At last they felt her otherness, her womanness. She felt the bodies move aside. Where there had been a hot press, she now

— JRfl

.-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.

"Oh, dear/' she turned, smiling, holding out her hand, quite forgetting that these manners were unexpected in this part of George Street. "Why," said the mystery woman, abandoning her stern countenance as easily as a painter's drop sheet. "Why," she said, advancing on my suddenly terrified great-grandfather. "Why, Reverend Mr Crab."

She swore later that Oscar's mouth dropped open. She described it for him. He was like a ventriloquist's doll from which the ruling hand has been rudely withdrawn, leaving the subject slumped, without a spine, unable to lift so much as an arm.

The silence that now fell on the little room was not complete-the Chinaman began to clear away his brass cup and coins. There can be no doubt what the misunderstanding was-he feared another Royal Commission into gambling. He imagined the slack-jawed, red-headed youth to be one more Reverend commissioner intent on proving his father an opium addict and his wife a prostitute. He slipped the coins into the pocket of his floppy coat, the cup into his back pocket and arranged to have himself dissolved into the shadow of the wall.

The room did not empty immediately. There were those more curious than fearful who waited a nosy minute or two while they considered the association of clergyman and oilskinned woman. In all likelihood they too came down in favour of a Royal Commission. In any case they soon departed.

"Oh, dear," Lucinda said. "I am so sorry."

"It is not Crab."! "No, no. I am so sorry. I don't know where the name came from." This was an untruth. She knew exactly where it came from-the image of a crab scuttling from red settee, to cabin, to red settee.

"It is Hopkins, not Crab," he persisted.

She thought his response too hurt and humourless. "It is the reverend," she said, "that I should first apologize for."

He smiled then, and she remembered how much she had liked him.

"Well," he said, flipping a coin into the air and catching it (slap) against the back of his wrist, "I suppose I must face up to facts-my disguise is done for. But in London, as I suppose you know, they would not be half as particular. In Drury Lane they expect to see a little cloth."

"You could try Ah Moy's."

The Multitude of Thy Sorceries

"That's true. But it is such an awful trek."

"I am so sorry."

"Oh," he said, yawning and stretching-she could see his tonsils, a clean pink cave and quite surprisingly uncorrupted-"! am better off because of it. I should thank you, Miss Leplastrier, for saving me from

my weakness."

They were walking now, proceeding awkwardly, embarrassed, indecisive, through the Pak-AhPu room. The customers had all departed but two Chinese with a ladder were hanging a large Union Jack on the wall. They bowed politely, although this was not an easy thing to accomplish from the top of an unsteady ladder. One of them lost his balance, or perhaps he jumped intentionally. He was a nimble old man who landed with ony the slightest "oof"; he escorted them to the door on George Street with many polite Good evenings.

"This is dangerous work you do, Miss Leplastrier," said Oscar when the door had been bolted behind them and they were left alone in the dark and rain-shiny street. "You know we are not a minute from the Crooked Billet Inn where whatshisname obtained the pistol which he used to trick poor Kinder into shooting himself? Do you have a carriage? For me, alas, it is shanks's pony." "Then you do not have a living?"

"I do not wish one. But the Bishop would not hear of mission work. He gave me Randwick (it is far too grand for me) and there was a lovely carriage and a gelding by the name of Prince. But unfortunately I took some bad advice."

Lucinda was cold and wanted to be home with her cocoa but she could not leave him to walk four miles in this weather. She must drive him to his vicarage which lay in exactly the opposite direction to the one she wished to go in. She watched him warily, more detached than was her custom, as he stood before her, flapping his long arms around in the damp waterfront air, explaining, in such innocent, educated English, how it was that he had lost his horse and carriage (the one provided by the Randwick vestry) to a common racecourse tout who was also, he discovered the next Sunday, a member of his congregation. She was both enchanted and appalled by his innocence and it was this quality she was confused by, not knowing if it were genuine, or if it were a cloak for a mad or even criminal personality.