Murther and Walking Spirits

  She has an attendant, the fat woman who sits in front of the fire at work on a jigsaw puzzle representing, when completed, The Entry of King Charles II into London after His Restoration. Do I know her? Yes, she is what has become of Minerva McOmish, now a dependant and companion to her invalid sister. In her lap nestles a fat little dog, one of the terrier breed called Black-and-Tan. The infamous Janie, with whom I was not allowed to play when I was a boy, because Janie had delicate nerves, as overfed pets so often do.

  “Brocky, Janie wants out,” says Auntie Min. A young man, who sits further from the fire, rises and shepherds Janie to the front door, where she ventures into the cold night, urinates weakly by the front steps and waddles back to the warmth, and the lap, and the frowst to which she makes her doggy, gaseous contribution.

  I know the young man. My father, as a youth. Brochwel Gilmartin, whom I knew only as a moderately successful university professor, who wrote a psychological analysis of The Ring and the Book that sustained him in a profession where some such publication was obligatory.

  He hates being called Brocky. He hates Aunt Min and he hates Janie. He hates the illiteracy of “wants out.” He does not hate his parents, because that would be wicked and, although he fancies himself to be an atheist, he cannot escape from the indoctrination that bids him honour his father and his mother. Honour them he does, as dutifully as he can manage, conscious that such honouring has a whiff of superstition about it. He hates a great many people, tolerates many people, but he loves only Julia, and his passion for her is a torment.

  How do I know what he hates? How is that knowledge communicated to me? I understand with a sinking heart that in this film I am to know whatever I am to know not by the actions and the words alone of the players, if I can call these forebears of mine players, but by sharing their thoughts and their feelings.

  How in the world am I to know those things from a film? Films are not adept at conveying thought and feeling without words or actions. How does one become privy to the thoughts of those who do not speak or move?

  Writers have tried to convey such knowledge by what they call Inner Monologue. Joyce wrestled with the problem in two great, long, dense books. He was not the first, and his followers have been many. But words cannot give the fullness of feeling; they can only struggle to arouse some echo-feeling in a reader, and of course every reader must comprehend in terms of what he has himself felt and known, so that every reader feels the essence of Joyce and his imitators in a different way. An echo is a diminished voice.

  Musicians have done better. With voices and huge orchestras – or possibly with a string quartet – they have aroused greater depths of feeling than most writers can hope to do. Wagner, to name but one, has done it with shattering impact. But even Wagner, with his magnificent music and his rather less worthy pseudo-medieval words, is never wholly successful. Why? Because a work of art must be, in some measure, coherent; but thought and feeling mingled, as all of us experience them, are surging and incoherent. Thought and feeling trimmed into coherence in a work of art are still far from the reality, still far from the agonizing confusion that rises like a miasma in what a great poet has called the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

  And not just the heart. The guts, the bones, the physical being of the human creature, which, alone of all creation, is given the sense of a past and a present, and the apprehension of a future – gifts that agree so oddly with the mind, the heart, the soul and the body, all combined. Oh, what a god we have made of the mind, the understanding, which is so necessary to life, but which hangs like a cloud in the sky above the physical world which is the totality of every human creature! The mind: a trifler! Feeling is more than what happens in the mind; feeling possesses the whole living being.

  Can this film succeed where other arts have failed? Never. Not a hope. But this one will try, and I must watch and feel so far as I can, for in my disembodied state feeling is still my last hold on life as once I possessed it. Feeling, as though I still had a body, a mind, and all that makes a living creature thrill with joy or writhe in pain.

  Nobody in the room I am watching thrills or writhes. They might perhaps be said to stew, to bubble deeply and with terrible purpose in the gumbo of their emotions. Three of them appear to be reading, and so they are, but the reading is no more than the uppermost layer of their reflections and emotions. Rhodri seems to be busy with his favourite author, P. G. Wodehouse. Malvina is reading St. Elmo, an almost forgotten novel of her youth. Brochwel is chewing doggedly away at The Faerie Queen, of which a portion is required reading for his literature studies at Waverley University, but which he is determined to read in its entirety, for already he detests half-heartedness and superficiality. Auntie Min is trying to find the moustache of King Charles the Second for her puzzle; five hundred pieces in all, and a terror, as she frequently tells anybody who will hear.

