TV)
Oscar and Lucinda
themselves aloof, and tight-lipped, Mr Judd was forward and friendly, attempting to engage the stork-legged new chum in talk of music.
But Oscar happily confessed he was tone deaf and could no more talk about music than he could about the breeding possibilities of merino sheep, if that was a subject at all. He wanted to talk about the blacks. Mr Judd did not; he sandpapered the louvres in silence. He soon became so anxious on the subject that he had-vanity or no-to sound out the more musical members of the congregation on their opinion of the new chap's attitude. The betting, he discovered with dismay, was against Handel. This was Bishop Dancer's man. Look at his vestments. There would be no Handel this year, Matty, good heavens no.
Mr Judd came and clipped the hedge and he returned, with his wife, at six o'clock on a Friday morning, in order to sweep up the clippings. He was deeply unhappy. He was also-it came in fits and starts, was sent away and invited back again-angry.
He was surprised to see the lights on and the window unshuttered. He bade his wife stay on the path while he climbed-very quietly-on to the veranda, and peered in. Well, you know what he saw.
There was also money on the table. He saw this, too. He saw a woman, cards moving, money. It was then that he started hammering on the panel
Unless you have the most particular reading habits it is unlikely you will be acquainted with the so-called 'Wednesday Murders.' People of my grandmother's generation still spoke of them, but they are forgotten nowadays. The most distinctive feature of these murders was not suggested by their name, which merely celebrated a coincidence-260
Serious Damage
that the first two murders occurred on Wednesday nights of succesI sive weeks. But the murderer would not let himself be so easily pigeon[holed and thereafter took lives on a Tuesday (the third victim) and i Sunday (the fourth). In spite of this-and let this be a lesson to anylone dealing with the press-the name stuck.
I The murders were so ghastly you might think it peculiar that LuI cinda, no matter how lonely she might be, would leave her house at I all, or, accepting the peculiarity, you may wrongly attribute great courI age to her when you hear she had driven, unaccompanied, through I streets that were still, for the most part, unlighted. Further, she was I by no means insensible to this murderer. She was informed that he I was, in all likelihood, a butcher or, the press suggested, an unsuccessful i apprentice. This was not melodrama or gutter-press imaginings. It was I clearly suggested by the manner of the murdering, the nature of the i cuts, the chops, the bonings. You could not live alone and not think of the Wednesday Murderer, and Lucinda, once her maid had gone at nightfall, was not only alone, but alone on an island promontory in a wind-buffeted cottage in which the floorboards sometimes groaned out loud, in which timbers-or was it the nails in the timber? — made inexplicable noises. Lucinda, alone with her nervous cat, sometimes thought about these matters to such a degree that she could not leave her chair beside the fire, not even when the coal scuttle was empty and it was three a.m. and cold enough for her breath to show. So the very excursions which may seem to us so brave, seemed to her most cowardly-she was not only fleeing loneliness, but also fear. She thought herself more vulnerable in a house than on the highway, in her bed than in a fan-tan parlour. And even though her good opinion of Oscar had been seriously damaged by his selfish behaviour aboard the
He told her that his mantelpiece clock-a huge contraption with its brassy innards showing-was ten minutes fast. She did not doubt its gaudy unreliability and felt herself more reliably informed by the sky outside. She judged it almost six a.m. She had enjoyed herself, although not in that personal way she had enjoyed herself at Mr Borrodaile's table. On that occasion she had enjoyed
261
Oscar and Lucinda
her mind to construct all sorts of pleasant fancies. She had thought him an angel painted by Mr Rossetti. This was before he showed himself so thoughtless. But rummy was a game you could play with perfect strangers, with a man in a mask, or even (she imagined) a clever machine. She had arrived with nothing and now she had nearly five pounds-it was all there in notes and coins in front of her. She had taken the money slowly, and she had found the process as satisfying as drawing bent nails from old timber. She had enjoyed it as much as she had enjoyed the dizzy lightness of losing at fan-tan. It did not once occur to her that she might be punishing him. She was not tired. She could not afford to be tired. She had time to go home and bathe before taking tea with Mr Rolls, a builder lately arrived from Melbourne. She began to gather in her winnings. The notes were larger in those days. You had something more substantial for your efforts. If you pulled out a pound no one would mistake it for your cigarette papers or-if you were not of that class-your calling card. It was at this moment, as Lucinda began to gather these triumphantly proportioned notes together, that Mr Judd pushed his ruddy face against the window. He had been a boxer in his youth and this had left his face a little out of balance, the nose a fraction to one side, the ears of independent character. When you knew him you found him strangely soft and, though his hands were likely scabbed on the back and horny on the palm, you would find him gentle around gentle subjects-I am thinking of music when I mention this. But it is easy enough to imagine that such a face, without introduction, might appear-I will not say murderous-frightening.
Lucinda should have made allowances for the glass. It was not plate, but crown, of uneven thickness and marred by a yellow tinge produced by chrome salts in the sand. You can say she should have reacted more scientifically. She did not. She saw a butcher's face with hairy eyebrows. She saw a pig snout of unnatural yellow. That the face was partly veiled by a patch of condensation did not make it seem less terrifying.
She could not scream.
She made a noise which may be crudely signified: 'Erg.' j
Oscar smiled uncertainly.
'Erg.'
She made him nervous, anyway. She knew better Greek. She
•seemed well schooled in theology. She did not smile readily.
She played cards with a cool elegance and skill which shocked
him. He liked her smell. He did not know how to treat her,
O?T
Serious Damage and when she stared at him and said 'Erg,' he became embarrassed.
'Well,' he said, shuffling the cards. 'Well, well, well.' He did his fancy shuffle. He had taught himself this, although he had seen it done in a 'hell' in Jermyn Street. There it had been done by a very frail and very drunk old actor who could, in shuffling cards, make a moving bridge one yard long. Oscar had taught himself this. It was, he supposed, a conversation piece. Mr Judd saw the bridge and could contain himself no more.
He banged.
Oscar's face then behaved as it had when Lucinda had called him 'Crab.' It lost its bones and colour. The muscles on his scalp contracted and pulled each hair to smart attention. He opened his mouth and Lucinda was treated this time, not to a clean pink tunnel and a little peak of epiglottis, but to some half-munched coconut macaroon suspended,
mid-mastication.
But then, of course, he turned and discovered Mr and Mrs Judd.
Lucinda could not credit what she saw him do. The unfriendly attitude of the intruders was perfectly clear, but the gangling vicar stood, wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, went to the window, unlocked it, and let them in. Well, they did not enter, not immediately, but the man's voice entered and she did not have time to separate it from her nightmare, could not decipher all the moral outrage, felt herself to be swamped by an alien wave of tobacco-smelling rage.
'Mr Judd,' she heard her host say. 'Mrs Judd. Please do come in.' Come in? Lucinda was incredulous. Come in? Her hand was at her hat, feeling for the silver peasized knob that marked its end. She thought about the
