Peter Carey

Oscar&Lucinda

1

The Church

If there was a bishop, my mother would have him to tea. She would sit him, not where you would imagine, not at the head of the big oval table, but in the middle of the long side, where, with his back to the view of the Bellinger River, he might gaze at the wall which held the sacred glass daguerreotype of my great-grandfather, the Reverend Oscar Hopkins (1841-66). These bishops were, for the most part, bishops of Grafton. Once there was a bishop of Wollongong, travelling through. There was also a canon, and various other visiting or relieving reverends. Sometimes they were short-sighted or inattentive and had to have the daguerreotype handed to them across the table. My mother crooked her finger as she picked up her teacup. She would not tell the bishops that my great-grandfather's dog-collar was an act of rebellion. They would look at a Victorian clergyman. They would see the ramrod back, the tight lips, the pinched nose, the long stretched neck and never once, you can bet, guess that this was caused by Oscar Hopkins holding his breath, trying to stay still for two minutes when normally-what and geter-he could not manage a tenth of a second without scratching his ankle or crossing his leg. This was obvious to me, but I said nothing. I sat, tense, my hands locked underneath my thighs. In a moment the Bishop would ignore our big noses and many other pieces of contradictory evidence, and remark on our resemblance to this pioneer clergyman. We lined up: my mother, my brother, me, my sister. We had red hair, long thin necks like twisted rubber bands. My mother was pleased to imagine she looked like the photograph. I would rather have looked like my father. He was not like us at all. He was short, broad-faced, pigeon-chested. He had crinkled eyes and crooked teeth. He laughed and farted. He was a cunning spin bowler. He could roll a cigarette with one hand. He was not like us, and when my mother told the visiting Bishop the story of how Oscar transported the little church of St John's to Bellingen, my father would peel a match with his broad fingernail and look out through the windows to where the great physical monument to his marriage, the Prince Rupert's Glassworks-the roof painted bright red then, in the 1930s-sat high above the Bellinger River.

My mother told the story of the church in a way that always embarrassed me. There was an excess of emotion in her style. There was something false. We must have all known it, but we never spoke about it. I could not have named it anyway. She was the same in church: her responses to the Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts) were loud and showy in their reverence. My father made jokes about many things, but never about this. My father was jealous of that church, although if you could see it now, it is hard to imagine why. It sits on a patch of flood-prone land beside Sweet Water Creek at Gleniffer-a tiny weatherboard building with a corrugated iron roof. For fifty years it was painted various shades of brown, and then, in 1970, it was painted a harsh lime green. Now it has gone chalky and sits in that generous valley like something on which lichen has grown. It tucks in underneath the long line of casuarinas that mark the course of the river. High above, behind this line of river, the mountains rise sharply to three thousand feet-the back wall of the valley, so steep there are no tracks, although they say there is an old tin mine up there where they planned to hide the women and children from the Japanese during the Second World War. I was away at the time, but it seems unlikely to me. I learned long ago to distrust local history. Darkwood, for instance, they will tell you at the Historical Society, is called Darkwood because of the darkness of the foliage, but it was not so long ago you could hear people call it Darkies' Point, and not so long before that when Horace Clarke's grandfather went up there with his mates-all the old families should record this when they are arguing about who controls this shire-and pushed an entire tribe of aboriginal men and women and children off the edge.

These are the same people who now want St John's removed on a low-loader. They want it taken to Bellingen to be used as a Sunday school.

My father, for one, would have been appreciative. He was, as I said, jealous of it. He did not like my mother's proprietorial attitude to it. Perhaps if the church had been in the town of Bellingen itself it would have been different. But Gleniffer is ten miles away. She would not hear of attending service in Bellingen, They must motor out to Gleniffer. During the war they used their petrol ration just going to church. We were all baptized there, confirmed there. I was married there. When my father died he was carried ten miles to Gleniffer for the funeral service, and then ten miles back into town to be buried. My father did not get drunk, but once, after drinking two beers, he told me that my mother walked around the perimeter of St John's like a dog pissing around a fence. But only once did he ever show my mother the intensity of his feelings. The Advent Wreath

There was no torch available for my father because I had dropped it down the dunny the night before. I had seen it sink, its beam still shining through the murky fascinating sea of urine and faeces. My father did not, as he had on an earlier occasion, come out and retrieve it. So when the lights went off in the storm the following night, he had no torch to examine the fuse-box. Lightning was striking all around us. The phone was giving small pathetic rings in response to strikes further along the line. We thought our fuses were blown by a backsurge in the power system. My father took a candle out on the veranda. The candle blew out. When he came back into the house he did not have the fuse with him.

We were sitting in silence at the kitchen table.

My father said: "Where is the fuse-wire?"

I was ten years old. I sat next to my mother. My sister was sixteen; she sat next to me. My brother was fourteen; he sat next to my sister.

"I used it," my mother said. People described her as a tall woman. She was not. She was five foot six, but she had an iron will and a suspicious nature and this, combined with her power as an employer in the glassworks, was a tall combination.

I could smell the smoking candle. Although my father held this candle, I knew he could not smell it. He had no sense of smell at all.

"How did you use it?" I could not see my father. I waited for the next flash of lightning. "How?" He had a hoarse voice. This was somehow connected with the loss of his sense of smell. He syringed his nasal passages with salt water every morning. Often he would ask: "Does it smell?"

"It" was his nose.

"I used it," my mother said, "to make the Advent wreath." There was no note of apology in her voice. Lightning sheeted the kitchen. She had her head tilted in the air in that disdainful pose which, in the family mythology, was said to resemble a camel. I felt very tense. I was the one who had helped my mother make this Advent wreath. There had been no holly or ivy, but I had found camphor laurel leaves, which are shiny and green. I knew she had not only used the fuse-wire but had taken the wire netting from my brother's rabbit hutches. The rabbits were, at this moment in shoe boxes in the linen press. She did not think that they would piddle. It did not occur to her.

My father lit the candle. He did not approach the table. He did not go back towards the door. He stood in the middle of the room.

"Where is it?" he asked.

"At church," my mother said. "Please, David, sit down."

"Which church?"

"What does it matter?"

"It matters to me."

I cannot explain how frightening this was. My father did not speak like this. He liked life to be quiet. Even when he was dying, he tried to do it in a way that would not upset my mother.

"St John's," she said.

Of course it was St John's. What else would it have been? But for some reason this announcement seemed to outrage him. He clasped his head. He put the candle on top of the Kelvinator where it promptly went out again.

"Oh, Christ," he said. "Jesus, Joseph and fucking Mary." In the lightning I saw my sister's mouth drop open.

My mother stood up. She never made gentle or gradual movements. She stood so quickly her chair fell backwards. It crashed to the floor. The phone rang-two short bleats, then stopped.

"Kneel," my mother said. She meant for God to forgive my father his blasphemy. We understood her meaning, but we were outside our normal territory. Only "divorce" could have frightened me more, only "sex" been more embarrassing.

Christmas Pudding

"Kneel," she shrieked.

Later we knew she was a bully. But when we were children, we felt too many confusing things. Mostly we wanted her to love us. So we came and knelt beside her, even my brother although he liked to stay up late and talk cricket with my father.

Then my father knelt too.

We stayed there kneeling on the hard lino floor. My brother was crying softly. Then the lights came on.

I looked up and saw the hard bright triumph in my mother's eyes. She would die believing God had fixed the fuse.

Christthas Pudding

There would have been no church at Gleniffer if it had not been for a Christmas pudding. There would have been no daguerreotype of Oscar Hopkins on the banks of the Bellinger. I would not have been born. There would be no story to tell.

This was not a normal Christmas pudding. It was a very small one, no bigger than a tennis ball. It contained two teaspoons of glacé cherries, three dessertspoons of raisins, the peel of one orange and the juice thereof, half a cup of flour, half a cup of suet, a splash of brandy, and, apart from the size, you would not think it was such an abnormality were it not for the fact that it was cooked in the cottage of my greatgreat-grandfather, Theophilus Hopkins, in Hennacombe, Devon, England.

Theophilus Hopkins was a moderately famous man. You can look him up in the 1860

Britannica. There are three full columns about his corals and his corallines, his anemones and starfish. It does not have anything very useful about the man. It does not tell you what he was like. You can read it three times over and never

Oscar and Lucinda

guess that he had any particular attitude to Christmas pudding.

He was a dark wiry widower of forty, hard and bristly on the outside, his beard full, his muscles compacted, and yet he was a soft man, too. You could feel this softness quivering. He was a sensualist who believed passionately that he would go to heaven, that heaven outshone any conceivable earthly joy, that it stretched, a silver sheet, across the infinite spaces of eternity. He steeled himself in the face of his temporal feelings as a Royal Guardsman-a carouser and a funny man when at the pub-must remain poker-faced when flies crawl across his eyelids. He was one of the Plymouth Brethren and he thoughtthere is nothing mad in this particular bit-that the feasts of the Christian Church were not Christian at all. His problem was his temper, although the word is misleading. His problem was his passion. His body was a poor vessel for containing it, and when it came to Christmas each year it was all he could do to keep himself in check. For the most part he used his passion constructively-he was a preacher and it was his great talent to make his listeners share his feelings. He would not call it Christmas. He would call it Yuletide. He had so convinced his small congregation of farm workers, thatchers, warreners, charcoalburners, fishermen-all those earnest white-laundered folk who, if they could read at all, could only do it slowly, with a finger on each word-so convinced them that Christmas was not only pagan but also popish, that they went out about the fields and lanes on Christmas Day as if it were any other day. Their Baptist neighbours laughed at them. Their Baptist neighbours would burn in hell.

Oscar was fourteen, an age when boys are secretive and sullen. Yet he did not question his father's views. He knew his own soul was vouched safe and when he read the Bible, aloud, by the fire, he placed no different interpretation upon it than the man who poked the little grate and fussed continually with the arrangement of the coal. They both read the Bible as if it were a report compiled by a conscientious naturalist. If the Bible said a beast had four faces, or a man the teeth of a lion, then this is what they believed.

But on this particular Christmas Day in 1858, they had a second servant where previously they had one. The first servant was the large bustling Mrs Williams who brushed her untidy nest of wire-grey hair with a tortoiseshell brush whenever she was agitated. She had been with the family fifteen years, ten years in London, and five years in Devon. In Hennacombe she brushed her hair more often. She fought with the butcher and the fishmonger. She swore the salt air was bad for her catarrh, but it was-as she said-"too late to be making changes

Christmas Pudding

now." She stayed, and although she was not "saved," and they sometimes found her hair in their scrambled eggs, she was a part of their lives.

The second servant, however, was not only not "saved." She could not even be classified as

"questing." She was an Anglican who was in the household from charity, having been deserted by her navvy husband and been denied Poor Relief by two parishes, each of whom claimed she was the other's responsibility. And it was she-freckledfaced Fanny Drabble-who was behind this Christmas pudding. She had white bony hands and bright red knuckles and had lived a hard life in sod huts and shanties beside the railway lines the brawling navvies helped to build. Her baby had died. The only clothes she had was a thin cotton dress. A tooth fell out of her mouth on her first morning. But she was outraged to discover that Oscar had never known the taste of Christmas pudding. Mrs Williams-although she should have known better-found herself swept along on the tea-sweet wave of Fanny Drabble's moral indignation. The young'un must know the taste of Christmas pudding, and what the master don't know won't hurt him. Fanny Drabble did not know that this pudding was the "flesh of which idols eat." It was only a small cottage, but it was built from thick blocks of Devon limestone. You could feel the cold limey smell of the stone at the back of your nostrils, even when you were sitting by the fire. If you were in the kitchen, you could not hear a word that was said in the tiny dining room next door. It was a cramped house, with low doorways, and awkward tripping ledges and steps between the rooms, but it was, in spite of this, a good house for secrets. And because Theophilus did not enter the kitchen (perhaps because Mrs Williams also slept there on a bench beside the stove) they could have manufactured graven images there and not been caught. But Oscar liked the kitchen. He liked the dry floury warmth and he carried the water, and riddled the grate, and sat on the table when Mrs Williams scrubbed the cobblestones. He soon realized what was going on. He saw cherries and raisins. They did not normally have raisins. He had never seen a cherry. On Christmas Day it was expected they would have a meal like any other. Theophilus had called Mrs Williams up to his study. As this study was also Oscar's schoolroom, he heard the instructions himself. His father was quite spicific. It was his character to be specific. He paid attention to the tiniest detail of any venture he was associated with.

