Читать книгу Imagined Selves - Willa Muir - Страница 25

SEVEN

Saturday was Mary Watson’s busiest day. Coats hadn’t been going so well this winter as they should have done, but at last they were beginning to sell, and she was kept hard at it running upstairs to the mantle showroom.

‘I’m fair run off my feet,’ she complained, slumping on to a stool covered with black American cloth. ‘That Mrs McLean is just like the side o’ a hoose; there’s not a coat in the whole of my stock that’ll meet across her, and I’ve had every single outsize off the hangers. I’m fair worn out.’

Her first assistant made no comment. She got on very well with Mary chiefly because she was taciturn.

‘There’s Jeanie come back,’ she said after a while, as the door opened with a rattle and a stumble of feet came down the steps.

‘Ay,’ said Mary dryly, ‘Jeanie’s a handless and footless creature. She’ll come a elite on her head one of these days…. Is all the messages done? Has she ta’en Miss Reid’s trimmings yet?’

‘No’ yet.’

‘Jeanie, you’ve to take this down to Miss Reid the dressmaker. And on the way back ye’ll speir at the manse for Mr Murray, and say that Miss Watson would like to see him at once. At once, mind ye.’

Mary allowed herself a few minutes more on her stool. She was indeed weary. But the chief cause of her weariness she was keeping to herself. No need to make a scandal in the town, although the scandal was bound to come unless a miracle happened, she thought bitterly. Well, she would try the minister first.

Jeanie’s scared little voice piped its message at the manse door. When she stumbled down the shop steps again she elbowed through a throng of customers and hovered uneasily at the back until she could rid herself of the answer.

‘Miss Murray said to say the minister was writin’ his sermon and she couldna disturb him, but he would come as soon as she got at him.’

‘Tchuk, tchuk,’ said Mary.

Writing his sermon on a Saturday afternoon! When he had the whole week to do it in! She was indignant.

When, nearly an hour later, William Murray diffidently appeared Mary was more than tart.

‘It’s to be hoped the Lord answers prayer quicker than his ministers,’ she said. ‘I might have been dead by this time for all you kenned. But I’ve noticed that folk that hasna muckle to do take the whole week to do it in.’

The minister inquired what service he could render.

‘I canna tell you here,’ said Mary. ‘Come into the storeroom. Na, ye’re that late it’s just on tea-time: I’ll walk hame wi’ ye mysel’.’

‘Has anything happened to your sister?’

‘You may weel ask, you that hasna been to see her for months and months.’

A ready answer, a bit of fencing, would have refreshed Mary, but the minister was in no condition to give battle. Since that terrible evening when Ned had spat in his face he had indeed driven the devil out of himself, but the house of his spirit although swept and garnished was still empty. God had forsaken him. Prayer had been unavailing; the sky was merely indifferent sky; he himself was nothing but a vessel of clay, a wretched body of flesh and blood that felt both night and morning as if it had swallowed an enormous cold grey stone.

This oppression in the region of your solar plexus, somebody might have told him, is only a derangement of your sympathetic or your parasympathetic nervous system, my dear fellow. You have had some emotional shock, that’s all. It is a salutary experience if you face it frankly. Revise your hypotheses. Some of them must have been wrong, for the world is exactly the same as it was.

It is doubtful whether that would have comforted William Murray. Like Elizabeth, and, incidentally, like his own brother, he believed in the last resort only what he felt. But the interpretation he had put on his own feelings for so many years had lulled him into such security, had flooded his world with so much sunshine, that he was unfitted to discard it. Ask a man who has been capsized in a cold sea, apparently miles from land, to believe that he never had a boat and that he must have swum out there in a trance, and the task will not be less difficult than that of persuading William Murray that his personal assurance of God’s support had been for nearly twenty years a delusion. Your swimmer will believe in the non-existence of a boat only if he awakens to discover, for instance, that he is not swimming, but really flying in the air, or pushing through a crowd; nothing less than the shock of a similar transposition, an awakening into a different kind of consciousness, could revise William Murray’s conception of God.

