Oscar and Lucinda

He had thrown her clothes into the sea. He had been half-drunk with anger and grief. He had left the boy in bed and gone ru

It was little Oscar, standing in his fla

They had never talked about this with words, but in the silence of their eyes they understood each other and said things that would have been quite unthinkable to say aloud. Mrs Williams began to brush her hair. She stood, wide and tall, her

Oscar and Lucinda

stomach pushing out against her white starched pinafore, and brushed at that tangled mass of grey frizz which would never right itself. She stooped a little so she might stare out of the seaward window while she did it. Thusk-thusk-thusk. She brushed as if she was in the privacy of her own room. And such was the conviction with which she brushed that she made herself a room, a little glass cage within the kitchen. It had a door and lock and you might not enter.

"Well," Theophilus said. He was riddling the grate of the stove. No one dared tell him he was riddling to excess or making coals go through the grate. A long strand of Mrs Williams's hair fell on his own. He did not feel it. Fa

"Well," he said, still riddling, back and forth, forth and back, "Master Hopkins, you will be a good helper and fetch up the buckets."

"Let me get them, sir," said Fa

"No," said Theophilus Hopkins. He did not notice the hair was gone. He kept on at the grate, inout, out-in. "That will not be necessary, Mrs Drabble. Master Hopkins and I are going to collect some specimens."

He looked at her then. She did not understand the look she saw. It seemed weak and watery. It did not match the tenor of the voice.

"But, sir," said Fa

It was then Theophilus turned his head enough to look at his son's eyes. It was then that he saw the damage he had done.

"Christmas Day," cooed Fa

When Theophilus looked at her he brought a face whose emotions were related to what he had just seen. The face had nothing to do with Mrs Drabble,

"Christmas Day," she said gently, not knowing what she did.

"Some call it that," said Theophilus, standing from the grate. He held out a hand so she must hand him the spoon. She gave it to him. "Some call it that, but none in my employ."

"Yes," thought Fa

V A Prayer

Oscar was afraid of the sea. It smelt of death to him. When he thought about this "death," it was not as a single thing you could label with a single word. It was not a discreet entity. It fractured and flew apart, it swarmed like fish, splintered like glass. Death came at him like a ghost in a dream, transmogrifying, protoplasmic, embracing, affectionate, was one minute cold and wet like his father's oilskin, so he shrank from it and cried out in his sleep, pushing the tight-bunched fla

In the sea-shells on the beach he saw the wonders which it was his father's life to label, dissect, kill. He also saw corpses, bones, creatures dead. Creatures with no souls. When the sea lifted dark tangles of weed, he thought of jerseys with nothing in their arms. He fetched the buckets from where they had stood since autumn, hanging on the back wall beside the well. He did not like the sea to touch his ankles. He felt the light frizzing froth like steel shackles on his skin. He put his fine hands to the pit of his stomach and stood stock still, his face chalky and carved, like a creature wishing to make itself invisible before the eyes of a predator. Mrs Williams swooped down on him with pullovers. She made him put four of them on, helping him in her breathless, impatient way, pulling his hair by mistake and getting the sleeve of the first rucked up inside the sleeve of the second, and so on, until he was a sturdy lumpy creature with a big woollen chest.

She did not meet his eye or say anything about the pudding.

"What will happen to her?" Oscar asked.

Mrs Williams was not worrying about Fa

13

Oscar and Luanda

"I forbid you," said Oscar, and was surprised that Mrs Williams stopped.

"Then go," said Mrs Williams, handing him the buckets and the coil of rope. "Swim," she said maliciously. She knew he was afraid of the sea. He carried his fear coiled and tangled in him like other boys carry twine and string in their crumb-filled pockets. You would not know he had it. You would think him cheerful, happy, obliging, polite. And he was. He was very religious, yes, but not in a gloomy way. When he talked about God it was with simplicity and joy. He had a face better suited to the master's beliefs than the master himself.

Mrs Williams looked into this face to see the fear. She could not locate it. There was something else, but he would not show her what it was.

This something else was anger.

His right ear was still hot and stinging from the blow. He followed his father out of the front gate (bumping it-he always bumped it) and down the steep and sticky path (counting his steps-he always counted) towards the sea, with his anger held hard against him, like a dagger. He took short steps to make the number of steps right. He carried six metal buckets, three hessian bags, a coil of rope, and the buckets banged against his scratched blue shins. His stockings did not have sufficient calf to hold them up; they were rumpled and mixed with red mud around the shiny brown laced boots. He had already Tom the seat of his knickerbockers on a bramble and there was more red mud on his woolly combinations. This was a boy, anyone could see it, whose school books would be smudged and blotted. He slipped and stumbled down the path, counting, in the direction of the sea.

It was not marine biology that led Theophilus down this path to stand chest deep in freezing water. He was a naturalist, of course, and he would collect specimens. But now he was in a passion to bear witness. He dug his nails into the palms of his hands. He pulled himself upright by that imaginary thread he kept in the centre of his skull. He would show all of He