The Diviners (30 page)

“Mr. Cameron–”

“Morag Gunn.”

“Yes.”

“I never knew much about her, you know, Christie’s wife.”

“Most didn’t. It’s–it can’t be helped.”

“Lachlan MacLachlan died a year or so ago,” Niall Cameron says. “You used to work for him on the
Banner
.”

“I didn’t know he’d died.”

“He chose it,” Niall Cameron says. Then, as though pulling himself together for the sake of someone as young as his own children, “Well, he never did get over the boy’s death, I suppose.”

Lachlan’s son, who died at Dieppe. Jules didn’t die. Amazingly.

Christie stands beside Morag.

“If I’d had it up to me–” Christie is trying to say.

“What?”

“I would have buried her my own self.” Christie mumbles, but strongly. “In the Nuisance Grounds.”

Morag takes the old man’s arm as they prepare to go to the graveyard.

Memorybank Movie: The Tower

Now, and somewhat oddly, considering the awfulness of the house on Hill Street, the apartment in Toronto seems more than ever like a desert island, or perhaps a cave, a well-lighted and beautifully appointed cave, but a cave just the same. Could one say
cave
if there were windows? Morag looks out the long high-up windows and sees the cars hurtling along
Avenue Road, all apparently bent on destroying one another, or, more particularly, united in their desire to wipe out that anachronistic species, the pedestrians. From this height they look scarcely less lethal than they do at earthlevel. She hates and fears them, and refuses to learn to drive.

She busies herself with this and that–goes out window-shopping, or to an art gallery or the museum. Seeing nothing. She phones friends, women who also have nothing to do and who are not friends anyway. Her own fault. Brooke says she does not make an effort to make friends, and this is true. She does not. Her lifeline depends on letters from and to Ella in Halifax. Morag has not heard yet from the publishers. The waiting is intolerable. Ella writes reassuring letters, counselling patience and cursing publishers.

Maybe
tower
would be a better word for the apartment. Crestwood Towers is in fact the name it bears on the flossy brass plate outside the thick plateglass doors. Crestwood. Crest of what? And not a wood in sight. Who thinks up these names? A tower it certainly is, though. The lonely tower. Self-dramatization. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair. Your long
straight black
hair, not golden waves. Who the hell could let their hair down here? Even the little worshipful group of Honours English students (Thurs., 8:00
P.M.
) argue in well-modulated grammatical voices, devoid of epithets, bland as tapioca pudding. Since Prin’s death, and the last sight of Christie, Morag has experienced increasingly the mad and potentially releasing desire to speak sometimes as Christie used to speak, the loony oratory, salt-beefed with oaths, the stringy lean oaths with some protein in them, the Protean oaths upon which she was reared. But of course does no such thing.

Morag stops going to the hairdresser and lets her hair grow. How could you ever let your hair down if there
wasn’t anything there to let down? This is, she suspects, a bizarre concept.

“We’re going to the Morgans’ tomorrow,” Brooke says. “I expect you’ll be getting your hair done.”

“No,” Morag says carefully. “I thought I’d let it grow out. I can’t go to the hairdresser any more, Brooke.”

“For God’s sake, why not? Are you allergic to whatever it is they put on your hair? Why don’t you go to the doctor?”

“Yeh. I’m allergic. But not physically.”

“Morag, will you kindly enlighten me? Your hair–not to put too fine a point upon it–looks a mess.”

“I’ll brush it back and hold it with combs until it’s longer, it won’t look that bad. I don’t like those places, Brooke. I never have. You don’t know what it’s like–all these mauvesmocked little perfumed dollies floating around, making me feel fantastically inadequate, and yet I don’t
agree
with the way they turn me out. I don’t want to look like that. I don’t know. I can’t explain.”

But all he really wants is that his wife should look decent, a credit to him. Is this asking too much? Sometimes she thinks Yes, sometimes No.

Brooke rises from the Danish Modern sittingplace, and comes over to where she is standing. Puts an arm around her shoulder, and she turns to him and holds him, holds onto him tightly, in need.

“Now wait a minute,” he says gently. “I think you’re getting all worked up over nothing, little one.”