As they walked through the darkening streets Mary told him her tale. It appeared that on Friday, the day before, she and Ann had quarrelled. They were aye quarrelling, that was nothing unusual, but this time Ann had taken some notion into her head and had locked the house, snibbed the windows, and refused to let Mary in at night. Mary had trailed back to the shop and slept in the mantle showroom, and cleared it up so that the lassies suspected nothing when they came at eight next morning. She had made an excuse to slip out for a bite or two in the forenoon, and she had eaten a dinner at the nearest baker’s. But this was Saturday night; she couldna sleep in the shop and bide there all Sunday; and would the minister do something with Ann? ‘She can hear you fine through the keyhole. I gave her some fleas in her lug, I can tell you. But not a word to anybody, Mr Murray; I dinna want this to be the clash of the town. I dinna want to have the door forced.’

‘But surely,’ said the minister (people who defend an indefensible position always begin with ‘surely’), ‘surely Miss Ann didn’t do it deliberately? She may be lying helpless.’

‘Preserve us a’!’ said Mary slowly, nearly stopping. ‘You’ve kent my sister Ann for twa years and yet you say that! You’re a bigger fool than I took you for…. Dinna mind my tongue,’ she went on quickly, ‘I canna help laying it about me. But Ann! She’s been a hard and cantankerous woman all her life, Mr Murray. The de’il kens who would have put up with her the way I’ve done. She plagued my mother to death when the poor woman was lying bedridden; mother didna dare to move a finger in her bed or Ann was at her like a wild cat for ravelling the bedclothes. She was the same when she was a lassie…. Many’s the skelp across the face I’ve had from her, the ill-gettit wretch. Father widna have her in the shop; he said she would ruin his business in a week with her tantrums, and yet she was better to him than to anybody. And since father died she’s led me the life of a dog, Mr Murray. I sometimes dinna ken how I’ve managed to keep going.’

It may have been the darkness of the small streets and the impersonality of a silent and only half-visible companion that encouraged Mary to be so confidential. She had never told so much about herself to anybody. Depressed as he was William Murray could not help feeling vaguely that after all there was much to be said for Mary Watson, and that the goodwill he liked to postulate in everybody was not lacking in her, but only hidden away. His mind was not clear enough to let him perceive that her aggressive attitude towards the world was a kind of self-defence, but he was sorry for her.

‘I’ve aye tried to be respectable,’ said Mary. ‘I’ve done my duty; nobody can say I ha vena done my duty. But this last carry-on of Ann’s fairly crowns a’. This is the first time I’ve had to ask help from a single living being, Mr Murray.’

William Murray was touched by this confession. It did not occur to him that Mary so fiercely resented the necessity of asking help that she might not be grateful afterwards to the helper.

‘We all need help sometimes,’ he said, to himself as much as to her. Perhaps in turning to God he had turned his back too much on his fellow-men. God must be present in all His creatures…. In Mary Watson, for instance, in Ann Watson … even when He gave no sign of His presence, even when the soul felt empty and forlorn….

It was only one’s consciousness of God that was intermittent…. Elizabeth Shand has said something like that….

His mind kept returning to Elizabeth Shand, as if warming its numbed faculties at a fire. He had not seen her for some days: he hoped she would be in church to-morrow. God was not a mere person, she had insisted, not a limited creature with fits of bad temper who sulkily withdrew Himself from His children; the fault is in us, she had repeated, if we feel ourselves cut off from God, and that alone should keep a man from falling into despair, since faults can be discovered and corrected. That was one-half of what she had pressed so urgently upon him: it was the half from which he drew some comfort. The other half of her argument was a doctrine he would not admit, that God existed not in another world, but in this very material one. ‘We shan’t discover God anywhere if not in ourselves,’ she had said. ‘I don’t believe in your separation of the body from the spirit. I can’t think of my spirit without feeling that it’s even in my little finger.’

No, no. William Murray knew that the body and the passions of the body could darken the vision of the spirit. In itself the body was nothing but darkness. That was what oppressed him so much.

