trussed up; he could hardly bear to be there, except he must. But one day he would go. One day he would not be there to make sure the work was done correctly, and then all the second-rate firms who had grown to trust the idiot would find themselves in fearful trouble. D'Abbs would never have a head clerk as good, not because there were not others to be had, but because he would not know how to recognize one.
Jeffris had dreams about d'Abbs. He dreamed he slapped him and stabbed him in his sparrow's chest.
But now, like an ass which God has given frankincense to carry, d'Abbs had brought him this gift-an incompetent clerk who had it in his head he would go to Boat Harbour, by land, across unmapped territory. He was a frail little thing, a skippy girl with milk-white skin and a weakness for poker.
With a patron, wrapped and sealed, in tandem.
Mr Jeffris sat very, very still. He must be careful. He must approach the matter as if it were a timid animal, a little birdie to be trapped-no, not trapped, he was not strong enough to think himself a predatorbut to be coaxed, persuaded, wooed.
Mr Jeffris stood and then kneeled. There was barely room for him to squash in between the bookcase and the bed. It was a week Before Christmas. He asked God that he might be granted this Great Journey.
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That Lucinda should greet Mr Jeffris so enthusiastically when he arrived uninvited at her back door late on Christmas night, his arms full of presents, a bottle of warm colonial hock under his arm, should shake his square short-fingered hand and bring him into the parlour and thus ignore all her intuitions about the man she had privately likened to both a spider and a vicious dog, was merely one more product of the devastating sermon the Reverend Mr Dight had preached that morning, Christmas Day.
The reverend gentleman had not planned this controversial sermon, although Mr Chalmers, the warden of the vestry, was always at him with his 'Do not be afraid to make a ruckus.' But Mr Chalmers was in trade (three butchers' shops with prices writ in whitewash on their window panes) and was too often inclined, the Reverend Mr Dight thought, to regard the building of a Christian congregation as being no different from establishing good will in the High Street. Mr Dight knew his warden to be delighted with his sermon for, in the midst of his passionate address, he had looked down into his congregation and seen, in the midst of two hundred grave and attentive faces, Mr Chalmers's round and polished countenance wreathed in smiles. Mr Chalmers imagined that his nagging for a ruckus had at last produced results, but the Reverend Mr Dight had not planned the sermon. It is possible that he had it in his mind, that he carried it, like black flies on a sweat-damp back, without knowing it was there. But it was only when he stood in his pulpit-in that moment before he would begin to fiddle with his bookmarks-that he saw that
5:27–30. 'Ye have heard it said by them of old time, thou shall not commit adultery.'
Christmas Day
He then had the pleasure of seeing his impromptu sermon take effect as his most carefully prepared addresses never had. There was a ripple, a shiver that'moved across the congregation like wind across the face of a pond. He froze them. He had them so quiet they hardly dared unfold their arms or cross their legs the other way. They formed a human lock around the two fornicators who sat rigid in their pew, their red necks advertising guilt. On Christmas Day the sky was a rich cobalt blue. The grass at Whitheld's Farm (being understocked) was long and golden and crackling underfoot.
The day had seemed perfect to Lucinda in every detail. She and Oscar had set a table in the garden before they left for church. The jacaranda had lost its flowers and was now a feathery umbrella of cool green. A soft nor'easter came off the harbour. They placed their presents on the parlour hearth and walked through the embarrassing plenty of Whitheld's Farm (all of New South Wales was in the grip of drought, and all the feed between Sydney and Bathurst was eaten down to the roots) through all the golden grass to church. Oscar said the colours felt wrong for Christmas. Lucinda said the colours in Bethlehem must surely have been like this: this dazzling blue sky, this straw-gold earth, and not the cold and bracken-brown of pagan Britain. Oscar smiled at her, his eyes glistening.
She thought: He
She accepted the glistening fluid that threatened to spill over his lower lids as the exact equivalent of a kiss and she was moved, and excited, and bowed her head and fixed her bonnet although she had not planned to do so until they were amongst the new houses of Balmain. And then there was the sermon.
She felt herself slapped and spat on and all that landscape which she had smugly celebrated not half an hour before-she had gone on and on, naming trees and birds for her companion-now seemed a hateful place-dry, harsh, a tinder-box with black snakes coiled amongst its deadly grasses.
The urge to cry was so strong she must battle with her body to subdue it. She bit her lip and breathed through her mouth. She ran the gauntlet of the crowded churchyard with her face blazing red. She thought: They
Oscar and Lucinda
nervous. This tone was no help. She drew away from him.
'I cannot speak,' she managed. She took off her bonnet and, in her agitation, wrapped it around her prayer book while they were still in sight of the church.
'It was a most unchristian sermon,' said Oscar to whom had come, in the midst of all this turbulence and upset, the following very simple thought: It is my
'Oh, do not be so
'It is on your behalf I hurt.'
'I thank you, but on my behalf it would be best if we did not discuss the matter.' Lucinda did not like herself like this. She knew herself wrong and also in the wrong. She was poisoned by that hateful sermon, by its crudeness, its intolerance, its certainty of its own whiskyand-tobaccosmelling strength. And now she snapped and slapped at the one soul whose goodness and kindness she would not question. She was acting like a spoiled child, like her mother had acted on the days when her daughter hated her, and although she knew all this, she could not stop herself. She was tearing Christmas Day to shreds.
She had put such store in this day, and not merely in the care with which she chose a turkey and a pair of pale blue poplin shirts for her dear friend. In her imagination she had seen all the unspoken things between them come, at last, to be spoken of directly. She had imagined the shirts laid across the faded damask of the parlour armchair, seen crumpled paper and golden ribbon discarded on the blood-red Turkish rug. And other things, like kissing, but not quite so sharp and clear, with furry unfocused edges like a water-colour.
But now she could not bear the way she sounded. She was not a person anyone could love. She drew herself into herself, and when they let themselves into the cottage she could not even look at the table she had set with so many feverish thoughts. She told herself: It does not matter what bigots think of me.
But it did matter. She could not bear to be so hated.
She took down the chipped brown-glaze tea-pot. She put the kettle on the stove and riddled the grate and then, feeling her tears well up inside her, she hurried upstairs to her room. Oscar saw the tumescent top lip and understood her intention. She was going to her room to cry.
Christmas Day
But he was to propose to her.
If he delayed the matter further all courage would depart him. And this is why he went chasing after her, up the clattery uncarpeted stairs, two strides at a time. He caught her on the landing and he dare not ask her to accompany him downstairs to some prettier place-he saw she would almost certainly refuse this for, not
