Morag plods along the High Street in the weak grey-light of the morning, head down against the drizzling rain. She has not put up her umbrella and never does so except in downpours, as she prefers to get her coat and headscarf damp rather than crash into other umbrella-bearers who walk blindly like a host of mobile mushrooms. She has come to feel in many ways at home here, although she will never feel she belongs. She has, as well, come to value the anonymity of these streets, the fact that people often don’t know their neighbours or care about their goings-on of whatever variety. It is, of course, all very well for her, because she made a few friends fairly quickly in the beginning owing to introductions on the part of her English publishers. A person coming to this city totally unknown to anyone could literally die of loneliness, and no doubt many do. Odd, now, though, to recall that she had come here in the first place partly because of a fantasy–Morag getting to know dozens of other writers, with whom she would have everything in common. In fact only a few of her friends are writers, and she has discovered that publishers’ parties in London are no more appealing to her and no less parochial than they were in Canada. Useful to know that, probably. At least when she finally does return, she won’t ever again feel that she must be missing out on a lot in these ways. Another thing which enabled her if not to overcome her dread of cities then at least to suppress it was the desire to see places she had read about all her life–the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square. For the first year, she and Pique were intrepid tourists, awed by monuments. Now they live here. How long will they remain? She often wonders this, sometimes feeling that she is held here largely by lethargy–the thought of moving again is too much for her at this point; Pique likes her school; they have established a place of their own, some kind of refuge.
Morag turns off the High Street, goes down a small winding street and arrives at the shop where she works mornings.
AGONISTES BOOKSHOP
J. Sampson, Prop.
This play on words is somewhat diminished in effect, for Morag, by the fact that Mr. Sampson spells his name with a “p.” He, however, is pleased with it. Morag once asked him if he didn’t think the reference was a little unfortunate or inappropriate. No, he said, because after all here he was in a constant state of dreadful labour and mental anguish over trying to keep the business going. Yes, but what about the fall of the temple? Oh that, Mr. Sampson said–well, wasn’t he trying his best against the philistines?
“Morning, Mr. Sampson. Chilly day.”
“Morning, Morag. The chill shouldn’t bother you.”
Their ritual exchange, nearly every day in winter. He affects to believe that Morag comes from a land of perpetual snow. Mr. Sampson is a slight, thin, rabbity little man in his mid-sixties, whose face is not strengthened by the small wavering moustache he wears. His appearance is not impressive until you notice that his greenish eyes are very clear, intelligent and watchful. He stocks a surprisingly large range of books, considering the smallness of the shop, but his true love is the English contemporary novel, about which he knows everything. This morning he is unpacking new arrivals, slowly, because he has to glance through each one and also examine the jacket design and blurb for saleability.
“Look at this,” he cries. “Whom do Lansbury’s employ in their Art department, I ask myself. A blind man? Who is going to buy a book with a dust jacket that’s all grey, totally, not a glimmer of light in it? Let’s hope it gets a few good reviews, to offset this mess. It wouldn’t matter so much if it were by a known writer, but it’s a first novel. A shame.”
When Morag’s collection of short stories, Presences, came out last year, Mr. Sampson insisted on filling the window with copies, and only Morag’s embarrassment prevented him from forcibly thrusting the book onto everyone who entered the shop. When she decided she hated the title, which sounded like one of those small literary magazines which are forever dying quick deaths, he told her sharply that it was unprofessional to think of such things after the book was out.
“Want me to clear some of the last lot from the front counter?” Morag asks, with a pang for the books published a month ago, now to be relegated to shelves.
“I suppose so,” Mr. Sampson says regretfully, knowing her feelings. “We need more room, but where could it come from? If I could throw out all those cookery and flower-arranging books and nonsense like that–but I’d starve. So go ahead–clear, clear. We must be ruthless to survive.”
Morag grins. He is far from ruthless, as is well-known to impecunious young people who drop in and read books here chapter by chapter.
The phone rings and Mr. Sampson disappears into his tiny crowded office at the back. He emerges in a moment and beckons to Morag.
“It’s for you.”
