Mary turned and glanced again at Sebastian’s half-submerged body at her side in bed. His face and head seemed subtly eaten, oddly consumed, in the half-light and taut wave of shadow in the room. This was John’s father beyond a shadow of doubt … and yet so was Father Marsden (he was also John’s father), eaten beard, eaten treasuries of wisdom. She should have been logically repelled by the sight of Sebastian but found herself relating to him within the crisis he endured through Mother Diver’s shadowy arms around him in the sea of sleep. That Diver embrace, that oddly maternal and oceanic shadow upon him, was curiously processional as if it broke him into a multitude of little selves…. It made Mary jump a little—as a mother and a wife herself—to see Jenny Diver in that slumbering light and it raised Sebastian into heraldic procession as Mary recalled a number of sleepwalking faces and figures she had seen in the city that afternoon.
They too were creatures of the sea of disease, they too had that bitten, asleep look as if they were familiar with the most secret currents of vulnerable fatherhood, Father Equality and Father Inequality, within a tidal void—a current both empty and full—in which one sometimes subsided into the minimum of real decision, into the minimum of real insight, as prelude to increments of painful, sometimes half-tragic, sometimes half-abortive, yet slowly maturing perception of the riddle of the womb of age. Mother Diver would save all, would take care of every emergency in that subsidence or ebb tide, that riddle of crisis. Mother Diver was here in response to crisis.
To think of Jenny Diver like that seemed a bitchy way on the face of things, Mary felt, to recall her own mother who had vanished from sight twenty-odd years ago to return afresh now in a tide of depression that nibbled at unemployed Sebastian’s head. Bitch of necessity! Depression, economic and psychological, stimulated the return of a mother for all emergencies to seize upon equal and unequal fathers, Sovereign Father Money, Sovereign Father Gold, Sovereign Father Poverty.
Insatiable mother who seemed now to make starkly clear the inadequacies of Stella and herself! Mary shuddered, she stared at Sebastian. Her own father, she dimly recalled, had run away to live and die at sea. Perhaps Sebastian would learn to run…. Unless he could bear insatiable, eccentric Mother Freedom. And that reflection took Mary by surprise. It seemed a judgement of herself in respect of John, a timely reminder to desist from claustrophobic affection, claustrophobic order. The faces she had seen in the city seemed to move in circles just within or without a strictly designed circumference. The traffic too revolved in grooves or cycles within or without strict location or wheel. There was an indefinable edge, an indefinable tide, that lapped everywhere and drew one into unpredictable haven that was more pertinent than strict, unhappy queue. And that eccentricity seemed necessary. It cast a shadow of curative doubt, however pitiless, upon everything, a curious sense of the mother of freedom lurking everywhere in age-old fixation or diseased habit.
Mary was standing in a supermarket. It was perfectly familiar, rows of household utensils, toilet paper, food stalls and counters with expensive meats and fish, high-priced vegetables, fruit, haberdashery, garish paperbacks with guns and naked ladies, washing powder competing with washing powder, soap and lipstick competing with soap and lipstick. Everything was familiar except the eccentric emotion they engendered in her now, eccentric advertisement, manipulations of greed and appetite, sophistications of excess, sophistications of waste, sophistications of necessity; and through it all—despite it all—perception of Mother Quality as real however marred by brute fashion and uncertainty about the state of the world, its wealth, its poverty.
Shadow of curative doubt was one of the shawls Mother Diver wore to give substance to eccentric insistence on freedom of choice, and to imply unwittingly perhaps that no fact or feature compelled her to pander to self-indulgent daughter or son; her genuine cares therefore were strangely solemn love, even supernatural resolution—on one hand—against nature as brute law and—on the other—a brooding uncertainty about the metaphysical quality of qualities that creates just competition (the justice of intelligent and true competition) as superior in Mother Blood to Thieves’ Manifesto, dreaded Communist Manifesto. Even so, in pursuit of “quality of qualities”, a metaphysic of curative doubt—planted in carnival, diseased quantities for sale in the marketplace/supermarket of history—made Mary wonder at distinctions hidden but resident in Mother Blood, Mother Dread. Could theft by the rich from the poor, by the poor from the rich, possess a metaphysical justification? Was the theft of fire from the gods justified? Were the gods truly rich or truly poor sons of space, Jupiter, Saturn, and others?
