Wilson Harris - Black Marsden - A Tabula Rasa Comedy

“Fancy that. He did well for himself then.”

“Aye,” says the woman. And they sigh in respectful unison.

A moment later the man asks softly: “Who did he leave it to then?”

I sense a change of weather in the woman’s voice: “Would you believe it — d’ye know that daft besom …?” I miss the rest of what she says as the bus draws up and we climb aboard. I am left with a vivid sketch of Willie; intrigued also by the curious melancholy practicality of the conversation and the puritan indictment of Willie’s “daft besom” whoever she may be.

Invisible Willie has stood before his judges in the queue and some portion of his anomalous estate has rubbed off on me so that his fortune becomes a pooled reflection to sum up the state of the world in which I live.

I get home still denuded, hang my coat in the hall and am about to make my way to my room when Jennifer pokes her head out of the kitchen: “Oh Clive, I’m glad you’re in — Mrs. Glenwearie’s away.” She laughs as she tries to mimic Mrs. Glenwearie’s voice.

“Away?” I cry.

“She asked me to apologize for going so abruptly but she said you would understand. There’s been a message about her niece. She didn’t say what it was.”

“Oh,” I am relieved. “Yes, her niece is an invalid of sorts.”

“In the meantime I promised to keep things shipshape.”

“That’s nice of you, Jennifer.”

“Clive!” Her manner changes, grows almost apprehensive. “Can I have a word with you?”

“Why of course.”

“Mardie’s out at the moment. In fact I don’t think he’ll be back for a couple of hours or so.”

“I’ll join you in the sitting-room in a few minutes.”

When I get there she has laid out scones, bread, butter, biscuits, cake, which I eat (I am suddenly ravenous) and enjoy. “I saw you in the Botanical Gardens today.”

She turns and looks at me now as if she sees me for the first time: “Why didn’t you say something, then?”

“Oh well, you seemed so absorbed in your companion. I did in fact try to call out to you later but you had already turned a corner. I found a comfortable seat overlooking a stream and wrote.”

“Is it an autobiographical work? Mardie knows about it.”

“Does he?” I ask darkly. “Very little one does is private nowadays. There’s always someone spying at every word. From bureaucratic camera or taxman or censor to the livid clock on the wall. But to return to your question. My book is not autobiographical. I lose myself in it, you see. In the same token I need to intuit when to pull back. The existences I probe are dark and sometimes the very spectre of oblivion confronts me. But what is the nature of oblivion? How close can one come to it, learn from it, without succumbing to it, without being swallowed up in it? Is there a warning that lies just beyond all given shapes of knowledge in order to distance (in some degree disarm) the traps or fascinations of ritual knowledge?”

“Clive,” Jennifer is pleading. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I wish I could spend all night listening to this. It is really fascinating. But I am in trouble. I need your help and I must speak of it before the others get back….”

“Jennifer! What is it?”

“Clive, I believe I am pregnant.”

“Pregnant?”

“I’m almost certain. I’ve missed one period and the doctor is pretty sure. He’ll know for certain when I see him in another week. But the thing is …”

I feel I have been dealt a blow. I am astonished, flabbergasted and blurt out the first thing that comes into my head: “You want to get married. You want money.”

“No, no. Not that.”

I blurt out again: “Jennifer, what do you mean — has he refused to marry you — is he the one in the Royal Mile or the one I saw you with in the Gardens today?”

“Clive, since I’ve been here you and I have quarrelled occasionally but we’ve been friends.” She lowers her head. “I think I can be honest with you.” She looks at me now a trifle defiantly. “I want to keep the baby but I don’t want to marry.”

I am silent.

“How can I help you?” I ask at last. “If it’s a question of money?”

Jennifer decides to take the bull by the horns. “It’s more than plain money. If I accepted a straight gift of money from you I could live with Ralph whom you saw me with today (poor Ralph hasn’t a penny to his name) until the baby is born. But who knows what claim he may make after upon me or upon the child? I couldn’t risk that sort of thing. I need a neutral establishment which I could leave whenever I wish. Clive,” I see her steeling herself, bracing herself, “could you let me stay here, let me pretend I’m your mistress or assistant housekeeper or something — anything? I don’t care. I know it sounds immoral and all that but you’re a rich man. And you believe in people. A rare combination, believe me. All I want is to have my baby in an atmosphere that is really secure. Perhaps I’m cheating. I want a kind of family prop, though in fact I don’t believe in family props any longer. I want to have a man beside me who can afford to give me all sorts of things without making any demands on me. I need someone like you, Clive. I’m not in love with anybody. I’m not in love with Ralph. I like you as much as any of the men I’ve known including Ralph. I want — I want my baby all for myself.”

“Have you told Marsden?” I blurt out.

“No. Not yet. He would be absolutely mad.”

“Mad? What do you mean by mad? Does it matter so much whether he’s mad or not?”

“Of course it does. I’ll tell him when I’m sure of everything. When I know what I’m going to do about it. Then perhaps when he understands, perhaps if you agree to what I ask of you, Clive, he’ll be less furious.”

“I need to think about this. Perhaps when you have seen the doctor again I’ll have come to a decision. In the meantime it’s our secret. I won’t say a word of it to Marsden.”

She comes close to me, my pregnant Salome. Her lips brush mine. For a moment at least I have more of her than Marsden and this pleases me.

*

In the late evening Goodrich made his way down to the wall near Newhaven Harbour and became absorbed in the flickering shadows on the water and the lights far across the water on the shore of Fife. In his mind he could still hear Jennifer’s voice like a pulse beating inside him, a smiling wry pulse almost, imbued with a brutal candour and yet a childlike ripeness.

His present reaction, perhaps irrational, to her proposal was a sense of the interrupted journey he had made across Namless with Knife. It was odd, he knew, to think of the pages he had written that afternoon as an actual journey but, in fact, related as they were to an earlier diary (which was related, in its turn, to actual but transformed family histories and movements and events) it all loomed now as stranger than fiction and therefore in that sense as life.

He recalled the piper’s warning threaded into the stars which in the wake of Jennifer’s proposal returned to him now with renewed potency. Knife had said that the music had ceased to counsel retreat and had turned into an invitation into the tunnel, the open-ended tunnel. But suddenly he was stricken by an illumination; by the fact that he had elected to pull back from the tunnel; and in abandoning the journey had obeyed the original counsel of the pipes. Had he gone forward — written another page in that direction (his heart was beating fast) would he be here now — would he have literally collapsed into coming face to face with the Nameless Other in a death for which he was unprepared? Yes, he was unprepared to die — his knowledge of death was not only incomplete but too biased. So biased it could prove a grossly shattering event. It was a strange climax to absorb within his private book — that another step forward would have proven one too many and Knife would have tricked him and silenced him and his life would have been absorbed into a dead man’s silent pipes.