by Barrie Shore
In the beginning, there was an Adam and an Eva in a Garden called Eden. They lived in joy and an innocence, feeding on a fig and a leaf and a primrose or two when they felt inclined. But a serpent hid in the bosom of the garden and watched them with a jealousy in its heart that knew no bottom, and it said to itself in its sneakery, snakery way, ‘I shall make a downfall of the man and the woman and squeeze the happiness out of their hearts.’
And later, much later, at least a millennium or three, there were a man and a woman who met in a gallery. And she said to him, ‘He looks a bit raffish, wouldn’t you say?’ And he said to her, ‘I beg your pardon, what did you say?’ And the consequence was that the serpent smiled to itself and licked its lips with its flickery tongue. The man fell in love with the woman’s eyes and her smile and her thumb. And she fell in love because he was a lion with peaceable face and a primrose.
And this is the second part of the story. It’s called Chapter Two.
There once was a woman who thought she was a lady. She was as thin as my finger and short as my thumb with tiny teeth and lips that were never in a learning to smile, and she smelled like the smell of milk that’s turning. And what’s more, baby dear, and this is the importance part, she had a league with a Devil that was in Disguise. It was an excellency good disguise that pretended it was God in his Heaven, Almighty God, and the woman believed it with her all her main and her might because she lived in a drudgery and a resentment and was in a soreful need of reward.
And the Devil said to her, ‘My good woman,’ said he. The woman wasn’t good in the least, but that’s what he called her, it was part of his plan to put her in a buttering. ‘My good woman,’ he said again, in case she hadn’t heard him at first, ‘if you obey me in every degree, I shall make you a queen in a land of honey and milk that is known by the name of Paradise. But if, on the other hand’ (these were the Devil’s exactly fine words), ‘if you fall into any sin or transgression, I shall becast you into a Furnace of Fire. And your son, that was conceived in a bed of sin, your son will descend to the Bottom-most Pit of Hell.’
Well, baby dear, if I’d been the woman in question, I’d have upped and be-offed that Devil in his Disguise. But she didn’t because, even and though the Devil was wrong, she believed his every perfidummy, treachery word. She was in a slip and a sliding of fear, she was terror and fied, all for the sake of her son and his soul. And she said to the son, ‘Oh, beloveable son of mine, man is corrupt and flesh is in a weakening, and the wages of sin is Death unto Hell.’
And the son, who was an obedience boy, who loved his mother and was in a sorrow for her because they lived in a penury place and were in a poor and a grinding, said, ‘Do not fear, mother dear, I owe you my life and my love, and your word is my commanding.’
So the mother was happy. And so was the son, in an unthinking, acceptance way that children have who are born under a guilt. And the Devil was in a happy as well because he held them both in his thrall.
But.
There are always buts in a story, baby my dear, you’ll find it out for yourself when you grow up but I’ll tell you now so that you’re precautioned. Buts are a very good thing in a general, because they give you a pause for a time and a while before you make up your mind to a thing. If the woman had butted the Devil and turned her back, she would have been happy and wise, but she didn’t, so she grew thin and grey and turned into a witch. But the best sort of but is the kind that you meet when you’re out on a walk on a path you haven’t walked before that leads to a gate that’s locked and barred with a notice that says, ‘Danger, Keep Out.’ And there’s a bit of you, the bit that’s in a fear, that turns away and goes back to the safetymost path that’s been trodden before. But there’s another bit, baby dear, the bit that is buried in a deep inside your heart, that shouts out from the back of your mind. ‘But! But why is it danger? But why keep out?’
And that’s what happened to the son, the son of the mother who was the husband of Eva. He obeyed his mother in every way until quite by an accident he met a man on a path whose name was Bob. The Bob was a man with a clumpety boot who was wise in his words and proud of his name. He kept a thousand books on a thousand shelves, and he didn’t believe in heaven and hell which made him a wisdom all to himself. And the Bob that was wise said to the son, ‘Go forth and read.’ So he did. And he learned about all manner of things he never dreamed of before, such as Greeks and Erasmus and Darwin and Love.
