The Diviners (39 page)

 

Memorybank Movie: Travelling On

Snapshot:
Pique, age one, sits on the front steps of the house on Begonia Road. Her sturdy legs are stretched to their small length in front of her, and her feet are encased in new white shoes, high around her ankles so she will learn to walk steadily. She wears a yellow dress, very short, patterned with butterflies green and mauve and blue. Her straight black hair is still not very long and is brushed carefully for the picture. Her round face is unsmiling but not unhappy. Her large dark eyes look openly and with trust at the person behind the camera, namely her mother.

 

Pique's first birthday is over, and she is asleep. Morag and Fan are having a beer on Morag's balcony. In the garden below, the forsythia is in yellow flower, and the leaves are beginning to come out on the big dogwood tree. The evening air is faintly bright and warm, and there is a smell of salt, the breeze now blowing from the sea. In the distance the white gulls glide, riding the wind.

“You oughta get out more,” Fan says disapprovingly. “You go on devoting the whole of your entire life to that kid,
and I'm here to tell you what'll happen, sweetheart. She'll grow up and leave without a backward glance.”

“Fine,” Morag says irritably. “I wouldn't want her to do anything else, when the time comes. And I'm not devoting my entire life to her, Fan. I'm working, and that's what I want to be doing. Anyway, I get out some.”

“Should I introduce you to some nice guys?” Fan says, single-mindedly. “Actually the number of
nice
guys I know is precisely none, but they're good for a few laughs.”

Fan's continually altering attachments do not appeal much to Morag.

“I'll think about it,” she promises.

Fan kicks off her grimy green-feathered slippers and puts her bare feet on the balcony rail. Pedicured toenails with tangerine polish, but her feet, like all the rest of her, are shapely and strong. Beside her, Morag feels too heavy-boned, too tall, despite the fact that her legs are better proportioned than Fan's and she prefers her own long straight black hair to Fan's wildflower arrangement of auburn whorls and curls. Fan is studying her feet and legs with an apparently absorbed and even narcissistic interest. She frequently appears obsessed with her own flesh, although (or so Morag suspects) not so much at home within it.

“It's a problem, eh?” Fan says. “I mean, what to do, you know. You like fucking, Morag?”

“Yeh. Sometimes I wish I didn't.”

“Yeh? Well, sometimes I wish I did. Oh sure, okay, I screw like a bitch in heat, but my heart's not in it, know what I mean? I should of been a hustler–I would've been perfect. In, out, pay at the cash desk, buddy. I mighta made a fortune.”

Morag ponders the theme of irony. Opportunities for sex are minimal. Has she set it up like this for herself? Her kid,
her work. And here is Fan, getting more than she wants. But not really. Fan has set it up for herself as well, in some way or other, unacknowledged.

“Why screw so much if you don't like it?” Morag asks.

Fan shrugs.

“It passes the time. I can't stand being alone. I'm so goddamn jittery when I quit the club, nights, that I can't think straight.”

Fan never has breakfast or even lunch with one of her men. She throws them out about 8:00
A.M.
, when she reckons she may possibly get off to sleep. Morag hears them stumbling solitarily around the kitchen, looking for instant coffee. Morag, her own day having by then begun, walks barefoot and silent around her own kitchen, cursing fate. Unfair, unfair. Oddly, it has not soured her relationship with Fan. Probably it would have, though, if Fan was down there with a man loving every minute of it.

“Didn't you ever love a guy, Fan? Whatever
love
means.”

Fan considers.

“Not so's I can remember,” she says finally. “I suppose yer gonna expect me to say my dad raped me when I was twelve, or like that, eh? Well, he never. He knocked my mum around some, but she could take care of herself. She wasn't such a big lady, but built like me–wiry. She used to knee him in the groin. It was a laugh. Well, I dunno what it was with me. Sometimes I think about it, but then again, what's the use?”

Look at songs hidden in eggs.
Sandburg. Look at laments hidden in eggshell skulls. Gunn.

“Know what I wish?” Fan says suddenly, as though this is costing her something to say.

“No. What?”

“I have sometimes,” Fan says carefully, “wished I was lez. Queer. Bent as a forked twig.”

