Oscar and Lucinda (66 page)

Laudanum or no, he was not at ease. He called for Percy Smith to lock the door. He placed his hard wooden chair in the very middle of the church. He prayed out loud and his voice had a hard vibrant quality inside the glass. He said: "Oh Lord, I am alive in the midst of Thy dreadful river. All Thy glory surrounds me, but I am afraid."

Outside the walls, he could hear the man named "rumgo" giggling. This had no more importance to him than the cries of savage birds.

My great-grandfather drifted up the Bellinger River like a blind man up the central aisle of Notre Dame. He saw nothing. The country was thick with sacred stories more ancient than the ones he carried in his sweat-slippery leather Bible. He did not even imagine their presence.
41A

The Aisle of a Cathedral

Some of these stories were as small as the transparent anthropods that lived in the puddles beneath the river casuarinas. These stories were like fleas, thrip, so tiny that they might inhabit a place (inside the ears of the seeds of grass) he would later walk across without even seeing. In this landscape every rock had a name, and most names had spirits, ghosts, meanings. He had given his hat to Kumbaingiri Billy's father's sister. It was the Wednesday before Good Friday, and although it was now cool in Sydney, it was hot at this latitude. Under the canopy of glass it was very hot indeed. Only on the dog-leg bend at Fernmount was the riverbank able to provide any shade.

Kumbaingiri Billy saw the glass church. He was a young boy, initiated only the year before. He was with the men, hunting, at the place which is now named Marx Hill. He saw the glass church in the distance-a prism, a cube, a steeple of light sliding into the green shadows of Fernmount. There were men with blue shirts and wide-brimmed hats. They held long poles. They stood around the perimeter. In the middle was a man. Even in the shadow, so Kumbaingiri Billy told my father, hre danced around this man's head.

Oscar could not see the blacks watching him. He was not frightened of the blacks. He was frightened of other things. The wooden platform beneath his feet was built on H. M. McCracken's two lighters, which remained, in spite of all the nails and planks and lashing that joined them together, two independent entities. Thus when one lighter bobbed it would not be in step with its companion and the result of this was that the foundation of the fragile bird-cage church would shift and twist. Glass, for all its great strength under compression, cannot easily tolerate this sort of twisting.

Three panes of glass had cracked. These panes were in the roof. They crazed and hung like iceknives. Their jigsaw edges refracted the colours of the rainbow across my great-grandfather's clasped hands. He was gaunt and ugly, with a bright Adam's apple and a bright red hooked nose. He looked like the most fearsome Calvinist. There were white unburnt rings around his eyes. His green irises were set in yellow whites and these were laced with fine red rivers. Percy Smith drove his pole into the mud. Vectors of force fought with each other for a resolution. The platform beneath Oscar's feet twisted. Another pane splintered and, this time,

Oscar and Lucinda

fell at the foot of the barley-sugar columns in the little chancel. "Oh, Lord," he prayed, as sweat ran down his brow and into his eyes, "I thank Thee for granting me this day." For answer, three more panes crazed. And while, according to all the laws of science, they should have fallen-there was no wire reinforcing in the glass, nothing but its own splintered edges to hold it there-it stayed in place. It was a blemish on the sky, like something curdledmilky-white, like crinkled cellophane. The man inside the church waved his hands, gestures which appeared, from the perspective of Marx Hill, to be mysterious, even magical, but which, inside the crystal furnace of the church, had the simple function of repelling the large and frightening insects which had become imprisoned there.

There were bush-flies inside the church. They did not understand what glass was. There were also three blue-bellied dragon-flies. For one hundred thousand years their progenitors had inhabited that valley without once encountering glass. Suddenly the air was hard where it should be soft. Likewise the tawny hard-shelled water beetle and the hang-legged wasp. They flew against the glass in panic. They had the wrong intelligence to grasp the nature of glass. They bashed against "nothing" as if they were created only to demonstrate to Oscar Hopkins the limitations of his own understanding, his ignorance of God, and that the walls of hell itself might be made of something like this, unimaginable, contradictory, impossible. While the three men worked around him with their long sapling punting poles, Oscar put his hands over his ears or waved them in the air. The fractured glass cast a burning spectrum across his forehead. He said: "Oh, God, I praise Thee. I praise Thy dreadful river. I am not afraid." But his hand sat on the hard lump in his pocket where the sticky laudanum bottle sat. He thought: It will soon be over.

