That night she heard the puzzling postscript to her visit. Everything in the office had been thrown out of kilter. Mr Jeffris had stormed into Mr d'Abbs's office. There had been shouting. The clerks had stayed

3t their desks, not looking at each other.

irn

77

Happiness

She did not expect to be happy whilst parcelled up in a grubby apron, clogs on her feet, scrubbing her own floors, or being snubbed at the greengrocer's, kept out of her own works, denied the company of Dennis Hasset, becoming so cut off from life that her only companion was a homeless stray, a defrocked priest with blue-stained hands and a sweat-weary smell. These unpromising circumstances served to distract her attention whilst happiness snuck up on her like a poacher in the night.

She had not known she was happy, but it had been silently remarked on by others, by the glass blowers, by Mr d'Abbs, by Mr Chas Ahearn who had paid her a visit and brought her a gift of bantam eggs. They noticed, because her manner was gentler, because they were spared those ironies and sarcasms which Mr Ahearn, for one, had thought much too pronounced of late. She kissed his cheek and called him "uncle" and the old chap blushed to the lobes of his big fleshy ears.

Yet she had not recognized the moment when her scales had tipped from "down" to "up." She had been too busy to notice, until this morning, the Sunday before Advent. She was walking with her lodger down past her piebald cottage (half of it whitewashed, half red brick). It was an hour or so before early service and the Bal main bells were still silent. Sleek Herefords (the property of the bankrupt estate of Whitefield's Farm) gorged themselves on the new spring pasture. Lucinda wore a long white cotton voile with tiny roses worked into it. She carried her gloves and prayer book in one hand and her bonnet in the other. She walked along the thin cattle track along the spine of the point. There was still dew, not a lot, but she felt it soak into the hem of her dress. She did not mind. Oscar strode through the calf-high grass beside her. Nothing happened. Nothing was

Happiness

said. But she thought-I am happy.

She looked at Oscar. He did not notice her. He was busy looking out for snakes, surveying the harbour-a sea of rough hills poured full of silver glass. H had his head up, his head down, his eyes everywhere at once. He had stuck a tiny blue wildflower into the band of his tall black hat. She thought what a pleasant companion he had turned out to be, and if they were in such disgrace that the barely educated vicar of Balmain should think it best not to "see" them as they filed past him out of church, it was a most superior kind of disgrace. She had judged him too hastily. This was a bad habit. It had caused her trouble before. She had compared him to Dennis Hasset and had pursed her lips when he picked up his tea-cup in a certain way, or placed the pot back on the table a little too heavily. She had felt slighted when he had scurried back into his room and shut the door on her. And yet-how quickly it happened-she had come to be proud of the propriety with which they now shared the house, the sense of measured discipline (a virtue she much admired) that they brought to their conduct so that there was a great closeness, the closeness of intimates, but also a considerable distance, the distance not of strangers, but of neighbours. They occupied a positon well above those Philistines who snubbed and slighted them. God, who saw all things, would not find their conduct unbecoming. They did not gamble or take hazards of any type.

Oscar had no experience of female friendship. At first he was shy with her, stammered, tripped over himself, tried to make himself invisible around her. Only in his unholy dreams did he ever imagine anything even slightly more intimate. And if there had been a maid, this is how it might have stayed. But Mrs Froud had retired due to being in a certain condition, and there was no maid at all. There was a cottage that must be looked after, a fireplace that must be red-leaded, soap to be made, carpets beaten, the brass doorknobs taken to with halves of lemon. Seeing how the young mistress worked-quick, small steps, slap of brush, flick of duster, smack of mop, clatter of bucket, an energy quite in excess of what was promised by her physical size-the lodger took off his shiny jacket, rolled up his sleeves to reveal thin milk-white arms, and worked beside her. Lucinda was embarrassed at first. She did not think it manly.

And yet this is how they became friends, by scrubbing the pitted,

Oscar and Lucinda

checkered tiles of the kitchen floor, working side by side, creeping backwards. They did their jobs inexpertly. They drank tea by the potful and kept the leaves to use in rug-cleaning. And when they had at last finished, usually around midnight, Lucinda would kick off her shoes and let them drop on the damp floor and Oscar would put his feet up on a chair. He would be smudged with red-lead, or W. G. Nixey's black-lead, and have sticky wax on his elbows. She thought him an "old woman," a "kind soul," "odd fellow." Sometimes she looked at him and saw him as if she had never seen him before-a "vision," humming, stirring his tea with the blunt end of his knife, hooting with high laughter, talking Latin which he expected her to understand. He was, in his conversation, so elliptical, so tangential. He made her feel plain, uncultured, inelegant. She did not guess her cast-off shoes were "dainty," the object of his admiration. She saw what she had seen aboard the Leviathan-that he was not a man to be so easily patronized, that he was a passionate man, an enthusiastic man, who would plunge into the jungle of ideas, not fearfully, but impatiently (thwack, slap, wet clothes from the copper), but also a pleasure.

He was very homesick and liked to talk about England. It was a different England from the one which had so disappointed her. It was a dear, green place, and she could not know that the Strattons' house was damp and cold or that the Baptist boys had made him eat a stone. He talked fondly of the Strattons whom he called "my patrons" and did not tell her that Hugh Stratton, having as much success with horse-races as he had had with farming, had used Oscar's system to lose all his capital and was into debt so deep he was now begging money from men he had not known since Oriel.

There was a bright white pack of cards in the cedar sideboard by Oscar's elbow. He saw it there, sitting askew beside a ball of grey wool and a tangled tape measure, saw it frequently, each evening when he reached out for the sherry decanter (engraved with the image of an emu) and poured out the two thimblefuls which was their "nightcap." He said nothing about the cards. He imagined his hostess-so disciplined in her running of the household-untroubled by them. He wisher* he had the strength of character to fling them away, but having made himself ridiculous aboard the Leviathan he dared not.

They did not discuss cards, but what they did not talk about gave

Happiness

their evenings a tense and tingling edge and left them both happy, yes, but wakeful in their beds. Lucinda might sneak from her own house at midnight to place a wager somewhere else, but she dared not touch the pack that lay in her own sideboad. She knew how passionate he had become about his "weakness." She dared not even ask him how it was he had reversed his opinions on the matter. But, oh, how she yearned to discuss it with him, how much she wished to deal a hand on a grey wool blanket. There would be no headaches then, only this sweet consummation of their comradeship.

But she said not a word. And although she might have her "dainty" shoes tossed to the floor, have her bare toes quite visible through her stockings, have a draught of sherry in her hand, in short appear quite radical, she was too timid, she thought, too much a mouse, to reveal her gambler's heart to him. She did not like this mouselike quality. As usual, she found herself too careful, too held in.