Oscar and Lucinda

When he drew an anemone you could be certain that he did not miss a whisker on a tentacle. The potatoes, he said, were to be of "fair to average size." There would be a half a head of King George cabbage, and so on.

But within the kitchen the treasonous women were kneading suet, measuring raisins and sultanas, peeling a single precious orange. Oscar set by the bellows and puffed on them until the kettle sang so loud you could hardly hear the hymn that Fanny Drabble hummed. Mrs Williams went running up the stairs like a dervish whose activity is intended to confuse and distract. She made a screen of dust, a flurry of rags. She brushed her hair on the front step looking out through the dripping grey branches, over the rust-brown bracken, to the cold grey sea. She walked around the house, past the well, and put the hair on the compost heap. Oscar knew that Mrs Williams's hair did not rot. He had poked around with a long stick and found it. It had been slimy at first but you could wash it under the tap and it would turn out, with all the slime washed off, to be good as new. This was exactly how Mrs Williams had told him it would be. He was surprised that she was right. His father did not value Mrs Williams's beliefs. She was not scientific. She said there were men who robbed graves just to steal the hair of the dead. They sold it to hair merchants who washed it and sorted it and sold it for wigs, and curls and plaits. This hair still had bulbs at the end of each strand, "churchyard hair" was what it was called. Mrs Williams lived in a state of constant anxiety about her hair. There were, she insisted, perhaps not in Hennacombe, but in Teignmouth and Newton Abbot, "spring-heeled Jacks" with sharp razors ready to steal a living woman's hair right off her head. She brushed her hair on the stairway and the upstairs study. At each place she collected the hair from her brush, made a circle with it, knotted it and put it in her apron pocket. On the day they made the Christmas pudding she did this even more than usual. Theophilus, being a naturalist, may have noticed. Oscar certainly did. Oscar was not told about the Christmas pudding, but he knew. He did not let himself know that he knew. Yet the knowledge thrust deep into his consciousness. It was a shaft of sunlight in a curtained room. Dust danced in the turbulent air. Nothing would stay still. When Oscar ate his lunch on Christmas Day, his legs ached with excitement. He crossed his ankles and clenched his hands tight around his knife and fork. He strained his ear towards the open kitchen door, but there was nothing to hear except his father breathing through his nose while he ate. «

8

Christmas Pudding

Oscar had a little wooden tray, divided into small compartments. It was intended to house beetles, or shells. Oscar kept buttons in it. They were his mother's buttons, although no one told him it was so. They were not his father's buttons. There were small round ones like ladybirds with single brass loops instead of legs. Others were made of glass. There were metal buttons with four holes and mother-of-pearl with two. He drilled these buttons as other boys might drill soldiers. He lined them up. He ordered them. He numbered them. There were five hundred and sixty. Sometimes in the middle of a new arrangement, his head ached. On this Christmas Day, his father said: "You have reclassified your buttons, I see." The buttons were on the window ledge. It was a deep sill. Mrs Williams had put the buttons there when she set the table.

Oscar said: "Yes, Father."

"The taxonomic principle being colour. The spectrum from left to right, with size the second principle of order."

"Yes, Father."

"Very good," said Theophilus.

Oscar scraped his plate of stew clean. He finished his glass of water. He bowed his head with his father and thanked God for what He had provided. And when Mrs Williams came to the door and asked would he please help her add pollard to the pigs' swill, he went quickly, quietly, a light, pale, golden-haired boy. He thought about his buttons, not about what he was doing. The two women stood side by side like two jugs on a shelf. One was big and floury, the other small and freckled, but their smiles were mirror images of each other and they held their hands in front of them, each clasped identically.

They had "It" on a plate. They had cut it into quarters and covered it with lovely custard. Mrs Williams pushed her hairbrush deeper into her pinny pocket and thrust the pudding at him. She moved the bowl through the air with such speed that the spoon was left behind and clattered on to the cobble floor.

Mrs Williams stopped, but Fanny Drabble hissed: "Leave alone." She kicked the fallen spoon away and gave Oscar a fresh one. She was suddenly nervous of discovery. Oscar took the spoon and ate, standing up.

He could never have imagined such a lovely taste. He let it break apart, treasuring it inside his mouth.

He looked up and saw the two mirrored smiles increase. Fanny

Oscar and Lucinda

Drabble tucked her chin into her neck. He smiled too, almost sleepily, and he was just raising the spoon to his mouth in anticipation of more, had actually got the second spoonful into his mouth when the door squeaked behind him and Theophilus came striding across the cobbled floor. He did not see this. He felt it. He felt the blow on the back of his head. His face leapt forward. The spoon hit his tooth. The spoon dropped to the floor. A large horny hand gripped the back of his head and another cupped beneath his mouth. He tried to swallow. There was a second blow. He spat what he could.

Theophilus acted as if his son were poisoned. He brought him to the scullery and made him drink salt water. He forced the glass hard against his mouth so it hurt. Oscar gagged and struggled. His father's eyes were wild. They did not see him. Oscar drank. He drank again. He drank until he vomited into the pigs' swill. When this was done, Theophilus threw what remained of the pudding into the fire.

Oscar had never been hit before. He could not bear it.

His father made a speech. Oscar did not believe it.

His father said the pudding was the fruit of Satan.

But Oscar had tasted the pudding. It did not taste like the fruit of Satan. 4

After Pudding

His son was long-necked and delicate. He was light, airy, made from the quills of a bird. He was white and frail. He had a triangular face, a thin nose, archer's-bow lips, a fine pointed chin. The eyes were so clean and unprotected, like freshly peeled fruit. It was a face that trusted you completely, made you light in the heart at the very moment it placed on you the full weight of responsibility for its protection. It was such an open face you could thank God for its lack of guile

10

After Pudding

at the very moment you harboured anxieties for its safety in the world. Not even the red hair, that frizzy nest which grew outwards, horizontal like a windblown tree in an Italianate painting, this hair did not suggest anything as self-protective as "temper." He should not have hit him.

He knew this even as he did it, even as he felt himself move like a wind through the cabbagedamp kitchen, which was peopled with stiff and silent mannequins. He saw Mrs Williams reaching for her hairbrush. He saw Fanny Drabble raise her hand to cover her open mouth. He knew, as he heard the remnants of the nasty sweetmeat hiss upon the fire, that he should not have struck his son.

Theophilus saw the two blue marks he had made on bis son's neck. They were made by the pincers of his own thumb and forefinger. He regretted the injury, but what else could he have done? The boy had skin like his mother. In a surgery in Pimlico, a Dr Hansen had dropped nitric acid on this skin from a 15ml pipette. Had the boy in the waiting room heard her cry out? She had cancer, and Hansen had removed the growth like this, with drops of acid on her tender skin. What they finally removed was a lump, dark and hard from all this pain. She had died anyway. He had never struck his son. They had supported each other, silently, not wishing to touch their hurt with words. They were alone in a country where they did not belong. They sat on the red soil of Hennacombe like two London bricks. When the father fell into a brown study, the boy squatted silently, an untidy mess of adolescent limbs, and clasped his father's knee and horny hand. They were united by blood, by the fundamentalist certainties of a dissenting faith, by this dead woman whom they could not talk about directly.

He had thrown her clothes into the sea. He had been half-drunk with anger and grief. He had left the boy in bed and gone running down through the rifle-sight of the combe, carrying her lavendersweet clothes, not caring to separate them from their wooden hangers. The sea took them like weed, and threw them back along the beach. He dragged them out, searching for a current. The sea rejected them.

It was little Oscar, standing in his flannelette nightgown like a wraith, who finally brought him to his senses.

They had never talked about this with words, but in the silence of their eyes they understood each other and said things that would have been quite unthinkable to say aloud. Mrs Williams began to brush her hair. She stood, wide and tall, her

Oscar and Lucinda

stomach pushing out against her white starched pinafore, and brushed at that tangled mass of grey frizz which would never right itself. She stooped a little so she might stare out of the seaward window while she did it. Thusk-thusk-thusk. She brushed as if she was in the privacy of her own room. And such was the conviction with which she brushed that she made herself a room, a little glass cage within the kitchen. It had a door and lock and you might not enter.

"Well," Theophilus said. He was riddling the grate of the stove. No one dared tell him he was riddling to excess or making coals go through the grate. A long strand of Mrs Williams's hair fell on his own. He did not feel it. Fanny Drabble saw it but did not dare to lift it off.

"Well," he said, still riddling, back and forth, forth and back, "Master Hopkins, you will be a good helper and fetch up the buckets."

"Let me get them, sir," said Fanny Drabble who was ill, almost to the point of vomiting herself. She knew her tenure to be in danger. She knew it was to do with pudding, but beyond that she really could not fathom. "Oh, please," she said. "Let me go, sir." And she snatched the grey hair off his head. She could not help herself.

"No," said Theophilus Hopkins. He did not notice the hair was gone. He kept on at the grate, inout, out-in. "That will not be necessary, Mrs Drabble. Master Hopkins and I are going to collect some specimens."

He looked at her then. She did not understand the look she saw. It seemed weak and watery. It did not match the tenor of the voice.

"But, sir," said Fanny Drabble, feeling at last that she was free to stoop and pick up the spoon from the floor, "it be Christmas Day."

It was then Theophilus turned his head enough to look at his son's eyes. It was then that he saw the damage he had done.

"Christmas Day," cooed Fanny Drabble, "and they say the boilers are bursting from all the frost at Exeter."

When Theophilus looked at her he brought a face whose emotions were related to what he had just seen. The face had nothing to do with Mrs Drabble,

"Christmas Day," she said gently, not knowing what she did.

"Some call it that," said Theophilus, standing from the grate. He held out a hand so she must hand him the spoon. She gave it to him. "Some call it that, but none in my employ."

"Yes," thought Fanny Drabble, "and what a black loveless bastard you are."

V A Prayer

Oscar was afraid of the sea. It smelt of death to him. When he thought about this "death," it was not as a single thing you could label with a single word. It was not a discreet entity. It fractured and flew apart, it swarmed like fish, splintered like glass. Death came at him like a ghost in a dream, transmogrifying, protoplasmic, embracing, affectionate, was one minute cold and wet like his father's oilskin, so he shrank from it and cried out in his sleep, pushing the tight-bunched flannel sheet into the pit of his stomach, and then sometimes it was warm and soft and wore the unfocused smile of his mother.

In the sea-shells on the beach he saw the wonders which it was his father's life to label, dissect, kill. He also saw corpses, bones, creatures dead. Creatures with no souls. When the sea lifted dark tangles of weed, he thought of jerseys with nothing in their arms. He fetched the buckets from where they had stood since autumn, hanging on the back wall beside the well. He did not like the sea to touch his ankles. He felt the light frizzing froth like steel shackles on his skin. He put his fine hands to the pit of his stomach and stood stock still, his face chalky and carved, like a creature wishing to make itself invisible before the eyes of a predator. Mrs Williams swooped down on him with pullovers. She made him put four of them on, helping him in her breathless, impatient way, pulling his hair by mistake and getting the sleeve of the first rucked up inside the sleeve of the second, and so on, until he was a sturdy lumpy creature with a big woollen chest.

