Black Marsden (11 page)

“What an embarrassment for all, I would think.”

“Indeed. Imagine the scene. The bridegroom sits regally in his chair. Turbaned, a living ornament. The bride’s father offers him a cow.”

Marsden laughed: “And waits for him to eat?”

“And waits for him to eat, yes. For if he eats a morsel it is a sign that he accepts the gift. But if he does not stir a finger his
father-in-
law-to-be offers him another cow. Then a piece of land
perhaps.
Then a horse or a bull….”

“And still,” said Marsden chuckling hoarsely, “he may refuse to eat?”

“Quite so. Then the father-in-law doubles his offer. And after consulting with his family may—if he can afford it—come up with a motor-car.”

“What about an expensive camera?” said Marsden and as he spoke Goodrich recalled the hypnotic persuasion cast upon him and Mrs. Glenwearie when Marsden first arrived: hypnotic walking camera, hypnotic flashing bulb.

“A camera,” he said (and he was glad this time he could resist him so easily, almost banteringly), “yes, why not? To take his bride’s picture and then later the pictures of his children.”

“Presumably in the end he does eat?” said Marsden.

“Yes, invariably I understand he eats, but not before—on rare occasions anyway I would imagine—the wedding party is
enshrouded
in fear.”

“Fear?” Marsden brooded.

“Fear, yes, by those who bring the gifts that they may have to twist his arm.
Make
him eat. And fear in him as a consequence—fear of their methods of persuasion.”

“You have aroused my curiosity, Goodrich, I must say. You speak of fear. I take your point. Why is it indeed that in every contract between men fear appears to be such a dominant
principle?
Last night I was reading
Writings
from
the
Philokalia
translated by one Kadloubovsky and one Palmer.
Prayer
of
the
Heart
I think it is called. And as you spoke of your remarkable bridegroom I could not help recalling this passage: ‘A man who has planted the fear of judgement in his heart seems in the eyes of the world like a prisoner in irons. For he is constantly afraid of being seized by a merciless executioner and dragged to the place of execution.’ In the same context the passage goes on to say that if that man can endure the constraint of his bonds to the bitter end ‘his bonds—his fear—will fall off, his executioner will hasten away and his heart’s grief will turn into joy which will become in him a fountain of life or a spring for ever gushing forth: physically—rivers of tears; spiritually—peace, meekness and unspeakable delight’.” Marsden was laughing deeply. “So you see, Goodrich, your bridegroom may be quite right in tightening those bonds and in enduring the gifts showered upon him to the bitter end.” For a moment or two it seemed Marsden had become his old ruling mocking self but it did not last long. The sense of depletion which Goodrich still associated with the assassinated agent in Namless returned and brought him back into line with Jennifer’s consorts. Was it a ruse, Goodrich wondered …?

*

Two days later Mrs. Glenwearie wrote to say that her sister had been taken very ill and she must therefore remain to look after her invalid niece and her brother-in-law. Would he mind if she arranged for a temporary woman to come into the Goodrich establishment, clean and cook?

The ground of duty Goodrich knew from past experience was a religious question with Mrs. Glenwearie. If her sister recovered she would return but if she did not or became bed-ridden she would have no alternative within her own lights but to relinquish her situation as his housekeeper.

Goodrich knew that if this happened he would miss her very much. A picture floated it seemed from nowhere into his mind as he put down her letter, of old chateaux in France and titular houses in Britain where at each turn of the road a sculptured sentinel from the past stands watching the world of the present. And written into that vigil was the notion of duty or loyalty to laird or king or party.

It seemed incongruous that he should identify Mrs.
Glenwearie’s
good works with that vigil; the vigil of the nurse, the vigil of duty with estates of power; yet so it seemed to him now as he contemplated her by the sick-bed of her family. A curious melancholy consistency was there in a series of postures rooted in identity and frozen into a paragon of duty extending from château to cottage.

It was the irony of the situation that wrapped itself around him now. He stood on the eve of giving an answer to Jennifer, and Mrs. Glenwearie had been conveniently or inconveniently whisked away and frozen, as it were, into a picture of duty.

There was a logic here—an intuitive logic towards which one could grope on this level of fascination with corresponding events. The translation or transformation of Mrs. Glenwearie may have been implied the very moment, some months ago, she had
conceived
flash-bulbs in the sitting-room turned on in—or upon—naked Jennifer by Marsden—Marsden disguised as Camera: a walking camera like a deacon of the cinema fully clothed, fully dressed, who invaded Goodrich’s dreams until Knife slashed the cloth.

In Goodrich’s book every correspondence of events within an individual life was an implicit and secret dramatization of buried universal themes within objective existence. For what was
objective
existence in the long run but a series of common-or-garden situations? For that reason it was an easy trap to view Mrs. Glenwearie’s voyage to the sick-bed of her family as another common-or-garden inevitability divorced from bizarre
conjunctions
involving Deacon Camera, Jennifer, Knife etc.

But the very expression “inevitability” gave the game away and implied a pattern, a pattern of far-flung devious subconscious intelligences at work through the day-to-day normal situations of each individual in society. It was the exposure of that pattern which interested Goodrich. For without some degree of exposure,
inevitability
would become both an all-consuming ritual principle and a forgotten bias of fate in the affairs of men.

