by Murray Bail
‘Why, hell-o there,’ she beamed. ‘Wel-come to the Institution.’
The men had to squeeze past her.
‘Howdy,’ nodded Doug, pulled past by his wife.
‘What have you got this thing for?’ Garry pointed to the lasso.
‘Keep moving, please.’
They waited in a hall decorated with dried flower arrangements which met with Mrs Cathcart’s approval. From another room came the pleasant hum of a domestic vacuum cleaner. Framed on the wall was HOME SWEET HOME in New England needlepoint.
‘Boys and girls, I see. Any singles?’
Sheila involuntarily raised her hand.
‘What does she want to know all this crap for?’ Violet whispered.
But Louisa had raised her arm. Louisa was usually obedient. ‘Oh I’m without husband.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the woman. ‘I am sorry to hear that.’
‘He’s only out looking at more stripe paintings. He’s always been interested in that type of modern art. I don’t mind,’ Louisa smiled.
‘Where’s old Borelli then?’ Garry asked, unthinking. They had become accustomed to seeing the two together, talking to one side.
‘He doesn’t believe in institutions. He said he wasn’t interested. I asked him to come but he marched off somewhere else.’ The vacuum cleaner hum was replaced now by light organ muzak. It sounded like a church warming up.
They waited for the redhead. She had both hands on her hips, like a predatory bird.
‘All right now, I won’t chatter away. That would be nagging, and I think that’s dreadful. It can drive even a good man away.’ Slight laughter here and there, stopped short. ‘I’ll come along and keep you company, shall I? I think that’s best. And hasn’t it been a gorgeous day?’
As usual Gerald Whitehead remained at the edge cracking his red knuckles: those of a bachelor. To the Institution of Marriage and to America itself, Gerald had decided merely to tag along; hands in his pockets, so to speak. America hadn’t been his idea, and the Institution represented its worse excesses. He would have preferred being somewhere else. Vienna, say; or cobbled Florence say: in Europe where the clocks show Roman time. It invited contemplation; he allowed himself to drift, separate.
He’d raised his hand to poke the glasses on his nose when Swoooosh: the whirring loop dropped and wriggled like a quoit around his wrist; and before he knew it, before he could prevent it, he was dragged forward into the arms of the redhead.
‘Gotcha!’ said she.
And they were laughing and whistling, joining in, even Sheila in disbelief. Gerald reddened as she undid the lasso.
‘There now…’
Gerald gripped his wrist.
‘I didn’t burn, did I?’ she asked all solicitous.
But the others were still wiping their eyes, ho hee.
‘It’s nothing,’ he said.
‘So that’s what it’s for?’ Sasha said. ‘I never thought of that before. Isn’t she clever?’ Turning to Phillip North she had a mocking shine.
‘There are also other ways,’ her friend Violet reminded, ‘you should know.’
‘Say,’ Doug was asking, ‘where on earth did you learn to use that thing?’
‘It’s bloody lethal,’ Garry Atlas shouted.
Ignoring them, or affecting to, she took Gerald’s hand.
‘So you’re with me. OK? Everyone, this way.’
Again they couldn’t help grinning and pointing. The back of Gerald’s neck and ears had reddened. It was like a game.
The exhibits here were arranged as in any institution: small rooms and the usual étagère and glass cases (horizontal, vertical), wall fixtures and photographs.
First of all, there was nothing unusual about marriage. Ceremonies and subsequent suburbias had been observed even among colonies of ants. The redhead said nothing except a few moist whispers to Gerald. The point was driven home by photographs and scientific statements with arrows.
This put the subject into perspective.
Cabinets at easy intervals displayed the odds and ends employed in the courtship ritual—dead posies, lockets, examples of lavish compliments, theatre programmes and the like. Promises, promises! It was all very familiar and yet Mrs Cathcart and Sheila, and Louisa, why even Violet Hopper, appeared to take a close interest. The redhead here interrupted as Garry began telling everyone about the ‘incredible bloody bucks’ night’ he’d been to at Bendigo, pissed as lords, and ‘we got the groom and—.’ It was easy, only too easy, to make a mockery of the Institution. ‘OK, OK,’ he put up his hands, ‘you’re nagging me.’ Between the furniture of western courtship—the floral sofa, walnut love-seats in the shape of S, the arctic back seat of secondhand cars—the path was so narrow it casually forced them to proceed in pairs. Most of them didn’t suspect.
