Chinese, she had been told, had European wives. It was said the Chinese men were kind to their women. These were fallen women, beyond the pale. It was said-248
The Multitude of Thy Sorceries
the reverend friend had said so-that they were loved and found happiness. She tried to block out the sound. She shut a large and heavy door on it and pressed it-for it did not wish to go-firmly shut.
There was movement now. A shoulder, blind of feeling, pressed against her. The men pushed, like fish feeding, or piglets rushing the teat-all feeling concentrated in the mouth, the rest of the body quite numb. There were eighty characters. They would put twenty in a bowl. Of these twenty, they would select ten. They were doing it now. She was crushed all about. The Celestial, one eye half-shut against his own cigarette smoke, drew out ten yellowed ivory counters and placed them on a little wooden tray.
She had been told that these characters represented virtues. She had trouble recognizing them in this light. There was the one with the roof, the one with the two Fs standing huffily back to back, the one with eyes like a cat staring from the grass, the one like a river, Jesus Christ Almighty, dear Lord forgive her, she had eight correct.
She felt light, high as a kite. The Chinaman gave her money but did not approve of her. She could not imagine him being kind to his wife. She did not give a damn what he thought. She was going for a trot. She was going to hell.
Don't think that!
She clenched all her muscles to resist the idea. Then, almost at once, she did not care. The punters saw the small woman in the big oilskin coat walk towards the door. She walked briskly and bossily towards it-not the door to the street, but the door in the back wall. She was going for a trot.
The second room was where fan-tan was played. It was dark all round its edges, much darker than in the Pak-Ah-Pu room. But the light above the zinc-covered table was brighter and the zinc itself threw back a dull glow into the faces of the noisy players, making them look sickly, tinged with green. No one looked up when she entered. She stayed back for a moment in the cover of dark. She felt, suddenly, quite wonderful. She could not explain why this change should come, that she should move from blotchy-faced hell-fear to this odd electric ecstasy merely in the moving from one room to the next. She felt herself to be beyond salvation and did not care. She would not be loved, not be wife, not be mother.
She felt the perfect coldness known to climbers.
The croupier was thin, with gold in his mouth. She could smell the rancid oil from his pigtailed hair. All sorts of smells here. Sailor's oilskin, someone's newly polished shoes. The croupier made a small
Oscar and Lucinda
cry-probably English, although it sounded alien, mechanical, as if he were an extraordinary construction from the Paris exhibition. The dark enveloped her, warmed her like brandy. The croupier threw-such a
There was much barracking now. Cries of yes, it is, no, it's not, groans, and then an odd cheer, squeaky as a schoolboy's which attracted comments, not all of them good-natured.
'It's two.'
'Toe,' said the Celestial. 'Numma toe.'
He had placed all the coins in sets of four. There were two remaining. Anyone who had placed their stake on the side of the zinc designated '2' had trebled their money. The Chinaman gave out the winnings. He slid out six coins across the zinc. Someone expressed a wish to pass water in an eccentric style. Another wind. There was laughter and crudity. Lucinda was not lonely. She pressed forward now, to make her bet, but also to reveal herself. They must know she was there. It was to prevent their embarrassment. She would rather she did not reveal herself, but she must not delay it. She did not look at the faces of the men as she pressed between them to reach the bright square of pitted zinc.
She said: 'Excuse me.'
It took longer to register than you might expect, partly because of the alcohol, which gave the air in the room its volatility, but also because of the intense focus created by the zinc square which, at the moment she chose, contained nothing of any significance except the numerals (1, 2, 3, 4) which red forms had become almost ghostly with the heavy traffic of coins across their painted surfaces.
At last they felt her otherness, her womanness. She felt the bodies move aside. Where there had been a hot press, she now
— JRfl
.-tf
The Multitude of Thy Sorceries
experienced a distinct and definite cooling. * < o
But she was not lonely, and she was not frightened or shy. She looked at the Chinaman-he was lonely, she saw, and very youngbut she observed this in a way that did not involve her capacity for compassion or sympathy. What moved her were his ringed hands, the black metal cup, the brass coins, the red scratched numbers, and these things, being merely instruments, provided the anticipation of an intense, but none the less mechanical, pleasure.
She placed a florin against the four. This was soon joined by the more customary coppers. The
'4' won. She felt herself liked. She felt the hot pulse of their approbation. They went from cold to hot. It was done as quickly as the cutting of a cockerel's throat. She did not acknowledge it, but she welcomed it. She was not lonely. She looked at no one. She played with inspired recklessness. She felt she could control the game with no other tool than her will. 4, 3, 2, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1, 4, 3, 3, 3, 4, 1.
She won until she touched the quicksand of the final '1.' Then she could not get the run of it again. She was out of step. There was a hidden beat she could not catch. The men stopped following her then. They no longer announced their bets as 'the same as the missus'.'But they did not withdraw from her either. And when, at three o'clock in the morning, she snapped her purse shut, she had no more money than the poorest of them. The purse was empty, freed from all weight, contained nothing but clean, watered silk. She felt as light and clean as rice paper. She allowed herself to notice her companions. She felt limp as a rag doll, and perfectly safe. She saw that the boot-polish smell belonged to a would-be gentleman in a suit with too-short sleeves, the rancid smell not to the Chinaman at all, but to an ageing man with fierce ginger flyaway eyebrows and a strong Scottish burr. There was an odd-looking chap dressed in the style of the Regency and two young sailors who could not have been more than sixteen. She also noted the engraving of Queen Victoria in the deep shadow of the wall and, immediately beneath it, a living face in three dimensions which was disconcertingly familiar, although she could not, immediately, place it.
She opened her purse again. She pretended to look for something in it. There was, as I said already, nothing in it. She opened her purse to cover her confusion. She knew the face well, almost intimately. She managed to conjure, from the hitherto empty purse, a ticket from a London omnibus. She looked up and found the fellow winking at her. She tore up the ticket and dropped it on the floor. She snapped her
Oscar and Lucinda
purse shut. She tucked her purse in her bag. She was already imagining withdrawing her hatpin from its felt scabbard, when she remembered where she had last seen that heart-shaped face and flaming angel's hair.
'Oh, dear/' she turned, smiling, holding out her hand, quite forgetting that these manners were unexpected in this part of George Street. 'Why,' said the mystery woman, abandoning her stern countenance as easily as a painter's drop sheet. 'Why,' she said, advancing on my suddenly terrified great-grandfather. 'Why, Reverend Mr Crab.'
She swore later that Oscar's mouth dropped open. She described it for him. He was like a ventriloquist's doll from which the ruling hand has been rudely withdrawn, leaving the subject slumped, without a spine, unable to lift
