The Diviners

by Margaret Laurence

  Memorybank Movie: Bleak House

  Some of the mountains beyond the city are called snow mountains because the snow is perpetual upon those faroff peaks. They are impressive, but frightening. Uncaring gods, they stand cold and infinitely lofty, diminishing the city and its inhabitants. Perpetual snow–the very thought of it makes Morag experience that iciness crystallizing her own blood. She stares at the mountains from the boardinghouse window, but can never look for very long. This is not to be her final settling-place, obviously. People of the city, the real inhabitants, born here or having adopted the place, do not feel the same way. They do not feel hemmed in or threatened by these mountains.

  Insane to have come here. Would have been better to have gone back to Manawaka. Christie needs her, and she needs a home for herself and her child, when it is born. But there is no way she can return to Manawaka. If she is to have a home, she must create it.

  Down at the harbour, where Morag sometimes walks, hoping to understand the place, the vast ships cluster and creak, groaning and shunting, wallowing herds of ungainly sea-monsters. Then, surprisingly, one will glide majestically from the harbour, transformed by movement, as clumsy waddling seals are transformed into eel-like litheness when they swim. The gulls scream imprecations, their tongues hoarse and obscene, but the white flash of their wings is filled with grace abounding.

  The boardinghouse is in Kitsilano, the rundown part of the area. A tall narrow frame house, last painted around the turn of the century, no doubt, and now a non-unpleasant uniform grey, not the heavy hard grey of a uniform, but the light sea-bleached grey of driftwood, silver without silver’s sheen. Having once hated the unpainted houses along Hill Street, Morag now feels at home with this shade, shade in both senses, or perhaps even three, a colour ghostly-subtle as shadows, welcoming cool. It has no pretensions. Weather has created it. She prefers it to the jazzy split-level houses in the west side of the city, across the Lion’s Gate Bridge. She likes the bridge’s name, but not the steel-girdered giant itself.

  The house in Kitsilano is neighboured by others of the same ilk. Firetraps, lived in by people who can’t afford to live anywhere else. Morag’s landlady, Mrs. Maggie Tefler, some forty-odd years old, frizzy bottle-blonde hair, is a short woman, short in stature, nearly always short of breath (high blood pressure, stoutness) and decidedly short-tempered. Morag, however, is not in any position to quibble. She came to Maggie Tefler’s bleak house because it was cheap and the room looked halfway clean. Her first room was on the second floor, and had a divan bed and an old brown carpet with vague geometrical designs in blue and red. It also had a sink. This room lasted only a month. It was the sink which was Morag’s undoing. One early morning, her door alas unlocked, she vomited copiously into the sink. Finally able to look up, eyes and nose streaming, she perceived Mrs. Tefler standing in the doorway, arms akimbo in a kimono of artificial silk, nauseatingly pink-poppy-patterned.

  Maggie T.:

  I thought I heard you coupla times before, upchucking. In the john. Wasn’t sure it was you, Miss Gunn.

  Morag:

  Yeh, it was me.

  Maggie:

  (crudely, but with accuracy) I’d say you got a bun in the oven. Either that or the booze, and you don’t have the signs of an alkie, as I should know, being probably the world’s top authority on rubbydubs.

  Morag:

  Huh?

  Maggie:

  Winos. I get more than my fair quota here, you can bet your bottom dollar. You preggers, kid?

  Morag:

  Yeh, I think so. It seems unbelievable.

  Maggie:

  C’mon, now, honey, don’t give me that line, like he only screwed you once and you never thought it was possible the first time. You’re no virginal seventeen, Morag–mind if I call you Morag? I dunno what’s with you, but why don’t you go on back to yer hubby?

  Morag:

  What? How did you–

  Maggie:

  (smirking) Easy. You still got the mark of a wedding ring on yer finger. It hasn’t been off you for that long.

  Morag:

  Okay, Mrs. Tefler. You are right. But I am not going back.

  Maggie:

  Kid not yer hubby’s?

  Morag:

  (with admirable restraint) That is my affair, I believe.

