Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

was nothing attractive in this idea. He promised God he would go before Good Friday. He celebrated Easter, in bad faith, amidst the white-smocked Plymouth Brethren. He read them the lesson God said: "Thou hypocrite." Easter came, but did not come. The flower buds of the wild cherry were still tightly sealed on Easter Sunday. This was on 24 April, almost as late as Easter can be. It had never happened before that there were no wild cherries on Easter Day. There was no pussy willow either. This was called "palm" in Hennacombe, and used as palms on Palm Sunday. So there were no palms for Palm Sunday. Nor were there primroses for Easter Day. There were not brimstone butterflies. The swifts did not arrive. This also was a sign.
    The weather frightened him. It was this that drove him to apostasy.
    He did not allow himself to know what he was doing. While the Brethren sang their long and doleful hymn-it was the second Sunday after Easter-he slipped quietly out of the meeting-house door. He had no more in his pocket than a threepenny bit and a soiled handkerchief. He walked beside his father's house and heard the door slam as Mrs Williams came inside from the garden. He could see the square tower of St Anne's below him, a little to the left. It was deep in shadows, hemmed in by leafless trees. It was not an attractive destination.
    He was fifteen years old, nearly sixteen. His feet were tight inside his boots. His pale wrists protruded from his sleeves -they looked a foot long. He took a path--but not the one that led most directly to St Anne's. He tried not to think about what he was doing. He said a little prayer, but the words were like bricks-he placed them carefully, slowly, one after the other-to keep out the nightmare images that had leaked into his waking mind-his papa's face burning in the hellhre. He could hear the Plymouth Brethren singing. They pulled out the words like taffy pull. "Dear Lord," he prayed, "I am only fifteen."
    The path forked. The left path ran down into the combe, and therefore led more or less directly to St Anne's. He took the right fork which led to Man's Nose and up on to the Downs. He looked down, watching his brown spit-and-polish boots, the red
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    Apostasy
    gravel, the dead margins of the path. He thought of summer, of hawthorn white with blossom, the sloe, the maple, the guelder-rose with its snowballs, the glossy, heart-shaped leaves of bryony. He was hurt and aching for bright evenings. He saw the gentle enquiring motion of his papa's malacca cane as it blessed the pretty dog-violet, stitchwort with its thousand white stars, dog mercury, rose campion.
    He thought: I will never be happy again.
    He blew his nose and looked briefly, but with curiosity, at what came out. He put his handkerchief back in his pocket. The path was almost at the sea. He did not like that part of the path. He turned, and began to run down the path in the direction he had come, towards St Anne's. He took a new path. It went down through a dark coppice. There were blackbirds, like flutes, but he did not hear them. There was a thing like a dry pea rattling inside his head. The way was tangled and overgrown. He pushed through. He stamped down the thick stems of briars. His breath started to come with difficulty. He tripped and stumbled. And when he emerged on the high bank which looked down on the Reverend Mr Stratton's vegetable garden, he did not even follow this path any longer, but slid down on his backside and landed, heel first, in the shallow ditch beneath it.
    He reached for the threepence in his pocket, intending to flip it. But the coin was lost. There was a tiny hole in the pocket. He stopped a second, looking at the overgrown stone wall, breathing hard.
    He was caught between bank and wall. He could have edged around and found the stile, although had he done so he might have hurt himself, for the stile was ancient, its timbers rotted with the damp, unused since the time of the previous incumbent. But Oscar was