A suspended post-office bag spilled a quantity of letters, many perfumed and one French. It demonstrated the desire to put difficult feelings into words. A few had been opened and ironed flat for easy perusal. Bundles were tied with pink ribbons. Take away the reams of business correspondence and a high proportion of all mail is love letters.
‘I feel sure this is where the phrase “tons of love” originates,’ the redhead said. She stared at Garry in case he tried to be funny. ‘And I think that’s just wonderful, don’t you?’
Gwen bent over with Louisa to read some.
‘You know,’ said Kaddok at an inaccurate tangent, ‘France is the only country that doesn’t have the air-letter.’
Sasha asked Phillip North, ‘Have you ever written poems to anyone?’
‘Poems? Good God, by the mile. I’ve lost count.’
‘No tell me,’ said Sasha gently, ‘I’d like to know.’
‘They get embarrassed,’ Mrs Cathcart said.
‘Do you have any ruddy ball-and-chains here?’ Doug laughed, embarrassed.
Marriage was a force. It was subterranean, was light and dark, pink and white, grey, elemental, in its growth and hold. It was meant to be binding. That was its social function. In part it diminished and yet two could ripple outwards; the institution was circular in its shape and helplessness. One Californian couple wrote rhyming letters to each other every day for thirty-three years from the same house. A regular diet of lies is needed.
‘You’ve all heard the term “fabric of society” bandied about? Well here it is. You can touch it.’
And temporarily dropping Gerald’s moist hand the redhead took the hem of a wedding gown and felt it between her fingers, sperm-like in its viscosity. About a dozen gowns were fitted to blonde mannequins, demonstrating the slow almost negligible change in fashions.
Opposite stood an equal number of poker-faced grooms. A guard of honour; visually quite effective. The women clustered around uttering cries and wearing solemn expressions, as they mentioned comparisons with their own ceremonies. The redhead began telling them about her own. They all seemed to like her. There were no distinctions between them.
‘I fear this was a mistake,’ North commented to Gerald. To one side Gerald gazed at the ceiling, scratching his throat.
Making a move Garry put out his hand and touched a nylon train—and yanked back.
‘Yeow! I got a boot then!’
It made them laugh. ‘It serves him right,’ said Sasha. She turned to the redhead, ‘You were saying?’
‘No kidding!’ Garry kept yelling and pointing.
‘Static electricity,’ Kaddok naturally explained. He hadn’t taken a photograph yet.
In this institution, labels were printed in a cursive hand in the style of invitations.
Black and white, the colours of marriage, represent the shared twenty-four hours a day, split night and day. Wearing black the husband has been designated (genetically?) the earlier death. It has been established since Adam that white represents propagation, future tense, flights of fancy, hope, a clean slate. But it stains easily. In a rare reversal of the designated colours the white sperm swims into the night-black womb. B
etween the two poles lie the grey tones of every day: gentle acquired knowledge, tolerance, shades of meaning. Hence the colours of marriage, black and white.
‘What do you make of all this?’ nodded Doug. Whenever his spouse showed involvement Doug beamed.
‘We could well be here for the day,’ North sighed. At least he showed patience.
Doug beamed and glanced back, ‘Ah, but you know, it doesn’t do them any harm.’ And he rocked on his soles, ‘Yup…’
Gerald made the point, ‘If it’s so “elemental” and “subterranean” how is it we feel segregated?’
‘Oh I of course recently had a wife,’ murmured North vaguely.
The women now faced them. With their florals, holding their handbags, they looked formidable but for their serene, almost lofty, expressions, as if they possessed inner secrets. They were in agreement.
‘Come on. Don’t stand there on one foot,’ said Sasha to North. The others could hear. ‘Show an interest.’
She was on the point of saying more.
