that he could barely hold the load they carried, let alone the unhappy
?RH
Oscar and Luanda
story she asked him to lash on atop. He was much moved, too moved. It was ridiculous, he knew-he hardly knew her-but it took everything in him to stop bursting into tears. He chewed his lip, he grimaced, he excused himself while there was still sultana cake uneaten on the plate. She heard him creaking up the stairs. The door shut to his room. She picked up her tea-cup and threw it at the wall.
74
A Degree from Oxford
'This chap, Miss Leplastrier, is he any good?'
Mr d'Abbs held her eye quite fiercely for a minute, but he could not sustain. He had a small smile, quite ironic, and it twisted his thin moustache and made him look not quite respectable. And while he enjoyed being thought of in this way-it was no commercial liability in Sydney-it was not the truth at all. He might let her glassworks go cold through timidity or cautiousness, but he would not break the law.
'He has a degree from Oxford.'
'Oxford,' said Mr d'Abbs. He was pleased, but did not wish to appear impressionable. His hands-large hands for such a small manplayed briefly with his blue silk tie, then held the edge of the desk, then slid until they found the drawer, and in the drawer a cigar. The cigar was such a big one that Lucinda, when she saw it, thought it made him look like a caricature in
'Oriel,' she offered.
Mr d'Abbs blinked. He leaned forward a little as if he expected her to say more. When there was obviously no more to say, he frowned. 'It is not just a question of clever men,' he said. He fussed with some grey ash which had landed on his green corduroy jacket. 'Really, there is no cleverness required. The work itself would drive him mad with boredom. All it requires is neatness. So why do you come to me with a man from Oxford?'
A Degree from Oxford
Mr d'Abbs really wanted to be flattered. He prided himself on his employees as he prided himself on the paintings and lithographs that crowded his walls at home. He was an artist himself. He liked artists. He was a philosopher. He liked philosophers. He provided them, in the midst of commerce, with a refuge.
He could not tell anyone, not even his wife, what pleasure it gave him to know that now, at this instant, in the clerk's room next door, he had Mr Jeffris the poet and surveyor, Mr Trevis-Dawes the pianist, Mr Coyle the water-colourist whose views of Pittwater and the Hawkesbury adorned the cedar panels of his office. He did not wish to talk to them, and he certainly did not socialize with them. But he was very pleased, more pleased about this than anything, that they were there.
'So why come to me?'
'Oh, Mr d'Abbs,' said Lucinda, 'do not tease me.' 'Tease?' said Mr d'Abbs, looking pleased. He relit his cigar and sent clouds of smoke into the air. 'You told me yourself about your Mr Cloverdale.' 'Speaks Hindi, that's correct. It is absolutely no use to him in Sydney. But he is an honest man, Miss Leplastrier, and neat.'
Lucinda assured him of Oscar's character. She said nothing of gambling. (She should say. She would not.) Mr d'Abbs was now explaining that money was kept in the office. He stood, took out a big bunch of noisy keys from his pocket, and opened the safe with one of them. He showed her money. There was ten thousand pounds in his safe. He showed her the money to stress the importance of honesty, but the other reason, the real reason, was that he could not believe it was him, little Jimmy Dabbs, Ditcher Dabbs's boy, who was standing in his own office in the colony of New South Wales, a cigar in one hand, ten thousand pounds in the other. 'Fancy that,' he said.
The things that moved Mr d'Abbs were clear to Lucinda. Sh was embarrassed for him, not that he should be so pleased about himself, but that he should reveal his pleasure so clearly, that he should stand naked at his bathroom window, not knowing he had an audience for all his imperfections.
'He knows Latin,' she said, 'and Greek.' Mr d'Abbs looked up at her and blinked. He smiled and tapped a wad of banknotes against the back of his wrist.
'He has excellent references from his London employer. He was a schoolteacher.' She spoke quickly, leaning forward, listing his achievements until she had said Greek three times and Latin twice. She spoke
7R7
Oscar and Lucinda
on and on, not because she wished to exaggerate Oscar Hopkins's attainments, but in order that she be too busy to notice the private reverence Mr d'Abbs showed the wad of currency-the one bright colour in this room of sombre water-colours.
Lucinda held her hands together. It gave her the appearance of 'imploring.' Her little shoulders were uncharacteristically rounded and Mr d'Abbs, without knowing quite what had triggered it, felt a stirring of the loins.
Others found Miss Leplastrier attractive. Absalom had taken a fancy to her. Old Gerald MacKay had dubbed her the 'Pocket Venus' and sworn he would have her for wife. But Mr d'Abbs, if you discount that unfortunate occasion when he had placed his hand on her knee, had forgotten how to see her in this light. Their friendship at the card table had continued, but in business he found her the complete shrew. When she had returned from England she had thumped his desk with her little fist.
But today he found her very 'girlish.' He could imagine this young Hopkins being smitten with her. She had a soft white neck.
He tossed the banknotes into the safe-thwack, ding, money's nothing to me-and locked its door with a heavy brass key. He returned to his new squeaky leather chair to hear how she would manage to tell the story of her involvement with this defrocked priest whom she now sought to recommend to him.
Well, she could not tell it, of course. She might slam her fist on his desk or drink Scotch whisky from a crystal tumbler, but she could not tell him about this one face to face. Jimmy d'Abbs knew the story. Of course he did. He was not a member of Tattersall's, the Masons and the Sydney Club for nothing. He smiled and nodded encouragement, but she told him nothing, and there was no hint, no rumpling of her white starched collar to suggest the amours he imagined her conducting with the priest in the tangled privacy of her bed. Lucinda found it hard to look Mr d'Abbs in the eye. She felt her cheeks colouring but could not stop them. She told Oscar's story without mentioning cards or horses. Mr d'Abbs noted the omission but was unconcerned. One could gamble and be honest. He gambled. He played most games a gentleman would play.
He asked her would she be so kind as to have Mr Hopkins supply a sample of his handwriting.
'What shall I have him write?'
'Some Latin,' he said, 'a little arithmetic.' He placed the
Heads or Tails cigar in the ashtray so it might go out. 'Some Greek.' ••«*• •>': f'j
'Greek?'
Don't frown at me, young lady. 'Greek,' he said. He would like the Greek as he had once liked Mr Jeffris's trigonometry. What other accountant would demand a sample of your trigonometry?
The thought of Mr Jeffris-who was his head clerk these days-made him uneasy. Mr Jeffris did not like him to employ new clerks without consultation. This was fair. They had agreed on it. But was it not Mr d'Abbs's own practice? Was not that his own name on the door? Did he not have the right to employ whomever he liked without there being doors slammed and ultimatums issued?
'There is no hurry,' he told Lucinda.
But when she arrived at Longnose Point that night, she brought a present with her. It was wrapped in maroon tissue paper from a Pitt Street stationer's-ink, a new nib, and three loose sheets of ledger paper.
75
Heads or Tails
Lucinda had painted a picture of Mr d'Abbs. She had made him a shy creature, a dormouse with a waistcoat and a gold chain. Oscar had imagined a small pink nose all aquiver, seen his hands go to his face as he attended to his nervous toilet. He had gone to the meeting full of tenderness for Mr d'Abbs, not merely for his timidity, but for his Christian charity, that he should risk his own business name by employing a man in such public disgrace. But
