Oscar and Lucinda

crunch travel up her arm. When the kitten was a soiled and lifeless rag, she leaned the murdering bar against the throne. She thought: I had the strength.

And although she was mostly shaken by what she had done, there was a small part of her that was proud.

So when she was reunited with her old friend, it had already been a most disturbing day. She did not meet him in quite the place she had imagined, not in the gentle book-lined study she had so often recalled, but in a room filled with wooden crates in which Dennis Hasset was permitted to camp while the new incumbent and his family made themselves at home in the remainder. Without a fire, the room proved both cold and damp. Lucinda shrank inside her rabbitskin coat. She had not even been shown into the room politely. She had been greeted at the front door by a too-pretty child with a hoop. She had found her friend sitting on a rough wooden crate and the floor around him slippery with old letters. He was smaller than he had been, hunched over, and although there was no invalid's rug across his knees, his posture suggested one, Even when he stood he did not appear to straighten properly. She thought his hand very cold and bloodless. They looked at each other and although she sought much from the dear and familiar face she imagined she saw nothing there but exhaustion and defeat.

'What a miserable day,' she said.

Dennis Hasset thought her eyes 'pouchy' and her skin pallid. He 231

Oscar and Lucinda

had looked forward to this reunion, but now he was irritated by her tone. She made it seem as if the condition of the weather was his responsibility. He peered out of the window, shrugged, and then sat down again. He reflected how quickly women age.

'I am afraid,' he said, 'that I must offer you a crate. The chairs are taken, but not for the purpose of sitting, just taken. I am so very sorry about your works. It came at a bad time.'

'Your study is in ruins,' she said. ,.

He shrugged. t v i;, ;

'I find it quite disturbing,' she said.;> '-K,

'We grow too attached to things.'

'Yes, but it is a shock.' The shock was not so much to do with what the room had become, but in the realization that this place-which she had all but eliminated from her memory-was the seat of all those feelings which make us call one city 'home' above all others. It had been more of a home than her cottage at Longnose Point. It was certainly far more of a home than Mr d'Abbs's house although it was the latter she had so romanticized in her absence, making it into a place of

'comradeship' and 'jolly good times,' which labels involved forgetting all that was tawdry and corrupted about the house and its occupants.

But this room, Dennis Hasset's room, had contained all that was true and good in her life. She had forgotten this because he had not proposed to her as she had thought he might, and she had been angry with him. But now she was back, she saw that Sydney would be unbearable without this friendship, this room. Everything in her wished to cry out like a child at the injustice of her homecoming. But she was not a child, and she would no longer demand her hot cocoa and her seat to sleep in by the fire. She was a grown woman with a damaged friend and she forced herself to show concern for him, teasing his story from him like a bandage from a congealed wound.

And yet there was a part of her, a substantial part too, that did not give a damn about Dennis Hasset's story. This part was angry. It thought Dennis Hasset a weak fool and a poor friend. It judged him for not valuing her sufficiently, for slumping over in his seat, for not lighting a fire. It coexisted with this other part that loved him. And these two factions fought within her all the while she listened to his story. She thought he had a kind and intelligent face and it was not wise to speak so indulgently about his enemies.

'But surely,' she said at last, 'Boat Harbour can be appealed against?'

yn

> Home,

He shook his head., e

'But it is unfair. You still see yourself a Christian?' She wished he would sit up straight. v -

'Of course.'

'Then damn him,' said Lucinda, not softly either, 'then damn him in hell.' And tears were coursing down her cheeks and he leaned over and enfolded her hand with his. But she did not wish her hand held. It was too late for that now. And, anyway, her tears were selfish tears, not really shed for him at all, but for herself. He had a big hand and it did not comfort her, merely reminded her of how small her own was. 'He behaves like a cad,' she said, removing her hand on the pretext of finding her handkerchief. 'Oh, Mr Hasset, please, and where is Boat Harbour?' He smiled and shrugged. She saw that he did not realize that her life would also be affected.

'Is it far away?' She had come to have war with him about his neglect of her works. She had despised the way he sat so hunched on the crate, but she would not be without him. He was a good man, but

too soft. She felt herself to be red and blotchy in her cheeks. The tiny veins on her eyelids would be showing.

'Far enough,' he said. 'It is the territory of the Kumbaingiri Tribe. What does 'far' mean in this country? I don't know, Miss Leplastrier. I am so awfully sorry about your glassworks. The two crises arrived coincidentally.'

'They were all I had.'

'You have them still,' he said reprovingly, feeling she cared too much for her own predicament.

'Yes, but not my partner.'

The softness of her voice made him catch his breath. He checked himself. He had been, generally, too emotional of late.

'I think I will never forget how you came into my study and I thought you a Mr Leplastrier. Do you remember the to-do we caused?' *

'We were most improper.'

'Oh, we were a degree or two hotter than improper.'!*

'And we were noted,' said Lucinda who, although she was smiling, was feeling her neck and shoulders set upon by a swarm of hot

prickles. 'They could not help themselves,' said Dennis Hasset, grinning broadly. 'Then it is I who am responsible for your exile.'

Oscar and Lucinda

'Oh, no.' >v

'Oh, yes, and you have tried to hide it from me. I was such a child. I never thought the harm I did you.' s KK;-,

'Hush.'

'I never thought.'

'Hush. Do you hear me? You're wrong. You are quite wrong. Now, please. It is wholly theological, I promise you.' This was not exactly true. His situation had not been helped by the association.

'Do you give your word?'

'I do,' he said. She did not catch the small grimace he made at the sound of his own falsehood.

'Then do not go,' she said. 'If that is truly the case, then you do not have to go.'

'I do not follow your logic.'

'There is no more logic in my argument than there is truth in yours,' she said softly. He did not know whether to smile or frown at her. He remembered the afternoons he had found her, unannounced, asleep in his armchair. 'How sad life is/' he said. Lucinda stood and went to the window. She was surprised to fine the view the same. She turned up the collar of her rabbit fur. She pulled on her gloves, as if she intended to leave, and then took them off again and arranged them on a crate, laying out the fingers, flattening the thumb. 'You do not