The Diviners (35 page)

The crocuses used to grow out of the snow. You would find them in pastures, the black-pitted dying snow still there, and the crocuses already growing, their greengrey feather-stems, and the petals a pale greymauve. People who'd never lived hereabouts always imagined it was dull, bleak, hundreds of miles of nothing. They didn't know. They didn't know the renewal that came out of the dead cold.

She could have stopped off to see Christie. But has not done so.

There are many other passengers on this train, and Morag sees none of them. This in itself frightens her, but she cannot lessen it or take any lesson from it right now. What will she do when she gets where she's going?

The train moves west.

 

PART FOUR

RITES OF PASSAGE

 

EIGHT

M
orag walked through the yellowing August grass and down the river. On the opposite bank, upriver a little from A-Okay's place, the light-leafed willows and tall solid maples were like ancestors, carrying within themselves the land's past. The wind skimmed northward along the water, and the deep currents drew the river south. This was what Morag looked at every day, the river flowing both ways, and yet it never lost its ancient power for her, and it never ceased to be new.

Pique and Dan were not up yet. These kids reversed the order of life, staying up all night and sleeping most of the day.
Order.
For heaven's sake. It flowed in Morag's veins, despise it though she might. What possible differences did it make if the kids wanted to turn the days around? They had both worked for a month in McConnell's Landing, at nothing-jobs, while Dan was still at A-Okay and Maudie's place. Was it Morag's concern if they decided they had enough financial reserves between them to quit work for a while, until the bread ran out, as they put it, because it was more important to get to know one another? They paid for their board; they shared the
work of the house with her–in fact, they did more than their share. Nary a dish had Morag washed since Pique and Dan took up residence in the large front bedroom.

So why complain? They're pulling their weight. You said they could move in here together. They didn't take the place by siege.

It was, of course, perfectly obvious what the problem really was. Not the kids' late rising, as Morag fairly often (and ignominiously) pretended to herself, thus justifying her early morning slamming of doors, loud stomping about in the kitchen, full-blast radio (preferably some loudmouth trumpeting the news), and general clashing of saucepans like clutches of cymbals. Clichés of symbols.

Royland came shuffling and crunching through the sundried grass. Old Man River. The Shaman. Diviner. Morag, always glad to see him, felt doubly glad now. He would, of course, not tell her what to do. Not Royland's way. But after a while she would find she knew. Royland sat down beside her on the dock.

“Morning, Morag.”

“Morning, Royland.”

For a few minutes they both looked at the river and listened to the slapping of the small waves against the wooden posts of the dock.

“Well, what is it this time?” Royland said finally.

Morag laughed.

“How come you always know? Celtic second sight?”

“You're the Celt, not me, Morag. Well, a person wouldn't have to be very smart to see that you're looking grim as granite. Is it Pique and her man?”

“Yes.”

“Well, look here now, Morag. There isn't a reason in the
world why the two of them gotta stay at your place, is there? You have got to consider your own work, and that. If they are interrupting it–”

“Royland, it's not that. Well, it
is
that, too, but the reason for it isn't their fault. It's mine.”

“Here we go with the guilt again,” Royland said cheerily. “I thought you'd got a bit better about that. What terrible thing have you done now, eh?”

Can you tell him, Morag? I've got to tell someone, and it is inconceivable that I should tell the Smiths, who would be sorry for me.

“I,” Morag said flatly, “have been reacting badly. Mostly it's been okay. But then the tension mounts in me, and I flip my lid over something trivial, like they're not up by noon or they're not home for dinner at the dot of six. I don't talk with them about this. Not me. I go around slamming doors. Dishes get smashed. Yesterday, my only Limoges cup and saucer bit the dust, not that I give a damn about that. However, Royland, all this mishmash is only an evasion.”

“You don't say,” Royland said mildly.

“You mean you knew? It's that obvious? Look, it isn't that I don't want them to live together. I do want them to. It seems right. And God knows it isn't that I care one way or another if they're legally hitched. But the plain fact is that I am forty-seven years old, and it seems fairly likely that I will be alone for the rest of my life, and in most ways this is really okay with me, and yet I am sometimes so goddamn jealous of their youth and happiness and sex that I can't see straight. Horrible, eh?”

