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**THE NEW CANADIAN LIBRARY**

General Editor: David Staines

**ADVISORY BOARD**

Alice Munro

W.H. New

Guy Vanderhaeghe

**CONTENTS**

_Title Page_

_Dedication_

_Epigraph_

_Acknowledgments_

**ONE** River Of Now And Then

Chapter One

**TWO** The Nuisance Grounds

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

**THREE** Halls Of Sion

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

**FOUR** Rites Of Passage

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

**FIVE** The Diviners

Chapter Eleven

**SIX** Album

The Ballad Of Jules Tonnerre

Lazarus

Piquette'S Song

Pique'S Song

_Afterword_

_About the Author_

_Also by Margaret Laurence_

_Copyright_
_For
the Elmcot people
past present and future
and for the house itself
with love and gratitude._
_but they had their being once
and left a place to stand on_

Al Purdy
–Roblin Mills Circa 1842
**ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**

My deepest thanks to the following:

– Ian Cameron, who wrote the music for "Lazarus," "Song for Piquette," and "Pique's Song," and who did musical arrangements for all the songs, and tape-recorded them for me so I could hear them sung;

– Sandy Cameron, who set down the musical notations;

– Prue and John Bawden, who transcribed the songs;

– Jocelyn Laurence, who typed the manuscript for me;

– Bob Berry, Paula Berry, David Laurence, Peter MacLachlan, Joan Minkoff, John Valentine, who helped with either the singing or the playing of the songs, or with the obtaining of copies of the musical scores and Xerox copies of the manuscript.

I should like also to thank the Canada Council for the Senoir Arts Award which assisted me during the writing of this novel.

(Music © 1973 Heorte Music)
**PART ONE**

**RIVER OF NOW AND THEN**
**ONE**

**T** he river flowed both ways. The current moved from north to south, but the wind usually came from the south, rippling the bronze-green water in the opposite direction. This apparently impossible contradiction, made apparent and possible, still fascinated Morag, even after the years of river-watching.

The dawn mist had lifted, and the morning air was filled with swallows, darting so low over the river that their wings sometimes brushed the water, then spiralling and pirouetting upward again. Morag watched, trying to avoid thought, but this ploy was not successful.

Pique had gone away. She must have left during the night. She had left a note on the kitchen table, which also served as Morag's desk, and had stuck the sheet of paper into the typewriter, where Morag would be certain to find it.

Now please do not get all uptight, Ma. I can look after myself. Am going west. Alone, at least for now. If Gord phones, tell him I've drowned and gone floating down the river, crowned with algae and dead minnows, like Ophelia.

Well, you had to give the girl some marks for style of writing. Slightly derivative, perhaps, but let it pass. Oh jesus, it was not funny. Pique was eighteen. Only. Not dry behind the ears. Yes, she was, though. If only there hadn't been that other time when Pique took off, that really bad time. That wouldn't happen again, not like before. Morag was pretty sure it wouldn't. Not sure enough, probably.

I've got too damn much work in hand to fret over Pique. Lucky me. I've got my work to take my mind off my life. At forty-seven that's not such a terrible state of affairs. If I hadn't been a writer, I might've been a first-rate mess at this point. Don't knock the trade.

Morag read Pique's letter again, made coffee and sat looking out at the river, which was moving quietly, its surface wrinkled by the breeze, each crease of water outlined by the sun. Naturally, the river wasn't wrinkled or creased at all–wrong words, implying something unfluid like skin, something unen-during, prey to age. Left to itself, the river would probably go on like this, flowing deep, for another million or so years. That would not be allowed to happen. In bygone days, Morag had once believed that nothing could be worse than killing a person. Now she perceived river-slaying as something worse. No wonder the kids felt themselves to be children of the apocalypse.

No boats today. Yes, one. Royland was out, fishing for muskie. Seventy-four years old this year, Royland. Eyesight terrible, but he was too stubborn to wear glasses. A marvel that he could go on working. Of course, his work did not depend upon eyesight. Some other kind of sight. A water diviner. Morag always felt she was about to learn something of great significance from him, something which would explain everything. But things remained mysterious, his work, her own, the generations, the river.

Across the river, the clumps of willow bent silver-green down to the water, and behind them the great maples and oaks stirred a little, their giant dark green tranquility disturbed only slightly by the wind. There were more dead elms this year, dry bones, the grey skeletons of trees. Soon there would be no elms left.

The swallows dipped and spun over the water, a streaking of blue-black wings and bright breastfeathers. How could that colour be caught in words? A sort of rosy peach colour, but that sounded corny and was also inaccurate.

_I used to think words could do anything. Magic. Sorcery. Even miracle. But no, only occasionally._

The house seemed too quiet. Dank. The kitchen had that sour milk and stale bread smell that Morag remembered from her childhood, and which she loathed. There was, however, no sour milk or stale bread here–it must be all in the head, emanating from the emptiness of the place. Until recently the house was full, not only Pique but A-Okay Smith and Maudie and their shifting but ever-large tribe. Morag, for the year when the Smiths lived here, had gone around torn between affection and rage–how could anyone be expected to work in such a madhouse, and here she was feeding them all, more or less, and no goddamn money would be coming in if she didn't get back to the typewriter. Now, of course, she wished some of them were here again. True, they only lived across the river, now that they had their own place, and visited often, so perhaps that was enough.

Something about Pique's going, apart from the actual departure itself, was unresolved in Morag's mind. The fact that Pique was going west? Yes. Morag was both glad and uncertain. What would Pique's father think, if he knew? Well, he wouldn't know and didn't have all that much right to judge anyway. Would Pique go to Manawaka? If she did, would she find anything there which would have meaning for her? Morag rose, searched the house, finally found what she was looking for.

These photographs from the past never agreed to get lost. Odd, because she had tried hard enough, over the years, to lose them, or thought she had. She had treated them carelessly, shoved them away in seldom-opened suitcases or in dresser drawers filled with discarded underwear, scorning to put them into anything as neat as an album. They were jammed any-old-how into an ancient tattered manilla envelope that Christie had given her once when she was a kid, and which said _McVitie & Pearl, Barristers & Solicitors, Manawaka, Manitoba_. Christie must have found it at the dump–the Nuisance Grounds, as they were known; what an incredible name, when you thought of the implications. The thick brown paper stank a bit when Christie had handed it to her, faintly shitlike, faintly the sweetish ether smell of spoiled fruit. He said Morag could have it to keep her pictures in, and she had taken it, although despising it, because she did not have any other sturdy envelope for the few and valued snapshots she owned then. Not realizing that if she had chucked them out, then and there, her skull would prove an envelope quite sturdy enough to retain them.

_I've kept them, of course, because something in me doesn't want to lose them, or perhaps doesn't dare. Perhaps they're my totems, or contain a portion of my spirit. Yeh, and perhaps they are exactly what they seem to be–a jumbled mess of old snapshots which I'll still be lugging along with me when I'm an old lady,clutching them as I enter or am shoved into the Salvation Army Old People's home or wherever it is that I'll find my death._

Morag put the pictures into chronological order. As though there were really any chronological order, or any order at all, if it came to that. She was not certain whether the people in the snapshots were legends she had once dreamed only, or were as real as anyone she now knew.

_I keep the snapshots not for what they show but for what is hidden in them._

_Snapshot:_

The man and woman are standing stiffly on the other side of the gate. It is a farm gate, very wide, dark metal, and old–as is shown by its sagging. The man is not touching the woman, but they stand close. She is young, clad in a cotton print dress (the pattern cannot be discerned) which appears too large for her thin frame. Looking more closely, one can observe that her slight and almost scrawny body thickens at the belly. Her hair is short and fluffy, possibly blonde. The man's head is bent a little, and he is grinning with obvious embarrassment at the image-recorder who stands unseen and unrecorded on the near side of the gate. The man appears to be in his early thirties. He is tall and probably strong, narrowly but muscularly built. His hair is dark and somewhat unruly, as though he had combed it back with his fingers an instant before. In the far background, at the end of the road, can be seen the dim outlines of a house, two-storey, a square box of a house, its gracelessness atoned for, to some extent, by a veranda and steps at the front. Spruce trees, high and black, stand beside the house. In the further background there is a shadow-structure which could be the barn. Colin Gunn and his wife, Louisa, stand here always, in the middle 1920s, smiling their tight smiles, holding their now-faded sepia selves straight, hopeful, their sepia house and sepia farm firmly behind them, looking forward to what will happen, not knowing the future weather of sky or spirit.

Morag Gunn is in this picture, concealed behind the ugliness of Louisa's cheap housedress, concealed in her mother's flesh, invisible. Morag is still buried alive, the first burial, still a little fish, connected unthinkingly with life, held to existence by a single thread.

_Snapshot:_

The child sits on the front steps of the house. She has lost the infant plumpness which presumably she once had, but she is built stockily, at age about two. Her hair is straight and dark, like her father's. She looks grave, although not unhappy. Thoughtful, perhaps. She wears a plain cotton dress with puffed sleeves and a sash, and she or someone has tucked it modestly around her knees. Beside her sits a grinning mongrel dog, tongue lolling out.

The dog, as one would not guess from the picture, is called Snap, short for Snapdragon. He always follows Morag around the yard, keeping an eye on her. He is a mild-natured dog, easygoing, and he never once snaps at anyone, despite his name. He would snap at thieves or robbers if there were any, but there aren't, ever. Morag's mother lets Snap sleep in Morag's bedroom, to keep her company. Some people wouldn't have allowed a dog to sleep at the foot of a bed, but Morag's mother doesn't mind, because she knows Morag wants Snap to be there so as she will feel safe. Morag's mother is not the sort of mother who yells at kids. She does not whine either. She is not like Prin.

_All this is crazy, of course, and quite untrue. Or maybe true and maybe not. I am remembering myself composing this interpretation, in Christie and Prin's house._

_Snapshot:_

The child, three years old, is standing behind the heavy-wire-netted farm gate, peering out. The person with the camera is standing unseen on the other side. The child is laughing, acting up, play-acting goofily, playing to an audience of one, the picture-taker.

What is not recorded in the picture is that after Morag's father has taken this picture, he asks her if she'd like to have him help her climb the gate. Her father never minds helping her. He always has time. Her father is beside her, then, and lifts her up and sets her on the very top of the gate, holding her so she will not fall. She hangs onto his shoulder and puts her face beside his neck. He smells warm and good. Clean. Smells of soap and greengrass. Not manure. He never stinks of horseshit, even though he is a farmer. Morag's father lifts her down from the gate, and they go into their house. The house is very huge, full of strange corners and places to explore. It even has a diningroom, with good furniture, a sideboard and a big round table. The Gunns eat in their diningroom every single Sunday without fail. There is a cupboard under the front stairs, into which Morag crawls when she wishes to find hidden treasure. It goes a long way back and is just high enough for her to stand up. Inside, there are stacks of books that once belonged to Alisdair Gunn, Morag's grandfather, who came here a long long time ago and built the house and started the farm when probably nothing was here except buffalo grass and Indians. The books have leather bindings, and smell like harness, only nicer, and the names are marked in gold. Also in this cupboard are vases and plates, painted with orange chrysanthemums and purple pansies, and old dresses, long, with lace on the sleeves, blue velvet and plum-coloured silk, fragile and rustling. A few spiders and ants live in that cupboard, but Morag is not afraid of them, or of anything in that house. It is a safe place. Nothing terrible can happen there.

_I don't recall when I invented that one. I can remember it, though, very clearly. Looking at the picture and knowing what was hidden in it. I must've made it up much later on, long long after something terrible had happened._

_Snapshot:_

The child is leaning out the window, an upstairs window. She is smiling down at the person with the camera. Her face is calm, serene. Her straight black hair, neatly trimmed, comes just to the level of her earlobes.

What the picture does not tell is that Morag is leaning out the window of her own bedroom, a room not too small and yet not too large. It has a white dresser with a pale leafgreen ruffled curtain around the bottom, and underneath there is a white (cleaned every day) chamber pot for her to use during the night if she has to go. This is nice, because it means she never has to go outside to the backhouse in the winter nights. There is also a white-painted bed, with a lovely quilt, flowers in green and pink on a white background, very daintily stitched, maybe by a grandmother.

_I recall looking at the pictures, these pictures, over and over again, each time imagining I remembered a little more. The farm couldn't have been worth a plugged nickel at that point. The drought had begun, and the Depression. Why in these pictures am I smiling so seldom? A passing mood? Or inherited? In my inventedmemories I always think of my father smiling, possibly because he really seldom did. He is smiling in the only picture I have of him, but that was for the camera. Colin Gunn, whose people came to this country so long ago, from Sutherland, during the Highland Clearances, maybe, and who had in them a sadness and a stern quality. Can it ever be eradicated?_

_Snapshot:_

The child's black straight hair is now shoulder-length, and she is four years old. She is sitting primly on a piano stool in front of an old-fashioned high-backed upright piano. She is peering fixedly at the sheet music in front of her, which, from the dimly seen word "Roses" may be guessed to be "Roses of Picardy." Morag wears a pullover which appears to be decorated with wool embroidery, possibly flowers, and an obviously tartan skirt. Her hands rest lightly on the keys and her feet do not reach the pedals.

_My concentration appears to indicate interest and even enthusiasm. I did not yet know that I was severely myopic and had to peer closely to see anything at all._

Let the snapshot tell what is behind it. Morag's mother, before she married, was a piano teacher in Manawaka. She is now trying to teach Morag how to play, and Morag really loves the lessons and is very good and quick at picking up how to do it. The livingroom is not used for everyday, but Morag and her mother go into it quite a lot in the afternoons. The carpet is royal blue, patterned with birds whose wings are amber, dovegrey, scarlet. On the piano is a red glass filled with cornflowers, and a very miniature tree made out of brass, with small bells attached to it. If you put the piano stool up as high as it will go, and start off quickly enough, it twirls all the way down again with you twirling on it. Morag's mother plays, not the plonk-plonk-plinkety-plonk of Sunday school music, but very light, very light.

_And that is the end of the totally invented memories. I can't remember myself actually being aware of inventing them, but it must have happened so. How much later? At Christie's, of course, putting myself to sleep. I cannot really remember my parents' faces at all. When I look now at that one snapshot of them, they aren't faces I can relate to anyone I ever knew. It didn't bother me for years and years. Why should it grieve me now? Why do I want them back? What could my mother and I say to one another? I'm more than ten years older now than she was when she died–and she would seem so young to me, so inexperienced._

_Snapshot:_

The child is standing among the spruce trees at the side of the house. She wears overalls, and her long hair is untidy. She is now five, or thereabouts. She squints a little, against the painful sun, trying to keep her eyes open so the picture of her will be nice, but she finds it difficult. Her head is bent slightly, and she grins not in happiness but in embarrassment, like Colin Gunn in the first picture. Only the lower boughs of the spruce trees can be seen, clearly, darkly.

Now, those spruce trees, there, they were really and actually as tall as angels, dark angels perhaps, their boughs and sharp hard needles nearly black except in the spring when the new needles sprouted soft and mid-green. The grass, there, didn't grow right underneath the trees, but Morag used to go to the edge of the road and pull up couchgrass as high as herself, carrying it back in armloads and spreading it, already drying in the heat, under the spruces. The walls of her dwelling, her playhouse, were single lines of stones she had found on the dusty rutted road. The fallen spruce cones and the dandelions and wild honeysuckle and purple vetch and pink wild asters were the furnishings–chairs, tables, dishes. All for the invisible creatures who inhabited the place with her. Peony. Rosa Picardy. Cowboy Joke. Blue-Sky Mother. Barnstable Father. Old Forty-Nine. Some of the names came from songs she must have heard, "Cowboy Jack" and "The Wreck of the Old Forty-Nine." The latter was especially fine, inaccurate as the words might have become in her head throughout the years.

T'was a cold winter's night,

Not a soul was in sight,

And the north wind came howling down the line;

Stood a brave engineer,

With his sweetheart so dear,

He had orders to take the Forty-Nine.

She kissed him goodbye

With a tear in her eye,

Saying, "Come back quite soon, oh sweetheart mine."

But it would have made her cry

If she'd known that he would die

In the wreck of the Old Forty-Nine.

_And so on. I recall that song from later on, but it must've been sung to me young. Who would have? Maybe we had a radio. Where the other names came from, I wouldn't guess. I played alone, mostly, as it was too far to go to seek out other kids. I don't think I minded. I preferred my spruce-house family, all of whom I knew as totally individuated persons (as the pretentious phrase has it, when describing okay fiction). Strange and marvellous things used to happen to them. Once Cowboy Joke's pinto threw him over a ravine, as in "Little Joe the Wrangler He Will Never Wrangle More," and he would've been a goner except that RosaPicardy and myself, with great intuition, had happened to build a couch of moss in that precise place._

_Another time, Peony and I, although warned not to by Blue-Sky Mother, went into a deserted grain elevator, hundreds of miles high and lived in only by bats, dragons and polar bears, on different levels, bats highest, and succeeded after many perils in discovering a buried treasure of diamonds and rubies (known to be red, although I had never seen one) and emeralds (which I thought must be the same brave pale mauve as the prairie crocuses we found in spring even before the last snow went)._

_I remember those imaginary characters better than I do my parents. What kind of a character am I? Old Forty-Nine smoked a pipe and sometimes spat a giant globule into the local spittoon (a word I loved, although I'd never seen one, and visualized as resembling a chamber pot, only more dignified and decorated). Peony, not unnaturally, had curly blonde hair, the opposite of mine, and sweet little rosebud lips like those on the unreachable dolls in Eaton's catalogue. Rosa Picardy, my alter ego, I suppose, was somewhat sturdier. She did brave deeds, slew dragons and/or polar bears, and was Cowboy Joke's mate. Unlike the lady in the song, Rosa Picardy could never have expired gently while sighing–_

Your sweetheart waits for you, Jack,

Your sweetheart waits for you,

Out on the lonely prairie,

Where skies are always blue.

_No. Rosa Picardy had her head fastened on right. Not for her the martyr's death, the grave where only the coyote's (pronounced_ kiy- _oot's) wailing voice paid sad tribute. Rosa was right in there, pitching._

_Does that say anything about my parents, or only that I was born bloody-minded? I WAS born bloody-minded. It's cost me. I've paid through the nose. As they say. Also, one might add, through the head, heart and cunt._

_The spruce-house family must have appeared around the time my mother took sick. The whole thing was so quiet. No outer drama. That was the way, there. But I remember it, everything. Somewhat ironically, it is the first memory of actual people that I can trust, although I can't trust it completely, either, partly because I recognize anomalies in it, ways of expressing the remembering, ways which aren't those of a five-year-old, as though I were older in that memory (and the words bigger) than in some subsequent ones when I was six or seven, and partly because it was only what was happening to Me. What was happening to everyone else? What really happened in the upstairs bedroom? No–the two bedrooms. He was moved into the spare room. People couldn't be that sick together in the same bed, I guess._

_Memorybank Movie: Once Upon a Time There Was_

Mrs. Pearl from the next farm has come to Morag's house. She is an old woman, really old old, short and with puckered-up skin on her face, but not stooped a bit. Her face is tanned, though, which makes her look clean. She makes dinner and swishes around the kitchen. The stove is great big black and giant–oh, but good and warm. Summer now, though, and it is too _hot_. Morag has to wash her hands. The pump brings the water to the sink, but you have to chonk-chonk-chonk it, and she is not big enough to get it going. Mrs. Pearl chonks the pump, and the water splurts out. Morag takes the sliver of Fels-Naptha and washes her hands. For dinner. That is what you have to do.

"How come you're here, Mrs. Pearl?"

"Your mum and now your dad is kinda sick, honey," Mrs. Pearl says matter-of-factly, "and I just come to help out. You and me's going to have our supper in a minute, so you run along and play now, and I'll call you when it's ready. I'll bet a purty you're hungry, eh?"

Morag does not reply. She tries to reach the pump handle so she can rinse her hands, but although five years old is big, it is not big enough. Mrs. Pearl obliges.

"I think," Morag says, "I'll just go upstairs for a minute and see my mother and father."

Something is happening. Morag senses it but cannot figure it out. Mrs. Pearl is trying to be kind. Morag is scared, and her stomach aches. If she eats anything, she will throw up.

"No, honey," Mrs. Pearl says. "You're not to go upstairs. There's a good girl. Doctor MacLeod will be along in a little while, and he wouldn't want you to go bothering your folks when they're feeling kind of poorly, now, would he?"

"I want to see my mother," Morag says. "I am going up to see her right now. I won't stay long, Mrs. Pearl. I promise."

But the Big Person grabs Morag's wrist before Morag can slither away. Mrs. Pearl's hands are very strong, a trap like for mice or gophers or that, crunching down.

"No, you don't," Mrs. Pearl says sharply. "They're too sick to see you, just now, Morag. They don't want to see you."

"How do you know?" Morag cries. "You don't know anything about it! They do _so!_ Let go of me!"

Mrs. Pearl does not let go. Then Dr. MacLeod's car comes whamming into the yard. He is a tall man with brown hair and a smile. Morag now does not trust anyone who smiles.

"Hello, Morag."

She will not speak to him, or smile. She is not letting on that anything is happening.

"It's all right," the doctor says. "It's going to be okay. Don't you worry, now."

When he comes downstairs, he and Mrs. Pearl go into the livingroom (where no one ever lives; it is for Best), and close the door. Morag hears their voices but not their words. Then Dr. MacLeod leaves. Nothing else happens that day or night.

The days snail along, and Mrs. Pearl is still there. Every morning and evening she sprays Morag's throat with a sticky yellow stuff, saying it is good medicine which Dr. MacLeod has given. Morag sleeps in the kitchen now, while Mrs. Pearl takes Morag's upstairs room.

Mrs. Pearl's husband Henry comes over every evening and eats with Mrs. Pearl and Morag. He is old. He milks the cows. Once he asks if Morag would like to go with him to the barn, to see him milking the cows.

"No," she says.

Not _No Thanks_. And feels bad for having been rude. But she hates Mr. and Mrs. Pearl, for being here.

During the nights, there have been no sounds from upstairs, at least none that Morag has been able to hear, for the stairs go up from the livingroom, and the kitchen door is closed and locked at night so that Morag will not wander upstairs. Then one night Mrs. Pearl forgets to lock this door.

Dr. MacLeod had been that evening, and Morag had been sent out to play long after supper, when it was nearly dark. Mrs. Pearl's face looked scary when she put Morag to bed, but she said not a word.

Morag is alone in the dark. The stove hisses a little, and sighs, as the fire dies down. Morag gets up and tries the door and it opens into the livingroom. She stands barefoot, the linoleum cool on her skin, and listens.

From upstairs, there is a sound. Crying. Crying? Yes, crying. Not like people, though. Like something else. She does not know what. Kiy-oots. She knows only that it is her father's voice. There is no sound of her mother's voice, no sound at all.

Morag, terrified, scuttles back to the kitchen like a cockroach–she _is_ a cockroach; she feels like one, running, scuttling.

Next morning, Mrs. Pearl does not have a talk with Morag. Not that day. Or the next. But finally. When?

"Morag, honey, they have passed on," Mrs. Pearl says, blushing, as though caught in a lie, "to a happier land, we know."

Morag does not imagine that they have gone to some real good place. She knows they are dead. She knows what dead means. She has seen dead gophers, run over by cars or shot, their guts redly squashed out on the road.

"I want to see them! I have to!"

"Better not," Mrs. Pearl says firmly. "There, there, honey. You just cry."

And so of course Morag does not know how much of their guts lie coiled like scarlet snakes across the sheets. She does not cry, not then. Mrs. Pearl's leather arms and flat breast stifle and sicken her, and she pushes the well-meaningness away. She stares unblinking, like fledgling birds when they fall out of their nests and just stare.

"You _are_ the brave girl," Mrs. Pearl says. "Yes, that you surely are."

There is silence all around, and then Mrs. Pearl says something else.

"It was the infantile, dear. The infantile paralysis."

Morag has never heard either word before. She asks, and Mrs. Pearl tells her that it is a sickness which usually happens to children.

The lowest and largest boughs of the spruce reach down and touch the earth, making a cave, a small shelter into which no one can see. She is not doing anything. Cowboy Joke and Rosa Picardy and the others are not here now. They have gone away. For good. Once and for all.

Morag is talking in her head. To God. Telling Him it was all His fault and this is why she is so mad at Him. Because He is no good, is why.

If it was the infantile, though, why them and not her? She is the kid around here.

Next day, Morag goes upstairs and looks in all the bedrooms, carefully, but everybody has gone. Vanished. She has not seen them being taken away.

"Honey, come here a second," Mrs. Pearl says.

Morag comes to her, reluctantly.

"Listen, Morag," Mrs. Pearl says, clicking her false teeth and then putting a hand over her mouth, "you're gonna be living with Mr. and Mrs. Logan, dear, in Manawaka. Christie Logan, that is. He was in the Army with your dad, honey, and he and Prin have offered to take you, seeing as there ain't none of your own relatives hereabouts. They're not what you'd call a well-off couple, but they're kind, and they got no children of their own. I'm sure you'll get on dandy with them, once you're used to it. It was real kind of them to offer."

Morag says nothing. She has learned you can't argue when you are a kid. You can only wait not to be a kid any more.

Mr. and Mrs. Pearl have a broken-down old car, black and rattling, like a hearse for clowns.

They drive off, and Mr. Pearl stops the car on the road just outside the fence and goes back.

"Won't be but a minute."

Morag does not look back, but she hears the metallic clank of the farm gate being shut. Closed.

_Now I am crying, for God's sake, and I don't even know how much of that memory really happened and how much of it I embroidered later on. I seem to remember it just like that, and yet, each time I think of it, are there new or different details? I recall it with embellishments which don't seem likely for a five-year-old._

_Infantile paralysis–that was what they called polio, then._

_The land, house and furniture had to be sold to pay the mortgage, Christie told me years later, but Henry Pearl managed to winkle the piano and a few other things out and over to his place, and quietly sold them when he could, and no one who knew about it in South Wachakwa or Manawaka ever told on him. He put the money into a bank account for me to have at age eighteen. He died of pneumonia about five years later. So I never had the chance to say anything to him about it, when I was old enough._

_That's all there was to them, my parents. Christie toted me along once to see their gravestone in the Manawaka cemetery when I was about eight or ten. I didn't want to go, and hardly looked at the stone, and wouldn't place on its grey granite the bunch of peach-coloured gladioli (naturally, half-wilted, one of Christie's salvage operations). Christie scowled but didn't say a word. I was raging because he'd made me go. And now I no longer know whether I was furious at Christie, or at them for having gone away, or whether I was only afraid and didn't know that I was. Now I would like to see that grave, only once, although I know quite well it couldn't tell me anything._

_Were they angry at me often, or only sometimes? Did my father feel he'd done well with his life, or that he was a total loss, or did he feel anything? Did my mother feel pleased when she saw him come in from the barn, or did she think to herself–or aloud–that she'd married beneath her? Did she welcome him in bed, or did she make a habit of turning away and muttering she had a headache? Did he think she was the best lay he'd ever had, or did he grind his teeth in hardly suppressed resentment at her coldness? No way of knowing. Why should it matter now, anyway?_

_They remain shadows. Two sepia shadows on an old snapshot, two barely moving shadows in my head, shadows whose few remaining words and acts I have invented. Perhaps I only want their forgiveness for having forgotten them._

_I remember their deaths, but not their lives. Yet they're inside me, flowing unknown in my blood and moving unrecognized in my skull._
**PART TWO**

**THE NUISANCE GROUNDS**
**TWO**

**S** even-thirty A.M. and the phone rang. Morag, never an early or easy wakener, surfaced groggily from the submerged caves in which she had been happily floating for some nine hours.

Two rings. Her call. She wondered sourly how many people on her party line would be up and about to listen in. Who on earth could be calling at such an hour?

Pique. Of course. Naturally. It could only be her. Mother, I'm coming home, okay? I've made it up with Gord and he's gonna meet me at McConnell's Landing.

Or no. Not Pique. A welfare officer in Toronto. You the girl's mother? She's unconscious at the moment, under heavy sedation. A bad trip. Naturally, LSD–what did you think I meant, CPR? She was found wandering–

Morag shot down the stairs, tripping on the piece of loose stair carpet which she always forgot to tack down, losing her balance, grabbing simultaneously for her glasses and the stair railing. She had instinctively clapped on her glasses, she realized, not so much because she needed them to find her way downstairs as because she felt totally inept without them. Probably she thought she needed them in order to hear.

"Hello?" Her voice anxious, tense.

"Hello? Is that Mrs.–um–Miss Gunn?"

A woman's voice. Drawling a little. The welfare officer.

"Yes. Speaking."

"Oh, well then. You wouldn't remember me Miss–er–Missus Gunn, but I was in Dragett's Bookshop that day last October when you were there autographing your books, you know, and actually I bought _Stick of Innocence_."

" _Spear of Innocence_ ," Morag interjected irritably. What a rotten title. How had she ever dreamed that one up? But let's at least get it right, lady. _Stick_ , ye gods. Freudian error. Same could be said of _Spear_ , probably.

"Yes, that's the one," the voice went on. "Well, I do a lot of writing myself, Miss–uh–Miss Gunn, so I just thought I'll phone you up, like, and I'd be grateful if you would just tell me how you got started. I mean, I know once you're accepted, you don't need to worry. Anything you write _now_ , I mean, will automatically get published–"

_Oh, sure. Just bash out any old crap and rake in the millions. I get my plots from the telephone directory._

"But, well, I mean, like," the voice persisted, "did you know some person in the publishing field? How could I get to know someone?"

"I didn't know a soul," Morag said heavily, trying to force politeness and consideration into her voice. "I just kept sending stories out, that's all. When I wrote a novel, I submitted it. The second publisher took it. I was lucky."

"Yes. But how did you actually get a _start_? What did you _do_?"

"I worked like hell, if you really want to know. I've told you. There's no secret. Look, it's awfully early. I'm sorry. I'm afraid I really can't help you."

"Oh, is it early to you? I always rise at six, so as to work at my writing before I prepare the breakfast for my husband, but I guess a successful writer like you wouldn't have to worry about domestic chores–"

_Certainly not. I have a butler, a cook and a houseparlour-maid. Black. From Jamaica. Underpaid. Loyal slaves._

"Look, I'm awfully sorry, but–"

"Oh well, in that case, I shouldn't have troubled you, I'm sure." Voice filled with rancour.

Slam!

Morag held the receiver in her hand for a moment, looking at it. Then replaced it. Had she been too abrupt? The woman only wanted to find out. Desperate, likely. Wanting the golden key from someone who had had five books published and who frequently wondered how to keep the mini-fortress here going and what would happen to her when she could no longer write. Golden key indeed.

Morag started to kindle a fire in the woodstove, then changed her mind. The day would warm up quickly enough. Mid-June, and, although it was cool at daybreak, by noon it would be hot. Strange to think she had once cooked on that woodstove, when she first moved in here, not then being able to afford an electric stove. She was fond of the old stove now, black and huge as it was, but in the first days it had been a disaster, smoking like a train and the food either raw or scorched.

The river was the colour of liquid bronze this morning, the sun catching it. Could that be right? No. Who had ever seen liquid bronze? Not Morag, certainly. Probably no one could catch the river's colour even with paints, much less words. A daft profession. Wordsmith. Liar, more likely. Weaving fabrications. Yet, with typical ambiguity, convinced that fiction was more true than fact. Or that fact was in fact fiction.

Royland came to the door, looking old as Jehovah. Wearing his plaid wool bush jacket and heavy denims–a wonder he didn't melt. Greybeard loon. Royland had a beard for the only sensible reason for having one, because he couldn't be bothered shaving. Large and bulky as a polar bear, he filled the doorway.

"Morning, Morag."

"Hi. Come on in. Want some coffee?"

"I don't mind if I do. I brought you a pickerel. Went out earlier this morning. It's straight from the river."

Ancient myopic eyes mocking her, albeit gently. He knew she had not yet been able to bring herself to clean a fish. He was working on her, though.

"Oh, thanks, Royland. That's–wonderful."

Her face, no doubt, looked gloomy as purgatory. He laughed and produced the fish. Cleaned and filleted.

"Heavens, Royland," Morag said, ashamed, "you shouldn't have given into my squeamishness."

"Well, the last time I tried you with the whole fish, you threw it back into the river."

"How did you know?"

"The Smiths' kid told me. Young Tom, he seen you. It just slipped out, kind of. He never meant to tell on you.... Oh, I was about to mention–I'm divining this week."

"Where?"

"A-Okay Smith's. Want to come over?"

"Yes. Please."

"Fine. It'll be Friday. I'll pick you up in the boat. Seven. Morning, that is."

"I'll be ready."

Royland's faded amber eyes grew clearer and sharper, examining her face.

"Why're you so interested in divining, Morag?"

She hesitated.

"I don't know. I wonder why, myself. I guess with one part of my mind I find it hard to believe in, but with another part I believe in it totally."

"It works," Royland said.

"I know. That's the only proof needed. I always think, though, what if one day it doesn't work? And _why_ does it work?"

"I don't reckon I really need to understand it," Royland said. "I just gotta do it."

Oh Lord. Of course. Which she had known all along, but still perpetually questioned. Why not take it on faith, for herself, as he did? Sometimes she could. But not always.

"You're alone too much," Royland said, unexpectedly.

"What about you?"

"Oh sure. But I'm getting on in age. And I don't sit around knocking my brains out, like you do."

"I'm a professional worrier, that's all," Morag said. "Did you know Pique's gone again?"

"You worry too damn much about that girl, Morag. She's a grown woman."

"Hell, don't I know it. That's why I worry about her."

"You used to be her age, once. You made out."

"In a manner of speaking. Anyway, when I was her age, beer was thought to be a major danger. Beer! Because it might lead to getting pregnant. Good God, Royland. Babes in the woods. Innocents. The tartiest tarts in Manawaka were as Easter lilies. The world seems full of more hazards now. Doom all around. In various shapes and forms. I used to be very liberated in my attitude towards drugs, incidentally, until Pique got to be about fourteen. Okay, pot. That I can accept. Although nervously. But all the other stuff. I worry. I worry, but can do absolutely sweet bugger-all."

"You brought her up. You should have more faith."

"Yeh," Morag said, lighting her tenth cigarette of the day. "Great example I am."

"Why don't you quit, then?"

"Too late. For her. Anyway, I began when the disastrous effects of the weed were not yet known, and am now addicted."

Excuses, excuses.

"Also," Morag added, "another thing about myself when young was that I got married when only one year older than Pique is now, and Brooke kept me on the straight and narrow for a long time."

"That must've been fun," Royland said dryly.

Dirty old man. Shut up. Shut up.

"It wasn't so bad," Morag replied stiffly.

"Oh-oh. Sorry, lady."

"Think nothing of it."

They both laughed, not uncomfortably.

When Royland had gone, Morag wrapped the fish in aluminum foil (good God, why not fresh leaves or something?) and put it in the refrigerator (natural living–it should be an earth cellar or roothouse). Then, willing herself not to do so, she got out the snapshots again, and began looking at the ones taken after she had gone to the Logans', right up through the years.

She put the pictures away, finally, and walked over to the oval walnut-framed mirror which hung precariously from a nail above the sideboard.

A tall woman, although not bizarrely so. Heavier than once, but not what you would call fat. Tanned, slightly leathery face. Admittedly strong and rather sharp features. Eyebrows which met in the middle and which she had ceased to pluck, thinking what the hell. Dark brown eyes, somewhat concealed ( _good_ ) by heavy-framed glasses. Long, dead-straight hair, once black as tar, now quite evenly grey.

The films were beginning again. Sneakily unfolding inside her head. She could not even be sure of their veracity, nor guess how many times they had been refilmed, a scene deleted here, another added there. But they were on again, a new season of the old films.

_I can smell the goddamn prairie dust on Hill Street, outside Christie's palatial mansion._

_Hill Street, so named because it was on one part of the town hill which led down into the valley where the Wachakwa River ran, glossy brown, shallow, narrow, more a creek than a river. They said "crick," there. Down in the valley the scrub oak and spindly pale-leafed poplars grew, alongside the clumps of chokecherry bushes and wolf willow. The grass there was high and thick, undulating greenly like wheat, and interspersed with sweet yellow clover. But on Hill Street there were only one or two sickly Manitoba maples and practically no grass at all. Hill Street was the Scots-English equivalent of The Other Side of the Tracks, the shacks and shanties at the north end of Manawaka, where the Ukrainian section-hands on the CPR lived. Hill Street was below the town; it was inhabited by those who had not and never would make good. Remittance men and their draggled families. Drunks. People perpetually on relief. Occasional labourers, men whose tired women supported the family by going out to clean the big brick houses on top of the hill on the streets shaded by sturdy maples, elms, lombardy poplars. Hill Street–dedicated to flops, washouts and general nogoods, at least in the view of the town's better-off._

_Christie Logan's house was halfway up the hill, and looked much the same as the other dwellings there. A square two-storey wooden box, once painted brown but when I knew it, no distinguishable colour, the paint having yielded long ago to the weather, blistering summers and bone-chilling blizzard-howling winters. Front porch floored with splintered unsteady boards. The yard a junk heap, where a few carrots and petunias fought a losing battle against chickweed, lamb's quarters, creeping charlie, dandelions, couchgrass, old car axles, a decrepit black buggy with one wheel missing, pieces of iron and battered saucepans which might come in useful someday but never did, a broken babycarriage and two ruined armchairs with the springs hanging out and the upholstery torn and mildewed._

_I didn't see it in that detail at first. I guess I must have seen it as a blur. How did it feel?_

_Memorybank Movie: What Means "In Town"?_

Smelly. The house is smelly. It smells like pee or something, but not like a barn. Worse. Morag sits still on the kitchen chair. The two people are looking at her. Let them look. She will not let on. She will not say anything.

"You'll like living In Town, once you're used to it," the Big Fat Woman says.

In Town? This does not seem like Town. Town is where the stores are, and you go in for ice cream sometimes, like with Mr. and Mrs. Pearl yesterday or when.

The Big Fat Woman sighs. She is so fat–can she be a person? Can _people_ look like that? The Skinny Man looks funny, too. Sort of crooked in his arms or legs, or like that. He has a funny lump in his throat and it wobbles up and down when he talks.

"You'll call me Christie, Morag girl," he says. "And this here is Prin. You hungry, lass?"

Morag does not let on.

"She'll be all right, Christie," the Big Fat Woman says. "She gotta get used to us. Leave her be, now."

"I was only trying, for God's sake, woman." Sounding mad. "You want to see your room, Morag?" the woman says.

She nods. They mount the stairs, the woman going very slow because fat. The room is hers, this one? A thin bed, a green dresser, a window with a (oh–ripped, shame on them) lace curtain. A little room. You might be safe in a place like that, if it was really yours. If they meant it.

"I want to go to sleep," Morag says.

And does that. They let her.

_And after that, for one entire year, my memories do not exist at all. A blank. Nothing of what happened then remains accessible. Not until I was six._

_Memorybank Movie: The Law Means School_

The long long long long street, and Morag walking, slowly. Her hand, sweaty, in Christie's hand. His hand is like when you feel the bark of a tree, rough rough. Not far now. She wishes it was about another million miles.

All kids have to go to school when they are six. It is LAW. What means _Law_?

Big brick building, with a high wire fence around the big yard, and the yard all gravel. If you fell on that gravel you would skin your knees, all right. Must never trip. What if they push you, though?

So many kids, there. All yelling. Some very big kids. Some about Morag's size. Morag knows for sure only Eva Winkler, who lives next door on Hill Street.

"Do I have to, Christie?"

"Aye. Just give them hell, Morag, and you'll be fine. Just don't you take any smart-aleck stuff from any of that lot, there. They're only muck the same as any of us. Skin and bone and the odd bit of guts."

"Yeh." But not knowing what he means.

She and Christie walk up the cement steps. Forty miles. LAUGHTER? Why? She turns. Many laughers. All around. On the steps and on the gravel. Large and small kids. Some looking away. Some going ho ho har har.

"Lookut her dress–it's down to her ankles!"

"Oh, it isn't, Helen! It's sure away below her knees, though."

Her dress? What's wrong? Prin sewed it. Out of a wraparound which Prin is now too stout to wear.

Girls here. Some bigger, some smaller than Morag. Skipping with skipping ropes. Singing.

Jamie Halpern, so they say,

Goes a' courting night and day,

Sword an' pistol by his side,

Takes Junie Foster for his bride.

And oh

Their dresses are very short, away above their knees. Some very bright blue yellow green and new cloth, new right out of the store. You can see the pattern very clear, polka dots flowers and that.

Well oh

Eva Winkler's dress same as Morag's.

"Hello, Eva. Hello there, Eva!" Morag's voice loud.

But Eva is bawling her eyes out. By herself.

In the front hall, dark dark floor stinking of oil bad-smelling oil. Boys' voices. Mean.

"Hey, you know who _that_ is?"

"Sure, old man Logan. He's the–"

"Sh! Al Cates, you shut your face." Girlvoice.

"Oh shut up, Mavis. He's the–SCAVENGER!"

What means _Scavenger_? Morag cannot ask. Christie's face is stone.

"Phew! Can't you smell him from here?"

"Gabby little turds," Christie mutters.

The room. Grade One. Christie gone. Morag alone with all the other kids. Having taken a seat at one of the desks in the back row. Holding hard onto her wooden pencil-case. Never mind. They are only gabby turds, these kids. And when she goes home today she will know how to read.

The teacher is a lady. Tall, giant, like a big tree walking and waving its arms. A tree wearing spectacles. Morag giggles, but inside.

Then the worst thought. What if she has to pee or shit? Is there a backhouse in this place?

The teacher says a whole lot of stuff welcome boys and girls I know we're going to get along just beautifully and I know you're going to work hard and not make any trouble and I may as well say right now that troublemakers will find _themselves_ in trouble and it is the ruler across the hands for them and the really bad behavers get the strap from the Principal.

What means _Principal_? What is _Strap_?

"Stand up and say your names, please. You, the girl at the back in this row, you begin."

_Who?_ Her. Morag. She knows she won't be able to say. Or will wet her pants. She struggles up, stooping a bit so as to hide her tallness. She is taller than any of the other girls, what a disgrace.

Mumble.

"Speak up, dear, we can't hear you."

"Morag Gunn."

"Thank you, Morag. You may sit down. Next, now."

All the names. Stacey Cameron. Mavis Duncan. Julie Kazlik. Ross McVitie. Mike Lobodiak. Al Cates. Steve Kowalski. Vanessa MacLeod. Jamie Halpern. Eva Winkler. And so on and so on.

Teacher's name–Miss Crawford.

"Miss Crawfish," Jamie Halpern whispers.

Eva Winkler's tears go drip-drip-drip-splot onto her scribbler. Morag wants to cry, too. But doesn't. Miss Crawfish is gabbing again. All sorts of stuff now boys and girls if you want to leave the room you must hold up your hand for permission either one finger or two you take my meaning of course.

What means _Leave the Room_? Morag does not think it really means you can go home if you want to. One finger? Two fingers? What for?

"Number One and Number Two," somebody whispers. "If you gotta do Number Two, she lets you go out right away. My brother told me."

Morag now sees that she cannot see what is written on the blackboard. Her ears, though, are of the best. Maybe this will make up for not having a brother who tells you things.

Eva Winkler's brothers are all younger. None yet at school.

A horrible smell everywhere. Who? Eva Winkler bawls out loud now. All eyes on her. Morag clenches her own stomach, holding on. She mustn't. She can't hold up her hand. Not in front of everybody. Especially now.

"Eva–have you had an accident?" Miss Crawfish asks.

Eva cries and cries. Some kids laugh.

"That's _enough_ , class. Eva, why didn't you ask permission? To leave the room."

"I never knew–"

"But I told you, Eva. Stand up beside your desk."

"I _can't_. It'll go on the floor, the poop will."

" _Please_. Never use such an expression in this room again. Very well, you had better go to the washroom, Eva, and then go home. You can come back this afternoon when you've got cleaned up. Now, don't worry. It's all right. Just don't let it happen again."

Eva scuffs out. Plop-plop-plop behind her as she begins to run, and the floor has stuff on it yellow-brownish and smelly.

"Jamie Halpern," Teacher says. "Go and find the janitor. In the basement."

A man comes into the room after a while. Hairy and dark, grinning at the kids. Friendly? Mr. Doherty. Winks once or twice when Teacher not looking. Carries a bag, a broom, a dustpan. Empties bag, with greenish powder, onto Eva's shame shame. Morag knows what the powder is. Paris Green. What a music name for that poison stuff. He sweeps up everything and goes.

