Boating for Beginners

by Winterson, Jeanette

  Gloria was confused. Since she had begun to think, she had come to see her mother as very complex indeed. Before, she had seen her in cartoon terms: larger than life, which she probably was, and entirely fixed in her ideas.

  How could a woman who wallowed in romantic fiction and who believed in the power of the Unpronounceable be so affected by, and so affect, her environment? Perhaps Doris was right; perhaps her astronomy did give her a dimension that made her poetic rather than just prosaic, so the rest of her world condemned her to be. Then Gloria thought about herself. Until her epiphany with Northrop Frye she'd been an emotional amoeba. Now she had split into two and could observe herself developing — but that didn't solve the problem of her mother, who appeared to carry round all her contradictions without needing to examine them.

  Mrs Munde was still talking. 'I love the stars because they calm me down. When I look at them I feel like I'm looking into myself, myself without all the cares of the world. The lion sleeps then, but only then. Even when it's cloudy I can tell just where everything is. We've been together for years. As I get older they don't seem so far away, but perhaps that's because I know more about them. Look, it's a clear night; I'll show you what's what,' and Mrs Munde gave Gloria a guided tour of the heavenly bodies. For the first time Gloria saw how beautiful they were. Her mother made patterns, showed her how to join up the giant dots, so that the sky was no longer full of disparate elements but instead seemed more of a shorthand or a music score left by someone who wanted others to make an effort too. No wonder they didn't seem far away. Something you love is never far away because you know it so well, because it has become part of you. Mrs Munde had absorbed the stars and she believed that the stars inhabited her. What matter if it were true or not? -perhaps it wasn't literally true, but it was true enough. Gross Reality is intrusive enough without our help; there is no need to ruin poetry simply to emphasise it.

  Doris had been right about one thing, certainly: Gloria's previous state had been blurred. She had been a blender for every possible feeling, but that didn't make her poetic, only muddled. She had lacked her mother's primitive unity; she only had her mother's rather confused associations with romance and the soul and the great mysterious outdoors. Perhaps passion does dilute with generations. Mrs Munde redeemed her own worst excesses because she was a colossus; her kitchen and parlour were too small for her soul, and if she was misguided in seeking the kitchens of the world via the Hallelujah Hamburger at least she was still seeking. For eighteen years Gloria had sought nothing and absorbed everything; her soul had been without form and void. Maybe it wasn't her fault: living with a colossus, however flawed or deranged, is a tiring business, and she had only found her store of extra energy by accident. Mrs Munde, like all true primal forces, never realised the effect she had on other people and was always bewildered when friends confessed they found her a bit much. Presumably they were worried that her resident lion might make a break for it all over them.

  'They're steadfast, stars are,' Mrs Munde said. 'Even though they move across the sky and planets don't, I think stars have the advantage. A star can travel and still be fixed because it knows its orbit. It knows where it belongs. That's why stars are so important to travellers. I'll tell you a tale.

  'Once there was a traveller who put on stout boots to wander the world because he felt it had a secret he didn't know. After some time he met an old woman gathering firewood and he helped the woman, being well brought up. She offered him shelter for the night and promised to answer a question, should he wish to ask one. The young man thought for a while and then he said, «Do you know the secret of the world?» «Yes,» she replied, «the secret of the world is so simple, it could be written on a blade of grass with the juice of a berry. You will find it if you study the stars. To study the stars you do not need a telescope.»

  'The young man was confused, but he didn't press the old woman who clearly had better things to do than go on communicating. He set off again, travelling through distant lands where he found many marvels and some happiness, but still he felt restless. He hadn't found what he was searching for. One summer night he came to a temple where a girl of his own age was laying out vessels for a ceremony. Out of politeness he asked if he could help her. She was grateful and suggested he might stay with her that night and she would answer him one question if he chose to ask. As they sat by the fire, he entertained her with his stories and then he said, «But I am looking for the secret of the world. Do you know what it is?»

  'The girl laughed. «Stand against the door and put a mark where your head reaches.» The young man did as she said. «Now,» explained the girl, «the secret lies in the space you have just made. From head to foot in your own space the secret lies, and if you still do not understand, go and look at the stars.» The young man was confused, but clearly the girl had better things to do than go on explaining. He slept, and in the morning departed with his curiosity all the stronger.

  'Months passed and the young man grew a beard. He visited fabulous towns made from cobwebs and walked in places that only animals had seen before. He loved the world more and more but still he had not found what he was looking for. At last he came to a humble village by a river, and at the river he met a woman washing. Being thoughtful, he offered to help her carry her bundle back to her home, and she invited him to stay the night and promised to answer a question if he wished to ask. The young man sighed, and told the woman about his trip and the people who had already advised him. «Both of them told me to look at the stars, and one also told me that the secret lay in myself. But I am travelling the world because the secret lies outside myself. I follow it and it gets further away.»