“For me?” She is surprised, because people never phone her at the shop.
“It’s the school,” Mr. Sampson says nervously.
Morag flies to the phone. What has happened to Pique? She sees on her mindscreen a road accident. The terrible vulnerability of children.
“Mrs. Gunn? Miss White here. Pique–”
“Is she all right? What’s happened?”
“Don’t be upset, Mrs. Gunn. She’ll be all right. She just isn’t feeling too well, that’s all, and I think you should come and collect her.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Morag faces Mr. Sampson apologetically.
“I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to leave for the day. Maybe longer. It’s Pique–she’s ill.”
“Go ahead, go ahead,” he says cluckingly, helping her on with her coat. “The lesser matters must give way to the greater.”
Morag walks rapidly along the hilly streets to the school. Pique is waiting in Matron’s office, her coat on, her face flushed. She did not feel entirely well this morning before going to school, but Morag, after dithering, had decided she was well enough to go. Morag does not like to stay away from work unless absolutely necessary–how far can Mr. Sampson’s good nature be presumed upon, and where would she find another job as convenient as this one? Also, she has wanted to work this afternoon on the novel which is taking shape in her head. Now look what she has done.
“Oh honey, I’m so sorry.”
Pique looks dejected.
“I threw up,” she says in a small shamed voice. “All over the floor beside my desk. Oh Mum, I feel awful. I feel sick, and I feel awful about doing that. I couldn’t help it.”
“That doesn’t matter, honey. Honestly. Come on.”
Morag thanks Miss White, who twitters in the background, and they leave. The walk home seems interminable and freezing. The rain continues its slow steady drip-drip-drip.
Morag puts Pique to bed and takes her temperature. A hundred and four. Morag by now is frantic with worry, and Pique’s skin feels as though it were burning. Morag administers aspirin and phones the doctor. After what seems about seven hours, but is in fact two, he arrives and says that Pique has flu and there is a lot of it about.
“There’s always a lot of it about, it seems to me,” Morag says idiotically, angrily, as though this were in some way the doctor’s fault.
“Well, try not to be upset, Mrs. Gunn,” he says sternly. “That won’t help the child, will it?”
Oh God. True. True. She wants to ask the doctor, young and brisk, to forgive her, to stay for a while, have a cup of tea, reassure her, tell her Pique isn’t very ill and will be fine, and that it isn’t Morag’s fault for having sent her out unwell into the raw morning. There is, however, no external reassurance available, as she learns each time as though for the first time, whenever Pique is sick. The doctor writes a prescription and leaves, nodding brusquely at Morag’s profuse and in some ways hypocritical thanks.
“What’ve I got, Mum?” Pique calls from the bedroom.
“Flu. You’ll be fine in a few days.”
“I’ll miss the Valentine’s party,” Pique wails.
Now Morag, perversely, feels annoyed at the child. Fan
cy worrying about a Valentine’s party when your health is in jeopardy. How unreasonable. And what is so reasonable about Morag expecting an eight-year-old to be reasonable?
I fluctuate like a pendulum. The terrible vulnerability of parents, though, your life bound up so centrally with this other one.
“Listen, honey, it’ll be all right. We’ll have our own Valentine party. And I’ll get Miss White to send your valentines home, and I’ll send yours for the kids. You just lie quietly for a minute, Pique–I’ve got to whip out and get the medicine for you. Shall I get you some ginger ale?”
“I don’t care,” Pique says wearily.
If she doesn’t want ginger ale, she must really be sick. Morag hurries up to the High Street pharmacy and back again. When she returns, Pique has vomited again. She has not made it to the bathroom and has not even managed the plastic bucket which Morag placed beside the bed. It is all over the sheets and blankets. There could have been very little to throw up except a glass of water and the aspirins, but it seems like gallons. Pique is crying. Her black hair, spread over the pillow, is wet.
Morag cleans up, gives Pique the tablets, praying she will keep them down, sponges the child’s face, and sits beside her. After a few hours, Pique’s temperature drops a little. Finally she sleeps, although restlessly, and Morag leaves her.