She did not meet his eye or say anything about the pudding.

"What will happen to her?" Oscar asked.

Mrs Williams was not worrying about Fanny Drabble. She was worrying about herself. She took her hairbrush from her pinny and tried to tidy Oscar's hair. It was as bad as her own. Oscar struggled under the sharp bristles.

13

Oscar and Luanda

"I forbid you," said Oscar, and was surprised that Mrs Williams stopped.

"Then go," said Mrs Williams, handing him the buckets and the coil of rope. "Swim," she said maliciously. She knew he was afraid of the sea. He carried his fear coiled and tangled in him like other boys carry twine and string in their crumb-filled pockets. You would not know he had it. You would think him cheerful, happy, obliging, polite. And he was. He was very religious, yes, but not in a gloomy way. When he talked about God it was with simplicity and joy. He had a face better suited to the master's beliefs than the master himself.

Mrs Williams looked into this face to see the fear. She could not locate it. There was something else, but he would not show her what it was.

This something else was anger.

His right ear was still hot and stinging from the blow. He followed his father out of the front gate (bumping it-he always bumped it) and down the steep and sticky path (counting his steps-he always counted) towards the sea, with his anger held hard against him, like a dagger. He took short steps to make the number of steps right. He carried six metal buckets, three hessian bags, a coil of rope, and the buckets banged against his scratched blue shins. His stockings did not have sufficient calf to hold them up; they were rumpled and mixed with red mud around the shiny brown laced boots. He had already Tom the seat of his knickerbockers on a bramble and there was more red mud on his woolly combinations. This was a boy, anyone could see it, whose school books would be smudged and blotted. He slipped and stumbled down the path, counting, in the direction of the sea.

It was not marine biology that led Theophilus down this path to stand chest deep in freezing water. He was a naturalist, of course, and he would collect specimens. But now he was in a passion to bear witness. He dug his nails into the palms of his hands. He pulled himself upright by that imaginary thread he kept in the centre of his skull. He would show all of Hennacombe-his son most particularly-what a true Christian thought of Christmas. His breath was shallow and he bore on his face an expression which a stranger might mistake for a smile. They were still in the mulch-damp dripping woods between the high downs and the sea, but Oscar could already smell death. It was lying out of sight, neat black velvet mounts of it, a weed named Melanasperm washed up beneath the fox-red cliff which gave the hamlet of Hennacombe its name. He could also smell the poisonous salt. He was shortsighted and could not see any more of the sea than a soft grey colour, like a sheet of satin thrown across a pit. But he could hear it already

A Prayer

and knew how it would be, lying flat and docile like a tiger sleeping. It would be grey and pearly and would let itself be drunk up by the sand in quiet fizzy laps. But the Melanasperm was there to give the lie to this, to show that the sea could pluck free a plant the strongest man could not dislodge, could kill the man himself, push white plumes down his gurgling throat, tear off his clothes and leave them scattered and formless, pale pink things like jellyfish along the whitelaced edges of the beach. He counted the steps. It was habit. He was hardly thinking about it. If he could walk to the bottom of the cliff in three hundred and sixtyfive steps, it would be, in some way, he was not sure, good.

He could still taste the plum pudding which had been denied him so violently. His ear ached and burned, and the anger did not diminish. The anger was unthinkable, but it was not a thinking thing. It took charge of him and shook him. He was a rabbit in its jaws. He slid down the red crumbling combe (count that as five steps) clanging his buckets together, barking his knuckles on the gravel-rough clay.

His father was breathing in that way. He wore thick woollen pullovers and a mottled oilskin the colour of burnt toast. Around this he wound belts and ropes to hold his hammers and chisels, his buckets and bags. His father was dark and sinewy, like something made from tarred rope. His father's hair was black, singed with silver fire.

The son's hair was golden-red, wiry, always awry. He stood on the beach (four hundred steps) like an angel, recently landed, his hair buffeted by turbulent air.

"Fill up," said Theophilus. He should not have hit the boy, but how else could he prevent the stuff being swallowed?

Oscar began to "fill up." This involved him standing on the edge of the rust-red rock pool, lowering a bucket, letting it fill, drawing it up, and then pouring water into the buckets his father lashed to himself. As the buckets filled his father would groan with the weight. His groans were comic.

But today Oscar would not look at his father. He was frightened of what these eyes would reveal. He watched his father's mouth instead. He watched it as if it were a sea creature, a red-lipped anemone with black hairy fronds. He stood above the sea as above a pit of hissing snakes. Then the father walked into the sea. The sea was an amoeba, a protoplasm. It opened its saltsticky arms and closed around the man. It flowed on to the sand and hissed beneath the boy's boots. He stepped back from it, back above the funereal fronds of Melanasperm, back until

Oscar and Lucinda

the cliff was firm behind his bony shoulder blades. The clouds were a soft and pearlescent grey, moulded like sand from which the tide has slowly run out. They were like a lid, sitting tight on the horizon, except to the south where there was a thin swathe of soft gold, like a dagger left carelessly lying on a window sill.

His father was indistinct, an unfocused dark shape, a lump in a dream. Oscar sat like a stook of sticks, a lean-to of too-long bones. When he hugged himself against his knees, they clicked. He sat with his back pressed hard against the red cliff, his scrotum tight with cold, a leathery wrinkled purse with only twopence in it, the skin tough and thick, like the gizzards of chickens, like the worm-eaten rock where his father stood, with cold water up above his chest, chiselling lumps of rock and dropping them into a wire basket. Oscar pushed his back hard against Hennacombe Cliff and while the wind brought a small storm of sand to dance around his ankles, he talked to God. He did not do this in the distant and ritualistic way the Anglican Stratton was said to do, with crossing and kneeling. He sat upright. He brought his hands together (one sandy, one smooth) and rubbed them hard as he spoke, unconsciously mimicking his father who, when praying, could be seen to wrestle physically with himself while he tried to hear, amidst all the clamouring costers' voices of his sinner's heart, the pure and uncorrupted word of God.

"Dear God," he said loudly, in a high and fluting voice, "if it is your desire that your flock eat pudding in celebration of Thy birth as man, then show Thy humble supplicant a sign." He screwed up his eyes and opened them fast. What did he expect? Angels? His friend Tommy Croucher claimed to have seen an angel. He said it was ten feet tall and his mother had seen its head above the milking shed. He took Oscar and showed him what the angel had left behind. There were three small stones which made the points of a triangle. Tommy said they stood for

"Father," "Son," and "Holy Ghost." Oscar had not believed Tommy Croucher, but when he saw that the sign was the mathematical symbol for "therefore it follows," he changed his mind. But on the beach on Christmas Day there was no sign, just the slightest brightening of the golden dagger to the south.

He grunted and rubbed his hands together. His ear was still aching from the blow. The taste in his mouth was vomit, but what he remembered was plums, raisins, cherries, suet, custard made from yellow-yolked eggs and creamy milk. This was not the fruit

/ 16

The Anglican Church

of Satan. It was not the flesh of which idols eat.

"Dear God," he said, and the straight edge of his teeth showed, "if it be Thy will that Thy people eat pudding, smite him!"

He twisted his limbs around the sandy corridors of prayer. He looked up to see his father almost out of the sea. He struggled to his feet. His knees went click; first the left and then the right, and then he ran, the guilty and obedient son, to help with the little creatures his father had captured, the anemones, antheas with fragile white tentacles, redbannered dulses, perhaps a sleek green prawn or a fragile living blossom, a proof of the existence of God, a miracle in ivory, rosy red, orange or amethyst.

He ran with his arms flailing, his lower legs kicking out awkwardly. He was not an athlete, but he was at the water's hissing edge when his father emerged, like a matted red-lipped Neptune, blue-nosed, encased in dripping wet wool and shining burnt toast. It was then, as he took the heavy buckets, as he knelt to untie the ropes, that he saw his father had been smitten. Theophilus's teeth were chattering, his limbs shivering. Red blood came from the wound in his thigh and the instrument, the naturalist's own rock chisel, was still in his hand. Sea water had kept the blood washed away, but now it rose through the blue serge, a thick flower of it, unnaturally bright.

Oscar was no longer angry. He lowered his bucket, frightened of what he had begun. The Anglican Church

*4

The Reverend Hugh Stratton saw Oscar praying. He did not know he was praying. The boy was standing at a kink in the path at the top of the combe with two spilling, brimming buckets hanging from the ends of his long pale wrists. He was praying with his "inside" voice, 17

Oscar and Lucinda

with his lips still. He was praying that his papa would not die. He felt cold and tight across his chest. The pain in his arms did not seem related to buckets. "Oh Lord, do spare him please, even though he be in grievous error. Let not his blood be poisoned in Thy smiting. Let him not be taken in ignorance. Dear Jesus who died for us, lift the scales from his eyes so he may see true light. Let him not be cast down. Let him sit with your saints in heaven." He did not pray for himself. But thoughts insinuated themselves between the warp and weft of the prayer. He tried to keep them out. They pressed in. He saw his father in a pinewood box with tiny handles. He saw Mrs Williams pack her case. She was going to "The Agency." She had threatened before. He had no money to pay Mrs Williams. These were selfish thoughts. He drove them out. He made his mind as bare as the meeting hall. He began again.

Hugh Stratton could not be privy to this praying. He saw only a boy with buckets. His back hurt. His sciatic was pinched. He had a pain pushing down his thigh, in his calf too. It pulsed in his left buttock and left testicle. He saw nothing admirable in the boy (nothing suggested angels or porcelain to him). His path was blocked by a boy with buckets and he thought nothing about him except that he was the son of the man who had stolen what was left of his congregation. Like smallpox, like plague, Theophilus Hopkins had emptied the pews one family at a time. The Reverend Mr Stratton imagined that he liked all men. No matter what tribulation he suffered personally, he tried to be fair, to see all points of view. But he could not abide the famous Theophilus Hopkins who had used the musical masculinity of his voice to seduce away his illiterate rural workers and leave him with the gleanings-two families of High-Tory Anglicans and one elderly rabble-rouser who was in rebellion against the Squire. The Easter Offering last year had been two shillings and sixpence halfpenny. A ton of coal cost seven shillings and sixpence.

Hennacombe was the sump, the sink-hole of the Anglican Church. It was a pit. It was a "living," hardly a living at all, in a county where the wheel had come late. It was a place for sledges whose runners had dug the lanes deeper and deeper, further from the sun. He loathed the red mud. It was like heavy glue around his boots and his left leg hurt every time he brought it forward. There were two red-backed hawks riding the updrafts from the cliff. They were not more than a chain away, but Hugh Stratton did not notice them. He edged around the boy who did not move from the path, although the path was

The Anglican Church

narrow. Hugh Stratton was accustomed to disrespect, eyen hostility. He imagined the boy was deliberately obstructing him.

He was carrying a sack of turnips on his narrow back and leading a lame horse; the horse could not bear the weight. He pushed around the boy. The sack knocked Oscar's shoulder and the horse pushed him back into the furze. Hugh Stratton did not see the boy stumble; he knew only that his back was hurting. He was pleased not to be greeted, to be "not seen" on Christmas Day. Dear Lord, forgive him. May the Lord forgive him and vouchsafe the health of his neighbours when they ate his fowls.