But the church burnt his already burnt skin and he watched the exquisite jewel-blue dragon-flies crash against the glass. He felt a stab of panic, that he had made his bet on secondrate information. It was not God who had persuaded him, but that "other voice." He took his jacket off and put it over his head and shoulders, and that is how, when the fractured church was finally towed to the jetty at Boat Harbour, the government inspector mistook him, in the evening light, for a hooded nun.

41 «

• . 107 :;-!: " •

Arrival of Anglican Church at Boat Harbour

The Reverend Dennis Hasset had discovered a leech in his sock. He was trying to walk home to his house so he might remove it. Actually, it was not merely one leech, it was two, although both of them were anchored at almost the one spot with the result that one had grown fat and bloated while the other stayed lean. The sight of this shining black slug with two tails turned his stomach and he would have run, were it not for the likelihood that, being seen to be in flight from something, he would be set upon by drunken bullock drivers or be pelted with potatoes by the snotty-nosed children of the Magneys or the Walls.

When he heard about the glass church his only thought was that he would not now be able to deal with the leech at home. He certainly did not make the connection with Lucinda. In fact he did not strictly believe what he heard. He knew only that there was a structure which his informant, the clerk from the government offices, imagined was a church and which would, eventually, prove to be a steam saw or a lifeboat or a smashed-up phaeton recovered from a shipwreck at The Heads.

To remove the leech, he needed salt. He could buy a ha'penny-worth at Hammond and Wheatley, which he did, favouring one foot a little, resisting the urge to rub ankle against ankle while he waited behind Mrs Trevis who was, between buying flour and bacon, relating the story of her Grandfather Dawson's service as a coach painter to Her Majesty the Queen. The clerk from the government offices ran in twice to fetch him and it was he who begged Mr Hammond please to serve the reverend gentleman because he was required by the government inspector to be at the landing wharf "quick and lively."

The Reverend Dennis Hasset got his salt. He was not accustomed to shopping. He was surprised at how much salt you got for a

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Oscar and Lucinda

ha'penny. There was no way you could slip this into your pocket. It was a hefty bag and must be held under the arm. He did so, marching down Hyde Street while the government clerk, a huge fellow with hefty hands and a cowed spirit that made him bend forward and bow his neck, clucked and fussed and postulated this and that about this strange glass church. The Reverend Mr Hasset was plotting a way to get the salt in contact with the leeches. He was therefore disappointed to see that a crowd had gathered at the wharf. This would make the operation that much more difficult.

He listened to the clerk as they pressed through to the river. As usual, most of the crowd were drunk. They smelt loathsome: unwashed clothing, rum, vomit. Hell itself could smell no worse than this. Dennis Hasset opened his bag of salt and took a fistful.

It was then that he saw the church. He thought
so
many things at once. That it was a miracle, a spider web, a broken thing, a tragedy, a dream like something constructed for George in and then assaulted in a fit of rage. He thought: It has been hit with hail. He thought: it has been salvaged from a wreck out at The Heads. He thought: it was a mistake to triangulate those tall panes of glass when a Roman arch would be much more graceful. He thought: Lucinda. It was the latter thought that made the mole on his back turn hot and itchy because he had never, in all his letters, bothered to tell her that he was now a married man and soon to be the father of a child.

In the face of this crazed image of Lucinda's passion, he was numb with panic. His mole was driving him crazy with its itching. He held his salt. He stood with the most of his weight on the foot that did not have the leeches. He waited for Lucinda to emerge from between the barleysugar columns. He could not see through the glass itself-it had become, with all the splintering, almost opaque. He tucked the bag of salt under his arm and fixed a smile on his face, but as H. M. McCracken's leaky old lighters were moored to the bollards on the wharf, the figure that emerged from the church's wooden door was not that of Lucinda Leplastrier, but a gaunt collarless burnt-ghost figure who marched towards him carrying a little suitcase like a hat-box.

"Sir," said Oscar and held out his hand.

Dennis Hasset's hand, alas, was filled with salt. He opened it, by way of explanation. The burnt man stared at it and laughed; it was not a normal laugh but a dry noise like a cough.