Mother Diver’s shawl of curative doubt (as Mary perceived it) enveloped Sebastian and he shifted slightly in bed beside her, uncertain of Father Inequality that gnawed into his frame and made him a lesser mortal than other men, or of Father Equality that raised him in Mother Diver’s arms into a hidden star amongst light years in the womb of space.
The intricacies of that shawl became clearer to Mary as the taut wave of shadow in the room also lifted the room and the house in Dolphin Street until they sailed backwards in time—one human, diminutive light-year back—1981 to 1980.
Now she and diminutive Sebastian were standing on the pavement outside the great supermarket whose goods she had “previously” inspected in “future time”. The sensation of having travelled backwards from 1981 (that lay in the future) into now (1980) that lay in the present reminded her of the slicing logic of John’s scissors in Paradise Park only “yesterday” or “the day before yesterday” that lay in the “future”; another measure of eccentric circuit around the years; reminded her also of Sukey Tawdrey’s eyes falling out of her head to become strangely wider perhaps, more open, in backward glance. That was Mary’s glance now, the strange width, the curious openness of apparently lost yet apparently regained eye for parallel times. It was all symptomatic of crisis—a world crisis—that raises the kingdom of mothers and daughters.
The rain had ceased and the pavement in front of the supermarket glistened like an urban mirage of a stream through that eye. The sun shone bright through a flattened beach of cloud, rainbow iris of sky in the head of space spoke of oceanic distances, the light on the pavement spoke of openness of perception to the curvature of the earth.
The supermarket lay halfway between a church spire at one corner and a subway station at another, sunken in the pavement under one’s feet. This was the religious beat not only of policemen and pedestrians but of an old woman draped, it would seem, in all her possessions, pots, pans, a bag with clothes, and an intricate array of small tins that glistened now in oceanic sun like scales or circular feathers.
Mary’s return to the “now” of 1980 within eyes she possessed that had slipped forwards and backwards across the centuries made her see the old woman as she never had before. Was she (that old woman) resurrection of crisis, was she Mother Diver? How could Mary have passed her in the street so often and not really have seen her? Mary had gone to Paradise Park whereas Jenny was here (was she not?) under a shawl patrolling the pavement between church spire and subway or underground tunnel.
Now—for the first time that she could recall coming face to face with Mother Bleak Freedom, Bleak Necessity—Mary’s wide-opened eyes were focused on the scales and circular feathers of aroused terror of existence. Each scale or feather was a glittering envelope and Mary wondered about secretions of egg or foetus but these—if they existed in some artificial form—were overcast by shawl of “curative doubt”. What was clear were slivers of subsistence that had been deposited in each scale or envelope or feather. Particles of cheese resembled doubtful gold. Fragments of sardine resembled the colour of inflated money. Grains of sugar resembled precious yet valueless metal. Crumbs of bread resembled alchemies of failed substance. A sliver of green vegetable resembled oil. Such slices or minute hands of the clock of uncertain wealth were the old woman’s irreducible morsels of eternity, and as she patrolled the pavement and stopped in front of the supermarket, she c
onducted endless conversations with a million spectres that clung to each morsel. Passers-by ignored her or took her for granted but Mary was held as never before. How could anyone not see who she was—from what depths she had come from the revolving past into the uncertain present?
Some spectres to which she spoke arose from areas of famine around the globe. “Now, now, children,” the old woman said in a soothing voice across the sea to invisible presences. Invisible, Mary knew, but with Sukey Tawdrey’s cousinly/sisterly eyes in her head, she (Mary) dreamt that she saw across the seas what Mother Diver saw as she placed her lips to Sebastian’s unconscious lips in bed beside her as to suffering, hungry spirit, genius of famine. The rain had largely washed away from the pavement a drunk man’s vomit. The stain that remained was the colour of gold to buy food for millions. Sebastian slept like drunk, humanitarian rich and diminutive skeleton in Mother Diver’s cupboard of a shawl, so that pots and pans were able to embrace him. She kissed him with her divided lips. It was a holiday from purest loathing, a holy day or mixture of degraded attachment and incorrigible affection.