So when he grew up and came to a gate that said ‘Danger! Keep Out!’ he said to himself, ‘But I’m in a want of a danger, I won’t keep out.’ Because, you see, he knew about poetry now and adventuresome paths. And without more and ado, he climbed over the gate with a leap and a bound, and I’ll give you a guess and a three where it was that he landed. It was the gallery place that I told you before, where he met a woman in blue with an elegance hat. And she said to him, ‘He looks a bit raffish, wouldn’t you say?’ And he said to her, ‘I beg your pardon, what did you say?’ And the consequence was they fell into a love that lasted a life. Only what I forgot to tell you was that woman’s name was called Eva, and she was your mother, baby, my dear. And the man that jumped over the gate was called…
Oh.
Jack?
Are you there?
Jack?
No, that must have been the name of somebody else.
Tock.
Tick.
And the time is…
The time is the next time of the story, which is called is Chapter Three, which is the place where a story turns, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, and so its name is called the Turning Chapter. And this is how the story turned…
A wedding was made for a day in May when the sun was bright. But when the bridegroom’s mother found out she went into a mortal fear and the Devil’s teeth went into a gnashing. But the Devil is never balked for long.
‘Never fear,’ said he to the mother of the son. ‘I have come up with a cunning plan.’
And he had.
It was a night in on the day before the wedding was planned and the mother couldn’t sleep. And I don’t know, baby dear, what a suffering there was in her heart, but I have it in my imagining mind. I can see her creeping into the room that used to be where her son had slept, touching his bed that was empty, opening the cupboard, breathing his smell, counting the childish belongings he’d left behind. His schoolbooks, his blazer, his Bible. He had left his Holy Bible behind and she hardened the hardness of her heart when she saw it. And the Devil saw the weakness she was in and sent his serpent to whisper poison in her ear. And the name of the poison was Fire.
The mother took up her candle to see the serpent in a better light and dropped it in a fright as soon as she saw the sight of his terrible face. And the candle caught a curtain and the curtain caught afire, and the consequence was that her house burned down. The mother escaped with her life but without her eyebrows, they were singed away and never grew back, and a lickety flame burned her cheek into a scarring that never healed.
And the second consequence was this. There’s never just one consequence, baby dear, one turns into another, they’re a grow and a grow, feeding one on the other till the first is lost in a swallow of forget. The second consequence was, that the son was struck with a guilt and a mourning, and he said to his mother, ‘Oh, mother of mine who is burned to a sadness, come to me for a while and I will cherish you into a betterness.’
For a while, he said.
But the while was an ever.
People whispered a rumour that the mother made the fire on a purpose to put a stop on the wedding, and maybe she did, you never know with mothers of sons what a length they will go. But she didn’t succeed because… there were two reasons because. One was Adam and Eve and the love they had before the serpent came slippery slither between them, and the other was that Eve believed (and Eva did too) that she was more than a match for serpents and mo
thers. Only I’m sorry to say that she wasn’t, because the mother of the son that Eva got into a marrying with, had skin as thick as a serpent’s tail, and it was venom, not blood, that ran in her veins.
So a Wedding Day came. Which is called Chapter Four.
It was a sunshine day but the rain was falling, and that sort of day, that only happens once in a while, is known as a Fox’s Wedding. And the reason for that, baby dear, is that the foxy-loxy mother, a vixen she’s called, is in a crying for the loss of her baby son. But Eva was a girl from the city who didn’t know about vixens and their wily ways, so she didn’t notice the rain, only the sun, and she was in a shining of happiness. So was the son in a bequieter way, a fearing sort of way, because he saw the rain and knew about vixens.
And very soon later came Chapter Four and a Half, which is called the Wedding Night, and the reason for the Half is that it’s a chapter that was never finished.