  Maggie:

  Oh beg yer pardon, yer highness. Yer affair is right, kid. Well, what you gonna do?

  Morag:

  (truthfully and with considerable panic) I don’t know. I can keep on working for a while.

  Maggie:

  You reckon Sanford and Willingham Real Estate is gonna put up much longer with a typist who keeps rushing out to puke?

  Morag:

  (furiously) I don’t, goddamn it. It only hits me this time of day.

  Maggie:

  Well, kid, what about when you get big as the backside of a barn? It’s your business, of course. But if you wanna work here–cleaning, cooking, doing the dishes–you can stay. Nice room up there on the top floor. Good view and all. Room and board and a little extra. What could be fairer? I know I’m a sucker, but I never could stand seeing a decent girl in trouble without I have to try to help. Maggie, my Wayne used to say, you got a heart soft as the centre of a toasted marshmallow. How about it, honey? Well, come on, I haven’t got all day.

  Morag:

  Okay, Mrs. Tefler. And–thanks.

  Maggie:

  Don’t mention it, dear. We were put here on this earth to help one another, is what I always say.

  So it is that Morag now resides in a room on the top floor, by which the saintly Mrs. Tefler has really meant, as it turns out, the attic, which has been more or less fixed up as a room. Oddly enough (although she does not tell Mrs. Tefler) Morag becomes fond of this room. It is, in a very real sense, all hers. You have to be on guard against the bare rafters at the extreme edges of the place, or you will bash your skull, but this slight disadvantage weighs small against the room’s many good features. If Maggie Tefler suspected this, she would either try to rent it for a huge sum to someone with Morag’s tastes but more money, or else she would quit paying Morag the minuscule sum which she now forks out reluctantly each week in exchange for virtually all the cooking and cleaning. From Morag’s viewpoint, the bargain isn’t at all a bad one. She dips cautiously into what remains of her five hundred bucks and buys a secondhand oak dresser, a desk, a bookcase, a couple of numdah rugs, a crimson Hudson’s Bay point blanket to cover the single brass bed. These, plus a lamp with a bulbous Japanese-lantern shade, and a poster of a large ruffle-feathered brown owl, all make the room hers.

  A woman, if she is to write, Virginia Woolf once said (or words to that effect), must have a room of her own. The garret bit never appealed to Morag unduly, but by God, it is at least a room of her own. The only trouble is that she feels too tired and lousy most evenings to do any writing at all.

  Memorybank Movie: Portrait of the Artist as a Pregnant Skivvy

  Morag, growing already in girth at four months, is washing the breakfast dishes. The water is lukewarm and greasy, but her digestion, fortunately, is steadier than it was, and her energy greater. In fact, she is strong as an ox, the doctor tells her, apparently with disapproval.

  Old Mr. Johnson, one of the inmates of Bleak House, is sitting at the kitchen table, shooting the breeze with Morag. He looks about a hundred and ninety, and frail as a feather, but he has a powerful pair of lungs.

  “Yes, siree,” he bellows, “I mind well that time at Williams Lake, talking to old Peter Paulson–he’d bin a prospector and still thought he was. Nutty as a fruitcake. I was a salesman in them days, d’you see. I was travelling in shoe polish, harness polish and brass polish. Wellsir, he says to me, there’s only two mortal things in this life I can’t stand, Mr. Johnson, just two mortal things–one is racial prejudice, and th’other is Indians. How’d you like that?”

  The two of them are still laughing when kindly Mrs. Tefler sashays in, bearing a letter.
/>   “This here is for you, I suppose,” she says suspiciously.

  Morag reaches for it. Luckily she has told Mrs. Tefler that such an epistle might arrive, but Maggie still has her doubts, and doubtless hankers to open and read it, ostensibly to make sure she is handing it over to the right person.

  Morag has written, painfully, to Brooke, not able yet to mention her pregnancy, but telling him that she is now using her own name. His letter is addressed: Mrs. Brooke T. Skelton. Morag puts it in her apron pocket. Mrs. Tefler waits in vain for her to open it.