‘We all need help,’ he repeated to Mary Watson, becoming aware that she had stopped speaking and was expecting an answer.

‘Tits, man,’ she retorted, ‘you said that before. That’ll no’ get Ann to open the door to us.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the minister. ‘I was thinking of – I was thinking, Miss Mary – that—’

‘What you are going to say to Ann?’ demanded Mary.

The minister did not know what he was going to say to Ann. He had a confused hope that God would put the right words into his mouth.

‘As I was saying,’ said Mary, with marked emphasis, ‘it’s no’ so easy to get her oot; I just canna bring the police, even if I wanted a scandal, for the hoose is hers, no’ mine. The shop’s mine, but the hoose is hers. She hasna a penny piece besides what I give her, but the hoose is hers. Father willed it like that. And what she wants is to make a scandal; just that, just that. She’s waiting girning behind that door for me to break it open, and then she’ll have the police on to me; I ken it fine. Brawly that. Ay sirs!’

‘Surely she’s not counting on that….’

Mary snorted and turned up the lane towards the cottage. The nearer she got to the gate the more she ceased to believe that the minister would be of any use at all.

‘It’s the fear of God you have to put into her, mind you that,’ she said, opening the gate and preceding him along the garden path.

The cottage was in darkness save for a feeble light shining through the blind of the kitchen window.

‘She’s in her bed,’ said Mary in a loud whisper. ‘That’s the light from her bedroom shining through the kitchen. Chap at the front door as hard as you can.’

She pushed him past her, and stealthily pried at the lighted window.

‘It’s snibbed,’ she whispered. ‘A’ the windows are snibbed. Chap at the door, man, I’m telling you.’

In the mirk of that winter night William Murray, as he rapped firmly with the cold iron knocker on the door of the little cottage, felt incongruously that he was making a last trial of his faith. It was not in a great arena that he was to be proved worthy or unworthy, not even in a despairing battle for his own brother’s soul, it was in knocking at a door trying to persuade one bitter old woman to give shelter to another. The cottage itself reminded him of the text with which he had been wrestling all the week: ‘But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.’ The kitchen window was a dim and evil eye; the cottage was, like himself, a body full of darkness. He rapped once more, and remembered again how Ned had spat in his face. A shrill scream followed his rapping, which he recognized although it was intercepted by the door, and he could make out slow and shuffling footsteps. Ann was not helpless, then: she was able to walk.

‘Cry through the keyhole,’ urged Mary, but the minister remained upright and silent as the footsteps became more audible.

There was a sound as of unlocking, and a scream: ‘Wha’s there?’

He nearly jumped: the voice came not from behind the door but from the kitchen window to his right. Ann had stopped there, unsnibbed the window and opened it a little from the top. He could see her dark outline.

‘It’s me, Miss Ann: Mr Murray.’

‘What were you wanting?’

‘I want to talk to you.’ The minister’s voice was gentle, but firm.

‘Come back the morn then: I’m no’ wanting anybody the night.’ The window shut with a bang.

‘Eh, the obstinate wretch,’ muttered Mary. ‘Try her again; chap on the window; go on, man; go on.’

The minister walked to the window and rapped on it. Ann was barely discernible inside. His sympathy for her welled up again.

‘She shouldn’t be shut up all alone like this,’ he muttered, and rapped more insistently than before.

Ann came closer to the window and peered through the glass as if she were spying into the darkness behind his shoulder. For a fleeting second William Murray thought of a human soul in captivity, peering into the unknown through the dim glass of its conciousness: Ann’s situtation was too like his own not to disturb his emotions. He rapped harder still, crying: ‘Let me in.’ Standing there in the loose soil of the garden bed he felt an infinite pity for both of the sisters and for himself.

Ann suddenly undid the window and thrust out her head.

Although her face was only a few inches from his she screamed at the highest pitch of her voice: ‘Come back the morn, I tell you! I have to keep the hoose lockit – for a purpose. I’m no’ safe from my sister Mary if I open that door.’