“Maybe you are. Would it bother you?”

“It would make life easier,” Fan says. “But yeh, it would bother me.”

“That's–too bad. That it would bother you, I mean.”

“I know,” Fan says, and her voice has a sadness in it that Morag has never heard there before. “Yeh, I know.”

Then she gets up and patters downstairs, down to the basement to feed the python.

After midnight, Morag finally sleeps. Wakens at three in the morning, a darkness in the room and in her head. She is drenched with sweat. Dreaming? Nightmaring? She has in sleep been back with Brooke, in the Tower. They have been making love, as it used to be, everything drawn into this centre, their bed, their merging selves. Then, just before their moment, she has realized that she had only fantasized the child, her daughter, who is really in the realm and unreality of the unborn. She cannot bear this knowledge. She draws away, tearingly, from him, leaving him bewildered and angry, and herself alone.

Almost awake, Morag pulls herself out of the swamps of sleep, out of the nightmarshes. Rises, groping for lights.

Pique is asleep in her cot, lying on her stomach, her head turned upwards, the small profile visible against the sheet, her hands upcurled into themselves, like new ferns beside her face.

 

Memorybank Movie: Harold, Lover of My What

“What you need,” Fan says, “is a little more makeup, and can't you for heaven's sake leave off your glasses just for the evening?”

“I'm blind as a bat without them,” Morag says. “I wouldn't recognize my best friend at three paces.”

“Well, take a quick gander at the crowd, when you get there, then take the specs off and stick 'em in your purse.”

“I'll try,” Morag says halfheartedly.

“That dress looks great on you,” Fan says encouragingly, sizing up the new green and blue silk (artificial). “Just slap on a little more warpaint, sweetheart, and go in there pitching.”

The party at Hank Masterson's is for a visiting poet whom Morag has not read.

She goes back upstairs and applies more lipstick. She dislikes and feels alienated from herself with a lot of makeup on. She has, however, minimal faith in her own judgement. After all, the women who are successful with men always plaster all this gloop on their faces. Fan's paint job takes her about forty-five minutes. Is it the makeup or Fan's inner assurance that does the trick? Or just the fact that Fan really doesn't give a damn about men, and certainly doesn't need one sexually and is hence in a very good bargaining position?
Bargaining position.
One of the sexual postures not mentioned in the Kama Sutra.
Postures.
The ways in which one lies. Oh, shut up.

“I'm not that fond of games,” Morag tells the mirror.

“Well, then, why not stay home with your knitting?” the mirror replies, meanly.

Angrily, Morag slaps on more lipstick. Then, angrily, takes most of it off again.

“Were you speaking to me, Mrs. Gunn?” the teenage babysitter enquires, appearing at the bathroom door.

“No, Carol. Just talking to myself.”

“Oh. I see.”

Carol, you can bet, does not talk to herself. She talks interminably to Morag, when given the chance, about her boyfriends, of whom there are about three hundred, at a rough estimate.

“Your cab's here,” Fan shouts up the stairway.

The Mastersons' house is large and elegant. Hank, out of genuine kindness, tries to steer Morag towards men who are single, divorced or separated. Morag resents this obvious ploy, but is grateful for the motive behind it. After the second scotch, she drinks very slowly. A lady on the make. It doesn't sound too pleasant. On the other hand, why doesn't it?

Morag never gets to meet the visiting celebrity. He is surrounded by a breathless group, all women, who possibly think it would be nifty to be able to say you'd slept with a well-known poet. Morag has observed this phenomenon at Hank's parties before. The woods are perceptibly not full of an equal number of breathless men who have designs upon women writers.

But hist! What have we here?

“Hi. My name's Harold.”

About Morag's height. Sandy hair. Glasses. Blond hair on wrists. Blue eyes. Jovial, and slightly drunk.

Harold is a broadcaster. He reads the news. He does not read many books, but of course he would like to, if ever he had the time for it. He has recently split up with his wife, who has their two kids. He misses the kids, and can see them only every other Sunday and even then his wife is always there, so how can he talk to them, with her sitting there vetting his every word?

“Are you married, Morag?”