  Later, in her room, Morag reads it. It says, in part, that Morag has now surely proved her point and shown she could get along alone and isn’t it time she began acting sensibly once more? He will be prepared to try to forget that one occurrence. If she needs the train fare back to Toronto, he is prepared to send it.

  Morag sits on the bed, looking at the page. Brooke’s words–the closest he will ever be able to come, in expressing his need for her.

  I need you, too, Brooke. I care about you. I can’t stand this.

  There is, however, no way back. Would she have gone back if she hadn’t been pregnant? At this moment, she feels she would have. Was it only for that reason, after all, she had wanted to get pregnant, so her leaving of Brooke would be irrevocable? So she would not be able to change her mind? And had chosen Jules only so there wouldn’t be the slightest chance of pretending the child was Brooke’s? How many people had she betrayed? Has she even betrayed the child itself? This thought paralyzes her. Or is she only interpreting herself, now, in the worst possible ways?

  Why had she imagined that she could look after and support a kid, on her own? It had seemed a perfectly natural notion at the time. Now it seems merely lunacy. She will have to go on welfare. Never. But of course she will, if necessary. What will happen to her, and to the child?

  She recalls Brooke’s certainty, his control of situations. Even if that calm was only outer, how reassuring.

  Don’t deceive yourself Morag. For you, ultimately, far from reassuring. I don’t know. I just don’t know.

  She no longer feels certain of anything. There is no fixed centre. Except, of course, that there is a fixed centre, and furthermore it is rapidly expanding inside her own flesh.

  She stops crying, puts on her coat and headscarf, and goes out. The hell with Maggie Tefler. The cleaning of the rooms can damn well wait.

  Winter. Not snow, here, or not this year, anyway. Rain. The sidewalks are awash with it. Interminable grey rain. Morag feels perversely, almost angrily, akin to it.

  Go ahead, God, let it rain, then. Let it rain forever. I won’t be drowned.

  When she returns, she writes to Brooke, telling him.

  She does not hear from him again. She receives, instead, a letter from Brooke’s solicitors, asking her to forward a doctor’s certificate confirming pregnancy, and will she also please send her own signed and witnessed statement to the effect that the father of the child is not her husband, and will she please, further, forward the name of the father and the dates when adultery took place.

  Morag complies with the first two requests and refuses the third.

  Dear Morag:

  There is no way it can be done painlessly, as I know. It is a thoroughly nasty and barbaric procedure, designed to make everyone suffer as much as possible. All you can do is live through it and survive. And you will. So just hang on, eh? And remember, you didn’t do it lightly.

  Love,

  Ella

  Is, however, this last statement true? Morag doesn’t have a clue, anymore. Perhaps it will all become clear in time.

  Christie writes with a spidery hand to say he is sorry Morag has split with her husband, and does she need any money because he’s got a few-odd bucks stashed away. She reads the letter numbly, and answers no thanks but thanks a million. She has not yet told Christie about the child. She is not sure how he would take it. Would he merely think she is a faithless bitch? She cannot bear that possibility. Not yet.

  Late evening, and the Bleak House doorbell rings. A minute later, Mrs. Tefler, voice rich with reproach, shouts up the stairway.

  “It’s for you, Morag. A guy.”

  A guy? For an instant Morag imagines it is Jules. Realizes how much she wants and needs to see him. Then recalls that he doesn’t have her address. Has he got it through the publishers? Impossible. Jules would never do that.

  “Who is it, Mrs. Tefler?”

  “How would I know?” the saintly Maggie replies, verbally withdrawing the hem of her respectable pink kimono. “He says he’s from some outfit called Walton and Pierce.”

  “Send him up!” Morag shouts.

  Amazing! Astounding! Wait for the next thrilling instalment! An angel of the Lord, probably St. Michael of the Flaming Sword, disguised as a publisher’s rep, has come to explain how paradise can be regained.

  Or has he come to say Spear of Innocence hasn’t yet earned its royalty advance, and they want the rest of the money back?