Some of the spectres that clung to Mother Diver arose from areas of redundancy to address her on her beat from church spire to underground. The old woman stood quite close to Sebastian now, and Mary could hear her talking to a respectable saleswoman who had lost her job that afternoon.
“We were told”, the saleswoman was saying, “to keep our stocks low, Mother Diver.”
“You should have known then…” Mother Diver said to the saleswoman. “I’ve been keeping my stocks full….”
“We didn’t see”, the saleswoman confessed, “that we were being taken over….”
“By me,” said Mother Diver. “By me. Imagine that.”
“We didn’t realize until today the shop was being cleared for someone to take over….”
“Me,” said old Mother Diver. “Me. Imagine that.”
She stared at Sebastian as the respectable saleswoman vanished. A couple of police officers were advancing along the pavement. Or were they descending the church spire? Mother Diver comprehended Sebastian’s fear, and placed her body upon his until he vanished into the pavement. She then called to the policemen, distracted them from their beat, and allowed Sebastian to fly with the speed he had acquired. In actual fact, he was entitled to the drug, on this occasion, by legitimate intercourse with a chemist secreted in Mother Diver’s shawl, prescription from a GP, but a sudden irrational fear of the heights of the law inserted into the spire had caught him and made him unaccountably guilty.
The extraordinary powers of Mother Diver were clear in the riddle of her behaviour. On the face of things, it looked comic that she should absorb the saleswoman’s possessions, that her stocks should be full, the saleswoman’s reduced or exhausted. But this was so absurd, it ceased to be comic. It lay outside of the reach of conventional comedy. Was it tragic then that Mother Diver was rich—however dubiously wealthy—whereas the other, the respectable saleswoman, was destitute? But that was too outrageous to be tragic. It lay beyond the reach of conventional tragedy. Then there was the notion of genius of famine and the gold of the drunk man staining the pavement to feed millions. And here—in loathsome territory—one came closer perhaps to Mother Diver’s terrifying judgement of love that had occasioned guilt in Sebastian under the spire of the law. Guilt? Or was it something else, some nameless emotion?
Comedy? No. A kind of unsmiling humour, yes.
Tragedy? No. A kind of eccentric nemesis, yes.
Guilt? No. Not guilt. Except in response to bleak love.
Mother Diver’s arts of the “kingdom of mothers” possessed no classification, purest loathing yet incorrigible affection for desperate humanity….
An odd vibration shook the world, the timbers of the ship in Dolphin Street. Mary felt an indescribable cosmic tenderness she could not fathom. She turned to Sebastian and made love as if Stella had indeed vanished from their bed. Yet Mother Bleak Love was there and had moved the world a faint inch or two into curative doubt of all conventional classifications to absorb the shock of a wave, the shock of compassion.*
The cosmos had been moved a faint inch or two. The planet Bale was affected. A skull-like formation of rock presided there called Rudimentary Brain from earth where it had been first sighted by an amateur astronomer from Angel Inn. Now the shock of cosmic tenderness and ruthlessness awakened a fire on Bale. Fire was the mind of nature in space. Fire was subtle conversion of nature in space. It became the womb of the brain or the rock on Bale.
Indeed the tremor had shaken Mary’s diminutive cosmos. An ocean had filled a bath when she travelled to India. Now a bale or loaded box from a lorry became a planet. Mary repaired to Angel Inn in the afternoon to find Marsden ill and in bed. He had suffered a shock. In turning a corner, a lorry had overturned that morning and flung a train of bales on to the ground. One narrowly missed Father Marsden before it ploughed into a gate. Was it a meteor from Mother Diver’s shawl? It had happened within a stone’s throw of the supermarket.
Mary sat, quiet as a mouse, by the great four-poster on which Joseph lay. He looked all at once very ill. His black, greying beard lay against his chest and white roughened skin. And for a flashing moment—faint inch moving the cosmos—Mary was reminded of Sebastian’s hollow tree of a body.
“Nothing serious,” Joseph said. “A very minor heart attack. More shock than anything else. They did not even worry to keep me in hospital. As you see I’m here….”