Hugh Stratton was forty years old, tall, stooped a little, with a face which had, from a distance, a pippin youthfulness to it-round cheeks, small pointed chin, a floppy fringe of sandy hair-but which showed, on closer examination, all the fine marks of pain and disappointment that buttered rum could not smooth over. He was an Anglican clergyman in a county with a popular Baptist squire. These circumstances made his position less powerful, and his financial situation more humble, but it need not have been desperate. Even when Theophilus Hopkins arrived from London and stole his congregation, he could have lived reasonably enough-for the vicarage had ten acres of good pasture attached to it. But he had no talent for farming. His wife had more, but not sufficient. She read the journals of the London Agricultural Society. She was in enthusiastic correspondence on the subject of a combined seed and manure drill. But there was no point. They could barely afford the postage stamps, and they were always in crisis with his back injured from lifting or their oats stunted or their sow aborting or, today, their fowls taking ill and dying just when they were plump enough for market. They would have fetched ninepence each. He could not bear the loss, God forgive him-he had beheaded them and dressed them as if they had died healthy. He had broken the sabbath to do it. As soon as the dismal morning service was over he had taken these dressed fowls across to the Squire's mansion, pretending them a gift. He was bartering, of course, but it was Christmas Day and he must pretend otherwise. He went to the kitchen door. They were Baptists. They despised him, not for trading, but for trading on Christmas Day. They knew it was not a gift. The cook gave him turnips as a measure of her feelings. He had hoped for something better, but he had pretended it was an exchange of gifts so he could not haggle. He worried about the safety of the dead fowls. May no illness come to the Squire's house. The Squire wore a tall hat, a high collar, a muffler around his neck. His long grey hair hung over his ears. His eyes were

Oscar and Lucinda

fixed, looked straight before him and shamed the devil. He would not put up with poisoning. He had a broad nose and defiant nostrils. He was rugged, bluff, kind, and he would lay his Dissenting whip across an Anglican's face for poisoning his people.

Hugh Srratton led the lame horse up the steep path, under the bare elms. He saw no beauty in these woods. Through black dripping branches he could see the Norman tower of St Anne's, and to the left a little, the high thatch of the vicarage. It had grey rock walls with lichen, stonecrop and moss, but he was no longer the clever man just down from Oriel, charmed by the rusticity, the peace, the little sundial in the garden which bore the legend "To serve and to rule." He knew the thatch was full of rot and the walls were seeping. It was money he thought of, and how to get it. 5

Stethoscope

The stool had three legs and stood against the sloping, flaking white wall of the attic in which Oscar slept. It was a sparsely furnished room, with just an iron cot, a rag rug, and a small spirit lamp. But it was a dry room, too, and it had a sweet, sappy smell which emanated from its ancient aromatic timbers. The stool was made from Devon oak and, while generally dark, was polished to a honey colour at its knees, the point at which two hundred years of hands had picked it up, swung it, set it down, always within this one cottage.

In the mornings Oscar stood on the stool and hoisted up his nightdress so that his father could listen to his chest with the stethoscope. He had never questioned why the stool was necessary, not even now that he had begun to question other aspects of his papa's practices. He stood on the stool. He hiked up his flannel while his father tapped at him anxiously, like a young and inexperienced man called to check for death watch beetle. This would happen first thing, as soon as he

•?n

Stethoscope

woke. He would have his bladder full. Sometimes his penis would be hard, sometimes not. Having no interest in the function of a hard penis, he was not embarrassed. When Oscar lifted his nightdress, his father observed the ginger hair growing around the genitalia. He observed this with a naturalist's eye, but not only. He did not like the appearance of the hair. With the hair came the great difficulty of life.

The stool was also used when Oscar slept, late at night, when Theophilus's eyes were tired and his fingers cramped from writing. His study (it was also Oscar's schoolroom), was across the way, at the top of the staircase, and at two in the morning he would remove his shoes and come across, lifting his feet so as not to attract splinters, in his dainty yellow socks. Then he would lift the stool and place it, very quietly, next to his son's bed.

He sat and listened to him breathing.

In the morning he would listen with the stethoscope. The lungs were clear. They were always clear. He would hear himself say, "Clear as a bell," but it gave him no peace, for God had told him there was something wrong with the boy. This voice he heard may not have been what you would call God, but let it rest. You may have another word for all the things both Hopkinses (father and son) called God. It does not matter what you call it. For Theophilus it was God. It was his fear, his conscience, whatever you want, but it was clear to him. In any case, the boy had his sister's chest. The fluid in her little lung sacs still gurgled in the blocked drains of Theophilus's waking dreams.

When he sat down on the little stool he would draw up the eiderdown until it touched Oscar's little chin. The nail-bitten hand would then push the eiderdown away and Theophilus would smile and, in spite of his anxiety, he would not try to push it up again. His son had a white flannel nightdress and breath like warm milk. There was nothing to indicate the boy's troubled state of mind; for he now believed his father was in error, that he was wrong, not merely about puddings, but about many other things beside,

Theophilus, however, had no doubts about the life hereafter. It was this life he worried over. He feared his son would be "taken." He begged God to spare him. No voice came back. He would bear it if he must. If his God covered him with boils like Job, he would bear it. God took his daughter Sarah, his son Percy, his beloved wife. He had not been able to bear it, but he had borne it. There was nothing unbearable. The teeth of lions, the torture of martyrs, was a flea bite in the face of eternity.

Oscar and Lucinda

He thought himself a weak man, a sensualist.

Sometimes he wished only to lie on the bed and embrace his son, to put his nose into his clean, washed hair, to make a human cage around him, to protect his bird-frail body from harm; and what pride, he thought, what arrogance that would be.

For Oscar was already given to God. He was one of the elect. The mysteries of salvation had been divinely revealed to him. He had laid hold on Christ and would not be cast into hellnre. All this had been vouchsafed him.

And when he made himself think this last thought, Theophilus would feel the tension leave him. The muscles in his chest and upper arms would go soft and his breathing would become deeper and more regular. In his mind's eye he saw his own blood oxygenating, turning a deep and brilliant red. He stretched and felt the blood tingle in his hitherto clenched fingers. What a miracle Thou hast wrought.

He bent over his son and kissed the air above his forehead and then walked on tiptoe in that slightly exaggerated and silly way that men like Theophilus, normally gruff and bustling about their business, adopt as a sort of dance to celebrate their most tender feelings. 8

Pagan Sigijs

This was in Devon, near Torquay. To pretend-as Theophilus didthat this was almost tropical, is like referring to a certain part of Melbourne as "the Paris end of Collins Street." It is quite reasonable if you have never been to Paris, but once you have been there you can see the description as nothing more than wishful thinking.

When I visit Devon I see nothing tropical. I am surprised, rather, that so small a county can contain so vast and indifferent a sky. Devon seems cruel and cold. I look at the queer arrangements of rocks up

Pagan Signs

on the moor and think of ignorance and poverty, and cold, always the cold. But Oscar had not yet seen the Bellinger River and he shared his father's view that they were privileged to live in the "almost tropics." It did not matter that he was chased and mocked by the sons of fishermen and farmers, that the Squire's cook's son made him eat a stone. This was an earthly paradise. They read London papers one day late. They gloated over myrtles and fuchsias unburnt by frost.

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 across 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 &eai 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'shead 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, aje," said Bargus, who had thought it looked like a children's game, "I do not doubt it." jheophilus 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 24

Throwing Lots

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, whiteaproned 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. Throwing Lot.

It was Oscar, of course, who had made the "witches' markin's." They were a structure for divining the true will of God.

The A. stood for Theophilus who, in turn, represented the revelation as understood by the Plymouth Brethren and all that strict system

25

Oscar and Lucinda i

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 O£ 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

26

Throwing Lots

long and shaped, as his face was, a little like a heart. He was not aware of this coincidence. He 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 mulchsoft 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 27

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 28

False Instruction

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

29

Oscar and Lucinda

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 alpha 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-of-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 30

False Instruction

in my colour box named Indian Yellow and this is made by a rather curious process. From peepee," 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.

"Of course you know," Theophilus said, "that witches eat this plant." Oscar felt the new tor heavy in his pocket and held it hard with one ink-smudged hand. He wanted to scream at him: Your soul is in danger. You are wrong.

His father was close and familiar, so familiar he could not have described his face to anyone. He was a shape, a feeling, that thing the child names "Pa." He was serge, formaldehyde, a safe place. He was not a safe place. Not any more.

'They drink the urine of someone who has eaten the plant." Oscar did not look up. "They are in communication with the devil or, in their state of intoxication, imagine they are." The stone in his pocket was heavy, too heavy. His hand locked around it so hard he could not let it go. The muscles around his neat little jaw reflected the spasm in his hand. His safety was in God.

The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him; and the Lord shall 31

Oscar and Lucinda

"We have several witches in the area," Theophilus said. He felt he was talking in a fog. His son would not look at him. "I think it is true, that there are witches nearby." Oscar touched the edge of the cartridge paper his father was drawing on. It had a sharp edge but a soft velvety face.

"Do you think this is true?"

"Yes," said Oscar. He looked up and was frightened by the eyes. Beware of prophets that come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

"Yes, I think so myself." There was a pause. Oscar heard his father sharpen his pencil. He smelt the sharp, metallic smell of pencil lead, the sweet, sappy smell of wood shavings.

"There is evidence," Theophilus said, "around the lanes, that the agaric eaters are out. You have seen the markings?"

"Yes."

Theophilus then did something which was completely out of character-he described something he had not actually seen. In his desperate desire to have his son's loving attention, to feel those amethyst eyes rest unanxiously upon his own face, he repeated something said to him by Smart Jack, the warrener who called at the cottage to sell his rabbits and discuss scripture.

"There is a blank square at the top," Theophilus said, "where they sacrifice a goat. They decapitate the poor creature and leave its head upon the square as a mocking image of Our Saviour."

And they shall turn away their ears from the truth and be turned into fables. Oscar saw his father raise the glass of cold black tea he always sipped at while working. The mouth moved open a fraction. The tip of his tongue showed. Oscar saw the father whom he loved, but he also saw that person most reviled by Theophilus Hopkins-an agent of false instruction.

Oscar's hand clenched round the stone. The tendons in his neck showed the strain of the grip. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and opened it in front of his father. There!

Theophilus took the stone from the ink-stained palm. The stone was warm. He placed it on the cartridge paper and turned it over with his pencil.

"Caput mortem," he said.

Oscar burst into tears.

Apospâg

The Baptist boys made him eat dirt. They made him sing songs he was not allowed to sing. They showed him engravings of a pagan statue from the Crystal Palace. They put coarse mud on his skin because they could not bear it so soft and white.

He was not from "here." He was from "there." He did not like the sound of his own voice. He tried to change it, to make it soft and leafy like Timmy Croucher. He said "fayther" for father, but not at home.

How small his world was. He did not mind it small. He would have had it smaller still, have been a mole or a badger. He preferred the tangled forest of oak and elm which separated the high downs from the sea. Here he might stand still for hours, in a day-dreaming trance no wind could cut, examining dead leaf, leaf mould, spores, fungi, white indeterminate life-something without a soul that looked like spilt flour. He posted letters to his mother in a hole in a tree. Timmy Croucher, a large-boned, olive-skinned boy with soft hair on his lip, devised special prayers; they conducted their own services and argued about the nature of hell. In the bulging, spiky map which marked his territory, this was the larger part. The map did not include the village. He went there, but only when instructed, and with Mrs Williams for a guard if he could arrange it so. He had as firm a sense of territory as a dog, and when he moved across the terrain outside his map, across the Downs to Merely, for instance, he moved jerkily, running, his knees clicking, out of breath with a pain in his side.

He did not wish to leave the shelter of his father's home. He had no ambitions to see the world, to take part in the great adventures of Empire. This empire existed beyond the myopic mist. Somewhere there were "Disraeli" and "Lord Russell" and "Lord Elgin." He could not imagine them. He knew Mrs Williams, Timmy Croucher, Smart Jack.

