carpenter had expressed the view that the cargo was 'safe enough.' Mr Jeffris did not show a different character from the one he had revealed when wearing striped trousers in Mr d'Abbs office. He merely brought himself into keener focus. He drew his antique sword and called the man-he was a boy, really, with sandy hair and a newly sunburnt nose-'a frigging colonial frigging dog, a frigging lemonsucking incompetent.' He would cut his hand off. By God he would. You watch him. He would feed it to him for his dinner. Etc.
Now Mr Smith sat on a log next to the young clergyman and stared into the hre. He had been on several journeys of exploration, and this always was a time of day he enjoyed. There was no shortage of water here, and so he had washed his day's clothes and hung them on a line he had rigged along the wagon where he and Oscar were carried as passengers. This was already dubbed by the overseer the 'Ladies' cornpartment,' on account of the canvas awning provided them. Mr Smith now wore clean clothes. They were cool against the skin and still smelt of his wife's ironing board.
His companion had neither washed nor changed his clothes. He had been too shy to bathe naked in front of the other men and must now, surely, be in a state of some discomfort. So much did Mr Smith enjoy the feeling of clean linen against his skin, that he was made vicariously uncomfortable at that thought of Oscar Hopkins's sweat- sticky garments. It had been hot travelling. The country was still very dry, and where ploughed, dusty. They had travelled half a day along a series of ridges still smouldering from bushhre. Tree roots were still alight and, twice, burning branches crashed dangerously close
Mr Smith
to the party. He and Mr Hopkins had travelled with wet handkerchiefs on their faces but their skin, of course, was filthy from the smoke and ash. Percy Smith could not bear for his companion to sit in his filth.
'It is a pleasant time for bathing,' he said. 'The moon up over the water. I think there is nothing so pleasant. In fact I have a mind to bathe again. Old mother night,' he said, 'throws a modest curtain on us.'
Oscar said nothing.
Two Scots were singing somewhere by the boat carriage:
'Does your throat still pain you?'
'Oh, it is not so bad.'
'I have been thinking,' Percy Smith said, taking out his pipe and tobacco pouch, 'that if I were to coat the funnel with wax it might not be so painful. But then I fear your fit will make you bite it, and a loose piece of wax could easily choke.'
'I had no fit.'
'But you have a phobia about the water.'
'All my life. Yet when I mounted the barge I had no phobia. I was merely sad to leave one I loved so dearly.'
'Mr Hopkins,' said Mr Smith, sending great plumes of blue smoke into the night, 'Mr Hopkins, has the laudanum removed all memory from you?' And he laughed to show he did not mean it unkindly. 'You forget.'
'And what do I forget, Mr Smith?' The voice was cool and unfriendly. Mr Smith thought: He will not easily forgive me for what I must do to him. Yet he, too, is in the maniac's power. We are both in the same boat. He must forgive me. It is intolerable he should not.
Mr Smith said: 'You forget I found you in a fit. Your teeth were clenched. Your face was red as butcher's meat. Your eyes had rolled and your veins were like worms lying on your brow.'
'You found me thus, on account of that 'person' whom we stupidly engaged to deliver this cargo,' Oscar hissed. 'It was he who assaulted
Oscar and Lucinda
me and pushed me down and forced this 'medicine' upon me.'
'He has a great responsibility,' said Percy Smith. 'He fears you will throw yourself into the water.'
'He fears he will lose his bonus. But he will not lose me. I will not allow myself to be lost. I have much to live for.'
'Do you forget it was I who introduced her to our table?'
'I am sorry…'
'Your 'much-to-live-for.' Do you remember who it was who arranged her invitation to Mr Borrodaile's table?'
'Oh, yes,' said Oscar, and Mr Smith was pleased to hear the voice, at last, lighten.
'You have that to thank me for.'
'Indeed.'
A moment later, Oscar said: 'I have never seen men behave like this.' Percy Smith was not sure exactly what he referred to, whether he meant Mr Jeffris himself or the men who wrestled with each other by the edge of the fire or those dancing a drunken jig around the overseer's grey tent. There was also, of course-and this was quite normalmuch profanity in the night.
'I fear I am not suited to this life,' the clergyman said. 'There is a cruel feel to it. Indeed, it is extraordinary that one can go through life and know so little of it. I suppose much of it is like this.'
'Oh, aye,' said Percy Smith, and sighed. 'Oh, aye.'
'You need give me no medicine tomorrow. It does not agree with me.' Percy Smith said nothing.
'Strictly speaking,' Oscar said, 'Mr Jeffris is in my employ.' He stood up. For a moment it seemed that he would walk to Mr Jeffris's tent. Indeed he took a step in the direction of that tent, which glowed with the light of three lanterns. But then he stopped and Percy Smith stood to see what it was had halted him: it was the carpenter, he who had been threatened with amputation. He was kneeling in the outer circle of firelight and thus, with his fair hair touching the ground, was allowing himself to be penetrated by the overseer.
'May God save you,' said Oscar Hopkins. He said it in a high clear voice. It cut across the campsite with that clean slice you hear in whipbirds in dense bush.
In a moment there would be a general eruption of laughter, an ugly noise which could contain, within its chaos, noises like doors slamming, donkeys braying. But for a moment, everything was very quiet. *
I
95
Arrival of Wardley-Fish (1)
Four weeks out from Home, Ian Wardley-Fish had looked into his silver-backed mirror and seen, above the unblemished white of his clerical collar, a gross and thick-lipped man with weak and watery bloodshot eyes, a buffoon who-even whilst standing in the dock before his Better Selftried to grin and joke his way to acceptance; but it would not do. Wardley-Fish placed his mirror upon the washstand and, having wedged his bulk between washstand and bed, kneeled upon his cabin floor. He vowed to God that he would henceforth forswear not only cards and alcohol and smutty talk, but also that he would acquit himself with dignity, that he would eschew the company of Messrs Clarkson and Maguire, those two 'gentlemen' with whom he had, not three hours previously, been pleased to recite sixteen verses of 'Eskimo Nell.' His head hurt terribly. He had drunk a thing which Clarkson, an agent of some type in Sydney, called Squatter's Punch. It was made with grenadine, champagne and a particularly foul colonial rum, which Clarkson, who was addicted to the stuff, had carried with him to London. Maguire, being from Belfast, claimed he could drink anything, but had been defeated by the Squatter's Punch. WardleyFish was playing the 'Modern Man of God.' He had outdone himself last night. He had also, again, said unflattering things about his ex-fiancee's knees. He had said these things before. He had said it was the image of these knees-glimpsed accidentally in a moment on the Serpentinethat had made the marriage impossible to him. This was not true. But in his cups he had enjoyed drawing gross pictures for Maguire and Clarkson. They thought him exceedingly modern. But he would do this no more, and with his stomach rebelling against the smell of his own chamber-pot, he promised God he would henceforth behave as both a Christian and a gentleman.
.-<(
1
Oscar and Lucinda
Even as he made the vow he feared he had not the strength to keep it, and yet he did, well past the time when he had the queasiness of his stomach to assist him.