But he was dying. She knew. Bath, bale, hollow tree and other functions of negative capacity or capability became elements in a progression neither comic nor tragic, the diminutive funeral of an age, not large-scale imperial funeral, jet-planes flying overhead, tanks on land, warships at sea, but precarious Utopian utensils in which to store water and food for the baptism of the small soul and the nourishment and protection of the dying body. That a bale, the container of choice dates, silks, clothing, had functioned as a deadly meteor was the unsmiling humour of the Diver woman.
Marsden tried to laugh it away but as he looked at Mary his eyes were grave. It was an immensely difficult task—whether as the ex-priest or the ex-dialectician that ancient Joseph Marsden was—to face his departure, his coming death, in the light of the aroused kingdom of mothers that began to replace him and to shake Mary’s world.
Could he, he wondered, humour her on the very brink of the grave, humour her to see that she stood between him and Mother Diver as Stella had stood between her and Sebastian? That as he diminished, her diminutive stature would increase to encompass men and women everywhere in mutual arts of the “genius of love”?
Could he humour her on the brink of the grave?
Yes, humour of curative shadow and hypnotic fire. That was the comedy of Planet Bale. There—to Bale—he would take her. There she would stage his funeral, the funeral of an age. His coming “absence” could then endure as a protective fire in her matching his rudimentary skull and brain, her “distance” from him in the future could then multiply into the conversion of natures and bodies lit by tender, ruthless grace and the annunciation of life far out in the universe.
“Fire is the womb of brain and mind.” Perhaps his mind was already inching forward into a feminine vessel or evolutionary capacity on another, a dead planet.
He lay on his bed as if it were pavement or street.
“I have been caught, crushed,” he said, “you must begin to see me as an empty container or utensil with capacity nevertheless, a capacity to burn elsewhere when you look into the sky at night, and thus we journey to Bale, my funeral becomes the fullness of occasion, as my bath, remember, was high, as everything that’s hollow moves a faint inch or two in the depths of space, in the depths of the mind.”
Mary closed her eyes. A new page had been turned in her book of hypnotic expeditions, clairvoyant apprehension of Joseph Marsden’s death. What was a faint inch far, far away was an immediate blow or shock close at hand. Joseph had been flattened into minia
ture valley and bearded peak between a fat bale (Mother Bale) and supermarket pots and pans in a “black holes” beggarwoman (Mother Diver). His peak of beard stuck out from the shadow of his concave body like elusive vegetation or moss from a rocky planet. And yet he was precariously alive, disconcertingly alive, in the midst of deprivations that had hollowed all sensibility within him by heaping upon him what seemed the crest of natural forces (Mother Diver’s stone’s throw or pots-and-pans assault) and economic forces (Mother Bale’s meteoric strike or assault).
Mary would have wept floods of tears as this vision of faint life in the mind of space addressed her except for the parable of deprivation that Joseph seemed intent on bringing home to her. Empty yet full human vessels were the resources to chart a universe. Deprived concert was the inchoate music of the spheres.
She drifted out of the Inn and joined the crowd that had gathered where Marsden had been killed. Her head floated into a million faces pressing upon Joseph’s valley and peak, faces stained by gross sympathy, by gross curiosity, by gross, ribald attachment to ailing father/husband or ailing mother/wife or extravagant brother or cousin or sister or complex child; faces that seemed to know the faint march of the soul and were painted themselves by opaque distances, by addictions to alcohol or tobacco or food with which to assuage the pain of long blurred faculties and hopes, broken human pots, human universes, as hollow as Mary now was in weeping for Joseph.
All these symptoms that rose in her suddenly struck her as the faintest conversion of an age. Joseph’s shadowy pool of blood on the pavement brought home unexpectedly to her now the stain of vomit she had seen by the supermarket when she had slipped back into another time, another “present” age. That conjunction of Marsden’s blood and a drunk man’s gold would have led to an inflation of premises, icy hysteria, protest—another day—but now in the light of genuine funeral (rather than leprous or leprotic gaiety), genuine funeral of an age, yet paradoxical spirit, it gave her a sense of inexplicable, confessional wholeness or passion for truth.
The Angel at the Gate (Faber Finds) Page 8