“Divorced.”

The evening grinds on.

“Can I drive you home?” Harold asks, an hour later.

In the car, complex problems go on in Morag's head. Should she ask him up for a drink, or would he interpret that as over-eagerness? Impossible, anyway, as Carol is there. Why worry about Carol? Because Carol will tell her ma, is why, and
Carol's mother will then refuse to allow her innocent (ha ha) daughter to babysit for an immoral lady who brings men home. If Harold makes the suggestion should Morag go to his apartment instead? Nope. Two strikes against that one. Carol has to be home by midnight. Secondly, Morag does not have her diaphragm with her–she will never carry it in her purse, as that seems in some mysterious way unprincipled and also probably a bad omen.

Harold stops the car in front of the house on Begonia Road. He carefully takes off his glasses and places them in the glove compartment. Morag's glasses are in her handbag and she feels as though she is looking at the world through six fathoms of seawater. Then Harold kisses her. Morag struggles with her sex so as not to appear to respond with instant swiftness. The poor guy doesn't want to be raped, after all. But he seems pretty eager, too.

“Can I come up to your place for a while, Morag?”

“Yes,” she says, and then, “but do you mind waiting here in the car until the babysitter's gone home?”

“You've got a kid?” Harold enquires, as though appalled. “I didn't know you had a kid.”

Is this the exit line?

“Well, I do,” Morag says flatly.

“How old?”

“One.”

What is he thinking, and why doesn't he say? Why ask how old? Is one year old okay–not talking yet, or not much, and presumably not likely to come pattering in at the wrong moment? What if she'd said
three
or
five
?

“Well, sure, okay,” Harold says finally. “I'll wait here.”

When Carol has trotted off home, Harold comes upstairs. Morag has checked on Pique. Asleep, thank God.

The appropriate rituals have to be observed. A drink. Lighting cigarettes which are obviously going to burn away in the ashtray. Morag wonders if Harold is only doing it this way because he thinks she expects it. If he thought she didn't expect this small theatrical act before the real act, he'd be out of here like a shot, probably.

Jules never put on that act. But then Jules was never much of a games-player. At this thought, and at her sudden terrible desire to see Jules and hold him, Morag feels she is betraying the man here with her now.

They then are in bed, and this man now and here is inside her, and Morag is present here and now. Her need for him, for the pressure of his sex, is so great that she finds it difficult to hold back enough to accommodate his time. He has drunk a lot more than she has, and is in consequence slower. Then she cannot stop herself, and her consciousness is submerged, drenched in this spasm of gladness.

He laughs a little.

“You wanted that for a long time, didn't you?” he says.

This is true. But she does not like the arrogance in his voice. On the other hand, possibly it is not arrogance at all, but only resentment or even apology for the fact that he has not yet come. Morag wants to reassure him, but does not know what words would be acceptable to him. She tries to bring him, not knowing what acts will be best for him, and not wanting to ask. Finally, his own effort or frenzy succeeds, or appears to. It is so brief and unstrong that Morag is not sure it has really happened at all. Has she ruined it for him by being first? Or was it just the booze? She won't ever know. The casualness of this association now hurts her.

Harold kisses her lightly at the door, and leaves.

“I'll call you,” he says.

Morag's own uncertainty tells her she won't hear from him again. But if he did think he hadn't done all that well, he may call again in order to show his prowess.

That is an unworthy thought, Morag.

Harold does phone, for whatever reasons, several days later. “My, my, living it up, aren't we?” Fan says with approval, as Morag waits for Harold to pick her up.

Restaurant. Dinner. Then back to Harold's apartment, which is glossy and looks unlived-in. Harold drinks very little, and ultimately comes with unquestionable strength. For Morag, it is less good than the first time, although she finds it difficult to understand why. The Black Celt within seems to be threatening her spirit.

“That was great, eh?” Harold says.

“Yes.”

She smiles at him, and wonders what they can possibly talk about. Dinner has exhausted the topic of Harold's job at the radio station, his dislike of smartass disc-jockeys who think they own the place, the ways in which a broadcaster has to look after his voice, how to avoid laryngitis, and so on.