"The Reverend Mr Hasset?"

!

Ain

Arrival of Anglican Church at Boat Harb°ur

There was something very dangerous about this staring man. His green-eyed gaze was too intense. He would not rel<*se his hold on Dennis Hasset's eyes, not even for a second.

"Yes," said Dennis Hasset.

"Then I have the pleasure, sir, to present this splen<*id church to you. It is a gift to the Christians of Boat Harbour fr"m th« most wonderful woman in New South Wales." The ghost seemed oblivious to the splintered state of the church. "I tell you now, without reserve," he roared, "I envy you. This woman loves you.'

Dennis Hasset felt ill. He wished to withdraw. All the godless of Boat Harbour pressed their thick necks and cauliflowerears forward. He stooped and poured his fistful of salt into his
sow-
The madman was now crying. His face was as di^X and tattered as the bandages around his wrists.

"How you can stand there," Oscar said, "when
U&
^plastrier pines in Sydney, why, it is quite beyond my comprehen

The salt in Dennis Hasset's sock was as painful as ground glass. He thought: When, oh Lord, will my past follies stop returning to torment me?

He put his hand on the shoulder of the weeping man-He intended Christian charity, but felt only an alien body as
W*
and bony as a suit of armour. It was then, wondering how he could stop the germs of scandal which were already multiplying around him, that he saw Miriam Chadwick's bright green riding costume

"Mrs Chadwick," he said, "I wonder could you assist us?" Thus, while Percy Smith was busy shifting his mo°nn8 in accordance with the wishes of the government inspector, Denn»s Hasset and Miriam Chadwick escorted Oscar Hopkins up the rutted track to Hyde Street. Both men limped a little, one from an injury mcurred upon a journey, the other on account of blood-red salt grinding against a naked high-arched foot. At the Hyde Street corner, Dennis Hasset requested that Oscar excuse them both. He left him standing, still weep'°8'.ln the shelter of the post office while he conferred with Mrs Chadw«*

whose large, dark brown eyes, so obviously filled with charity &the weeping man, moved him greatly.

"Miriam," he said, "you must help me, please-I "just hurry to my wife before she hears all this puffed up by gossip5' Would you be the good Samaritan? Here is a crown. Buy him bandages and mercurochrome. Here is the key to the meeting roo"1-You can lock the door and keep the busybodies out. Look after nim-He is in such a

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Oscar and Lucinda

sorry state, poor beggar. Can you manage this? Will Mrs Trevis permit you?"

"Dear Dennis," said Miriam Chad wick, who was at once delighted to have exactly what she wished and outraged that a man who had (not long ago either) cruelly spurned her, should now beg favours of her. "Dear Dennis, you must hurry home to Elizabeth and leave this wounded soul to me."

She accepted the large brass key, the crown piece, and the Tom bag of salt which Dennis Hasset thrust into her bosom. And then my greatgrandmother took Oscar Hopkins by the arm and walked very slowly, oblivious to the stares, to the meeting hall above the cobbler's shop. There she locked the door and began her ministrations.

108

Oscar and Mlriim

When Oscar Hopkins and Miriam Chadwick came down the stairs to the cobbler's shop at last, it was to announce their impending marriage.

There was a small wet stain on the back of my great-grandmother's green silk riding habit. This was remarked on-how could it not bebut nothing was ever said out loud, and, in any case, Miriam had plied the young traveller with Mr Hammond's expensive emollients and creams, with stinging iodine, blue-red mercurochrome, bright yellow "Healing Ointment," had rubbed him with so many healing dyes that he soon looked like a tropical fish in his father's aquarium; with so many wet and greasy substances about, no one could be surprised if Miriam also spilled a wee drop on her clothing.

Oscar, when at last he opened the heavy cedar door at the top of the stairs above the cobbler's, had the stunned and slightly vacant air you might see in some one rescued from a burning house. As he walked down the loud, uncarpeted stairs, he felt his sin declared to all the world.
'

47?

Oscar and Miriam

I love Lucinda Leplastrier. . ,

The cobbler was working at his bench. Oscar could not meet his gaze. He Ipoked instead at a pair of dancing pumps hanging from the door. To these he nodded.