He had seen the Anglican minister and his wife, but they had no place in his life. It is true, of course, that Hennacombe was built around

33

Oscar and Lucinda

the Anglican church of St Anne's and its vicarage, but the hamlet was like a tree in which the heart wood has rotted out. There was no heart, only a place for dust and spiders. And yet this was where God wished him to go. When he would not listen to the stone, God repeated the message again and again. OÇ = Anglican.

Thus, God said: "Go." There was nothing attractive in this idea. He promised God he would go before Good Friday. He celebrated Easter, in bad faith, amidst the white-smocked Plymouth Brethren. He read them the lesson God said: "Thou hypocrite." Easter came, but did not come. The flower buds of the wild cherry were still tightly sealed on Easter Sunday. This was on 24 April, almost as late as Easter can be. It had never happened before that there were no wild cherries on Easter Day. There was no pussy willow either. This was called "palm" in Hennacombe, and used as palms on Palm Sunday. So there were no palms for Palm Sunday. Nor were there primroses for Easter Day. There were not brimstone butterflies. The swifts did not arrive. This also was a sign.

The weather frightened him. It was this that drove him to apostasy.

He did not allow himself to know what he was doing. While the Brethren sang their long and doleful hymn-it was the second Sunday after Easter-he slipped quietly out of the meeting-house door. He had no more in his pocket than a threepenny bit and a soiled handkerchief. He walked beside his father's house and heard the door slam as Mrs Williams came inside from the garden. He could see the square tower of St Anne's below him, a little to the left. It was deep in shadows, hemmed in by leafless trees. It was not an attractive destination.

He was fifteen years old, nearly sixteen. His feet were tight inside his boots. His pale wrists protruded from his sleeves — they looked a foot long. He took a path-but not the one that led most directly to St Anne's. He tried not to think about what he was doing. He said a little prayer, but the words were like bricks-he placed them carefully, slowly, one after the other-to keep out the nightmare images that had leaked into his waking mind-his papa's face burning in the hellhre. He could hear the Plymouth Brethren singing. They pulled out the words like taffy pull. "Dear Lord," he prayed, "I am only fifteen."

The path forked. The left path ran down into the combe, and therefore led more or less directly to St Anne's. He took the right fork which led to Man's Nose and up on to the Downs. He looked down, watching his brown spit-and-polish boots, the red

34

Apostasy

gravel, the dead margins of the path. He thought of summer, of hawthorn white with blossom, the sloe, the maple, the guelder-rose with its snowballs, the glossy, heart-shaped leaves of bryony. He was hurt and aching for bright evenings. He saw the gentle enquiring motion of his papa's malacca cane as it blessed the pretty dog-violet, stitchwort with its thousand white stars, dog mercury, rose campion.

He thought: I will never be happy again.

He blew his nose and looked briefly, but with curiosity, at what came out. He put his handkerchief back in his pocket. The path was almost at the sea. He did not like that part of the path. He turned, and began to run down the path in the direction he had come, towards St Anne's. He took a new path. It went down through a dark coppice. There were blackbirds, like flutes, but he did not hear them. There was a thing like a dry pea rattling inside his head. The way was tangled and overgrown. He pushed through. He stamped down the thick stems of briars. His breath started to come with difficulty. He tripped and stumbled. And when he emerged on the high bank which looked down on the Reverend Mr Stratton's vegetable garden, he did not even follow this path any longer, but slid down on his backside and landed, heel first, in the shallow ditch beneath it.

He reached for the threepence in his pocket, intending to flip it. But the coin was lost. There was a tiny hole in the pocket. He stopped a second, looking at the overgrown stone wall, breathing hard.

He was caught between bank and wall. He could have edged around and found the stile, although had he done so he might have hurt himself, for the stile was ancient, its timbers rotted with the damp, unused since the time of the previous incumbent. But Oscar was too impatient in any case, and he now flung himself at the wall as a fearweak soldier may, in despair, go over the top of a trench, his body awash with urgent chemicals, teeth clenched, mouth already open in a yell. He clawed at the rock, scraping off both skin and lichen. He got a boot up, slipped, tore his trouser leg, then got a better purchase and was up on the ragged top looking down on tomato seedlings, brown soil, and brimstone butterflies. He was already launched when the Reverend Mr Stratton came running, a garden spade in his hand. The clergyman cleared the beds, one, two, three. He was fortunate his paths were wide and allowed for one long pace between. He had not run like this since sports day at Eton.

The seedlings already had their stakes in place beside them. This made a barrier the clergyman could not easily cross. He was on one

35

Oscar and Lucinda

side, the young intruder on the other. They looked at each other, both breathing hard.

"You, boy!" said Hugh Stratton.

Oscar's mouth was open. The seat of his breeches had been torn when he slid down the bank. He thought the clergyman looked like some sort of vegetable picked too long ago. He could smell the alien odour of what he knew must be alcohol. He assumed it was from the exotic ritual of the eucharist.

The clergyman walked around the tomato bed. He should not have run like that. It had made his back hurt horribly. The sciatic nerve sent a pain like toothache up both his legs, pulsed through his aching testicles, took possession of his buttocks.

"You, boy, go home to your father."

"I cannot," said Oscar, taking a step back on top of the new lettuces.

"Get off my lettuces," said Hugh Stratton. He took a step forward. This was a mistake. It forced Oscar to take another step backwards, into one more lettuce.

"I am called," said Oscar.

It was some time before he could make himself dear.

12

Mrs Stratton was not a don. She could not have been, for while the constitution of the university would permit entry to a fourteen-yearold boy (with his pocket full of string and dried-out worms) it could on no account matriculate a woman. Yet Mrs Stratton had the walk for it. Her whole body expressed her calling. She had a walk you can see today in Magpie Lane and Merton Street. The dynamics of this walk are best appreciated if you place a three-foot-high stack of reference books in your imaginary walker's extended arms. From here on it is all physics. You can resolve it with vectors-the vertical arrow

36

To Serve and to Rule

indicating the mass of the books, the horizontal one the propulsive force of the moving body. It is obvious. You can see immediately why the body of such a person tilts forward at 60° to the horizontal. It is the books, or the propensity for books that does it. And when you see the height of the stack it is also clear why such people always lift their head so high. You thought it myopia, but no-it is the height of the imaginary books they must look over. Mrs Stratton's father had been a don (but only briefly-there was controversy). He, however, did not have this walk. Her mother, of course, had never been a don, but neither did she walk with her body on the incline. The daughter, it would seem, had made her walk to suit herself. To-see her walk up the steep red lanes of Devon was to see a person out of her element. She was awkward, so awkward that no matter how much you liked her you would not invite her to play a set of tennis. She belonged in Oxford, not in Hennacombe, and yet she did not realize it. She carried with her, as she plodded in mudcaked boots up the lane, a combination of doggedness and wellmeaningness, so that when she lifted her head and jutted her long jaw at you, you could not allow yourself to feel irritation or see anything as unpleasant as stubbornness; you saw, rather, the determination to succeed in spite of any handicaps.

Her father had been a rector with a large glebe in Buckinghamshire which he had farmed himself. She had liked the farming life, all pitching in at harvest time-curate, parson (although not the dean), the tenantry and farm hands and all the young women, regardless of their rank, all with big white bonnets to protect their much-praised complexions from the sun. She liked this just as much as she liked life in the drawing room where her conversation was every bit as intellectual as was suggested by her walk. Her father was fond of saying that Betty would "make a useful wife." And although his assessment of usefulness was quite correct-her husband might have starved without her-she was an old maid of twenty-eight before the future vicar of Hennacombe came to claim her.

What had alarmed the previous young men was not her enthusiasm for the stocking at harvest, but her passion for discussion of the larger issues that beset the Anglican Church in the everwidening wake left by the Oxford Tractarians and the Wesleyan schismatics. There were those who disliked her passion because they thought theology was not a woman's business. And others still who thought her voice always a fraction too loud for the drawing room. Of these, of course, some rightly belonged in this first group, and one should also record that 37

Oscar and Lucinda

there were others who, whilst personally repelled, felt drawn to care for the owner and protect her, just as they might a blind person forever bruised by bumping into walls. But there were also young men who were fascinated by her conversation. They were not necessarily in the minority, although they tended to lack staying power, suffered a bright and fast attraction and an equally quick fatigue. These were the ones who called two or three times in quick succession, and then not at all. These were the young men who came to the conclusion that she was, although clever, quite spoiled by being argumentative and contrary, and whatever position they put up themselves Miss Cross would see it as an Aunt Sally she must quickly lay low. If her suitor took the Evangelical position she would feel herself drawn to the Latitudinarian; or she might just as easily come out in favour of Enthusiasm and the Evangelical, easily, that is, if her suitor revealed Puseyite tendencies. She was quite capable of putting a formidable argument in favour of the doubtful aspects of the Athanasian Creed and then, without bothering to trouble her friend with so large a difficulty, knock it down herself. Her father's dean, a dry old man who did not like his botany to be disturbed, likened her behaviour to that of a large and enthusiastic child who will spend five hours on building a sandcastle simply in order to knock it down again. This was unfair, and not just because the dean's mouth was prim and puckered when he told it (assuming the same drawstring pursing as when he recalled this, always, on the third brandy-the pubic hairs a famous lady novelist had left behind in the deanery bath). It was unfair because Betty Cross had no position, belonged to no party, advocated no schism, and cared only to find out what the

"truth" might be. She sought for an absolute and could not find it. She had no prejudice to anchor herself to and was as unaware of this as of her walk.

Fortunately, that is, for Hugh Stratton who was doing his Greats at Oriel in 1838. He came down to Buckinghamshire in Michaelmas terms to see his friend Downey who was playing curate to Betty Cross's father while secretly translating the early gnostic gospels. Hugh was much taken with Betty Cross and did not tire of her.

It was his opinion-and he was not shy of expressing it-that the dean's eldest daughter had presented him with vistas, with possibilities that the distinguished Fellows of Oriel-good men, famous menhad not made him aware of. He whirled before the wind of her contrary mind, spinning like a top. He was not offended by her donnish walk, the loudness of her voice, the fact that she had large hands and that they had freckles on them already. She was large-boned, but this

38

To Serve and to Rule

was not the sort of thing he noticed, either to desire or dislike. He had no eye for the physical at all and could meet you four times and still not recognize your face. It was this, a serious disability in a parson, which accounted for the uncertain smile he would bestow on total strangers, ready to broaden if responded to, snatched back if not. So he did not notice the freckles. He knew she had flaxen hair, but if he had been asked the colour of her eyes he would have had to guess. He saw her face, in memory, with that gentle formlessness, all the details made soft by feeling, with which a one-year-old is said to perceive its mother. He saw her ideas though, in profusion, like a garden. In a garden no one argues about which is the true flower, and so it was, he imagined, with her ideas and arguments. He did not see then (and did not see ever) that she would be a professional liability to him, that she would so distress succeeding deans and bishops, that the pair of them would be tucked away like two ghastly toby jugs given as a gift by a relation who may, someday, visit. The toby jugs cannot be thrown away. They must be retained, in view, but not quite in view. Hence: Hennacombe in the bishopric of Exeter. The Strattons had no children and, given the chaste nature of their embraces, had no reason to have any. They thought this a civilized arrangement. They had reached it, with relief, on their wedding night and felt no temptation to change their minds. Mrs Stratton felt no sense of loss. She was happy with almost every aspect of her life, more happy, she thought, than she had any right to be. She was forever refreshed by the countryside, the sea, the seasons. She was out and about. She had her periodicals to read and an intelligent man to talk to, but she also liked to be with country folk, and she liked to seek the opinions of warreners and shepherds, thatch cutters and farmers' boys. She was poor, of course, so much poorer than she had ever expected, but somehow this terrible thing, this most dreaded thing, had not been as she might once have imagined it. So many of the people they lived amongst were poor. The young boys hereabouts grew up wearing their older sisters' dresses and no one thought to laugh. If her husband had been happy she would have judged life perfect.

