Oscar and Lucinda

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