'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
14
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
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
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
