by John Bowen
Muriel was singing: “Root them up. Put them behind. Four little foxes that will spoil the vine. Envy, jealousy, malice, pride; All if allowed will in your heart abide.” She had a great store of such songs, and would croon for hours to herself, Wide, Wide as the Ocean or I’m H.A.P.P.Y. or Lonesome Valley or any of a dozen others that I cannot now remember. Sonya also sang as she sat in the shade, swollen and heavy in her pregnancy, and the different words and tunes would cut across each other and interweave in gentle disharmony.
The god Arthur remained within the inner cabin. The men slept on the open deck, the women had our former sleeping quarters, and the god Arthur lived permanently in the bedroom of the raft; it had become his temple. Only Banner, who was now the priest of the god Arthur, was allowed to see him, and Banner prepared his food, though I continued to cook for the rest. The quarto volumes of the raft’s log had been taken into the temple, and were now the Sacred Books, and in the main cabin a candle and the god Arthur’s old yellow oilskins had been grouped together to make an altar. When we gathered together round the cabin table for supper, Banner would light the candle, and place the god Arthur’s portion on this altar as an offering; then we would all turn our backs while he carried it into the next room. No particular ritual was yet associated with the god’s washing-up; his plate was washed with the others by the women.
“Flow softly,” Sonya sang. “Flow softly, sweet Afton,” and Tony, to whom she was teaching the song, echoed, her, “Sweet Afton”.
“Flow softly, sweet Afton, Among thy green braes….”
“… green braes.”
(“Put them behind—” from Muriel.)
“Flow softly. I’ll sing thee, A song in thy praise.”
“Four little foxes that will spoil the vine.”
“My Mary’s asleep, By the murmuring stream….”
“… stream.”
“Envy, jealousy, malice, pride….”
“Flow softly, sweet Afton. Disturb not her dream….”
“All if allowed will in your heart abide.”
“… abide.”
“No, dream.”
“Dream.”
I moved away, and went to sit by Hunter. I was in a dream of tigers. I could not talk to Sonya any more; I could not talk to Tony. Sometimes during these days after the meeting of the currents, I would find myself shivering violently; sometimes my voice would play tricks, hovering and changing like a boy’s, breaking when I was nervous into a bronchial falsetto. I became furtive. I would hang about the fringes of a conversation, my glance sliding over the faces of the speakers, holding no one’s gaze. For a while I would force myself to behave sensibly; when the strain of this became too great, I would retire into the private jungle of my tigers until restlessness drove me to look for company. Sonya, although she could not share my feelings, knew that something was wrong, and was sorry for it. Once she came over (although more often she would avoid me) and laid her head against my shoulder, but neither of us took the chance to speak, and nothing was gained but a moment’s peace. At other times, because she was herself worried and frightened, she would snap at me. “You’ll only begin to twitch if you hold yourself tense all the time,” she said, and I did fancy afterwards that a nerve leapt independently from time to time at the corners of my mouth.
Banner appeared. “The god Arthur wants some glue,” he said.
“Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green——?”
“Braes.”
“Braes. Flow gently. I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise.”
“That’s right, Tony. Now let’s try to get the tune.”
“What’s he want glue for?”
“He didn’t say.”
“It is better not to question the god’s desires,” Gertrude said. “Whatever the god wants is good. Perhaps he has a use for glue. Perhaps—” her voice took on a more reverent tone—“Perhaps he just wants it.”
“I think there’s some glue with the tools in the hold. I’ll go and get it.”
“No, I’ll go,” Banner said. “Otherwise it would only have to be purified.”
Gertrude said, “Now we’ll miss our game. But of course the service of the god must come first.”
“I’ll give you a game if you like,” I said.
“We’ll have to keep a separate score then.”
“I don’t mind if there isn’t a score at all.”
“Oh, we have to keep a score. There’s no point in playing if you don’t remember who’s won.”
“Try again, Tony,” Sonya said.