“Not so very,” Royland said. “In fact, hardly at all, except you feel bad about it, and also I guess they wonder what's going on, all those doors and cups and that.”

“Oh damn,” Morag said, rising. “I'll have to explain. I hate presenting myself in such an unflattering light. The pride is wounded, and a good thing too, no doubt. But difficult.”

She looked up the long slope to the house and saw Pique stretching in the sun, on the doorstep, her long hair loose around her shoulders. Royland said nothing. Morag walked back to the house as slowly as possible, stopping to pick a dandelion seedclock and to blow the seeds into the wind. Nine. And it was actually noon. Inaccurate dandelion. Catharine Parr Traill would not have wasted her time puffing dandelion seed-clocks. Nor would she have tried to explain the subtleties of her feelings to one of her daughters, either, probably. Maybe never had this problem, and never felt any such thing. Too busy preserving fruit and sketching flowers and weeding the garden. Too tired. Benefits of physical labour. Cold baths, too, like as not.

When she entered the kitchen, Pique and Dan were having coffee and cereal.

“You should have some crunchy granola, Ma,” Pique said.

“No,” Morag said, suddenly impatient. “I know it is very healthy. But I gag on it. Leave me my depravities, eh?”

“Oh sorry,” Pique said, grinning. “Well at least you don't eat Sugar Puffs. Want we should clear out now? Want to work?”

“Not yet awhile. I have to talk to you first. I'm sorry I slammed the door this morning. I hope it didn't waken you up.”

“Well,” Pique said, allowing her annoyance to surface, “we could've done without it.”

“No doubt. I have, however, my reasons.”

When Morag had finished saying approximately what she had said to Royland, she looked gloomily into her coffee mug, wishing it were possible to teleport herself out of the situation, literally, in the flesh. The ascension of the far-from-virgin. Mars
or heaven her destination. Greetings and salutations to ancestors or bug-eyed monsters.

Silence. Then astonishment. Pique had taken one of her hands and Dan the other.

“We thought that was what it was,” Pique said, “but we couldn't say it unless you said it. And, like, we're aware you're alone, Ma. But in other ways you aren't. You know?”

True. Truer than Morag even yet knew? Perhaps.

“I think it'll be okay, now,” Morag said, when able to speak, “for you to stay here. I don't really know why. But I feel it will.”

“No, listen,” Dan said. “Pique and I have talked this over a lot. We've gotta get jobs of some sort pretty soon, and it would really be better for us to live at the Smiths', as it's on the right side of the river for McConnell's Landing.”

“We'll be back and forth a lot,” Pique said. “I mean–you'll see enough of us. Too much, probably, even.”

“No, it won't be too much,” Morag said.

She held onto their hands for another moment. Then Pique and Dan went outside.

Morag got out her typewriter.

 

LETTER TO D. MCRAITH, CROMBRUACH,
ROSS-SHIRE SCOTLAND

Dear McRaith–

As to why I have begun calling you McRaith, Pique's new man is named Dan, and I cannot bear confusion. Outer confusion, that is. The inner is quite enough to be getting on with. I once read a novel in which the protagonist, a young man, falls in love with two women (not simultaneously) both named–I
can't remember–let's say Flora. Both kept flitting in and out of the pages, and were sometimes given the distinguishing marks of Flora One and Flora Two. Sometimes the reader just had to guess. I was enraged. How come this guy (the writer) doesn't have more imagination, I wondered. Plenty of good names in the telephone directory. Maybe it was his character's fault…the poor twit had a fixation on women called Flora. I don't know why names seem so important to me. Yes, I guess I do know. My own name, and feeling I'd come from nowhere. If I could call Pique's Dan by any other name, I would, but that would take some explaining. I think this with Pique may work out better this time, although who knows. Whatever she feels is right for her is okay with me, but no doubt I will continue sometimes to get annoyed over trivialities, and so will she. Hers, actually, are less trivial than mine, not because of any intrinsic difference in degree of our various dilemmas, but only because I've worked out my major dilemmas as much as I'm likely to do in this life. Now that I read that over, I wonder if it's true. The calm plateau still seems pretty faroff to me. I'm still fighting the same bloody battles as always, inside the skull. Maybe all there is on that calm plateau is a tombstone. No, this isn't Celtic gloom–in fact, I'm feeling good at the moment, which is partly why I'm writing to you now. If this is gaiety, you may well observe, what can depression possibly be like? But not so. Do you remember you once told me–we were walking along the shore at Crombruach, and it was freezing and Easter–that a Presbyterian is someone who always looks cheerful, because whatever happens, they've expected something much worse?