But Hugh did not like their poverty. He fretted. He would blame the Squire as a Baptist or Theophilus Hopkins who was always standing in the sea. He could be reduced to crying like a child for no more reason than a patch'of damp on the livingroom wall. He worried at the thatch, and had a tin in which he put coins that would, one day, pay the thatcher. He wrote special prayers to the Almighty in order that the Easter Offering might be substantial, that the aphids stay away

39

Oscar and Lucinda

"°m the tomatoes, the wheat not have rust. Her point was that it had ahvays been like this, that the Squire was a boor, the walls had been an" ip, etc., etc., dear Hugh, and they had survived. This was not a good argument to use. It made him worse. He took her around the n°Use pointing out new mould and new rot. By the sun-dial ("To serve arvd to rule") he lay down amongst the rank grass and wept. He begged her to give up the subscription to her Oxford and London periodicals. She would not. He ranted at her. She said she would rather eat turnip for a month, have no shoe leather and sell the horse. He said they might have to. She said nothing about the cost of sherry he would soothe himself with later.

This was the same man as represented by the symbol OC, the one who God told Oscar was his chosen servant. The emotions that moved the chosen servant were, when he at last understood Oscar's intention, far more complicated than those immediately summoned by the loss of two young lettuces.

Hugh Stratton flicked his straight fair hair back out of his eyes and Plunged his hands deep in his pocket. He made a small motion, a bob, a nod, a genuflexion. And then he turned and led the way through tr» e wide maze of garden paths, indicating his guest should beware the fallen rake, the rusting fork, the half-dug cesspit with the crum" urig edges. And while, predictably enough, one part of him was in despair that there was a new body to feed and clothe, there was another part of him in blazing triumph-he had a soul, a theological refuge. He walked fast, with long strides, and the pinched grey look on his face was made only by the pain of the sciatic nerve. He did not go to the back door or the front, but to the kitchen window through which he was accustomed to handing hens' eggs and vegetables to the c°ok. He knocked loudly and impatiently and brought Mrs Millar away from a tricky moment with the custard.

'One more for dinner, Mrs Millar," he said. He could not help himself. He smirked.

'He has his own," she said, "at home."

'He shall have his own, Mrs Millar," shouted Hugh Stratton, but joyously, recklessly. "He shall have his own with us. The oblong napkin ring shall be his."

She would not normally have let that pass-calling a ring an oblong,

111 she was confused by his mood. She leaned forward, pretending to examine the boy, but really trying to smell her employer's breath.

It was the smell of custard, however, that intervened and, without excusing herself, she withdrew and slammed the window shut.

40

13 Raisins

This was the second time in his life he had seen raisins. He removed them from what they claimed was "shepherd's pie." He laid them side by side, along the borders of the dinner plate. The plate was painted with pagan scenes. He began to obscure the images with raisins. It was not calculated. He was in too much distress for calculation.

The first time he had eaten raisins was in that so-called "fruit of Satan"-the Christmas pudding. All the muscles in his narrow chest were tight. He grasped his knife and fork and tried to stop his sense of smell from operating. The air in the vicarage was sour. He had never been anywhere so alien. It seemed there was not a thing his hand might brush against that was not sticky with damp. He had been taken to see the view and his hand had accidentally touched the antimacassar on the big maroon couch. The damp made it feel like a dead thing. He snatched his hand away, repulsed. He pulled a face. This was noticed. He blushed bright red while his hands burrowed into the dry-breadcrumb corners of his jacket pocket.

But the nest-smell of the Strattons' house was worse than its damp. It was like a gloved hand pressing your nose into the pages of a musty book. When he entered the room the smell had risen and settled on him like aphids on a rose bush. Books, papers, newspapers, leaned and tottered all around him, not always on shelves, either, sometimes like towers built straight upwards from the floor.

The three of them sat down in chairs and faced the yellow evening light. Oscar felt himself choking on regret and melancholy.

He imagined this room must be the Anglicans' drawing room. No one else in Hennacombe had a drawing room. But then, from the corner of his eye (he could not devote his whole attention 41

Oscar and Lucinda

for he was being interrogated about the health of his father's poultry) he saw the Anglican servant at the big reading table. She was removing newspapers and periodicals and stacking them on top of the paper towers which lined the walls. She thrust others into cupboards which lookedexcept that there was paper where there should be linen-like receptacles for soiled bedclothes. When the table was clear she put a tablecloth on it and began to lay it with cutlery. When they had learned all they could about Theophilus's cockerels, Mr and Mrs Stratton placed him at the head of the table and sat on either side of him. This seemed wrong to him, but almost everything was wrong. There was not sufficient light to make out the oriental deities (for that was how he misunderstood the willow pattern) and, more particularly, the so-called shepherd's pie which seemed like a thick layer of potato with a thin sauce underneath. It had a most peculiar taste-curry-but never having tasted curry he did not know it.

It also contained raisins. He did not know what this signified, but in spite of the Christmas pudding that had led him here, the raisins felt wrong to him. You do not stop being one of the Plymouth Brethren in five minutes. He placed the raisins across the pagans' faces. It was important that he eat everything on his plate, that much was made clear to him. When he had finished everything but the raisins, Mrs Stratton leaned across and put another large spoonful on his plate.

"Thank you," he said. He wished he had never come here.

'They are only raisins," said Mrs Stratton, beaming at him through the gloom.

"Only raisins!" snorted Mr Stratton. "At four pence the pound and only."

"Yes, my darling," said Mrs Stratton whose father had sent the raisins (finest Elemes) together with a whole tea-chest full of other items he classed as "necessaries," on the train from Oxford.

"He is probably unfamiliar with them. Are you familiar with raisins?"

"Oh, yes," said Oscar. "Yes, I am." He was pleased to have such a simple reason for not eating raisins. He begged her silently to remove the plate from him. He sipped his tea. He smiled painfully at Mr Stratton who also tried to show good will.

Mr Stratton was tense. He clicked his fork against his empty plate and took a sip of what Oscar realized must be "drink."

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Raisins

"Have you ever seen an orange?" Mrs Stratton asked. She had a pretty face, Oscar thought, with large soft lips and pale, gentle, blinking eyes, but everything about her was bigger than it should have been. "Yes," he said.

"Jolly good!" she said, and leaned back, folding her hands in her lap as if oranges were why he was there. He ate more of the nasty food. -'-…•

He thought: "They are Thy servants, Lord." It would appear that neither of the Strattons knew what to talk to him about. Mr Stratton tapped his plate with his fork and had more of his "drink." Mrs Stratton asked him about various fruit and then described for him a little church in Torquay which was being restored by some followers of Dr Pusey. There were to be a number of altars in the church apart from the high altar. Each altar was to have its own dresser and wardrobe in its sacristy. She asked Oscar what his view was on this subject.

"I do not know, ma'am," the boy said in misery. He knew an altar was a place where heathen sacrifice was made. It was all he knew about the term. He knew he must eat his raisins, otherwise his plate would not be taken from him. They were waiting for him to eat the raisins. The raisins had become a symbol of a Christmas pudding. He knew he should eat them. He could not bring himself to do it.

"So you draw the line at altars," Mrs Stratton suggested. "Well, I don't know-Hugh, I really don't-don't know that it is incorrect to do so, for really there is so much that we have accepted unthinkingly, and if you will call it a communion table instead, I, for one, will not call you a fanatic."

The boy moved a raisin sideways on the rim on his plate. He looked so very unhappy. Mrs Stratton smiled. "Really, you know," she said, "it is a nice distinction. Don't you think so, Hugh?" And having begun her speech so confidently, she now ended on a breathless and rather supplicatory note, bowing her head. Mr Stratton suddenly took Oscar's raisins. He speared them, one, two, etc., with his fork. He did not speak until he had finished eating them.

"Do you think your pater will come rushing around here?" He stared at Oscar belligerently. 43

Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar could not hold his gaze. He was not comforted when Mrs Stratton patted his hand."

"Threatening me?" asked Mr Stratton.

Until this moment Oscar had not thought about the immediate future at all. He had his mind on eternity. He had thought merely to do that which was unthinkable. Had he permitted himself to think about his father's actions he would never have had the will to climb the fence into the Anglican garden. But now, imagining his father arriving here, angry, threatening Mr Stratton, his heart lightened.

"Yes," he said, "I expect so." And when he saw the effect of this on Mr Stratton, he felt suddenly very powerful. He was the object of his papa's care and love. Of course his papa would come. He was only a boy and the matter would be taken from his hands.

He smiled at Mrs Stratton, even though he knew that a smile was out of keeping with the seriousness of the question.

"Threats will do his cause no good," said Mr Stratton. He picked up the bell and shook it. He was, it seemed, impatient that Oscar's plate should be removed by Mrs Millar. He topped up his

"drink." "You can tell him that from me."

"You thought to stay here?" said Mrs Stratton, her eyes suddenly filled with alarm, looking from Oscar to her husband and back again. "Hugh?"

Mr Stratton, quite without warning, grinned at her. Mrs Stratton chose to attribute this grin to sherry.

"Yes, ma'am," said Oscar.

"But what will your poor father do?" said Mrs Stratton. "Think of the terrible pain you will cause him, to know his son is here with us, not half a dozen chains away." Oscar's eyes were brimful of tears. He scratched his head. He looked around the room (a little wildly, Mrs Stratton thought).

"I know, ma'am. He will be very sad."

Mrs Stratton heard the West Country accent where the Baptist boys had heard only London. She thought, not for the first time, how expressive it was. When Oscar said "sad" she felt an immediate response, as if to a reed played in a minor key.

"Yes," she said, "most sad."

"I know, ma'am, I know, but he is in error, you see."

"But still you will go home to him," she said, but looking at her husband whose intentions she had not divined. She expected to see his face twisted in anxiety about this matter. Money would be a trouble

44

Raisins

for him, that most of all. She was surprised therefore to see his grin transmogrified into a beneficent smile.

"But still," said Mrs Stratton, continuing to look at her husband. "Still you shall go home to him." She added: "Hugh?"

"Oh, no," said Oscar, and he banged his hand upon his knee in an agony of agitation. Beneath the banging hand, his knee rose and fell, his foot drumming the Turkoman which made Hugh Stratton-in spite of his triumph-think about the rot in the floor joists.

"I cannot," said Oscar, still not crying, but the face so frail, so white, pulled into furrow lines by the clench of the fine little jaw. "No matter how I yearn to."

"But surely," she said, "surely your father loves you?"

"Yes, yes, most dreadfully." The tears had come now, but the boy had not lost control. Mrs Stratton extended her napkin a little and then, not having the offer accepted, withdrew it. She extended a hand to his shaking shoulder but did not feel she had a call to be intimate. He looked alien to her now, like a praying mantis-those long thin limbs shaking with agitation, the raw scratched hands wiping the triangular face. She thought this and still felt great compassion.

"I also love him," said Oscar, with some effort.

The gooseberries and custard were then brought in by Mrs Millar who was surprised to see Mr Stratton serve the boy himself. He doled out excessive quantities of custard. It was not like him to be so generous towards a guest. Mrs Stratton also observed this custard-ladling with interest.

"I could not otherwise."

"Otherwise?" said Mrs Stratton. "Please have sugar if you wish."