And Violet and Sheila were talking. Answering Violet’s question Sheila looked back. ‘I’ve never thought—I mean, yes. I suppose so. If anyone would have me,’ she added without mockery. ‘I know myself. I am not the easiest person…’
Marriages of convenience, marriages between dynasties, arranged marriages (legalised prostitution?). Mixed marriages and shotgun marriages, marriages of couples who had never been married before; some who dreaded it, others who couldn’t wait (for it). There were marriages between in-laws. A marriage of killer and victim’s wife. Photographic evidence of child marriages, of giants and dwarfs, yeah, and Siamese twins, nudists and octogenarians, communist marriages. There were marriages at sea.
The redhead lifted a flyproof dome on a silver tray. A coal-like substance made them crane with curiosity.
‘One of our most treasured possessions,’ she said to help.
Still they didn’t know.
‘Gerald, please read those words.’
Bending close he fogged the sterling silver with his breath.
He read:
‘The Queen’s Bridal Cake, Buckingham Palace
Feby. 10, 1840.’
He straightened up.
‘Queen Victoria,’ Mr History spelt it out, and decided to take a photograph.
Hooray!
Anyway, Mrs Cathcart had a piece of wedding cake locked away in a sideboard. Sometimes she has a look at it. A practice not followed these days by the young.
The redhead had been listening, interested. She closed one eye.
‘Average age of marriage, 23.6 years. Twenty-two per cent of your marriages are Roman Catholic. Divorce in Australia is on a terrible increase. Already it approaches the United States. It is ahead of England. In the past decade there has been a large swing from gold rings to silver. The man wears the pants.’
The way Kaddok moved his lips showed he was memorising it. ‘Very interesting,’ he said.
The ritual offering of food in the wedding ceremony is another universal. Yes, our anthropologists find it practised in the most primitive societies. Always cooked and usually a delicacy the mouthful acts as a social cement. There is an audience (auditors), watchful, almost serious. And isn’t it a reward for a job well done; sustenance also for the journey ahead? The symbol is accepted by the couple and verified by the elders. That same orifice—close-up of chewing mouth—soon bears the initial transports of passion.
Unlike other institutions the interior surfaces here were painted in domestic hues; pinks from the bedroom, pale blue of the veins, lilac and such. Casual and pleasant, the rooms were full of interest. It was like walking through a life.
Pinned like butterflies in a spotless showcase an array of stained and torn marriage certificates folded into wings provided just a hint of the worldwide army of printers employed to keep the institution going. But of course they don’t prevent the unscrupulous person, nearly always male, abusing the carefully worked-out system. For this same cabinet acted as a kind of transparent arrow to an adjoining rogue’s gallery of bigamists—mug shots, case histories, from the floor to the ceiling. It was dimly lit and frowned upon, and the redhead began tapping her high-heeled shoes, Gerald stationed at her side; at least he was no bigamist. But the snapshots exerted a fascination. What sort of man became a bigamist? Garry held up his cigarette lighter, like those entrepreneur herdsmen who point to prehistoric cave paintings with flaming torches.
Look, the majority were men in their forties, early fifties, with ballpoints protruding from their coats: they openly gazed, all of them. One smoked a pipe. Like the rest he had small eyes. It was almost enough to dispel suspicions. They had regular features, uncongested, nothing to hide. One who smiled stood out (by the door). He was bald and wore a propeller-shaped bowtie, an exception, perhaps even a bit soft in the head. Aside from the smooth foreheads, remarkable for men of their years, the only telling sign was in fact the very absence of ‘signs’, as if a hand had passed over their features—although a surprising percentage had shaving nicks around the chins.
As the senior married person Mrs Cathcart assumed the natural mantle of leader or spokesman and was the first to break the curious silence, first by sucking spit and air through her teeth, then muttering ‘blighters’ and ‘the beggars!’ As the others kept studying the photographs she could no longer contain herself: ‘Rotten pigs! I’d shoot the lot of them, every one of them. The misery they cause.’
‘You tell ’em,’ Garry clapped: at this stage he liked to pronounce his bachelorhood. ‘I reckon, Christ, they deserve medals—the Victoria Cross. To have two or three women on the go: one’s trouble enough.’ He turned to Phillip North. ‘How do they do it?’
‘The voice of experience,’ Sasha jeered, almost including North.
‘Another ruddy feminist! They’re everywhere,’ he answered.