  The books and the puzzle occupy the upper layer of their minds, various as these are. Each of the four is conscious of a musical accompaniment to reading, and reflection. With them I – the patient looker-on – read, and listen and experience their deeper monologue.

  (2)

  AUNTIE MIN: (Music: “The Honeysuckle and the Bee,” played on a banjo, minstrel-show style.)

  This it? No; won’t fit. Must be hair off one of the girls. He had plenty of girls, they say. Can’t really see. Of course they’ve all got lamps, but nobody imagines I’d like a lamp. Where did this fellow come? Brocky would know, but I daren’t ask him. He’d jump down my throat, or else heave a sigh and tell me in that “Poor old dumb Minnie” voice he puts on. Lordy, Lordy, the young! When they’re babies they love you and you can’t do enough for ’em, but wait till they’re grown up, and then they seem like they can’t stand you. Even if they’re your own. Brocky is like that to Viney. Coldly civil. No more. What went wrong there? Why doesn’t he love his Ma like a real son? Viney and I loved our Ma. Couldn’t have loved her more. Poor Ma. What she went through with that Old Devil. He died in the Poor Farm. Long after Ma, too. The Devil looks after his own. Of course all Brocky can think of is that Julia. Well, that’s how it goes. That was the way it was with me and Homer…. You be my honeysuckle, honey, I’ll be your bee.

  Homer was undoubtedly the neatest man I ever saw. Shoes always shined like glass. Always a clean white handkerchief in his breast pocket, too. And one in his hip pocket. “One for show and one for blow,” he used to say. He had more jokes….! Called his hip pocket his pistol-pocket, as if he was a bandit! I loved just walking down Colborne Street with him, he was so classy. And believe me I dressed up to his style, you bet. Great big hats. He used to call them my Gainsborough hats. A painter. Must have liked big hats. A big hat, and a dress made up in a good Dotted Swiss, silk stockings and patent leather pumps so tight they nearly had me crippled. Lots of beads. Always have loved beads, and that was the time of the really Big Bead. Those red ones! I have them still. Some place. Yes, the Big Bead was The Bead of Choice, as Miss McGovern at Ogilvie’s used to say. And scent! He used to give me scent after we were engaged, when it was all right. Djer Kiss – that was the name of it. Spicy. Black box with a parrot on it. A small man. Good gifts come in small packages, he used to say when he gave me a quarter-ounce of Djer Kiss. Small, and bald in front. A distinguished baldness, not that scabby baldness. And pince-nez. French for pinch nose. Of course he was an optometrist and always in the height of the fashion in eye-wear. Pince-nez, and the lenses tinted just a hint of violet. It rested the eyes, he said. He pioneered tinted lenses in our city. Sometimes I asked him if he wasn’t afraid the violet tint would look like an unhealthy shadow under his eyes, but he would chuck me under the chin (if we weren’t in the street) and say they made him look passionate. Pretty strong talk, but after all, we were engaged, and when he kissed me …! Brocky was playing that song last week on the Orthophonic as they call it now. Taken over from what we called the phonograph. That song when the girl sings about her lover and bursts out, “And Ah – his kiss!”
It brought it all back, and I had to pretend I’d got something in my eye. That phonograph Homer gave me the Christmas after we got engaged. An Edison. Thick, heavy records. Like stove-lids, Ma said. Some records came with it. “Gems from The Yokohama Girl.” …

  In your silk pyjama

  Go and tell Mama

  You will be happy with me –

  My little Japanee!

  And “Cohen On The Telephone” – we laughed…. “I vant a carpINter to mend de shutter that hangs on the side of mine house, because de vind come, and de shutter clutter.” Clever, real clever, taking off the Jew. Homer was clever, too. He included a record of hymns for Ma, and that sort of made her hesitate to condemn the phonograph, because it sang “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Life’s Railway to Heaven.” …

  Keep your hand upon the throttle,

  And your eye upon the rail.