Morag withdraws. He looks at her in–what? Bewilderment? Annoyance? Surprise?

“For God’s sake, what is it
now
?” he asks, or states.

What indeed? Perfidious Morag, acting like a child. She sees this, and is trapped by it.

“Listen, Brooke–please don’t misunderstand me. Only–I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

“Call you
what
, for heaven’s sake? What’ve I said wrong
now
?”

“
Little one
. Brooke, I am twenty-eight years old, and I am five feet eight inches tall, which has always seemed too bloody christly tall to me but there it is, and by judas priest and all the sodden saints in fucking Beulah Land, I am stuck with it and I do not
mind
like I did once, in fact the goddamn reverse if you really want to know, for I’ve gone against it long enough, and I’m no actress at heart, then, and that’s the everlasting christly truth of it.”

“You,” Brooke says, “are hysterical. Are you due to menstruate?”

Morag stands absolutely silent.
I do not know the sound of my own voice. Not yet, anyhow.

“No,” Morag says. “That was, of course, an ill-considered outburst, and it owes more to Christie’s way of talking than mine, I guess. But it was meant.”

She is, she realizes, very very angry, and at the same time doubtful about her right to be angry, at him or at the composition of her own composite self.

“As I see it,” Brooke says, “you really are–in some way quite mysterious to me, Morag–rejecting affection. Don’t you realize that when I say
little one
, it’s the affectionate diminutive? You must see that much.”

True. All true. How could anyone reply to that?

“I know,” Morag says. “Look, I do know. But it’s just that, somehow, with the way I am, with the long past I’ve had–because I
have
had a long past–for me, the term isn’t good. When I was a kid, I was never treated like a kid, and that was both fortunate and unfortunate. I guess my own parents
must’ve treated me like a kid, but I don’t recall, except a few fragments and the fantasies I composed about them later on.”

“It’s too bad you had to go back to the town this last time,” Brooke says. “You had effectively forgotten it. Now it’s all risen up again, and it’s only upsetting you, Morag. Can’t you simply put it from mind?”

“I never forgot any of it. It was always there.”

“When you first came to me,” Brooke says, “you said you had no past. I liked that. It was as though everything was starting for you, right then, that moment. You used to make me laugh–I don’t mean
at
you, I mean with you. Don’t you remember? I don’t, I suppose, laugh easily. You had a lightness of heart that I loved–I really loved.”

His terrible need. His terrible need for someone who could bring him light, lightness, release, relief. How could you fight that? How could you withdraw from the terrors of the cave in which he lived almost always alone? But what if remaining there meant to be chained forever to that image of yourself which he must have and which must forever be distorted?

“Brooke–I remember. And I’m sorry. I think I lied to you, without meaning to, right from the first.”

“You didn’t lie, love. You couldn’t. Not you. You were without guile. That was the reason I loved you.”

“Brooke, I haven’t been without guile since I was four years old. I didn’t think you’d care about me if I let you know, that’s all. I mean, let you know about my own darkness, that comes on sometimes.”

Brooke goes and stands by the windows, looking down at the traffic weaving its metallic violent ballet.

“Don’t you think we are making too much of all this, Morag? I think you’re exaggerating, if I may say so. Look–we’ve been married nine years. It’s been all right. There were
bound to be some difficulties. Don’t you think I’ve felt them, too? Don’t you think I’ve held back, many times, coming home and finding you sitting there at the typewriter as though hypnotized, and no dinner in sight? Well, that’s trivial–what I really mean is, no welcome in sight. Don’t you think I’ve ever felt attracted to other women, to women who seemed mainly to care about connecting warmly with a man?”

“Yes. Yes, I know. Sometimes I’ve wished you had–”

“You don’t wish that at all,” Brooke says bitterly, his face containing such pain and such ambiguity that she has to look away.

“Brooke–just accept that I’m not the same as I was. Or maybe I’m the same, but it scared me, before. Now I can’t–”

“Can’t what?”

“Can’t bear not be taken seriously,” Morag says, the words sounding melodramatic to her ears, although true. “Can’t bear to be treated as a child.”

