A second cousin of Mrs Stratton's held a post with the Church Missionary Society of London. That was how the Strattons knew that Oscar was to sail to New South Wales. It was they who brought Theophilus the news his anxious son had not yet summoned up the courage to deliver. Theophilus was miffed. It was worse than miffed. It was jealous. He bit the inside of his cheek and gnawed on his bottom lip until he broke the skin. He could not bear that they should invite him to accompany them on the train to farewell the boy.

God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over to the hands of the wicked. Yet he must bear it. The Strattons were in error, but they were also kind. He must not be full of pride. He prayed to God to prevent him falling to "that sin which most often besets me." He shared a second-class carriage with them to Southampton. He shared their too-sweet-toomilky tea and felt himself deceitful. He fully intended to save his son, not from Australia but from the Anglican heresy. To this end he worked at his Bible. He wrapped himself in his greatcoat-the carriage was unheated-and while the train rattled over the long low bridge at Teignmouth, he ignored the pleasures of the view, the bare-legged women collecting out on the mud flats, the

176

Who Can Open the Doors of His Face?

lovely lustrous sheen upon the wet earth, the misty blue-white sky. He knew all of the Bible by heart and if you wished to quote a verse to him he could continue from there, reciting until you bade him stop. But on this day, as the train rolled through Exmouth and Lyme Regis, he tore little strips of paper and made diminutive notes upon them. He used these pieces of paper as markers in his Bible, all in readiness for the prayer he would say over his son. The Anglicans insisted on talking. There was nothing in their conversation but money. He knew their situation was difficult. He felt a certain sympathy. But he had never heard such gross materialism. Mrs Stratton, so she told him, was engaged by a certain publisher to write a novel. Theophilus nodded politely. Inside he boiled. He did not doubt that Satan spoke through novels. Mrs Stratton wished to discuss the financial arrangements she made with publishers. He did not wish to speak of anything that might assist her plan. Mr Stratton wished to know how Oscar had obtained the money for his voyage. He did not press at this directly but came at it, like a mouse around a skirting board, all stops and starts and quick grey scurries. Theophilus thought this impertinent. He excused himself and went back to his work, but this did not stop the Strattons and they talked away, pennies and shillings, to each other. It was like sharing a carriage with a pair of grocers.

Theophilus became so out of temper with the Strattons-although

he thought it unchristian to be so-that he was quite unprepared for

the reunion with his son. He was hit before he got his muscles ready. He stood on grey, sooty Southampton station and was nearly washed

away. He watched Mrs Stratton embrace his boy. Jealousy ripped him.

He trembled. He did not embrace. He shook hands formally, but felt

so light in the head he feared he would faint. He found a bench on

the pretext of tying a bootlace, but when he got there, he dared

! not put his head down lest the blood rush to it. He placed his tin i box beside him on the seat and his Bible on top of it. The Bible

: shed some markers. Mr Stratton picked them up for him. Theophilus

stuffed them in his greatcoat pocket as if they were nothing but dead leaves.

He had felt faint ever since. He was like a man who arrives at Osaka when he had been expecting Edinburgh. Everything was odd, distant, trembling. His son was beautiful to him. His heart sang the Song of Solomon. He had his mother's fine, heart-shaped face, the face he had cupped in his hands at the wonderful moment when his seed spurted. A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night between

Oscar and Luanda

my breasts. He had his mother's gorgeous hair and milk skin, his mother's animations and enthusiasm, her wide eyes and, most of all, her hope. This was not a dark face that would fall prey to pride of jealousy. It was a better face, a better face by far. He offered the gift. It was all he had.

The box, as you know, was a tin box containing implements for soldering, a technique Theophilus set great store by, but one never properly mastered by his son. He had made not just the box, but the wooden handles for the soldering irons themselves. He had given up his two best bottles (ones with ground-glass stoppers) for the acid and flux. He had made a smaller box to hold the resin. On the lid of the box he had riveted a little copper plaque on which he had etched:

"O.J.P. Hopkins, a gift from his father."

But even when the son had accepted the box and thanked him for it, Theophilus could not contemplate him without agitation. He wished to kneel with him and pray. It was not shyness prevented him from doing it on Southampton railway station. (He was never ashamed publicly to bear witness.) It was the fear of being overcome with emotion. This was his flaw, the crack in his clay, and the more dreadful for being so unexpected: that one who preached so fearlessly in front of even the most hostile audience could also break down and lose control in public. He had disgraced himself at the boy's mother's funeral. He had tried to say a prayer for her. They had led him away. He had not been able to say the words. His voice had become a stranger in his throat. When he heard the name Leviathan they were in a hansom, travelling across the slippery streets towards the docks. He did not think of a ship. He knew it was a ship. He had heard the Strattons lecture him with great authority on this subject. But when he heard the word Leviathan in Southampton, he thought of the giant whom God made to impress Job with his ignorance and powerlessness.

I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportions. Who can discover the face of his garment? Who can open the doors of his face? His teeth are terrible round about. His scales are his pride, shut up close together as with a close seal. Out of his mouth go burning lamps and sparks of hre leap out. The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are hrm in themselves; they cannot be moved.

This was the Leviathan Theophilus saw. He stood on the wharf and stared at it.

Who Can Open the Doors of His Face?

He saw his son tremble before the face of Leviathan. ;

Rain stood on the edges of his hair as on a holworth blossom.

"Surely, Oscar, surely," Theophilus said, "surely you can walk." But suddenly there was a stretcher, a blindfold, a cage. He wished to say his prayer but when he began no one noticed him. The pain from his arthritis was sewn through the fabric of his day, like a bright needle threaded with dull wire. The pain prevented proper concentration, but the name Leviathan stayed with him and gave him a curious and unexpected comfort, reminding him that he should not question the will of God, that he was ignorant in His sight, that his son might not be damned after all. Theophilus Hopkins did not see the ship as the work of Satan. And what he did not like-satin, silk, plush-he did not look at. If the interior reminded him of anything, it was an Anglican cathedral, but he chose not to retain a single detail of it. He wished only to remember the face of his son.

He wished to go up on deck. He had a hunger for plain air. The sea was clean and uncorrupted. Oscar could not go up on deck. They therefore stayed below, walking up and down, arm in arm, as Theophilus had seen men do in Italy.

Oscar praised the natural lighting and thorough ventilation. He had a firm grasp of the principles. They went into Oscar's cabin where there was a sheet of celluloid, the new substance Theophilus had read about but never seen. The celluloid was marked with squares and was affixed to the porthole. He could get no proper explanation of its function, but did not persist. He thought they might say a prayer. He was wondering if the prayer he had devised on the train was the correct prayer after all. (It had been devised in jealousy and pride.)