Oscar and Lucinda

You will be back in college tonight and it will not be nearly so

much fun."

They were quiet for a moment. Wardley-Fish fussed around with his cigar as he tried to nip its end with a new patented device that did not seem to work as promised. Oscar watched him, with his palms

flat on the table.

"But I have changed," Oscar said when Wardley-Fish had his smoke alight, "look at me. Look at what I have become."

"Oh, strike me," roared Wardley-Fish. He pushed his chair back. He did not care that he made a bellow in such a quiet place. "You have not become this," and he waved his hands around to indicate the sort of trappings that did not exemplify Oscar's personality. "You are tiresome, Odd Bod. You have only one conversation, and it makes no sense. You belong no more here than you belong anywhere. Odd Bod, you must realize, you do not fit."

Oscar and Lucinda

"Speak quietly."

"You do not fit. You are wonderful. You are perfectly unique. Do you feel you 'fit' in Oriel?" Oscar looked down into his glass. "I have my friends."

"Who?"

"Pe

"Pe

Oscar's eyes looked hurt and troubled.

"Neither do you fit here. You are not corrupted. It is an impertinence to suggest that you are. You do not have to travel to New South Wales for a penance."

"And you?"

"And me? Oh, I 'fit.' I daresay I 'fit' all too well." Wardley-Fish leaned across and took the Odd Bod's hand. He shackled the wrist. "But you showed me that I might be saved." His smile was fixed. Oscar could feel the big hand trembling. "So do not," he whispered, "start pretending you must cross the world to save your soul, because I tell you it is not true. You must not leave. And anyway," he took back his hand and relit his cigar, "you ca

"And why can I not leave?"

"Because you ca

"What is this, Oscar?"

Wardley-Fish rarely called him Oscar. There was a sibilant sadness in the name which now made its owner pause before answering.

"It is known as celluloid, and is pretty much what it appears to be. But you see I can make these marks on it, and I can carry it around. It is very light and handy."

"This will cure your phobia?"

Oscar then explained his plan for viewing water through the celluloid. He could view it one square at a time, thus containing it. What was terrifying in a vast expanse would become "quite manageable." Wardley-Fish did not trouble himself with the theory. His friend was talking too much, too fast, in too high a register. It would not work. Only desperation would make a man believe it would.

"Has it ever occurred to you," he said when Oscar had finished and was rolling away his celluloid, "that what you call your 'phobia' is really the Almighty speaking to you?" "Don't mock me, Fish." "As a matter of fact I am very serious."

" 'Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death'-no, Fish, if my soul were clear, I would have no fear-Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me.' "

"But has it occurred to you that what you call a phobia may be God telling you that you must not go near the water?" "Very clever, Fish."

Wardley-Fish shrugged. The extraordinary woman had found herself a companion. The Odd Bod was pushing a florin across the table to him. He picked it up, then put it down. "You wish me to flip this?" "Thank you, Fish."

"You know I only flip my own coins." He pushed the florin back across the table and searched in his own pocket. His handsome face was suddenly weary, pouchy around the eyes. He found, at last, a pe

"Call," he said.

The Odd Bod had gone pale and waxy. He had his hands clenched tight together on his breast. He was moving the fingers in the trap of the hands. He looked like a praying mantis.

"Call," said Wardley-Fish, but loudly so that blonde-haired women turned to stare. The pe

Wardley-Fish turned the pe

"Heads," said Oscar. Wardley-Fish sighed. He lifted his hand to reveal the head of Queen Victoria. The Odd Bod's face was ghastly, a mask carved out of white soap, and you did not need to be a mind reader to know that God was sending him to New South Wales. This happened on 22 April 1863. My great-grandfather was twentytwo years old.,-;; Leviathan

My father, I think I said before, was a swaggering little fellow, a cu

But when it came to celluloid, my father was a coward.

The celluloid was most definitely the property of my mother. It was the same piece Oscar had brought to Australia in 1864, and was certainly the first sample of that substance introduced to the ancient continent. Perhaps it was the first synthetic long-chain hydrocarbon in the southern hemisphere. This was something my father, being a chemist by training, pondered over, but only once out loud. My mother would not hear him speak of it, and not because she was silly, but because she understood as women often do more easily than men, that the declared meaning of a spoken sentence is only its overcoat, and the real meaning lies underneath its scarves and buttons.

When my father spoke of the scientific history of celluloid (which, having a diploma in industrial chemistry, he was entitled to do) she felt that he was contesting her ownership of its original use, its meaning, its history.

And she was right. When my father said 'long-chain hydrocarbon," he was saying: "I am right. This one's mine."

But my mother would not let him have it. The celluloid was hers. The meaning of it was hers. The lines ruled on it were-I was brought up on this-lines of latitude and longitude. She would lay the yellowed, scratched material across a Shell road map and explain to us how it would have worked.

She became emotional, as she often did, when discussing the past, and because she wished Oscar to be a "missionary" and a "pioneer Anglican," we gew up imagining Oscar travelling out on steerage, on a clipper ship, crowded in amongst poor immigrants. We imagined our greatgrandfather with his map and celluloid, his Bible, his Book of Common Prayer. We saw himeven while we squirmed in embarrassment before my mother's holy-toned recitation-conducting sad funeral services for babies lost, a toothless sailmaker stitching up a sad little parcel in canvas, and young Oscar, his hair flaming red, his milkwhite skin burnt raw, squinting into the antipodean sun with the ultramarine sea swelling up above him.