  She should have gone down to greet him. Graciously. Yeh, graciously, all three tons of her. No way she is going up and down those ten zillion stairs again today. She puts on her blue flannel housecoat, which makes her appearance resemble only that of a modified schooner rather than a galleon in full sail.

  “Hi, Miss Gunn–shall I call you Morag?”

  He is a middle-aged moustached man, a little out of breath after the dizzy ascent of the Tefler Grand Staircase, linoleum-covered.

  “I’m Hank Masterson,” he goes on. “W and P’s local representative. They wrote me you were in the city, and separated, you know, and I thought I’d drop around and see how you were doing. Also, I’ve got some news. They thought it might be good to deliver it to you personally.”

  “Bad news?” Why should she respond this way, instantly?

  “No. Good.”

  “Really? My God, I could do with some.”

  Hank looks at her.

  “I can see that,” he says pleasantly. “Well, your novel’s been accepted by a publisher in England and one in the States.”

  Morag is silent. Stunned.

  “Will that mean some more money?” she says at last.

  What a question. Mercenary, he will be muttering to himself. If only she weren’t so goddamn near being broke.

  “Sure,” he is saying. “Not a fortune, but some. Listen, are you strapped for dough?”

  “Well, more or less.”

  She explains her domestic arrangements at Bleak House.

  “That’s crazy,” he says. “You should be writing.”

  “Yeh. Well. I am, to some extent. Stories, mainly. But not many.”

  “Send them out, then. I’ll get the firm to put you in touch with an agent. Ever tried your hand at articles? I mean, feature articles for newspapers? It’s a hell of a thing to suggest you spend your time doing, maybe, when you should be at another novel.”

  “I would do almost any damn thing at all,” Morag says truthfully. “I never thought of articles. What sort?”

  “Oh–light and amusing, preferably.”

  “You mean, like–Sunday School Picnics I Never Attended?”

  “That sort of thing. You haven’t tried?”

  It occurs to her that she has not been very enterprising.

  “No,” she says. “I’ve been kind of taken up with other things.”

  “Things will change,” says St. Michael Masterson.

  Things do change, although scarcely at the speed of light. Morag sends her short stories to Milward Crispin, literary agent, and after innumerable tries on his part, one is accepted. On the strength of this, plus the royalty cheques from England and the States on Spear of Innocence, Morag resigns from her role as domestic at Bleak House. She would have had to do so anyway, soon, as her girth prevents light-footed action around the place. She continues to rent the room. Maggie Tefler is suspicious, obviously thinking that such a pregnant lady cannot have suddenly become a hustler, but if not that, what?

 
; “You have come into some money, dear?” she enquires.

  Morag explains, but guardedly.

  “Think of that,” Mrs. Tefler says. “That guy said you were an author, but naturally I never believed him.”

  “Oh, naturally.”

  “Well,” Maggie says, sighing heftily, “it must be nice to be able to earn a living just sitting there.”

  “Yeh.”

  Morag embarks on frenzied attempts to write and sell articles, any kind of articles, to the local press. The Features Editor, perhaps growing tired of being bombarded, finally begins to accept these small gems, which could not be confused with deathless prose, but over which Morag sweats and drudges, wishing she had the gift of churning them out. During the months when she is wrestling with these articles, she writes no fiction, nothing involving. Nothing.

  Memorybank Movie: Voices from Past Places

  You mean right up the stairs all the way to the top?” the woman’s voice says.

  “That’s what I said,” Maggie replies laconically.

  “Heavenly days, where does she live? In the attic?”

  “The top floor,” Maggie Tefler says icily, “has the best view in the house.”

  Morag, on the second landing, proceeding back from the bathroom, overhears this exchange. Whose voice? She knows it, but from where?

  Click-click-click. Heels on the stairs. Morag waits. Then catches sight of the woman. Still slender–thinner, actually–and still fair-haired although her hair has darkened a little and is now done in an upsweep. Smartly tailored suit, the longish jacket of which only partially hides the fact that her hips have become slightly too bony. Her face more sharp-featured, more drawn than it should be at twenty-eight, the same age as Morag.

  “Julie! Julie Kazlik!”