Recess. _Recess_ means you go out onto the gravel. Morag listens, hanging around the edges of bunches of kids who are friends. No talk about Scavenger now. All about Eva. Eva Weakguts, pale pale face and pale yellow hair. Kids are saying lots of things scared to ask permission doing it on the floor wow wait'll we see her face this afternoon bet you she'll be blushing like a rose yeh but not smelling like one oh Ross think you're so smart dontcha well aren't I and what about you stuckup Stacey and lots of other things.

Morag's head is thinking thinking figuring out.

At four o'clock they can go home. She still does not know how to read. Some school this turned out to be. But has learned one thing for sure.

Hang onto your shit and never let them know you are ascared.

_Memorybank Movie: Morag, Much Older_

Seven is much older than six. A person knows a hell of a sight more. And can read. Some kids still can't read yet. But they are dumb, dumb-bells, dumb bunnies. Morag can read like sixty. Sometimes she doesn't let on in school, though. Just depends on how she feels. So there.

Prin is sitting in the kitchen when Morag gets home from school. Prin is getting fatter all the time, and she looks like a great big huge pear. She buys jelly doughnuts at Parsons' Bakery and sometimes she gives one to Morag. Mostly the bagful has gone by the time Morag gets home. Prin doesn't mean to be mean. She sits all the afternoon in the squashy leather-seated easy chair in the kitchen, chewing, and then she looks and lo and behold no doughnuts are left.

Prin's family was English. She has told Morag about it. Prin's father was a remittance man. That meant his family in The Old Country didn't like him so good, and were pretty mean and all, even though he was a gentleman, a real one, and so they made him come to this country where he didn't want to come to, and for a while, there, they sent him some money, but then they didn't. He wasn't much of a farmer, but he meant well, Prin said. She was the only child and wasn't none too bright (you were supposed to say wasn't _any_ too bright but Prin didn't know that) and couldn't be too much help, but then her dad died anyway. Her mother had died Before. When would that be? Long ago in olden times. Prin married Christie when he came back from the Great War. The town said good job too; a pity to spoil two families. Which was mean. But funny, too.

Prin's real Christian name is Princess. Morag thinks this is the funniest thing she has ever heard. But once when she said so to Christie, he told her to shut her trap.

"Hi," Morag says. "Can I have something to eat?"

"Sure. You want some bread and sugar?"

Morag nods and goes to fetch it. Soft brown sugar spread on white storeboughten bread. Her favourite. Prin used to make her own bread, but gave it up. Too hot to bake in summer and too hard in winter to find a place neither too warm nor too cold for the dough to rise proper. Morag is glad. The soft fluffy bread from Parsons' is better. More delicate. Morag is very delicate-minded. She prides herself on it, although she never lets on, of course. Vanessa and Mavis and like them have storeboughten bread in their houses all the time. Or so she guesses, never having been into their houses. Never so much as a bite of anything else, heaven forbid. Storeboughten cookies are another thing. She is sure _their_ mothers make cookies because when the class had a valentine's party, they and some others brought heart-shaped cookies with pink icing. Storeboughten cookies are looked down on.

The hell with them. Screw them all. They are stupid buggers.

Morag loves to swear, but doesn't do it at school because you get the strap or else have to stand out in the hall by yourself where the coats are hung.

"Christie has to go out with the wagon again, now. I'm sure I don't know why. I'll bet a nickel to a doughnut hole they won't pay him extra."

Prin's voice is kind of small and high, like a little kid's. Prin really likes Christie. But she is a born whiner.

Christie comes in from the stable at the back where Ginger and the wagon are kept. He wipes some sweat from around his eyes and grins at Morag.

"Hello, lass. Did they _learn_ you much today, then?"

He knows better. He says it like that on purpose. A joke. Prin would say it not on purpose.

"No." Morag turns away from him.

Christie is short, skinny, but actually quite strong. He looks _peculiar_. His head sort of comes forward when he walks, like he is in a hurry, but he isn't ever in a hurry. His hair, what's left of it, is sandy. Blue eyes, but all cloudy and with little red lines on the white part. Wires (hair, actually) grow out of his chin–he doesn't shave every day. The lump in his throat is called his Adam's apple, what a name. His teeth are bad and one is missing at the front but he never tries to hide it by putting his hand over or smiling with his mouth closed, oh no, not him. He always wears a blue heavy shirt, and overalls too big so they fall around him and make him look silly.

That is the worst. How silly he looks. No. The worst is that he smells. He does wash. But he never gets rid of the smell. How much do other people notice? Plenty. You bet. Horseshit and garbage, putrid stuff, vegetables and that, rotten eggs and mouldy old clothes.

"Gotta pick up a load of scrap from the blacksmith's," Christie says. "Want to come along, Morag?"

Morag hesitates. She has never gone with Christie in the wagon. Just for once she would like to go, to see the Nuisance Grounds. She nods.

"C'mon, then," he says. "Haven't got all night."

Ginger is a rusty colour. A gelding. Morag knows what _that_ means, too, ha ha. Ginger is thin, and his hipbones stick out under the leather skin. Morag climbs up onto the wagon beside Christie.

Why is Christie called Scavenger? Morag does not yet know this and will not ask. She knows what he _does_ , collecting the town garbage and taking it to dump in the Nuisance Grounds. But what, really, means _Scavenger_? She is afraid to ask. And why _Nuisance Grounds_? Because all that awful old stuff and rotten stuff is a nuisance and nice people don't want to have anything to do with it?

Clank-clonk. The wooden cart crawls up Hill Street, turning north on the main drag. All the stores are up the other end of Main. Here there is only the Granite Works, which makes gravestones in two colours, red or black, speckled stone, some plain and some fancy with flowers and scrolls and that. Then Christie turns in at a sign above a dark dark brick cave. _W. Saunders, Blacksmith._ Morag isn't going to go down there. She stays on the wagon, looking into the blackness. At the very end of the gloomy dark there is a fire, glowing red but not seeming to light up the place at all. Smells: heat, horses, sweat. An old man is sitting on an overturned nail barrel outside, and inside a younger man suddenly swings a big hammer onto the iron slab and for a second the whole place is full of stars. Christie loads the wagon with scrap iron, old horseshoes, crooked pieces of rusty oily metal, and they are off again. Morag thinks of the sparks, the stars, and sees them again inside her head. Stars! Fire-stars! How does it happen? She wants to ask, but won't. Christie would think she was dumb. She isn't the dumb one. Christie is.

Now they are going along the streets where some of the big houses are, big yellow brick houses or wooden houses painted really nice. Lawns all neat and cut, and sprinklers sprinkling, swirling around and making water rainbows. Flower gardens with pink and purple petunias, and red snapdragons like velvet, really _rich_ velvet, and orange lilies with freckles on the throats. The blinds are pulled down over the front windows of the houses, to keep out the heat. Cream-coloured blinds, all fringed with lace and tassels. The windows are the eyes, closed, and the blinds are the eyelids, all creamy, fringed with lacy lashes. Blinds make the houses to be blind. Ha ha.

Morag is enjoying this ride more than she thought she would. Then it happens. A gang of kids. Some from her class in school. Voices. Yelling. Whistling.

"Hey–there goes Old Man Logan on his chariot!"

"Giddup! Hey, giddup there, ya old swayback!"

"Hey, get a load of who's with him, eh? Got a little helper, Mr. Logan? Hey, Christie, got a new hand, there?"

Mostly it is the boys who are yelling. Ross McVitie. Al Cates. Jamie Halpern. The girls are looking away, pretending not to notice. But snickering a bit. Trying to get in good with the boys. Mavis Duncan. Vanessa MacLeod. Stacey Cameron.

"Hey, listen–how about this, eh?"

Then, like a song, like a verse, but mean.

Christie Logan's the Scavenger Man–

Gets his food from the garbage can!

Laugh laugh laugh. Har har ho ho. One of the girls, though (which one?), says for them to cut it out. But no. They don't.

"I got a better one. Hey, wait, listen! Listen, Ross!"

Mo-rag! Mo-rag!

Gets her clothes from an ol' flour bag!

Morag is not breathing. She can't feel herself breathing. She isn't hearing, either. She won't hear. She sits still, not looking at Christie. Then she realizes he has stopped the wagon and she glances at him.

Oh. Christie is grinning. He is twisting his face, like different crazy masks. His tongue droops out like a dog's tongue. He crosses his eyes, and his mouth is dribbling with spit. Then he laughs. Oh. He laughs in a kind of cackle, like a loony.

Silence. The kids aren't saying anything. Now Christie's face goes back to its own self.

"Seen enough, then?" he says. "Next time I'll pass the hat."

Then he reaches, very slowly, for the whip which he never uses on Ginger. He lifts it high in his hand.

Give it to them, Christie! Hurt them. But she isn't saying the words out loud.

The kids run, scattering all over the place. Christie puts the whip back, and laughs. Laughs like himself. Morag is crying, but with her head down, so as not to be seen. Christie puts a hand on her shoulder, but she shoves it away.

"Why did you have to act so silly, Christie? Why did you have to?"

Christie hawks and spits into the road.

"Och aye. Only showing them what they thought they would be expecting to see, then, do you see?"

She does not see.

"Look at it this way," Christie says. "All these houses along here, Morag. I don't say this is so of all of them, now, but with the most of them, you can see from what their kids say, what they're saying. Some of them, because I take off their muck for them, they think I'm muck. Well, I _am_ muck, but so are they. Not a father's son, not a man born of woman who is not muck in some part of his immortal soul, girl. That's what they don't know, the poor sods. When I carry away their refuse, I'm carrying off part of them, do you see?"

No. She does not see. She sees one thing, though. Christie is working himself into a spiel. He usually gets into a spiel when the whiskey is in him. Prin says so. And Morag has seen it. But there is no whiskey in him now.

Christie's face looks funny, sort of squashed-in. His skin is all sunburnt, and now it's covered with dusty sweat, all that red skin face. Christie is a redskin. Ha ha. But she isn't laughing. She hates the kids for talking like they did, to her but also to Christie. Now she hates Christie for talking the way he is, crazy.

"By their garbage shall ye know them," Christie yells, like a preacher, a downy preacher. "I swear, by the ridge of tears and by the valour of my ancestors, I say unto you, Morag Gunn, lass, that by their bloody goddamn fucking garbage shall ye christly well know them. The ones who eat only out of tins. The ones who have to wrap the rye bottles in old newspapers to try to hide the fact that there are so goddamn many of them. The ones who have fourteen thousand pill bottles the week, now. The ones who will be chucking out the family albums the moment the grandmother goes to her ancestors. The ones who're afraid to flush the safes down the john, them with flush johns, in case it plugs the plumbing and Melrose Maclaren has to come and get it unstuck and might see, as if Mel would give the hundredth part of a damn. I tell you, girl, they're close as clams and twice as brainless. I see what they throw out, and I don't care a shit, but they think I do, so that's why they cannot look at me. They think muck's dirty. It's no more dirty than what's in their heads. Or mine. It's christly clean compared to some things. All right. I'll please them. I'll wade in it up to my ass. I could wade in shit, if I had to, without it hurting me. I'd like to tell the buggers that."

Christie wipes his face with the back of his hand.

"Now then, Morag," he says in his real voice, "what a bloody fool, talking to you like that. I want my head looking at, that's God's truth. But I took this job, you know, because I fancied it. I could've worked for the CPR. Nothing elevated, I not having had the full High School for various reasons. It was after I came back from the war. Lot of muck lying about there, in France, I can tell you, most of it being–"

He stops speaking. Morag's hair is hot around her neck, and the sweat is trickling down between her shoulder blades.

Christie took the job because he fancied it.

"Christie, I think I'll get off and go on home now."

"Are you not all right, then, Morag?"

"It's so hot," she says. "I feel kinda sick to my stomach."

"Suit yourself, then."

So Morag does not see the Nuisance Grounds this day, either. Christie goes on his own way alone.

_Memorybank Movie: Parsons' Bakery
is the Worst Place in Town_

August. No school for another month yet. The heat is awful. Prin minds the heat, but Morag doesn't. In the house, the flies are in their millions, but slow and stupid with the heat. They get in through the rip in the screen door. Christie always forgets to fix this hole. The flies are _bluebottles_ –how come they got this nice name given to them? They're ugly. Some of them are all swollen with eggs inside of them, and they go crawling over the peanut butter pail on the table, or just burrow and nuzzle their way inside the loaf of bread. Morag sits with her elbows on the kitchen table, watching the flies.

When she peers close, she can see that their wings are shining, both blue and green. Can they be beautiful and filthy? Should she shoo them away? More would only come.

The oilcloth on the table is dirty. Sometimes Morag wipes it off, but more often she leaves it. It will only get dirty again. Neither Christie nor Prin ever notice, or, if they do, they don't let on. Prin is not really dirty. She just doesn't notice so much any more. She sits and sits in her chair, Prin does. Is she dreaming, with her eyes wide open? You can do this. It's easy. Morag knows. Maybe Prin is dreaming of being young and pretty. And rich. Prin rich! Pretty! She can't be dreaming _that_.

Morag likes the kitchen best. The oak bench, with the coat racks on each side of it, looks like a big moose with antlers, like in the school Reader. Christie's winter jacket, and all the scarves and mitts are still there, full of moths. The bench part is piled with old newspapers and also Morag's lunch pail for school. Christie's chair is the same as Prin's, armchair, old leather with horsehair (horsehair? Christie says so) inside. The seats of the chairs go _scree-ee_ – _squ-uff_ when someone sits down, and Morag loves this sound because it's funny. The kitchen smells, but some of the smells are okay: melted butter; heat; dust; Fels-Naptha soap. Sour milk and feet do not smell okay.

Morag likes the sittingroom, too, but nobody ever sits in it. It is not too good for everyday, like some people's, but it is full of stuff Christie has brought home from the Nuisance Grounds. Such as:

a black old stove, quite small and round and fat

a blue chesterfield but you can't see the pattern anymore too torn

a lamp with no shade, but it is _bronze_ and has a bronze lady with a bronze lily

a real carved wooden chess set, but no bishops (what are bishops?)

a family album, covered in red velvet (mouldy) and no name attached, no _family_ name, but the pictures have things written in white ink on the black pages– _Agnes as Fairy Queen in School Play; Mother & Marigold 1901_

a blue _plush_ (pl-uush–rich-sounding, but it is really like velvet only cheaper and not so smoo-ooth on the fingers) cushion, with a painted-on picture of King Edward the Seventh

a very _good_ china saucer, very good because thin and you can nearly see through it (Prin's father had the _very same kind_ ; maybe it was his?); tiny _mauve_ violets on it, but no cup

books, old old old books, and one has real leather for the cover, and the letters are in real _gold_ or used to be but now you can hardly see them, and you can't read the book because it is in _another language_ , but Christie says it is the Holy Bible in Gaelic. Throwing out a Holy Bible! Oh. But would God mind so much, seeing as it was in Gaelic? ( _What means Gaelic?_ )

Christie keeps bringing stuff home. He never does anything with it. But it is there. He calls it _good rubbish_. He says Bad Riddance to Good Rubbish. But you're supposed to say it the other way around. Morag knows.

Prin is puffing and wheezing. Her shoes are off.

"Golly, it's hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, ain't it, Morag?"

Morag does not reply. She is watching two flies fucking, buzzing while they do it.

"Morag, would you run to the store for me, like a good girl?" "Do I have to?"

"Well, I'd go myself," Prin says, sighing, "but it's these gosh-darned veins of mine. I hope and pray _you_ never know what it feels like to have varicose veins, Morag. Sometimes they just burn and sting like I got a whole nest of wasps right there in the veins themselves. Standing on my feet these hot days is murder."

So Morag goes. Up the hill and onto Main. To Parsons' Bakery.

The bread is kept on open shelves, but not the cakes and pastries. They are kept in a glass case. Morag looks at the iced fancies, little tiny cakes covered with pink or green or white icing, and with an almond or a cherry on top.

"Four jelly doughnuts, please."

"Right away," Mr. Parsons says.

At the other side of the store are Mrs. McVitie and Mrs. Cameron. Morag spotted them when she first came in. Sometimes she has to look hard to be sure who people are, because the faces don't come clear until they're really close up, but she always tries to see who is around. You have to. In case. Ross's mother and Stacey's mother are looking at the walnut slices and the shortbread. Nope. Now they are looking at her. Maybe they don't know she can hear what they're saying?

"It's a wonder some people can afford jelly doughnuts." Mrs. McVitie.

"Haven't you ever noticed, though, that it's _those_ who spend their money as though it was water?" Mrs. Cameron.

"Poor child, don't they ever have her hair cut?" Mrs. McVitie.

"And those gangling dresses, always away below the knee." Mrs. Cameron.

Morag takes the bag, pays, and turns. Her hair feels dirty. But it isn't dirty–Prin washed it only a day ago. The two ladies are wearing flowery _chiffon_ dresses. Hats, with real artificial flowers.

Morag sticks out her tongue at the both of them. And runs. Home.

"I'm not going there again, Prin. I hate that dumb place."

Why doesn't Prin go and get her own goddamn blistering bloody shitty jelly doughnuts?

Prin gets up out of her chair. Holding on to the chair-arm to heft up.

"Honey, what's the matter, now? Tell me, eh?"

Okay. If she wants to be told, Morag will tell her, all right all right. Morag has got a good memory. She repeats every word the two of them said, there.

Prin looks funny. Her face goes crinkled.

"You think it's my legs, honey?" Prin says. "It's that, but I _could_ drag them up the hill. I just don't want to be seen, _like this_. But better they'd said it to me than you."

"What? What, Prin?"

"I never used to look this way," Prin says. "Yeh, well, I know I let myself go. I know. Oh, I know that all right. I don't know. Just didn't seem that much use, bothering. We never seemed to get anywheres, anyhow. He's smarter than what I am, and I only got the Grade Five. I was lucky he married me. I never could fathom why he did. But I never could fathom _him_ , neither. He never cared about getting anywheres. It ain't his fault, I guess. But now–I don't kind of know how to be any different, like. That's why I don't, you know, look after you better, sort of. I'm that sorry, Morag."

Morag is crying. Holding onto Prin's awful fat belly wrapped around in the brown wraparound, Prin's good good good.

"Prin–I never meant! I never!"

Prin wipes Morag's eyes with fat warm hands.

"The Lord knows I care about you. I lost my only one."

"What? _What_?"

"Strangled on the cord. A boy. Dead when born."

What? What cord? What means _Cord_? Dead when born? Oh. How could you be born and dead at the same time? Oh–

"I shouldn't have said," Prin says. "Never you mind."

Morag doesn't say. Doesn't say. Doesn't say. Doesn't say.

Evening, and the three are sitting on the front porch. Christie and Prin are on straight chairs from the kitchen. Morag is on the top step. All along Hill Street, summer noises. Gangs of kids playing Kick the Can and Run Sheep Run and Andy Andy Eye Over. Dogs fucking in ditches, or fighting, yelping when somebody kicks them apart. Lots of women leaning on their fences and yakking.

Next door, at the Winklers', old Gus starts to shout. Trouble. Vernon runs outside and onto the road. Vernon is younger than Morag. He is a drip. Also, his nose drips drips drips all the time. He is skinny, and his hair (pale pale like Eva's) looks funny because his mother cuts it by putting a bowl on his head and snipping all around. But he is just a little kid, and it isn't his fault he's a drip. What is Vernon's dad going to _do_?

Gus Winkler has caught Vernon by the arm. Gus has a stick in his hand and he is hitting Vernon with it. On the legs, on the bum, oh on the face. Vern screams and screams. Like a dog when somebody has hurt it real bad.

Morag stares. Blood on Vernon's _face_. He has a nose-bleed. She looks up at Christie.

Christie is sitting very still. His hands are around his knees. He looks away from Morag. She might have known he wouldn't do anything. Scaredy-cat Christie.

Gus pushes Vernon back inside the Winklers' shack. All of a sudden everything on Hill Street seems quiet. Then the ordinary noises begin again, as though nothing has happened. Nothing at all. Christie does not move. Then he speaks, but it doesn't sound like Christie.

"I didn't go over. I didn't go over, did I? Not me. Gus Winkler's too brawny. May God–"

He stops. Prin makes little clucking-hen noises.

"It wasn't none of your business, Christie."

Christie gets up and walks inside the house.

"He's gonna have one of his spells," Prin says. "He ain't had one for a long time."

When they go into the house, Christie is sitting on the oak bench. His blue blue eyes look like they are _blind_. He is shaking all over. He keeps on like this a long time. Then he stops shaking but doesn't move. When Morag goes to bed, he is still sitting there, not moving.

"What _is_ it, Prin?"

"Shh," Prin says. "It's nothing. It'll go away by itself. Doc MacLeod says he don't think nothing can be done for it. It's the shell shock, like."

" _What_?"

"In the war," Prin explains. "He was shook up very bad. In his nerves, like. Sometimes it takes him, even now. He never said, but I always had a hunch that was why he couldn't get no other job except Scavenger. He never knows when it might take him, see."

"But–he told me he fancied the job."

"He would," Prin says, crossly.

"Why would Gus Winkler do that to Vern?"

Prin shakes her head.

"Only the Lord can tell. He's got a devil in him, that man."

Morag lies in bed, thinking. Christie would never beat her. He's stinky and he looks so dumb. But he's never beaten her. He wouldn't do that, anyway. But he didn't go over to Winklers'. He was scared of Gus.

Christie, sitting there in the kitchen. Christie, shaking all over.

Morag cries.

_Memorybank Movie: Christie with Spirits_

Morag is nine, and it is winter. The snow is a good four feet thick outside and you have to walk to school on the road, where the snowplough has been. The windows are covered with frost-feathers and frost-ferns, and it doesn't matter that you can't see out because the patterns are so good to look at. In the kitchen, the stove keeps them warm, although Christie has a job scrounging enough wood. Lots of people on Relief are going to the Nuisance Grounds looking for old wooden boxes, not being able to afford cordwood, but Christie has first pick. Christie is not on Relief. _Relief_ means you have no job on account of the Depression, and the government feeds you slop. Ugh. The _Depression_ means there aren't any jobs, or hardly any, or like that.

Christie is drinking red biddy he got from somebody across the tracks, and he is explaining about the wood and other things to Morag. Prin is cross about the red biddy, so she has turned her chair away from him.

"I leave some, do you see, then, Morag," Christie says. "It's only right. Garbage belongs to all. Communal property, as you might say. One man's muck is everyman's muck. The socialism of the junk heap. All the same, though, with every profession do you see, there must be some advantages, some little thing or other that you get which others don't. And this here is mine. The Nuisance Grounds keeps us warm. Out of the garbage dump and into the fire. Och aye, that was the grand load of boxes I brought back today. Old butter crates from the Creamery."

He swallows some more red biddy, coughs, then gets into the subject he always talks about when the spirits are in him.

"Let the Connors and the McVities and the Camerons and Simon Pearl and all them in their houses up there–let them look down on the likes of Christie Logan. Let them. I say unto you, Morag, girl, I open my shirt to the cold winds of their voices, yea, and to the ice of their everlasting eyes. They don't touch me, Morag. For my kin and clan are as good as theirs any day of the week, any week of the month, any month of the year, any year of the century, and any century of all time."

Gulp. Swallow. The spirits are really in him. His eyes are shining. His right hand comes up, clenched. He is pretending he is holding a claymore. Morag knows, because once afterwards he said so, laughing. But you aren't supposed to laugh now.

"Was I not born a Highlander, in Easter Ross, one of the North Logans? An ancient clan, an ancient people. Is our motto not a fine, proud set of words, then? _This Is the Valour of My Ancestors._ The motto of the Logans, Morag, and our war cry is _The Ridge of Tears_. The ridge of tears! _Druim-nan deur_ , although I'm not so sure how to pronounce it, not having the Gaelic. A sad cry, it is, for the sadness of my people. A cry heard at Culloden, in the black days of the battle, when the clans stood together for the last time, and the clans were broken by the Sassenach cannons and the damned bloody rifles of the redcoat swine. They mowed the clans down in cold blood, my dear, and it must have been enough to tear the heart and unhinge the mind of the strongest coldest man alive, for our folk were poor bloody crofters, and were not wanting to fight the wars of the chieftains, at all. But they thought their chieftains had the power from heaven, Morag. They believed their chiefs were kings from God. And them who didn't believe was raised anyway, with fire and with sword, until they went off to fight Charlie's battle for him, and him a green boy from France who neither knew nor cared for his people but only for the crown gleaming there in the eye of his own mind."

Christie stumbles to the sideboard and opens a drawer. He brings out the book, _The Clans and Tartans of Scotland_ , and looks up Logan.

"See there," he bellows. "The crest badge of the Logans. And what is the crest, Morag? What is the way, then, you would describe, in the right words, what is there on that badge?"

She knows it off by heart.

"A passion nail piercing a human heart, proper."

Christie's fist comes down on the table.

"Right! An ancient family, the North Logans, by the Almighty God."

Then the spirits start to get gloomy in him.

"Och, what the hell does it matter? It's here we live, not there, and the glory has passed away, and likely never was in the first place."

"Christie, tell me about Piper Gunn."

Christie sighs, and pours another drink. He sits there, thinking. Soon he will begin. Morag knows what it says in the book under the name Gunn. It isn't fair, but it must be true because it is right there in the book.

The chieftainship of Clan Gunn is undetermined at the present time, and no arms have been matriculated.

When she first looked it up, she showed it to Christie, and he read it and then he laughed and asked her if she had not been told the tales about the most famous Gunn of all, and so he told her. He tells them to her sometimes when the spirit moves him.

Now he rocks back on the straight chair, for he is sitting at the table with the bottle beside him.

"All right, then, listen and I will tell you the first tale of your ancestor."

CHRISTIE'S FIRST TALE OF PIPER GUNN

It was in the old days, a long time ago, after the clans was broken and scattered at the battle on the moors, and the dead men thrown into the long graves there, and no heather ever grew on those places, never again, for it was dark places they had become and places of mourning. Then, in those days, a darkness fell over all the lands and the crofts of Sutherland. The Bitch-Duchess was living there then, and it was she who cast a darkness over the land, and sowed the darkness and reaped gold, for her heart was dark as the feathers of a raven and her heart was cold as the gold coins, and she loved no creature alive but only the gold. And her tacksmen rode through the countryside, setting fire to the crofts and turning out the people from their homes which they had lived in since the beginning of all time. And it was old men and old women with thin shanks and men in their prime and women with the child inside them and a great scattering of small children like, and all of them was driven away from the lands of their fathers and onto the wild rocks of the shore, then, to fish if they could and pry the shellfish off of the rocks there, for food.

Well, now, the Bitch-Duchess walked her castle, there, walked and walked, and you would think God in His mercy would keep the sleep forever from her eyelids, but she slept sound enough when she had a mind to. She was not the one to feel shame or remorse over the people scrabbling on the rocks there like animals and like the crabs who crawl among the rocks in that place. _All the lands of Sutherland will be raising the sheep_ , says the she-devil, _for they'll pay better than folk._

Among all of them people there on the rocks, see, was a piper, and he was from the Clan Gunn, and it was many of the Gunns who lost their hearths and homes and lived wild on the stormy rocks there. And Piper Gunn, he was a great tall man, a man with the voice of drums and the heart of a child and the gall of a thousand and the strength of conviction. And when he played the pipes on the shore, there, it was the pibrochs he played, out of mourning for the people lost and the people gone and them with no place for to lay their heads except the rocks of the shore. When Piper Gunn played, the very seagulls echoed the chants of mourning, and the people wept. And Piper Gunn, he played there on the shore, all the pibrochs he knew, "Flowers of the Forest" and all them. And it would wrench the heart of any person whose heart was not dead as stone, to hear him.

Then Piper Gunn spoke to the people. _Dolts and draggards and daft loons and gutless as gutted herring you are_ , he calls out in his voice like the voice of the wind from the north isles. _Why do you sit on these rocks, weeping?_ says he. _For there is a ship coming_ , says he, _on the wings of the morning, and I have heard tell of it, and we must gather our pots and kettles and our shawls and our young ones, and go with it into a new world across the waters._

But the people were afraid, see? They did not dare. Better to die on the known rocks in the land of their ancestors, so some said. Others said the lands across the seas were bad lands, filled with the terrors and the demons and the beasts of the forest and those being the beasts which would devour a man as soon as look at him. _Well_ , says Piper Gunn, _God rot your flabby souls then, for my woman and I will go and rear our daughters and our sons in the far land and make it ours, and you can stay here, then, and the Bitch-Duchess can have chessmen carved from your white bones scattered here on the rocks and she shall play her games with you in your death as she has in your life._

Then Piper Gunn changed his music, and he played the battle music there on the rocks. And he played "All the Blue Bonnets Are Over the Border" and he played "Hey Johnnie Cope" and he played "The March of the Cameron Men" and he played "The Gunns' Salute" which was the music of his own clan. They say it was like the storm winds out of the north, and like the scree and skirl of all the dead pipers who ever lived, returned then to pipe the clans into battle.

Now Piper Gunn had a woman, and a strapping strong woman she was, with the courage of a falcon and the beauty of a deer and the warmth of a home and the faith of saints, and you may know her name. Her name, it was Morag. That was an old name, and that was the name Piper Gunn's woman went by, and fine long black hair she had, down to her waist, and she stood there beside her man on the rocky coast, and watched that ship come into the harbour in that place. And when the plank was down and the captain hailing the people there, Piper Gunn began to walk towards that ship and his woman Morag with him, and she with child, and he was still playing "The Gunns' Salute."

Then what happened? What happened then, to all of them people there homeless on the rocks? They rose and followed! Yes, they rose, then, and they followed, for Piper Gunn's music could put the heart into them and they would have followed him all the way to hell or to heaven with the sound of the pipes in their ears.

And that was how all of them came to this country, all that bunch, and they ended up at the Red River, and that is another story.

"Best go to bed, Morag," Prin says. " _He'll_ be asleep at the table in a coupla minutes."

Morag goes upstairs. Her room is really hers, her place. It has always been hers. She likes that it is small, just enough room for the brass bed and the green dresser. She sits on the bed, shivering. The cold is seeping in through the closed window. She does not undress. Prin finds her there, after a while, and scolds.

"Morag, you are a mooner."

Morag puts on her nightgown then, and climbs into bed. Thinking.

_A mooner._ That sounds nice. She knows what it means. It isn't meant nice. It means somebody who moons around, dawdling and thinking. But to her it means something else. Some creature from another place, _another planet_. Left here accidentally.

She thinks of the scribbler in her top dresser drawer. She will never show it to anyone, never. It is hers, her own business. She will write some in it tomorrow. She tells it in her head.

_Morag's First Tale of Piper Gunn's Woman_

Once long ago there was a beautiful woman name of Morag, and she was Piper Gunn's wife, and they went to the new land together and Morag was never afraid of anything in this whole wide world. Never. If they came to a forest, would this Morag there be scared? Not on your christly life. She would only laugh and say, _Forests cannot hurt me because I have the power and the second sight and the good eye and the strength of conviction._

What means _The Strength of Conviction?_

Morag sleeps.
**THREE**

**T** oday would be better. Today Pique would phone, or there would be a letter from her, saying she had decided against hitching west or else that she and Gord were back together and were going west for a while but all was well.

Morag went downstairs, made coffee and sat at the table, looking out at the morning river. The sky was growing light. Exact use of words, that. The sky actually was _growing_ light, as though the sun, still hidden, were some kind of galactic plant putting forth tendrils.

Idiotic to have got up so early. As you grow older, you require less sleep. Could it be that she would become a consistently early riser? Two hours' work done before breakfast? A likely thought.

The swallows were of course awake and flittering out from the nest under the eaves, just above the window, zinging across the water, swooping and scooping up insects to feed their newly hatched fledglings. For years Morag had hardly noticed birds, being too concerned with various personal events and oddities. In the last few years she had become aware of creatures other than human, whose sphere this was as well, unfortunate them. Even plants were to be pitied, having to share home with the naked apes.

Across the river came a boat, its small outboard motor chuffing fitfully. A-Okay Smith and Co. Maudie and Thomas. At five, apparently, Tom could read, taught by Maudie, so that in Grade One he had been to some extent ostracized by the other kids. Now at eight he was full of exotic knowledge. The Smiths were enlightened almost to a fault. Morag, while exceedingly fond of them, sometimes felt ignorant in their presence, which caused her to react towards them with a degree of resentment and chagrin. Also, they believed, somewhat touchingly, that their enlightenment would mean that Tom would be spared any sense of alienation towards them later on, in his adolescence. Morag had, once upon a time, held that belief herself. One of the disconcerting aspects of middle age was the realization that most of the crises which happened to other people also ultimately happened to you.

The boat came to a jolting standstill alongside Morag's dock, and the Clan Smith clambered out and straggled up to the house. Tom, deceptively cherub-faced, was heard to announce that he was going along the road to Royland's. Praise God. Spared his hideously knowledgeable remarks for perhaps an hour, if lucky. _Those birds are not Blackbirds, Morag–the Rusty Blackbird is like that, only smaller and with shorter talons and tail–those are Grackles, Common Grackles._ Tom could confidently be depended upon to know the nesting, breeding and living habits (many of them disgusting) of the Common Grackle, from conception to death. Probably he wanted to pick Royland's brains on the habits of the muskie, pickerel, rock bass and other fish inhabiting the waters of southern Ontario.

"Hi, Morag."

The Smiths entered without knocking, which Morag did not mind. They had, after all, lived here last year until they got the place across the river. A-Okay and Maude were one thing, but a winter enclosed in the farmhouse with the encyclopaedic Thomas was not to be highly recommended. Odd how much she now missed the kid, however, all things considered.

"I brought you some poems," A-Okay said in his earnestly jokey young voice, attempting nonchalance but totally without success.

"Alf read them to me last night," Maudie added, a testimonial, "and I thought they were Right On."

Right On. Dear little Lord Jesus, what did that mean? Like saying Great, Stupendous. No meaning at all.

_I'm just as bad. Even if I think the poems are rubbish, I always say Very Interesting, at least before clobbering him with my real opinion. Please God, let them be better than the last couple of bunches. Well, some of those would've been a-okay if he'd worked on them more._

A-Okay thrust a wodge of papers into Morag's hands. He was a tall gangling man in his late twenties, still having something of an adolescent awkwardness about his limbs. He would frequently crash into tables, although sober, unaware of their presence until overtaken, and as an accidental dish-breaker he was without peer. He was, admittedly, shortsighted, and although he owned a pair of specs, he seldom wore them, believing them to indicate a subconscious desire to distance oneself from others. The result was that he was considerably more distanced from others, and from assorted objects, than he need have been. But let it pass. His was a heart of sterling or oak, stalwart. Morag's unofficial protector, believing her to be in need of one, which indeed she sometimes was.

"Thanks, A-Okay," Morag said. "I'll read them later. As you know, I don't think well off the top of my head. I'll be over at your place soon, anyway. I'm going with Royland, when he does your well. All right?"

"A-Okay," said A-Okay, this being the reason for his nickname. Maudie always called him Alf. He always called her Maude, a name Morag found unsuitable. Come into the garden, Maude. Maudie sounded more appropriate. Maudie herself was slender and small and would probably look young at fifty, a plain scrubbed face, blonde hair worn long or in a plait, her dress nearly always ankle-length, granny-type, in gingham she sewed determinedly herself on a hand-cranker sewing machine. A wonder she didn't sew by hand with needle, thread and tiny silver thimble. At night. By coal-oil lamp.

"Can I make some coffee, Morag?"

"Sure, Maudie. You know where everything is."

"Heard from Pique yet?"

"Not yet."

"Well," Maudie said, her voice clear and musical as a meadowlark's, "she was right to go. You know that, don't you?"

"Yeh." Yes. Truthfully. No need to hammer the point home, thanks.

"And she's right not to communicate, too." Maudie, like Shakespeare, knew everything. "She will, in time, but she's got to find herself first."

"Oh balls, Maudie," Morag said, ashamed of her annoyance but unable to prevent it. "One postcard wouldn't destroy her self-discovery, I would've thought."

"Symbolically, it might do just that."

"Yeh. Maybe." Morag's voice lacked conviction.

Maudie with a cool efficiency produced a percolator full of real coffee in less time than Morag would have taken to make Instant.

"I've been thinking about that back vegetable garden of yours, Morag," A-Okay said. "How be if I dig it out for you again? It's kind of gone to seed, since–well, since we left. Now don't take offense–you know I don't mean it that way. I know it's a little late this spring, but at least you could put in lettuce and stuff."

"We've got ours nearly dug," Maudie said, eyes bright as goldfinches' wings. "I put in six packets of seeds yesterday."

Morag felt trapped. For one glorious summer the Smiths had grown vegetables in Morag's garden. At present, nothing was there except weeds.

"A-Okay, my dear, there is no way I'm going to slog around in that huge vegetable garden as long as I can bring in supplies from McConnell's Landing."

Both the Smiths looked away, embarrassed, troubled for her. Traitoress. Lackey to the System.

"By taxi?" A-Okay murmured.

"By packhorse would be better? The taxis are running anyway. This way, I'm not adding to the effluvia in the air."

A small moment of triumph. Then the recognition that the reason she shopped by taxi was quite simply that she was afraid of driving and refused to learn.

"True," A-Okay said. "But I was actually thinking of the cost, right at the moment."

"Look at it this way," Morag continued. "If I spent all my time gardening, how in hell could I get any writing done? No great loss, you may say, but it'd be a loss to _me_ , and also I need a minimal income, even here. Whatever Susanna Moodie may have said in _Roughing It in the Bush_ , I am not about to make coffee out of roasted dandelion roots."

"An hour a day in the garden," A-Okay said patiently, "would do the job. At least enough to have some results."

True. Undoubtedly true. Morag Gunn, countrywoman, never managing to overcome a quiver of distaste at the sight of an earthworm. Lover of swallows, orioles and red-winged blackbirds. Detester of physical labour. Lover of rivers and tall trees. Hater of axes and shovels. What a farce. You had to give A-Okay full marks for persistence–he never ceased trying to convert her.

"I approve of your efforts, God only knows," Morag said. "I applaud. I think it is great. I cannot help feeling, however, that like it or not the concrete jungle will not be halted by a couple of farms and a vegetable garden."

Silence. What a fatuous thing to say. As if they didn't know. As if they didn't know it all better than she did. They'd been part of it all their lives, from childhood, in a way she never had. She had lived in cities as though passing through briefly. Even when she'd lived in one city or another for years, they'd never taken hold of her consciousness. Her childhood had taken place in another world, a world A-Okay and Maudie had never known and couldn't begin to imagine, a world which in some ways Morag could still hardly believe was over and gone forever. These kids had been born and had grown up in Toronto. They weren't afraid of cities in the way Morag was afraid. They knew how to live there, how to survive. But they hated the city much more than Morag ever could, simply because they knew. A-Okay had once taught computer programming at a technical college. The decision to leave was, for them, an irrevocable one and hadn't been made lightly. Morag had met them through mutual friends in Toronto at the precise moment when they had decided to leave the city. She had suggested they give it a try at her place, and they had done that, paying their way both financially and in physical work. However they might feel sometimes, now they were living and had to live as though their faith in their decision was not to be broken.

"I'm sorry," Morag said, truthfully. "I didn't mean to say that. I didn't even mean it."

"No," A-Okay said suddenly. "We were talking at you, not with you. Weren't we? I guess we've done a lot of that since we got our own place. We didn't have any right."

"Well, now that you mention it, there may be some small degree of the Bible-puncher in you, A-Okay."

More in Maudie than in him. But she did not say this.

"Your writing is your real work," A-Okay said, with embarrassing loyalty and evident belief. "It's there you have to make your statement."

Or not make it. You can't write a novel that way, in any event. They'd been real to her, the people in the books. Breathing inside her head.

Phone. Her ring. Morag leapt up and shot over to the telephone on the sideboard. Pique. Cool it, Morag.

"Hello?"

"That you, Morag?"

Oh God. Him. Not him surely? Yes. How long since she'd seen him? Three years, only. Before the Smiths moved in. The Smiths had never seen him, and didn't even know anything much about him, as Morag only ever talked about him to Pique, sometimes.

"Yes. Speaking."

A deep gust of hoarse laughter.

"Don't try to make out you don't know who this is, eh?"

"Yeh, I know. I'm surprised you're still alive, is all."

"Yeh? I plan on living forever–didn't you know?"

_Yes. You told me once you used to believe that, and didn't now. Are you all right?_

"Are you all right? Are you okay?"

"Of course not," he said. "What do you think? I got busted for peddling. The hard stuff, naturally. I'm phoning from Kingston Pen. Got a private phone in the cell."

Well, at least he was okay.

"Oh, sorry to cast doubts on your blameless reputation. Why did you phone?"

_And do you remember the last time I saw you, and what happened and didn't happen?_

"To ask you, you mad bitch," he said, "what in hell you think you're doing with that girl?"

He had two speaking voices, one like gravel in a cement-mixer, the other exceedingly low-pitched, quiet. He used the second when very angry. As now.

"What do I think _I'm_ doing?" Morag shouted. "What do you mean by that? Wait–have you seen her, then?"

"Of course I've seen her. She turned up here."

"Where is here?"

"Toronto. Yesterday. Don't ask me how she found out where I was. Ask her. She's a smart kid, I'll give her that much."

"What–how _is_ she?" Morag sat down on the high stool beside the phone.

"She's okay," he said. "She's changed a lot since fifteen, eh?"

"Yeh."

"What's with this guy she had this fight with?"

"Gord? He wanted to get married. She doesn't believe in it."

"God, what an example you've been to her," he said, but laughing, really in approval. "Well, why in hell did you let her leave home? You know where she can end up, don't you? You know what can happen to her, don't you? By Jesus, Morag, if she goes out to Vancouver, I'll strangle you. Why did you let her go?"

"Let her? Let her?" Morag cried furiously. "What do you suggest I should've done, then? Chained her to the stove?"

A second's silence at the other end of the line.

"Yeh," he said finally. "Well, I guess she had to go. She comes by it naturally. I guess it isn't your fault."

"Well, never mind. It's not yours, either."

"No," he said. "It isn't. But I keep thinking of them, back there. You know."

"I know. But don't. Just don't, eh? Has she gone, now, then?"

"Yeh. West. I don't know how far, though. She wanted something. Maybe that's why she looked me up. She wanted the songs."

"Did you give them to her?"

"What do you think? Naturally I did."

"Well. Anyway, she was okay as of yesterday?"

"Yeh. Hey, Morag, do you still say my name wrong?"

"I–haven't tried it recently."

"No. I guess you wouldn't."

When he had rung off, she sat without moving. Afraid she would begin shaking, the way Christie sometimes used to do. The Smiths looked worried, curious, startled.

"My daughter's father," Morag said finally. "As I've told you, never having had an ever-present father myself, I managed to deny her one, too. Although not wittingly. I wasn't very witting in those days, I guess."

Maudie rose and nudged A-Okay.

"I think we should be getting along," A-Okay said. "Are you all right, Morag? Is there anything–?"

"I'm all right. Really."

Alone, Morag sat still for another half-hour before she could bring herself to get out the notebook and begin.

_Whatever is happening to Pique is not what I think is happening, whatever that may be. What happened to me wasn't what anyone else thought was happening, and maybe not even what I thought was happening at the time. A popular misconception is that we can't change the past–everyone is constantly changing their own past, recalling it, revising it. What really happened? A meaningless question. But one I keep trying to answer, knowing there is no answer._

_Memorybank Movie: The Thistle Shamrock Rose
Entwine the Maple Leaf Forever_

Morag is twelve, and is she ever tough. She doesn't walk all hunched up any more, like when she was a little kid. Nosiree, not her. She is tall and she doesn't care who knows it. Her tits have swollen out already, and she shows them off by walking straight, swinging her shoulders just a little bit. Most of the girls are still as flat as boards. She has started her monthlies, too, and occasionally lets kids like Mavis or Vanessa, who haven't started, know it by a dropped remark here and there. She is a woman, and a lot of them are just kids.

But she's a tomboy, too. You gotta be. If it comes to a fight, she doesn't need to fight like a girl, scratching with her fingernails. She slugs with her closed fist. Boys or girls, it makes no difference. If a boy ever teases her, she goes for him. The best way is to knee them in the balls. They double over, scream, and chicken out. Hardly any boys ever tease her these days.

Nobody much teases Eva Winkler, any more, either, because Morag gives them the bejesus if they do. Eva is her friend, her one true friend. She loves Eva. She looks down on Eva, too, a bit, because Eva is gutless as a cleaned whitefish. It must be awful to be gutless. Gus Winkler still beats his kids, even Eva. He doesn't even have to be drunk. In fact, he hardly ever drinks and then only beer. He just likes beating his kids, that's all. You couldn't imagine Eva, so pale-haired and always saying _Oh sorry I didn't mean to_ even when she's done nothing, you couldn't imagine her deserving it. Maybe Gus beats her because she's gutless, like Mrs. Winkler, like all the kids, there. In some awful spooky way Morag can understand this. If you ask for it, you sure as hell get it. But she sticks up for Eva, because Eva is her friend. She doesn't stick up for Eva with Gus, though. She never goes over there. She and Christie sit on the front porch and hear it happening. When it does, they never look at each other.