Brooke looks at her. His very tall frame is rigid and separate. “
Do
I? Does the way in which we make love strike you that way? Has that been anything except good?”

“It’s been–you know it’s been good.”

But even there, the game these past years, rewards and punishments.
Have you been a good girl?
She cannot bring it up now. Because their coming together has been fine so many times over the years that if she were never to make it with a man, ever again, she couldn’t depart this life complaining.

“Well, then,” Brooke is saying, “maybe you’re simply worrying needlessly.”

“Yes. Maybe. I guess so. I’m sorry, Brooke.”

“It’s all right, love. Everything’s all right. That visit to Manawaka just upset you a bit, that’s all. Now, I’m going
to make us both a very dry martini, and you’ll have your hair done tomorrow, and we will cease worrying about things that don’t matter, shall we?”

“All right, Brooke. Yes.”

She wonders whether, if Brooke now suggested that she should try to have his child, she would any longer agree.

Spear of Innocence
comes back after seven months, with a polite letter of rejection. Morag sends it out again, willing herself not to think.

After three months, the manuscript is returned, with a letter saying
We do want to publish this novel but we do feel that certain parts…
etcetera.

Morag has not looked at the manuscript for going on a year. Looks at it now. Bloody hell. Some of the editor’s remarks strike home as true; others seem ludicrous. She rages. But goes back inside the novel. Tries this time, more than anything, to bring Lilac’s own unstilted speech into more being, into more relevance with the rest of the story. This rewriting is a thousand miles from the first setting down. No half-lunatic sense of possession, of being possessed by the thing. In fact, this is much easier, but without exhilaration.

Morag does not know what to do, faced with acceptance and then with editorial criticism which at first seems like the Revealed Word but shortly thereafter seems like individuals’ opinions. She embarks upon a vast number of letters.

In Chapter Four, where you say Lilac talks like a totally uninformed person, unaware of the world, I have to say that she
is
a totally uninformed person, unaware of the world, and that is part of the point about her. I see, however, that in Chapter Nine, I haven’t given enough
consideration to Paul’s wife’s responses–am not sure what can be done here, but will see–

Morag realizes, with some surprise, that she is able to defend her own work. Also, it is a relief to be able to discuss it, no holds barred, with no personal emotional connotations in the argument. Only when the process is completed does she see that it has been like exercising muscles never before used, stiff and painful at first, and then later, filled with the knowledge that this part of herself really is there.

“Brooke–”

“Mm?”

“Walton and Pierce have accepted
Spear of Innocence
.”

He stares at her, then smiles warmly.

“Well, that’s marvellous, darling. That’s absolutely splendid. I didn’t even know you’d sent it out.”

“Are you glad, Brooke?”

Dumb question. What does she expect him to say?

“Of course I’m glad, idiot child. How could I be otherwise? Do they want any changes made?”

“They suggested some things.”

“I’ll take a quick run through it, if you like,” Brooke says.

“Well, thanks, but that’s pretty well settled, the changes.”

“I see. My reactions aren’t any longer welcome to you.”

“It’s not that. It’s–I know you know a lot about novels. But I know something, as well. Different from reading or teaching.”

“With that insight, perhaps you’d like to take over my English 450 course in the Contemporary Novel? I’m sure it could be arranged.”

Morag, standing in the diningroom doorway, feels a spinning of blood inside her skull. She recalls having been as
angry as this as a child, but seldom since. It acts upon her precipitously, like about six double scotches taken at a gulp. She picks up the peacock-blue Italian glass bowl from the centre of the diningroom table and heaves it against the livingroom fireplace. Naturally, it shatters dramatically.

Total silence. Inside her head and stomach, sickness like a hangover. Brooke stands beside the long windows. Very very tall, absolutely straight, his face like the carved face of the unknown soldier.

“You’d better clear that away,” he says finally, in a perfectly controlled voice. “I wouldn’t advise you to do that again, Morag. The burden of your complaint, these past months, seems to be that I treat you like a child. Might I suggest you stop acting like one?”

True. All true. How in hell has she done such a thing? She can barely believe it herself, even with the blue-chipped evidence all over the carpet. What can ever make up for this enormity?