Oscar and Lucinda (39 page)

She was angry, with Dennis Hasset, with the hallooing gallopers who rushed out of the dark, with the rutted track and the mud-churned soak where the drunker wagoner dropped a plank which almost jammed between her wheels.

Anger made her reckless. She drove fast. She was going for a trot. She went all the way into George Street although she did not like it at this time of night. She dared herself. She did not care. She brought her jinker up past the theatres. Her Majesty's. The Rappallo. Lyceum. The weather had not kept the crowds at home. The street was a river of wheels and horses, the banks awash with the flotsam and jetsam of men's hats.

There were gangs of larrikins afoot, up from The Rock with their hands boasting against their braces. She was afraid. Inside her big coat, she was small and white, soft-breasted, weak-armed, all soaked with sweat in the wind-cold night. A man spoke to her from a carriage. She put the tired gelding into a canter. There were shouts of, "Gee-up, Nelly." Laughter. She came in under the shadows of St Andrew's. The loathed St Andrew's. It stood grim and dark, the castle of Bishop Dancer. A crowd by the nave door announced not late service but a

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The Multitude of Thy Sorceries

fight. Two policemen ran towards it, momentarily brilliant and lividfaced in the gaslight. She swung into Bathurst Street at the last moment, nearly colliding with one more unlit sulky. The sulky gave up a wail of silk-and-feathered screams. Lucinda felt contempt. It curdled in her jealousy. She struck her horse and followed the line of wide verandas as if she were going to see her dear friend at Woollahra. But there was nothing at Woollahra. There was a too-pretty child with a hoop who said the house was hers.

"I am going mad," she said. She said it out loud. "I am unlaced and not connected." It was
a
frightful city in which to contemplate madness, all hard with eucalyptus, snapping sticks, sandstone rocks with fractured faces and cutting edges. You could not, not in Sydney, dear God, allow yourself to fall nto such a weakened state. "A mad woman," she whispered. "Trrrot up." She was going for a trot. The horse knew this. He knew the destination. "Not a mad woman," she said, as they went down into the smoky dark of The Rocks. You could not see the fire so close. It was on the other side. The drains reeked. They reeked everywhere, but it was worse here towards the quay. Her nerves were on edge. "Dear God, forgive me." She intended nothing more than a little Pak-Ah-Pu. This was a lottery run by the Chinese down at that end of George Street. It was dark down there, and dangerous. The front of the establishment had a candle burning-no gas-inside a glass lantern. There were men standing around in twos and threes. She could smell putrid meat but also liquor. These two smells were carried on the salty air of the harbour. The wind played on the rigging of the tall-masted ships. She tied the rein to the railing. Even before she betrayed her sex by the sound of her walk, the men around her were unnaturally silent. The big wet coat was an inadequate disguise. She affected a stiff-spined
haut froid.
she told herself this: "You're the boss." The front room pretended to be a shop. Everyone knew this was not the case, even the policemen on the beat (who wore gold rings and heavy watches). Lucinda did not look at whatever dusty goods were displayed, but walked-she heard her boots echo on the wooden boards-towards the curtained doorway at the back. She could
hear
how small her feet were. She felt their unmaleness.

The truth is that she no longer wished merely for a Pak-Ah-Pu ticket. She was having a trot. There is nothing to Pak-Ah-Pu except a lottery. There is none of the sting (her term) you get in a good game. But she began, once she reached the table, as she had originally pretended.

Oscar
and
Lucinda

It was nearly half past nine, time for the last draw of the day, and there was therefore quite a crowd standing around the table. Several of them were drunk, but they did not sway. They had that rather sullen stillness which is the mark of a betting shop late in the day. The floor was littered with crumpled paper, cigarette ends, matches broken nervously in three. The men had a look at once scuffed and glazed. She felt-or imagined-an anger, barely contained, but the anger may well have been her own.

She gave the Chinaman at the table her sixpence. She was given her ticket and she marked, quickly, urgently even, ten of the Chinese characters on the paper. There were eighty all told. She did not know what they meant. They were printed on coarse grey paper. Twice she pushed the unpleasant little chewed pencil stub (property of the house) through the paper. She wrote her name (not her real name) on the paper and gave it to the Chinaman who put it into a bowl, which appeared to be black but was probably a dark Chinese blue. The light was bad. She could see the squashed stub of a fat cigar near her foot. She tried to look at nothing while she waited for half past nine.

It took three and a half minutes. All this time she stood immobile. The air around her was still. Occasionally a man said something in a low voice. This would be followed by laughter. Once she heard a word she knew referred to copulation. She was quite drenched inside her oilskin coat. All this fear she felt, this hostility and danger, was but the aura surrounding something else, a larger body of feeling which was dense, compacted, a centre of pure will-Lucinda was willing herself to win. Her anger became as inconsequential as blue-flies, then less, like summer thrip. Six correct marks would bring her ten shillings. Seven would deliver four pounds, eight shillings and eight pence. Eight good marks was twenty-three pounds, six shillings and eightpence. This was all written on the blackboard above the back wall. She was not silly enough to waste her will on ten. She decided on eight, imagining that this was within her limit. There was a smell of incense, another like wet dog, and that other smell-the bodies of men who work hard sweaty work and only bathe once a week. You can produce a similar smell by leaving damp cleaning rags in a bucket. Not an attractive smell, but Lucinda liked it. The cigar smoker had lit another cheroot and made the air slightly blue and streaky. Through all this there came the soft crying of a baby in another room. Many of the 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
svelte
motion-the brass coins. They sounded, as they hit the zinc, both dull and sharp; light, of no substance, but also dead and heavy. It was lovely to watch, just as lovely as a good butcher cutting a carcass, the quick movements of knife, the softness and yielding of fat from around kidneys, the clean separation of flesh from bone. The croupier's tin cup covered some of the coins while his right hand swept the others away. She was a Christian. Her mind found the parallel-Judgement Day, saved coins, cast-out coins-without her seeking it. Sheep on the right. Goats on the left. She drew the curtains on the picture, turned her back, and concentrated all her attention on the heather as he lifted the cup and set the coins-see how sweetly this is done, the suppleness of long fingers (three of them ringed, one of them with emerald)-and slid the coins into sets of four.

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

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.-•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.