"Otherwise than to love him." He accepted the very small handkerchief which Mrs Stratton gave him. He had never seen anything like it; it had fragile lace around its edges. He blew his nose thoroughly and judged the lace a poor material for such a task. "But the dispute is not personal so much," he did not know what to do with the handkerchief ("Keep it, keep it," said Mrs Stratton),

"not so much personal as theological. You see," he said, "he is not saved."

"What a remarkable boy you are," said Mrs Stratton.

Oscar, in spite of his agony, felt pleased to accept this compliment and he tucked it away carefully just as he now tucked away this hard warm ball of wet handkerchief into the depth of his pocket. He was a remarkable boy.

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Oscar and Lucinda

"But, Oliver," said Mrs Stratton, "we cannot steal you from your father, even if we wished."

"It is not Oliver," said Mr Stratton (rather smugly, thought Mrs Stratton).

"What is it, then?"

"It is Oscar," said Mr Stratton.

"Oscar?",

"Yes."

"What an extraordinary name," said Mrs Stratton.

"I am named after an old friend of my father's."

"Was he a foreigner?" asked Mrs Stratton, but her mind was not on her interrogation. Her husband had unsettled her. She did not understand his face. It bore a calm and powerful look it had not shown for years. He was very still, and this stillness was perhaps the source of his power. In any case it was most unusual.

"He was English, ma'am. It was he who lifted the scales from my papa's eyes." Mrs Stratton had lost interest in Oscar's namesake. She addressed her husband directly on another more urgent matter, not worrying that what she had to say was of a private nature.

"Hugh, the cost." °''

"The boy is called."

"In what sense, Hugh?"

"He is called to Holy Orders," said Hugh Stratton. "He must go to Oriel. I am to coach him for his Articles."

Mrs Stratton pressed her hand against her bosom, not lightly, but hard, to press her heart into stillness. "You have had three glasses," she said.

"Quite right," said Mr Stratton.

'Tomorrow we might talk about it properly," said Mrs Stratton, cocking her head on one side and looking at her husband.

"Quite so," said the Reverend Mr Stratton, rising from his dining chair. He was a little unsteady at first and then he appeared, as he stretched himself, to be of a springier and more athletic type than previously. He flicked his hair back off his forehead. "I think," he swung his arms backwards and forwards, expanding his chest, "that the best plan would be for Oscar to go to bed."

Mrs Stratton looked at her husband's smile. It was lovely, and rather boyish, as if he held roses behind his back, or if not roses, something rarer, some genus hitherto unseen in this part of the country.

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14 Trials

Men and women with lanterns crossed fields sown with winter oats. Sleepy children were raised from bed to pray by cold hearths. The three Groucher men, Timothy, Cyrus and Peter, came to Theophilus and offered to take the boy back by force. They were big men with barrel chests, arms like blacksmiths'; they carried big wooden staves which they thumped on the floor to punctuate their conversation.

Mrs Williams silently sided with the Croucher brothers. She would have paddled his backside with a hairbrush and had him in his bed before the hour was up. But her employer sent the Crouchers away asking "only" that they give up their precious sleep for prayer. Mrs Williams was tired. She wished to sleep. Her employer seemed to expect her to pray beside him. It was a hard floor and no prayer mats, not even the piece of felt she used when scrubbing. Her master prayed loudly. He prayed self-importantly. He prayed as if he were the centre of the universe, as if the only reason the son had run away was so that God could punish the father. He begged God to punish him in some other way. He begged him loudly, continually, but Mrs Williams thought he sounded like a duke talking to a king and not the "poor sinner" he claimed to be. Mrs Williams was fifty-five years old, too old for this sort of nonsense. If she had been God she would have given him a thwack across the earhole and sent him to bed. At fifteen minutes past eleven, the two Anglicans came, bringing red mud and the smell of the taproom into the little limestone cottage. She was permitted to get up from her knees then. She made them tea, but they did not stay long enough to drink it. She was required for more praying, and then she was not-Mr Hopkins rushed out of the house without a lantern. She sat and waited at the kitchen table and after five or ten minutes the wind

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Oscar and Lucinda

brought his voice to her: he was praying, loudly, on the beach.

The last time she had seen this hysteria was when the boy's mother passed on. On that occasion she had tried to calm him. On this occasion she went to bed.

The Vicarage Kitchen

It was true that Lucy Millar did not like her kitchen. It was not a kitchen at all. It was a large pantry into which some previous vicar had moved the stove and sink and, presumably because there was no room to do otherwise, had left behind all the shelves, cupboards and tables which make a kitchen a proper place to be. It was not that the Strattons had not been apologetic. They had, on the day she arrived (with all her references tied up with ribbon), drawn it to her attention. Mrs Millar had been charmed by Mrs Stratton who gave all the appearances of being a firm and practical woman. She could remember her now, her indignant, "Look at this!" when she poked a large finger at the tattered bellows, or tried-she had to give up-to open a minuscule window to the gloomy north. She begged Lucy to imagine how splendid the other, original kitchen would have been before some interfering clergyman had wasted good money squeezing the stove and scullery into the pantry.

Mrs Stratton acted as though none of this was her responsibility. She commiserated with Lucy for having to spend a lovely summer inside a "dreadful pantry." She paid her only sixpence the week and sometimes, although Lucy had four children and two old parents to keep out of the workhouse, only threepence or fourpence, depending on what was available. Lucy was cross enough to spit in the soup.

She was always cross. She was walking here across the Downs at five in the morning or halfwalking, half-running home again at eight at night. She could not count the reasons she might have to be cross.

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The Vicarage Kitchen

There were a hundred inside the kitchen itself, and she made her family tense and unhappy by listing them. It was a litany they had come to dread. They bowed their heads and ate their soup. Today she was even crosser than usual. They had brought that silly Theo-dogus, Theo-whatshis, to sit at her table and they knew-or Mrs Stratton did-or should if she didn't-that this ruined her entire method of working. Because the other room, the old pantry, was so small, she always tried to do as much work as possible at the big table in the original kitchen. She had two tubs in which she washed dishes, and she would prepare all her ingredients in advance, all these little bowls and chipped cups set out across the table-an egg yolk in one, chopped chives in another, the chopped meat soaking in a herby sauce which took the smell out of it, and so on and so forth. She liked this big room. It was as generous as the other was mean. Alone in all the house it was dry. It had a window to the south which often took the brunt of storms in winter but through which you could see-she kept the privet trimmed herself to allow it-calm blue water, and a touch of the red cliff that gave Hennacombe its name.

But then Theo-holius had sat himself down and ruined her day. The place for such visitors was in the book-musty room she called the pigsty (although in public she said "drawing room" like everybody else). He did not belong here.

"Are you saved?" he asked her, first off, no introduction. She told him to mind himself. She had a leg of lamb she wished to bone. But there would be no hot-pot if this man with staring eyes did not eat and go. She went into the so-called kitchen and made dough for the scones. This was not for the lunch, but the tea Mrs Stratton liked to give for the Old Men (although the Squire looked after them anyway and Mrs Stratton had no business to give away what she could not afford). She needed the big table to make the scones, but Theophilus had the table so she tried to make do in the pantry, using the back of the wooden breakfast tray. She balanced it on the top of a stool and had to kneel to roll the dough across it. But the tray slipped and the dough fell. She said nothing out loud. She scraped the dough off the floor and carried it to the little window to examine it. She was a thin, nervous woman with dark sunken eyes and brisk movements, but she was, while she examined the dough, very still. She was thinking, weighing up, knowing the fuss that would be made if they found her dough in the bucket for the hens. She pushed the dough together and sat it on the tray. Then she went to the doorway where she surveyed the mournful man. He did not see her. As she watched, he sighed.

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She was too cross to be sympathetic. She could see the shadow of Mrs Stratton as it moved across the other side of the little kitchen window. The glass was of a rather poor quality, opaque and filled with bubbles, but Mrs Millar knew Mrs Stratton was waiting for her scones. She sprinkled the dough with flour, kneaded it, and soon the cinders from the floor were hidden. But still she did not like to make her scones from it. She left it to stand, in limbo. She took the leg of lamb from the meat-safe. It had turned a little green, but she had seen worse meat in this household. She took her best Sheffield, a lovely knife she had brought with her to the job-and just as well, too-and sharpened it. She set the dough aside and washed the tray and, once again, balanced it on the stool. Then she took the leg of lamb and rested it on the tray. She did not approve of using the tray for cutting meat, but she had no choice. She knelt and began cutting. It was such a lovely knife, and very sharp. She laid open the leg to the bone, taking pleasure in her skill, and the noise, in which she could hear the faintest tearing, even though the cut was razor sharp.

It was then that she heard the Evangelical groaning, the sort of noise a sick man might make in his sleep, but not, please God, when he was awake, at her table. She listened for a minute or two, her head on one side, like one of the Rhode Island Reds which would not-she had definitely decided-eat the scone dough. Then she laid the leg of lamb down, placed the knife carefully beside it, stood, and went to look.

She had seen him before, of course, but she had never-odd as this may seem, given that he lived so close and that they both used the same lane every day-ever seen him so close. He was a queer one all right, as you might expect of someone who did not hold with dancing. He was hard and wiry with ebony eyes. He sat bolt upright, his eyes clenched shut so tight it made his top lip twist up beneath his nose. He was rubbing his hands together as if they were fighting each other, as if the right hand wished to snap the wrist of the left. His lips, as she watched, began to move. The lips did not belong with all this rigidity. They were thick and red and passionate. It embarrassed her to look at them.

She made a noise, quite loud enough to hear. It indicated her disgust. If he heard it, she did not notice. She turned her back, and, having considered her scone dough again, went back to work on the lamb. It was so unfair. She could hardly bear the unfairness of it, that she must kneel here, with her knees hurting while he had all that table to himself. He thought himself humble for doing so. She had heard his big important voice. 'The kitchen will do well enough." 50

The Vicarage Kitchen

She resumed her work on the lamb. Then, because she was angry and the light was poor, and because she had to balance the lamb without putting pressure on the tray, she cut deeply into the cuticle of her index finger. There was a quick blooming of Turkish Red, a perfect circle which quickly ran to seed. It left great hot splashes across the tray and on her apron.

"Damn God," she said loudly, spitefully.

The noise in the other room stopped, and when she went in there to find a bandage, she noted that he was watching her with interest.

"So," he said. It was a deep voice, the thing people normally mentioned about him first. But she had heard the voice already and was not surprised by it. It was the note it struck that shocked herbright, triumphant, quite out of keeping with the anguished hands.

"So, Cook, you have cut yourself."

She did not understand this triumph, because she did not share his belief, i.e., if you were sick or injured, if you broke a leg, for instance, it was to punish you for sin. He had heard the Damn God and seen the cut, but he had the order of events quite wrong and thought the cause was the effect and vice versa.

She tore some strips of linen to make a bandage. She did this on the table and although she did not apologize for doing so, her heart beat very fast indeed. She could hear Mrs Stratton fussing with the umbrella stand in the passage, straightening up the sticks and umbrellas for no reason other than that she was waiting for her scones.

Mrs Millar brought the leg of lamb to the big table. She was bright with defiance. She placed it at the other end of the table from Theophilus but she did not look at him. She worked with her head bowed, standing up. She was occupied in this when the son arrived. She had seen him before last night, quite often, from her window. He was not like any other boy in Hennacombe. She thought him like a girl with the manner of a grown man. She had often heard him in the lane way singing hymns and she had no great opinion of his voice.