“My Mary’s asleep by——?”
“The mur——”
“Mur——”
“—muring stream….”
“Can’t you shut up singing that?” I said. “It only puts me off.”
“Envy, jealousy, malice, pride.”
Gertrude said, “You have to take me.” She moved her man over four of my Glub Cushions, and swept them off the board, saying, “You’re not very good, are you?”
“I can’t concentrate with Tony caterwauling all the time.”
“All if allowed will in your heart abide.”
Banner came up from the hold, carrying a large brown paper bag. “I’m not sure whether this is gum arabic or another sort of Glub,” he said.
“Gum arabic.”
“I’ll take it in then.”
Gertrude said, “We’d better try halma. You’re not much good at draughts.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“John,” Gertrude said. “Don’t struggle. The god Arthur is good and necessary. Why don’t you accept the truth as we do, and then you will feel right with yourself.”
“That’s right,” Banner said, reappearing. “Just make an act of faith. Everything follows from that.”
“You’ll be a different man.”
“I don’t want to be a different man.”
“Don’t you? Are you so happy as you are?”
“What does he want with the glue?”
“He wants me to make a mask,” Banner said. “The women can help. We soak paper in the glue, and it turns into papier mâché. Then we mould it, and it hardens.”
“What does he want a mask for?”
“He says his face is too terrible for us to see.”
“You see it.”
“Not lately. He’s been putting his head under the sheet. I think he’s growing a beard. He says we’re to make eyeholes and a mouth. He says this is going to be a smiling mask, but later on we may have to make a frowning one.”
“Oh, Harold,” Gertrude said, “I hope he will never appear to us in a frowning mask.”
“Not to us,” Muriel said. “But he may to some.”
*
They boiled the gum in a pot with sea water, soaked pages from Britain’s Beauty Spots in it, and made a sort of papier mâché. There was enough for both a smiling and a frowning mask, so both were made; Gertrude sketched in the features, which had a strong flavour of the Greek theatre. Banner told us that the god Arthur was pleased with the masks, and soon we should be allowed to enter the temple, and hold communion with him—“when his beard’s grown, I expect,” Banner said.
In fact, the god’s beard was rather strange. It was sparse, and grew in a fringe round the edges of the mask; he looked like a Mormon playing Oedipus. Also, since not even Banner was allowed to give the god the kind of basin haircut we gave each other, he had become shaggy. We had little chance, however, to observe the details of the god’s appearance closely at this time, because we had to keep our heads bent in reverence. Speaking from behind the mask, the god Arthur sounded as though he had no roof to his mouth. “Ha ha ha hee ho hi,” he said, and Banner translated. “The god tells us that soon we shall see great things. He has a surprise for us.”
The air in the cabin was close and hot. There was the stench of sweat, both ours and the god’s, for I do not think he had been washing very much; I suppose he did not care to risk meeting any of us in the bathroom. I realized f
or the first time that it wasn’t any fun being the god Arthur, and that Arthur, however deluded by self and circumstance, was sacrificing himself for us. Sonya moaned suddenly, and fell down in a faint. “Hee ha hee ho ho ho,” said the god Arthur, and Banner said, “She has been overcome by the nearness of the god,” Immediately Muriel fainted also.
Tony and I carried Sonya out into the air. There were deep pools of sadness below her eyes under the tan; she looked small and afraid. “What’s going to become of me?” she said, “Johnny, I’m frightened.”
I motioned to Tony to go away, and he did. “I’ll help,” I said. “It’s not anything to … native women … they just go off into the bushes. They don’t need doctors or anything.” She gripped my hand tightly. I said, “We’ll all help. Both the women.”
“Not Muriel.”
“No, not Muriel. I’ll keep her away. Gertrude’ll help you. And it’s not for a month or so yet. We’ll find land before then. There’ll be … oh, all sorts of people.”
