"Let me show you," said the bishop.

"My Lord," the dean began. He could see that Dancer was in a dangerous sort of mood and he knew what had caused it. The press had got hold of this matter of the Randwick vicarage where, it was said, there had been behaviour of a most immoral type. It had involved women and cards. This had been Dancer's appointment. He had boasted of it. He had called the incumbent "my Reverend Mr Ferret."

"Do not 'My Lord' me," said Dancer. "Let me show you this thing and then you will see I was not boasting."

The bishop appraised the table. It was modestly set for such a demonstration. Almost all the luncheon service had been removed from the white tablecloth. There was a little silver tray of condiments, a showy gravy boat, a claret bottle with half an inch of sediment in it, two wine glasses, three of water. It was a bright day. The westerly had stopped momentarily and sunshine broke through the peach blossom outside the window and fell prettily across the table.

"I did not imagine it a boast," the dean said, pushing back his chair a little, but lacking the courage to stand. "But the wait will not improve the mood of your visitors. I imagine them quite high and mighty in their tone."

"Do you know?" said Dancer. He also pushed back his chair. He held the tablecloth as he had once seen his sister hold the train of the Duchess of York's wedding dress. He looked at the dean. The dean was a neat man. He kept a little brush and pan beside him at table and was not embarrassed to whisk away a fallen breadcrumb. His hair was, to Dancer's taste, overly neat. It was of a coarse material, steely grey, and looked as if it had been trimmed, one hair at a time, by razor. "I have aways thought, Dean, that men in our position should value the importance of relaxation."

The dean tried to look nonchalant. He could not. He folded his arms across his chest. It was a broad chest, and he was a young man and well built, and yet, Dancer thought, he behaves like a fussy barnyard

The Tablecloth

fowl. It was easy to imagine him pecking at the crumbs on the white tablecloth.

"I am quite relaxed, Bishop, I assure you. In fact I was rather wondering," and here the dean pushed his spectacles back on his nose and his mouth folded in a manner both prim and smug, "if Your Lordship was not feeling the pressure of this Randwick scandal."

"Scandal?" said the bishop, testing the tension on the tablecloth. "There is no scandal."

'To bring your man before the ecclesiastical court."

"My man? Ha, ha, Dean, really. The silly little fellow was an Evangelical. Hardly my man. Now, concentrate. Watch. You will not see this done in many other deaneries." Dancer felt the cords of his muscles stretched with a not unpleasant tension-they were tight like a baited line with a flat head pulling insistently on one end.

"Allow me then to remove the gravy boat."

"Sit down," ordered Bishop Dancer. The dean sat down. He buttoned up his coat.

The bishop took the pressure on the tablecloth. He felt it nice and tight. He narrowed his eyes and concentrated and he could feel, with the pressure on, the position of wine bottle (which, being both light and tall, was a tricky one) and the gravy boat, the set of condiments. He took the tension up another notch until he had it at the point just before movement. Then he pulled the cloth right off the table.

The bottles rose, teetered again, but settled nicely on the polished cedar. It made a long, low, ringing noise as it came to rest.

The condiments were never in doubt. It was only the gravy boat, an eccentric three-legged affair, which caught. This was partly the fault of the legs, and partly the fault of the dean who had insisted that the tablecloth always be starched crisply. A starched fold had caught the leg, the bishop guessed, and it would have done no real damage at all if the dean had only trusted him. But the dean, being as nervous as a rabbit, had started out of his chair the instant the cloth was pulled. He broke cover, so to speak, and placed himself directly in the line of hre. There was very little gravy left, hardly a spoonful. It made a small mark on the dean's thigh, but even this would not show-sponged or not-once it was dry.

"There," said Bishop Dancer. "You didn't believe I could do it." That night the dean would beg God's forgiveness for the thoughts he had thought at that moment. But as he picked up the broken pieces

>M

Oscar and Lucinda

of the gravy boat, his anger was not even mollified by the thought that it had been of a pattern he had never liked.

"I will replace it," said Dancer, folding the tablecloth with a surprising (to the dean) precision.

"You will not," said the dean, his face pale, his hands full of sharp shards. "You will kindly go to your vestry and leave this matter to me."

The bishop had to stop himself from ruffling his hair and it was not until his evening prayers that he, too, found room in his heart for remorse, but even then, praying on his bare knees in his nightshirt, a smile insinuated itself on to his face. He could not help it. Surely God would allow this contradiction?

70

The Good Samaritan

The cloth was, likewise, pulled out from under Oscar's life. But do not imagine that the bishop's party trick was metaphorical, for were it so it would not be equal to the devastation. If we wish a metaphor we must load the dean's table with Doulton saucers, candlesticks, boats for gravy, bowls for custard, vases full of flag flowers, and even then we will not have anything to equal the damage Bishop Dancer did to Oscar. To provide an equivalent we would have to take to the table with a saw or axe.

Once Oscar's indiscretion came to the attention of the press, he was finished. It did not matter that Dancer was a card-player himself, or that he was not beyond a "something on the gee-gees." His private sympathies were of no account. He must cut himself free. He must rebuke, dissociate, etc. And Oscar Hopkins, whose whole character had been built around the certainty that he was one of the chosen, now found himself to be very publicly cast out. His name was made notorious in Sydney generally. He was not considered a suitable person to employ.

The Good Samaritan

That he was not a match for his scandalous story, neither in terms of personality nor appearance, did not make people question the slanders that were now told about him. Indeed, his innocent manner made his guilt appear more shocking.

He took rooms in a common lodging house in Bathurst Street. He learned how much we are the creatures of our station, one minute all snug and warm, worthy of affection and the esteem of total strangers, granted respect without a question, credit without a pause, and the next, the most despicable creature on whom it is quite permissible to spit; someone whom the slovenly owner of a run-down boarding house-unshaven, with a collar missing and a tattoo visible on his hairy wrist-admits only on condition of a large deposit.

September and October were reckoned the perfect months for new settlers to arrive in Sydney. September was no longer cold and windy. October was not yet hot. The blow-flies, bush-flies and house-flies were not the offence they would be when the York hams were in the ovens and muslin-wrapped puddings were boiling and bumping against the walls of cast-iron pots. September and October were bleak months for Oscar Hopkins. He was cut adrift from those who loved him. No mail could reach him, and he, for his part, was too ashamed to let anyone at Home know the disgrace that had befallen him.