The redhead went over to him. ‘Why don’t you,’ she twanged in his ear, ‘shut your face. You’re not funny.’ To Mrs Cathcart she said, ‘I agree with you. Completely.’
A few smiled good-naturedly, to lighten the mood; and drifted around the walls. Hardly anyone heard Violet Hopper, ‘I knew a bigamist once…’
It caught only Sheila’s interest. She gazed sideways at the floor. ‘That must have been—.’ But she changed it to a characteristic dead question: ‘What was his name?’
What did it matter?
‘I think these men are essentially weak when you consider it,’ Louisa said.
And since she had scarcely spoken, and walked alone, they turned, remembering her. ‘Anyone who can’t make up his mind, or has to lie like that, I wonder what they think of themselves?’
It was almost worth another look. Garry felt for his cigarette lighter.
‘Come along,’ the hostess called out, cracking the whip. She took Gerald’s arm as an example. From behind they looked a natural couple.
A welcome change appeared through the door: set into the long side wall a brightly lit replica of a shop window. It could have been Tiffany’s: only these velvet trays and turntables were crowded with rings of every description, almost indiscriminately. Unlucky opals rubbed shoulders with 40-carat diamonds which lay alongside mirror rings from the Punjab, and ultramarine lapis taken from Afghanistan. One slowly turning wheel, a Ferris wheel in miniature, scooped up wedding rings from a pile, raining them down again as it turned, a kind of perpetual motion.
Ingeniously, the window allowed up to a dozen or more to look over the merchandise, though again it was the women who had their noses and fingers to the glass. The slipping on of a ring symbolises the sacred sexual act. Hemmed in, Kaddok could only look back over the coiffured heads.
‘They’re having a good time,’ Doug beamed, standing back; so was he. Folding his arms he winked at North.
‘It’s all they ever think about,’ said Garry walking away. ‘I don’t know what this place is driving at. It must have cost a fortune. What’s the point? Say, does anyone know the time?’<
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Phillip North seemed to attract a response merely by his presence. Some liked to stand near to bounce off or soak in. He listened and so he seemed always interesting.
Violet Hopper came away from the window. Although softened somewhat, her face was not lit up like the others.
North nodded politely. They’d scarcely spoken before.
‘Very little surprises you,’ he observed, nodding at the window. Such observations were possible with Violet Hopper.
‘If you mean this, it’s old hat to me. Once or twice at the time it was nice; even then not always. It became irrelevant. You’ve been married, haven’t you?’ She looked at the window, at the crush. ‘Sasha,’ she turned to him, ‘is a close friend…I like Sasha.’
North thought about this and looked at the window. ‘I know.’
‘Yes, you’re not blind,’ said Violet sharply.
Kaddok had brushed past, pulled by his wife. Turning to North again Violet opened here eyes wide. ‘I’ve put my foot in it again. Have I?’
Sasha had arrived. She stood with them quietly.
‘Not at all,’ said North.
Marriage is big business, bigger than tourism. Is only marginally affected by economic, political, climatic downturns, if at all. Not only is there the outlay on the gold and diamonds: consider the wedding cars and uniformed chauffeurs, ribbons, and the fuel they burn; remember the cost of new clothing, the wedding haircut, the tons of scattered rice and confetti; feast food, jugs of beer and bubbly; the stenographers, photographers (film emulsion, the price of silver); there must be shoe repairs of waitresses and priests; above all, the shower of gifts, usually consumer durables, often electrical in nature; cutlery or sheets don’t come cheap; and without honeymoons, the motel and leathergoods industries would collapse. These out-goings filter through all sectors of the economy. The institution of marriage is fuel to the capitalist engine.
Are there any questions—?
Marriage brokers, marriage guidance counsellors, private detectives and legal costs.
Following their leader, Sasha marched ahead with North, taking his arm in full view, and her breast squashed against him as she leaned; so Sasha then took an even greater interest in the exhibits. In allowing it Phillip North could merely have been urbane, giftedly so; could have been: but Mrs Cathcart apparently still fuming at the idea of bigamy, and recalling her position of seniority, made the clicking sound with her tongue (in her lifetime these had often been effective) and to those around her, shook her head: ‘And I believe he’s recently bereaved. I don’t understand it.’