Her remarks, like her glances, were fired into the darkness behind him.

William Murray put up a hand and held the window down.

‘Come, come, Miss Ann,’ he said coaxingly, ‘that’s not the kind of woman you really are. I know you better than that.’

Ann seemed not to hear a word. She had no desire to appear a saint, she merely wished to prove her sister a devil; and she suddenly cut clean across the minister’s cajoleries by screaming: ‘I see you! I see you, you jaud! Come oot frae ahint the minister! Ye needna think I dinna see you. I’ll let the whole toon ken hoo you’ve treated me, so that I have to lock myself up in my very hoose to be safe from you!’

‘Nonsense, Miss Ann! No, no – you’ll just injure yourself—’

The minister’s voice was drowned by Mary’s energetic reply:

‘Lock yersel’ in then. Bide there. Not a penny piece will I give you—’

‘I’ll let the whole toon ken it, then. On Monday I’ll awa’ into the poorshoose, and what’ll you have to say to that? Better to live in the poorshoose by myself than to live wi’ you. Mary Watson’s old sister in the poorshoose! They’ll ken you then for what you are, my leddy.’

Mary was tired, disappointed and angry.

‘Ye cunning auld deevil,’ she retorted, ‘I’ll set the police on you, that’s what I’ll do. It’ll be the police office and no’ the poorshoose for you, and that this very night, as sure as my name’s Mary Watson.’

‘This is my hoose. The police canna take a body up for locking her ain hoose door. Na, they canna!’

‘They can take a woman up for keeping what’s no hers. You’ve a’ my gear in there, and my fur coat and my —’

Ann had disappeared with a thin satirical chuckle. Mary darted to the window and began to throw it up.

‘You’re a fushionless fool o’ a creature, are ye no’?’ she said to the minister. ‘Ye might at least help me through the window.’

Before William Murray could move Mary was thrust back by some large soft object which fell on the ground. Rapidly after it came a succession of things, scattering in the darkness.

‘My fur coat, ye deevil!’ he heard Mary cry, half sobbing, and then he saw her clutching Ann by the hair and shaking the older woman to and fro over the window-sill. Ann began to scream. Instead of desisting for fear of scandal Mary tugged the more furiously; she was as if transported out of herself. The minister at first felt almost suffocated at the sight of the two women worrying each other, and then the inert mass in his bosom seemed to burst into flame.

‘You call yourselves Christians,’ he found himself crying, as he held Mary at arm’s-length. ‘I’ll cut you both off from the communion of the Church – both of you, do you hear? I’ll blot your names from the Church books. I’ll expel you publicly from the congregation!’

He almost flung Mary away from the window.

Open that door at once, Ann Watson,’ he continued, ‘or I shall proclaim you from the pulpit to-morrow.’

His own vehemence amazed him, even while he exulted in it. This time his anger gave him no sense of sin: it was like a clean flame burning up dross, and like a devouring flame it swept the two women before it.

Ann groaned as she shuffled to the door, but the key grated in the lock, and the minister stalked in.

‘Let us have a light,’ he said.

Ann’s fingers were shaking, but the minister avoided looking at her.

‘Go and put on a wrap,’ he said, ‘while I bring in your sister.’

Mary was sitting on the ground where he had left her. She was crying. She had not cried since the day of her father’s funeral.

‘Go inside,’ said the minister coldly. ‘I’ll pick up your things.’

He groped in the flower-bed, which was now faintly illuminated by the paraffin lamp in the kitchen. A fur coat, a hat with hard jet ornaments, two black kid gloves, a flannel nightgown and, gleaming in the dark soil, a large gold watch with the glass smashed he collected one by one, shook the damp earth from them and took them into the cottage.

Mary was sitting at the table, her head supported on her hands. She had unpinned her hat. He noted that Ann was in her bedroom and that Mary had stopped crying. For the first time in his life he felt scornful of tears: his old susceptibility was gone. He noted simply that she had at least stopped crying.

‘Get me a Bible,’ he said, in the same cold, authoritative tone, laying his armful on the table.