Morag is the best girl pitcher on the ballfield, and also a good shortstop. She can even play ball with the boys, and sometimes does. The girls yell things at her, but Morag doesn't care a fuck. They can't hurt her. She'll hurt them first. And when the boys laugh, she grins openmouth clowny, then pitches a twister, hard and fast.

The teachers hate her. Ha ha. She isn't a little flower, is why. That will be the day, when she tries to please a living soul.

_Conversation Overheard from the Teachers' Room
All of Them in There Gabbing at Recess_

_Miss McMurtrie:_ | oh, Skinner's bad enough but at least he's away from school half the time and not much missed by me I can tell you but Morag never misses a day sometimes I wonder what on earth I'm going to do with her you find her same Ethel

---|---

_Miss Plowright:_ | how do you mean exactly

_Miss McMurtrie:_ | well one day she's boisterous and noisy chewing gum in class whispering drawing dirty pictures _you_ know and then heavens the next day she'll be so sullen not speaking to a soul and you can't get a word out of her she won't answer just sits there looking sullen if you take my meaning

_Miss Plowright:_ | oh yes yes oh yes she was just like that in my class I always thought you know maybe she wasn't well maybe not quite _all there_

_Miss Crawford:_ | she was a timid little thing in grade one but she learned to read really quickly well not exactly timid more well just very quiet never spoke to a soul except that poor little Eva Whatsername

_Miss McMurtrie:_ | well she is not timid now I can assure you but bright enough I think you're wrong there Ethel she's bright enough but doesn't seem to give a hoot

_Mr. Tate:_ | the home the home always look to the home old Christie and that half-witted wife of his

Morag doesn't let on. If you let on, ever, you're done for.

"How'd you get on today, Morag?" Christie says. "Let's see what you're copying out, there."

Christie's brown cracked stained teeth. Like an old teapot. Ha ha. You can see them all when he grins while reading.

"What in hell is this crap? _I wandered lonely as a cloud._ This Wordsworth, now, he was a pansy, girl, or no, maybe a daffodil? Clouds don't wander lonely, for the good christ's sake. Any man daft enough to write a line like that, he wanted his head looked at, if you ask me. Look here, I'll show you a poem, now, then."

Two large books she has never seen before, red binding a little bit warped, and really small print.

"In the days long long ago," Christie says sternly, "he lived, this man, and was the greatest song-maker of them all, and all this was set down years later, pieced together from what old men and old women remembered, see, them living on far crofts hither and yon, and they sang and recited these poems as they had been banded down over the generations. And the English claimed as how these were not the real old songs, but only forgeries, do you see, and you can read about it right here in this part which is called Introduction, but the English were bloody liars then as now. And I'll read you what he said, then, a bit of it."

A chariot! the great chariot of war,

Moving over the plain with death!

The shapely swift car of Cuchullin,

True son of Semo of hardy deeds.

Behind it curves downward like a wave,

Or mist enfolding a sharp-peaked hill;

The light of precious stones about it,

Like the sea in wake of boat at night.

Of shining yew is its pole,

Of well-smoothed bone the seat:

It is the dwelling-place of spears,

Of shields, of swords, and heroes.

On the right of the great chariot

Is seen a horse high-mettled, snorting,

High-crested, broad-chested, dark,

High-bounding, strong-bodied son of the Ben,

Springy and sounding his foot;

The spread of his forelock on high

Is like mist on the dwelling of deer.

Shining his coat, and speedy

His pace–Si-fodda his name.

On the other side of the car

Is an arch-necked snorting horse,

Thin-maned, free-striding, deep-hoofed,

Swift-footed, wide nostrilled son of the mountains–

Du-sron-gel the name of the gallant steed.

Full thousand slender thongs

Fasten the chariot on high;

The hard bright bit of the bridle,

In their jaws foam-covered, white,

Shining stones of power

Save aloft with the horses' manes–

Horses, like mist of mountain-side,

Which onward bear the chief to his fame.

Keener their temper than the deer,

Strong as the eagle their strength.

Their noise is like winter fierce

On Gormal smothered in snow.

In the chariot is seen the chief.

True-brave son of the keen brands,

Cuchullin of blue-spotted shields,

Son of Semo, renowned in song.

Ossian. Christie says _Aw-shun_. And shows her the Gaelic words, but cannot say them.

"It must sound like _something_ in the old language, Morag. My father knew a few words of it, and I remember a little bit of it from when I was knee-high to a grasshopper and that must've been in Easter Ross before my old man kicked off and my mother came to this country with me, and hired herself out as help in houses in Nova Scotia, there, and kicked the bucket when I was around fifteen or so, and with all of that. I never learned the Gaelic, and it's a regret to me."

Together they look at the strange words, unknown now, lost, as it seems, to all men, the words that once told of the great chariot of Cuchullin.

Carbad! carbad garbh a' chómhraig,

'Gluasas thar cómhnaird le bás;

Carbad suimir, luath Chuchullin,

Sár-mhac Sheuma nan cruaidh chás.

"Gee. Think of that, Christie. Think of that, eh? Read some more in _our_ words, eh?"

But Prin waddles over to the table and lays it for supper, and they eat boiled cabbage and boiled spuds and baloney. Christie chews with his mouth open so you can see the mushy slop of pink meat and greeny mush cabbage and gummy potatoes in there. Morag wants to hit him so hard his mouth will pour with blood. She stares at him, but he does not notice. Or if he does, he doesn't let on.

The Grade Six room is full of maple desks, each with a metal inkwell. Initials of other kids in other years are carved into the desks, with jackknives or by going over and over with a pencil until the lead eats into the wood. This is the easiest to do, and Morag has put M.G. on hers this way. You always have to look up at the blackboard at the front. Should be called the greyboard, always smudged with chalk. Morag can never see the board properly, and never has been able to, but doesn't let on. If she let on, they'd move her to the front row and she likes the back row better. No one is behind you there, looking at you.

On the walls at the side and back, great big framed pictures. No colours, just very dark brown or black, shadowy. One is of two people, a man and a woman, dressed in olden days poor clothes, kneeling down. _The Angelus_. Which means a bell is _tolling_ , telling them it is time to pray. The other picture is worse–a whole lot of soldiers looking terrible, and a drooping Union Jack, and in the middle a man falling or fainting (dying, actually) with his eyeballs rolling upwards. _The Death of General Wolfe_.

"Good morning, Grade Six."

"Good morning, Miss McMurtrie."

"We will now sing 'O, Canada.'"

Grade Six shuffles to its feet.

O Ca-na-DA

Our home an' native lan'

Troo patriot LUV

In all thy sons' comman'....

They are also learning it in French. The school board was a mite dubious at first, Miss McMurtrie says, tee hee, but she won them over.

O Ca-na-DA

Teara da nose ah yoo....

The second line always makes the kids titter. They know it means land of our forefathers, but that isn't what it seems to mean. Morag sings loudly. She loves singing and has a good and carrying voice. She doesn't mind standing up any more, at least not when all the other kids are also standing beside their desks. Her dresses aren't away below her knees now, hell no, because she lops them off with the kitchen scissors herself and sometimes even does a hem, which is boring but doesn't take so long if you take good big stitches. Now her dresses are shorter than anyone else's, because she is going to show them, is why. Prin still makes Morag's dresses out of old stuff, though. Who has the money for new stuff these days, Prin says. (Some have.) Prin isn't so hot at sleeves, so usually leaves them out, and in the cold weather Morag wears a sweater underneath the dress. She wears running shoes in warm weather and galoshes in winter, with only socks inside, not shoes, so has to keep them on all day, and how could anyone not have stinky feet if they had to do that? Who gives a christly damn anyway? She's not the worst dressed. Eva is worse–her dresses are still halfway to her ankles, as she is too ascared of what her dad will say if she cuts them off. Also, one of the Tonnerre girls, halfbreed from the valley, is worse dressed; she's away a lot because of TB in one leg but when she _is_ at school she looks the worst because her dresses are long-gawky and dirty, and she has a limpwalk.

They are seated again, and it is Spelling.

"Morag!"

Startled, she looks up. The teacher has been talking to her and she hasn't heard.

"That's quite enough, class," Miss McMurtrie says, because of the giggling all around. "Stand up, Morag."

Draggingly, she stands. Whatever is going to happen, it can only be awful. She straightens her shoulders and holds herself so her tits stick out under her dress.

"Now, Morag, you weren't listening, were you?"

Silence. She cannot speak. Her throat is full of phlegm or something. She stares boldly at Miss McMurtrie, so the teacher will think she is being silent on purpose.

"Are you tongue-tied, Morag?"

Morag is not here. She is in the Wachakwa valley, and the couchgrass is high around her. There is a clump of scrub oak trees, easy to climb, and all around are thick chokecherry bushes. It is warm and shady in the hideout, and you can hear the bees singing their crazy buzzsongs as they tumble among the pink wild asters and cowslip bells colour of oranges or suns. Cowslips are the best. For bees. More honey in them.

"I _said_ ," Miss McMurtrie's butcherknife voice, "I _said_ are you tongue-tied, Morag?"

Morag's anger. Like shame, burning in her throat.

"You know I'm not." Loud.

Miss McMurtrie's face gone reddish, splotched.

"Very well, then, if you're _not_ tongue-tied, would you be so kind as to answer the question I asked you about ten minutes ago? You're wasting the class's time, Morag. I suppose I will have to repeat the question. Obviously you were away off in Cloud Cuckoo Land. How do you spell Egypt?"

_Egypt_. Cleopatra, evil and beautiful, dying of a snake bite. Having put the snake right on herself. Ugh. Miss Plowright, last year, reading them _Tales from Shakespeare_. Was Shakespeare there? Did he see the snake being put on the _bare skin?_ Cleopatra, drifting down the Nile River in a boat shaped like a giant bird (coloured picture in the book) while her slaves fanned her with fans made out of pink green blue feathers. Plumes. Think of that. Classy.

"Well, Morag?"

If she could've written it down she could've got it. Always the same. But no writing-down allowed.

"E-y–"

"Wrong. Try again."

"E-y-g-t–"

Miss McMurtrie shakes her starched-looking grey head. More in sorrow than anger, as she is always saying.

"You may sit down, Morag. All right, class, who can spell Egypt? Ross?"

"E-g-y-p-t."

Show-off. Smart-aleck McVitie. Who cares? Morag, sitting down, will not look around. Neither to left nor to right. Finally, she takes a quick glance around to see if anybody is still looking at her. They better not be. She catches the eye of Skinner Tonnerre, who also sits in the back row out of choice.

He grins at her. Well, think of that. The grin means _Screw all of them, eh?_ Astounded, Morag grins back.

Boys are generally mean. Those girls who have a hope of pleasing them, try. Those who haven't a hope, either stay out of their way or else act very tough and try to make fun of them first. Skinner is just the same as all the boys, in that way. He is mean. He knows a lot of swear words and isn't afraid to use them to make girls feel silly or cheap. _Hey, Vanessa, want me to fuck your ass? It's better that way._ He has never shouted like this at Morag, because he probably knows she wouldn't take it all meek. Or else doesn't think she's pretty enough to be worth embarrassing. The other boys in the class, even Mike Lobodiak, who is really big, never tangle with Skinner. They're scared of him. Also, they think they're better than he is. Skinner is taller than any of the other boys, and has better muscles. He is about three years older than any of the rest of the class, which is why he and his sister Piquette are in the same class. Both having missed a lot of school. Sometimes Skinner goes off with his dad, old Lazarus Tonnerre, and disappears for weeks, setting traplines way up at Galloping Mountain, some say. The Tonnerres (there are an awful lot of them) are called _those breeds_ , meaning halfbreeds. They are part Indian, part French, from away back. They are mysterious. People in Manawaka talk about them but don't talk _to_ them. Lazarus makes home-brew down there in the shack in the Wachakwa valley, and is often arrested on Saturday nights. Morag knows. She has heard. They are dirty and unmentionable.

Skinner is thin and he has dark dark slanted eyes. He is always scowling. He wears worn unpatched jeans held up by a leather belt with a big brass buckle. Morag has always reckoned that he hated the other kids so much he never even noticed what they said about him and his gimpylegged sister and all of them (and about their Ma, who took off and went to cook for some crazy old man living alone on a farm oh shame). Maybe Skinner does notice the passed remarks? Maybe he just doesn't let on. Like her.

He is _not_ like her. She does not glance in his direction again all day.

At ten minutes to four, Miss McMurtrie leads the class in "The Maple Leaf Forever"

In days of yore
From Britain's shore
Wolfe the donkless hero CAME
And planted firm | (titters; but what means _Donkless_?)

---|---

Britannia's flag

On Ca-na-da's fair do-MAIN.

Here may it wave

Our boas' our pride

And join in LUV together

The THISTLE SHAMROCK ROSE entwine

The MAPLE LEAF FOREVER!

Morag loves this song and sings with all her guts. She also knows what the emblems mean. Thistle is Scots, like her and Christie (others, of course, too, including some stuck-up kids, but _her_ , definitely, and they better not forget it). Shamrock is Irish like the Connors and Reillys and them. Rose is English, like Prin, once of good family. Suddenly she looks over to see if Skinner Tonnerre is singing. He has the best voice in the class, and he knows lots of cowboy songs, and dirty songs, and he sometimes sings them after school, walking down the street.

He is not singing now.

He comes from nowhere. He isn't anybody. She stops singing, not knowing why. Then she feels silly about stopping, so sings again.

_Memorybank Movie: Christie's Gift of the Garbage-telling_ Morag goes alone to the Nuisance Grounds. Not with Christie. Not with anyone. Eva wants to come along but Morag says No. Just for once she has to see what the place looks like. By herself.

She knows exactly where the spot is. Everybody knows that. A little above the town, the second hill, the same hill as the Manawaka cemetery. All the dead stuff together there on the same hill. Except that the cemetery is decent and respectable, with big spruce trees, and grass which is kept cut, and lots of the plots have flowers which people plant and tend. _Gunn_ is just a small stone with grass around it, no flowers. Morag has only been there the once and doesn't want to go again.

The Nuisance Grounds are on a large flat sort of plain, up there, and no trees grow, although the place is surrounded on all sides by poplars and clumps of chokecherry and pincherry bushes, screening it from sight. Morag approaches it quietly, cannily, looking around. Okay. Nobody here. She can feel the sun hot and dusty on her bare arms and legs, and her hair feels snarled and too long and hot for summer. She is sweating in this hot closed-in place. It isn't really that much closed-in. It just feels so. Should she maybe not have come here?

Oh. The Nuisance Grounds contain a billion trillion heaps of old muck. Such as:

a rusty car with no tires and one door off

mountains of empty tin cans, some with labels still on

Best Pie Pumpkin

moth-eaten sweaters and ragged coats

a whole bunch of bedsprings

green mould like fur on things

rotten fruits oranges bananas gone bad soft black

FLIES on thema

car axle but no car

maple syrup tins with holes in them

saucepans and kettles also with holes

a sewing machine with no wheel or handle

broken bottles (beer milk rye and baby)

more rotten stuff cabbages phew

a cracked toilet bowl

wornout shoes some bulging where bunions have been

boxes of not-used rubber frenchies she knows what they're

for Eva told her (why thrown out? holes in the rubber is

why; that'd fool somebody ha ha)

a pile of clothes and old newspapers, BURNING

and stench sour sicklysweet rotten many smells STINKS

and a ZILLION crawling flies

A shadow. Somebody here. Morag whirls. He laughs (meanly?) showing teeth. He is close enough so she can smell the sweat and woodsmoke on him. The only good smells here. But she is scared. In his hands, an iron crowbar, bent, and a pair of pliers. Skinner Tonnerre.

"Hey, whatsamatter, kid?" he says. "You think I'm gonna–"

"Shut up," Morag says. "What're _you_ doing here?"

"Whatcha doin' here yerself?"

"None of your business."

"Seein' the place where yer ol' man works, eh?"

He says _da_ instead of _the_. He talks funny, kind of. He always has. Why? Then Morag feels really mad, thinking of what he has just said.

"Christie's not my old man! My dad is dead."

"Sure, I know. So _he's_ yer ol' man now, ain't he? What the diff?"

"Plenty. Plenty difference. So there."

Skinner laughs. Hoarse. Like a crow's voice.

"Okay, okay. _Tabernac!_ What's eatin' you?"

"My family is named Gunn, see? And you better not forget it."

Skinner's eyes grow narrow. Cruel. Mean.

"That so? You t'ink that means yer somebody? You're a little half-cunt, dry one at that I betcha."

"Listen here," Morag spits, "my family's been around here for longer than anybody in this whole goddamn town, see?"

"Not longer than mine," Skinner says, grinning.

"Oh yeh? Well, I'm related to Piper Gunn, _so there_."

"Who in hell's he?"

"He–" She is afraid to speak it, now, in case Christie has got it wrong after all, but she can't quit. "He came from Scotland, and he led his people onto the ships when they were living on the rocks there in the Old Country and poor because they didn't have their farms because the Bitch-Duchess took them, and all, and they were scared, leaving there, but then Piper Gunn played the pipes and put the heart back into them."

Skinner gapes at her. Then grins again.

"Where'd you get that crap, eh?"

"It's true. It's true!"

He looks at her. Then he sits down on an empty tar barrel, not worrying about getting tar on his jeans. He stretches out his long legs and gets out a packet of cigarettes.

"Want one?"

She shakes her head and he laughs. She would like to snatch the cigarette now and light it, but is too proud.

"You ever seen my place, Morag?"

"Yeh. Sometimes. Passing by."

The Tonnerre place, right beside the Wachakwa River down there, is a square cabin made out of poplar poles chinked with mud. Also some other shanties, sheds and lean-tos, tacked onto the cabin and made out of old boards and pieces of flattened tin cans and tarpaper. Lots of old car parts and chicken wire and wornout car tires lying around, stuff like that.

Morag guesses that is why Skinner is here. Looking. Collecting.

"My grandad," Skinner says, "he built the first of our place, and that was one hell of a long time ago, I'm tellin' you. He come back from The Troubles."

"What's that?"

"Out west, there. _You_ wouldn't know. You don' know nothin'. My grandad was lucky he never got killed, there. Lucky they never shot his balls off, my dad says. But they couldn't, because he was a better shot than them soldiers. I can shoot pretty good, too. I got his name, see? That means I got–"

He stops. Suddenly. Shuts up. Looks away.

"You mean his name was Skinner?" Morag asks.

"Don't be dumb. Jules. His name was Jules. Skinner ain't my real name."

"Why'd they call you it, then?"

"Some say it's 'cause I useda be so damn skinny. Some say it's 'cause I am real good at skinning any damn t'ing, rabbit, muskrat, even deer. Want me to catch a gopher and show you?"

Morag shudders. No–please. Not a gopher. He will do it and she will throw up. But he only laughs.

"Scared, eh, Morag?"

"Tell me about your grandad. Aw, come on."

He jumps to his feet and leaps over the tar barrel.

"Shit, I can't remember. It's all crap. Anyhows, I wouldn' tell _you_."

"Why not? Why not?"

"It ain't none of yer business. I tell you one t'ing, though. Long time before my grandad, there's one Tonnerre they call Chevalier, and no man can ride like him and he is one helluva shot. My grandad, he tol' my dad about that guy, there."

"What means _Chevalier_?"

"Rider. It means Rider. Lazarus, he says so. Ah, what's it to _you_?"

Skinner begins to walk away, singing "The Old Strawberry Roan," really really loud and sort of through his nose as well as his throat, like the cowboys singing on the radio.

Rattle-rattle-crunk-crash-gronk. Slow horse steps. Grinding wheels, Christie and his wagon. Morag jumps up and heads for the chokeberry bushes, but he has seen her.

"Jesus in sweet paradise, Morag, girl, what in the christly hell are you doing here? And who the fuck's _that_? Oh–hello, Skinner. Found anything today?"

Skinner scowls but does not reply. The crowbar and pliers still lie beside the tar barrel. The air reeks of smoke and rot. The sweat is snaking down Morag's back and between her legs.

Christie's blue workshirt is rolled up at the sleeves, and the sweat trickles through the sandy hairs on his arms. He starts to unload the wagon, swallowing his spit with the effort of the work, his Adam's apple yo-yoing in his throat. He is shovelling off a whole pile of eggshells, vegetable peelings, orange rinds, bones with shreds of cooked meat still on them. Skinner and Morag stand silent, watching.

"Did I ever tell you," Christie says, "how to tell the garbage, Morag, like telling fortunes?"

" _What?_ "

Skinner snorts with laughter. Morag hates Christie. Maybe he will fall down, right now, this second, with a _heart attack_. He doesn't. He is chortling, enjoying himself. He likes the sound of his own voice. With him, it's either yak-yak-yakkity-yak or dead silence. No silence now. No such luck. Would it be worse if someone like Jamie Halpern or Stacey Cameron were here, listening? Yes. Let us be grateful for small mercies, Prin always says.

"You know how some have the gift of the second sight?" Christie goes on. "Well, it's the gift of the garbage-telling which I have myself, now. Watch this."

Christie shovels out the stuff onto a heap on the dump. Bends down to throw some of the bones with his hands.

Morag cannot move. She is held there, not wanting to be there but wanting to listen all the same. Skinner isn't grinning. He is just watching. Watching Christie. And listening.

Christie speaks. Like a spiel. Only different.

"Now you see these bones here, and you know what they mean? They mean Simon Pearl the lawyer's got the money for steak. Yep, not so often, maybe, but one day a week. So although he's letting on he's as hard up as the next–he ain't, no he ain't, though it's troubling to him, too. By their christly bloody garbage shall ye know them in their glory, is what I'm saying to you, every saintly mother's son. And these chicken bones right here, now, they'll be birds which have been given to Doc MacLeod for services he's rendered to some farmer who couldn't pay a bill if his life depended on it so he takes it out in poultry, well it's better than baloney which is what a jesus lot of us gets served up on the table. And the huge amount of apple peels from the Reverend George McKee, now, means he gets a crate of apples from his Okanagan sister so they eat a lot of applesauce each summer at the manse, there, but they don't put in a garden or they'd use the peels for compost, so the preacher really means it when he says the Lord provides. Now the paint tins from the Connors' means the old man's on the rampage and he's painting like a devil all the kitchen chairs and suchlike, showing all of them around him that they're lazy worthless sinners, but he's painting out his anger, for he thinks this life is shit."

Finish.

"Climb on," Christie says. "I'm heading back."

Morag doesn't want to. She would rather walk. But can't say so in front of Skinner. Christie offers Skinner a home-rolled cigarette, and Skinner takes it. Without saying thanks. Christie doesn't notice. He wouldn't.

"You know," Christie says, as they go along past the cemetery, "I once saw a terrible thing. It was the worst thing I ever did see in this country. I am not counting the time in France in the War, do you see, for that was worse. Now, then, what is strange is that some people think I don't see what goes into the bins outside their back gates. They put it in and that's the end of it to them. But I take it out, do you see?"

After the garbage-telling, this. Why can't he shut up? Why can't he just shut up? Crazy Christie. But he can't shut up. He can't, at times, and she knows it. She knows it, all right. What _was_ it, that time, here? She won't ask. Not her.

"What _was_ it, Christie?" she asks, not wanting to know at all, no not at all.

It wasn't terrible at all. It wouldn't be terrible at all. It would just be Christie, like he sometimes is.

"It was wrapped in a lot of newspapers," Christie says.

He stops and turns to look at both Morag and Skinner, Morag is sitting beside him on the wagon seat. Not saying a word. Skinner is sitting in the back part of the wagon, where all the awful stuff has been, just sitting there as though it didn't matter to him what had been there. And looking at Christie. Listening. Not letting on.

"Well," Christie says, "the Lord only knows I would be better off keeping my trap shut. It was a newborn baby. Wrapped in newspapers, but it fell out. Dead, of course. Hadn't gone its full term. It was that small, like a skinned rabbit."

"What'd you do with it?" Skinner.

"Buried her. It was a girl."

" _Where?_ " Morag cries, cries. "Buried her _where_?"

"In the Nuisance Grounds," Christie says, spitting into the dusty road. "That's what it was, wasn't it, a nuisance? Well, the hell with their consecrated ground."

Morag sits quiet. Thinking of what his hands have touched. She won't think of it. Once she used to take Christie's hand, crossing the street. She's too big for that now, but even if she weren't, she wouldn't. Dead. Dead when born? Or what? What is _dead_ , really? Do you know when you are?

"Didn't you ever _say_ , Christie? I mean–I mean–"

"Why? What good would that've done? I knew where it had come from. The girl, the one whose it was, she'd had enough hard talk, I wouldn't doubt, from her people. She's married now. Happily married. They say."

" _Who?_ "

"None of your business, girl."

_Memorybank Movie: How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds_

Morag loves Jesus. And how. He is friendly and not stuck-up, is why. She does not love God. God is the one who decides which people have got to die, and when. Mrs. McKee in Sunday school says God is LOVE, but this is baloney. He is mean and gets mad at people for no reason at all, and Morag wouldn't trust him as far as she can spit. Also, at the same time, she is scared of God. You pray at nights, and say "Dear God–", like a letter but slipping in the Dear bit for other reasons as well. Does He really know what everybody is thinking? If so, it sure isn't fair and is also very spooky.

Jesus is another matter. Whatever anybody says of it, it was really God who decided Jesus had to die like that. Who put it into the head of the soldier, then, to pierce His side?

( _Pierce?_ The blood all over the place, like shot gophers and) Who indeed? Three guesses. Jesus had a rough time. But when alive, He was okay to everybody, even sinners and hardup people and like that.

Christie doesn't care whether Morag goes to Sunday school or not. He wouldn't. He never goes to church himself. Although a believer. But not liking the Reverend McKee. Prin goes to church. She wears her coat, whatever the weather, even in summer, because it covers her fat up. She says the singing does her good. Morag goes into the basement, where the Sunday school is held, while Prin goes upstairs to the church service.

Winter, and Morag stamps the snow off her galoshes at the United Church door. She pulls her scarf down from around her nose and mouth, and peels off her mitts, covered with tiny hard red bubbles, wool and ice. Colder than a shit-house in hell. Christie's saying. Mrs. McKee, who takes Morag's Sunday school class, would not think that was funny. Still, Mrs. McKee doesn't bawl people out, nor look at their clothes. Mrs. McKee's clothes are none too hot, if it comes to that, old tweed skirts and kind of shrunken twin-sweater sets. Does Mrs. McKee like being the minister's wife? Morag would hate it. Mrs. McKee, though tired-looking, doesn't seem to mind. Should Morag show Mrs. McKee the poem she's brought to show her? Would Mrs. McKee laugh? No. Mrs. McKee isn't a laugher. Maybe.

In the basement, the chairs are all set out in neat rows. The same old coloured paper pictures on the walls–they never change them. Morag doesn't mind. She likes the same ones being there all the time. _The Mothers of Salem Bringing Their Children to Jesus_ –a whole lot of ladies dressed in white sheets, with little kids scampering around, and Jesus (also in a white sheet and with that lovely-looking beard) lifting one hand as he suffers them ( _suffers?_ ) to come unto Him. _The Good Samaritan_ –an old guy in a blue and yellow striped dressing gown (sort of), leading a donkey on which is lying, draped across it, a very skinny guy who has closed eyes and terrible wounds _pouring with blood_. _The Loaves and the Fishes_ –a huge big mob of people, men with different coloured beards black or blond, women carrying babies, lots of kids running around all over the place, and the Apostles looking really worried, but Jesus looking not worried at all, not by a long shot. He is standing there cool as a cucumber and raising one hand in the magic way and at his feet are two baskets, one with a few hunks of bread and the other with a few tiny fishes, and in a moment there will be a zillion loaves and a whole seaful of fishes because He can do anything.

Mrs. McKee is talking to the Sunday school principal, at the front of the room. Morag slides in the door and waits. Mrs. McKee turns. Smiles.

"You're early this morning, Morag."

Morag nods.

"Can you c'mere for a second, Mrs. McKee? Please."

"What is it?" Mrs. McKee walks to where Morag is standing.

Morag hands the piece of scribbler paper to her. The poem is copied very neatly in best writing.

_The Wise Men._

by Morag Gunn.

VERSE ONE

Despite the cold and wintry blast,

To Bethlehem they came at last.

And there amid the hay and straw,

The baby Jesus was what they saw.

"Why, this is just fine, Morag. I never knew you wrote poetry." Surprised.

"Sure. I write lots. I've got more at home. And stories. Would you–"

"The only thing," Mrs. McKee says, "is that it was a Far Eastern desert country, dear, so they wouldn't have a wintry blast, would they?"

Morag's face–flames of shame. She snatches the paper back. "Wait–I'll fix it."

She goes into the classroom where the tables and chairs are set out for each class. Sits down. Finds a pencil.

Despite the desert sun's cruel ray

To Bethlehem they came that day.

No good. It was night.

Despite the heat of the desert (what?)

To Bethlehem they came that night.

Bright? White? Light? Might? Bite? Of course. Bright and light. Never mind the weather.

Guided by the Star's bright light

To Bethlehem they came that night.

Good. Fine. Much better. Morag goes out and hands the new version to Mrs. McKee. Who looks at it. One quick glance.

"Much better, dear. Now we'd better get ready for the service. Sit with your class, dear."

The others have all come in while Morag was busy. She has not noticed them until this very instant.

"Whatcha' doing, Morag? Writing out _I must not tell a lie_ four hundred times for the old bag?" Jamie Halpern, his face giggling behind his glasses.

Morag says nothing. Crumples the page and stuffs it in her pocket.

The singing. Carols. Morag sings loudly, loving the carols.

Good Christian men rejoy-oy-oyce

With heart and soul and voy-oy-oyce–

When they get to the line _Ox and ass before Him bow_ , Ross McVitie puts a hand to his bum. Morag glares at him. Ignorant slob.

In class, Mrs. McKee tells them that one member of their class will be chosen to sing A SOLO at the grown-ups' Christmas Eve service, and all of them will be in the choir. They will have to try out, those who want to be considered for the solo. They gather around the piano, the five who want to try, Morag among them. She has a good voice. Clear and can carry a tune perfectly. Also, a carrying voice. Christie says she would've made a good hog-caller, but he is just ignorant. They each sing a verse of "Once in Royal David's."

"I'll let you know next week," Mrs. McKee says, "when I've considered thoroughly."

Morag knows it will be her. Or maybe it will, anyhow. At least, there's a chance. Maybe.

"I want to read you a poem today, children," Mrs. McKee says, when they are all around the table again.

Morag's heart quits beating. Hers? She will faint. A talented poem written by one of our members, class. The others will stare. Who'd have thought it? Old Morag. Gee.

"It is by the English poet, Hilaire Belloc," Mrs. McKee's gooey voice says, and she opens a book.

When Jesus Christ was four years old,

The angels brought him toys of gold,

Which no man ever had bought or sold.

And yet with these He would not play,

He made Him small fowl out of clay,

And blessed them till they flew away....

There is more, and some words in Latin, which Mrs. McKee explains, but Morag isn't listening now. At home, Morag takes off her galoshes and coat. Goes to the stove.

"What's that you're burning, Morag?" Prin asks, alarmed.

"Nothing. Just nothing."

Morag goes to her room. Sits thinking. Wants to cry, but will not, must not. _Blessed them till they flew away._ Oh. How could anybody write anything that good?

She has shown "The Wise Men" to Mrs. McKee, and there is no way she can unshow it.

Next Sunday, the verdict. Vanessa MacLeod will sing the solo.

Vanessa MacLeod! A crow with a sore throat could sing better than what _she_ could. An old bullfrog honk-honking out there in the Wachakwa could sing better, even. It isn't fair.

"It's not fair, Christie," Morag rages, at home.

Christie cleans his horrible teeth with a straw out of the broom, a wonder his gums don't rot, dirty old broom like that.

"If you expect things to be fair, you'll be waiting until hell freezes over. Anyways, has she got such a lousy voice, then?"

"Well. I guess not. But mine's just as good."

Would Mrs. McKee think Morag would _look_ okay, standing up there alone in the choir loft? Would Mrs. McKee be that way? Sure. You bet. Any of them would. Wouldn't they?

On the night, Morag decides to go and be in the choir after all. Vanessa, all gotten up in a pleated tartan skirt with straps over the shoulders and a white blouse with a frill at the front, rises to sing. Her hands, Morag sees, are trembling. She's nervous. Ha ha. Morag hopes that something really awful will happen to Vanessa. But it doesn't. She sings a crappy song but she never misses a note.

Christ was once a little baby

Jus' like you an' me

Boy, whoever wrote that song was sure plenty dumb. Serve Vanessa right, having to sing a dumb song like that.

It is a month later. School. Roll call. Vanessa MacLeod? Absent. Morag listens to the recess-time whispers.

"Her dad's died."

At home, Christie blowing his nose on his fingers, stepping outside to throw the snot on the snow already dirtied with yellow dog-piss, comes back into the kitchen and says it.

"Well, then, Doc MacLeod's gone to his ancestors. Pneumonia. He was quite a man, there. You could of had many a worse."

Morag sits at the table in the warm stove-crackling kitchen. But has to go upstairs to the freezing bedroom.

She never meant never meant never meant and a long time ago what was it when and Dr. MacLeod was there and

God knows what you are thinking. _He_ knows, all right all right. But is mean. Doesn't care. Or understand.

Vanessa returns to school. Morag neither looks at her nor speaks to her. Want to but cannot. Vanessa does not notice. She has never spoken to Morag much, anyway. Vanessa does not talk much to anyone, now, for quite a while. Morag watches. From a long way off.

_Memorybank Movie: Christie and Red Biddy
and Piper Gunn and Clowny MacPherson_

Christie has a jug of red biddy. Prin has waddled off to bed, not approving. Morag is doing her homework. The ceiling bulb isn't very bright and she has to bend close over the geography book to read the print which flickers in front of her eyes. Christie, across the table, brings down one fist– _clump_. Taking care with the other hand to hold onto the grey bottle-jug which once long ago used to hold vinegar.

"Now, then, girl, would you like me to tell you about what happened to Piper Gunn and them, when that ship landed up north there?"

Morag closes the geography. Grinning.

"Sure, Christie."

"Well, now, then, I read it all in a book somewheres, so help me, and it is all there in the books, but you don't want to believe everything them books say, for the good christ's sake. We believe what we know."

What's he talking about? But she likes this story. He pours another glassful.

CHRISTIE'S TALE OF PIPER GUNN AND THE LONG MARCH

Now that bloody ship, there, who would know what its name was, but with all of them from Sutherland on board, and struck with the sickness and the fever and the devil's plague, well, then, that ship with the children dying of the fever, it crossed the ocean, do you see, and it came to the new land, which was HERE, only very far north. But what happened? What almighty catastrophe struck that ship? Well, the first catastrophe was that ship had a bloody idiot as captain, then. And he landed the christly vessel, if you'll believe it, away up north there, _at the wrong place_. The wrong place. Can you feature it? Them people, see, Piper Gunn and his woman Morag and all them, were supposed to be landed at the one place, up there by Hudson Bay (that's the water, the sea, like, not the store). But the silly bugger landed his ship at another place. Oh yes. The bloody captain didn't give a hoot. Get landed and well rid of them–that was his thought. So he landed all of them at the wrong place, now, the name escapes me at this moment, but it was on the Hudson Bay, up there. Cold as all the shithouses of hell.

Well, then, there they were. So Piper Gunn, he takes up his morsels of belongs, his kettle and his plaid and his axe, and he says to his woman Morag, _Here we are and by the holy Jesus here we will remain._ And then didn't his woman strap onto her back the few blankets and suchlike they had, and her thick with their unborn firstborn, and follow. But one thing was missing.

Pipes. The pipes.

_If we must live here in this almighty godforsaken land, dreadful with all manner of beasts and ice and the rocks harsher than them we left_ , says Gunn's woman, _at least let's be piped onto it._

So Piper Gunn, he got out his bagpipes and he piped the people onto the new land, that terrible bad land, frozen as it sure as hell was, and they built their mud shacks to the music that man played.

Now they lived there and they suffered and then they suffered more, through the long days and longer nights, and it seemed there was no end to their suffering. But they didn't give in. They hunted for meat, to live.

(What did they hunt, Christie?)

Oh, polar bears that looked like great moving snow-banks with jaws and claws, then, and great wild foxes with burning eyes in them, and

(Did they eat _foxes_ , Christie?)

Well, maybe not the foxes. They would use _them_ for the fur, see? But they ate all manner of strange things, and it was a time of misery, but they stayed because they had the heart in them. And in the spring they walked. Yes, they _walked_ to the place where the supplies would be. It was a long long long way. It could've been maybe a thousand or so miles, then.

(They walked? A _thousand_ miles? They couldn't, Christie.)

Well, it might not have been quite the thousand, but it was a christly long way. And through the snow and muck and that. And who led them? I ask you, who led them? Who led the men and women and the children on that march? Piper Gunn. Himself. He led them with his pipes blaring, there. He was a man six feet nine inches tall, a mighty man of God. And he played the pipes like an angel right out of heaven and then like a devil right out of hell, and he kept the courage of the people beating like drums, or like the wings of brave wild birds caught in a blizzard, for he had the faith of the saints and the heart of a child and the gall of a thousand and the strength of conviction.

Well, then, I guess they must've walked through all of them frozen lands, and through the muskeg there and through the muck and mud of the melting snows, and through the hard snow itself although it was spring. And it was that hard, walking, even Piper Gunn himself began to have his doubts, as who would blame him? And he says to his woman Morag, _What in the fiery hell are we doing in this terrible place?_ So Morag says to him, for she had the wisdom and the good eye and the warmth of a home and the determination of quietness, and she says, _We are going into the new country and your child is going along with us, so play on._ And he did that. Yes, he did that.

So then, they got to the place where all the supplies was. And they got boats, big flat-bottomed boats, more like scows or rafts or like that, and they went down all the way to Red River, which is to say they came to this part of the country, not so very far from where we are at this very instant. And there they stayed.

(What happened then, Christie?)

Och aye, it was hard. It was so hard you could barely feature it. Locusts. Hailstorms. Floods. Blizzards. Indians. Halfbreeds. Hot as the pit of hell in the summer, and the mosquitoes as big as sparrows. Winters so cold it would freeze the breath in your throat and turn your blood to red ice. Weather for giants, in them days. Not that it's that much better now, I'd say.

(Did they fight the halfbreeds and Indians, Christie?)

Did they ever. Slew them in their dozens, girl. In their scores.

(Were they bad, the breeds and them?)

What?

The story is over. Christie's blue watery eyes look at her, or try to.

"Bad?" He repeats the word as though he is trying to think what it means.

"No," he says at last. "They weren't bad. They were–just there."

He motions with one hand, tired, for her to go to her room. And she sees him again the way he really looks, the way she sometimes forgets when he is talking. Why can't he look different? But she doesn't say. He is yawning– _gawp_ –and nearly asleep across the table, spraddled out with his head going down on his arms.

Morag, upstairs. Writing in her scribbler. This one is nearly full, and what it is full of is a long story about how Piper Gunn's woman, once the child was born, at the Red River, went out into the forest and built a chariot for them all, for Piper Gunn and herself and their girlchild, so they could easily move around in that country there. She cut down the trees and she carved out the chariot. It was not a wagon. It was much fancier, and it had:

four giant wheels

a big high back with a seat

the seat covered in green moss

(she said velvet at first but where would they get it?)

the front shaped like a ship and a bird

birchbark scrolls around the sides

carvings of deer and foxes and bears

carvings of meadowlarks

carvings of tall grasses

carvings of spruce trees and spruce cones

polished stones for jewels, on the sides and axles

a brass hook for Piper Gunn's pipes

Morag is working on another story as well. In another scribbler. She does not know where it came from. It comes into your head, and when you write it down, it surprises you, because you never knew what was going to happen until you put it down.

She writes in bed, with the eiderdown around her, up to her neck nearly.

The new story is about a guy who was one of Piper Gunn's men. A little scrawny guy. Actually, though, he was very tough. His name was–no, not Cluny, something like that. Macphersons are nicknamed Cluny a lot of the time–why? His name was Clowny Macpherson, because people always laughed at him on account of he looked silly. But Piper Gunn, he knew one thing about Clowny, for sure, and that was he was a great woodcutter and

More tomorrow.

_Memorybank Movie: Christie's Presence and Presents_

Christie is looking for misplaced longjohns in the kitchen dresser. He and Prin do not have a dresser in their bedroom. For some unknown reason, there is a large phonograph there instead, the kind you wind up, and it has a pile of old records in the cabinet, but is never played.

"Damn things must be lost, stolen or strayed," Christie mutters. "Where the hell'd you put 'em, woman?"

Prin becomes flustered and cannot remember.

"I seem to mind I put 'em in the top drawer. Or was it–"

"Never mind, never mind!" Christie shouts. "I could find something easier at the Nuisance Grounds than here. You wouldn't know neatness if it was your middle name."

"You're a fine one to talk," Prin whines, her breath coming difficult, in gasps.

Christie stops flinging clothes around and looks at her. His face is strange.

"Ah, Lord, don't I know it. You'd have done better to marry anybody else, Prin. That is the declared truth."

"What chance did I have?" Prin says, very low, but he can hear.

This is mean, Morag considers. She changes in her head, for the moment, to Christie's side. Christie's face frowns.

"Goddammit, you make your own chances in this world!" he roars. "Or else you don't make them. Like me. You have to work bloody hard at it, believe me, to be such a bloody flop as I stand here before you. In my one suit of underwear."

His voice drops then.

"Although that's not the truth of it, neither. It's all true and not true. Isn't that a bugger, now?"

"I don't understand you, Christie Logan," Prin says. "I never have done."

"You're not the only one. I don't understand myself. _Oh what a piece of work is man._ Who said that? Some brain."

He goes on riffling through the drawer, humming to himself.

"Oh what a piece of work is man oh what a bloody awful piece of work is man enough to scare the pants off you when you come to think of it the opposite is also true hm hm."

He stops.

"Here, what's this?" he says suddenly.

A book. He looks through it, then brings it over to Morag. A purple cover, faded to a sickly mauve at the edges, and dim gold letters.

_The 60th Canadian Field Artillery Battery Book_

"It's the regiment book from the War," Christie says. "It's the regiment I and your dad was in from 1916 until we got back in 1919."

CONTENTS

I. In Canada

II. In England

III. First Experiences in France

IV. Position Warfare

V. Open Warfare–The Battle of Amiens

VI. Open Warfare–Arras to Cambrai

VII. Open Warfare–Cambrai to Valenciennes

VIII. Open Warfare–Valenciennes to Mons

IX. The March to the Rhine

X. The Horses

XI. Casualties

_Vis-en-Artois_ (brick buildings all fallen down into a heap)

_Battery Entering Valenciennes_ (a street, building in pieces, men running)

_Protection of Horses_ (deep ditch; two men and some horses standing in mud)

_The Battery_ (lots of rows, men but looking more like High School boys)

"Christie! Is my father in that picture?"

"Yep. We're all there."

"Which one is he? Which _one_?"

Christie and Morag both peer at the picture. Row after row, faraway faces. They are very very small in the photo. And they all look the same, because no face is clear.

"Lemme see," Christie says. "This one? No. Maybe not. Maybe this one? Which is myself? Lord, Morag, I can't even find my own self."

Morag looks at the long-ago picture. One of these men is Colin Gunn, her father. But it could be any one of them. She says nothing.

"Your dad saved my life that one time, then," Christie says. "He did? When? How?" "Bourlon Wood."

He looks up. They read what the book says.

On the night of September 26th the guns were moved into position. Zero hour was 5 A.M. on the 27th September, and, promptly to the second, the guns opened fire, continuing in action until 12:10 P.M.

Notwithstanding the secrecy with which the operations had been performed by the Battery, their position must have been spotted, for no sooner had the barrage started than the enemy shelled the guns with whiz-bangs; if it had not been for the fact that the guns were below the level of the ground, the casualties might have been heavy. As it was, the men escaped by a very narrow margin. Time and again a perfect ring of ground bursts encircled the guns, within a very few yards radius, and as the smoke slowly rose and thinned out, it was with a hopeless sort of hope that their comrades glanced around to assure themselves of the safety of the various crews. This phase of the attack included the capture of Bourlon Wood.

"Oh Jesus," Christie says, "don't they make it sound like a Sunday school picnic?"