In the small livingroom, which also serves as Morag’s bedroom, Morag sits cross-legged on the couch-bed, listening to Pique’s hoarse breathing, and the rain, and the wind in the bare branches of the plane trees. It is at times like this that she feels her aloneness. When Pique is well, and Morag is writing, and there are sometimes people to talk to, then the fact that she is alone is bearable. Even the fact that she lives without a man except for occasional casual encounters which leave her emptier than she was before–even that can be survived, although with spates of rage or self-pity. But in the times of the threat of darkness–when Pique is sick, or when Morag herself is sick and wonders what would happen to Pique if anything fatal happened to herself, or when the money is perilously low and Morag, paralyzed with anxiety, cannot write–it is then that she feels the aloneness to be unbearable. Like now.
If only there were someone to talk it over with. Someone to share the pain, I guess. That wouldn’t help Pique much. It would help me, though. Or would it? Look at Angie in Flat Two upstairs. When the baby is sick, she says to Dennis that she’s worried out of her mind, and he says she always worries unnecessarily and she’s inherited it from her neurotic mother and she had better snap out of it. And maybe she is indeed worrying unnecessarily. As probably I am. But you would just like somebody to say–God, love, I KNOW and I’m worried too.
Outside, on Hedgerow Walk, the high-pitched laughter of guests arriving at some party or other. Upstairs in Flat Two, Dennis turns the record player up full volume, and Angie yells at him to turn it down or he’ll waken the baby–if one of them doesn’t waken the baby, the other certainly will. If they waken Pique, Morag will go up and strangle them both, or at least sit down here and curse them. She takes off the black and scarlet Madras cotton bedspread (meant to make her bed look in daytime as though it were not a bed) and crawls between the sheets. Then crawls out again to look once more at Pique, who is sleeping but whose skin is unnaturally hot. Nothing more can be done at the moment.
Finally Morag sleeps.
Pique’s fever continues, up and down, for four days. Then it drops to normal and stays there, but the doctor says she is not to return to school for another week. Morag, on the phone to Mr. Sampson, is assured that she still has a job, but he is beginning to sound irritable. A little more of this, and Morag will not have a job, probably. And she will not really be able to blame Mr. Sampson, who hires an assistant with the reasonable expectation that she will be at work most of the time.
Hell, I’m lucky. I don’t know what difficulty means. At least there are some royalties dribbling in from past books, although not much, and I suppose if I were really broke, I could go to the publishers and ask for a small advance on the next book–no, I couldn’t do that, though, because then the book wouldn’t get written. But Jeremy Sampson is not a mean-minded guy, and I am not a cog in some vast machine, at the bookshop. Suppose I was a waitress in a chain of cheap restaurants? Devil a bit they’d care if my kid was sick and I had to stay home for two weeks. I am lucky. I know it. It’s just that I don’t feel so very lucky right now.
Morag buys a bottle of Cyprus sherry and drinks it in an evening. That evening she feels better. In the morning, worse. Pique, recuperating, is beginning to enjoy poor health, a good sign. The two of them have had an impromptu Valentine’s day party, Pique opening the valentines from school with varied comments–Oh gee, I never sent Carla one–hey, it says G. R.; that must be Georgie Rexroth, that twit–and so on. Pique is getting up now, late mornings, and flitting about in her housecoat. Morag has done no writing for more than a week, and now that Pique is better, chagrin begins to set in.
“Honey, could you leave me be for about a couple of hours, while I try to do a little work?”
“Sure,” Pique says with dignity. “Of course.”
The arrangement lasts for fifteen minutes, after which Pique tiptoes into the livingroom, where Morag is sitting staring at the blank page.
“Mum?”
“What?” Spoken churlishly.
“I was just thinking–tonight could you tell me some of those stories again?”
“Which stories?” Not wanting to know.
“Oh, you know. The ones Christie used to tell you, and that. And about my dad, and all that.”
Why this sudden need? Or is it simply that this week the two of them have been together all the time, and Pique has herself been frightened by her sickness, and now is well, and wants this particular closeness to continue for a while longer?
