache. Mr Jeff ris gave him three musty-smelling journals with moth-eaten leather spines. These were the debtors journals for John Hill & Co., John Bell (Homoeopathic Chemists) and Senior's, also chemists but making no claim to homoeopathy. Oscar was not a snob about commerce, but it was completely alien to him. When he saw the books he felt that he would never understand them. Mr Jeffris gave him the business's receipt books and asked that these receipts be transcribed into the journals. And although you might not think this so foreign an activity for a young man with a passion for racehorse journals, he did not see the similarity. He felt only despair that life could be passed in so low and slow and meaningless a manner. Mr Jeffris gave him a pen with a new nib, a pot of ink, and a sheet of pink blottingpaper which seemed, perhaps due to its colour, but then again perhaps not, to produce a fit of coughing and scraping amongst his fellow workers.

  And that was how Oscar was employed. He tried to feel grateful. He sat on a hard wooden chair with no cushion, at a table with a wobbly leg which sometimes contributed to his smudges and blots. He found the work trying and the hours too long. Nothing in Hennacombe, in Oxford, in Netting Hill, at Randwick, had been so stultifying. As a clergyman he had enjoyed his mornings at the desk. He had drunk a little jasmine tea while he thought about the most demanding duty of his week-his sermon. Nothing had prepared him for the flavour of something so dull and mean. He wrote down the names of items he could not imagine and, in columns next to them, prices he could not afford to pay.

  He transcribed Shower Baths.

  Slipper Baths.

  Hip Baths.

  Foot Baths.!>

  He entered Bagatelle Boards.»

  Chiffoniers. -

  Superfine.,

  Millefleurs Powder.

  And he sweated in the harsh afternoon sunshine which blazed across his desk and every day became hotter and hotter. He did not ask for a curtain. He knew what rude laughter would accompany the request. He would end his days with no feeling of release, but with a dull

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  Mr Smudge

  headache and his shirt sticking unpleasantly to his skin. His dreams shrank until they could accommodate no larger idea than a curtain, or a crisply folded poplin shirt. He only had two shirts. The white one he wore for two days, the blue one he wore for three. And although he bathed three times a week and changed his collar daily, his shirts smelt like the old rags Mrs Williams kept in a bucket in the scullery in Hennacombe. The smell was remarked on by his fellow workers without anything ever being said. It happened, somehow, in the silence, although

  "silence" is perhaps the wrong term. It was more that there was a pressure of silence, a lid of silence beneath which there were odd and secret stirrings of sound.

  The Reverend Oscar Hopkins sat in his own stink above a dungfowled Sydney street suffering alternate waves of anger and depression which could be triggered by a blow-fly trapped behind sun-bright glass or the bells of St John's at Pyrmont, or St Andrew's in the city. He had told the Ecclesiastical Commission that his gambling had not been covetous, but he had not acquitted himself well. He had been nervous, overpowered by their confidence and authority. He had felt himself to be as venal as they imagined him to be. His voice had shaken as he stood before them, bishops in purple drinking tea from floral cups. He had said that he had never gambled for personal gain, and they simply did not believe him. And so he was cast out, spat upon, become anathema.

  Mr Jeffris called him Mr Smudge. This was thought to be a great joke. He was appointed as clerk responsible for mixing ink, a messy job which ruined his shirt cuffs and had him going home each Monday night with ink soaked so deeply into his skin it took a pumice stone to remove it, or remove most of it, for even after a long and painful rubbing, a shadow still remained, a blue cast lay on his skin and he named it, joking to Lucinda, as his Monday Shadow. Elizabeth Leplastrier's daughter was not tolerant of his messy style his blue ink, the unpleasant smell of the shirts. And yet she thought it her Christian duty to assist him and so she laboured with him (not altogether graciously) on Saturday morning, stirring his clothes in the copper. Her face was wet with steam. Her eyes stung with smoke. He dripped boiling water all around him, splashing her, splashing himself, ooh-ing and ouch-ing as he thwacked the blue shirt and the white shirt down into the trough.

  He was not manually dextrous, that much was obvious. He went at things in too much of a rush to do them neatly. He was ungainly, made bony angles, would hurt himself badly

  Oscar and Lucinda

  should he have ever needed to work in a glassworks.

  Lucinda was interested in the way men made things, how they organized themselves. She sat her guest down in her kitchen and questioned him about the way in which the ink was manufactured. He surprised her with the fastidious nature of his answer-it did not fit i
n with all the shirt thwacking and dripping water.

  To make the ink he must first take a brown paper bag of ink powder, a little metal cup, and a large bottle. He must carry these utensils to the alleyway which ran through the heart of the building. In the alleyway was a tap. There were other taps in the building, of course, but it was forbidden-there were signs above the taps expressly forbidding it-to make ink at these basins. No, he must go into the laneway which served as a thoroughfare, not only for snot-nosed message boys cutting through from Kent to Sussex Street, but also for the wagons and drays from the wheelwright who occupied the tangled courtyard in the centre of the building. Wind blew along this alley way even in the most clement weather and the tap was one of those widemouthed types with a lot of air in its gurgle, "all wind and no water" as a passing rag-andbone man observed to him. Here, crouching against the urine-sour brick wall, Theophilus Hopkins's son, now twenty-one years old, an age at which his father had already published two distinguished monographs, must measure out the ink powder from its paper bag with a flat steel spatula and transfer it, guessing the quantity, into a metal cup. This was not only menial, it was not easy. Ink powder blew in the wind. Specks of stinging pigment lodged in his already baleful bloodshot eyes. He must mix the powder into paste in the cup. The tap gurgled, spluttered, splashed. The spatula handle became wet, then blue. The blue was now on his hands, his face, and still he must dilute the sludge so it would pour, and then transfer it to the ink bottle and then, if there was time, and they had not sent young Summers down to tell him to hurry up, that the ink was needed as quickly as you like now, Mr Smudge, he would wash.

  He made Lucinda laugh, but when the froth had subsided she was left with a black and slightly bitter taste, and this scene did not fit with her idea of Mr d'Abbs, who, no matter what his frailties and vanities, she had always thought of as a kindly man, not one to subject another human being to comic indignity.