The night started sweet with a fire in a room and a ewer and a kettle of water. And a high iron bed that was daunty but had pleasure waiting between its crispy sheets. On the top of the bed was a nightdress that was white as a virgin, made for the bride by the mother of the son with a jealousy sewn into every stitch, so that the nightie was starchy stiff and crackled with spite. But Eva wasn’t in a minding because she had a suitcase that she’d brought to her wedding. It was battered and blue that she’d kept from school. And when the husband was gone to fetch his pyjamas and make himself in a ready for bed, in a ready for love, in a panting for it, she opened the battercase and found a nightdress of her own that was made of sky-blue silk and was saved to buy with a ration from the war. It was lushful. She pressed it soft to her cheek and kissed it and laid it on the bed beside the crackledy linen and she knew which one the husband would like the best.
She took out her hairbrush and comb and laid them next to the husband’s on the dresser table, side by side just only not touching. And then she undressed, all exciteful and primrose, and did a washing, quickly, quickly, because the sun had gone from the day and the night was shivering cold. She dried by the fire, rubbing geese from her skin, and put on the nightdress, the one that was made of silkeny blue; and she let down her hair, beautiful nut-brown hair, and danced in the mirror in a swirl of desire. And she waited for the husband to come.
But.
This is another but, baby dear, and this one is called a Tragedy But, because it shouted ‘Beware!’ in a loudly voice, but nobody listened. And this is how the tragedy went.
First, there was a bedroom. Next, there was a fire that was sulking in a grate. Then there was Eva, waiting in her high, silky blue bed. Then there was the husband, poking at the fire to make it burn. Last of all was the mother in a bedroom that was hers with only the landing in between, in a pace up and a down, sniffing for the smell of a fire that burned, listening for the creak of a sinful bed. And she heard the softly sound of her son and his wife in a whisper for a while, and then she heard a silence and knew there was a kiss in the silence. And she was filled with a horror and rage, because she knew that the kiss had sweetness in it. The kiss was a smouldering fire that she knew too, if the wind turned in the right direction and the bellows blew lusty and strong, would burst into a conflagration that would be beyond anyone’s power to quench, even a vixen, even a serpent, even a mother with venom in her veins. (Oh, and she knew about fire, this mother of the man whose newly wife at this very moment, on the other side of the bedroom wall, was showing her husband how to make fire. Oh, and she knew, this mother, how set a match to a curtain, how to fan flame into burgeoning life.)
So she made moan, this mother, the mother of the son she had so painstakingly taught to be pure, the son who still trailed clouds glory, the son she had so jealously guarded for more than thirty-three years (thirty-three years and twenty-nine days, to be precise) she made moan to save her son’s innocent soul was about to be to save him from the Fiery Pits of Hell. Not loud and complaining but in a subtlety way, like the wind gathering, just as the Devil had taught her, just enough to be heard, till at last the son appeared at her door in a tousle of hair and heat and a burning in his cheeks.
‘Pray God forgive me for disturbing your rest,’ said the mother of the son in her plainty way, ‘But I am in fear of a fire and I cannot sleep.’
And the consequence of that, baby my dear, was that the son spent long and a time in a comfort of his mother, in a stroking of her forehead, with fingers that weren’t just filial, but almost maternal in their touch. For you must remember, baby dear, that only a week had gone by since his mother’s narrow escape from the fire that had consigned his childhood home in Temperance Terrace to dust and oblivious; the fire in which his mother had an escape (a miraculosity, so some of the neighbours said – Miss Maiden certainly said it and wondered about God in His mercy for a while until she forgot, although Mrs Moxon remained silent for once); the self same fire the fire in which his mother might have lost her life but who (miraculously or not) had escaped serious injury to the person or burns to the flesh, except that her eyebrows (never substantial, mark you, never eyebrows that made a statement to her face, eyebrows that arrested attention, eyebrows, nevertheless, that were delineated by visible hairs), her eyebrows were singed by the fire, giving her an innocent look, the look of a baby, a look that made her son’s guilty heart beat in a sorrow.