“No, there won’t.” There was a long silence. “It doesn’t matter really.” Sonya did not let go my hand. “We won’t let her be a dancer whatever happens. There’s no future in it,” she said.
Banner came fussing out. “Has she recovered? Is she all right?” He had removed his vestments; that is to say he had taken off the made-over sheet that the god Arthur required him to wear over his trunks. “I expect she was seized,” he said. “You often hear of such cases in the United States. And in the Bible too, of course.”
“I expect so.”
“The spirit, you know.”
“I expect so.”
“Muriel has been frothing. It is most impressive.”
“You’d better go and look after her then.”
When Banner had gone inside the cabin again, I said gently to Sonya, “I won’t be so foolish. I know he’s really mine. I know when it was too. It was that time at Chew Magna. He’ll be born out of … out of love, Sonya; that’s always an easy birth. I love you. You know that. I won’t be stupid any more.”
But Sonya was asleep, and could not hear me, and even as I watched over her, sleeping gently with her head on my lap in the shade of the cabin, even as I looked down at the sharp bones of her face and her swollen belly that stood out all the more prominently from her wasted body, even as tenderness and compassion and all those parts of love that I had for so long stifled swept over me in a flood, the old jealousies returned with the tenderness, and I began again to question and to wonder.
*
Muriel’s fit was a great score for her. She said she had been possessed. “I’m afraid she may bear fruit,” Banner said. “You must see how this undermines my position.”
Gertrude said, “It isn’t fair. Aren’t I the god’s handmaiden too?” She took it very ill, and spent much time mooning on deck, staring at the water, and sucking her thumb. I suggested that she might become possessed as well. “Oh, if only there were that possibility,” she replied, and I thought at our next communion with the god that I saw her begin to quiver in preparation, but Muriel forestalled her. “I don’t think Muriel ought to be possessed every Sunday afternoon,” I said. “It’s sort of suburban.”
Shortly after this, the god Arthur demanded first fruits. For the time being, the first fruits were fish. Banner would carry Hunter’s first catch of the day into the temple, and the god would decide whether to have it for lunch or order it to be thrown to the sharks. The fish had to be caught; none of the flying fish that fell on deck during the night would do. They were a great nuisance, and a hazard to the sleepers; Banner especially would awake with a shout when one landed on him.
Banner had become touchy, first with having his new position, and then with not being sure of it. He and Muriel began to get into arguments. Muriel said that, since she had been possessed by the god and might give birth at any moment, she ought to have preferential treatment and special food. Banner pointed out that Sonya was also an expectant mother, and much nearer her time. Muriel said that it was not at all the same thing. Whoever was the father of Sonya’s child—and she looked wickedly at me—he was not a god. Tony said, “Sometimes I wish there was chips with this fish,” and the conversation took another turn.
*
We caught a shark. It was Hunter’s decision. He said, “Going to catch a shark today. Come and help.”
The time was about ten o’clock in the morning. The sea was as clear and as still as usual; the sharks kept their usual station. Hunter said he had heard that pork was the proper bait, but we would have to use another fish, gutted so that it bled. The bait was taken almost at once, and we four men hauled the shark in while the women gave little cries of encouragement. We kept a good deal of line between the shark and ourselves, and we watched from a distance as it flapped and writhed on deck. Muriel said, “They’ve only got to touch you with their teeth, you know. You can see how sharp they are. You could lose a leg.”
Tony said, “There was some kids stoned a cat to death in the bomb site near where we lived.”
Sonya said, “Did you help?”
“No. But I watched. I was only twelve. When it was nearly dead, one of the kids went to bash its head with a stone, and it got him. His hand went septic after.”
We kept well away from the dead shark for most of the morning, just in case. When we were sure it was safe to approach, we discovered that we had no idea what to do with it. Banner said, “Shark steaks. Rather like chicken, I believe, if properly cooked. But Muriel didn’t fancy that, and neither, we decided, did the rest of us, so we pushed the dead shark back into the water, and the other sharks ate it, having no such scruples.