  Ma liked anything that was religious. We used to joke about it. She’d sit in the parlour window, all Sunday afternoon, so’s people could see her, with her specs on and her Bible in her hand, and then she’d doze off. But of course she was really religious. I guess…. She said I oughtn’t to take such an expensive gift as the phonograph. Said I was making myself cheap. Keep your hand upon the throttle. But Homer got round her. Said as we were engaged it was really for our future home. Not that it ever got there. We couldn’t marry until his mother went. It would have killed her. Or so she gave out. I don’t think so. She was as tough as old boots. But anyhow, Homer had to believe her. She was his mother. And of course at last she did die, and we were ready to get married till Ma said – with tears in her eyes, and it was the only time I ever saw Ma cry – “I’d hoped you would have waited till I was gone.” That clinched it, of course. We couldn’t wait for old Mrs. Hall to die and then marry right in Ma’s face, the way Viney did. So we waited and Ma certainly took her time. But she went at last – not that I ever wished for it, nobody could say I did – and then Homer got pneumonia before the year of mourning for Ma was out, and he died, and that was that. He left me everything, but not the business, of course. His cousins saw to that. I’ve got his cufflinks and watch-chain still, and I guess they’d better go to Brocky when I’m gone. Never mind; Homer’s few hundred set me up in business for myself. The Home of The Hat Beautiful. Everybody said it was a wonderful name. And I knew the business. Hadn’t I been buyer for Ogilvie’s for years and for your straws and your felts and your feathers and your Bohemian ornaments – cherries, little apples, flowers of all kinds – there weren’t many who could beat me. Creative, they call it now. That was what I was; creative. An artiste of the hat…. Damn cars! As soon as they got popular, and everybody had to have one, and women started to drive, and girls wanted to drive with the top down and the wind blowing, that was Good-bye, Hat! Of course the older women went on wearing hats, but time took care of that. I’d put a hat in the window that anybody would be proud to wear, but unless somebody wanted to wear it to a wedding, or maybe a funeral if it was a crushed velvet, let’s say, there my hat would stay for weeks. Got under my skin, and my trouble got worse. I had to turn to Rhodri for extra capital, and why not? Wasn’t he my brother-in-law? He came through, in the end, but not warmly, it must be said. I suppose Viney made him. She knows how to get what she wants and Rhodri’s weak, under all that bluster. Weak, and I’m not afraid of him. Not a particle. He’s done well. I grant you that. But he’s had the luck, and not everybody does. How did Viney get him? That was a mystery, but some of the girls said she caught him on the bounce, from that Elsie Hare. He was too proud to be jilted. Always thought of himself as a great one with the girls. He had a kind of a come-hither combined with a touch-me-not look about him that was like catnip to some of ’em. Still is. And Viney’s jealous, don’t try to tell me any different. She’s still jealous and there’s women around this city who would grab at him. And maybe they do. Some of those women in that Drama Group, as they call it, always wanting him to be in plays. Luckily he’s too busy for much of that. And what parts could he take, anyway? Old men. He’d not thank you to be asked to play an old man. But wouldn’t surprise me if … Dresses younger than his age. And what he spends on clothes the Lord only knows. I’ve always been poor, and when you’re poor you see life from underneath and you notice things other people miss. I’ve tried. I’ve certainly tried. But nothing seemed to work, and I lost heart and more money from Rhodri couldn’t do anything against cars and flappers who didn’t know what a hat was. Young de’il-and-go-flickets! What would people have said in my day if we’d carried on like that? Rolled stockings! And the War hardly over! Like this Julia. Oh, Brocky doesn’t kid me. Not on your life! I see that look in his eyes when I’m not supposed to see anything…. Viney’s beginning to nod. She’ll want to go upstairs soon. Maybe I’d better go and heat the milk. Hope those ugly foreigners are out of the kitchen. They look at me as if they’d like to kill me…. But I’d like to find the King’s moustache first. What was it we used to say? A kiss without a moustache is like an egg without salt.

  (3)

  MALVINA: (She is reading St. Elmo by Augusta Jane Evans; below her reading is music; a song, “Could I,” as sung by Emilio de Gogorza on a Victor Red Seal Record; further below, her brooding.)