Thus he could see in his private theatre or premises all the elements of crisis which plagued a civilization. Written into the most common-or-garden vigils were the pressures of time. Mrs. Glenwearie had been drawn to the door of death—as had he (Goodrich) been drawn to the narrow pass leading to Namless Town—and as had he (Marsden) been drawn to play a kind of depleted role in a
hiatus
of knowledge. A
hiatus
or depletion which had become the stigmata of a universal bridegroom whose
persona
was civilization. A civilization that had left its impress in almost every crook and cranny of the known world. A civilization that had been showered with gifts, resources, materials beyond the wildest dreams of societies in earlier centuries. A civilization therefore which invited a kind of disaster (as with every
bridegroom
of fate wedded to universal resources), a kind of backlash from those cultures which had given all they possessed, and from “nature” which had been drained of so much….

Thus to stand at the door of death in a composite terrain of profound imagination or in a common-or-garden station of existence determined by history was to be visited—however subconsciously—by the intimate pressures of an age piling up across generations (disease, starvation, alarming pollution, overpopulation etc. etc.). To be visited also by a necessity for
decision
beyond mere vigilance—how to relate oneself to oblivion—wasted resources, wasted lives etc.—and extract from it a caveat restraining technological
hubris.
How (in some degree of genuine humility) to come to grips with the bridegroom’s executioner through a decision related to a half-open, half-shut door to lives on this planet. How at the same time within instrumental measures—birth-control gift horse etc.—to opt for life as a
never-ending
river of sweetness, fountain of love….

This immense variable drama was related to oneself however far one fled from a so-called centre of things. It might pass over one’s head like a tide of oblivion. But one’s very obliviousness to it was part of the fabric, part of the comedy of the fabric: a blessing in disguise for some who were relieved of anxieties, a curse for others who were plagued to the end of their days by their ignorance or helplessness or complacency or historical complicity in the disposition of common-or-garden particular resources….

*

Jennifer had arranged to see her doctor in the afternoon and Goodrich set out in the morning of the same day to make a few purchases. In confessing to being plagued by enormous questions he had become aware that he was also plagued by the denuded figure or shadow he sometimes became. His jackets were inclined to be over-casual, rather worn-looking, old-looking for a man with half-a-million pounds in the Bank. His shirts too had remained stubbornly bloodless against the extrovert styles of the day. (For a long time he had had his eye on a flaming pink cravat and a scarlet shirt but every time he ventured into Princes Street to buy these, somehow he couldn’t summon up the courage.)

Then there were his trousers which never seemed to keep their crease the way other men’s did. For ages too he had worn a pair of comfortable boots despite Mrs. Glenwearie’s protests that he should get himself something smarter for a change.

No wonder people did not see him in the street. It was a marvellous discipline in invisibility but the time for a change was at hand. He was reminded of a passage in Stevenson’s
Amateur
Emigrant
which told of practising upon the public by:

It was a nice remark—
well-regulated
female
eye
—Goodrich thought, and it rang a deep bell in his mind associated with the seeing eye, the unseeing eye, the personalization of blind or visionary society written into unwitting status or rank as an intercourse of fates.

To retire into invisibility was to invite the most secret
correspondence
of all—the most secret flowering garments of all. To breach fate in some degree…. Goodrich was all of a sudden disconcerted by the weight he placed on his newfound
relationship
of trust with Jennifer Gorgon. Disconcerted by the desire to externalize it into a ready-made flamboyance…And yet as he made his way into a shop in Princes Street he felt a kind of laughter, a kind of delight and acquittal from overburden at the prospect of buying something made of flame, made of fire, in an inner cautionary rather than outer exhibitionist sense.

*

Goodrich bought the new shirt, cravat and a pair of sandals and left the shop with the parcels under his arm. He crossed Princes Street towards the Gardens in the valley under the Castle. A small crowd of sightseers had gathered around the floral clock waiting for the cuckoo to appear and the hour to strike. He strolled along the pavement with its high banks of flowers: one of those uncanny, slightly ominous but beautiful autumnal days which sometimes appear in the middle of summer. A misty light lay upon the hollow of the valley and he felt himself so absorbed by it that he clutched the parcels under his arm quite fiercely. The sound of a train addressed him and a puff or two of smoke inserted a pillar into the phenomenon of autumn stitched into summer.

For all these reasons, phenomenal reasons, all related to the garb of the year, Goodrich felt that this was a memorable day in the body of his life. An unforgettable day—unforgettable as a pattern of erasures and accretions, accumulations, dispersals—unforgettable not least in the purchases he had made to symbolize an eternal apparition of spirit, however denuded, however misted over, however solitary, however wedded to place and time.

A stream of people descended towards the bandstand on his left and Goodrich made his way towards the West End, ascended to the street and turned into Lothian Road. The street here was wide and the buildings seemed rather grimy but as he drew closer to the Usher Hall he recalled a concert he had attended there with Jennifer and Marsden some months before: Webern’s
Symphony,
something by Couperin (he had forgotten what this was), some Bach.

The greyness of the street scene lifted somewhat into the mild expansive half-autumnal, half-summer day. An unforgettable day in his life for reasons beyond a precise location or summary of events. He tightened his grip upon the parcels. A day (he smiled whimsically) of judgement and acquittal. Goodrich made his way back to the West End suddenly anxious to be home. He hailed a taxi.

*

When Goodrich arrived home, he went to his room, undid the packages and changed into his new shirt and cravat. It was quite a luxurious garment with the most delicate markings, and as he adjusted the cravat and felt the rich texture of the shirt upon him, he was possessed by the sensation of an impresario of bonfires (the fire of love, the fire of decision) wedded to inner lives and fabrics of time.