  'The woman was sorry for the man and gave him a bowl of soup. Then she explained, «The secret of the world is this: the world is entirely circular and you will go round and round endlessly, never finding what you want, unless you have found what you really want inside yourself. When you follow a star you know you will never reach that star; rather it will guide you to where you want to go. It's a reference point, not an end in itself, even though you seem to be following it. So it is with the world. It will only ever lead you back to yourself. The end of all your exploring will be to cease from exploration and know the place for the first time.» The young man thanked her and in the morning set out for home.

  That's the thing,' said Mrs Munde. 'Knowing your orbit, like they do. They don't drift, they travel, but they always move back to their original place.'

  'I thought you could never go back,' said Gloria, dredging up a bit of philosophy she'd seen in some magazine. 'What about progress?'

  'Progress is a mixed bag,' her mother told her. 'Some things get better, but some things get a lot worse, it seems to me. Besides, if you've dropped a stitch somewhere in the jumper of life, you have to pick it up again or your pattern will come out lopsided.'

  If Mrs Munde had been able, she would have told Gloria that progress is not linear, and that only the very stupid associate what is primitive with what is outmoded. As it was, she talked instead about the jumper of life, which we don't much want to listen to as it is rather a sentimental regression after her first and pertinent point about dropped stitches. While she continues we can talk among ourselves.

  Just as a point of interest: the Bible is probably the most anti-linear text we possess, which is why it's such a joy. People have believed for centuries, on the authority of the book of Genesis, that there was once a deluge over the whole world. Maybe Genesis is less important than it was, but we still like flood stories - whether they're Plato's Atlantis or yarns about the Loch Ness monster. Freud says we are preoccupied with deluges as a safeguard against bed-wetting. This may or may not be true; what remains true is the potency of the myth. Myths hook and bind the mind because at the same time they set the mind free: they explain the universe while allowing the universe to go on being unexplained; and we seem to need this even now, in our twentieth-century grandeur. The Bible writers didn't care that they were bunching togethe
r sequences some of which were historical, some preposterous, and some downright manipulative. Faithful recording was not their business; faith was. They set it out in order to create a certain effect, and did it so well that we're still arguing about it. Every believer is an anarchist at heart. True believers would rather see governments topple and history rewritten than scuff the cover of their faith. For them, all things are possible. They are poets, insomuch as poetry expands, whereas prose defines. Believers are dangerous and mad and may even destroy the world in a different deluge if they deem it necessary to keep the faith. They are fanatics, and reasonable people will never deal with their excesses until reasonable people find a counter-myth in themselves and learn to fight fire with fire. It's very potent, that Punch and Judy show book. The Romantics didn't need it because they found their own fire; but almost every other quasi-revolt has gone back to it, because when the heart revolts it wants outrageous things that cannot possibly be factual. Robes and incense and larger-than-life and miracles and heroes. It's all there, it's heart-food, and the more we deprive ourselves of colours and folly, the more attractive that now legitimate folly will become.

  But read it; read it for its arrogance, its sleight of hand. It's very beautiful, and it's a pointer for living. The mistake is to use it as a handbook. That way madness lies. When Mrs Munde delivered herself into the everlasting hands of the Almighty she did so because her heart was too loud for this muffled world. She was out of place. She loved the stars and she had no one to talk to; she found romance and it wasn't enough. She was not free-thinking in a sense that would have allowed her to question the institutions that made her moody: her family, her marriage, her career prospects. Suddenly she was offered a choice that gave her the space to be safe and eccentric at the same time. She took it, and the mind gave way a little — as minds do in the face of a massive compromise that can't be articulated. She's soggy round the edges and peculiar in her outlook but her heart is still loud; and to keep the roaring inside, however you do it, must be worth something.

  Gloria sighed. As yet she hadn't had a calling and so she didn't know the power that involved. She didn't know that on the wild nights no one can call you home except the one who knows your name. For Mrs Munde the wild nights came very often, her lion heart being what it was. She couldn't risk not reaching home again; and so if the Lord could bring her home, and the Lord wanted her to make hamburgers, she was going to do it. It seemed to her like a bargain.

  They fell into silence until they reached home. Gloria thought of going to bed. She wanted to touch her mother, but that was such a new feeling she decided to leave it until another time. There might not be any Gross Reality around to save them if it started to go wrong. Mrs Munde said she was going to stay up and read Genesis again.

  'The film won't be as good as the book,' she sighed. 'They never are.'

  Gloria just smiled. She didn't care about the film. It was a means to an end as far as she was concerned — her own ends, her own development.

  'I'll see you for breakfast. We can eat my fish.'

  Once in her hammock Gloria fell instantly asleep, and dreamed that she was walking through a valley of stars that all seemed very close until she tried to touch them. One star she wanted more than the others, and followed it for many miles until she came to a lake. Exhausted, she sat down and noticed that the star was sitting down too, but in the water. Laughing she got up and plunged in to catch it, but it broke in her hands. Each time she tried to catch it it broke again, but when she sat beside it, it stayed whole. She looked up and saw that it was really in the sky and its image in the water. She didn't understand. Then at her elbow she heard a tapping and it was the orange demon.

  'What's going on?' she demanded.

  'It's your first lesson in plural reality,' it said, and vanished.