“Okay, honey. After dinner, eh?”
“Sure. Okay.”
But now there is no way that Morag can even try to begin to get inside the novel which is beginning. The novel, whose title is Jonah, is the story of an old man, a widower, who is fairly disreputable and who owns a gill-netter in Vancouver. He fishes the mouth of the Fraser River and the Strait of Georgia when the salmon run is on. It is also about his daughter Coral, who resents his not being a reputable character. Jonah inhabits Morag’s head, and talks in his own voice. In some ways she knows more about Coral, who is so uncertainly freed by Jonah’s ultimate death, but it is Jonah himself who seems more likely to take on his own life in the fiction.
How to get this novel written, in between or as well as everything else?
“Pique–”
“Yeh?”
“C’mon, let’s get the dinner now. I’m not going to do any more work today, I guess. And then we’ll do the stories.”
Whose need is the greater? Morag’s, to tell the story of Jonah, or Pique’s, to hear the stories of Christie and of Lazarus and all of them, back there?
MORAG’S TALE OF CHRISTIE LOGAN
Well, a long time ago, when I was a kid, Christie used to tell me all sorts of stories. Christie Logan, he was a strange man, I guess. Not a big man–rather slight, really, but tough as tree-bark and wiry as barbwire and proud as the devil. He used to wear the same old overalls, always, and that embarrassed me and I used to think he stank of garbage, but now I’m not sure he did and I wonder why I thought it mattered, anyway. When he told me the tales about Piper Gunn, at first I used to believe every word. Then later I didn’t believe a word of them, and thought he’d made them up out of whole cloth.
(What means Whole cloth?)
Out of his head–invented them. But later still, I realized they’d been taken from things that happened, and who’s to know what really happened? So I started believing in them again, in a different way. Now, when Christie told a tale, then, his voice would become different from the ordinary. It would be like the ranting of the pipe music, wild and stormy, until you could actually feel the things happening that he was telling you about. He had v
ery blue eyes, Christie did, in those days, and when he was telling a tale, his eyes would be like the blue lightning and you would forget his small stature, for at those times he would seem a giant of a man. And I’ve told you the tale of Piper Gunn–well, now, when Christie told that first tale, about how Piper led his people onto the ship to take them to the new land, he used to describe Piper, and he’d say that Piper Gunn was a great tall man with a voice like the drums, and the heart of a child, and the gall of a thousand, and the strength of conviction. I always liked that–the strength of conviction, even though at the time I didn’t really know what it meant.
(What does it mean?)
It means that Piper Gunn believed the people could make a new life for themselves. He had faith. And you know, Pique, how Christie used to describe Piper’s wife? He used to say Now Piper Gunn, he had a woman, and she had the courage of a falcon and the beauty of a deer, and the warmth of a home, and the faith of saints.
(I like that. Would he tell me those stories, if we went to see him?)
Well, maybe. But he’s getting pretty old now. He mightn’t remember so well.
(He would still remember those stories. He wouldn’t forget. Not Christie.)
MORAG’S TALE OF LAZARUS TONNERRE
Well, your grandfather, Lazarus Tonnerre, he brought up his children in the Wachakwa valley, there, just below the town of Manawaka, where I grew up. And there was your dad, and the two girls, Piquette and Valentine, and the two younger boys, Paul and Jacques. And their mother, Lazarus’s wife, she–I’m not sure what happened. Maybe she died, or–well, I don’t know.
(Why don’t you know?)
I just don’t. Maybe someday you’ll see your dad again and he can tell you. Anyway, Lazarus used to tell stories, too, to his family when the winter evenings were freezing cold and a blizzard wind would be yowling outside and the snow would be blowing across the door in drifts. Sometimes the kids would be hungry, and Lazarus would tell them these stories, all about his father, old Jules Tonnerre, who fought in the battle out west, and he really existed, once, and about Rider Tonnerre, a long long way back, who may have existed and maybe not, but it doesn’t matter–and he was said to be the best rider among all the Métis and the best buffalo hunter for miles around, in those old days.