"What happened, Christie?"

Christie sits down and rolls a cigarette.

CHRISTIE'S TALE OF THE BATTLE OF BOURLON WOOD

Well, d'you see, it was like the book says, but it wasn't like that, also. That is the strangeness.

Holy God, with all of them guns pounding away that morning, the sky was like fire, _Like_ fire, did I say? It _was_ fire. We was firing from the trenches. Them trenches, now. You never heard of "trench foot"? The feet would rot. They'd rot, I tell you, because they'd be wet with the mud and slime and shit and horsepiss all the time. You'd be trying to line up them devils of guns, the eighteen-pounders, and you'd be up to your bloody navel in muck, nearly.

It was terrible for the horses. I've seen horses sinking in mud, where there was a crater, do you see, a shell crater and it would be filled with that damned mire. Once I seen a horse going under, and its mouth foaming with the fear, and its eyes wild as a lunatic's eyes, and its voice screaming. Not neighing or like that. Screaming. Drowning in mud. Jesus, it's the mud you recall more than anything, nearly.

(What happened that day, Christie? Go on.)

Your dad and me was both gunners. He was my mate, do you see. We worked the big gun together.

(Gunner Gunn. That's funny, eh?)

Not so funny you'd hardly have noticed it at the time. I was older than Colin, and not so quick, I would say. There we are, getting ready to fire old Brimstone, and a shell explodes so christly close to me I think I'm a goner. The noise. Jesus. And then the air all around me is filled with

(With what, Christie? Why are you stopping?)

Well, then, with bleeding bits of a man. Blown to smithereens. A leg. A hand. Guts, which was that red and wet you would not credit it at all.

(Oh.)

I thought–God, it's Colin. Then the noise or some damn thing got me. I started to shake and I couldn't move my feet from the spot I was standing on. Then–I don't remember. I must've passed out. When I came to, it was away past midnight and it was that quiet you could hear the heart beating in you. The stars was out, and I recall they scared me at first. I thought they'd be more shells, you see. But they didn't move or come closer. Then your dad gave me some water. He must've dragged me into the dugouts where we bunked, out of the fire. The water spilled. A goddamn waste. I couldn't drink it. I was still shaking like a fool.

(What then, Christie?)

But the story is over. Christie gets up. He is, Morag sees, shaking.

"I wish I had not found that christly book at all," he says.

And goes to bed.

"Can I have the book, Prin?" Morag says. "If he doesn't want it, then can I have it?"

"Sh," Prin whispers. "I don't think he would want to part with it. Don't ask him, will you, now?"

Christie has heard, though. He doesn't come back into the kitchen that night, but the next morning he opens his hands to Morag.

"Not the book," he says. "And I don't have anything that was your father's. But you can have this if you want it."

It is a knife. About eight inches long including the handle, which is dark-brown and leathery. The blade is wide and comes to a very sharp point at the end. A hunting knife. Morag takes it. Examines it. On the handle, burned into it, it seems is a sign:

"What's that sign, Christie?"

"I dunno. A knife's not much of a thing to give a girl, I guess. I found it in the same drawer as the book. Haven't seen it for years. Some young twerp of a kid offered to trade me it for a package of cigarettes, so I done it. It's never been any good to me, though. He talked me into it. Great talker, he was, as a boy, though not as a man. Killed a year or so ago, when his truck smacked into an oncoming freight, reckless young devil, poor sod, drunk at the time no doubt. Well, I guess it's not much of a Christmas present."

"If you hadn't had that bottle of hooch, you could of bought candies," Prin says.

"Jesus, woman, don't you think I know it?"

"I like this," Morag says. "I like it fine, Christie. Honest."

Christie has never given her a present before, except sometimes candies. But never a lasting present. Ashamed of this one, and of herself, she shoves it away to the back of her dresser drawer.
**FOUR**

**T** he starlings and grackles began their dawn performance, a chorus of iron-throated squawks accompanied by a heavy-footed ballet on the roof. Morag sighed. Birds should be light in the step. These sounded like carthorses, _tramp tramp tramp_. Birds transformed into tiny moose for an hour at sunup. Never any swallows walking on the roof, you could be certain. They would no doubt at least have pranced prettily, but sensibly preferred to fly.

If the farmhouse had had upstairs ceilings, the birdfeet would not be quite so thundering. But there was only the rafters. Morag liked it this way because it showed the way the house had been built, nearly a hundred years ago by a homesteader called Cooper. Whose sons and grandsons had farmed the beautifully treed but rocky land until finally giving up, selling out and moving to some town or other. The house was log, still as sound as the year it was built. The door frames and window sills were handhewn timber, although the floorboards and doors had come from a sawmill. The rooms were small. Morag had obtained the furniture–old-fashioned straight-backed chair, pine dressers, the long table in the kitchen–at secondhand furniture stores in McConnell's Landing. The oldness of the farmhouse, the roughness, were qualities Morag would have loathed as a kid. Now she valued them.

Morag gave up the battle to block her ears against the birds, and got up. The kitchen was cool and would remain so. The thick walls kept out the heat. She put her head outside the door. The river was still. No breeze. The trees across the river were reflected in the water so sharply you could imagine it was another world there, a treeworld in the water, willows and oak and maples, all growing there, climbed upon by river-children, and slithered finnily through by muskie and yellow perch. The day, she predicted, was going to be a scorcher.

Royland would be here in about an hour. Today was the day.

You wondered about people like the Cooper family, all those years ago. Trekking in here to take up their homestead. No roads. Bush. Hacking their way. Wagons and horses? Probably coming much of the way by river. Barges teetering and overloaded. Then the people clearing the first growth of timber. Shifting the rocks from fields, making stone walls to outline the land to be cultivated. The sheer unthinkable back-and-heart-breaking slog. Women working like horses. Also, probably pregnant most of the time. Baking bread in brick ovens, with a loaf in their own ovens. Looking after broods of chickens and kids. Terrible. Appalling.

Healthy life, though. No one died of lung cancer. Strong and fit, they were, tanned and competent. Pioneers oh pioneers.

But what about a burst appendix? Desperately ill kids? Fever? Women having breech births or other disorders of childbearing? The tiny cemetery on the hill contained, among other stones, the one to Simon Cooper's first wife.

In Memory of Sarah Cooper

Who Died in Childbirth

June 20, 1880, Age 24.

She Rests In The Lord.

Probably glad to rest anywhere, poor lady, even In The Lord. How many women went mad? Loneliness, isolation, strain, despair, overwork, fear. Out there, the bush. In here, a silent worried work-sodden man, squalling brats, an open fireplace, and would the shack catch fire this week or next? In winter, snow up to your thighs. Outdoor privy. People flopping through drifts to the barn to milk the cow. What fun. Healthy life indeed. A wonder they weren't all raving lunatics. Probably many were. It's the full of the moon, George–Mrs. Cooper always howls like this at such a time–nothing to worry about–she'll be right as rain come the morning–c'mon there, Sarah, quit crouching in the corner and stop baring your fangs like that–George and me's hungry and would appreciate a spot of grub. _Onward, Christian Soldiers. Thy Way Not Mine O Lord However Dark It Be._

The fact remained that they _had_ hacked out a living here. They had survived. Like so-called Piper Gunn and the Sutherlanders further west. Was it better or worse now? Both. Both. At least _their_ children did not wander to God knows where. Unknown destinies, far and probably lethal places. If any _did_ , though, there were no telephones and the mail services could hardly have been very snappy. Well, then, _they_ did not have to wrench up their guts and hearts etcetera and set these carefully down on paper, in order to live. Clever of them, one might say. Anyway, some of them did. Including women. Catharine Parr Trail, mid-1800s, botanist, drawing and naming wildflowers, writing a guide for settlers with one hand, whilst rearing a brace of young and working like a galley slave with the other.

_From the Birch, A Thousand Useful Utensils Can Be Made. A Few Hints On Gardening_ (including how to start an orchard, how to _start_ it!)

_How To Make:_ | Cheap Family Cake

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Hot Tea-Cakes

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Indian-Meal Yorkshire Pudding

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Maple Vinegar

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Potted Fish

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Potash Soap

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Rag Carpets

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Candles

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A Good Household Cheese

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Cures For Ague and Dysentery

And so on. It did not bear thinking about. Morag, running her log house with admirable efficiency and a little help from the electric fridge, kettle, toaster, stove, iron, baseboard heaters, furnace, lights, not to mention the local supermarket and Ron Jewitt's friendly neighbourhood taxi. Great God Almighty.

The song sparrow was tuning up in the small elm outside the window. Its song was unambiguous.

_Pres-pres-pres-pres-Presbyterian!_

Mrs. Eula McCann from several miles away had dropped in with welcome raisin buns when Morag and Pique originally moved in, and had asked Morag if she had heard the bird which said that word. Morag, until that moment, had only heard it as a pleasant trill. Since that day, however, its message came across loud and clear.

Catharine Parr Traill, one could be quite certain, would not have been found of an early morning sitting over a fourth cup of coffee, mulling, approaching the day in gingerly fashion, trying to size it up. No. No such sloth for Catharine P.T.

_Scene at the Traill Homestead, Circa 1840_

C.P.T. out of bed, fully awake, bare feet on the sliver-hazardous floorboards–no, take that one again. Feet on the homemade hooked rug. Breakfast cooked for the multitude. Out to feed the chickens, stopping briefly on the way back to pull fourteen armloads of weeds out of the vegetable garden and perhaps prune the odd apple tree in passing. The children's education hour, the umpteen little mites lisping enthusiastically over this enlightenment. Cleaning the house, baking two hundred loaves of delicious bread, preserving half a ton of plums, pears, cherries, etcetera. All before lunch.

_Catharine Parr Trail, where are you now that we need you? Speak, oh lady of blessed memory._

Where the hell was Pique and why didn't she phone or write? If Pique were not carrying any form of identification (as was likely), how would anyone know who she was and be able to get in touch with Morag if anything happened? Should Morag try to trace her? Pique had been okay not too long ago. The phone message from Pique's father had established that. But where was she now and why didn't she simply _say?_ Was this over-concern on Morag's part? No doubt. But still. How could you stop yourself from worrying? The kid was eighteen. Only. What had Catharine said, somewhere, about emergencies?

Morag loped over to the bookshelves which lined two walls of the seldom-used livingroom. Found the pertinent text.

In cases of emergency, it is folly to fold one's hands and sit down to bewail in abject terror. It is better to be up and doing.

( _The Canadian Settlers' Guide_ , 1855)

_Morag:_ | Thank you, Mrs. Traill.

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_Catharine Parr Traill:_ | That, my dear, was when we were at one time surrounded by forest fires which threatened the crops, fences, stock, stable, cabin, furniture and, of course, children. Your situation, if I may say so, can scarcely be termed comparable.

_Morag:_ | Well uh no, I guess not. Hold on, though. _You_ try having your only child disappear you know where, Mrs. Traill. Also, with no strong or even feeble shoulder upon which to lean, on occasion. Okay, don't say it, lady. You'd go out and plant turnips, so at least you wouldn't starve during the winter. You'd pick blueberries or something. Start a jam factory. Make pemmican out of the swayback which dropped dead of exhaustion on the Back Forty. Don't tell me. I know.

The knocking (only now noticed by Morag) at the kitchen door had ceased and Royland had stepped inside. She knew from his step, slow but not heavy, that it was him.

"First sign of going off your rocker, Morag, so they say."

Embarrassed, she returned the book to its place and went back to the kitchen.

"Don't you ever talk out loud to yourself, Royland?"

"Oh sure. It's when I start answering myself I get worried."

Ha ha. The ancient joke.

"I was not answering myself," Morag said. "I was holding a polite if somewhat controversial conversation with a lady of my acquaintance, who happens not to inhabit this vale of tears any more."

"You and Joan of Arc, the pair of you," Royland said, cough-laughing into the grey shagginess of his chin foliage.

"The lady of _her_ acquaintance held–um–a slightly more distinguished position than this lady of mine. Want some coffee?"

"Don't mind if I do. You working yet, Morag?"

He got the word right now. Once he used to ask her if she was doing any writing these days. Until he learned that the only meaning the word _work_ had for her was writing, which was peculiar, considering that it was more of a free gift than work, when it was going well, and the only kind of work she enjoyed doing.

"I don't know. I mean, about the thing I seem to want to do, or have to. It seems like an awfully dubious idea, in a lot of ways, but I guess I'll have to go on with it. Maybe it's begun. I don't know very much about it yet."

"Heard from Pique?"

"No." Turning away so the old man would not see her request for reassurance.

"I thought not. You have got to quit fretting over that girl. As I keep saying."

Morag turned suddenly and faced him.

"Don't mistake me, Royland. I don't want her living here any more. She can't. She mustn't. She's got to be on her own. Anything else is no good for her and no good for me. It's just that I'd like to hear from time to time that she's okay, is all."

"You think she isn't?"

"Remember that time a year ago, when she left school and took off?"

"Yeh. She came back, though. And is now a whole year older."

"She was in a mental hospital in Toronto for a month. A bad trip, as they somewhat euphemistically say. She hasn't had a very easy life, Royland. I clobbered her with a hell of a situation to live in, although I never meant to. Okay, maybe everything else clobbered her, too, and I'm not God and I'm not responsible for everything. But I chose to have her, in the first place, and maybe I should've seen it would be too difficult for her. You don't think of that, at the time, or I didn't, anyway."

Pique, her long black hair spread over the hospital pillow, her face turned away from Morag, her voice low and fierce. _Can't you see I despise you? Can't you see I want you to go away? You aren't my mother. I haven't got a mother._ The nurse, candy-voiced, telling Morag it would be best for her to leave and in a week or so we would see, Morag, walking on streets, not knowing where, stumbling into people, seeing only small hard-bright replayed movies inside. Pique at five saying _Tell me the story about the robin in our own dogwood tree please Mum._ Pique on the first plane flight saying _Is it safe Mum?_ and Morag saying _Yes_ , hoping this was true. Pique in England saying _We're going home?_ and not knowing where that place could be. Pique saying _Are we really going to live on a farm and can I have a dog?_ Pique, when her father visited both those times, ten years apart, and then when he had to go away again, Pique saying nothing. Nothing. Pique's face turned away, her hair spread across the white freeze-drift of hospital linen, saying _I despise you_.

"You know something, Royland?" Morag said. "I guess I feel that sometimes she despises me. And there are moments when I can see her point, there."

"I knew about Pique in Toronto," Royland said. "She told me."

"She did?"

"Sure. She said she couldn't be certain she wouldn't do it again, but she hoped she wouldn't, on account of she wanted to get her head together–that was how she put it–by herself. Also, she doesn't despise you. She has mixed feelings, is all. Haven't you ever had?"

_Christie. Prin. Brooke. Pique's father. Dan McRaith. Pique._

"Yes. Of course. Naturally."

"You should try to rest your soul," Royland said. "You ready to go now, Morag?"

A strong south wind had risen, and the river was darker now, the water undulating under the boat.

"What if it rains?" Morag asked.

"Makes no difference. Water's still there underground."

At the Smiths' dock, grey weathered timbers and driftwood logs, built by A-Okay, Royland drew the boat in, tied it, and they walked up the slope to the house.

The Smiths' house was brick, dark red, with a gabled roof on which A-Okay had already restored the wooden lace, now painted white by Maudie, suffering vertigo on the ladder but never once saying _Die_ or even _Down_. They had rented the farm, with an option to buy, always supposing A-Okay could whomp up the necessary money from the pop science articles he wrote. The rent was small, because the land was neglected and overgrown and the house, while pleasing on the outside, had been virtually only a shell. The floors were sound, but that was about all you could say for it. The rest was a shambles. But being restored.

"Hi," A-Okay said at the door. "Maudie's got the coffee on. We'll do it right after, if that's a-okay with you. Any special time of day for this, Royland?"

"Nope. I don't usually do it at night, is all."

"Why not? I mean, is there a–"

A-Okay, ex-science man, groping, wondering about all this procedure.

"Might trip over a tree root," Royland said.

A-Okay laughed, but self-consciously. Royland's cracker-barrel humour embarrassed him. He thought it had been pinched from B-grade movies, as perhaps it had. Royland sometimes took pleasure in his Old Man of the River persona, but was no hick in fact. He had begun life on a homestead–that was all Morag really knew. He knew cities; he knew lots of areas. Probably. But never talked of his past. Morag Gunn, inveterate winkler-out of people's life stories, had never winkled out Royland's. He knew a hell of a lot more about her than she did about him. He, obviously, preferred it this way. Perhaps she did, too.

"Did you read Alf's poems, Morag?" Maudie asked, coming out of the kitchen looking like a very fragile wood nymph, her long pale hair all around her, a wood nymph in dirty beige corduroy jeans and tomato-stained blouse, today. Maudie could not weigh more than a hundred pounds, at most, Morag estimated. That such apparent frailty could conceal such muscularity, physical and spiritual, was a marvel.

The poems.

"I read them, yes."

"And what did you think?"

"Let her get in the door, first, eh, Maudie?" A-Okay said with suppressed irritation, blushing.

"I thought the river ones were good," Morag said truthfully, "but I thought the land ones were kind of abstract. I thought maybe they might need more work, more specific detail. I know what you were aiming at–at least, I think I do, but they seemed too exclusively philosophical. A little more flesh and blood detail might get them across better. You didn't seem–well, to _know_ enough about the land. Not that _I_ know. I don't know all that much about poetry, either. I really don't like saying."

"Yeh. Well. Thanks." A-Okay's tall frame seemed sunken in despondency, and he blinked slightly, short-sightedly connecting with a footstool and knocking it over. "I guess I might do some more work on them."

Maudie looked dubious. His one-woman cheering section. Well, good for her. But all the same.

"As I've said before, Morag," Maudie said, "if Alf messes them around too much, where does that leave the spontaneity? Maybe they're more for real if he leaves them just as they are."

"Yeh. Maybe."

They went outside. Royland had a Y-shaped piece of willow, one hand on each branch of the fork. He held his hands clenched, palms upwards, clutching the greenwood tightly. The tail of the Y was held well up. They watched.

At the back of the house, Royland began walking slowly. Up and down the yard. Like the slow pace of a piper playing a pibroch. Only this was for a reverse purpose. Not the walk over the dead. The opposite.

Nothing happened.

"Does it ever–well, you know–not work, Royland?" A-Okay asked.

"Alf, sh!" Maudie hissed the sounds, as though A-Okay had interrupted during a symphony or a seance.

"Doesn't fail if the water's there, or at least not so far," Royland said. "You don't have to sh-sh. I don't need quiet."

But all the same, none of them talked after that. Tom stood with his hand in his father's hand. The whiz kid, now subdued.

Morag had once tried divining with the willow wand. Nothing at all had happened. Royland had said she didn't have the gift. She wasn't surprised. Her area was elsewhere. He was divining for water. What in hell was she divining for? You couldn't doubt the value of water.

"Hey–look!" Thomas.

The tip of the willow wand was moving. In Royland's bony grip, the wood was turning, moving downwards very slowly, very surely. Towards the earth.

Magic, four yards north of the Smiths' clothesline.

"How about that?" A-Okay said. "Well, I guess we'll see when the driller comes in, eh?"

Wanting faith, taking it on faith, but not yet convinced. Would the driller strike water?

Tom, encyclopaedic mind suddenly pierced by mysteries, could only stare.

"Will they find water there, Dad?"

A-Okay, naturally, unnaturally, could neither say Yes or No. He grinned, in embarrassment, hoping.

"Morag–" Maudie.

"Yes?"

"What if the driller doesn't–?"

Maudie, feeling intimations and premonitions of mortality. Morag wanted to put her arms around Tom's mother. But could not.

"I know."

Royland marked the spot by sticking the willow bough into it. The driller's truck clanked into the yard.

"'Lo, Bob." Royland. Casual.

"'Lo, Royland. This it?"

"Yep. Should be."

The drilling rig was set up and began chewing the ground. Clay and earth spat out in a steady stream. Maudie shivered and rose from the front steps.

"It's crazy," she said, "but I just can't take this, Morag. I mean, how'll Royland feel if it doesn't, you know?"

"I know. Me, too. Let's go in and make coffee."

The drill hit water at forty feet.

"Lucky there isn't so much rock on your place, A-Okay," Royland said, sucking at his coffee. "Knew one place they had to go down damn near a hundred feet through sheer rock. Had to blast. Cost them enough, I can tell you. Well, you got enough water for a good-size town, here."

"I just don't see, though," A-Okay said, grateful but confused, "how it's done."

"I don't know no more than you," Royland said. "All I know is, it happens."

The river had quieted when Royland and Morag went back across. Royland in his old blue-and-grey plaid windbreaker sat hunched over the motor, his eyes half closed.

"You tired, Royland?"

"Not exactly. I just sometimes get kind of keyed-up. You know? And you get this feeling, sometimes, I guess."

"What kind of feeling?"

"That this time it might not work," Royland said.

Yeh. That.

"What would you have been like, as a young man, Royland?"

"Maverick," Royland said. "Maybe I'll tell you sometime. Or maybe not. Look–carp jumping, see it?"

A golden and fanged crescent, breaking the river's surface. Then gone.

_Maverick?_

Night. A piercing noise.

Morag shot from her chair and answered the phone.

"Collect call from Winnipeg." Operator's voice. "Will you accept the charges?"

"Yes. Yes."

"Go ahead, please," said the antiseptic voice.

"Hello. Ma?"

"Pique. Are you okay? I mean, how _are_ you?"

"I'm fine." Voice sounding strong and maybe okay. "You weren't worried?"

"No. I knew I'd hear from you."

"Liar."

They both laughed. Morag, with relief.

"So how are _you_?" Pique asked. "Are you working?"

"I've begun, yes," Morag said, hands shaking as she lit a cigarette, holding the telephone receiver between her chin and shoulder. "I'm okay. I went over to the Smiths' today. Royland divined their well. Incidentally, Pique, Gord didn't phone."

"It's all right. He's here now. Not with me this minute. I mean, but here."

"Thank God."

"Oh _Mother_. For Christ's sake. All is now fine because I've got a big strong husky dog to fend for me?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Pique. You know I don't mean that."

"You _do_ , though."

True, as Morag realized upon a moment's reflection.

"Well, it's just that you alone, honey–look, I'm sorry. I'll get used to it. I'm learning, but I'm not learning fast enough. The usual human condition, if I may say so."

"Philosophical to the last ditch, that's you," Pique said cheerily. "Well, Gord's okay. I mean, he's a real good person and that. I'm just not all that convinced he's my actual destiny. We may as well travel together for a while. I don't guess he knows, really, what I'm looking for."

Gord, however, was six-feet-two, gentle as a lamb flock except when roused to the protection of Pique. This much, in the opinion of some, was decidedly in his favour.

"I won't demean myself by asking if you're eating properly. But _are_ you, Pique?"

"Oh sure. No sweat on that scene." Impatience in her voice, then suppressed excitement. "Say, I went out to your old hometown."

"You _did_?"

Manawaka. Pique sauntering along Main Street in her jeans, her guitar on her back, a stranger in a place strange to her. What had she seen or found? Who?

"Yeh." A laugh, not very amused. "I looked it over. I stayed a coupla days. I'll tell you about it sometime. It was a real gas."

"I'll bet. Was there–did you go–"

"I said, I'll tell you sometime. It wasn't quite what I expected."

"I have no trouble in believing that."

"Yeh, but you don't _know_ what I expected, and you don't know what I found, do you?"

"Okay, you've got me there. What else?"

"I nearly had the guitar hurt," Pique said. "Luckily, that turned out okay. It was the day I nearly got busted."

"You did? What for? I mean, what did they _say_ it was for?"

Morag had to remind herself once again that her instinctive image of the police was one from the distant past–old Rufus Nolan puffing beer-bellied up Main Street. Mooseheaded but harmless. The local constable. When anything serious occurred in town, the mounties zinged in, summoned from somewhere, taut and sinister in breeks with the bright yellow stripe like a stinging wasp, and jackboots, but not living locally so only a sometime and not-quite-real threat, even to Hill Street.

A silence.

"Pique, what happened? Nobody hurt you? Did anyone–"

And if they had, what could Morag do?

"Cool it, eh?" Pique's uncool voice. "It was outside of some little nothing-type town just inside Manitoba. I can't even remember the name. Maybe I blotted it out. Or maybe it actually didn't _have_ a name, you know? I'm walking along hoping for a lift but not actually trying that hard because it's a nice evening, see, just after dusk and I'm wondering when I'm gonna start hearing those fabulous prairie meadowlarks you always used to tell me about, remember? Listen, this call is costing you a fortune, Ma."

"Never mind. What _happened_?"

"Well, a car went by, and it was this bunch of, like, you know, kind of middle-aged guys, pretty jowly and obviously the local businessmen or something. So they see me, yes? I take one look and think _uh-uh_. So you know what they do then?"

"I can't imagine."

She could, though, and none of it was human.

"Well, they start pelting empty beer bottles at me. Outa the windows. They're drunk, I need not add. Some charity supper or something they've been to, no doubt. One of the bottles hits the guitar, and the case is only a plastic one as you know, but luckily no real damage, although there's a mark. The car was creeping along slow, there, and I wasn't feeling too happy just about then. Well, one of the guys took this bottle and cracked it hard on the door frame of the car. The bottle broke, of course, and then he heaved it at me, meantime yelling all kinds of shit. Well, the glass got me on the arm, and I guess the blood kind of scared them. They took off."

_My world in those days was a residual bad dream, with some goodness and some chance of climbing out. Hers is an accomplished nightmare, with nowhere to go, and the only peace is in the eye of the hurricane. My God. My God._

"Pique–is your arm okay now? What happened then?"

Her arm. What about the other dimension?

"Yeh, it's okay. Oh, I walked into town. I dunno–just thinking of those guys kind of bugged me. Maybe what they really would've liked was to lay me and then slit my throat. I had that feeling. Anyway, I stopped at a house and asked if I could please wash, as I'd had a slight accident, and they called the cops."

_She tries to speak my idiom, to me. She never says Pigs, cognizant of my rural background._

"What for? To report on the men?"

"You've got to be joking, Ma. No. To report on me. They took me to the police station. I was let off with a warning."

" _You_ were let off with a warning? What about the–"

"I guess it was just I was walking through their town, by myself, like, and how I got the bleeding arm would've been too uncomfortable for them to know, probably. I tried to tell them, naturally, not because I thought it'd do that much good, but I mean, for God's sake, if you're a doormat somebody will be bound to walk all over you, right? But they didn't want to know. So I kept on moving."

_If you want to make yourself into a doormat, Morag girl, I declare unto you that there's a christly host of them that'll be only too willing to tread all over you.–Proverbs of C. Logan, circa 1936._

"Pique–honey–"

"Oh shit. Now I've gone and told it like a hardluck story. Appealing to your sympathy. I didn't mean it like that."

"It didn't come across like that."

"It _did_ , though. Anyway, I'm going on to the coast. I'll write you. Listen, I'm sorry, this call really is costing you the earth–"

_I'm not quite broke yet. It's only money. Don't ring off. Not quite yet._

"Yeh, it is," Morag said. "Well–write when you can, eh? And take care."

"I will. You too." SILENCE.

The silence boomed resoundingly from wall to wall, The house was filled with it. Only after half an hour did Morag realize that Pique had not mentioned seeing her father, and Morag had not mentioned that he had phoned.

The night river was dark and shining, and the moon traced a wavering path across it. Morag sat cross-legged on the dock, listening to the hoarse prehistoric voices of the bullfrogs. Somewhere far-off, thunder.

Incredibly, unreasonably, a lightening of the heart.

_Memorybank Movie: Whose Side Is God On?_ Morag stands beside Prin, the back row of the church, hating her own embarrassment but hugging it around her. She is much taller than Prin now, and even though she has finally got Prin a new coat, grey with silverish buttons, at Simlow's spring sale, Prin still looks like a barrel of lard with legs. She has tried to do Prin's long grey hair up in a bun (which is in classy circles called a _chignon_ , she now knows), but the hairpins are falling out, and Prin doesn't even realize or try to poke them back in again, so a funny-looking twist of hair is now halfway down her neck. Prin's hat never stays on at the right angle–it sits there all cockeyed, the navy straw brim drooping over Prin's forehead, the pink velvet geranium looking as though it may come unhitched at any moment. It is, as well, a hat which Christie found at the Nuisance Grounds and Morag is in agony, wondering if it once belonged to Mrs. Cameron or Mrs. Simon Pearl or somebody who's here today and will recognize it and laugh and tell everybody. Prin sings loudly, a deep contralto, but is quite frequently off-key, and when she hits a sour note Morag squirms.

She loves Prin, but can no longer bear to be seen with her in public. Prin maybe knows this, and is grateful when Morag goes to church with her, which makes Morag feel bad, that is, feel _badly_.

Morag is dressed nicely. Nobody could deny it. She spends on clothes everything she earns Saturdays working at Simlow's Ladies' Wear. Her hair is done in very neat braids, twisted around her head, and her hat is that very pale natural straw, with just a band of turquoise ribbon around it, in good taste. Her coat, also turquoise, matches the ribbon exactly and is princess-style, fitted, and flaring at the bottom. It shows off her figure, which is a goddamn good one–that is, a very nice one. But all this makes no difference. When church is over, and they're all filing out, chattering, the Camerons and MacLeods and Duncans and Cateses and McVities and Halperns and them, no one will say _Good Morning_ to Morag and Prin. Not on your life. Might soil their precious mouths. Maybe they're just embarrassed, like, and don't know what to say? Not a chance. They're a bunch of–well, a bunch of so-and-so's. Morag does not swear. If you swear at fourteen it only makes you look cheap, and she is not cheap, goddamn it. Gol-darn it.

In Christ there is no East or West,

In Him no North or South–

Oh yeh? Like fun there isn't.

"Let us pray," Reverend McKee says.

And prays for all the Manawaka boys who have gone to the WAR.

Morag, head bent, tries to imagine the War. You imagine lots of things about it, but is that the way it really is? Is it like that poem they took this year in English?

The sand of the desert is sodden red.

Red with the wreck of a square that broke.

The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,

And the regiment blind with dust and smoke–

The rest of the poem is crap, but those lines are really something. Sodden red. Blind with dust and smoke. Is it like that? They don't use gatlings now, though. Much worse stuff. Also, bombing places like London (and in that giant city, _no lights on_ at night, how creepy and awful) and even little kids lying there, dead. What does God care? What would it be like, actually to _feel_ a bullet going into you, let's say into your stomach or your lungs, and knowing there was no way out, no hospital or cure? _Knowing_ you _have_ to die, right now, this minute. Was it like Christie described that other war? Gunner Gunn. Age eighteen. Only four years older than she is now. God couldn't have cared less, whoever died _there_. If the War lasts until she is eighteen, she won't join the Women's Army. They'll have to come and drag her away, if they want her. It would be a way of getting out of town, though.

"Amen," Reverend McKee says.

At home, Morag faces Prin, now rocking comfortably in the rocker that was part of Christie's recent loot from the Nuisance Grounds.

"Prin–"

"Yeh?"

"I'm not going to church anymore. I don't like it. It's–it's–"

Christie is watching her. Half-smiling.

"I don't want to go, that's all," she says. "I don't like it anymore."

"Well, you suit yourself," Prin says. Resigned.

Not in judgement. Just–you suit yourself.

"Christie–"

He gathers the phlegm in his throat. Goes to the front door, opens it, and spits outside into the weeds.

"You heard her, Morag. It's like she says. You suit yourself."

It would have been better, almost, if they'd argued with her. Now she feels she's done something awful. But will not change her mind.

_Memorybank Movie: Saturday Night in the Old Hometown_ Simlow's Ladies' Wear is a lovely place. There are carpets, even, sort of wine-coloured with black circle patterns, and there are long counters and you stand behind one and say, _Can I help you?_ It's nice to work here on Saturdays, and you get paid for it as well.

The racks of dresses are at the back. Morag has looked through them when the store isn't busy. Right now they have:

printed silk two-piece dresses for the fuller figure

a whole load of cotton housedresses blue green yellow etcetera

silk or rayon afternoon dresses some with velvet bow at the shoulder

little girls' party dresses very cute with full skirts and embroidery

dirndl skirts with bright orange and blue flowers printed blouses with lace ruffles at the neck

AND

oh

the most adorable red dressmaker suit size 14

Morag cannot afford the suit but is saving for it. Will it be bought first by somebody else? She keeps her fingers crossed. When anyone looks at it, she fixes them with the evil eye. When anyone tries it on, she holds her breath.

Morag isn't allowed to work in Dresses, not yet. That is Millie Christopherson's territory. She needs a helper, and maybe soon it will be Morag. Millie is old (well, _older_ , anyway, as you might say) and she is tiny and light like a dandelion seed, very skinny legs ( _silk_ stockings, always, never lisle). She also looks kind of like a dandelion in full bloom, on account of her hair which is puffy and permed and a dandelion-yellow. She _dyes_ it; imagine having the nerve. But it is a gorgeous colour, and does not make Millie look cheap at all. Millie has very Good Taste.

"Good Taste is learnt," she says to Morag. "No soul in this here world is born with it, Morag. It is learnt, honey, and I am going to learn a teeny bit of it to _you_."

Morag is proud to have been chosen, and listens carefully. "It is the colour _harmony_ which is all-important, honey," Millie says, the store being unbusy as yet in the early evening. "Pink and purple, now, would you put the two of them together?"

"No, I guess not."

"Don't you guess, honey. You better _know_. Pink and purple, now, they clash. Also blue and green. Clash. Clash. Ugh."

What about sky and grass, Morag wants to know, but doesn't ask.

"Accessories, too," Millie goes on, darting over to the glove counter. "They are also all-important. Take this little dress now–a teal-blue, wouldn't you say? Lightened with the beige flower pattern. Now, would you wear these black kid gloves with it, or these others here?"

"The–beige ones?"

"Right, honey! Very good. The beige carries out the tone of the flowers, doesn't it? You catch on quick, dear. It's a pleasure to tell you things."

Morag has never felt such a warmth before. She loves Millie with all her heart and soul.

Morag is in Lingerie. At first it seemed funny, that people would go to all that expense and bother to wear really nifty underwear when who would see it, unless you were married, but now it seems as though it would be lovely if you could afford it. Mostly the demand is for rayon pants and cotton brassieres, the cheaper lines, but sometimes people will buy one of the beauty garments. Morag sorts and folds them, constantly rearranging. They are nice to touch, cool, slippery. Especially:

the blue satin nightie with a deep band of lace at the neck

the pale peach slip with tiny appliquéd flowers at the neck

the pastel pink panties very short not at all like bloomers

Business is warming up. Between eight and when the store closes, at ten, is the best time. Lots of people just look, of course. Morag stands up straight, behind the slips and nighties, feeling like she owns them, in a way. She _knows_ them, is why. And can show them off to anyone interested. She knows the prices of every item by heart. Millie says a good salesgirl always knows the prices without looking, but if you forget, try to sneak a glance at the tag without the customer noticing. It makes a good impression, Millie says.

Quite a few people now. Mrs. McVitie in a new hat, dark purple straw just dripping with mauve and yellow velvet violets, what awful Taste. Young Mrs. Pearl the lawyer's wife, not really young at all but this is so's she won't get confused with her mother-in-law, old Henry's widow, who is hardly ever in town anyhow. A lot of farm women whom Morag doesn't know except by sight, the same ones who flock into Simlow's every Saturday night just to look and finger the stuff, because no money.

Eva Winkler.

"Hi, Morag, how ya doing?"

"Oh, just great, Eva. How's things?"

"Okay, I guess. Dad's in one of his bad spells again. Me and Vern is going to spend the night at Auntie Clara's. I'm a bit worried about Ma, though. She says she can look after herself and keep out of his way when he gets that mad at everybody, but she can't look out for me and Vern as well. Still and all–"

Eva has got Vern with her. Oh horrors. Vern is still awfully small for his age, and his pale hair looks nearly white. His nose is runny, as usual. He is in overalls only, no shirt, and is in his _bare feet_. On Simlow's carpet. Then Morag notices his eyes, scared and sly at the same time. What a life.

"Gee–I'm sorry, Eva."

Sorry, but wanting Eva to go. Right this minute. Not to be seen talking to her.

Eva's hair, the same whitish yellow as it always was, could be really nice but still straggles all over the place. And not always clean, either. Eva's dresses are still the same old cotton things like potato sacks. Eva hasn't smartened up any. She is no longer in Morag's grade at school. She has failed twice and is only in Grade Seven, in the Public School, not the Collegiate. Morag is ashamed to be so glad that they are in different schools. They sometimes walk up Hill Street together in the mornings and then turn different ways.

Eva seems like she is beaten by life already. Morag is not–repeat _not_ –going to be beaten by life. But cannot bear to look at Eva very often.

"Gee, I'm sorry, Eva," she repeats. "I gotta go now. Millie doesn't like us to gab to friends when we're supposed to be working."

Eva brightens for a second at _friends_. Then gets the real message.

"Sure, Morag. It's okay. I understand."

And trails off, clumpingly, with Vernon. How can anyone who weighs so little as Eva walk so heavy? Morag wants to call Eva back. But doesn't.

Mrs. Cameron comes in, fluttery as a dusty-miller moth, twittery as a flock of sparrows. In a silk-rayon suit, navy, which looks familiar–aha, it is the old rose one she's worn to church for ages, dyed to look different. She carries white gloves and purse. With her, Stacey, so neat and short and pretty in a cherry-coloured dress, polka-dotted with white, her hair long and in a perfect pageboy at the back and done up in the front in those great big soft rolls like Betty Grable's, and how in the dickens does she get it to stay _up_ because even ninety million bobby-pins won't do the trick on Morag's hair, so heavy and thick. Stacey looks uncomfortable. Embarrassed by her mum, no doubt, and no wonder. Mrs. Cameron puts her hand to her heart every third step, and stops, really _breathing_ , so you know she's trying hard at it. She always makes out like she's at death's door.

_Tough as old boots, that woman, for all her performances_ (Christie says). _She'll outlive Niall, I'll bet a nickel to a doughnut hole. Hey, Morag, here's a riddle for you–who buries the undertaker? Give up? Whoever'll undertake it._

Then it happens. Mrs. Cameron is looking at the Red Dressmaker Suit. If Stacey gets it, Morag will will will well will do nothing, obviously. It's too long and big for Stacey. It's Morag's exact right size and length.

Twenty hours, it seems, in the trying-on cubicles, and then

_Heavens._

It is Mrs. Cameron who emerges wearing the suit. To see herself in the better light and the longer mirrors.

"What do _you_ think, Stacey?" she chirps.

_Mumble mumble._ Stacey isn't letting on. Why doesn't she just say _Mother it looks like hell on you it is twenty-five years too young for you_? Not a word. Stacey is studying the little kids' party dresses as though her life depended on it.

"What do _you_ think, Millie?"

"Mm–mm–" Millie says noncommittally, torn between truth and sale. "Did you try the chocolate-brown or the grey yet, Mrs. Cameron, dear? They might be more _you_. I'm not saying that's not a lovely little suit, mind–"

"It's cheerful," Mrs. Cameron carols, laughing her nervous laugh. "I'm just going to be a wee bit reckless, Millie. I'm going to take it."

"It'll need some altering," Millie says.

"Oh, that'll be simple enough. I can do it myself. No need to pay anything extra to have it done."

Fuck. Shit. Bloody bloody christly hell. And the hell with not swearing, too.

"Can I help you?" Morag says politely, to a woman pawing around through the garter-belts.

On the way out, Mrs. Cameron stops at Lingerie. Stacey grins weakly at Morag.

"Hi, Morag."

"Hi, Stacey."

When have they ever said much more than this to one another? But now, surprisingly, Stacey gives Morag a look, meaning _I know she looks like mutton dressed as lamb in that suit, but what can I do about it?_ Morag permits herself a small return smile. It is all she can do. People with real parents sometimes have a lousy time, too. She has known this all along, of course, but not really.

Mrs. Cameron smiles, friendly, at Morag.

"I just wanted to say to you, dear," she says, "I think you've done really quite well since you started working here. You've smartened yourself up a whole lot."

" _Mother!_ " Stacey's agonized cry.

Stacey rushes out of the store. Morag stares. Unblinking. Stare. Stare. A hex. Mrs. Cameron, bewildered, fusses with her gloves and then laughs a tiny girlish laugh.

"Well, I just wanted to–"

And leaves, at last. Morag stands very quietly. In her head:

blue satin nightie with deep band of lace at top

pale peach slip with appliquéd flowers

pastel pink panties

and every goddamn silk stocking in the place

thrown around like confetti

while people shrink and shriek

"Could you keep an eye on my counter for a sec, Janis?" she says to the girl in Kiddies'.

And goes to the john. She sits on the toilet, tearing up little shreds of toilet paper in her fingers. It strikes her then that she will be able to face Stacey next week in school, but Stacey probably won't be able to face her. This is a peculiar thought. After a while she can come out again, and after two thousand hours more, it becomes ten o'clock.

Parthenon Café. Morag sits at the U-shaped counter, not a booth, because she is by herself.

"Hi, Morag. What'll it be?"

"Hi, Julie. Just a coffee, please."

Julie Kazlik works here on Saturdays. Longer hours than Simlow's, and she says Miklos is a rough guy to work for–if you stand still an instant, he's yelling at you. But Julie likes the sociability of the job. She looks good in the waitress uniform. The light applegreen smock-dress goes really well with her blonde hair which she wears in a smooth French-roll when at work although long or in braids at school.

"Hey, Morag. Mike's dad says we can sit in the car, after. Wanna come? I'm off in fifteen minutes."

Mike Lobodiak is Julie's boyfriend. What is it like, to have a boyfriend? Well, who gives a damn anyway?

"Well, sure, Julie, but are you sure you want me to come along?"

"Oh sure. It's a public gathering. Some of the kids will be there. The private stuff comes later. Here's Mike. Hi, glamour-boy. Want a coffee? I can't leave until eleven _on the dot_ , or Miklos will scream his lungs out."

Mike sits down beside Morag, smiling. He is tall, kind of rawboned, which means the bones of his face, high cheekbones, can be seen under his skin, but he looks good that way. Morag catches a whiff of the mansmell about him, and for a second is paralyzed because she wants to touch him. His red-brown neck, his arms with the light brown hairs on them, his hand. His mouth. Julie's boyfriend.

Morag envies Julie's breeziness. Ever since she herself decided to drop her tough act, she has been not too certain what to aim for. To act really ladylike would be too old for her, and also kind of phoney. She has therefore gone back to not speaking much, like when she was quite a little kid and scared. She's scared again, now, but she doesn't know what she's scared of.

The Lobodiaks' car. An old Nash, pretty beat-up but comfortable. Steve Kowalski, black-haired and nice, but kind of on the short side, is also there, and he and Morag sit in the back seat. He doesn't try anything, though. She is half-relieved and half-disappointed.

"Ringside seat," Mike says. "I got my dad to park right in the middle of the main drag so we can see both ways."

Morag doesn't often get to sit in a parked car and look, like some of the kids do every single Saturday night, so she really feels good tonight. You can watch everybody going by.

Farmers mostly not in overalls but their good serge or tweed suits if they have them, coming out of the beer parlour and walking along the street yelling to people they know. Their women, sometimes with the men, sometimes in their own groups, as dolled up as possible, some in high heels and wearing makeup, laughing, excited, middle-aged and young, stout and skinny, hauling along their little kids by the arms. Kids all ages and shapes, eating ice cream cones, shouting, snivelling, shrieking, half-asleep, dancing with the circus feeling, some of them complaining, joking, humming to themselves. The town whores looking for a pickup oh the eyeshadow wow and the sticking-out busts in laced-up French brassieres under pink green mauve angora tight tight sweaters. Some girls hooked onto the arms of soldiers. Noise hooting yelling _DIN_ wow. Smells, dust from the streets, grittily blown by the wind–French fries from the Regal Café dusky musky smell of perfume Lily-of-the-Valley Sweet Pea cheap Bad Taste and also Tweed Evening-in-Paris expensive Good Taste and finally the smells all mashed into one smell inside your nostrils.

Oh.

Christie Logan, walking, sauntering, dressed as usual in his old overalls and rolled-up sleeves blue plaid shirt sweat-wet under the arms, not drunk but slouching happily along, gawking into the drugstore window at the boxes of chocolates and the hot-water bottles.

Simon Pearl and Archie McVitie, lawyers, coming out of their offices, locking carefully after late work on somebody's farm mortgage or somebody's will, dressed in of course business suits grey pin-striped, Mr. Pearl tall tall like Morag remembers his father old Henry but of course much smarter in the head and the looks than the old guy, and Mr. McVitie much shorter but gold-rimmed specs.