Mary looked up and saw the watch.

‘It’s broken! Father’s watch, and she’s broken it! Fifteen years I’ve had that watch —’

He silenced her. What were fifteen years compared to eternity?

The minister picked up the watch, and when Ann reluctantly appeared, in an ancient dressing-gown, he made it the text of his sermon.

On earth, he told them, what is broken can be repaired, but although mended it can never be unflawed again. A moment, a second, suffices to smash for ever what has for years been intact. How much more irrevocable is a break in one’s relations with God! What is done can never be undone, never; even repentance cannot undo it…. The least of our actions is of eternal significance….

The more he berated them the more they felt involuntarily drawn together. His insistence that they were both equally wicked exacerbated but united them. It was the threat of expulsion from the Church that had cowed them, and they now submitted to his exhortations from fear rather than from conviction.

Mary was the first to fidget.

‘I have to get back to my shop, Mr Murray.’

‘Your shop! You should be thinking of your immortal soul.’

‘My shop canna wait.’ The ban was lifting from Mary. Her immortal soul could wait till the morn, she was thinking, but Saturday was Saturday and not Sunday.

Ann exchanged a look with her sister, a look which said plainly: Get him out of here.

‘I’ll mak’ you a cup o’ tea before you go to the shop,’ she offered.

‘Aweel,’ said Mary, rising, ‘we’ve had it out, now, and I dinna think we’ll flee at each other again for a while, Mr Murray. If Ann has ony mair o’ her tantrums I’ll let you ken.’

‘Me! It’s no’ me has the tantrums—’

The minister rose quickly, clapped on his hat and marched out into the night without another word.

Half frightened the two sisters looked at each other.

‘Na, he’ll no’,’ said Ann abruptly. ‘He’s no’ like us. It winna last.’

She hobbled to the fire and drew the simmering kettle on to the middle of the range. In response to this generous action Mary cleared her things off the table, merely compressing her lips as she looked at the condition they were in, and shaking them out ostentatiously before taking them into her room. A tacit truce was thus concluded.

Common sense had triumphed over rage and tears.

We’re queer folk, reflected Mary, as she went slowly back to her shop. Queer, dour folk, the Watsons.

That evening had brought her closer to her sister Ann. She actually felt the better for it.

The minister also was feeling the better for it. Although he had departed in impatience the heavy oppression which had weighed so long on his bosom had discharged itself like a gun with the flash and explosion of his attack on the two sisters. As if he had finally vaulted an obstacle he had balked at for years, William Murray was exhilarated and wondered at his previous foolishness. It now seemed to him that he had been faint-hearted all his life. He had made himself spiritually sick by evading the fact that God’s anger was as real as God’s love. The old ecstatic serenity was gone, but in its place he felt a tense determination to fight the battle of the Church. Instead of spreading himself anonymously into the universe, as if he were a quiet wave lapping into infinity, he recognized himself now as an individual with a definite place in the world; he was a minister, backed by that authority and prestige of the Church which, for the first time in his life, he had invoked, and invoked successfully. His appeal to the Church had been involuntary, almost unconscious; its very spontaneity convinced him that it had been prompted by God Himself.

Anger was at times good and necessary, he said to himself, as he walked home buoyantly. It was weakness to be too sympathetic. In his sick state he had sympathized too much with everybody: for instance, he had sympathized with both Mary and Ann Watson, first with one and then with the other, and yet they were both in the wrong – not to be sympathized with at all. Christ had driven the money-changers out of the Temple, and had spoken to devils as one having authority. That was the right way with those possessed of a devil.

He remembered suddenly how Sarah had said about Ned: ‘I’ve daured him.’ She was right. One could not create light without dispelling darkness. For years he had shut his eyes to the fact of evil; but now he had heard the word of God, and he would deal faithfully with evil wherever he found it. He had awakened out of his sleep. ‘Wherever I find it,’ he said, opening his own front door.

The wall in front of William Murray was no longer smooth, without handhold or foothold, no longer blank. It now had both lights and shadows on its surface. He could climb it.