Mrs Stratton came bursting in straight afterwards. She had been interfering with the poultry. She was carrying a bowl of eggs and probably had the one from the broody hen. She would be better off building a proper roost and providing shelter from the wind-driven rain. Mrs Stratton put the eggs on the table and winked at Mrs Millar who, whilst pleased enough by the wink and even more pleased not to be sent into the pantry, suffered another wave of irritation. She sighed, and closed her eyes. She could not put off the scones any more.

"Papa," she heard the boy say. The voice swept from tenor to alto. 51

Oscar and Lucinda

He was at that age. She sprinkled flour across the table and began to roll dough. She was well aware that the flour was sprinkled on what could be regarded as her guest's territory. She felt specks of cmders in the dough, felt them through the wooden roller. She wondered what such peculiar people would say to one another.

16

Job and Judas

Everything about his papa was so familiar and sweet that he briefly forgot the circumstances that brought him there, only that he was there. His strongest desire was to rush and embrace him, to push his face against the rough blue serge which could contain the faintest odour of formaldehyde or, if decorum would not permit this, then at least hold those two strong hands which were always marked with some scab or cut from his work with rocks and sea. He felt he had been mad, infatuated with something not quite wholesome. He wanted to be somewhere good and dry and in that moment, at the kitchen door, the two qualities seemed synonymous.

He saw his father stand. He heard the chair pushed back. He registered the interest of the servant. He thought his papa about to take the matter out of his hands, that he would simply open his arms-the good shepherd, the father of the prodigal son-and sweep him to his bosom, press him into the good honest cotton of his shirt, bid him come home, away from all these musty smells to the lovely ascetic odour of floor polish, the smell most readily associated, in Oscar's mind, with sanctity.

And his father did embrace him. But he held him out, and away, in a tight grip that vibrated with a passion Oscar could not correctly read. It felt as if his father were moved more by love than anger, and yet he also wished to act sternly. Oscar imagined it was because of the servant. He was embarrassed that a stranger be a witness to this

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interview. His papa obviously felt the same. They both looked expectantly at the servant. The servant picked up her knife and the bloodred bone scraps and left the room. But in a moment, before father and son could be seated, she was back again with a scrubbing brush. When the scrubbing was done, they imagined themselves free of her. But no, she was back, dusting another corner of the table with flour. She began to roll out dough, with no show either of apology or hurry. Then Mrs Stratton burst in carrying eggs and saying Mrs Millar would make them breakfast. But Mrs Millar, it appeared, was insolent and would not do as she was bid. They were painful with each other, aware that they must bare themselves before strangers. On any less fraught occasion they would have walked out into the garden, or down along a lane, but the father had lost his normal sense of authority and the boy was just lost and waiting to be led. There were two places set. Oscar's was marked with a white napkin and a silver ring. The ostentation of the silver ring would be offensive to the father. Oscar saw this and was ashamed. He was a Judas. His alphas and deltas had no weight in the face of this. He would be kissed, even forgiven, but he was Judas. When he was back in his own home, his happiness would be marred for ever. He would never be asked to read the lesson to the Brethren. "I have prayed for you," his papa said.

Oscar looked at him, and then down. He was ashamed of what he had done to his father's eyesyellow whites, red veins, a red contusion in the corner of the left eye. He had caused this torture. There was a cut on the forehead, sand glued to his beard in two places. Lucy Millar cut the scones into squares although she knew Mrs Stratton liked them stamped out round, but there was no time for Oxford tricks today. The Holy Hypocrite was whispering to his son. He held him oddly, by the finger, and leaned across the corner of the table. The boy should wipe his nose. She looked away.

"You are travelling down the tide of time," his papa said. The voice was tangled, all wound around on itself like toffee. To Oscar's ear, this voice was a thing that had lost its bones. It was soft and floppy, without conviction.

But when Lucy Millar heard Theophilus speak, she felt a strange feeling, not unpleasant, at the back of her neck. She greased the tray.

"And you have chosen-or so Mr Stratton has, last night, informed me-to throw away the chart your Lord has revealed to you. What a dreadful thing it will be when Our Lord says, on 53

Oscar and Lucinda the Last Day, 'Come, ye Blessed/ and says it not to you." Mrs Millar goose-pimpled all over.

Oscar was embarrassed by his father's lost authonty. He wanted to free his finger from his grasp but did not know how.

"It is not as if you have been tempted, and given in to temptation," Theophilus said. Oscar did not listen to the words. It was the tone he heard. He thought: He is in error, and he knows! He felt pity, but also anger.

"It is not a weakness of your flesh," Theophilus said. "A weakness of the flesh is soon conquered. Itxis an arrogance of spirit. You must listen to the voice of God." His son had a smudged red mouth and green eyes that looked at him as though he were a stranger. He could not bear this lack of love. He rubbed his beard. Sand fell on the table. He brushed the sand on to the floor. He thought: Oh Lord, how have I offended Thee?

"I have listened to the voice of God, Papa."

He was frail-boned like a girl, thought Mrs Millar, and tangle-footed. His voice squeaked and farted and had no authority. His face showed his feelings like a pond that wrinkles in the slightest breeze. And yet, bless me, he could be a magistrate. She picked up the tray of scones and rushed them to the oven.

She came back to ask about their breakfast. It was too late for a fuss. She would offer them some tea and toast. The father was asking the boy: "Then why are you here, child? Why are you sitting in a household of this type?"

The boy was a fidgeter. His trunk twisted against the wooden rungs of the chair and his hands, in his lap, were at war with each other. His legs kicked the table. But although everything he did with his body suggested a sort of panic, his eyes were calm. Mrs Millar saw something in him which would make her defend him against all the coals Hennacombe would heap upon his head, something she could only name as "good."

She asked them about their breakfast. She offered them things the household could not afford. She would do them kippers, eggs, she would coddle some if they liked, or fry some in pork fat with a slice of bread. She felt moved to offer the boy gifts, but they looked at her and ignored her. This seemed to her to be arrogance on the father's part, and she was mostly right, but the son was also imitating the father. She went to make them toast, cutting the loaf thin. When she returned with the toast ihe thing she was struck by was the sinews-the father's, the son's, both of them-they were showing

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Scuffed Boots

taut sinews along their necks. Tears ran down the father's cheeks and were lost in his beard. She imagined he was imploring his son, but she was wrong. He could not implore. He could only endure.

Oscar had just, at the moment, realized the extent of his father's selfabsorption. All this, everything that Oscar had done and felt, was seen by his papa as something God was doing to his father. Oscar was merely an instrument of God's wrath.

He would not be invited to return home.

He could hardly breathe. His stomach hurt. A panic struck him and bound him still. He lifted his head oddly high, like a child drowning, and it was this that made the sinews stand out on his long neck.

They took their napkins and unfolded them on their laps. The air was wet with tears.

"I will not order you home, Oscar. I will pray for you each day."

"I will pray for you too, Papa."

And then they were both crying, and Mrs Millar placed toast in racks in front of them and filled their cups with tea. They sat isolated from each other, no longer connected by hands, and wept, bowing their heads as if it were a form of prayer.

Scuffed Boots

It was known about in Teignmouth and Torquay. Mrs Stratton heard it discussed at Newton Abbot markets by two women who she judged were hardly Christians. On Sundays the Baptists from Babbacombe, walking to chapel at the Squire's, now chose to take the longer route via Hennacombe so they might observe this new phenomenon: the Plymouth Brethren congregation kneeling and praying outside the Anglican vicar's broken-down front gate. There was not trimmed grass for them to rest on. There were blackberries and nettles, but this did not stop them. They flattened an area like cattle seeking shelter from

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Oscar and Lucinda

the wind. The way they knelt, so still and neat, you would not think their knees were pierced or ankles bleeding. The men wore red handkerchiefs and some of the women scarlet shawls, and although you would see one or two dark suits, the menfolk were mostly in their smocks. Here and there you might notice a blue smock with a pattern of white thread on the breast, but most of the smocks were a brilliant snowy white. They were all abloom, like a garden, and nothing suggested pain.

The Baptists hied past them silently and did not speak until they were round the corner of the lane.

The Plymouth Brethren never announced what they were praying for. The Reverend Mr Stratton imagined it was for his downfall, but those who kept this vigil knew that the Reverend Mr Stratton could not be saved. It was Oscar, little Oscar, they were praying for. Big men with white beards, young women with snow-white bonnets-they screwed up their faces and furrowed their brows. There would be great rejoicing in the Lord's house when this one sinner returned to the fold.

The Anglicans, walking briskly past, noted only that Theophilus was still not present. There were not many Anglicans, just the four. They knew, as everyone knew, that Theophilus disagreed with this praying, that he believed the boy had been taken from him because of his own pride. It was his sin that had done this, and it was for him to be punished and no one else. He could not approve of kneeling amongst blackberries, but no one believed it was his fault at all. Hennacombe thought Oscar unnatural. It could not accept what it might have accepted from a more robust boy. A sturdy young fellow, already a fisherman at sixteen, might come to blows with his father and even bloody his nose. This would not be welcomed, but no one would gather in gateways to pray because of it. There would be no detours on the way to chapel either. But Oscar was so girlish, so harmless, so gormless and it was this-this harmless, heart-shaped child's face which made it so unnatural. He was like a goblin or a devil in a story-what other being appears with the body of a child and the voice of a man? They would give him no credit for filial feelings, although, of course, he was boiling with them. He suffered the pains adults imagine reserved for them-those lonely, murderous, ripping feelings that come with the end of marriages or the death of babies. He was free from the disciplines of his father's house, and although it might be reasonable to hope that he would feel some lightening of his soul now that he no longer lived in a place where music and dancing, poetry and puddings were all seen to be the work of the devil,

56

r

Scuffed Boots

this was not the case at all. His world did not open, but rather closed, and he was trapped inside the vicarage with nothing to take away his bewilderment and grief. He was angry that his father should abandon him in such a place. And yet how could he blame his father? He suffered stomach-aches and three times peed inside his bed.

He did not like the Strattons' house. He did not like its damp, its mould, its sour smell of rotting thatch which became confused, in his later memory, with the idea of failure and disappointment. The Strattons were kind to him, but it was a tense household. He did not understand it. It was full of clocks that struck hours when there were none to strike. It was nervous and on edge, and although he was certainly coached in the Articles, the two most common subjects were money and the Bishop of Exeter. No one said he was a burden on the household, and yet he could not help but be aware of it. Each night he prayed to God to give the Strattons money, and sometimes thoughts leaked into his prayers, like coarse newspaper leaving its imprint on something clean and white, and because of these thoughts God must know he wished to be somewhere else. His map shrank. The myopic fog descended around its boundary fences. Outside this border he could see the soft fuzzy massings of the Plymouth Brethren's smocks. He brought the full force of his guilt to those silent unfocused faces. He imagined hooded brows, twisted lips, judgemental eyes. He wondered if he had been tricked by the devil. He skulked inside the vicarage and hid behind the privet. He pretended an interest in gardening so that he would not have to accompany Mrs Stratton when she went out on to the fuzzy Downs to distribute largesse (withered carrots that she could not really spare) to those Baptists whom she insisted on claiming as "our little flock."

On an errand to the post office he saw a large white shape which metamorphosized into Mrs Williams and then chased him with a stick.

Once, above Combe Pafford (sent to find Mr Stratton who was, anyway, lying snoring in the bed upstairs) he met his father carrying buckets. This was later, around the tenth Sunday after Trinity. They had not seen each other in over two months. There was a strong wind blowing. It pushed against their mouths and left them stricken, winded. His father had shrunk. He seemed a good three inches shorter. The skin beneath his eyes was like a wound that had healed-it was ridged and livid. He had white dry spittle caked on the corner of his mouth. His father stopped. He put down the buckets. Oscar did not look inside them. He knew the delicate tentacles of anthea were now

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forbidden him and he would not learn the names of these or see them through the microscope.