Oscar and Luanda

and new to Sydney. He winked at her. She looked away.

Lucinda sat with her hands in her lap and presented a perfect wall to the room. No one could have guessed her feelings, which were so contradictory it is a wonder she could contain them without fidgeting.

First: she was, like Jimmy d'Abbs, amazed to find herself in such a place. The room, with its tangle of paintings and rugs, its odd mixture of fastidiousness and sloth, suggested more complex possibilities in life than she had previously imagined, and while it offended her carefully inculcated senses of order and restraint, it was also most attractive. Second: she was grateful to Mr d'Abbs for his kindness, and she would continue-no matter what evidence arrived to say she should not-always to be loyal to him on this account. Third: she was disturbed by Mrs d'Abbs whose eyes she found continually glancing in her direction. She now wondered if she had done something to offend.

Fourth: she did not like the way Mr d'Abbs had held his children out, away and at a distance as if they were, even when bathed, too sticky to be encouraged to affection. Fifth: she felt very lonely. Mr d'Abbs's friends made her feel alien. Miss Malcolm, Miss Shaddock, Mrs Burrows, Mr Calvitto-they were polite to her, she thought, but were in no hurry to have her a member of their circle.

Sixth: she was disturbed to find Mr d'Abbs and Mr Calvitto irreligious. When Mr d'Abbs winked she pretended not to see him.

Seventh: she would rather be in her own bed, drifting into sleep. This territory, between sleep and waking, was her only real home and it was this she sought in Dennis Hasset's armchairs. Eighth: she was waiting for Mr Calvitto to come in from the veranda so the real business of the evening could begin.

They were waiting for Mrs Burrows to leave so they could play cards. Mrs Burrows would not leave until Mr Calvitto was ready. Mr Calvitto was admiring Rushcutters Bay as it appeared in the evening gloom. Although he was a recent arrival in the circle he had already formed a friendship with Mrs Burrows although no one could speak clearly about what this friendship amounted to.

Mrs Burrows, a vocal supporter of the American rebels, was the widow of an army captain who had been killed by blacks in the "Falls" district near the head-waters of the Manning River. Lucinda did not like her at all. She had reprimanded Lucinda on the subject of the blacks. Mrs Burrows would have them given "bye-bye damper/' bush

132

A Game of Cards

bread made from strychnine-poisoned flour. She knew this was extreme. She liked to be extreme. She was one of those who claimed no white man should be hanged for shooting blacks in selfdefence. Her opinions suited her face which was red in the nose, drawn in the cheeks, pinched. She was a critical woman and one would not have expected her to have a friendship with Mr Calvitto, on the grounds of atheism alone. She was so strongly against card-playing that they must all wait before they could play. But here she was, meekly waiting for an atheist to return from the veranda so she could announce her intention to go home.

Then they could play cribbage. Lucinda pressed herself back into the wing-back chair. It was doubtless sinful, but she did like cribbage. She liked it very much indeed. She found herself, during the day, looking forward to the game as she might not so long ago have looked forward to golden-syrup dumplings. When she played cards she was not dull or angry. She laughed. She looked prettier. She could feel her own transformation. People smiled at her. She was moved by playing cards in a way she could not explain even to herself. She had a feeling, not the same, but similar, to when they fought the grass fire on Bishop's Plain-that line of people, men, women, children, with their sacks and beating poles, even nasty old Michael Halloran, but all lined up in the choking smoke. Cards was not like this, and yet it was. They were joined in a circle, an abstraction of human endeavour.

But now she was lonely, and aware of her isolation, and everyone's isolation one from the other. There was a Dutch lamp-it was made from black iron filigree and had a gracefully shaped white mantle-above a round walnut table with three legs. Beside this table sat Miss Malcolm, the governess. She was a pretty young thing, or had been not so long before. On the other side of the table sat Miss Shaddock with her needlework. While Miss Malcolm was light and wispy in her nature, Miss Shaddock was dark and heavy. And while Miss Malcolm gave the impression of greater innocence than her age would agree with, Miss Shaddock gave off an odour of foreboding, as if whatever venture was discussed must come to an unhappy ending. And yet Mr d'Abbs, leaning against his case of books, was obviously so contented, so pleased to have the company of Miss Shaddock, to value her every bit as much as Mr Calvitto who was now-Lucinda could hear his leather soles squeaking-beginning to stir from his reverie on the veranda.

133

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Oscar and Lucinda

Mr d'Abbs collected people. It was his passion. It was a distinction that Captain Burrows had been killed whilst bravely defending isolated settlers, that Miss Malcolm was the sister of a tenor, that Miss Shaddock's needlework had been presented to the Prince of Wales. Every now and then Mr Horace Borrodaile would drop in. Once he had brought Mr Henry Parkes (Mr d'Abbs still held his IOU). Here was Mr Calvitto, now, standing at the open door and speaking authoritatively about the landscape.

Lucinda did not listen to Mr Calvitto immediately. There was a cow bogged in the mangrove mud flats below the house. No one in the room thought to rescue it. It was not their cow. They were waiting for Mrs Burrows to leave so they could play cards.

"Shouldn't we do something about the cow?" she asked Miss Malcolm, but Miss Malcolm, although she looked at her, did not seem interested in what she said. Lucinda was indignant, but did not know what to do. No one would look at her. She felt a great sense of boredom, of purposelessness, sweep over her. The beast bellowed. It knew it would die. Its own kind would not help it.

"Yes, yes," Mr Calvitto was saying to Miss Shaddock, "but it is not '. a Christian landscape." Mr Calvitto had sunken eyes and a doleful \ countenance. He had black curly hair and a strong, wiry black beard., At the back of all this, like lamps placed at the back of a long room, ' one was aware of his eyes glittering. He was like a man who had been robbed of something precious and is waiting for others to see the injustice so they might restore it to him. "It is not a Christian landscape at all."

"You are not a Christian," said Miss Shaddock, her voice shaking as it always did when the conversation took this turn. \

"That is not the point, Irene," said Mrs Burrows.

"God made all the landscape," said Miss Shaddock. "Surely you be-: lieve that, Mildred?"

"Of course," said Mrs Burrows but turned to Mr Calvitto.

Lucinda was impatient that this conversation should continue. It was > hypocritical to proclaim your Christianity whilst this suffering con-} tinued. And yet she knew what Mr Calvitto meant. She had felt it herself, and her mind drifted to the back creek. In this place the water \ had been dark and still, brown from tannin, cut by church-like motes j of sunlight. Here she had plucked her doll bald. Here she had wept] when her papa died. Here she had seen two blacks standing as still | as trees. She was sixteen years old. She held her breath. There were! two more. Another two. This was in the years when the blacks oM