*
Fighting broke out between Muriel and Gertrude after supper that night.
We had passed the most unpleasant period of our gastronomic history; there was no more raw fish. By experimenting with different kinds of fish, by broiling and boiling and steaming and frying and baking in the ashes of the fire, by varying the quantities of Glub and sea-water, I managed to prevent our supper menus from becoming monotonous; “Surprise us,” Sonya had said in the early days, and so I had, and surprised myself as well. For this evening I had prepared flying fish, fried crisp until you could eat the bones. Muriel looked at them with disrelish. “The god doesn’t care for flying fish,” she said.
Gertrude said, “How do you know?”
“He never has them for his first fruits.”
“He has what we catch. We never catch flying fish. They catch themselves.”
“The god doesn’t like them.”
“You’re not an authority on what the god likes and doesn’t like. Just because you say you’ve been possessed, that doesn’t make you an authority.”
Muriel did not reply.
Banner came out of the temple. “Well,” he said, “the god has been pleased to accept our little offering, and now we can all tuck in.”
“You see? He does like them.”
“He respects our feelings.”
“The god doesn’t have to respect our feelings. He doesn’t think about them. We’re supposed to respect him and his feelings. If he didn’t like flying fish, he’d throw them back. Isn’t that right, Harold?”
“Well——”
Muriel said, “I don’t pay any mind to you. You’re only jealous.”
“What have I got to be jealous about?”
“Because the god possesses me.”
Gertrude said, “I was possessed a long time before you were, if you want to know. The god possessed me before he was a god.”
“He was always a god. We didn’t know it before.”
“Well then.”
“Well then what?”
“He was a god when he possessed me then.”
“He never possessed you.”
“I know whether I was possessed or not.”
Banner had been making little ineffectual movements of pacification, but he was hampered by his sheet. “Ladies, ladies!” he said.
“Why d
o you let her walk all over you, Harold?”
“I don’t pay any mind,” Muriel said. “Jealous bitch!”
Gertrude picked up a flying fish with her fingers. She leaned across the table, and slapped Muriel in the face with it. The fish was so crisp and brittle that it broke at once into pieces. I said, “You see? I said you could eat the bones.” Muriel picked up a cup.
“No,” Banner said, “don’t throw anything. I’ll tell the god.” The cup missed Gertrude, and was shattered against the cabin wall.
Gertrude pushed back her chair, and stood up. I said, “For goodness’ sake, hold on to them.”
Tony said, “I don’t like to.” Muriel stood up also.
“Harold!”
“Ladies! Ladies!”
Gertrude said, “I’ve some pride left, Harold. I won’t be insulted in front of all of you. I’ve had a lot of cruelty and inconsiderateness to put up with in my life—” she was shaking, and had to hold on to the table for support—“Parts that should have come to me have been given to someone else, because I’ve always told people what I thought, and never pretended. I’ve sat alone in a tiny room, waiting for the telephone to ring. I’ve made myself ask for favours sometimes; I’ve eaten dirt, and been refused. I’ve watched my own pupils pretend not to see me in the foyers of theatres. I’ve been ignored in the street.”
“Now, Gertrude.”
“This woman. What right has she to insult me? She falls down in a fit, and calls it possession.”
“That’ll do from you,” Muriel said. “You keep your place. If the god prefers me to you, then you ought to take your medicine and keep quiet about it, instead of——”
Gertrude launched herself across the table, and stabbed with a fork at Muriel’s stomach. But the distance was too great for her, and only one of the tines of the fork penetrated Muriel’s skin, while Gertrude herself landed with her face in a plate. Muriel gazed at the single drop of blood raised by the wound. “I’m bleeding,” she cried. Gertrude recovered, and put herself in position for another attack, but Muriel, crying, “I’m bleeding. You bitch, I’m bleeding,” left her place, and came around the end of the table to grapple with her.