So and in the end, baby dear, the mother went to a sleep. Or was a pretend she did. And the son went back in a creep to his newly wife on the other side of the wall, the wife that was only a fewly hours old (it was nine, nearly nine, for they were in a marrying at two o’clock in the afternoon in a churchful of whispering swans and temperance guests and a brewman (although the father of the husband of the newly wife who was a brewman too wasn’t there because he was in a grave in a yard on the outside and forgot the time, and so did his horse), and a mother was there with a bandage on her head instead of a hat who’d lost her eyebrows and never managed to find them again (and another mother not there because of a bomb and a butcher’s shop), and a best friend who was all of a frown and a consternation, and a man with a name that was Edgar who did the giving away, although he shouldn’t have done if he’d kept the sense he was born with, and a man with a ring and name that no one remembered), and when the husband was in a creep back to his wife, the clock did a hiccup and a strike that was eleven o’clock, so yes it was nine hours since the marrying time) and when the clock was finished its strike, the man that was the husband of Eva found his wife in a sitting up in her bed, wearing a calico nightgown that was virgin white and crackled with spite, that was stitched by his mother (stitched with love) as a wedding gift to welcome her daughter-in-law to the marriaging bed. And the other thing that he found was that the fire had gone out. And when he had climbed into bed beside his wife, still wearing his dressing gown because he was fearsome of losing it, did he remember, do you think, baby dear, another nightgown made of silk, blue silk, sky-blue silk, that clung to a rounded breast, did he remember as he sat up in bed with his wife at his side, close together, just only not touching, like a brush and comb on a dresser table?
Or do you think he was in a relief? And maybe she was too. And which of them, baby dear, was more of a stupid? Which one of them was more in a wrong? Was it the son of the mother who was lying in a sleep on the other side of the wall (or in a pretending to be) who reached for a book on a bedside beside him (a book that was green and gold that had an inscribing in it, a book that he loved but that she was in a learning to hate as the years grew old), was it the son when he said to his newly wife, ‘Would you like me to read to you, my darling?’
Or was it the wife of the son of the mother who was sleeping on the other side of the wall (or in a pretending to be), the newly wife who wished that her mother was here (her only mother, that is, her ownly mother, because she’d forgotten for a lonely moment about the bomb and the butcher’s shop), who wished that her mother was on the edge of the marrying bed, smoothi
ng her brow with a sweetly touch and telling her not be in a minding?
Was it the newly wife, was it your mother, baby dear, who drew the bedclothes up to her chin and said with a wanly smile (although I’m sorry to tell you that she was lying through her newly brushed teeth) ‘I can think of nothing I should like better’?
Which of them was it, baby dear, that let the fire go out? And why was it that they weren’t in a sense how to light it again?
Bing, bong.
I wish the clock would stop battering, it’s getting on my nerve-endings.
And I wish…
Battercake, battercake, baker’s man,
Bake me a baby as fast as you can,
Bat it and bing it and bonk it with…
Tock, tick.
So the time went by and the time went by, a year and another and three and a more. The days were long and the nights were cold, and the bed was hard, and the books that were piled by the side of the bed were dusty and dry and unconsolational.
What a poor thing he was, the husband of Eva. Buried in books, all by himself, with a wife at his side in a crying because her husband wasn’t in a desiring of her, and his mother in a crowing. What did he think in his secrety heart? Why didn’t he put his mother into a banish and make a loving to his wife?
I never met him, so I don’t know.
But somebody told me, I don’t know who, what a sadness it was to see such a man, such a peaceable, pleasantry chap, trapped in between two such thundering women, both so strong and possessing, each so wanting his soul for their own. But I didn’t care about him, it was Eva I minded.
Eva?
Are you there?
Where is she? Why doesn’t she come?
Never mind, dear bubba of mine, she’ll be here in a soon.
Bubba. Bubb, Budmouth, Bulbarrow…
Oh, I’ve remembered it now, that game we played…