Sorry the work isn't going too well for you at the moment. I will light mental candles for it to begin again. Mine
has been pretty much nothing for a month, but I think it'll start again now. If God is good and if I'm lucky and if I damn well pick up the pen and begin. Which I aim to do now.

Love,
Morag

She put the typewriter away and got out the notebook and pen. Sat looking for a while at the pale blue empty lines like shelves on the page, waiting to be stuffed with what?

Would Pique's life be better or worse than Morag's?

Mine hasn't been so bad. Been? Time running out. Is that what is really going on, with me, now, with her? Pique, harbinger of my death, continuer of life.

 

Memorybank Movie: Bleak House

Some of the mountains beyond the city are called snow mountains because the snow is perpetual upon those faroff peaks. They are impressive, but frightening. Uncaring gods, they stand cold and infinitely lofty, diminishing the city and its inhabitants. Perpetual snow–the very thought of it makes Morag experience that iciness crystallizing her own blood. She stares at the mountains from the boardinghouse window, but can never look for very long. This is not to be her final settling-place, obviously. People of the city, the real inhabitants, born here or having adopted the place, do not feel the same way. They do not feel hemmed in or threatened by these mountains.

Insane to have come here. Would have been better to have gone back to Manawaka. Christie needs her, and she needs a home for herself and her child, when it is born. But there is no way she can return to Manawaka. If she is to have a home, she must create it.

Down at the harbour, where Morag sometimes walks, hoping to understand the place, the vast ships cluster and creak, groaning and shunting, wallowing herds of ungainly sea-monsters. Then, surprisingly, one will glide majestically from the harbour, transformed by movement, as clumsy waddling seals are transformed into eel-like litheness when they swim. The gulls scream imprecations, their tongues hoarse and obscene, but the white flash of their wings is filled with grace abounding.

The boardinghouse is in Kitsilano, the rundown part of the area. A tall narrow frame house, last painted around the turn of the century, no doubt, and now a non-unpleasant uniform grey, not the heavy hard grey of a uniform, but the light sea-bleached grey of driftwood, silver without silver's sheen. Having once hated the unpainted houses along Hill Street, Morag now feels at home with this shade, shade in both senses, or perhaps even three, a colour ghostly-subtle as shadows, welcoming cool. It has no pretensions. Weather has created it. She prefers it to the jazzy split-level houses in the west side of the city, across the Lion's Gate Bridge. She likes the bridge's name, but not the steel-girdered giant itself.

The house in Kitsilano is neighboured by others of the same ilk. Firetraps, lived in by people who can't afford to live anywhere else. Morag's landlady, Mrs. Maggie Tefler, some forty-odd years old, frizzy bottle-blonde hair, is a short woman, short in stature, nearly always short of breath (high blood pressure, stoutness) and decidedly short-tempered. Morag, however, is not in any position to quibble. She came to Maggie Tefler's bleak house because it was cheap and the room looked halfway clean. Her first room was on the second floor, and had a divan bed and an old brown carpet with vague geometrical designs in blue and red. It also had a sink. This
room lasted only a month. It was the sink which was Morag's undoing. One early morning, her door alas unlocked, she vomited copiously into the sink. Finally able to look up, eyes and nose streaming, she perceived Mrs. Tefler standing in the doorway, arms akimbo in a kimono of artificial silk, nauseatingly pink-poppy-patterned.