The two meet Christie on the sidewalk just in front of where the Lobodiaks' car is parked with its open windows so you can hear everything oh hell hell.

"Well, well, hello there, Christie," Archie McVitie.

Simon Pearl says nothing. A nod of the head, only. Brisk.

"H'lo there, Mr. McVitie," Christie says. "Fine evening."

_Christie._ But _Mr. McVitie_. Who decides?

"Hear you're keeping off Relief so far, Christie," Mr. McVitie says.

"Some are still on," Christie says sullenly, "despite this life-giving War."

Then oh please NO

Yep. Christie goes into his doormat act. Bone-grin, full of brown teeth.

"Och aye, an honest job is all I ask in this very world, Mr. McVitie, and I tell you, sir, that's God's truth. An honest wage for an honest day's work, as you might phrase it."

Mr. McVitie frowns, suspecting dirty work at the crossroads somewhere here but can't put his finger on it. Morag stifles a laugh. But wants to cry. Wants to go out and be there with Christie. Also, wants Christie not to be there, just not to be there at all, and if she had a loaded gun in her hands this very second, would take careful aim and shoot him in the throat. Failing a gun, a stone. Or maybe would shoot McVitie & Pearl, Barristers and Solicitors.

She does not move.

"That's more or less what I told the Town Council at the last meeting," Mr. McVitie says. "They want to get a truck, you know, for the um ah refuse collection. Younger man, and that. I said we'll only have one more on Relief if we do that. They claim the War's made a difference. Not enough yet, I said. If it lasts another couple of years, yes, we'll be out of the doldrums."

Christie is looking hard at the two men. Deciding. Finally he speaks.

"God will no doubt hear you," Christie says.

And strolls on.

Inside the car, silence.

"Hey!" Morag cries suddenly and loudly. "Get a load of that, eh? Ina Spettigue's got _three_ soldiers tonight. Lotsa guys on leave this weekend."

Laughter.

"Boy, I bet she'd be okay." Mike. Teasing Julie.

"Oh _Mike_. She's fat."

"A good armful, is all."

And then Mike's older brother arrives.

"Okay, you guys, everybody out. I need the car."

"Aw, _John_."

"Out, I said. I'm taking Marge home."

"What about me?" Mike complains. "How'm I supposed to take Julie home?"

"I'll drop you off."

"Oh, thanks a _million_. How'm I supposed to get home myself, then?"

John Lobodiak laughs.

"Walk, kid. It's only three miles. True love will find a way."

"Jeez, you make me want to puke," Mike says furiously.

"Puke away," John says cheerfully.

So then they all go home.

_Memorybank Movie: Leaves on Trees Can Be Seen By Some_ At the Manawaka Collegiate, all the girls wear the same clothes, at least on top. The boys can wear anything they like, but the girls have to wear navy pleated tunics and white blouses. Some of the girls don't go for this idea, but for Morag it is godsend. Also, she gets ten percent off the tunic and blouses at Simlow's.

Grade Nine is lots harder than Grade Eight, but then it is High School. Morag's new policy–work like hell, that is, like the dickens. Although not letting on to the other kids. If you answered questions in class too much, the others would be dead set against you. Morag does not care about most of the kids, but she does not want Julie to be against her. She is not Julie's _best_ friend, but she is a friend of Julie's all the same, and has been out twice to the Kazliks' place for supper, and it is a lovely place, the dairy farm, there, a big house with real lace curtains and piles of delicious food, and Mr. Kazlik roaring at them all but not meaning it, and Julie's younger brothers, the twins, laughing and making fun of everything, and Mrs. Kazlik very short and stoutish and very motherly, which Julie resents but Morag likes. Mrs. Kazlik made a blouse for Morag this spring, very full long sleeves and all embroidered at the top with tiny cross-stitch birds and flowers in all colours, and this is a really fantastic thing, and Julie isn't very interested in school so Morag has to watch it and never show off.

But if you work, really really work, and get educated, something will come of it, maybe. Like being able to get out of Manawaka and never come back. Morag listens at nights to the long wailing of the trains crossing the prairies, their voices like the spooky voices of giant owls. She always feels warm and good at the sound, because she knows something which nobody else in this world knows. Which is, one day she will be on one of those trains, going to the city and maybe even further than the city. Going to the whole world.

She sits in the back row in class as usual. Skinner Tonnerre sits opposite, also in the back row as usual. She has never spoken to him since that day at the Nuisance Grounds, but sometimes they give each other a half-grin, if nobody else is looking, like when old Craigson gets off track in History and starts spouting about Planting Gardens for Victory and All of Us Doing Our Bit for the War Effort, and sometimes gets so worked up that the tears come to his eyes and he looks really dumb and embarrassing. Skinner comes to school pretty regularly these days, although his sister who used to be in the same class has quit for good. Maybe Skinner is working on the sly, too, although you'd never know. He slouches in his seat, same as always, and his eyes are usually half-closed.

Miss Melrose is talking. Her voice is gruff and abrupt. Some of the kids don't like her because she doesn't stand for any nonsense. Morag worships her. Because of what she says about the compositions. Sometimes after class as well. No one ever before has talked to Morag about what was good and bad in writing, and shown her why. It is amazing. And when you look at the composition again, you can _see_ why. Some things work and other things don't work. Like the Pathetic Fallacy. You can't say _The clouds swooped teasingly over the town, promising rain_ , on account of clouds don't feel–they just _Are_. Wordsworth used the Pathetic Fallacy, of course, but Miss Melrose is not a great fan of Wordsworth's. She prefers Browning, who could get inside a person's very soul.

"After last week's free choice of composition topic," Miss Melrose says, "I am forced to the reluctant conclusion that many of you need a lot of exercise–not on the baseball field but in the field of the imagination. Can't you think of anything to write about except _My Holiday_ or _The Story of a Cent_? We had that same cent going through almost exactly the same series of adventures at least a dozen times. What did you do? Get together and work out one plot?"

Titters. Denials. Admissions.

"Well, it may be labour-saving," Miss Melrose says, "but it's awfully boring to read. I'm not going to spoon-feed you. Choose your own topics again this week, and for mercy's sake try not to be so dull."

Bell rings for recess.

"Morag, could you wait a moment, please?" Miss Melrose says.

Morag stands by the teacher's desk, her face (is it really or does it only feel that way?) a dark peony-red.

"Yours was one of the very few that showed any originality, Morag. Why don't you submit it to the school paper?"

Published. Fame. Notoriety.

"I don't know," Morag says. "I don't think it's good enough."

"It's good enough," Miss Melrose says, kind of grimly. "The literary standards of the school paper cannot exactly be termed highbrow. The story is a little sentimental in places, it seemed to me, but you haven't opted for an easy ending, at least."

"Well–"

Julie. Scorn, or what? The other kids.

"I can't," Morag says. "I just can't. Not right now."

"Well, then, you must take your own time," Miss Melrose says. "You will."

Morag goes out of the room but not outside. Down to the girls' john. Locks herself in a cubicle. What a terrible world it would be without lockable johns. The thought is funny, which is just as well, because she is crying her eyes out. For what? She is not sad. She has known for some time what she has to do, but never given the knowledge to any other person or thought that any person might suspect. Now it is as though a strong hand has been laid on her shoulders. Strong and friendly. But merciless.

Someone is walking over her grave.

When she goes back upstairs, she meets Miss Melrose in the hall.

"Oh, by the way, Morag, I meant to mention. Can you actually see the blackboard from where you're sitting?"

"Well–"

Glasses are awful. No boy would ever look at you. Never.

"Have you ever had your eyes tested?" Miss Melrose persists. "Well, no. I–I don't want to wear glasses."

"Why not, for pity's sake?" Miss Melrose, who is undoubtedly Past All That, sounds impatient and kind of cross.

"I look bad enough as it is," Morag says.

_When in doubt tell the truth, if you happen to think you know it._ (Christie.)

Miss Melrose gives her a really strange look. Then sighs.

"Someday you may find out differently, Morag. Or maybe you won't. Some never do, until it's irrelevant. Look at it this way, then. You need your eyes. In the last analysis, they're all you have."

At the doctor's office, after the drops are put in Morag's eyes, the entire world swims and flounders in front of her. She gets only as far as the second line of letters on the chart. After that, blur all the way.

The new glasses are hideous. Round. Metal-framed. Morag now looks like a tall skinny owl whose only redeeming feature is a thirty-six-inch bust. She begins to wear her hair long again. If she puts it up, she looks like a Sunday-school teacher. In front of the mirror she rages and curses. Life is over. Having never begun.

"They look kind of distinguished," Christie says.

"Shut up! Shut up! They look awful."

"Oh, beggin' your ladyship's pardon. Shall I kill myself now or later?"

"Christie, leave the girl alone," Prin says. "You should know better."

"Why should I know better, then? I'm only the Scavenger."

"That's exactly _all_ you are," Morag says coldly.

Has she said it? How could she? How could she? How to make the words unspoken?

"Shut up, girl, or I'll give you the back of my hand," Christie shouts.

"I'd like to see you try," Morag yells.

Christie looks at her a moment, then turns away.

"You know damn well I wouldn't, Morag. It's only my way of talking."

"Christie–"

But he had walked out of the house, out to the stable, and hasn't heard. She wants to go after him. But doesn't.

Morag goes upstairs to her room. She looks out the window at the maple tree. Forgets about Christie. LEAVES! She can see the leaves. Individually, one at a time, clearly. She has not known before this that you are supposed to be able to see the leaves on a tree, not just green fuzz.

Excited, she looks for a long time. Then thinks for a while about the story that will never see the light of day. "Wild Roses."

Hm. Sentimental in places? The young teacher not marrying the guy because she couldn't bear to live on a farm–would that really happen? Maybe all that about the wild roses is overdone? Could it be changed?

_Innerfilm_

Morag living in her own apartment in the city a small apartment but lovely deep-pile rug (blue) and a beige chesterfield suite the thick-upholstered kind a large radio in a walnut cabinet lots of bookshelves a fireplace that really works

She has just had a story called "Wild Roses" published in the _Free Press Prairie Farmer_ and is giving a party to celebrate with all her many friends

Shit. Who is she trying to kid? Worse than the story. Nothing will happen. Ever.

_Innerfilm_

Quiet funeral privately held in Cameron's Funeral Home a whole lot of flowers snapdragons larkspur peonies florist roses Eva has brought wild roses and they are wilted and in a quart sealer Eva crying has been a real true friend and now it is too late for Morag to tell her so Morag lying in a white satin-lined coffin eyes closed face awfully pale and she is wearing a yellow silk dancing-dress she has never danced in it and now never will coffin is closed and hearse goes to the graveyard Christie is absent overcome with sorrow Stacey Mavis Vanessa Julie Ross Jamie etcetera crying in sadness wishing they had recognized the qualities Morag had before too late

Some time later it is found that among the things in her dresser drawer is a novel one of the finest ever written in a long time anywhere it is published Christie buys two bottles of rye on the proceeds ( _he better not!_ )

Morag never knows novel has been published (unless watching from somewhere, maybe?)

How corny can you get?

_Memorybank Movie: Down in the Valley the Valley So Low_ Morag is moving slowly along the edge of the Wachakwa River. Bushes are everywhere–silvergreen wolf willow, chokecherry, pincherry, and a jungle of unnamed unknown bushes. If you don't watch your step, here, you will slip and end up in the brown water. The river rattles over the stones, but the water is clear. How come the water is both brown and clear? _Brown_ sounds murky. But this is as clear as brown glass, like in a beer bottle, or no, not that, not like that at all. What like? Like only itself, maybe, the Wachakwa River, in places only a creek. _Crick_. Some people say it like that. Different people say things differently. Eva says _crick_. Gus Winkler doesn't know how to pronounce things right. Does Christie? Sometimes, sometimes not.

Another few steps and then the RAVINE. Why come here, when it is really spooky? Eerie. _Eerie._ What a word. Ee-ee-rie. She comes here often. _Why_ doesn't matter, here. The river is now flowing very far down there, and on the banks the grass doesn't grow–just the bushes, bending over the ravine as though beckoned by the river below, as though wanting to go down there. (Pathetic Fallacy.) If you come here in spring, the marsh marigolds are out in masses down there on the water, and you can look at their juicy gold and green, little gold flowers connected to a whole web of green stalks and floating leaves.

Soon the swinging bridge. Yes, now. Who made it? How long ago? Ropes across the ravine, fraying ropes but still strong, and the pieces of split poplar to walk across, each joined to each by the old old ropes, and if you really _did_ walk across, the bridge would sway and shake and maybe you would plunge down into the shallow water and the stones. Morag has never crossed this bridge. She wants to make herself do it. She could do it if she had to. She puts a hand on the poplar pole at the edge of the bridge. She will definitely do it this time. If she can do this, she can do anything. A sign. An omen. She has to make it come true.

She puts one foot on the bridge. It lurches. She leaps back onto safe ground.

She is suddenly convinced that the bridge is trying to send her plunging down into the ravine. She holds onto a willow branch, and it supports her. Pathetic Fallacy? What if Miss Melrose is wrong, though, just in that one way? Not that clouds or that would have _human_ feelings, but that the trees and river and even this bridge might have their own spirits? Why shouldn't they? The wolf willow and the chokecherry bushes and the tall couchgrass growing away from the ravine, and the river itself–no threat. Just the bridge. Who built it? Why does it still stay here, rickety, swaying? How old is it? Does someone sometimes patch it up, keep it going? Whose is it? Not hers, that is for sure. Something doesn't want her to be here at all.

Then she hears someone. On the other side of the bridge. He comes out of the bushes and steps onto the bridge. Beat-up blue jeans, brass-buckled belt, rolled-up shirtsleeves, brown hawkish face, dark slitted eyes. His straight black hair cut shorter these days than it used to be. Skinner Tonnerre.

He begins rocking the bridge, which swings like a dangerous hammock. Morag moves further back from it.

"Hey, look out, Skinner, eh?"

"Hi, Morag–I didn't see you, there," he grins, lying. "Whatsa matter? You scared? The bridge is okay."

"I'm not scared," Morag says angrily. "It's just that–"

"It's just that you're scared shitless," Skinner says flatly.

He gives out with the Tarzan yell like Johnny Weissmuller in the movies.

"TAR-MAN-GAN-EE!"

And walks across the bridge, swinging it violently. Morag looks away, expecting to hear his dying body go _splat_ on the rocks below. But no.

"Want a cigarette?" he says, beside her.

"Sure."

Morag has not smoked before, so does not inhale. He laughs at her, and shows her how. At first the smoke pinches her lungs, but she soon gets the hang of it.

"How're you liking it at the Pearls' place, then?" she asks.

It seems now to be quite natural sitting on the riverbank and talking to him, even though they don't talk to each other in school. Skinner has been staying with Simon Pearl and his wife this year while going to High School. The Pearls have no kids and have offered to have Skinner board with them because the local welfare officer has said Skinner will never keep on going to school if he stays down in the valley with Lazarus and all, and that he is bright enough to keep on. Everybody in Manawaka knows about this, and many say it is foolhardy of the Pearls, who need not expect any gratitude from a halfbreed.

"It's okay, I guess," Skinner replies, but cautiously. "Mr. Pearl, he's doing his good deed for the year, I guess. I don't give a damn. The Welfare pays my board. Let 'em. My old man and my sisters, they think I'm nuts. The little kids, my brothers, they don't think _anything_ , but they say when am I coming back. I don't give a fuck what any of them think."

"You come down this way often?"

"Yeh. On Sundays. The Pearls go to church. I won't go. _Okay_ , Mr. Pearl says. No, he don't. He says, _Very well, then, Jules, go to the Catholic Church._ But I won't do that, neither."

"Who–who made the rope-bridge, there, Skinner?"

"How should I know?" he says. But knows.

"You ever go back and see your folks, then? Now that you're at the Pearls'?"

Skinner spits down into the ravine and half-closes his eyes.

"Naw. The hell with them. My old man's always drunk, anyways, and the girls, they're about the same. The little kids are just dumb brats. The old lady my Ma, she ain't coming back, and good riddance to bad rubbish. Me and my old man, there, we don't get on now. He thinks I'm a kid, but he doesn't know what he's talking about. We had a fight, there, and I knocked four of his teeth out. It really surprised him. Val reported me, the crumby little bitch. That's why the Welfare said I had to move out. I would've moved out, anyways. Hey, Morag, want to hear a _real poem_?"

"What?"

He chants it.

"When apples are ripe they should be plucked,

When a girl is sixteen she should be fucked."

Morag wants to touch him, to touch the black fine hairs on his arms, the bones of his shoulders, his skin smelling good, of fresh sweat. She edges away. Scared. What if it hurts? What if he _makes_ her do it, and she decides at the last minute she doesn't want to? What if what if what if.

"I'm not sixteen," she blurts, and then would give anything to reswallow the words, make them unsaid, because what a dumb dumb _dumb_ thing to say.

Skinner is laughing.

"Well, do tell! Guess you're safe for a while, then, eh?"

She gets to her feet. Hovers. Undecided. Skinner remains sprawled on the grass. Looking at her.

"C'mon, Morag. It feels good. I bet you never done it, eh? I can do it with Ina Spettigue any time I like. She never even charges me. She likes what I got. Wanna see?"

He reaches for his fly buttons.

Morag runs. He does not follow.

When she is back home, she goes to her room and locks the door. Hating herself for having been scared. Slips one hand between her legs and brings herself, with her eyes closed, imagining his hard flesh bones skin on hers, pressing into her, feeling her tits, putting his cock there there there.

Next day at school, and forever after, she will not look at him, she promises to herself, never, not ever.

That evening, Morag starts talking to Christie, who is paring his fingernails really disgustingly with his jackknife. She does not talk to him much these days, and so he is surprised now.

"Christie–remember those stories you used to tell me when I was a kid?"

"Sure. How could I forget? Why?"

"Tell me them now, some."

"Great jumping jesus, Morag, I thought you would've been past all of that."

"Yeh. Well."

Why does she want to hear? She doesn't know. But the times when she was a kid and Christie would tell those stories, everything used to seem all right then.

"Okay, Morag, if you want. Let's see."

CHRISTIE'S TALE OF PIPER GUNN AND THE REBELS

Now Piper Gunn lived there along the Red River on his farm for more years than you could shake a stick at. And him and his woman had a fine family, too, five sons and five daughters, the boys all strapping and husky, and the girls all tall and as beautiful as tiger lilies. And Piper Gunn and his wife grew old, in time, and yet both together, for as is well-known, when the Angel of Death spread his wings out for them, they kicked the bucket the selfsame day, for neither could live without the other, so the story goes.

(You're romantic, Christie.)

Hush, girl, I'm about as romantic as a pig in a trough and that's the bloody christly truth of the matter, but can I help it if that's how Death finally took up old Piper and his lady?

Now, then, when Piper was a real old man, and not working the land that much any more but leaving it all to his five sons, it happened that the halfbreeds around the settlement got very worked up. They decided they was going to take over the government of the place. So they got themselves a rebel chief. Short little man he was, with burning eyes. His name was Reel.

(Louis Riel, Christie. We took it in school. He was hanged.)

That's the very man. Well, but he wasn't hanged for a hell of a long time after the time I'm telling you. So this Reel or Riel, however you want to call him, him and his men took over the Fort there, and set themselves up as the government.

Now, all the Sutherlanders, over the long years, had kind of forgotten how to fight, eh? Peaceful farmers, they were, and their sons reared to that way. Not a mother's son of them remembered the old days in the old country, except for Piper Gunn and a few oldtimers. They were not what you'd call a spineless lot, oh no. But they'd grown up here, farming. So when Reel took over, with his gang of halfbreeds, they didn't know what to do. There was a lot of chewing the fat, but nobody moved. Reel and his men started doing a little shooting, do you see, and killed one or two Englishmen. But the Sutherlanders didn't trust the goddamn English, them bloody Sassenachs from Down East, no more than what they trusted the halfbreeds. They kept themselves to themselves. So they sat on their butts and did nothing.

(The government Down East sent out the Army from Ontario and like that, and Riel fled, Christie. He came back, to Saskatchewan, in 1885.)

Well, some say that. Others say different. Of course I _know_ the Army and that came out, like, but the truth of the matter is that them Sutherlanders had _taken back the Fort_ before even a smell of an army got there.

(Oh Christie! They didn't. We took it in History.)

I'm telling you. What happened was this. Piper Gunn says to his five sons, he says, _What in the fiery freezing hell do all of you think you're doing, not even making a stab at getting back the bloody Fort?_ So his five sons, they said, _We're ready to_ _try if you can think up a way of raising all of them Macphersons and Macdonalds and Camerons and MacGregors and all them._ Piper Gunn rises to his feet, and him taller than his five sons even though pressing eighty, and not stooped one inch, no sir, straight as an iron crowbar.

_I've played the pipes in sorrow_ , says he, _and I've played them in joy and I've played them in bad times and in good, and I've played them to put the heart into the souls of men, and now I'll play them for the last bloody time._

_Will we come with you, then?_ asks his five sons. _I'll go alone_ , says Piper Gunn, for that was his way. So walk he did, along every farm on the river front, there, and he played the entire time. He began with the pibrochs, which was for mourning. To tell the people they'd fallen low and wasn't the men their ancestors had been. Then he went on to the battle music. And the one he played over and over was "The Gunns' Salute." A reproach, it was.

The Sutherlanders listened, and they knew what he was saying. They gathered together and Piper's five sons with them, and they took the Fort at the rising of the day the very next morning. The army from Down East got the credit, of course, but the Sutherlanders were a proud lot and didn't give a christly damn. They let it be.

And Piper Gunn went home and hung up his bagpipes and they have been silent from that day to this, for he died soon after, and no one ever dared play them, for no one could ever play the pipes like Piper Gunn himself could play them.

(I like him, though. Riel, I mean.)

That so? Well, he had his points, no doubt.

(The book in History said he was nuts, but he didn't seem so nuts to me. The Métis _were_ losing the land–it was taken from them. All he wanted was for them to have their rights. The government hanged him for that.)

Métis? Huh?

(Halfbreeds.)

Well, well, hm. Maybe the story didn't go quite like I said. Let's see.

(No. That's cheating, Christie. Thanks for telling the story, I liked it fine. Really.)

You're welcome. I'll send you the bill at the end of the month.

_Memorybank Movie: Down in the Valley, Act II_

Early spring, and the air still has a bite in it despite the sun. The snow, so clean before, is melting dirtily, honeycombed with black patches, leaving the winter's hidden accumulation of dogshit and tossed-away empty cigarette packets soggily soiling the streets. Slush everywhere. Maples and elms have not yet begun to bud, but out beyond town, in the valley, the pussywillows are making grey-furred beginnings.

It is also Grade Eleven, and there are a few boys in the class, but in the Grade Twelve class there are none. All in either the Army or the Airforce. One or two have recklessly joined the Navy, but the sea does not have much appeal for the prairie boys, being too distant an element.

Morag is walking home, carrying an armload of books.

"Hi, Morag."

He has, it is clear, been waiting at the corner of Hill Street. Slouched against a telephone pole. Looking heavier than before, in his thick rough-textured khaki uniform with the badge of the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders on the sleeve. Rank–Private.

"Skinner! How come you're here?"

"Everybody is. Overseas leave. Wanna come for some coffee?"

She has scarcely spoken to him for two years, since that day in the valley. He quit school a year ago and moved back to the Tonnerre shack. Then he joined the Army and left town. Morag is surprised at how glad she is to see him.

"Sure. But can I drop off these books first?"

"Okay by me."

They go into the Logan house. Prin, rocking with sleep-glazed eyes, all at once looks up with what for her, these days, is enormous alertness. Which is to say, she opens her eyes, half rises, thinks better of it, and lowers her heavy obesity, her soft barrel bulk, wraparound clad, back into the safeness of the rocking chair. She hardly ever moves these days, except from rocker to table to bed. Morag gets the meals. Prin hardly ever talks any more, either. But will not see a doctor. Even Christie, who worries seldom, worries now.

"Prin–this is Skinner, I mean Jules Tonnerre. I went to school with him. He's in the Army. You know?"

Morag feels embarrassed, adding this bit about the Army. But she is not certain Prin will notice or recognize the uniform.

"Pleased to make yer acquaintance, Mister," Prin says, in an oddly girlish voice, formally, as though with reference to some long-forgotten formula learned in a distant past.

"Hi." Skinner looks away.

Morag goes upstairs to change out of her school tunic, which would look dumb and kid-like beside an Army uniform. When she comes down, Christie has come in and is talking to Skinner. Christie, of late years, has taken to chewing tobacco. The spittoon of his choice, culled from his own private happy hunting grounds, is a large china chamber pot with mauve violets on it. He hawks massively into it now. Morag glowers, then thinks that whatever Christie Logan is like, he's probably not a patch on Lazarus Tonnerre.

"Whatcha doing with yourself these days, Skinner?" Christie says.

"Fighting for King and Country. Can't you see, Christie?"

"Yep. Well, then, boy, stay alive if you can. That's all that matters, though why it should the Lord only knows."

Skinner's eyes narrow.

"I joined for the pay, Christie. I don't aim to get hurt if I can help it."

"That's the spirit, boy. It's never the generals who die, you know. Don't let the buggers on either side get you."

As they walk up along Main Street, towards the Parthenon Café, Skinner says something that astounds Morag.

"He's quite a guy, that Christie."

"I'm glad _you_ think so."

"Don't you?"

"He's never tried to do anything," Morag says. "He thinks it's just great now because the Town Council have bought him a beat-up old truck for work. He thinks he's pulled a fast one on them because no one ever suspected he could drive. He learned on a Model-T years ago and he drives that truck as though it were a horse. Everybody laughs at him."

Skinner is laughing too.

"Well, let them. You don't like him being the Scavenger, do you? What if nobody would do it, eh? He's worth a damn sight more than a lawyer–all those guys do is screw things up."

At the Parthenon they sit in a booth and drink coffee. Now they are both suspicious of each other again. Skinner is looking hard at her, studying her face as though trying to read what lies behind her eyes, inside her skull. Is she trying to do the same with him? If so, neither of them seems to be getting very far. For a while they don't speak. Is there too little to say or too much?

"Why'd you leave the Pearls' place and go back to the valley?" Morag asks finally.

He reaches out and puts one of his long thin hands on hers. Only for a second. Then he takes it away.

"Really want to know? I guess Simon Pearl didn't spread it around, then, eh?"

"No."

"Well, it was this way. I got some fancy notion I'd like to be a lawyer, see, on account of if you've always been screwed by people it seemed a good idea to do some of the damage yourself for a change. Right? So I asked old Simon how a guy would get to be a lawyer. He didn't actually laugh out loud, but he kinda covered his mouth with his hand to hide the smile. Then he tells me it's a fine thing to get an education, but a person like me might do well to set their sights a bit lower, and he will ask Macpherson at the BA Garage to take me on as an apprentice mechanic after Grade Eleven. So I walked out. I thought of breaking his jaw, but then I thought it'd only land me in the clink and it wasn't worth it. So I went back to the valley. My old man never batted an eye. Just said, _You're back, eh? Well, give us a hand with this barrel–it's about ready to be put in the jugs._ We had a hell of a party, just him and me. Sat around with me singing and him playing out of tune on the mouth organ till near morning. He's not such a bad guy. He didn't give a fuck when I joined the Army, but he'd never turn me out. He'd never turn any of us out. He don't care if we leave, but we can stay if we want to."

"I'm sorry," Morag says. "I mean about Simon–"

"There's no call to be. I don't give a damn. I never have and I never will."

"Where's your sister these days?"

"You mean Piquette? She took off as soon as her leg was okay. She had TB of the bone as a kid–maybe you remember. She's married to a guy in Winnipeg. Al Cummings. I think she's got herself a first-rate no-good, but that's her business. He'll leave her one day. I hope to christ she leaves him first."

"How do you know? You can't tell."

"I can tell. He'll never look you in the eye. Also, he's always telling Piquette what a lousy housekeeper she is. It's quite true, she _is_. But he's a dirty bugger himself. It don't help much."

The Parthenon begins to fill up with the saddle-shoe gang, girls in long loose sloppy-joe sweaters and plaid skirts, boys in grey flannels and smart tweed jackets. All the kids. The jukebox.

"C'mon," Skinner says brusquely. "Let's go."

No one says anything as they walk out. Miklos thoughtfully holds the door open, relieved to see them go. To Miklos, the word Tonnerre spells only one thing, Trouble. There will, of course, be plenty of comments after they've left. They both know this, and walk stiffly, not speaking.

"Jesus, I hate this town," Skinner says finally.

"Me too."

"Hey, Morag, come down to my place and meet my old man?"

She glances at him. They both know. She feels nauseated with indecision. Then doesn't care.

"Sure," she says. "Why not?"

The valley road is like a miniature river, the deep ruts in it running with brown muddy water. The snow still lies in the bushes on either side of the road. Morag has her overshoes on, and Skinner's Army boots are impervious to the wet. They splash along, and he takes her arm so she won't slip. Suddenly she feels good, and laughs.

"What's the joke?" he says.

"Nothing. I just feel okay again, that's all."

"Hey, that's good."

He stops and breaks off a couple of twigs of pussywillows. Hands them to her.

"Orchids," he says.

"My, that is the first time anybody ever gave me orchids. Thanks."

"Well, there's a first time for everything," Skinner says.

He hasn't meant to say that, probably. Then, of course, they both fall silent again.

The Tonnerre shack is really a collection of shacks. The original one has now decayed and is used as a chicken house. The main shack has been put together with old planks, tarpaper, the lids of wooden crates, some shingles and flattened pieces of tin. Around it lie old tires, a roll of chickenwire, the chassis of a rusted car, and an assortment of discarded farm machinery. The backhouse stands at a slight distance. There is also a small shack, built in the same manner as the main one, but newer. Skinner steers her towards this one.

"Mine," he says. "I built it when I came back down here."

Inside it is warm because there is still a fire going in the stove which has been made out of an old oil-drum, bricked around at the bottom. Wooden boxes are the chairs. There is a bucket of water and a dipper, an enamel basin and a slop bucket. A coal-oil lamp hangs from a nail. There is a wooden chest, with a padlock. And Skinner's books from school. On the walls, pin-ups of movie stars, women with big breasts and carmine mouths. Also the pelt of a skunk, black and white.

"Make yourself at home," Skinner says.

By this time they really do both know.

"You remember that time at the bridge, Morag?"

"Yes."

"I scared you, I guess. I was sorry, but I couldn't say, after."

"It's okay."

"And all that I told you, about Ina Spettigue, was a pack of lies," Skinner says. "She wouldn't have given me the time of day, then. She would now, but the hell with her. Anyway, I just wanted to clear that up. Could you do without those glasses, there?"

Then they kiss for a long time, his tongue delicately exploring the inside of her mouth. His hands stroking her breasts. She has wanted this, it seems, now, for a long time. He is lying on top of her, and through all their clumsy layers of clothing she can feel his cock, long and hard.

"C'mon," he says. "We can't leave all these clothes on, eh?"

She hesitates, although only momentarily.

"Skinner–what if somebody, you know, barges in?"

"They won't," he says grimly. "They know better."

She believes him. She is astonished to find she is not scared. What if it hurts? Well, so what? And anyway it won't. She takes her clothes off quickly, expertly, as though she has been accustomed for years to doing so in front of a man. She feels no shyness at all. Only the need to feel him all over her, to feel all of his skin. Her own body, her breasts and long legs and flat stomach, all these seem suddenly in her own eyes beautiful to her, and she wants him to see her.

Then she looks up at him, above her on the bed. She never knew before that a man would look so beautiful, his shoulder bones showing under the skin, his narrow hips, the big ribcage, the warm smooth brown skin, the black hair between his legs, the long tense hard muscles along his legs and his arms, his long hardsoft cock nuzzling her. She thrusts up at him, locks her legs around his. As though she has always known what to do.

"Easy, easy," he says. "Oh God–not so quick, Morag. I can't–"

And goes off on her belly before he can get inside her.

"Oh hell," he says, after a moment, still not breathing steady. "I'm sorry."

But she clings to him. Still moving towards him, holding his shoulders desperately in her arms.

"Please. Don't go away."

Then he realizes, and helps her.

"Hey, that's fine. You're gonna come all over me."

And she does. The pulsing between her legs spreads and suffuses all of her. The throbbing goes on and on, and she does not realize her voice has spoken until it stops, and then she does not know if she has spoken words or only cried out somewhere in someplace beyond language.

Silence. He is very lightly stroking her shoulders, her face, her closed eyelids. She opens her eyes. They smile, then, at each other. Like strangers who have now met. Like conspirators.

"That wasn't so bad for you, after all," he says.

"It was–oh Skinner–"

"Hey, could you call me by my real name, eh?"

As though now it were necessary to do this. By right. Does she understand what he means? Is this what he means? What is he really thinking, in there? But you have to take it on faith, she now sees. You can't ever be sure. She nods.

"Okay. I will. Jules."

He laughs.

"You say it kind of funny. _Jewels_."

"How, then?"

"Jules."

"Jewels."

"You better learn French, kid."

"Do you know it?"

"No. Not that much, any more. Not that much, ever. Just a bit, mostly swear words. I guess we used to know a few things when we were kids, but it's mostly gone now. My old man grew up speaking quite a bit of French-Cree, but he's lost most of it now. You got nice legs, even if you do say my name wrong."

This is true. Morag has got nice legs, and has always wondered if anyone else would ever think so.

The fire has died, and the shack is cold. They dress. He does up her dress for her, and she helps him on with his Army jacket. They laugh a lot, now, over nothing, over everything. Nothing bad will ever happen again, not ever again. Nothing can ever touch them. This is their house. They are safe, here.

Then she remembers.

"When're you going, Jules? How long a leave you got?"

He lies back on the bed, alone, smoking.

"I gotta go back to camp tonight."

" _Tonight?_ "

"Yeh. We're coming back to town tomorrow. Dress parade. Wait'll you see me in a kilt, kid. A Tonnerre in a kilt is some sight, I can tell you. In the First War they used to call the Scots regiments the Ladies from Hell. I feel like a twerp in that getup, to tell you the truth. Thank christ we don't have to put it on that often."

"Why're they doing that? Tomorrow?"

"Because the Cameron Highlanders got so many Manawaka boys, is why."

"I see."

"C'mon, let's go over to my old man's. He'll have some home-brew or at least some tea."

The main shack has a bigger stove but with shakier looking stovepipes. Val, Jules' younger sister, isn't home. The two younger boys, Paul and Jacques, are hopping around like sparrows, but when they see Morag they grow quiet and watchful, and take up silent positions in corners. There are some bunk beds, a mattress on the floor, cooking pots and pans on wooden boxes, a table containing half a loaf of bread and a quart pail of peanut butter. On one wall there is a calendar from two years back, with a colour picture of spruce trees at Galloping Mountain, black against a setting sun, and on another wall Jesus with a Bleeding Heart, his chest open and displaying a valentine-shaped heart pierced with a spiky thorn and dripping blood in neat little drops.

Lazarus is sitting in the room's one easy chair which looks like it has been garnered from the Nuisance Grounds, springs protruding at the bottom of the seat. Morag has not seen Lazarus for a long time, and then only on Main Street on a Saturday night. Once he must have been a very large man, taller than Jules, and broader, but now he looks a bit shrunken, his belly fat and loose, but his ribs bending in upon themselves. He has the vestige of a handsome face, bonily handsome in the way Jules' face is now. The same lanky black hair as Jules.

Now everything is changed. Morag feels uncertain again. Scared. What is she doing here? Do they feel she is intruding? She looks at Jules and sees that things are now changed for him, too.

"Who the hell are you?" Lazarus says.

Morag is unable to say anything. Jules scowls at his father.

"She's Morag Gunn," he says. "You know. From over at Christie Logan's place."

"Oh. Yeh. I know now."

Lazarus begins coughing and keeps on until it seems he will retch. There is a glass full of brown sour-smelling liquid, with bits of white floating scum on it, on the floor beside her chair. He reaches for it. Stops coughing at last. Then he rises and stretches. Pulls in his belly. Looks Morag up and down. The same look on his face as on Skinner's, before. Morag is shocked. Lazarus–an old man. How revolting. Yet she feels his man-energy burning out towards her, all the same, so strongly that for a second it almost draws her in.

Jules knows, too, and puts his arm around her shoulders. Definitely. And, towards Lazarus, menacingly. Lazarus laughs, showing several upper front teeth missing. Refills his glass from a bottle, and holds up the bottle.

"My woman," he grunts. "This here is my woman, now."

"I'll be going now, Dad," Jules growls.

For an instant Lazarus looks–how? Stricken.

"You gotta go now, Skinner?"

"Yeh. There's an Army truck waiting at the bus station to pick us all up."

Lazarus makes as though to move towards his son. Then changes his mind.

"Well, you look out, eh?" he says. "You just look out, there, eh?"

"Yeh. Don't worry. I will."

Jules says goodbye to his young brothers, and then he and Morag leave. He does not look back.

Walking up the hill and through the back streets of the town, now nearly dark, they are both silent. Then Jules begins talking.

"How old you think my old man is, Morag?"

"I dunno. How old?"

"Thirty-nine. He looks twice that, eh? I was born when he was the same age I am now. Nineteen. One thing is for sure. I'm never gonna get like him. But he's not always like today. He don't like me bringing girls home. He gets wild for a woman sometimes. Then he gets drunk and gets into a brawl. I guess he was pretty tough on my mother. She was Métis, too, from up Galloping Mountain way. She thought Manawaka was gonna be the big city, and I guess she thought she was getting a king, there, when she got him. Some king. King Lazarus. Laugh now. No wonder she took off. But Jesus, he can't help himself sometimes. I've seen him get so mad, not at anybody, just at everything, that he'll hit his fist against the wall, just hit it, there, until the knuckles bleed."

"Why? Why?"

"I dunno. Things get him down, I guess. He takes off sometimes and goes up to Galloping Mountain or to the city, and he always comes back. God knows why. This town never done anything for him or any of us. He says it's the same everywhere, christawful jobs and treated like shit. He only got to Grade Three or like that. The best job he's ever held was sectionhand on the CPR, but that quit in the Depression. Sometimes he'd feed us by snaring or shooting jackrabbits. He taught us all how to shoot for meat, even if it was only rabbit."

"He's not done too badly, when you think of it. You never starved."

"Sometimes damn near. But yeh. He hasn't done so terrible. But try to tell him that. Jesus, he was some fighter in his day, though. He's had his nose broken four times. I've seen him take a hundred-and-eighty-pound man and lift him and throw him about twenty feet. I guess the time I hit him he could've killed me, even then, if he'd put his mind to it. Now I think back on it, he didn't do a damn thing. Maybe he was surprised. Or maybe not. When I joined the Army and had a bit of money, I told him I'd pay for him to get the dentist to put in some teeth for him, there, in place of them I knocked out that time. But he said no, he was getting along okay without them."

"Did he really used to tell you those stories when you were a kid, Jules?"

"Yeh. Sometimes even now, when he's drunk, but he don't remember them so hot any more."

"Tell me them," Morag says.

"You wanna hear? Why?"

"I don't know. I guess I like stories, is all."

"You're a funny girl, Morag."

But he puts an arm around her, and they walk the chill mudcarpeted streets beside the empty trees and the quiet half-dark houses, and he tells her. Stories for children. As they walk together with their arms around one another, like children away from home with the night coming on.

Then they are at Logans' on Hill Street. They kiss, and want one another but cannot because there is no time left and no place to go.

"So long," Jules says. "I'll be seeing you."

And goes.

The next day, Morag stands at the corner where Hill Street touches Main. The Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders march through the main street of Manawaka. It is very exciting. People wave and shout. The soldiers grin a little but do not look around. Eyes front. They are in dress uniform, khaki jackets and tartan kilts, the Cameron plaid. The pipers walk ahead, leading. They are playing "The March of the Cameron Men." It has a splendour in it. You could follow that music to the ends of the world.

It is in fact to the end of their world that most of these men are following the music.

The news of Dieppe changes the town of Manawaka. It will never be the same again. Not until this moment has the War been a reality here. Now it is a reality. There are many dead who will not be buried in the Manawaka cemetery up on the hill where the tall spruces stand like dark angels. There are a great many families who now have fewer sons, or none.

Morag reads the casualty lists. Column after column, covering page after page, it seems, in the _Winnipeg Free Press_. Among the men from Manawaka, she looks for those she knows.

Chorniuk, S. (That would be Stan Chorniuk, from the BA Garage.)

Duncan, G. (That would be Mavis' cousin George.)

Gunn, F.L. (From Freehold, but no relation to Morag.)

Halpern, C. (Jamie's brother.)

Kamchuk, N. (Nick, who quit school after Grade Ten.)

Kowalski, J. (Steve's brother.)

Lobodiak, J. (Mike's brother John, the handsome one.)

Macalister, P. (The banker's son.)

Macdonald, G. (Gerald, who used to work in the butcher's.)

MacLachlan, D. (Lachlan's son Dave, who would've taken over the _Manawaka Banner_.)

MacIntosh, C.M. (Chris, son of the High School janitor.)

McVitie, J.L. (The lawyer's son, Ross' brother.)

And on. And on.

She has looked first to see, and there is no Tonnerre listed. Did he get away? It is somehow difficult to believe that anyone could have got away.

The newspapers for days are full of stories of bravery, courage, camaraderie, initiative, heroism, gallantry, and determination in the face of heavy enemy fire. Are any of the stories true? Probably it does not matter. They may console some.

What is a true story? Is there any such thing?

The only truth at the moment seems to be in the long long lists of the dead. The only certainty is that they are dead. Forever and ever and ever.

Morag lies awake, thinking of the last time she saw Jules. Wondering if she ever will see him again. If he will survive.

SKINNER'S TALE OF LAZARUS' TALE OF RIDER TONNERRE

Well, my old man, he told me this about Rider Tonnerre, away back there, so long ago no one knows when, and Lazarus Tonnerre sure isn't the man to tell the same story twice, or maybe he just couldn't remember, because each time he told it, it would be kind of different.

Anyway, there is this guy, away back then, and they call him _Chevalier_ –Rider–because he handles a horse so good and because his own horse is a white stallion name of _Roi du Lac_ , King of the Lake, and how Rider got that horse is–he got it in a kind of spooky way, because once in a dream he saw it and it spoke to him and told him to spend one whole night beside this certain lake, see, which everybody believed was haunted or like that, and Rider _did_ that, even though anybody else would've been scared to, see, and just about dawn, this huge white stallion came up out of the lake and stayed with Rider ever after. Of course it could've swum from the other side, or something, but the way Lazarus told it, that horse had special powers. I dunno if it ever talked except that once in a dream, though. And that Rider, there, he could also ride a bull moose, and sometimes he used to do that, just for a joke, and to scare the hell out of guys who bragged how strong and great _they_ were.

Another thing is that Rider was also called Prince of the Braves. He wasn't all Indian, though. He was Métis, only back there, then, our people called themselves _Bois-Brûlés_. Burnt wood. I dunno know why. Maybe the fires they made to smoke the buffalo meat. Maybe their own skins, the way they looked.

Okay, so this Rider, eh, he is so goddamn good on a horse he can outride any man on the prairies. They have races, see, and he always wins, him and King of the Lake. And Rider's rifle, now, it's called _La Petite_ , and he's so good that he can be going full gallop on that stallion, and he never misses a buffalo at one thousand yards or like that. He's about seven-feet-tall, and he wears a big black beard.

Now, one time there was a bunch of Englishmen–goddamn _Anglais_ , as they used to be called–and they came in to take away the Métis land and to stop the people from hunting buffalo. And these guys had a bunch of Arkanys with them.

( _Arkanys?_ )

That is how my dad called the Scotchmen. Men from Orkney, I guess. So a bunch of the Métis, there, they said _Shit on this idea: they're not coming here to take over our land and stop us from hunting._ But they sat on their asses all the same and didn't move. So that Rider Tonnerre, he says _We're gonna hunt these Anglais and Arkanys like we hunt the buffalo, so c'mon there,_ _boys._ It was some place around Red River, there, and they see all these Englishmen and their hired guns the Arkanys.

(Hired guns? I bet they weren't!)

Sure, they were. Anyway it's just a story. So Rider Tonnerre and the others, they make an ambush, see, and the other guys fall for it and ride straight in. So Rider, he starts picking them off with his rifle, _La Petite_ , and the other Métis do the same. The English and the Arkanys try to shoot back, but they're not doing so hot, and in the end every single one of them got killed. And one of Rider's men made up a song about it, only my old man, he don't remember it. But he said his father, Old Jules, used to sing it sometimes.

(Hey–I know. That would be "Falcon's Song," and the battle would be Seven Oaks, where they killed the Governor.)