  Doris was in a bad mood. She had been hired as a cleaner and now they wanted her to take on a bit-part as an unbelieving crone. It wasn't especially demanding, just involved wearing old clothes and shaking her fist a lot as the great Unpronounceable tried to force everyone to repent, and when they didn't — false gods being difficult to give up — he would destroy them. Doris didn't like what she'd seen of the script. She knew it was a famous adaptation by the rabbit of romance, but she preferred the original which had some human drama and more than a touch of grand hyperbole. Noah and his cosmic friend had a way with words that Bunny lacked. She kept trying to make the thing progress — first there was this, then that, then the conclusion. In the original Genesis or How I Did It, events, people and places had been lumped together purely for dramatic effect. Doris admired that; it showed a magnificent lack of concern for order and common sense. She wasn't a believer herself because she didn't like mixing politics with poetry, and she felt that Noah had gone too far, trying to take over the world and change everything. He should have been content to stay a cult figure and write extravagant best sellers. She wondered how much his sons had influenced him, and whether his retirement was more to do with letting them get on with it. That was probably it, she thought, given how pushy they all were. And the wives; if only they could have a nasty accident in a dark place.

  Doris was old enough to remember the time when Noah had made his first announcement about the One True God on board Nightqueen. The cloud trick had been the clincher. However had he persuaded the Creator of the universe to appear in a fluorescent cloud and do some fancy sky writing? He deserved to be successful with contacts like that. Then there had been the Glory Crusade and the move towards a religious and political coup. Maybe it had done some good, helped a few people, but she still felt it a pity that someone who had such a way with words should turn out to be a lousy fascist bastard.

  Noah was right wing, suspicious of women and totally committed to money as a medium for communication. Yet when he spoke he charmed. He could transform his audiences' dull grey lives for an hour or two. Doris had been to most of those meetings, and when she came out she realised she had been conned and seduced because most of what he implied was dangerous nonsense. But while she was inside she believed him. He became a focus for pain and disappointment, urged his audience to lay their burden down and rest in him, told them they'd see their country become great again, painted a bright future for their children. It was all colour with Noah. Not surprising then, that many wanted to keep the feeling. He had created a congregation who wanted to look after one another. For some reason, this was their first experience of family. It meant they had friends to call on, resources to claim and, most important, that they would never be alone again. The sinister side lay in their attitude to those who didn't believe. If you refused the message you were an outcast, and although they might claim to love your soul the rest of you could literally and metaphorically go to hell. Doris objected to this. Why should a God of love disown a large part of his beloved? Noah said that love is hard and strong and love makes choices. Love discriminates and above all, love cannot embrace the inherently unlovely, ie those without YAHWEH in their hearts. They might feel concern and patience perhaps, but only for a time. 'Live in the light,' said Noah. 'Know your enemies.' Then there was his preoccupation with frozen food. This was some kind of personal oddity, but why make it a tenet of his doctrine? No believer was supposed to eat frozen food, and no believer was allowed to own a fridge because Noah felt it flouted the life process of freshness, decay and death. It was, he said, flying in the face of nature. Doris loved her fridge: her pots of cottage cheese, her smoked ham, and in the freezer she kept Black Forest Gâteau, Noah's particular anathema. She wondered why he'd hired her even to do the cleaning. Surely he could tell. She imagined the telltale smell of refrigerated food sticking to her clothes. But then, people in power — rulers, fanatics, TV personalities — always made a virtue out of their peculiarities; bow ties, a passion for oysters or silk knickers, and soon you had the whole world clamouring to dress up or make themselves sick. 'Heroes,' she mused. 'Why does the world need heroes?'

  'Obvious,' said the orange de
mon, poking its head round her duster. 'The impulse to worship is impossible to eradicate. Even the most prosaic have to worship something.'

  'What are you doing here?' demanded Doris. 'I thought you were on holiday.'

  'I was. I've come back because there's work to do. I've got a new client, that friend of yours, Gloria. We couldn't leave her like she was, could we?'

  'What's she need you for? She's been reading Northrop Frye.'

  'I'm teaching her to be poetic while she teaches herself to be analytic. She used to be a jar of instant whip, you know.'

  'I know that. I've seen it all before — the move towards reason, the loss of wonder, the empty place in the heart. I'm an organic philosopher, remember.'

  'Yes,' replied the demon patiently, 'but if we don't give her something real to worship she'll end up like her mother. An emotional vacuum is a dangerous thing. You said yourself we all need heroes,' and the demon started to slide up and down Doris' polished floor.

  'You leave off that floor. I've just done it. Besides, I've got my own worries. They want me in this film.'

  'Doesn't matter about the film,' shouted the demon from the other end of the room. 'We're not interested in plot, are we?'

  'You might not be,' grumbled Doris, 'but I am. This may be my one appearance in print. I may never occur in another novel. You appear all the time; you can afford to be relaxed.'

  It was true. The orange Thing turns up everywhere, as a demon, a sprite, omnipotent author, flashes of insight. It is there in Jude the Obscure, The Little Foxes; it probably impersonated Scarlett O'Hara in most of Gone with the Wind. Whenever something other than the plot drops in, it is really the orange demon adding an extra dimension.