Mr Smith bent his head low to attack his consomme which Mr Borrodaile remarked was nothing more than beef tea in a flat plate. Mr Smith nodded, but looked up, blinking from under his sandy eyebrows, to ask about the conversation. He had enjoyed his bit of Darwin with the parson, and when he heard 'Montaigne' he judged the couple would be well matched. He was about to confess he knew little of Montaigne but would be pleased to hear. He liked the look of the table far better now that the red-veined purser had removed himself. It looked a friendlier place altogether.
It was Lucinda who had answered Mr Smith. It was she who said Montaigne. Mr Borrodaile did not like the sound of it at all. It produced another three phantom grass ticks, these last just below his collar where he could not touch them. He imagined the young woman was being pretentious, using a foreign word for 'mountain' where an English one would have done. He was not entirely confident of this, and yet he wished it known, in a relatively safe sort of way.
'Montaigne,' he said, affecting a reasonable chuckle, putting his cutdown spectacles back in his jacket. 'Montaigne, hill mound and tussock.'
This produced a puzzled silence, but before it had extended more than a second or two, Percy Smith-he would have been faster, but he had been engaged with his consomme-produced an appreciative chuckle. He was well aware of Mr Borrodaile's sensitivities.
'Britt-ayne,' said Mr Borrodaile, pushing on like a man slashing at dense undergrowth in country he does not know. Hack, hack. God knows what vines will trip him, thorns snag him. Slash. 'Bourgogne. Bretagne. Montana, quite right.' He was laughing uproariously now, a high laugh for such a big man, like a string of firecrackers. Tears ran down his cheeks and lost themselves in his moustache. 'Oh, dear,' he blew his great big nose, 'my wounded aunt.' The two men felt they had missed something important, but Lucinda Leplastrier, although she did not understand the sense of the words, saw and tasted the prickliness beneath Mr Borrodaile's laughter and it made her remember things about Sydney she had forgotten. This man was rich and powerful in Sydney. She did not know him, but she could be confident he would dine at Government House. He was a barbarian. <,
•>m
Oscar and
'But speaking seriously,' said Mr Borrodaile, as the corned beef was placed in front of him (he prodded it with his knife, separated the slices, but said nothing of its quality). 'Speaking seriously,' sharing his gaze between Mr Smith and Oscar, 'I would like to hear the parson's opinion of tallow.'
'I have none,' Oscar smiled, and fiddled with something in his pocket. Lucinda, glancing at him sideways, approved of his answer just as much as-having suddenly placed Mr Borrodaile-she disapproved of this fellow who had made his great fortune out of buying land and chopping it up. This was a calling which moved her to great anger, and not only because she had had experience of it at so young an age.
So this was Borrodaile. He named streets after himself.
'You cannot travel,' said Mr Borrodaile, swallowing too much at once. 'Excuse me.' He paused to clear his pipes with burgundy. He wiped the shiny piece of dimpled chin between the hedges of his drooping moustache. 'You cannot travel out to New South Wales without an opinion on this subject. Upon my word, Parson, it's like going to Ireland without your umbrella. If it is llamas, then I think it matters not a pickle whether your head is empty or not. Even Mr Smith will tell you this. But tallow, your young Reverence, this is a thing you must know about. The price of town tallow when we sailed was two pounds a hundred-weight and if I were a young man with any capital, this is what I would invest in.'
'But the price may change,' said Lucinda.
Mr Borrodaile looked at her and blinked.
This was not a subject he would allow disagreement on, not even if the dissenter were protected by crinoline and stays. He had no time for anyone who wished to raise sheep for mutton. There had been too much mutton in the colony already. He was a tallow man, a chop-themup-and-boilthem-down man, and he liked to have a chance to say so.
'Change!' said Mr Borrodaile, holding up his knife and fork and looking down at her along his shiny-bridged nose. 'By God, girlie, of course it will change. It will go up.' Oscar found this bellow quite upsetting. He did not like the blasphemy. It was even more shocking when it came from so large and powerful an instrument. He saw that the diminutive Miss Leplastrier had done nothing to deserve such vitriol. It offended his sense of what was fair, and he was moved to take up a public position in her defence.
And yet he did not really think of 'sides,' only of trying to adjudicate,
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Montaigne
to assume the responsibility for the harmony of the table. This, really, vvas his great talent. It had made him a good schoolmaster. It was born of his hatred of discord, his fear of loudness. The weakness, therefore, ended up a virtue, and he brought his sense of fairness to every social situation so that he would divide curiosity and attention like a good socialist, dividing them fairly according to the needs of the participants. As for himself, if you left aside the subject of horseracingwhich he imagined he had now abandoned-and the construction of the Leviathan-on which everybody at the table was well versed-he thought he had nothing worth saying on matters secular. He had found his pupils at Mr Colville's school to be more worldly than he was. 'And what would you invest in, Miss Leplasrrier?' The question was quite innocent. He did not imagine she was in a position to invest in
anything.
Lucinda Leplastrier put her knife and fork together on her plate, the fork with its tines upwards. She knew her hair was a fright. She could feel it slipping from its clips. Her cheeks were burning but she forced herself to look slowly around the table, to take in every face before she spoke. She had taught herself this trick in Sydney. It was a sea anchor thrown out to slow her before the gale of her emotions, and although she did not actually feel it herself, it gave her an appearance of almost queenly dignity.
'I would invest,' she said. She counted to three. She lost her place. 'I would put my capital into something that I loved very much.' 'Very pretty,' said Mr Borrodaile, and made a show of applauding. 'Perhaps not loved' then, Mr Borrodaile, Let us say that I would invest in something from which I would derive innate pleasure. And if it were land, for instance, I would first find some land which would produce what I wished, and then I would prepare myself for good seasons and bad seasons, but I would cherish my land.' 'Dear girl. ,' Lucinda made a little face which was born in that painful territory
between a wince and a smile.
'But mostly, Mr Hopkins,' she said, to Oscar (who leaned forward and thus, although he wished no rudeness, was complicitous in excluding Mr Borrodaile), 'I would advise someone with capital in accordance with what I understand the parable of the talents instructs us to. I would advise that they make something that was not there before. I do not like your tallow works, I must admit it, Mr Borrodaile.' She returned her attention to him as she spoke. Her voice was soft, even regretful. 'And this is not merely because they produce a most
Oscar and Lucinda
unpleasant odour, but because I have lived and worked at farming and I cannot bear to see a beast used for so base a thing, and now I am sure I have allowed you to call me silly and feminine.'
'Dear girl, I have thought no such thing.' But his hooded bloodshot eyes thought worse things and brought them out, one after the other, and displayed them. It was a private showing and Percy Smith was not aware of it-he smiled at Lucinda and shook his head in such an idiotic and patronizing way that she revised her good opinion of him immediately.
'The principle,' said Oscar, inviting them all to join hands in some communion which they were-even Lucinda-now reluctant to approach, 'the principle, Mr Borrodaile, is surely a good one.'
'Oh, for God's sake,' spluttered Mr Borrodaile, then tried to catch his blasphemy before it landed. His mouth, for a second, lay open like someone who has eaten food too hot and wishes to spit it out, expel it, anyway, but cannot do it from politeness. He could not take it back. He could only push on, hack his way forward, and not worry that he could not see where his next step would lead him. 'I knew you were a clergyman when I saw you from behind. You see, it's in your walk.' He swilled his burgundy.
'By criminee, 111 show you.'
Lucinda sucked in her breath. Even Mr Smith accustomed by now to the erratic and energetic movements of his friend, his erupting passions, his hurts, slights, revenges, even Percy Smith, lining up his spoon and fork beside a