That so? I never connected it with that, because my dad's version was a whole lot different.

SKINNER'S TALE OF RIDER TONNERRE AND THE PROPHET

Another time, a long time later, I guess, because Rider Tonnerre was an old old man, anyway, another time, there, the government men from Down East, they're really getting mean and they plan on getting the Métis land, all of it. They are one hell of a mean outfit, and at least I'm damn sure that much of the story is really true. They send in men to take all the measurement of the land, so's they'll know how much they got when they get it. So Rider Tonnerre, he says to himself _The hell with this_. He is an old man, so he knows he can't be leader, see? But he knows somebody who can. Somebody who is just waiting the chance. Now this guy is–I guess you'd call him Prophet. He is like a prophet, see? And he has the power.

(The power?)

He can stop bullets–well, I guess he couldn't, but lots of people, there, they believed he could. And he has the sight, too. That means he can see through walls and he can see inside a man's head and see what people are thinking in there. He's Métis, but very educated. How the hell he ever got to get that way, I wouldn't know.

(You're talking about Riel.)

Sure. But the books, they lie about him. I don't say Lazarus told the story the way it happened, but neither did the books and they're one hell of a sight worse because they made out that the guy was nuts.

(I know.)

Well, the Prophet, then, he's a very tall guy, taller even than Rider Tonnerre.

(I thought he was supposed to be a very short guy.)

No. Very tall. And he carries a big cross with him all the time–this protects him, like. He's a very religious guy, see? Well, so here is our guys, not knowing what the hell to do, and the Prophet is trying to tell them, but all they're actually doing at the moment is hunting, drinking and screwing. So then, Rider Tonnerre, there, he goes to all the families of our people and he tells them a gutted jackfish would have more guts than what they've got, and this really shamed them. They really only needed somebody to tell them to get up off their asses and oil their rifles for a different kind of hunt. So they went along with the Prophet, and they took the Fort, there.

(They lost it again, though.)

Yeh, the government from Down East sent in about ten thousand soldiers, with cannon and like that. But that wasn't the end of it, by God.

SKINNER'S TALE OF OLD JULES AND THE WAR OUT WEST

It would be some time later, out west, near Qu'Appelle or around there in Saskatchewan, and my grandad old Jules who was just a young guy then, he was out there. He was a good hand with a rifle, and he went out to fight with the Prophet's men, because the Métis were putting on a war, there, for their land, see? Having lost it all around here, around Red River. So they got the Indians to join them, the Crees and Stonies and like that.

(Big Bear. Poundmaker.)

Yeh, those chiefs. And more. Lots more. I don't know their names. They weren't as good with a rifle as our people, but they were pretty damn good and they had a lot of men. Anyway, the way my grandad told it–at least, the way Lazarus says he told it–is that when Jules got there, things were going good. The Prophet and his guys and the Indians and their guys, they'd just beat the shit out of the Mounties at someplace, and everybody was feeling pretty fine. But what happens then? What happens is that the government from Down East sends in this fucking huge army, see? Not just with rifles, hell no. They've got the works. Cannon, even machine guns probably, if they were invented in those days. So the Métis are trying the old ambush, like a buffalo hunt. Well, Jules is dug in really fine, there, covered up in a pit with poplar branches and that. And he's sniping and picking off soldiers, and he gets him maybe a dozen or so. The guy they call Dumont, the lieutenant, like, he wants to attack in real full strength, but the Prophet, he's walking around with his big cross, waiting for the sign. From God, I guess. And Dumont's losing his mind because he wants to attack so bad he can taste it, but the Prophet keeps stalling. And Jules and them, they're still picking off as many soldiers as they can. Well, the Prophet waits for the sign a bit too long, because by that time the big guns begin. Jules stays right there in his cover, eh? All that yelling and firing and the big guns–he figures he's a dead duck if he breaks his cover. Guys dropping all around. Dead horses. Jesus, I always thought too bad about the horses, eh? They never done a thing to deserve it. But got shot just the same. Anyway, Jules picks off fifteen or so of the Eastern men before he gets a bullet in the thigh. Then he passes out.

When he wakes up, he's all covered in stiff blood, and he can hardly move, and he's still buried in poplar branches, and the whole goddamn thing's all over and everybody else is gone. He doesn't move for one whole day. He can't, on account of his bullet wound. So then he crawls out and makes it to a farm somewhere, our people, and lives there for a while. Then he gets the hell out, and winds up here, finally, having brought a Saskatchewan Métis girl back with him. Oh yeh–and the name of that place, the last battle, it was Batoche.

(They hanged Riel, the government did.)

Yeh. They hanged him. Dumont got away, though, just like my grandad.

SKINNER'S TALE OF DIEPPE

?

_Memorybank Movie: The Flamingo_

The RCAF has a training base at South Wachakwa, and this is a boon for many of the Manawaka girls. Not especially, however, for Morag. Sometimes she goes to the Saturday night dances at The Flamingo, with Julie or with Eva, who has become pretty in her pale and gutless way and who dances every dance because it isn't only gentlemen who prefer blondes, it is every goddamn smart-aleck in the whole Airforce. Morag is too tall for many of them, not actually taller than they are, but five-eight and they prefer tiny frail creatures like Eva, who they can look down on and who will say _Gee! Really?_ to everything they say. Morag has tried but is not the type. Sooner or later she either finds herself talking, which does nothing for her popularity, or else sinks into a semi-hostile silence, hating their assumed slickerdom, the way they are contemptuous of the girls they are trying to make. Not as though it might be something both might want to do, but only as though the girl were a mare to be mounted by a studhorse.

The hell with them. They never talk to you as though you are actually _there_ , but only put a knee between your legs and get a hard-on against you while pretending to dance.

She hankers after them, their tallness, the sexy sweat smell of them. She wants them. She wants them to want her.

When asked to dance, Morag does not know how to flirt. How do girls learn? Does she really want to join the circus, be a performing filly going through her prancing paces? Pride says _Hell, no_. Longing, on the other hand, says _Try anything_. She tries. What are the words? _I'll bet you say that to all the girls._ Not much of an opener if they haven't actually said anything. _Gee, you're some dancer._

The words won't come up into her mouth. How corny could you get, to talk words like that? The boy with whom she is dancing clamps a damp hand on her breasts and shuffles along, veering her backwards to "Tommy Dorsey Boogie."

"Not very talkative, are you?" he says.

Morag swallows her nonexistent saliva. What is it makes your mouth so dry here?

"Where–where are you going, once you're finished training, I mean?"

The airman shifts his gum to the other side of his mouth, just outside her radio-receiving-station ear.

"How should I know?" he says.

"What do you think of Manawaka?" Desperation. What would Betty Grable say, under similar circumstances? With a bust like hers, what would she need to say? Well, Morag's isn't so bad, either. But B. Grable isn't about nine feet tall.

"This town? It's a dump," the boy is saying. "I come from Calgary. Now _there's_ some place."

"Yeh. I guess so. I've never been–"

Anywhere. Except Manawaka. This will change, though. By God and the Apostles and all the Saints, it will.

"I don't aim to stay here," Morag finds herself blurting. "I'm gonna get to college when I've got enough money. I'm through High School now, I've just got a job. I'm working on the _Manawaka Banner_."

Silence from him. Busy with the gum. Spearmint.

"That's the town newspaper," she adds.

"Oh?" the airman says. "Well, thanks for the dance."

The dances are played in sets of three. You are supposed to keep the same partner for three tunes. This is the end of the second one.

Morag bolts like a shot elk to the Ladies' Powder Room, upstairs. Locks herself in the john. Her refuge, as of old.

john of Ages

locked for me

let me hide

myself in thee.

She laughs, but quietly and to herself. Not that even a laugh aloud would be heard over the birdflock voices of the girls who are gathered around the mirrors, putting on lipstick for the millionth time. Some girls hide in the Ladies' all evening.

Well, tonight wasn't as bad as the time she had been emboldened by a boy's friendly half-shy smile and had asked him if he liked poetry. Hell no, he had said, he was raised on a chicken farm and hated the buggers. Thinking she had said _poultry_.

Morag walks out of the cubicle. There is Eva. Looking soft and fragile as a yellow rose. In a blue and yellow dirndl skirt, new. With huge scared eyes, looking at Morag.

"What _is_ it, Eva? What's the matter? Are you okay?"

"No," Eva says. Not crying, not sniffling as of yore. Just staring with unblinking eyes like a baby bird does when it falls out of the nest and is too petrified to move away from any kind of danger. "I didn't mean to tell you. I ain't your worry. But–oh Morag. I'm two months gone."

"Oh my God, Eva."

"What'll I do?" Eva's anguished whisper. "I'm ascared to tell my dad. He'll whip the piss outa me. I know he will. You know him."

"Yeh. Well, look, Eva, there must be something. Is the guy–I mean–"

"He says he'd really love to marry me," Eva breathes, a little more softly now, almost smiling. "He bought me this here skirt and blouse. He really thinks a lot of me. He said so. I'm not kidding you."

"Well, then–"

"He's got a wife in Moose Jaw," Eva says.

Happy endings all the way for Eva Winkler, born to grief as the sparks fly upward.

Downstairs, music.

"Eva–I just don't know. I don't know at all what you should do."

Christie, years ago. The parcel in the garbage tin. _I buried it in the Nuisance Grounds–that's what it was, wasn't it? A nuisance._

A kid. Shakespeare. Milton. Not very likely, with Eva Winkler, admittedly, but you never could tell. Well, even an ordinary kid. A real kid, who would grow up.

"You could–I mean, people _do_ have them adopted."

"It ain't that part of it worries me," Eva says. "I'm ascared of my dad. He'd never forgive me for getting in trouble."

Morag and Eva walk home together. Eva shivers, cries a little but not much.

And aborts herself that night with a partly straightened-out wire clotheshanger. As Mrs. Winkler whispers in horror, then goes back to sit with Eva, too frightened to do anything. But later on, doing something becomes necessary.

"My goddamn girl's plenty sick with her monthlies," Gus Winkler bellows at the Logans' midnight door. "She been bleedin' like a stuck pig, there, my woman says. What I do, Christie, eh? Goddamn women."

Christie drives Eva to the hospital in the Scavenger truck. Morag sits up until he returns.

Gutless. Eva? Now really so, but not in the other way. What could Morag have done? Was there anything? Maybe not, but it will stay with her forever. She will never be rid of it. How will Eva feel? If she lives.

"She'll live," Christie says, returning. "Dr. Cates says she'll live. Suppose that's a good thing, although I wouldn't bank on it. She won't be able to have any kids. Maybe that's lucky, too. Och aye, Morag. What a christly bloody life."

"What did Dr. Cates tell Gus?"

"That the girl was anaemic and she haemorrhaged."

"Did Gus–?"

"Yeh. He believed it. Old Gus has never been none too bright. Jesus, he's a stupid man, thank God."

"What happened to the–"

Christie's watery and increasingly red-rimmed blue eyes harden.

"I seen Eva's mother while Gus was yelling at the boy when we come back. Never you mind, Morag. It'll be seen to."

Another candidate for the town's unofficial cemetery.

Eva, when she returns finally, walks a little stooped. Goes out to work as a hired girl. Some not-too-fussy guy will marry her someday, maybe. Or maybe not.

Morag recalls herself two years ago, and the chance she took, was willing to take, and what might have happened if the event had worked out differently. It never occurred to her, then. Now it does. Now she knows one thing for sure. Nothing– _nothing_ –is going to endanger her chances of getting out of Manawaka. And on her own terms, not the town's.

But it's not fair. It's not fair. It's the man who has to take the precautions, and if he doesn't, forget it, sister. There are other ways. But how would you find out, or get whatever it is, if not married? Maybe you might in a city, just maybe, but not here.

Jules?

She remembers how it was, and the feeling of his skin all over hers. Wants him again, as she often often does. Well, too bad. Nothing can be done about it. No answers. Is he alive, even? No reports. No news. She reads the casualty lists, always.

When she was a young child, she used to believe that everything would be all right once she was grown-up and nobody could tell her what to do. Now she wishes someone _could_ tell her what to do.

_Memorybank Movie: The Banner_

Lachlan MacLachlan, editor and owner of the _Manawaka Banner_ , is not a difficult boss, although sometimes unpredictable. A bulky, thickset man, bald except for a fringe of grey around the back of his skull. Wearing heavy hairy tweed suits even in summer. Suffering often from hangovers, at which times he closes the door into his office and sips Alka-Seltzer or Cokes, answering only to urgent questions, of which there are few. Apart from the three printers, Morag comprises Lachlan's entire staff. He has until recently done it all himself, but his son's death has depleted him. At first, Morag was shy and a little frightened, for Lachlan never ever smiles, much less laughs. But now they get on. She fetches the Alka-Seltzer on the bad days, and calls him Lachlan, like everybody else in town does.

Morag has her own desk. A roll-top oak desk with drawers. A typewriter. Just like a real reporter. She has learned typing at High School. Jock MacRae, one of the printers, has taught her how to read proof. If Lachlan doesn't feel up to doing the layouts, Jock does them and is teaching Morag. Morag writes or rewrites:

Obituaries

Town Council meetings

Courthouse cases (if any)

Rotary Club dinners

IODE meetings (the Daughters of Empire in fruit-salad-like hats)

School Board meetings

News (e.g. Accidents, Broken Legs, Lightning Striking Barns, etc.)

Local Reports from South Wachakwa, Freehold and so on.

Many of these items are written down by people who were there, and given to her. She then rewrites them in newspaper style, as Lachlan has taught her. She is not permitted to rewrite the Local Reports from South Wachakwa and Freehold.

Mrs. H. Pearl, widow of late Henry respected farmer spend the weekend visiting with her son Simon and wife in Manwaka and a good time had by all at a tea given in her hounor by Mrs. Cates wife of Doct Cates son of late Alvin Cates of South Wachakwa Mrs. Cates had red roses on a silver baskt and four kinds cake served. Glad you had a good visit Mrs. Pearl and welcom back!

Morag thinks this is hilarious.

"Lachlan–can't I rewrite it? I _mean_."

It is one of Lachlan's poorer mornings, but he struggles bravely against headache, nausea, and cramps in various parts of himself.

"They don't want it rewritten, Morag. They want it as it is. You can clean up the punctuation, grammar and spelling. That is all. As I have said before, if my imperfect memory serves, God help me, I have all the symptoms of a pregnant woman this morning–except I suppose they don't normally twitch or imagine their eyeballs are falling out. _Mea culpa._ Now stop fussing about those reports, girl."

"But–"

"But _what_?" Lachlan's voice is low but slightly menacing.

"They make the _Banner_ look like–well, like a small-town paper."

"They do, eh? Well, that is precisely what it is, Morag. And if you think your prose style is so much better than theirs, girl, remember one thing. Those people know things it will take you the better part of your lifetime to learn, if ever. They are not very verbal people, but if you ever in your life presume to look down on them because you have the knack of words and they do not, then you do so at your eternal risk and peril. Do you understand what I am saying?"

Morag gazes at him, embarrassed and angry and partly comprehending.

"Yeh. I guess so. A lot of people here look down on me. I don't think of myself as looking down on anybody, Lachlan."

"No? Well, maybe you better have another think about that one, then, to make quite sure. And for God's sake quit feeling set upon. You're not trapped. The doors are open. You couldn't say the same for some. I know whereof I speak. Go on, get out. Tell Jock he's to handle the layout for Simlow's sale handbills. Green newsprint, tell him. Not that puke-coloured yellow. _Green_."

"Do you want some coffee, Lachlan?"

"Get _out_ ," Lachlan says heavily. "And bring me four aspirin and a cold Coca-Cola. Make that two Cokes. Tell Miklos to charge it against what he owes me, the chiseller."

The Junior League, young women from the city, bring out an exhibition of prints of paintings to Manawaka, for the enlightenment of the local populace, and Morag wanders around the United Church basement where she used to go to Sunday school, looking. A thirtyish woman in sleek grey skirt and blue twin-sweater set with pearls (real?) at her neck sits smiling graciously at the three people who have thus far turned up. It is all very embarrassing.

And then

The picture is of the head of a girl, features so finely cut, so entirely beautiful that you know all at once this would be how an angel or the Mother of Christ would have looked if ever such had existed. The eyes meet yours, look into yours, without flinching or avoiding. Her hair you could call _tresses_ , as it says in very ancient tales and the bardic songs, hair in long twisting tendrils of light brown coppergold filled with the sun and coming from the sun. Like a queen in the old old poems, like Cuchulain's young queen, the woman beloved by all men.

Morag stands for a long time, looking.

"Lovely, isn't it, dear?" the twin-set and pearls lady says.

_Lovely._ What a word. Like using a marshmallow to picture God. But _beautiful_ is nearly as bad. How could you say? How can there be words for that face, for what lies behind those eyes? There have to be words. Maybe there are not. This thought is obscurely frightening. Like knowing that God does not actually see the little sparrow fall.

Morag goes back to the _Banner_ office and writes the report four times. Shows it to Lachlan. He reads it carefully. Then looks up.

"It's a pretty good report," he says. "But–this picture wasn't painted recently by someone in Winnipeg, Morag. It's part of a larger painting. _Venus Rising from the Waves._ It was painted by a man called Botticelli. A long time ago. In Italy. I'll bring you a book that tells about it."

Morag takes the sheets of newsprint and crumples them small into her hands.

"You would only have to alter it a little," Lachlan says, not looking at her.

"No."

"You learn hard, with that stiff neck of yours," Lachlan says. "There's no shame in not knowing something. You're not alone."

"That's where you're wrong," Morag says.

The report is never printed. But when Lachlan brings the book, she spends a long time looking at it.

_Memorybank Movie: Down in the Valley, Act III_

Winter, and the snow squeaks and scrunches dryly underfoot, even on Main Street where the _Banner_ office is. Morag has new fleece-lined leather boots and a grey tweed coat with a real beaver-lamb collar, but there is no way of keeping warm in thirty-below weather.

Lachlan is already at the office. He summons her.

"There's been a fire down in the valley, at the old Tonnerre shack, Morag. The older girl–what's her name?–and her two kids were caught in it. You better go down and see what's happened. Rufus Nolan's called in the Mounties, but he'll be there as well–he'll tell you."

For an instant Morag fails to understand what _caught in it_ means. Then realizes.

"Lachlan–Piquette and her kids–are they–"

"Dead. Yes, I believe so."

"I can't go. Lachlan."

"What do you mean, you can't go? Of course you can go. Rufus or somebody'll give you a lift back, likely. It's not that far."

"I–don't want to go, Lachlan."

"Oh christ. Of _course_ you don't want to go. Who would? But you're the one who thinks the _Banner_ shouldn't act like such a small-town paper. Here is a genuine news story. Now go."

The wind worsens at the rim of the town, knifes at her as she flounders through the snow on the valley road. The bare black branches have been enfolded and cloaked with last night's snowfall, and would delight her with their radiance under other circumstances.

Morag has met Piquette on the streets occasionally, since Piquette returned to Manawaka. They have not spoken, except to say _Hi_ to one another. Piquette, once slender, has gown flabbily fat and walks with the lurch of the habitual drunk. She has been arrested several times, like her father before her, for outrageously shrieking her pain aloud in public places, usually in the form of obscene insults to whoever happens to be handiest. Her husband took off and left her, just as Skinner said he would, and the two children, two small boys with large solemn dark eyes, appear to be about one and two years old. What went wrong? Or did it go wrong so long ago that there is now no single cause or root to be found?

Morag could at least have talked to her. But Piquette wouldn't have wanted to. How can Morag be sure of that? She is, though.

At the Tonnerre place, there is not a lot of noise going on. Valentine left home after Piquette returned, so the two younger brothers are by themselves, and are now walking towards Jules' shack, which still stands. No one is crying. There is a stillness in the frozen air.

The Tonnerre place, both the original shack and Lazarus' later addition, has been burned to the ground and is now only a mass of tangled still-smoking charred timbers and twisted shapeless blackened metal. Rufus Nolan stands bulky and bewildered in his navy blue greatcoat and absurd policeman's cap. The town fire truck is leaving. There is nothing for them to do now. The Mounties have evidently been and gone.

"What happened, Mr. Nolan?"

"Them stovepipes must've been old as the everlasting hills," Rufus says. "Lazarus and the boys were away. The girl was probably drunk. The place must've gone up like tinder."

Lazarus stands alone, his face absolutely blank, portraying nothing. He looks at Morag but does not see her.

Dr. Cates stands talking to Niall Cameron, the undertaker. There is no town ambulance. Niall has brought his old black hearse instead.

"Well, there's no point even examining them," Dr. Cates is saying. "You can tell even from this distance, all right."

The smell of smoke hangs thickly in the frosty air. And something else, a sweetish nauseating odour.

"Somebody will have to help me go in there and get them," Niall Cameron says in a hard low voice.

He stands there, bareheaded and tall, running one woollen-gloved hand nervously over his light brown hair and looking towards the ruins of the shack, the pile of blackened debris where three generations of Tonnerres have lived. Morag looks, too, and then realizes what is still in there. She can see only smokened metal and burnt wood, but there is something else in there as well.

Burnt wood. _Bois-Brûlés._

Lazarus shambles over to the two men.

"I'm going in," he says. "They're mine, there, them."

Dere mine dere, dem.

Niall Cameron's face twists momentarily as though in some inexpressible pain. Then he shakes his head.

"It will take the two of us," he says. "Hold that end of the stretcher, Lazarus, will you? Where's the goddamn draw-sheet? Oh, here."

Morag turns away. Vomits terribly into the snow. When she is able to look again, the job is done and the back doors of the hearse are closed. Niall Cameron walks over to her and puts one arm around her shoulders, pulling her upright again, forcing her upright.

"For God's sake, Morag Gunn, what are you doing here?"

"Lachlan–but he didn't know it would be–"

"Lachlan's out of his head," Niall Cameron says furiously, "and you can tell him so from me. Do you want a lift? No, I guess not–I'm sorry, Morag. That was stupid of me. I'd forgotten the fire truck had gone."

The only vehicle here now is the hearse. Dr. Cates has come down with Niall Cameron. Rufus Nolan has come down with the now-departed Mounties and is at this moment climbing into the hearse.

"It's okay, Mr. Cameron. I know you didn't–well, it's okay. I can walk back."

He turns to Paul Cates.

"All right, Paul. Let's go."

Dr. Cates looks very white and sick.

"You know, Niall, I'm almost glad Ewen isn't here. He fixed the girl's legs, years ago."

That would be Dr. MacLeod, who died some years back. He was the one who had overcome the TB in the bone, who had made it possible for Piquette to walk properly. And dance, briefly. And attract Al Cummings.

"He was probably the only one in town who ever did anything for her, then," Niall Cameron says in his harsh bitter voice.

"Should I say anything to Lazarus?" Dr. Cates asks, as though asking himself.

"What is there to say?" Niall replies. "There's nothing can be said now. Get in, Paul."

The hearse pulls away. Morag begins to walk. Looking back, she sees Lazarus.

He is still standing alone there in the snow.

At the office, Lachlan pours Morag a rye and hands it to her without a word.

"Niall phoned and gave me hell," he says finally. "I'm sorry, Morag. I didn't realize–"

"I know."

"Wasn't there another girl? A younger one?"

"Val. She went away a while ago. I don't know where she is."

"Where's the older brother?" Lachlan asks. "Do you know?"

"He was at Dieppe," Morag says. "But I don't think he got killed."

She recalls then that Lachlan's son did.

Without warning, taking herself by surprise, she puts her head down on the desk and cries in a way she does not remember ever having done before, as though pain were the only condition of human life.

In her report, Morag mentions that Piquette's grandfather fought with Riel in Saskatchewan in 1885, in the last uprising of the Métis. Lachlan deletes it, saying that many people hereabouts would still consider that Old Jules back then had fought on the wrong side.

_Memorybank Movie: Beginning and Ending, or Vice-Versa_ The War is over. The boys who survived are being sent home. Morag is leaving Manawaka in the fall, to go to college, having been adding as much as possible to the bank account which Henry Pearl started for her, when her parents died, on the proceeds of Louisa Gunn's piano and anything else he could manage to get out of the Gunn farmhouse before the mortgage company moved in.

Leaving Manawaka. At last. At last. Jubilation. Also, guilt.

Prin scarcely moves at all now, just sits in her chair, growing heavier and more silent all the time, living only inside her head, if anywhere. Morag has quit trying to talk to her. Dr. Cates says it is premature senility and he doesn't know what to do. Prin can still look after herself, or usually, the toilet and that, but needs help going upstairs. Who will get the meals when Morag goes? Christie will have to.

Christie is in none too good shape himself. He drinks very little any more, but his attacks of strangeness have increased all the same. Impatiently, Morag sometimes feels he brings them on purposely. It used to take the bottle. Now he can do it unaided. First stage, the ranting. The music of the pipes is sometimes described as _ranting_ , and that describes Christie. Human Bagpipes Logan. Blaring up and down, sometimes pacing the kitchen as he does so, here a pibroch, there a battle march, etcetera. Fraud. Fraud. Who does he think he's kidding?

Christie has grown even scrawnier with time, and his Adam's apple is even more frenetic in his throat than it used to be. He dresses in the same old beat-up overalls, rarely bothering to change them even when they stink of the Nuisance Grounds.

"Mine was a great family, then," he declares. "The Logans of Easter Ross, by christ, they used to be a great bloody family. _This Is the Valour of My Ancestors._ That is a fine motto."

"Oh Christie."

" _The Ridge of Tears_ ," Christie roars. "That was the war cry. Oh Jesus. Think of it. The Ridge of Tears. And the crest, then. A passion nail piercing a human heart, proper. I always wondered what the hell _proper_ meant, and now I'll never know, for who is there to tell me?"

"What does it matter, Christie? It was all so long ago."

The Gunns have no crest, no motto, no war cry, at least according to what it says in the old book Christie still hauls out from time to time. Just as well. It's all a load of old manure.

"It matters to me," Christie rants. "By heaven and all the stars of midnight and by my own right hand and by the holy cross its own self, I say unto you it bloody damn well matters to me, then. What have I done with my life, Morag? Sweet bugger-all. I used to think what was there worth doing? Maybe I was wrong. Oh jesus, I _was_ wrong. A disgrace to my ancestors. You get the hell out of here, Morag, you hear, and make something out of yourself. I used to think the only clean job in the world was collecting muck. I chose to be the one who'd collect it. But now I see we're all of us rotting in it all the same, myself as well. It was the pride in me done it. I see it now."

Pride? In being the Scavenger, Keeper of the Nuisance Grounds? He is really wild tonight.

"May I be forgiven," Christie mourns at the top of his voice. "May I be forgiven, but I'm damned if I know who to ask for that. There _is_ no forgiveness in the bloody world. None."

"Christie. Sh-sh. It's all right. Sh."

"Them tales I used to tell you. You never knew why I done it."

Oh God. Not this again.

"Hush, Christie."

"I meant well, Morag. That's a christly awful thing to be carved on a man's tombstone. _Here Lies Christie Logan–He Meant Well._ And how can a man even be sure of that?"

Ramble, ramble. And then he would sit in silence, for hours, sometimes shaking all over until the spell passed.

Morag goes out into the soft summer evening. Going into the Regal Café for cigarettes, she meets a man coming out. She stops, does a doubletake. Skinner Tonnerre.

"Jules? Jules!"

He is in civilian clothes, grey flannels, grey sports jacket, snappy grey fedora at an angle on his head. The same angular brown face and slanted eyes. But older. Different. He grins. Neither of them makes any move towards the other. "Yeh, it's me. Got back the other day. How're you doing, Morag? You look different."

"How do you mean?"

"I dunno. Older. I don't mean it bad. You look great."

"Are you–are you staying, Jules?"

"Who, me? You gotta be kidding. I just came back to see–well, how things are. I'm getting out as soon as I can."

"How's–your dad?"

Jules' eyes avoid hers.

"Not so hot. It was a bad thing happened, there."

"Yes. I–I'm sorry."

"I heard you went–well, Val sent me the clipping from the _Banner_."

"Yes."

"Did you–" he searches her face shrewdly, almost angrily. "Did you see _them?_ Lazarus won't talk of it. Did you see her, Morag?"

For a moment Morag contemplates saying _Yes_ , telling him Piquette suffocated quickly, wasn't touched by the flames. But cannot. He wouldn't believe her, anyway.

"No. Only Niall Cameron and your dad. They went in, and–you know."

Jules nods.

"Was it bad–the place?"

"Yes." It is all she can say.

She gets her cigarettes and walks along Main Street with him. He does not take her arm or touch her.

"I looked in the paper, after Dieppe," she says. "To see if you–"

"Yeh. Well. It wasn't quite the way the papers told it, I guess. All any guy thinks of is staying alive. Some guys were scared so shitless they couldn't even think of that. Yeh, and I guess some guys do think about what's happening to some real close pal."

"Not you?"

"I never had any close pal," Jules says lightly. "Lone wolf, that's me."

Cliché. But true. It _is_ him. He is distant, distant from the town, from Morag, from everything, perhaps even from himself.

"Did it–last long?"

" _Yeh._ One million years. Coupla hours, actually. I can't really say. I don't know. Didn't seem very real at the time. Guess you go kind of crazy, like. You just think _Well well that's John Lobodiak dead._ It doesn't mean much at the time."

"You saw John?"

"Yeh. He was right next to me when he got it. He was shot in the guts. He kept trying to hold them in–they were spilling out, there. Ever seen a shot gopher?"

_Yes yes when cannot remember the blood squirming entrails sheets what was it a dream_

"Skinner–please. Don't."

For the first time, then, he touches her. Puts an arm around her. She wants to hold him close. But makes no move. Cannot. Why not?

"That's how he was. Like a shot gopher. His guts. Not his eyes, though."

"How–"

"Like a horse's eyes in a barn fire," Jules says flatly.

Always the horses. For the prairie men, always the horses. The comparison. The god, living, dying.

John Lobodiak, handsomer than his younger brother, kicking them all out of the car that Saturday night, so he could take his girl home.

"Well, skip it," Jules says. "How about you?"

"Going to Winnipeg this fall. To college. And I'm never coming back."

"Hey, that's something, eh?" He drops his arm from around her. "Go to college and marry a rich professor, how about that?"

"Yeh, I can see it all now. I _don't_ think. What're you going to do?"

Jules shrugs.

"How should I know? I don't much care. Maybe something will turn up. I don't have to _do_ anything all that much. I'm not like you."

True. He isn't. She stiffens.

"You're just like Christie." Disapproval in her voice? Disappointment?

"I'm not," Jules says. "I'm just like–never mind. Well, you'll do okay."

"Why do you say that?"

"You want it so bad I can just about smell it on you. You'll get it, Morag."

"What's _it_?"

Jules stops walking. They have reached Hill Street. He is not going to walk home with her. He grins, but not in the old way, not conspiratorially. Not quite hostile, but nearly. To him, she is now on the other side of the fence. They inhabit the same world no longer.

"I wouldn't know," he says. "But I guess you do. Well, so long. See you around, eh?"

And walks away. As before, not looking back.

Morag does not think about him for very long. She will not. Will not. She has to think about getting ready to leave. Soon. Very soon now.

In the night, the train whistle says _Out There Out There Out There_.
**PART THREE**

**HALLS OF SION**
**FIVE**

**M** orag sat at the table in the kitchen, with a notebook in front of her and a ballpoint pen in her hand. Not writing. Looking at the river. Getting started each morning was monstrous, an almost impossible exercise of will, in which finally the will was never enough, and it had to be begun on faith.

Last night, sleepless until three A.M., long and stupendously vivid scenes unfolded. Too tired to get up and write them down, she still couldn't shut the projector off for the night. Got up and jotted down key words, to remind her. Staring at these key words now, she wondered what in heaven's name they had been meant to unlock.

_Jerusalem._ Jerusalem? Why? Gone. What had she meant by it?

The postcard from Pique yesterday. No address. Mustn't think of it. Morag didn't want to put the hooks onto Pique, nor to have Pique at this point put the hooks onto her. But a somewhat more newsy letter would be appreciated. Idiotic. How many newsy letters had Morag written to Prin and Christie, after she left Manawaka? That was different. Oh, really?

The long sweep of infrequently mown grass down to the river. The elm outside the window, still alive although for how long who could say? The small cedars, spearing lightly featheringly upwards. The fenced-off patch, where once Sarah Cooper had begun a vegetable garden all those years ago. Now it had gone to wild high seed-headed grasses, what a variety, must be dozens. And purple thistles, regal, giant. And those flowers like pale yellow snapdragons, called Butter-and-Eggs. And in late summer, the goldenrod. And those little pink whatsernames and those bright orange and brown softly bristled flowers called–ha!–Devil's Paintbrush. The birds liked the place, especially the goldfinches–it was their restaurant, all those seeds. Morag regarded it as a garden of amazing splendours, in which God did all the work. Catharine Parr Traill would have profoundly disagreed, likely.

_Morag:_ | Now listen here, Catharine, don't bug me today, eh? All right, I know. You knew more about wildflowers than I'll ever know. But you would have said that there were plenty of wildflowers in the woods etcetera, without taking up half the yard with them. You would diligently have grown turnips, carrots, peas, scarlet runner beans and other nourishing plants, as Maudie Smith does. I am caught between the old pioneers and the new pioneers. At least Maudie can't give names to the wildflowers, as you did. Imagine naming flowers which have never been named before. Like the Garden of Eden. Power! Ecstasy! I christen thee Butter-and-Eggs!

---|---

_Catharine P. Traill:_ | You are exaggerating, as usual, my dear Morag. I, as you know, managed both to write books, with some modest degree of success, while at the same time cultivating my plot of land and rearing my dear children, of whom I bore nine, seven of whom lived. No doubt, my dear, were you to plant an orchard, you would also soon find your writing flowing with grace, not unlike the river yonder.

_Morag:_ | You are right, Mrs. Traill. You are correct. Except I don't have your faith. In the Book of Job it says _One generation passeth and another generation cometh, but the earth endureth forever._ That does not any longer strike me as self-evident. I am deficient in faith, although let's face it, Catharine, if I didn't have _some_ I would not write at all or even speak to any other person; I would be silent forevermore, and I don't mean G.M. Hopkins' _Elected Silence, sing to me_ or any of that–I mean the other kind. The evidence of my eyes, however, does little to reassure me. I suspect you didn't have that problem, just as I suspect you had problems you never let on about. The evidence of your eyes showed you Jerusalem the Golden with Milk and Honey Blest, at least if a person was willing to expend enough elbow grease. No plastic milk jugs bobbing in the river. No excessive algae, fish-strangling. The silver shiver of the carp crescenting. My grandchildren will say _What means Fish?_ Peering through the goggle-eyes of their gasmasks. Who will tell old tales to children then? Pique used to say _What is a Buffalo?_ How many words and lives will be gone when they say _What means Leaf?_ Saint Catharine! Where are you now that we need you?

_C.P.T.:_ | I am waiting.

The screen door slammed as someone entered. Not C.P.T. reborn.

"You talking to that same lady, Morag?" Royland enquired.

She looked at his bulky hunched greyness. Wearing, of course, his plaid flannel shirt in this Pit-of-Hell weather. His neat greybeard blown very slightly in the humid blast-furnace breeze.

"Yeh. You never fail to catch me at it, do you?"

"You're alone too much, Morag. As I may have mentioned."

"Even if surrounded by a multitude with banners, Royland, I would still talk to ghosts. I got a postcard from Pique yesterday. Want to see it?"

"Sure. Of course."

_Postcard:_ View of Vancouver harbour, taken from west side of city. Many boats, ships, varicoloured vessels of one kind and another. Buildings tall in background. Excessively blue water.

On the back, with no address, these words:

This city the end. They like to classify people here. Matthew Arnold clash by night right on with this place. Gord and I do not relate so why fight it? Am okay, so no dramatics. Tell Tom seagulls fabulous.

Love, Pique.

"Hope this finds you well as it leaves me," Morag said. "Sometimes I think I know what she's about, and other times I don't. I know it's inevitable, but it hurts all the same. You know something, Royland? We think there is _one_ planet called Earth, but there are thousands, even _millions_ , like a snake shedding its skin every so often, but with all the old skins still bunched around it. You live inside the creature for quite a while, so it comes as a shock to find you're living now in one of the husked-off skins, and sometimes you can touch and know about the creature as it is now and sometimes you can't."

"Pique'll be back soon," Royland said, "before she goes away for good. It'll be nice to see her again. I'm going into town. You need anything from the store?"

"No–but thanks. And for the reassurance, too. I mean it."

When Royland had gone, Morag got out yesterday's newspaper and looked it up again.

There was the picture of Brooke. Telling about his new appointment. Not just Head of an English Department, not now. President of a university. Well, well.

_My God, what a handsome man he still is._

Another shed skin of another life. And it began happening again, again, as it had been doing for years, and perhaps the film would never end until she did.

_Memorybank Movie: Farewell and Hallelujah_

Morag says goodbye hurriedly to Prin, who, obese and silent and almost motionless now except for the awful _crik-crik-crik_ of the rocking chair, hardly seems to know that Morag is leaving once and for all. Like a tub with eyes. The vague eyes, though, are suddenly wet with uncontrolled unwiped tears. What has been going on, all these months and years, in Prin's skull? Morag, and probably Christie also, has tried to assume that nothing was. Now she is not sure. How much has she treated Prin as a dumb beast, these past years?

"I'll write, Prin. Honestly I will."

The hulk of anonymous oxflesh which was once Prin Logan (christened Princess in another world) now speaks, the hoarse guttural tones of someone who has almost forgotten human speech.

"You be–good girl, now. Dear."

_Dear._ Morag, as a very young child, eating jelly doughnuts with Prin, being protected from Christie's sometimes-stinging tongue, his oddness.

Morag bends and kisses the pasty pouched face, overwhelmed with past love and present repulsion. She straightens and sees the look on Christie's face–stricken.

He drives her to the CPR station in the old garbage truck. She thanks God it is night. Prays _prays_ no one she knows will be taking this train. She has chosen to go by train because most of the kids going to the city for university will be taking the bus.

"Goodbye, Christie. I'll–write."

"Yeh. You do that, Morag." No conviction in his voice. "Well, so long."

She resolves to prove him wrong by writing back regularly. Once a week. At least. Knowing she won't. She dreads Christie standing on the platform, looking at her until the train actually pulls away. But he doesn't. He doesn't even wave to her once she's inside the coach. Just turns and walks back to the garbage truck.

The train clonks slowly into motion, and soon the wheels are spinning their steelsong _clickety-click-clickety-click_ , and the town is receding. There go the rusty-red grain elevators, the tallest structures around here. There goes the cemetery. There go the Nuisance Grounds, forever and ever.

Morag settles herself. Exultant. On her way. She is alone in this coach, the plum plush seats puffing out ancient dust with every clank and sway of the train. No other passengers, it seems, on the night train to Everywhere. Only Morag Gunn, swifting into life.

Then–panic.

Alone in the coach, Morag Gunn, erstwhile of Manawaka, prudently goes into the john before she will allow herself to cry. The conductor might happen along. She can bear anything, she knows, really, but not for the people to see.

_Memorybank Movie: Higher Learning–The Lowdown_

A year older than almost everyone in her class–this does make a difference. There are four men who are even older, returned veterans, but they are all married. Or does the difference reside more in the fact that so many of these kids went to High School together in the city? Or is it Morag's own goddamn fault, being both proud and humiliatingly shy? Thinking she looks gawky, not knowing half the time whether other people are kidding or not.

The others flow in and out of classrooms and cafeteria, and she does, too. Usually by herself. So what? This is what she's wanted, to be here, and now she's here.

The late September dust fills the city streets, and the prairie maples are yellow, leaves blowing against her face as she walks to the streetcar stop. Manawaka has sidewalks, too, but the cement there isn't as hard on your feet there as it is here, perhaps because there you sometimes walk on the roadsides, through the grass.

She sees the night city rarely, with neon signs of crimson, yellow, blue, shrieking cigarettes or hotels or brands of cars. Lights should be blazing, impressive. Perhaps if you couldn't read these would be. By dark she's usually in her room, in the place where she boards, studying.

Her boardinghouse is away to hell and gone, North Winnipeg, half a mile beyond the end of the Selkirk Avenue streetcar line. No wonder Mrs. Crawley was so delighted when Morag turned up. She'd probably had a hundred others turn down the room. Morag had thought it might not be possible to find another room. Idiotic. The Crawleys rent only the one room. It is a small house and Morag's room is about the size of the one she had at Christie's. The size of a large cupboard. She doesn't care. She's used to it. The room will be freezing in winter, she foresees. It has a bed, a dresser and a chair. She uses the dresser top as a desk.

Mrs. Crawley is a Catholic, although not all that devout. Above Morag's bed, when she moved in, there hung The Bleeding Heart of Jesus. It looked familiar, and then she remembered–the Tonnerres' place. Even without this, the picture would be hard enough to endure, Jesus with a soft, yielding, nothing-type face and a straggling wispy beard, His expression that of a dog who knows it is about to be shot. As usual in these pictures, the Heart Itself is shown in violent purplish red, His chest having apparently been sawn open to reveal It, oozing with neatly symmetrical drops of lifeblood, _drip-drip-drip_. All tear-shaped.

"Why did you take Our Lord down, Morag?" Mrs. Crawley enquires.

Not sternly, just sort of wearily. Mrs. Crawley is still quite a young woman, in her late twenties, fluffy short beige hair the colour of a camel-hair coat, and meek blue eyes which only rarely spark with the momentary insistence that she, too, may possibly be real. She and Mr. Crawley have four young kids. Mrs. Crawley sighs a lot.

"I'm–I'm sorry." Morag struggles. "It's hard to explain. I was brought up–"

What a great lie she is about to perpetrate. As if it would make any difference what church had been her spiritual home, so-called, in her tender years. She would still have wanted to throw up every time she looked at the Heart. Mrs. Crawley, however, is sympathetic.

"It's okay, Morag, you never mind, then. I understand you've been raised a Protestant. I'll take it for the girls' room."

Lucky girls, now two and four. But Mrs. Crawley is no bigot. Rather, she is wistful and sometimes defiant.

"I'd never go against my Faith, Morag," she declares, "but all the same, I sometimes think–well, you know–if I'd known before I was married what I know now, I'd have had some fun, eh? Not that _we_ do anything to prevent God's Will, of course. We're expecting again, did I mention, and soon I'll be bloated up like a stout old lady with the wind. I wasn't a bad-looking girl."

"You're still good-looking," Morag cries, torn with the necessity of saying two things at once, "and anyway, you should've seen the snobbishness that went on in the church where I went as a kid. The United, it was."

Mrs. Crawley nods, but isn't really concerned with Comparative Religion.

"Well, it's nice of you to _say_ I'm still not too bad-looking," she says. "I got such awful stretch marks on my stomach and thighs after Marnie. Still, who sees them but Jim?"

Sad. Sad. Morag vows to have umpteen lovers but no husband. No kids. No stretch marks (what are _they_?). Mr. Crawley is balding although only thirty-two, and is skinnily pale. He comes home very tired from the Meat Packers where he works, which is no wonder when you consider he has to heave around sides of beef and he looks as though he'd have trouble hoisting a five-pound bag of flour. He is not, Morag has gathered, of a very romantic temperament. _Romantic_ is Mrs. Crawley's word. It means he believes in making love once a fortnight, at most. Mrs. Crawley is perpetually riven, wanting love and not wanting any more kids. It is a trying situation.

Mrs. Crawley cooks mainly boiled cabbage and wieners, or boiled turnips and (very small) portions of bacon. With gobs of watery mashed potatoes. It isn't very different from Christie and Prin's house. Which is disappointing. Morag considers seeking another room. But how can she, after Mrs. Crawley has confided all that about her sex life, and so on? Also, they need the money. A dilemma. Morag knows she will dislike living here more and more as the winter clenches in, and will be unable to move.

If Mrs. Crawley were tough, hard-spoken and angry, it would be easy. It is her flaccid lack of fight which makes it impossible. As with Eva Winkler, whom in some ways she resembles. Morag gags inwardly at the weak, against whom she has few defences. But she resents and fears them.

All the same, Morag talks more with Mrs. Crawley than with any of the golden-appearing college kids. She knows they are not all golden, not all happy, not all inheritors of some as-yet-unspoiled Garden. She isn't that stupid. She has seen the worse-off ones walking alone and quietly, or else trying to ingratiate themselves, clownlike, into the brazen multitude. These walking wounded she avoids like the plague. It might be catching.

One day, walking the narrow cracked sidewalks from the end of the streetcar line to the Crawleys' house, the bare lean board houses reminding her of Hill Street and the leaves still splendid with the last of the upblazing autumn, she hears the geese.