  Glad to see St. Elmo again. Down under all that trash of Rhodri’s out in the end room. Min found it. What was she doing rummaging around out there? Snooping. A snooper even when she was a young one. Must be fifty years. Bought it after I saw the play. Ida Van Cortland. Most elegant woman I ever saw. That last scene, where St. Elmo says: “Is Edna Earl more righteous than the Lord she worships?”-then that pause, and she looks him in the face and says – “Never was more implicit faith, more devoted affection, given any human being than I now give you, Mr. Murray; you are my first and my last and my only love.” People don’t talk like that any more. But you see the reality. Yes sirree! Brocky laughed when he saw me reading St. Elmo. But I’ve read more books in my life than he has, though he’s going through them fast enough. I know that the heart of a book isn’t just what you get from the language. Not that I suppose they care a particle for the heart of anything at the university. All head; no heart. They sneer at Les Misérables now. Well, let them better it, I say. Music, too. That stuff he buys and plays. Not a tune anywhere. Some of the songs are good. That one he played that made Min cry. She thought I didn’t see, but I did. Thinking of Homer, I suppose. Min’s had hard luck. Her trouble, to begin with. I saw her yesterday when she had one of those spells at the table. She thought nobody saw, but I saw. Petit mal the doctor calls it now. Used to say epilepsy, but that’s grand mal now. I wish she wouldn’t lock the bathroom door when she goes in. Might have a seizure right there on the seat, and how would we get at her? But you can’t break an old maid of that habit. Old maid. I was the only one of us three to get married. Consumption was the great fear. We’ve all got poor lungs. Min didn’t have the gimp to outface old Mrs. Hall, and poor Carry was the real breadwinner after Pa went smash and I married. Ma never really forgave me, even when I sent her money on the q.t. Poor Carry. She could play the piano like a professional. Might have been a professional, with better luck. She’d rip through that “Grande Paraphrase de Concert sur le Faust de Gounod” so your eyes would blink. Wonderful waltz tune in that. Ed Gould used to sing words to it –

  “I can sing like a nightingale,

  My notes are clear and bright.”

  “You don’t mean like a nightingale,

  You mean like a gale in the night.”

  He thought that was great till one day Mr. Yeigh turned on him and said, “Jeering at High Art leaves High Art untouched, Mr. Gould, but it shows up the quality of the mocker,” and Gould just shrivelled up like a leaf. Everybody respected Mr. Yeigh. That Christmas he gave me Les Misérables with a nice inscription. He knew I had a leaning toward a really good book. I’ve read it, oh I guess five times. Beats St. Elmo into a cocked hat. Reality! That’s what Victor Hugo had. Reality. He knew the human heart. Gould! Oh he thoug
ht he was a card! That day he brought the chocolates to the office and treated all the girls. They were cubes of soap he’d had coated at Alf Tremayne’s Candy Kitchen. But girls were a curiosity in an office in those days, and we had to put up with a lot. I wanted to get out of it. To get married. Not just to get out of it. I wanted some romance in my life. Carry wasn’t the only one who had art in her. I could sing. Haven’t sung for years. Asthma. From Pa, I suppose. Worse now than when I was young. We all have poor lungs. But I love a good song. De Gogorza –

  Could I but come to thee once,

  But once only,

  As you sit, so sad and lonely

  With your head on your arm

  So weary-hearted –

  What a voice! Rich baritone. Heard him sing that in recital. But every time he left the stage he strutted out ahead of his accompanist, and she was a woman! A gentleman would have let her go first. But he was an artist, of course, a Great I Am, and I suppose you have to make allowances for that.

  Could I but come to thee

  When night is falling

  In the old sweet way

  Just coming at your calling

  And like an angel bending down above you

  To breathe into your ear

  “I love you –

  I loooove you.”

  I suppose the man had died before they were married. De Gogorza sang it almost like a ghost, soft and mysterious and very tender. Before they were married. Like poor Min. Not that Homer Hall could sing a note. Tin ear. Does Min ever hear a ghost like that? Don’t suppose so for a minute. No imagination. I was always the one with the imagination. But what could I do with it? Three girls, left with Ma, after they dragged Pa away to the Poor Farm. Making a show of himself in the street, right up to the end. You don’t keep your Ma as she’s been used to on imagination. I wrote some poetry. No good, I suppose. After I married Rhodri I even wrote stuff for his first paper. For the Christmas Issue. How we worked over that! I don’t suppose the subscribers gave a continental whether they had a Christmas Issue or not but Rhodri was determined they should have one. He was proud, and wanted to show ’em. And he did. He’s done well. Rich, now. I wish Ma could have seen. She never had any time for him, and I know he didn’t like her, though he never said so to me. I give him that. Proud! And how he could sing!