Oscar and Lucinda

Homebush saleyards who must be called to shoulder a burden in excess of its strength.

'I would not be you,' said Mr Jeffris, 'for anything.' Oscar felt his windpipe knotting. He stroked his long neck and turned his 'smile' to Mr d'Abbs. Mr d'Abbs was pleased. He was pleased with the resources of his office. He was pleased to offer these services to his clients and give them free, gratis.

'Thank you, Jeffris,' he said. 'Back to the troops now.' Lucinda thought how arrogant and dismissive this was, but it was not arrogance, only the impersonation of arrogance, something Mr Jeffris permitted him in public. Mr d'Abbs undid his pen and drew-no one could see what he rendered-a lovely little barque with a seagull overhead.

'And so,' he said.

He added some waves.

'And so,' he screwed back the pen top, 'you will obviously be transporting your prefabricaton on the sea.'

'Perhaps we should discuss it further,' Lucinda said to Oscar.

'Good lady,' said Mr d'Abbs, 'what is there to discuss?' Oscar stood. He saw the childish drawings on Mr d'Abbs's pad. His face was triangular, chalkybone, skin, locked-up eyes. Luanda's heart

Oscar and Luanda

was filled with pity. Oscar sat down again. He could not have been more terrified if he had sat, once again, inside a cage on Southampton Pier.

85

A Prayer

It was half past six in the evening and very hot. A feeble light entered the staircase from a high window, but not sufficient to show the decrepit state of the wallpaper or the condition of the runner. Mr Jeffris walked up the stairs with his gloved hands clasped together as if he might inadvertently touch something he would find repulsive. When he reached the first landing he plunged off into a dark passage, walking briskly where a stranger to these lodgings would have been compelled to pause and strike a match or feel the way along the wall. He rose two steps, turned to the left, and stopped at a doorway which was not only locked but padlocked. He did not fuss with his keys. The door lock made a dull 'thuck,' the padlock a sharp brass

'snick.' The knob rattled. Mr Jeffris was home.

It was a small room with a window looking out at other windows and down into a small cobbled yard where three large black cats, the pets of the lodging-house cook, lay on top of a pile of lumber and grey rags.

The room was hot. Mr Jeffris threw open the window, pulled a face at what he smelt, and halfclosed it again. Two or three blow-flies entered the room and began, once they were there, to buzz and crash heavily against the glass. Mr Jeffris ignored them.

He removed his frock coat. It had wide shoulders and a narrow waist, and although the style was almost thirty years out of date, the condition of the nap was such that one could only

un

A Prayer

conclude that it had been recently tailored. Mr Jeffris placed this coat on a wooden hanger, brushed it, and hung it on the long rail he had himself suspended from the picture rail and then-it was a complicated system involving a triangulation of forcesheld out from the wall by a length of twine which dissected the air above his bed and was secured to a picture rail above its head. When Mr Jeffris sat on his bed (which he now did as he removed his boots) his knees almost touched the heavy bookcases which he had constructed himself in the same neat and handy style with which he had made all the other improvements in the room. Everything was at once temporary and sturdy. It would serve for a decade. It could be packed in a moment. It was, in short, a 'camp.'

At the foot of the bed there was a clear area marked by a sun-faded rug. Two dumb-bells, placed to one side of this rug, announced the purpose of this extravagance of space in so small and cramped

a room.

As he sat on the side of his bed, his hands placed flat on his knees, he exhibited such a perfect stillness that he might have been at prayer.

In fact, he was beside himself. He sat still as you might sit still on the edge of an abyss, or at the top of a pole, or on a tightrope strung between your lodgings and the country of your dreams. There was a silver-backed mirror and a comb in a carved chest on his bookshelf. He could reach them without moving from his seat. And when he leaned across and removed them it was easy to see that the chest was placed in this position for this reason. And when he combed his moustache, which he did now, slowly, very slowly, the action had the quality of a prayer or a meditation practised daily. He had a long lip and the hair was thick and luxurious. When he had had enough of combing he reached for the barber's scissors, he held up the silver-backed mirror and then snipped a little here and there. Only the movement of his broad chest betrayed his agitation.

All of his adult life had been spent in preparation for the day when he should survey unmapped country, have a journal, publish a map. Three times he had been employed on journeys of exploration and three Mmes he had resigned before the party had its animals purchased. He had standards, those of his hero, Major Mitchell, and he had no intention of lurching around the country with incompetents, idiots

Oscar and Lucinda

blindly putting one foot after the next and-no matter what names they named or maps they drewhaving no idea, in a proper trigonometrical sense, where on earth they were. Hume, Hovell, Burke, Eyre had all drawn their maps badly. They were useless for both settlement and exploration, but their authors were heroes and Mr Jeffris was a clerk in an office in Sydney. Mr Jeffris, against hope, against all good sense, had prepared himself as Major Thomas Mitchell would have him do. He had copied from Mitchell's Memoirs his self- deprecating advice to those who would follow him. Mr Jeffris had him. Mr Jeffris had executed the Major's prose in his admirable copperplate; he had made a frame for it; he had hung it above his bed. A little mathematical knowledge will strengthen your style, and give it perspicuity. Study the writings of great men. I would place Cae-| sar's Gallic Wars at the top of any list, but would advise you not ne-|, gleet Pliny, Plutarch, Sallus and Seneca. Study these writings both I for the subject and the manner in which they are treated. Arrangement is a material point in voyage writing as well as in history: I feel great diffidence here. Sufficient matter I can always furnish, and fear not to prevent anything unseamanlike from entering into the cornposition: but to round a period well, and arrange sentences so as to place what is meant in the most perspicacious view, is too much for me. Seamanship and authorship make too great an angle with one another. He would have copied more had the sheet of paper he had begun with been sufficient, for there was something of the actor in Mr Jeffris, and when he wrote the words of his hero on this piece of paper he felt himself become their author whose own frock coat (in an engraving dated 1835) bore a striking similarity to the one that Mr Jeffris had had made in 1864. Following the advice of Major Mitchell had led Mr Jeffris into areas a coster's son might not normally expect to enter. He had taught himself Latin so he might read what he must know. He had studied water-colour technique in order that he might record the landscapes of the New World. He had spent five years of his life as a brown-nose, arse-licking apprentice, assistant, dogsbody to the incompetent, asthmatic Mr Cruikshank in order that he might master that science which Mitchell placed above all others: surveying. He had come to Sydney that he might study under Mr Martin (the oil painter) and in so doing he had ended up;

A Prayer '

employed by Mr Martin's friend, Mr d'Abbs.

Mr Jeffris could not tolerate incompetence. He could quote scripture to support his view. He could not differentiate it from sloth. It was an offence to God who made us in His image. And yet he found it everywhere. It was as common as dust. There was not a man he had served who had been free from Mr Jeffris's censure.

Mr d'Abbs was incompetent. It was a wonder he had any business at all, and would not have had if he had not set up his kitchen and his cellar in the service of the fuddled complacent friendship of his dinner table. It was all social. That was obvious. He sat down with them at dinner. They drank too much wine and put their arms around each other. They imagined they discussed Philosophy and Great Issues when they could barely pronounce the names of the men they misquoted. He was 'good old Jimmy d'Abbs,' but he was a tosspot and incompetent. He could not add up. He could not bother to add up, and yet such was the condition of life that Mr Jeffris was called upon to serve him. It made Mr Jeffris angry, angry every minute he was in the office. He spent his days leashed in,