The Canada geese are flying very high up in their wide V-formation, the few leaders out in front, the flock sounding their far clear cold cry that signals the approaching frost. Going somewhere. Able to go, at will. Last year she saw them and thought _This time next year I'll be away too._ Now she is away. Away is here. Not far enough away.

Morag watches, angrily grieving and loving, until the geese have passed over.

Winter, and snow of many textures. Hard-packed snow on Portage Avenue and the downtown streets, dirty from the trampling boots. Deep, dry snow, creaking underfoot on the ten-million-mile trek from streetcar to house. And on lawns and little-used roadsides, the drifts are three feet high, crusted and white like royal icing, and when you break through the crust, the snow underneath is light and powdery as icing sugar. Snow everywhere. Black bare tree boughs are transformed overnight into white glittering traceries, candelabra, chandeliers of trees, the sun lighting them as though from within. In the mornings, frost patterns on the bedroom window, painted by windbrushes. Beautiful, but bloody cold. The breath seems to freeze in your throat, and your lungs feel full of ice.

Morag's room is so cold in the mornings she can hardly bear to snake slowly out of bed. The Crawleys' furnace is not efficient and Mr. Crawley does not stoke it sufficiently in the evenings, as Mrs. Crawley fears fire during the night. Morag would rather take the chance, and go out of life, if necessary, in a blazing splendour, gloriously warm. It is, however, not up to her. Taking a bath is a torture. Only those truly devoted to cleanliness would ever venture into the Crawleys' tepid bath-water and steel-cold tub in midwinter. Morag is one of these ( _what if I smell?_ ). The Crawley kids are not. Twice a week they scream and shriek as their mother exhaustedly forces them into the bath. The window is right beside the tub, and the storm-window does not fit properly. December seeps in.

Morag studies in bed, the dirty wine satin eiderdown drawn around her. Feels ill. Writes home (home?) to Christie, saying she has flu and will not be back in Manawaka for Christmas. Flu or cowardice?

Christie sends her a money order for five dollars. She cries, under the wine eiderdown, bitterly repentant. But does not change her mind. Reads _Paradise Lost_ , sneezing.

_Memorybank Movie: Ella_

Morag is daring the world of the elect, those who run the college newspaper and who in the literary section print mainly selections from their own prose and poetry. Her story is concealed inside the first volume of Taine's _History of English Literature_ which she holds nonchalantly under her arm. In the _Veritas_ office, she finds herself standing awkwardly beside a short rather stocky girl with auburn hair. The girl, who is Ella Gerson, is in Morag's year but they have not spoken before. Ella is holding a copy of _Das Kapital_ nonchalantly under her arm.

"I'll bet," Morag says, grinning, "you've got a poem or something stashed away inside _that_."

Ella looks, at first, amazed. Then strikes a hand across her forehead in what later comes to be known as the Sarah Bernhardt gesture.

"Good God!" she cries, although not so loudly that anyone else can hear. "My guilty secret has been discovered. How'd you know?"

Morag holds up Taine.

"Short story."

"Oh. Well, hell, and I thought I was being so original."

"I wouldn't have thought of _Marx_ ," Morag says admiringly.

"If you'd been me, with _my_ mother, you would've," Ella says.

They wait some more. Hoping to catch the eye or polite enquiry of one of the in-group. No dice. Cacophony surrounds them. Slender blonde girls with breasts bouncing under Shetland wool sweaters dash past bearing copy. There are cries of _Who's gonna make up Page Five?_ and other technical terms, which fail to impress Morag, as she understands their meaning. Should she offer her services? They'd laugh, probably, to hear about the _Manawaka Banner_. She thinks of Lachlan with a fondness she never felt for him when she was there. The _Veritas_ editor, Mark Trilling, strolls past, pipe clenched in teeth, frowning in leonine fashion, as befits one in this high calling.

"Ah, the heck with it," Ella says, snapping her fingers. "I'm gonna mail it in."

"Yeh, me too, I guess," Morag says. "I don't trust the mail, though."

They go to the coffee shop and brood over cups which neither inebriate nor cheer.

"You gotta begin somewhere," Ella says.

"That's just it."

"Even if it's only that crumby excuse for a paper."

"Exactly. Well, they don't know what they've just passed up."

They both despise _Veritas_ now, and will continue to do so until something of theirs is printed therein.

They show each other their work. Ella's is a poem, part of a long narrative poem about the Jews in Europe during the war. Auschwitz. Buchenwald. It is written with such an openness of love and bitterness that Morag for a while can't make it jibe with Ella's flippancy in speech, which, she now sees, is as determined a cover as her own.

"Did you have relatives–"

"Yes," Ella says. "But it would've been the same if I hadn't."

Ella does not live very far from Morag's place, as it turns out. "Want to come over sometime, Morag? Your boardinghouse sounds like a whole load of shit."

"I'd really love to come over. But my place–it isn't so terrible. Mrs. Crawley's okay, but just kind of defeated, you know."

"Yeh. I know all right. Lumpen proletariat."

When explained, the term seems unfair, in Morag's view. She says so.

"Whatever gave you the idea I was fair, for God's sake?" Ella shouts.

Then they both laugh. Morag tells–can she? she does, though–about Christie and Prin, and about the town. Some, anyway. It is a world which to Ella seems about as warm and inviting as living six feet deep in a snowdrift.

"How could you _take_ it?" Ella asks.

"Tell me how I could do anything else."

This is a point of view which Ella instantly recognizes.

"Yeh. That's so. Let me read your story, now?"

Morag hands it over. As it is longer than a poem, the waiting period is prolonged. Morag smokes five cigarettes. In comparison with the reach of Ella's poem, the story is pure unadulterated crap. She longs to snatch it back. But longs even more to know what Ella thinks of it. It concerns a young farmer during the drought, who nearly gives way to despair, but who finally determines to stay alive and to stay with the land.

"I think it's good," Ella says.

"No kidding?" Morag says hungrily. Then reality sets in once more. "The trouble is, I can see that the ending is kind of implausible, the way I've set it up, but I don't know what to do about it. Not yet, anyway."

"Implausible, nuts," Ella says. "Lots of people did stay, didn't they?"

"Oh sure, but–"

"The barns weren't overcrowded with hanged farmers, were they?"

"Well, no, but–"

"It would have been more implausible," Ella declares, "if you'd had him going through with the rope on the rafter bit."

A friend for life, Ella. Even though Morag knows the story is badly flawed and suspects that Ella knows, too.

"You really think so?"

"Sure. Did you–I mean, did you ever know anyone like that, Morag?"

"No. It's not based on anyone real."

And yet, in a way, it is. She sees the distortion and sees why the story had to end this way. The child, in some way, although without realizing it, saving the father's life. The father going on living. Could it have ended any other way, the story? No. Anyway, the child isn't her. She realizes almost with surprise that this is true. The child _isn't_ her. Can the story child really exist separately? Can it be both her and not her?

Ella is looking at her oddly.

"What's the matter, Morag?"

"I–don't know. Sometimes I get–well, scared. I don't feel all that normal."

Ella shrugs.

"So–who wants to be normal, anyhow?"

"I do," Morag says with passionate conviction. "Oh Ella, _I_ do. I want to be able to talk to boys the way they want to be talked to. Only I can't seem to get the trick of it."

"Boys like that are schmucks," Ella says furiously. "But yeh, I know what you mean."

"You too?"

"Yeh. I went out with this guy a coupla weeks ago, and I thought _Now this is It. Here is your opportunity, oh Ella bella._ So what did Ella the schlemiel do? Did she tell him how masterful and handsome he was? Not she. Oh no. She began talking in her winsome way about Marx's theory of polarity. Why? Why? I'll never see _him_ again."

"Well, then, why?" Morag is laughing, but not in mockery.

"I don't know," Ella says gloomily. "It just seemed so phoney, somehow, all that whole mutual flattery bit. And why should I pretend to be brainless? I'm not brainless."

"I know," Morag says. "And yet I envy girls like Susie Trevor so much that I damn near hate them. I want to be glamorous and adored and get married and have kids. I still try to kid myself that I don't want that. But I do. I want all that. _As well._ All I want is everything."

Ella strikes a theatrical wrist to her forehead. "Engrave it on my tombstone."

Morag goes often to the Gersons' house after this occasion. A small white-painted house, always full of people. Ella's father died several years ago, and Mrs. Gerson now keeps on the bakery, working there during shop hours and coming back at nights to make dinner for her three daughters.

Mrs. Gerson is a tall strapping woman whose voice is brisk and bossy but also loving. She does not complain about the large amount of work she has to do. It never occurs to her that it _is_ large. Her daughters are her life. She considers herself blessed.

"A nice house like this," she confides to Morag, "I never thought I would have. You should only have seen the place where me and my husband lived when we first married, in Poland, that was. A hovel. I could tell you things."

She stomps out, evenings, to left-wing meetings. If she can bring up her daughters to be socialists, she will not have lived in vain.

"Ella, she's okay in that way," Mrs. Gerson says, "but Janine and Bernice I sometimes doubt."

The girls shout with laughter.

"Mumma, you wait until I marry a rich insurance man or like that," Janine says, "and you won't turn down a little luxury. A mink coat, maybe?"

"A mink coat, who needs it? I'd die of shame to be seen in such a thing."

Ella is the middle daughter. Janine is at High School. Bernice is a hairdresser. Both Janine and Bernice, like their mother, have dark hair.

"Ella, can I ask you something?" Morag says.

"Ask. I'm inscrutable, but ask."

"How come your hair is auburn? Did your father–" Laughter from the Gersons.

"Poppa would love that," Ella says. "No. Bernice did it. It was supposed to turn out blonde. That was part of the Glamour Campaign, see? This new advanced technologically perfect method."

"Such nonsense," Mrs. Gerson sniffs. "I told her, you don't like the colour God gave you? You think you can improve on it?"

Mrs. Gerson believes in God and Marx simultaneously, and is not dismayed by her daughters' suggestion of disparity in such a dual faith.

"You don't _dye_ the hair," Ella goes on. "You sort of bleach it. Only when Bernice got mine down to its basic element, here I was this colour."

"I thought it was really lucky," Bernice says. "Blonde would've only made you look cheap, anyway."

"And who says I am so expensive?"

"Brat."

But Bernice, queenly and twenty-three, is their oracle in the area of beauty. Bernice knows which shade of nail polish to wear with which colour of dress. Bernice knows perfumes and lipsticks and shampoos like she knows her own name. This is great, from Morag's point of view, but she soon realizes that it has given Ella the feeling of being a hopeless incompetent. As Bernice prattles on about egg-and-lemon shampoos, the new Tropicoral lipstick and nail-polish set, and the best way of removing facial hair, Morag and Ella give each other the Sarah Bernhardt gesture, meaning in this instance, woe. They will not, they feel, ever attain the status of high priestesses at Beauty's Altar. They will, indeed, be lucky if they get even one foot inside the temple door.

"You're crazy, both of you," Bernice says disgustedly. "I don't know what you're complaining about. You could both be _gorgeous_ if only you'd put your minds to it."

"Our minds are on higher things," Morag suggests.

"Listen, higher than a man's belt buckle Ella's mind never yet got," Bernice declares, "and I bet you're not any different, either, Morag. Want me to do your hair? Look–it's lovely, that real shiny black, but the way you wear it–those braids over your head make you look like an old-maid school-teacher. No kidding."

"Now, Bernice, you leave the girl alone," Mrs. Gerson says severely from the kitchen, where she is ironing. "She's right–her mind _is_ on higher things. She studies. Reads. Not like some people, you know what I'm talking, who quit after Grade Twelve and turn themselves into such a _lady_ they can't even hang up their own nightgown, what a lovely way to be, such encouragement to give a young girl, who needs it?"

"That is Mumma's Bernice Speech Number One," Janine murmurs. "Next comes a brief rundown of the entire Russian revolution."

"Such disrespect."

Mrs. Gerson slaps the iron down on the ruffled blouse and irons furiously. She in fact adores Bernice and stands in admiring awe of her daughter's prowess in the beauty game. She complains proudly about the house being cluttered up with Bernice's boyfriends. She feeds them egg-bread and bagels and strudel and coffee in huge quantities until Bernice, embarrassed, tells her to lay off–it looks like she's feeding them up for the slaughter. She then goes to the other extreme and starts chatting to them about the iniquities of the City Council–all quite true, but it does not make a hit with Bernice.

Bernice does Morag's hair–a home permanent, because Morag cannot afford to go to Miss Bonnie, where Bernice ministers to the better-off. When the apparently endless process is finally over, Morag looks at herself in the long mirror in the Gersons' bathroom. Her hair is still quite long, and falls darkly shining into a pageboy style, very little curl, just enough to make the hair curve under. She feels peculiar. Not like herself. Yet better. Hopeful?

"Hey, it's terrific," Ella cries. "It looks like a million bucks."

Janine and Mrs. Gerson add their fulsome praise. Bernice, looking proud, says that she knew all along it would turn out lovely.

Morag has never known anything like this kind of house before. Its warmth is sometimes very much harder to take than any harshness could be, because it breaks her up and she considers it a disgrace to cry in front of anybody. When she finally admits this, out of necessity, the girls leave her tactfully alone. Not so Mrs. Gerson.

"Mumma, come _here_ ," Ella hisses.

"I know what I'm doing," Mrs. Gerson says adamantly.

She marches into the bathroom, where Morag has not thought of locking the door.

"So, what's the disgrace, Morag? Look at me–didn't I spend maybe half my life crying? It never meant any disgrace. It never meant I couldn't mop up, after, and blow my nose a little, and get back to work. So cry, child."

Morag Gunn, nearly twenty, five-feet-eight, grown-up, puts her head down on the shoulder of Ella's mother and cries as if the process had just recently been invented. What the hell is she crying about? Because of the unreal stab of hope she felt when she looked in the mirror? Because she fears she can't carry through with the New Her, and because in some ways she doesn't even want to? Because it shouldn't all be necessary but it is? Because she never knew until now that she has missed her mother as much as her father, for most of her life? Because she thinks of Prin and feels ashamed at not wanting to see her? Because she wants her own child and doesn't believe she will ever have one? Because she wants to write a masterpiece and doesn't believe she will ever write anything which will even see the light of day?

Because life is bloody terrifying, is why.

And under the tears, much deeper, Morag sees now why she feels close to Ella's mother. It is not only Mrs. Gerson's ability to reach out her arms and hold people, both literally and figuratively. It is also her strength. Morag doesn't know yet if she herself has the former ability. If she doesn't, it will go badly for her. Because she knows she has the latter. How is it she can feel totally inadequate and yet frightened of a strength she knows she possesses?

Flash–flash–all these thoughts like neons flickering on and off in her head while she sobs ludicrously on Mrs. Gerson's shoulder. Finally straightens up and blows her nose.

"Now, you'll have a nice little bit of dinner with us," Mrs. Gerson reassures, "and then you go home and you don't study tonight, eh? You relax a little, you read a book for pleasure, you don't have to think of an essay on it."

This magic combination is Mrs. Gerson's remedy for most of the psychic ills to which the human skull is prey. After the gefilte fish, Dostoevsky's _The Idiot_. What could cheer you up more?

Ella's ma has adopted Morag in some way or other, and is going to give her the same benefits as her own daughters receive. Cannily, she leaves the HCPSU (History of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union) until later on. For now, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Turgenev.

"Take, take, we're not in a hurry to have them back."

Thus it is that Morag Gunn sets a tentative and cramped toe inside the Temple of Beauty at the same moment as she first truly realizes that English is not the only literature.

_Memorybank Movie: Brooke_

The New Image, courtesy of Bernice, does not actually alter Morag's social life out of all recognition. Still, she is asked out several times, albeit by boys in whom she is not interested. She feigns interest, though. Aims to please. She would go out with Dracula if he asked her, probably. This a despicable attitude to have. She has it. It is not the loneliness of not going out which she cannot bear. She is in fact rarely lonely when alone. It is the sense of being downgraded, devalued, undesirable. She knows men feel pain, too. But does not yet wholly believe it, having never really seen it, except in Christie. Or Lazarus. Or Lachlan. Or, in some way she doesn't understand, Niall Cameron. But like Christie, their pain seems in another dimension, pain perceived frighteningly by her, scarcely to be looked at. Also, not immediately relevant to her situation. They are old and she is not.

What about Jules? Yes. Sometimes she thinks of him, and remembers how it was, and wonders where he is and how he is getting on. But will not will not think of it much. Refuses to think of it.

She discovers, not greatly to her surprise, that the location of her boardinghouse does little to enhance her popularity. Once a boy finds out that she lives half-a-mile from the end of the streetcar line and he has to flounder back out again after taking her home and wait for the next streetcar in the midst of a semi-blizzard or the icy stillness that sometimes puts frost straight into the bloodstream–he usually never asks her out again. Then, too, the Crawleys' arctic front porch cannot be called the ideal place for necking. Morag feels herself burning up with a sweetly uncomplicated lust the moment she is touched by a man. She is not modest or shy about having her breasts or inner thighs felt up, nor is she unwilling to press herself against him and feel the hardness of his cock inside his grey flannels. This she knows is called _leading him on_ , which is not honourable on her part, as she is too scared ever to allow him inside her. Scared not of sex but of getting pregnant. She suffers the lack of real sex as much as he does–at least, if he suffers more, he must really suffer _plenty_. Both, no doubt, have the same solitary solution. If he, however, knew this about her, he would scorn her forever. Unfair, but factual. Passion, however, is curbed to some degree by the Crawleys' porch in mid-February. She cannot ask the boy into the livingroom. What if one of the Crawleys woke and came downstairs? There appears no solution except to move. This she is now afraid to do in case it should turn out to be: (a) no better; (b) worse; (c) not the porch but herself, insufficiently alluring.

"I make boxes for myself," she tells Ella, "and then I get furious when I find I'm inside one. Do you think it'll be a lifelong pattern?"

"I don't know," Ella says honestly, although obviously she would have preferred to be reassuring.

Ella's poem comes out in _Veritas_ and Morag is nearly as glad as if it had been her own. Also, unbearably depressed.

"Did you mail them your story?" Ella asks.

"Yeh. But I don't imagine they'd bother returning it. I mean, think of the postage."

Why did she submit it under her own name? Imagine writing _Morag Gunn_ in cold blue ink.

"At this moment," Morag says, "my life seems odious. Apart from your poem getting in, I mean."

"Well, even with that," Ella says, "mine is not exactly one huge barrelful of chuckles."

They stamp snowbooted tweedcoated down the street to Ella's, singing, not caring who hears.

There'll be a change in the weather

And a change in the sea,

And most of all there'll be a change in me,

'Cause nobody wants you when you're old and grey–

There'll be some changes made Today

There'll be some chay-ay-anges made.

They cannot imagine ever becoming old and grey. Simultaneously, they live every day with the certainty of this fact, and with the fact of their own deaths. They seldom discuss this strange presence. There is no need. They know it from one another's writing. It is the unspoken but real face under the jester's mask. They do not pry, nor do they invade each other's areas of privacy. They simply recognize the existence of these.

Morag goes alone into the cafeteria after a late class. Very few people there, she is glad to see.

"Hello, Morag Gunn. Come here."

She looks, and it is Dr. Skelton, who teaches the Seventeenth-Century Poetry course and the Milton course. He is English (from England, that is) and has an impressive accent. He is also about ten feet tall–well, six-four anyway, and with a fine-boned handsomeness that gives him an aristocratic look, or what Morag imagines must be aristocratic. He wears dark framed glasses, which suit him. He's not terrifically old–in his thirties. His hair is prematurely grey and there is something nice about that, with the youngness of his face. He is, of course, swooned over by various birdbrained females in the class who couldn't care less about John Donne but just go to twitter over Brooke Skelton. Morag, who secretly thinks he is a prince among men, scorns such obvious ploys, although when she can think of some reasonably intelligent comment or question, she speaks it. She has never spoken to him out of class. In the cafeteria, he is always surrounded by his clutch of disciples, who hardly allow the poor guy a second's peace over a cup of coffee. Morag has sometimes wanted to join them, but pride forbids.

"Hello, Dr. Skelton."

He motions to a chair, and she sets her coffee on the table beside his. In his hand is a copy of _Veritas_. Today's. She hasn't seen it.

"I've just read your story," he says, smiling.

Morag snatches the paper from him, now unaware of his presence. There it is. _Fields of Green and Gold_ by Morag Gunn. They've certainly set it up rotten–about a million typographical errors, and why did they have to use that airy-fairy type for the title? The story itself. Hm. The ending is rubbish. How could she?

She becomes aware again of Dr. Skelton. What must he be thinking. Amused?

"I quite liked it," Dr. Skelton says. "In fact, I thought it extremely promising."

" _Really?_ "

"Yes. Really. Are you so surprised?"

"I'm astounded," she says, truthfully.

"The ending is sentimental, I think," he says, "but–"

"I know. I know it is. The story needs to be rewritten."

"Well, if you'd like me to take a look at any more of your stories, I'd be happy to do so. I might be able to point out a few things which would be helpful."

"Thanks. Oh–thank you."

She must not gush. She clamps her mouth shut. Dr. Skelton smiles, easily, as though if she has been awkward, he hasn't noticed.

"I'm generally free on a Thursday, after four. You can come up to my office then, if you like."

Morag phones Ella in the evening. They talk for one hour, approximately, about this strange happening. Mr. Crawley, timid though he usually is, comes and stands beside the phone, finally, making gestures at his watch, so Morag has to hang up. She goes to her room. Stays up until three in the morning, writing another story. This story is totally unsentimental. Also, totally worthless. She perceives that not even for Dr. Skelton can she write a story which wasn't there to be written. A humbling thought, but not daunting.

Nothing will ever daunt her again.

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread

Our eyes, upon one double string.

Dr. Skelton glances up at the class.

"What would you say that Donne meant by this metaphysical image? Miss Gunn?"

The only thing that daunts Morag is her sudden realization that she wants greatly to make the right comment so as to impress Dr. Skelton. Is there such a thing as _the_ right comment? Watch it, girl. But when she begins talking, Donne's lines take hold of her, and she forgets about everything else, even the curious eyes of classmates, who always gawk at anyone who opens their mouth in class.

"I thought it was pretty difficult at first," she says, "and maybe I don't really get it, but it seems to me if you can get inside the image, sort of, then it's amazing that anyone could catch in words that kind of closeness–I mean, two people who love each other are separate individuals, but they're both seeing everything, including themselves, through the other person's eyes. At least, I think that's what it means, partly."

"Good," Dr. Skelton says.

But before he can go on to make his own and more complex comment, Morag rushes in once more.

"What I can't understand about Donne, though, is how he can write lines like that, really terrific, and like in some of the Holy Sonnets–'Death, be not proud,' for instance, and–well, I think he's the greatest poet I've ever read, just about, but how is it he can know so much about people's feelings and then write so many cruel lines?"

"Which cruel lines did you have in mind?" Dr. Skelton enquires, looking surprised.

The class is beginning to enjoy this. Morag is beginning not to enjoy it. But will not stop now–pride forbids it.

"Well, like 'For God's sake hold your tongue and let me love.' That's a very cruel line. Supposing the lady had been able to write poetry–I mean, you wonder what she might have said to _him_."

"You would not take it kindly, Miss Gunn, to be asked to hold your tongue?"

Laughter from the class. Morag's face feels unpleasantly warm–does it show?

"No. No, I would not."

"Well, quite right, too," Dr. Skelton says, seriously, frowning a little at the class's general levity. "But Donne, surely, must be seen as a man of his historical time."

"Oh, of course. I understand that. But you can accept it with Milton, better, somehow, despite all those really awful things he says–'He for God only; she for God in him.' You think, well, he was all bound up with so many things that were going on in England at the time, and where people's feelings were concerned, except his own, maybe he just didn't know any better. But–well, you wouldn't have expected it of Donne, so much."

"You admire his poetry to a large enough extent that you would like to admire all his concepts as well?"

"I guess so. Yes."

"But concepts were different then."

"Yes. I–guess so."

"I'm not sure that particular theme is really integral to an understanding of Donne's poetry," Dr. Skelton says. "But on the other hand, it can only be a good thing to care enough about a poet's works to want to go back in time and discuss the matter with him. Which is what you almost seem to want to do, Miss Gunn."

Morag considers. Then smiles.

"That's right."

The class convulses. Laughter is rampant. Which does not matter at all, because Morag is well beyond the reach of it.

Morag is sitting in Dr. Skelton's office. He is leaning back a little in his swivel chair behind his desk. He has just finished reading one of Morag's stories, and is thinking what to say about it. The story is about an Austrian nobleman who comes to this country complete with the peasants from his family's lost estate and who tries to create a replica of that feudal system here. Needless to say, he does not succeed, and his end is both nasty and mysterious.

"Quite frankly, it seems a little implausible to me, Morag," says Dr. Skelton, who has taken to calling her by her first name out of class.

"Yes, I guess so. That's my fault for not being able to do it properly. Because it's based on something that really happened."

"Good Lord–where?"

"Up Galloping Mountain way."

"I like your idiomatic expressions," Dr. Skelton says, smiling.

Morag draws herself away from the desk. Country girl. Up Galloping Mountain way indeed. Illiterate.

He sees her face.

"Did you think I meant that sarcastically, Morag? I didn't. Your speech has a directness which one often does not encounter in academic circumstances. Where do you come from?"

She does not say.

"Oh–nowhere, really. A small town."

"Your family lives there?"

"I don't have any family, actually. I was brought up by–"

By no one. She cannot speak Christie's name, Prin's name.

"I was brought up by some friends, well, acquaintances of my parents," she finishes. "They're no relation to me. My parents died when I was very young."

"You seem very calm about it," he says, looking at her as though from a great distance, behind his glasses. Then his face relents and she sees that what she has taken for disapproval is in fact a kind of admiration.

"It happened when I was really very young," Morag says. "I don't remember it. Or at least hardly at all. I guess I was too young to be affected much."

Untrue. But she does not want to pose as brave, which would be even more untrue.

"And these–acquaintances who brought you up?"

"We were never–close."

"Have you had a lonely sort of life, Morag?" His voice is not prying; he needs to know, though, for some reason.

"In a way, I guess. Perhaps no more than most."

Dr. Skelton smiles, as though touching her, not in either amusement or pity.

"You're proud, I would guess. Am I right?"

"I can't bear pity," Morag says.

Dr. Skelton's face is no longer smiling.

"You needn't worry," he says. "You'll not get that from me, ever."

Ever? That is a long time. She does not feel able to interpret him.

"I had a relatively solitary life myself, as a boy," he says. "I was born in India. My father was Headmaster of a boys' school not far from Calcutta. Church of England school. I was pretty much alone as a youngster."

"But if it were a boys' school–"

"No. I didn't go to school there. I was sent to England to boardingschool when I was six."

"That's–awful. Like that kid in that Kipling story, 'Ba Ba Black Sheep.'"

"Not quite like that," Dr. Skelton says. "I wasn't so easily browbeaten. Nor quite so shortsighted, either. I liked the school once I got used to it. Still, in retrospect, I don't remember childhood as a golden era."

"It must be interesting to have a past like that, though," Morag says, regretting the naive words as soon as they are uttered. "I mean, India and like that."

"Fascinating." Dr. Skelton grins. "Exotic as all hell. Don't hunch up your shoulders, Morag. I didn't mean that as any slur against your response. It _was_ interesting. I loved India as a child. I used to go back on holidays. I still miss it. What sort of a past do you feel yours was, then? Or perhaps you're still too young to have considered it very much."

"I'm twenty," Morag says. "Or nearly. I don't feel–I don't know, I just feel as though I don't have a past. As though it was more or less blank."

She will not–she will _not_ –tell him about the town, and Christie, and all. Scavenger Logan. No. Not ever.

"That's a strange thing to say, Morag. Almost more interesting than having a past."

"You mean– _An aura of mystery surrounded her_?"

They laugh. Morag feels she has never felt so close to anyone before, except of course Ella, which is different.

"Come on, mysterious one," Dr. Skelton says. "I'll drive you home."

"You can't. I live away to hell and–I mean, my boardinghouse is away out in the North End."

"No matter."

The car finally skids and slithers successfully through the snow, and they reach the Crawleys' house.

"You were right," Dr. Skelton says. "It _is_ away to hell and gone. Why do you live here?"

"It was the first place I looked at, and I thought I wouldn't find another. Now I don't like to move. They're nice people."

"I like you, Morag." He reaches up and removes her glasses, simultaneously removing his own. "Life has many hazards for the not-fully-sighted–have you noticed?"

He then kisses her. It is not a friendly or teacherly salute. It is knowledgeably hard, his tongue exploring her mouth, not coolly or hesitantly but with insistence. Morag responds, as usual, instantly, but more so than ever before. If he should ask her to strip in the exposed and icy car and make love with him here and now, no holds barred, she would do so.

Dr. Skelton breaks away. Heavy breathing from them both. "I've wanted to do that for quite a while," he says. "Here–have a cigarette."

Cigarettes for safety. Morag, shaking, takes one.

"Dr. Skelton–"

She stops. You cannot call a man Dr. Skelton when he has just kissed you with his entire body.

"Brooke," Brooke says. "At least, out of class."

He sounds miserable, and she enquires with her eyes.

"Oh, nothing," he says. "It's just–well, goddamn, I'm thirty-four and you are a child."

"No," Morag says clearly. "I am far from a child, Brooke–you know that."

"Do I? When you're fifty, I'll be sixty-four. You wouldn't be happy."

"I would. I would. I've never before–"

"You seem very sure."

"I am," Morag says. "I always am, over things that matter. I always know. But what–what do you _like_ about me?"

He kisses her some more before replying.

"What do I like about you? I don't even think I can say. You're not exactly beautiful, but you will be. I don't know. You've got a kind of presence."

He laughs, as though being serious is a treat at the moment.

"Perhaps it's your mysterious nonexistent past," he says. "I like that. It's as though you are starting life now, newly."

Morag's feelings exactly. Now, however, now that it matters, she would like to tell Brooke everything, to make sure. Clowny Macpherson. Piper Gunn and the Bitch Duchess. Gunner Gunn and the War. The snapshots. Christie ranting the Logans' war cry, the pathetic motto and crest. The Nuisance Grounds. Prin, so long ago. The valley–the Tonnerre shack.

No. _No._

"You'd better go now, Morag," Brooke says gently. "Go now, my dear. If you stay here, I'll turn the car around and drive you back to my flat, and that wouldn't be a good idea."

Why not? But she does as he says. His car chuffs off through the loose whiteness of the road.

If she cannot be with him from now on, and live with him inside her and outside her in every way, she will not be able to bear the pain. She is all at once without shame of any kind, totally unscrupulous in what she would do, totally vulnerable. She will do whatever he wants her to do.

It will never happen. He would never consider marrying anyone like her. If he knew where she had come from. Or if he knew what she was really like, for that matter. Could she be exactly what he wants? What does he want? She will find out. She will conceal everything about herself which he might not like. None of Christie's swearing.

It will be useless, though. It will never happen. He will change his mind. Or believe the age difference matters.

She is numb with too much hope, too little hope.

They are walking down Portage Avenue. Brooke reaches out for her hand. Students may see. This matters less and less.

"You know, love, you have a quality of innocence that's very moving," he says. "I don't mean naïveté. I mean genuine innocence. I'm not like that. I've lived too long for that, and in too many places. But it's a quality I love in you."

She wants to tell him she is not like that, either. She also has lived too long for that. The state of original grace ended a long time ago.

"Brooke–I think I should tell you about my childhood. All about it. I think I should."

He laughs a little.

"All right, if you really want to."

Brooke's apartment is the size of five minutes. A miniature livingroom with hideous pale mauve walls which the previous tenant fancied and which he cannot be bothered to repaint. Bookshelves everywhere. A worn sofa covered with a very large and elegant white Kashmir shawl with intricately embroidered flowers and strange unworldlike birds in coral and black and leafgreen. A leather chair. A table. Prints of Renoir and van Gogh on the walls. Some pieces of Benares brass–a vase, several bowls enamelled in soft turquoise and clear brilliant red, patterns of birds and flowers and leaves, from a world too far from this one. The kitchen is actually more of a large cupboard with sink and two-burner hotplate. The bedroom contains a large and beautiful walnut spool bed, Brooke's desk, an austere dresser. The bathroom is so small you couldn't swing a cat in it (if you should ever desire to engage in such an activity–where do these phrases come from?). Morag thinks the apartment ( _flat_ , to Brooke) is beautiful.

"Shall we have some sherry before you tackle the eggs and bacon, which is all there is here at the moment for dinner?"

"Please," Morag says, having recently learned to say, simply, _Please_ , instead of _Oh yes thanks I'd just love some_ , or, worse, _Okay that'd be fine._

"Now what's all this about your nefarious past?" Brooke says, smiling.

"Not nefarious. But–well–Christie and Prin Logan, the people who brought me up–"

" _Prin?_ "

"She was christened Princess."

Brooke bursts out laughing.

"No–it wasn't all that funny. She–they–were quite poor, you see, and–"

She cannot go on. She looks away from Brooke and sees Hill Street.

Brooke is holding her now. She realizes she is crying.

"Hush," he says. "Hush, love. Listen– _don't_ tell me. All I want to know is this–were they cruel to you? I mean, did they ever–well, mistreat you? Or did the man–you know–ever try anything?"

Morag stops crying instantly.

"No. Of course not. It was nothing like that. Nothing like that at all."

"Well," Brooke says, "it has been known to happen, you know."

"Yes," Morag says. "I know."

"You know in theory," Brooke says, "but you don't really know. My dearest love, you're very young."

She knows in more than theory, about some things. Vernon Winkler, as a small boy, being beaten by Gus. Eva crying in the dancehall, and the night that followed, and Christie taking the small unformed corpse (could it be called that? what would it have looked like?) and giving it burial. The valley, the snow and the fire.

"I don't think I ever felt all that really young," Morag says apologetically.

"Nonsense," Brooke says, holding her more tightly. "You were and _are_. That's one thing I love about you. You're serious, but you're happy, too. You've got a talent of laughter that's lovely and heartwarming. It restores me, and I love it."

"Brooke–I _am_ happy, with you. And anything else–Manawaka and that–it's over. It doesn't exist. It's unimportant."

"That's right, my love. Don't talk about it–it only upsets you. I only want to know you as you are now, my tall and lovely dark-haired Morag, my love, with your very touching seriousness and your light heart. Never be any different, will you?"

"Never. I promise."

Then they are exploring one another's bodies, and Brooke, lying on her, is hard and demanding, and she rises to him. Now neither of them wants to stop, or can.

"A damn sofa is no place to make love," Brooke says grimly, and despite themselves they both laugh.

The bed, true, is better. Morag feels no hesitance about peeling off her clothes. She is, in fact, undressed first.

"Let me look at you," Brooke says, when they are lying together. "Oh my love, you're so goddamn beautiful."

He, too, is beautiful. His long body is taut, spare, lean. His ribs can faintly be seen under the skin, and the hair on his chest is light browngold, the colour his hair was before it became grey. His cock is proud, long, ready, and she wants to touch it but wonders if he would think this too forward of her, so soon. He sees where her glance is, and smiles.

"Don't be alarmed, love," he says. "Women always wonder, the first time they see a man naked and erect, if there's enough room inside themselves. Well, there _is_."

"Yes."

The first time they see a man naked. Should she tell him? But she cannot. What would he think of her? But is she deceiving him? Perfidious Morag. If she tells him about Jules, he will leave her. She cannot. Would he understand? Would any man? She does not think so, and cannot bear to take the chance.

"Put your hands there, my love. There–that's good. You're not shy–you have no false modesty. I knew you wouldn't."

Then their skins are close and touching all over, arms and legs entwined around one another, close close. And then he breaks away and fishes a small purple envelope from under the pillow, and takes out the safe, and she looks away, all at once embarrassed at this intrusion of some world outside their two selves, a world of drugstore and smirks.

Soon it is all right again, though. But when he tries to go into her, and she wanting him with every blood vessel and muscle in her, it hurts her. She tries not to let on, but her body betrays her and she flinches. Brooke is desperate, hardly able to hold back but unable to go on hurting her. Then he collapses, away from her.

"Oh christ, Morag. I can't hurt you. I can't."

"Brooke–I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

She has failed him. He strokes her hair, her face, her breasts. Then lights cigarettes for them both.

"Hush, love. It doesn't matter. I shall just have to be–well, as gentle as I can, and patient."

"Brooke, I don't mind if it hurts the first time or so–"

He grins wanly.

"I'm not very experienced with virgins," he says. "Well, at least it's proof positive, isn't it?"

"What if I hadn't been?" she asks.

There is a chill in her voice which her own ears catch, but mercifully he does not seem to notice.

"But you _are_ , love, so the question doesn't arise, does it? Idiot child, I wouldn't have thrown you out on the street. I would've been–well, disappointed, I expect."

"Why, Brooke?"

Now she is remembering overhearing a conversation between two boys in the college coffee shop. _I was all set to throw her the ice and it wasn't one of your two-bit rings neither and then she gave in and whaddya know I wasn't the first on that road so I thought the hell with that jazz._

"I don't know, love," Brooke says. "I suppose I like to feel that it's something you've only experienced with me. It's–well, if I didn't care about you, I wouldn't feel that way, would I? I think most men would feel that way about their woman."

Their woman. Her clenched and doubting guts now dissolve with gratitude and care.

"Am I your woman, then, Brooke? For sure?"

He laughs and draws her close.

"For sure, my darling. For absolute bloody certain."

His wife, then? Morag would be willing to be his mistress, fancy woman, kept woman, moll, or whatever. Just so he doesn't leave her. Just so they can always be together, always and always.

"Brooke–I love you so much."

"And I love you so much, my love. Aren't you going to ask if I intend to make an honest woman of you?"

"Well, you haven't made a dishonest one of me yet. Not that that was your fault."

"Oh, it's like that, is it? You're asking for it, then, love?"

"Yes. Yes."

"Well, this time I'll make a dishonest woman out of you. Oh my love, just relax and try to trust me."

"I do trust you, Brooke. And I'll try–"

It still, however, hurts like hell. She wants only to focus upon him, upon the two of them together. But remembers how, in medieval times or somewhere, if the sheets weren't bloody, the bride was considered a disaster and a jezebel and might be sent packing home to Ma and Pa. Imagine being sent packing to Christie and Prin for that reason. Prin wouldn't understand what was going on. Christie would laugh his fool head off.

For one unbelievable and appalling second, Morag is suddenly homesick for Manawaka. Then the moment of inner-talk passes and she is again with Brooke.

"Brooke–"

"My love–oh God, I can't keep it any longer–"

And he goes off, inside deep deep inside her herownself and she is inhabited by him at last.

Afterwards, when they are their separate selves once more, they are not separate.

"Morag, listen, my love, it'll be better for you soon. It really will. I promise you."

"I know. I do know. And it was fine–it was fine, anyway."

"Morag?"

"Mm?"

"Listen, dear one. I've been offered a post in Toronto, full professor. Would you like Toronto, do you think?"

Would she like Toronto? Would she like Paradise? With Brooke, and away from the prairies entirely.

"Of course I would. Of course. Of course."

But so strongly does she feel about this response that her voice comes out like a croak. She clears her throat.

"Sorry. Frog in my throat. Oh Brooke–Toronto would be great."

Dramatic effect is somewhat marred, second time. Frog in the throat? What a gruesome expression. Who could ever have thought that one up? Ugh. Those clammy clambering teeny saurian legs in your _gullet_ , for God's sake? Worse, more hideous than crab-claws but why think of that now for heaven's sake, crabs another word for VD or is it lice? She doesn't know enough. Why think of any of that with the cleanest best man ever to walk God's earth? But why did he say _Women always wonder if there will be enough room in themselves_ , etcetera, and then said _Not much experience with virgins_. Well, no one would expect or want him to be a virgin at thirty-four and what a disaster it would've been if he had been. Crab is also Cancer the zodiac sign, Morag's sign, and they always say lucky in career but not so hot luck in love, although oriented towards children and family. What a load of garbage. But to have Brooke's children–that is what she now sees is necessary in the deepest part of her being. What a sign to have, though, Cancer, and why think of that in connection with a frog in your throat? Words words words. Words haunt her, but she will become unhaunted now, forevermore.

Brooke is lighting two more cigarettes and smiling at her.

"That's settled, then, I guess the spring would be a good time to be married, would you have thought, Morag?"

Yes. Yes. Anytime. How about tomorrow?

"Yes. It would be a really good time to be married, Brooke."

Then she thinks of something else.

"Shall I go on in university there, Brooke?"

He considers.

"Quite honestly, love, I don't know what to think about it. If you want to go on, of course you've a perfect right to do so. On the other hand, you might feel a bit awkward about attending classes, with your husband teaching there."

"I–don't know."

"Well, you won't need the degree. My salary won't exactly be princely, but I can afford to keep a wife. Why don't you audit some classes? Or simply read. Education isn't getting a degree, you know. It's learning, and learning to think."

True. Hm. And if she isn't attending classes, she will have time to read and also work at her own writing. And care for the house, naturally.

"Another thing, love," Brooke says. "What about seeing a doctor? I mean, a diaphragm would be better."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes. Definitely. More reliable. We don't want accidents."

Accidents. He means kids.

"All right, then, I will, Brooke. But I want a child of yours, Brooke. You know?"

He laughs, but very gently.

"My true love, lots of time for that. Let's not think of it now, shall we? Get yourself fixed up, won't you?"

"Yes. Of course."

The doctor's office is small and very dark. Probably in external fact it is normal-sized and normally lighted. When finally summoned Morag finds an unknown resource within herself and does not whisper, stutter or slump.

She explains that she is about to be married. The doc, oldish, with a thin tired face, fixes her with a beady raven's eye.

"Well, suppose you come back to me when you _are_ married, eh?"

What if she'd turned up with a Woolworth's brass ring on her left hand? He would not have turned a hair, likely.

"What if I get pregnant before–"

"Would that be the end of the world?"

No. No. It would be fine. For her. But but but. It has to be two people's decision. It would be difficult, moving to another city and that. Not to mention the money. None of which would bother Morag, but then she is not the one who has to worry about the money and all.

She leaves. She does not see whether the expression on the doctor's face is one of boredom, or resignation, or sympathy, or what.

In the waitingroom, going out, she finds herself powerful with fury. She goes to the reception desk and makes another appointment. For the day after her wedding.

Dear Christie:

I have something to tell you. I am going to get married. His name is Brooke Skelton, and he teaches English here in the university. He is an Englishman (I mean, from England) and is a really fine and wonderful man, and I am very happy. As I am not yet 21, I guess I would have to have your permission, although am I legally adopted by you? But I guess you would be classed as my guardian. I feel sure you will say okay, though.

We are not having a real wedding, just very quiet, so we're not actually having any guests, as it seems a waste of money. I hope you don't mind. I will come to see you beforehand, as we will be moving to Toronto soon afterwards. Brooke would just love to come along, also, but cannot, unfortunately, as he will have examination papers to mark and can't get away, but I will show you a picture of him, and no doubt he will write to you.

I hope this is okay with you, and I hope Prin is reasonably all right.

All the best,

Morag

Dear Morag–

Well you are getting married that is some news all right and I wish well to you and him. You know damn well I would not say no and it is your life and I hope all goes well too bad he is English and not Scots ha ha. Come home when convenient. Prin not good in herself these days.

Yours,

Christie

_Memorybank Movie: Hill Street Revisited_

The house is just the same, only worse. Perhaps Morag notices it more now. The sour smell is sourer. The exposed light bulb in the kitchen looks bleaker, dimmer, than before, the old sideboard more cluttered with newspapers and unironed clothes, Christie's shaggily upholstered chair more shabbily torn and worn.

"Hello, Christie."

He is fifty-six, only. He looks about seventy, his hair sparser than she recalled, his badly shaven jaw more tweedlike with sprouting hairs, his eyes less blue, more clouded. As expected, he also stinks. But has put on a relatively clean shirt for her visit. The effect is somewhat diminished by the fact that the shirt was made to wear with a detachable collar which has got itself detached permanently and is no doubt among the dustballs under a bed or sofa.

"Hello, girl. By all the saints, then, and by the lord Harry, and by the–"

"Yes. Well. How's Prin?"

"She's–she's took to her bed now, Morag. Doesn't rise, these days. Can't hardly manage to rise. She ain't old, you know."

"No. I know."

The hulk in bed is barely discernible under the thick welter of blankets and eiderdown. Christie pulls away the sheet from the face. Prin's skin is the colour of uncooked pastry, yellowish-white. Christie shouts, as though to penetrate the veil of the years which comes between Prin's mind and now.

"Here's Morag to see you, Prin."

The eyes flutter open, and a smile, small and faint as the ghost of a child, crosses the puffy lips.

"Morag–Morag?"

"Leave me be, with her, for a bit, Christie, will you, then?"

"Sure, girl. Whatever you say."

Morag sits down beside Prin's bed. Prin smiles again, trustingly, like a young girl about to be married.

Morag becomes different, in this house. Older, older. With Brooke she feels young, too young sometimes, ignorant. Here she feels too old, too knowing. She should stay here and look after Prin, look after both of them. But cannot. Will not.

"Prin, I'm going to be married."

The faraway eyes try desperately to focus on Morag's face, to understand.

"Marry? Morag–little girl."

A soft giggle from the mound, as though somewhere inside that skull there is the image of an unchanging little girl. Morag who will never grow up, never go away, never be different, always four or six years old.

No use. No use trying to explain. Morag reaches out and holds one of Prin's swollen hands, the left one on which the wedding ring has long been overwhelmed and lost in the fat flesh.

Then an odd thing happens. What causes this swift and then swiftly vanishing streak of almost pure lucidity? Do the very very old have flashes of pure and painful sight, sweeping senility away for a second's unbearable perception of everything, everything? Prin, the doctor says, is prematurely senile. Her voice, this instant, is as clear and sweet as it might have been when she was a young girl. But what she says is neither sweet nor, at first, clear.

"That Colin," Prin says. "He never done that for my Christie. Saved him, like. Or maybe he done it. I dunno. He was a boy, just a boy, and that scared. Poor lamb. The poor lamb. He would cry, and Christie would hold him. Sh-sh. There, there. It's all right now. He's all right now, that Colin. Ain't he?"

Then the shutters come down over the eyes again, and although Prin's eyes remain open, they are seeing something Morag doesn't see, the fields or faces from a long way back.

"Yes, he's all right now, Prin."

Colin Gunn. Christie's tale of Gunner Gunn and the Great War. How Colin saved Christie, staved off his dying, that time away out there, on that corner of some foreign field that is forever nowhere. It hadn't happened that way, then, or probably not. It had happened the way Prin said. Christie holding Colin in his arms. Colin probably eighteen. Eighteen. Amid the shellfire and the barbwire and the mud, crying.

After a while, Morag goes back to the kitchen. On the table is a pot of tea and two cups. She recalls the half-bottle of whiskey.

"Here–I brought this for you, Christie."

"Well, thanks a million, Morag. That was real kind."

Kind. Half a bottle of whiskey. Not even a whole bottle. They sit and drink in silence. Then Christie, slowly, begins and she is terrified lest he launch into one of the old rants. He does not, however, do so.

"Married, eh? When will it be, then?"

"In about two weeks, Christie. It's not a–I mean, it's just going to be very quiet–no one there, really–"

She has all the subtlety of a two-ton truck. He's not stupid.

"It's okay," Christie says, his voice suddenly cracking like fire. "I wouldn't turn up, Morag. Never fear. I'd have to borrow a suit from Simon Pearl, eh? Think he'd lend it to me?"

"Oh Christie–I'm sorry. I never meant–"

"Sure you meant," Christie says, pouring himself another huge slug of whiskey. "No need to fib to me, Morag. I have known you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. Listen here, now, don't worry. I can tell you plain, and without fear nor favour, and this is the Almighty God's almighty truth, and I'd swear the same on a stack of Bibles and on the blood and bones of the whole clan of Logans from the time of Adam–look here, it's a bloody good thing you've got away from this dump. So just shut your goddamn trap and thank your lucky stars."

"Do you really think that, Christie?"

"I do," Christie says, knocking back the whiskey. "And also I don't. That's the way it goes. It'll all go along with you, too. That goes without saying."

But it has been said. _The way it goes–it'll all go–that goes._ Does Christie bring in these echoes knowingly, or does it happen naturally with him? She has never known.

"You mean–everything will go along with me?"

"No less than that, ever," Christie says.

"It won't, though," Morag says, and hears the stubbornness in her own voice.

Christie laughs.

"Who says so, Morag?"

"I say so."

In some ways she would welcome one of their old arguments. But it is better to change the subject.

"Christie–how do you manage here?"

"I'm still working, for Christ's sake," he growls.

"I know. I meant–with Prin, and all."

"Oh–that. Eva comes in on Saturday and washes Prin and changes her bed and that. I can make do for the rest. Prin has to use the bedpan now. But hell's bells and buckets of blood, girl, if I can still heave around them trash barrels, I can heave around my own woman when need be."

Coals of fire on the head. He doesn't mean it that way. Or does he? With Christie you never ever really know.

"Eva–Winkler?"

"The same."

"Where–what's she–"

"Married one of the McKendrick boys–he farms out by Freehold. The family was that put out, you would have bust a gut laughing."

"You mean, _his_ family?"

"Of course. You wouldn't think old Gus Winkler would object, would you? He was glad to get rid of her."

"Did Gus ever find out? I mean–"

"No," Christie says, frowning. "It ain't ever talked about here, neither."

"You needn't worry. I wouldn't. Has she got a–is she–well, it's only a year."

"No kid yet," Christie says, "nor won't be."

"Who told you?"

"Eva did. They're going to adopt. She works her fool head off, that girl. Thinks she should be grateful to young McKendrick for marrying her. He knows, you see. She told him. She would. The Winklers was never well-known for their brains."

"I see. Oh Christie–"

"Yeh, it's a bugger all right. So you go, Morag, and don't look back, you hear?"

Eva, coming into town on Saturdays, coming here and bathing Prin, hoisting that whalewoman, unwholewoman, unwholesome flesh, wholly alone inside her lost mind.

"I hear, Christie. I'm–I'm sorry."

Christie's eyes take on almost the same blue sharpness they once had.

"Don't ever say that word again," he says. "Not to me nor to anyone, for it's a useless christly awful word."

"I can't help it."

"Nobody can't help nothing, Morag, so best shut up about it, eh?"

The next day she goes away again.

Brooke meets her at the bus depot.

"Was it all right, love?"

"Yes. But I missed you. I'll never go away from you again, Brooke. Never. Not even for a day."

They go to Brooke's apartment, and this time she wants him more than ever, and there is no apprehension in her, only the simple need to be with him and to feel him inside herself. His entry into her is gentle and fierce, and they are close close close.

"Brooke–Brooke–"

"Yes. Yes. My love–"

And then no words no words at all, and after all there are no words, none.

She wants, then, to tell him, to praise him. To let him know. But there isn't any need, because he knows. They lie very still and close together, still joined, not speaking. Both shaken by the mystery they have known.

_Memorybank Movie: Leavetaking_

Morag and Ella are skimming along the street on the way to Ella's house, and it is real spring at last and the time of the singing birds has come. The sidewalks no longer flow with torrents of muddy water, the ex-snow. Small leaves are beginning to appear on the elms and maples, and the winter-anaemic grass shows signs of recuperating after all. The little stucco or frame houses look barer, greyer, without the whiteness of the snow on and around them. In a few yards, people are painting their front doors or porches.

"Hey, Ella, what means _The voice of the turtle is heard through the land?_ "

"Well, you see, turtles have got this very soft croaking–well, more sort of creaking voices, heard only in spring. You have to listen very carefully. It helps to be a member of the Turtle Watchers' Association."

They are running running through the warm cool air, their laughter unabashedly loud, brash, brazen.

"Have you ever heard a turtle dove?" Ella enquires.

"Hell, no," Morag says. "I didn't know that turtles _did_ dove."

Suddenly Morag feels bereft, about to journey to a strange land, knowing no one there.

"Ella, I'll sure miss you. I feel–well, you know–at home at your place. We'll write–letters, I mean. We won't ever lose touch, will we?"

"Of course not," Ella says. "Of course not."

Then they look at each other, frightened that this will not prove to be so, that friendship may not be weatherproof. Or frightened that neither of them can know what will happen, or how many years are ahead, or what manner of years they may turn out to be.

"It's terribly good of your mother to have the reception, Ella."

"Her pleasure. As you know."

"Does she cry at weddings, your mother?"

"Like the Assiniboine in flood."

"Do you think it's kind of silly, for me to be married in white?"

"What's so silly? A nice virgin like you, white you deserve."

Laughter. Spring. Like kids. Running. Wisecracking. They are almost twenty, both of them. Will Morag be able to act like this, when she feels like it, after this day?

"Ella, I'm kind of scared."

"Don't be dumb. All right–change your mind, then."

"No. I didn't mean that."

"It happens to everybody, so I'm told. Quit worrying. Brooke's probably nervous too."

"Brooke's never nervous."

Is he?
**SIX**

**T** he air always cooled off at night here, with the breeze from the river, thank heavens. Morag turned on a small lamp on the sideboard and poured herself a careful scotch. Pure malt whiskey. Royalty cheque on small continuing sale of previous books received yesterday and this was the celebration. Or Thanksgiving libation, as the case might be. The case. Did anybody actually buy scotch by the case? Imagine sauntering into the liquor store and saying casually _I'll take a case of Glenfiddich_.

Morag sat down in the big old armchair beside the kitchen window. The chair she had purchased in McConnell's Landing for two bucks fifty, and Maudie Smith had cleverly and beautifully recovered it in grey felt embroidered with leaves and flowers in brash shades of pink and green. Damn Maudie for being able to turn her hand to anything. Or rather, bless her for being so generous with her time and her work.

On the scotch bottle was the motto of the Grant clan. _Stand fast._ Morag sighed. Didn't any of them ever have mottoes such as, let's say, _Take It Easy_ or _Rest Your Soul_? Nope. Stiffen the spine. Prepare to suffer, _but good_. The Logan crest with the pierced heart, ye gods.

She wished all at once that she could talk to Christie. As he had now been dead for some seven years, that was not exactly possible. How great if one could believe in a re-encounter beyond this ridge of tears. When They Call the Roll Up Yonder, I'll Be There. How Christie would laugh at that. Would there be a special corner of heaven, then, for scavengers and diviners? Which was Morag, if either, or were they the same thing?

But the need to talk remained. She had long ago given up feeling guilty about long-distance phone calls. She settled herself on the high stool beside the side-board, and dialled.

"Hello–Mort?"

"Hi, Morag. How _are_ you?"

She began coughing. It never failed when she began to speak to Mort, he being a doctor specializing in respiratory ailments and obviously not a champion of nicotine.

"Morag, I hate to mention it–"

"Yeh, I know. Mort, I have been trying to cut down."

"Listen, dear, I don't want to lecture you–"

"Mort, you never stop lecturing me. And you're right. You're right. Only I always cough worse when I begin talking to you. I'm addicted, and have the will-power of a flea."

"Some flea, she writes a shelf of books. Want to talk to Ella?"

Shrieks and snorts of young laughter in the background. Then Ella's voice.

"Morag–hi. How _is_ it? How _are_ you?"

"Well, not bad. How are you?"

Ella, who was presently raising five-year-old twins, had now four books of poems and was working on a fifth while also doing a certain amount of freelance radio work in her spare time. Good God, what spare time? Her first marriage, undertaken the year after Morag and Brooke married, had foundered. She had waited a long time for Mort. Now they were four people, a family.

"Oh, I'm fine, actually," Ella said. "It's going to be all right, but I get this feeling sometimes of living too many lives simultaneously."

"I know. Jesus, do I ever know."

"So what's with Pique, then?"

"She's coming home," Morag said heavily. "She phoned last night. I'm a bit apprehensive. I mean, I'm glad she's coming back. Naturally. But she's split up with Gordon."

"So?"

"So, did I pass _that_ on? I mean–what if she can't have any kind of lasting relationship?"

"It is not passed on with the genes," Ella said sternly. "Anyway, if you would kindly examine your own life, you would see that quite a few people have been lasting in it."

"Yeh. Most of them are dead, however."

"Morag. Listen. Christie is dead. Prin is dead. I am not dead. McRaith is not dead. The Smiths are far from defunct. Pique is with us. I could name you a dozen others, but I trust you get the point. Look, kid, why don't you come and stay with us for a while?"

_Kid._ The word they called each other, way back when. Meaning friend.

"Jesus, Ella, thanks. But I can't. I'm not alone all that much, and anyway, I've got to try to work."

"So _are_ you?"

"I don't even know. Yeh, I guess so. I always thought it would get easier, but it doesn't."

"No. It doesn't." A pause. Then, attempting cheerfulness, "By the way, my mother sends you her love. We had a letter today."

"How is she? I can't imagine her in retirement. Does she find it difficult?"

"You should know her better. Difficult, hell. She's a member of the New Left. Actually, yes, I guess she finds it difficult. But she manages."

"The New Left, for God's sake?"

"Well, it's not a _party_ , you know."

"Oh heavens, Ella, I know at least that much."

"More a way of thought. I don't imagine she is about to hoist a rifle and woman the barricades or that. She's learning a lot, though, she says. Bernice is embarrassed. Her husband doesn't approve of that kind of mother-in-law–better Mumma should be hovering over the grandchildren, forcing unwanted food down their gullets. Janine goes along with it, though, so that's a help."

Janine, last seen as a High School kid, how many years ago? Now producing TV plays, and, resolutely, no children. Bernice, ex-priestess of Beauty, a matriarch with six, assorted ages from twelve to twenty, she herself still avidly following the new shades of lipstick. Well, good for her. In a way.

"Give your ma my love when you write, eh? She'll survive until she dies. Well, maybe I will, too. I wish I didn't worry about Pique. It serves no purpose, but it's hard to break the anxiety habit."

"It'll be all right. You'll see. I'll phone you next week. Phone instantly if you–well, if the need arises, eh?"

"I will. Listen, I can hear the twins raising Cain–you'd best go. Thanks, Ella. I feel better."

This was true. Morag poured some more whiskey and sat looking out the window, with only one small lamp on in the kitchen, so she could see the night river with stars floating like watercandles in it. No sounds except the sometime shushing of wind through the light-leafed willows and occasionally the ghostfluttering of the wings of a flicker, hunting the moths that were clustering around the house windows, moths that always insanely wanted in, however dim the light inside.

How would Brooke remember those years? Not the same, obviously. A different set of memories from Morag's.

_Memorybank Movie: Raj Mataj_

The unfamiliar city frightens Morag. Too many cars. Too much noise. When they go out, she holds tightly to Brooke's arm. He laughs, but is pleased. The apartment is small, but beautiful in Morag's eyes. They have filled it with secondhand furniture which they have painted in startling colours, orange and royal blue, lemon yellow. Brooke's prints are on the walls, and the huge bookcases are filled to overflowing with his books. His desk is in a corner of the livingroom, and if he is working in the evenings, Morag sits quietly, reading, so as not to disturb him.

"Are you finished for the night, then, Brooke?"

"Yes, and about time, too. Twenty blasted essays I've marked tonight. You've a good girl, sweetheart, to sit there so quietly all this time."

"I don't mind. I was reading. Would you like some coffee now?"

"Please."

She is reading her way steadily through the novels on Brooke's shelves. English and American. Translations from French and Russian. Brooke is very good about discussing these with her. She is alone most days, and the apartment is easy to care for, so she has all the time she needs for reading. When they go out in the evenings, or when they have some of Brooke's colleagues in, Morag says very little, mainly listening. Picking people's brains.

Now Brooke sprawls tiredly on the chesterfield, stretching out his long legs onto the Indian rug which they have brought with them and which Brooke has had for a long time, having inherited it from his parents' home in England. Brooke's parents went back to England when they retired from India, and lived there until first Brooke's mother and then his father died, a few years before the war. By that time Brooke was teaching in Canada, so he had the carpet and a few other things sent out to him. He has not been back to India since he last went out on vacation when he was sixteen, just before his parents retired. He tried to get there during the war, but instead had spent the duration, infuriatingly for him, as an officer in an Army training camp in Quebec. He refuses to talk about this period of his life, because he hated every minute of it except when on leave in Montreal, where there were lots of women. He talks about India sometimes, though, and with a kind of muted and concealed homesickness. Morag wants to know everything about him, about his previous life, so that she will know all of him.

"Brooke, tell me more about the kind of place you lived in when you were very young."

He takes his coffee from her, and puts his other arm around her shoulders as she sits down beside him.

"What's this? A bedtime story?"

"That's it." She smiles, then doesn't. "It seems such a strange sort of childhood. Weren't you lonely?"

"Not especially. Not then. I played with the servants' children. I was allowed to, when I was small."

"Not later on?"

"Well, no."

"I think that's horrible," Morag says.

"Unfortunate, yes, probably. Just one of those things. It was the custom in those days."

"What was your house like?"

"I remember it," Brooke says slowly, "as a very large whitewashed establishment with a great many rooms, and garden which was almost a jungle, filled with purple bougainvillaea and–"

The way Brooke tells it, Morag visualizes a huge Victorian structure, white as alabaster with slatted wooden shutters drawn against the sun. There would be a wall, also white, around it, and in the garden a tumultuous variety of strange trees and flowers, greens and purples and scarlets in strange shapes. Bright-plumaged birds, unheard of here, would have strutted and swooped there, their voices raucous or else silver. Would it have been like that? Morag cannot ever know, not being able to see the pictures that must grow inside his head when he talks of it. She is glad, however, that he cannot look inside her head and see Hill Street, about which she does not talk.

"Wasn't it very poor, there? The country, I mean."

"Yes. Yes, it was. We didn't often go to Calcutta, but I remember some of the markets there, where they sold carved ivory and teak and brass and all manner of baubles to Europeans, and the beggars there–most of them crippled, all skin and bones. Sometimes they used to maim children purposely, to use them as beggars."

"That's terrible."

"Yes. It was."

His face is grave, almost apologetic, as though he has seen things he would rather she didn't know about.

"Is it better now, there?"

"Not a damn bit better," Brooke says bitterly. "Worse, if anything, I should think. Whatever anyone may say of it, the passing of the British Raj wasn't the answer."

"But Brooke–surely you can't believe it was right for them, the British, even for you, to have lived there like that, in that way, house and servants, while–"

Brooke puts his cup on the coffee table and strokes her breasts lightly.

"Little one," he says, very gently, "there is no real justice in this world. I don't say it was fair. It was just the best that could be done under the circumstances, that's all."

"But–"

"Hush, love. You don't know. You just don't _know_."

True. She does not know.

"What was your mother like, Brooke?"

He smiles, although not with amusement.

"It's odd," he says. "I remember her always, even when they'd retired to England, as a kind of shadow, a quiet grey shadow of a woman, never daring to raise her voice to him. When I was a youngster she used sometimes to make feeble efforts to intercede on my behalf, but it never worked. Never. Not even once. I suppose I resented that, at the time. It always seemed she ought to have been able to do something. I guess I felt sorry for her as well. He was a difficult man."

"What did he do? To you?"

Brooke shrugs.

"Well, he was a schoolmaster, remember, and very keen on discipline. He used to cane the boys at school–he reserved that pleasure for himself, incidentally, and never let any of the Indian teachers do it. He caned me, too, but he had subtler punishments as well. Caning was simple. Once he made me sit on top of a large steamer trunk, tied to it, actually, just outside the front gate of our compound, where everyone passing by, Europeans, and Hindus from Brahmans to outcasts, could see me. On my chest was a placard which read _I Am Bad_. Rather a gruesome sense of humour."

"Oh Brooke–"

He laughs.

"I was supposed to stay there until I begged for his forgiveness. What I'd done I can't remember now. He also thought he could make me cry–I remember being certain that was what he expected and wanted. I must've been nearly six. I didn't cry, though, and I didn't apologize. My mother wept buckets, as I recall, wringing her hands like someone out of a Victorian ghost story. Not that it did any good. Finally he had to cart me back inside."

"That's appalling, the whole thing."

"He was a charmer, all right," Brooke says, his voice cold. "Well, never mind. At least it taught me to stand up for myself."

"Yes, like dropping a kid in the ocean, half a mile out and saying–learn to swim. He might, but what a way to have to do it."

"It came in handy all the same," Brooke says, "when I went to boardingschool in England. If you weren't reasonably tough-fibred there, you were reduced to a quivering jelly in a very short time."

"You make it sound like prison."

"No, not really. I quite liked it, as a matter of fact, once I got used to it. There were awful things about it, but one learned how to cope with them. It was a military school, mainly for the sons of officers. It was considered a desirable place to attend. The boys there were all given ranks."

" _What?_ "

"It's true," Brooke grins. "I was absolutely determined I wasn't going to be pushed around. We used to have kit inspection and drill and things like that. I worked at it like fury. I was a Sergeant at the age of eight. What do you think of that?"

He is laughing, but Morag cannot. She stares at him.

"You can't mean it."

"Come now, love," he says teasingly, "don't take it so seriously. It wasn't so bad. I rather enjoyed it. I didn't mean to turn this into a horror story. It isn't."

"I think it was pretty awful of your parents to ship you off like that."

"They didn't have many alternatives. My mother didn't like it much, I suppose, although she never said so. Anyway, one thing I do know–I shall never be like my father was. Never. How his students must have railed inwardly against him. As I did."

"You couldn't possibly be like that in any way at all. Your students adore you. I did, when I was a student. I still do, although in a slightly different way of course."

"How–different?"

"Sexier."

"Well, that is what I call the beginning of a good bedtime story."

Nowadays, when they make love, they almost always come at the same time, and often sleep the night in each other's arms, still joined. Sometimes in the morning he is still inside her, and they separate slowly, reluctantly, but their inhabitance of one another never really ceases and never will.

"Brooke–couldn't we make love and not mind if we had a child? I mean, just let it happen if it will?"

He outlines her face with his hand, as though his fingers are memorizing it.

"Aren't you happy as we are, Morag?"

"Of course. Of course I am. You know that."

"Well, relax then, my love. Plenty of time."

That night Brooke does not sleep well. He is restless, turning away from her, and finally he begins moaning in his sleep, a weird low anguished voice, totally unlike his waking one. Morag puts a hand on him and finds the hairs on his chest wet with sweat.

"Brooke–wake up."

"What? What's the matter?"

"You were having a nightmare."

"Oh–was I? Thanks, love."

"Brooke–you were talking, sort of. I could only make out one word."

"Oh? What was it?"

"It sounded like _Minoo_. Is that a Hindi word?"

"It's–well, not exactly. It's a name."

"For a man or a woman?" She despises herself for asking this, and not unnaturally Brooke is annoyed.

"Oh for heaven's sake, Morag. It's a woman's name. I can't think what it meant. Now can we get some sleep, please?"

"I'm sorry, Brooke. I didn't mean–"

But he is asleep again. What does it matter? It doesn't. Morag does not own him or what goes on in his head, nor does she imagine he has not been with many women. If age sixteen, he would have been old enough. It would not matter at all, had he not sounded so hurt, in ways he would never admit to, when awake.

She wants to console him, for whatever it was, but how could you do that for hurts which must have gone deeper than he wants to know? He is enormously strong within himself. But once he wouldn't have been. Once he would have been a six-year-old who had to teach himself never to give in, never to reveal his pain. What was it really like for him, away back then? Why would he not say? If he cannot tell Morag, who can he tell? Perhaps no one.

This is a frightening thought. She pushes it away, but lies unsleeping for a long while, beside him.

_Memorybank Movie: The Young_

Morag Skelton, age twenty-four, has now lived in Toronto for four years. She is able to go downtown without getting hopelessly lost. She has long since learned the various colleges of the university, which city bookshops are the best, where to buy clothes that Brooke will like on her, and how to do verbal battle with hairdressers in order to achieve (even if only partially) the style she wants, without submitting to the outlandish creations which they always seem to want.

She does not venture downtown very often, because unfortunately the city still scares the bejesus out of her. She does not, however, mention this fact to anyone.

Her long straight black hair has been cut much shorter and permed in the prevailing manner of the day, described by Helen of Miss Helene as _just a few soft curls, Mrs. Skelton, and a little swirl over your brow_. She feels slightly peculiar each time she gets her hair done, but Brooke likes her this way, and she has to admit it does look more feminine.

She watches her diet carefully and is slender. She wears lightly tailored suits in the daytime, with pastel blouses, sometimes frilled. In the heat of the summer, cotton dresses with flared skirts. Her shoes have what is known as Illusion heels, so that she will appear to be wearing high heels without adding too much to her height. In the evenings, meeting academic friends, she goes in heavily for the little black cocktail dress, not necessarily black, of course. She looks smart.

She is a competent cook. Her apricot bread and peanut butter cookies are splendid, and her chocolate cake with fudge icing is beyond compare.

She reads a great deal.

She asks the janitor of the apartment block if people are allowed to keep cats. He says No.

She grows African violets, which are pretty, and potted parsley, which can be used as a garnish on such dishes as tomato jelly.

She writes short stories and tears them up.

One day she throws a Benares brass ashtray through the kitchen window.

Appalled, she flashes down to the back alley and retrieves the brass vessel. It is not dented. They made their brass to last, all right, out there in Benares.

She thumbs rapidly through the Yellow Pages, and phones five firms of repairmen, all of whom say they've got more jobs on their plates than they can handle in three months, lady, and very sorry.

It is February. The kitchen is growing icier by the minute.

The sixth attempt produces a repairman who puts in a new window pane. She pays him in cash and flushes the receipt down the toilet, having first ripped it into tiny shreds. All she needs is a blocked toilet right now.

That evening, she and Brooke have their sherry before dinner.

"Brooke?"

"Yes, love?"

"I don't think I have enough to do. I really think we should try to have a child, Brooke. Don't you see? I really want a child of yours."

Brooke refills his sherry glass and sits on the arm of the chesterfield, putting a hand on Morag's shoulder.

"I know, love, and I'm glad you do, believe me. But once you have a child, you'll be awfully tied down with it, don't forget. You're still very young for that kind of limited life."

"You, however," Morag says, "are thirty-nine."

Brooke laughs.

"Well, that's not quite senility yet, my love. Look, I appreciate how you feel, Morag. It's just that I don't think you quite realize how tied down we'd be. Also, a flat is hardly the place for a child."

"Why don't we get a house, then? I hate this damn apartment." Morag hears her voice speaking; she sounds like a spoiled child.

"I'm sorry to hear it," Brooke says, withdrawing his hand. "I always thought you liked the place. At least, that's what you said. I never realized it was such an ordeal for you to live here."

"Oh Brooke, I'm sorry. Honestly. I didn't mean it. It's just that–"

"Well, you know, my darling, one doesn't just step out and acquire a house. It requires a certain amount of money. We've saved a fair bit, but not enough for a down payment on a decent house."

"We could wait forever, though, and the circumstances would never be entirely perfect for having a child."

"Personally," Brooke says mildly, "I like it here with just the two of us. There's time enough to think of a child when we're able to get the sort of house we want. For now, isn't this all right? I feel awfully close to you, my love."

"Oh Brooke–I do to you, too. You know that. And I'm sorry when I'm unreasonable. Really I am. Please don't ever leave me, Brooke. I couldn't bear it."

He puts his arm around her.

"How could I ever leave you? You're mine. My woman. I'll be with you and protect you always."

Does she really want to be protected, always? If not, this does not seem to be quite the moment to say so.

"Brooke, do you think it would be a good idea for me to get a job?"

"By all means, if you really want to. What sort of job?"

"Oh, I don't know. A clerk in a store, maybe. A bookshop? Or a job in an office–I can type."

"I wonder if you'd really care for that kind of routine job, Morag? Go ahead and try it, if you think you'd like to, by all means. But typing business letters or doing filing all day wouldn't be my idea of fun."

Nor would it be Morag's as she now swiftly perceives.

"No, I guess I wouldn't care much for it at that."

"What about your writing? Have you given it up?"

"No. But everything I write seems bad."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of that? Have you got any stories?"

"One or two."

"Well, let's see them, then."

Morag reluctantly shows them to him.

"I think these are _quite_ good," Brooke says finally. "They certainly need a little polishing, and I'm not sure of the plausibility of either ending, to tell you the truth, but–yes, they're definitely worth working on, I'd say."

She is hungry for approval, but suddenly cannot take what he is saying.

"Brooke," she says in a hard voice, "they aren't any good. They're trivial and superficial."

He looks at her in surprise.

"Well, if you don't like them, love, then of course that's up to you."

He glances at his watch.

"My God, Morag, we'd better hurry with dinner. My Third Year Honours English students are coming around tonight–had you forgotten?"

"Oh Lord. I'm sorry, Brooke. I _had_ forgotten."

The students, two girls and six boys, troop in about eight o'clock. They drape themselves around the room, some of them sitting on the floor. Brooke sits in the one armchair. He is warm with them, calm even when they make ridiculous statements, dependably friendly and yet never making the error of trying to be one of them. They are confident and yet a little shy with him, arguing tentatively but willing to be convinced when he points out (always carefully, never stabbing any of them to the heart) the flaws in their judgements. Tonight Gerard Manley Hopkins is the subject of talk. Morag sits on a low stool by the window, occasionally chipping in but mostly listening.

"I can't help feeling," one of the boys says, "that at least some of the obscurity is done for its own sake–you know, really just to baffle the reader. A kind of intellectual game, the purpose of which–subconscious, no doubt–was to prove that Hopkins' intellect was superior to most."

"Well, let's face it, his intellect _was_ superior to most," Morag finds herself saying. "But you're right about the spiritual pride, which is what I take it you mean. And also self-pity, in a poem like 'Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord.' The point is, he _knew_ it. But you're wrong about the obscurity–almost always, if you can get inside the lines, you find he's saying what he means with absolute precision. 'Sheer plod makes plough down sillion shine'–I'm not sure it really does, but it couldn't be expressed more concisely and accurately. Or where he says 'No worst, there is none.' My God, think of that. There really _is_ none–"

She stops. There is silence. Embarrassment.

Then Brooke smoothly leads the discussion into different channels.

When the young have finally departed, Morag turns to Brooke.

"I shouldn't have butted in like that, Brooke. I _am_ sorry."

Brooke draws her close to him.

"Hush, child. It's all right. It doesn't matter a damn. Truly. Everybody makes exaggerated statements from time to time."

Morag abruptly pulls away from him.

"Brooke–"

"What's the matter? For heaven's sake, Morag, you're awfully touchy today."

"Brooke, I am not your child. I am your wife."

Brooke laughs, but partly in annoyance.

"Is that it? I've offended your pride? My God, Morag, can't you see I only used the word as an expression of affection? Remember how you and Ella used to call each other _kid_? What's the difference, except that I meant this a little more tenderly and in a different kind of relationship?"

Oh God. Quite true. And she has lashed out at him for it.

"Brooke, I'm sorry. I really must be unbalanced. I'm sorry. I love you, Brooke. I do love you."

"I know, my love. I know."

_Memorybank Movie: Spear of Innocence_

Morag begins writing the novel almost unexpectedly, although Lilac has been in her mind for some time. She has no idea where the character has come from. She has never in her life known anyone remotely like Lilac Stonehouse, the fluffily pretty girl from a lumber town who lights out for the city. An old story, but in this case (hopefully) somewhat different, because Lilac's staggering naïveté is never presented as anything but harmful and in fact it damages not only herself but others. Innocence may well be the eighth deadly sin.

Morag has no idea how long it will take to complete the novel, nor how much rewriting will have to be done, but once started she writes quickly. She knows more about Lilac than Lilac knows about herself, but how to convey this? It is being written in the third person, but from Lilac's viewpoint, and as this is a limited one, people have to be communicated to the reader solely through their words and acts, which Lilac often does not understand. The difficulties of having a main character who is virtually inchoate. When actually writing, Morag is certain she is getting it across. When not writing, she is certain she isn't. A seesaw existence.

"What is it you're writing?" Brooke asks.

"A novel, I think."

"A novel? Well, may as well aim your sights high, I suppose."

"Do you think–no, honestly, Brooke, tell me–do you think I'm trying to run before I can walk?"

"That remains to be seen, doesn't it? The novel is a complex structure."

"Don't I know it," Morag says glumly.

"Here–no long face, please. Come on, smile, love."

Morag smiles.

"That's better," Brooke says. "How about a movie tonight?"

"Lovely. I'd love to. I'll flash up the dishes and be ready in ten minutes."

In fact, she would like to go back to Chapter Three. Lilac, going to work in the seedy nightclub, Crowe's Cave, for the first time, hasn't been presented properly. Lilac should be more hesitant–a combination of hesitancy and brashness. How to get that across?

Unfair to Brooke. Who is, after all, supporting her while she bashes away at the typewriter. And who loves her. And whom she loves.

Morag thinks of her smile. The eager agreement to go out. How many times has she lied to him before, or is this the first time? No, it is not the first time. She never thought of it that way before. It never seemed like lying. Now it does.

Brooke is depressed tonight, as he frequently is. The movie does not interest him, and they leave in the middle. At home, he pours them both a gin and tonic.

"Brooke–what is it?"

"Oh, I don't know. The First Year class this year is singularly lacking in wits. It's discouraging, I suppose. I sometimes think this is a hell of a way to spend one's life. And if you _do_ make contact, ever, more often than not you never know it."

"That's not quite so," Morag points out. "Your Third Year class is full of good kids, and you know perfectly well you make contact with them."

"Yes, I guess so. I sometimes wonder."

"Brooke, there's absolutely no doubt about it."

"You may be somewhat prejudiced, my love."

"Of course I'm prejudiced, damn it. But I'm not blind. I can see how they feel about you."

How is it that she once imagined him to be totally certain of himself? No one is, of course. But with Brooke, you have to get within very close range before you can see it. His vulnerabilities are not on display. He learned his lesson almost too well as a child.

"What would you have preferred to do, then, Brooke, if not this?"

Brooke smiles ironically.

"I don't know–run a tea plantation, perhaps. Somewhere in Assam, somewhere very remote, away from the varied awfulness of this world."

"I know. I think I can understand that."

"There is, however, no place, really, to go or to get away."

"Brooke, why don't you get a job teaching in India?"

He shakes his head.

"No, little one. I couldn't go back. It's all changed too much. I wouldn't know it. I wouldn't feel at home there any longer."

Trapped in a garden of the mind, a place which no longer has a being in external reality. Is everyone? Not Morag. She wouldn't go back to Manawaka for all the tea in China or Assam. And yet the town inhabits her, as once she inhabited it.

"Brooke–that's terribly sad. I'm sorry. I wish there were something I could do."

"It's the human condition," Brooke says abruptly. "There's nothing anyone can do about it."

"I can't accept that, Brooke. I just cannot accept it."

"Well, all right. There _is_ something you can do, then. Keep on being happy and cheerful–it's a kind of leaven. It's what I need from you."

_I will never let him see the Black Celt in me._ Morag, shortly before marriage. It seemed an easy thing to undertake, then.

"Brooke, I will. Be–the way you said. I will."

_Will_ is a strange word. Will she, then, by an act of will? And if this act of willing, however willingly undertaken, is false to her, can it be true to Brooke?

That night Brooke has the same (same? who can tell?) nightmare, the one which recurs every six months or so, and speaks the same name.

_Minoo._

She cannot bear the weird monotone of his voice. She shakes his shoulder.

"Brooke–wake up."

"Oh God. Not again? What a bore for you."

"I don't mind. Who _was_ she, Brooke?"

He rubs his eyes and sits up in bed.

"Did I say–yes, I suppose I must've. Well, I may as well tell you, not that it's all that important. She was a Hindu woman–really, at this point, I have no memory of whether she was young or old. She seemed old but she may only have been a girl. I was about five or six. She was my _ayah_."

"Your what?"

" _Ayah._ She looked after me. She was very–oh, I don't know–very affectionate and tender, I guess, and there was not much of that kind of feeling around our house. My mother spent nearly all her time lying in a hammock, suffering from migraine. Minoo used to play with me, and build little stone forts for me, and–"

"Go on."

"Well," Brooke says, reaching out for a cigarette and lighting it slowly, "actually, when I couldn't get to sleep she would get into bed beside me, and hold me in her arms and stroke me. I mean, all over. I used to have an orgasm or whatever is the equivalent in a child, and then I'd go to sleep. It was quite a common practise there, as I later learned. Not, however, among Europeans."

"It may be somewhat different from Dr. Spock's recommendations," Morag says, "but I can't see anything so heinous about it."

"No," Brooke says. "There wasn't. But one evening my father came into the bedroom."

"Oh. I see."

"That was, as a matter of fact, the reason why, next day, he beat me and tied me to the steamer trunk outside the gate, with the sign _I Am Bad_ on me."

"Brooke, that was terrible."

"Not really," Brooke says. "It's a nuisance that it comes back to me, that's all. But it certainly strengthened my resolve. I hated him forever after, and I suppose as a child I must've wondered if he was right about it, but at least it taught me at an early age that life is tough and one has to be pretty tough, as well, to stand up to it. I learned to run my life my way, to keep a firm control over things so that the external forces would batter at the gates as little as possible."

"And yet, earlier tonight, when you were depressed, you said it was the human condition and nothing could be done about it."

"Oh, that. Well, yes, I guess that's more or less fate, that kind of depression. But one can make oneself less vulnerable to the external blows, at least."

"Too much so, perhaps. Brooke–listen. We hardly know a thing about one another. I mean, not really. Even after nearly five years. It's necessary that we find out. I don't think either of us has ever admitted how we really feel about a lot of things. I'm not the way you think I am. And you're not the way I thought you were, either. I just didn't know. I like you better like this. Maybe I wouldn't have, four years ago, but I do now. We've got to find out a lot more."

"We may do," Brooke says, putting out his cigarette and patting her gently on the rump, "but I also have an eight-thirty class in the morning. Let's get some sleep."

This cannot be said to be an unreasonable viewpoint in any sense. If you have to get up at seven you don't lie awake all night yakking about your childhood and so on.

How much of Lilac's childhood remained with _her_? _All._ It always does.

Morag usually stops writing about four, so she will have time to get outside the novel before Brooke arrives home. She does not always manage. Sometimes she forgets that time, outside, is passing.

This afternoon she has forgotten, because Lilac has aborted herself in a way that Morag recalls from long ago. And yet it is not Eva for whom Morag experiences pain now–it is Lilac only, at this moment. Morag finishes the episode, moves away from the typewriter, walks around the apartment, smoking, trying to shed the tension instantly, which is impossible. It is five minutes to six.

The key in the door, and Brooke comes in.

"Hello, love."

"The dinner isn't ready," Morag blurts. "It isn't even begun."

He stares at her.

"For God's sake, Morag, are you ill? What's the matter, love? You're shaking."

A moment ago she felt aggressively defensive. Now she is ashamed to say.

"It's–no, I'm all right. It's just that I've reached a kind of crucial point. I mean, with the novel."

Brooke laughs, relieved.

"Is _that_ it? Heavens, I thought you'd been suddenly stricken with something serious."

_I have. I have._ But she does not say this. Odd–if you had a friend who had just aborted herself, causing chaos all round and not only to herself, no one would be surprised if you felt upset, anxious, shaken. It is no different with fiction–more so, maybe, because Morag has felt Lilac's feelings. The blood is no less real for being invisible to the external eye. She wants to explain, but feels too tired.

"Well, never mind," Brooke is saying. "It doesn't happen often. We'll go out to eat. You run along now and make yourself look presentable."

She wants only to go to sleep for about fourteen unbroken hours. But goes and puts on a decent dress and does her hair. It is, after all, kind of him. It really is. He might have been angry and has not been.

She takes three aspirins and tries to make herself look especially nice.
**SEVEN**

**W** ork over for the day, Morag walked. The road past the house was dirt only, supposed to be maintained by the municipality, but no voters worth mentioning lived along here, so the ruts were deep and old. Small red-branched dogwood bushes were now in white cluster-flower. The purple and white wild phlox were so rich and heavy with their July perfume that they seemed almost out of keeping here, amongst the plain coarse grass and the dust.

Red-winged blackbird. You would not guess their concealed splendour, seeing them on a branch with their wings folded. Only when they took off, the outfanning of those scarlet feathers hidden among the black.

A groundhog fatly scuttled from the path. Morag liked them–they seemed portly and innocuous, vine-gobblers, meaning well. But Royland said the groundhogs' holes made the cattle trip and break legs. Idiotic groundhogs, uncarnivorous, scuttlebustling about on their own tiny business, not one of your great antagonistic creatures, no dinosaurs or jaguars they, yet busting the legbone of some dumbly innocent cow all the same.

Morag always carried a stick when she walked these roads. So as to fend off the following: mad dogs frothing with hydrophobia; killer foxes; coyotes or some few ancient wolves which might have survived here since pioneer times, unknown to anyone, but possibly lurking in the underbrush, panting to pounce; and poisonous snakes, of which the snake book said this area had none.

Morag returned to the house. The swallows were positively dangerous, as always at this time of year, dive-bombing anyone who came within eyeshot of the nest, which was above the kitchen window–a goblet-shaped structure of mud and straw, with its patio on either side. The fledglings were nearly ready to fly, and took up all the space in the nest, so the parent swallows slept on the mud-and-straw patio these nights. Admirable parents. Intelligent. Joyous.

"It's okay," she told them now, as they flew to within an inch of her head. "I'm no threat to your young."

Imagine dying from a fractured skull delivered by a hysterical parent swallow. A novel death. In a novel, who'd believe it? _Novel._ Odd word. Swallows never actually hit, though. They possessed fine radar.

The kitchen door was open. Morag had closed it when she went out.

"Hi," Pique said.

"Pique!"

Morag hugged the girl, and Pique did not seem to mind. Seemed even glad to be here. Looking just the same–tall, slender, almost skinny, long straight black hair loose around her shoulders, dressed in blue jeans and what appeared to be a man's shirt of ancient vintage with sleeves cut off short and unhemmed, wide leather belt with old brass buckle which she hadn't had before but which had an oddly familiar look.

"How _are_ you, honey?" Morag asked, holding the girl at arms length as though searching for signs of malnutrition, ill-treatment by world, or sadness of any variety. Shadows under Pique's eyes. Sleepless nights? Worry? Over what?

"You look a bit tired," Morag said.

Pique laughed.

"I'm okay, Ma. I hitched from Toronto, and didn't have such good luck. I _am_ a bit tired. That's why I was kind of delayed, the luck. I'm starving. Got any peanut butter? I've just arrived this second. Has Gord phoned? I sure as hell hope not. What hassles. He won't go away. I don't want to damage the guy, but what can I do? Where's your bread–in the fridge? Yeh. You shouldn't eat white bread, Ma, it's very bad for you. How are _you_?"

"Fine. Fine." Morag lit a cigarette, hands unsteady. "It's good to see you. Are you okay, really?"

Pique grinned, dark brown slightly slanted eyes filled with faint golden lights, sparks.

"Relax, Ma. Shall I make us some coffee? Where's the percolator? You shouldn't drink that instant slop. It's plastic. Sure, I'm all right. Really. Can't you see? I had a pretty good time. Some times weren't so good. They hate kids hitching, some places. They'd really like you to be dead. Really _dead_ , for real. It's the anger that scares me."

"Yeh. Me, too."

"Because they don't know it's there inside them," Pique said. "They think they're sweet reasonableness, and it's _you_ that's in the wrong, just by being, and not being like them, or looking like them, or wanting their kind of life. It's the anger you can feel, even if they don't lay a hand on you. It's, like–well, visible. You can see and taste and smell it. You know?"

"I can guess. I've seen it, under other circumstances, when I was a kid."

"I wondered about that," Pique said, in between mouthfuls of sandwich, "when I went to Manawaka. I guess it's changed a lot, on the surface. Underneath–well, I dunno."

"Did you see–"

"I don't think I can talk about it, just yet," Pique said carefully. "I'll tell you about it later on, maybe, sometime. I don't think Christie's old house is there any more. Lotta new little tacky houses on Hill Street."

"I couldn't bear to see it. Although it could hardly look worse than it did then."

"Prosperous town, I'd say."

"Yes. I suppose so. Did you go down in the valley?"

"I'll tell you _later_ , I said."

"Sorry."

"That's okay. Got any oranges or bananas?"

"On the sideboard. Where'd you get the jazzy belt?"

"From my dad. He gave it to me. He had to shorten it a lot. It was his."

"Of course. I knew I'd seen it before."

"I saw him in Toronto, Ma."

"I know. He phoned me."

"He _did_? Why?"

"I don't know," Morag said, feeling slightly annoyed. "To say he'd seen you, and what did I mean, letting you go off like that. He has his reasons for saying that, though."

"That's funny," Pique said. "He didn't take that line with me. He said he knew why I had to go out west and that. He did, too."

"Yeh. Well, maybe he only said that to me because he thought it was what I'd expect to hear. I think he really phoned to tell me he'd seen you and you were okay. He always thought I was kind of–"

"What?"

"Bourgeois. Square."

" _Square._ I love your idiom, Ma. It's like an old dance tune from the forties."

"Brat. You wait. Yours will be passé, too."

"Well, _were_ you, like, _square_?"

"It all depends where you stand," Morag said. "To him, I suppose I was, at least in some ways. He thought I wanted things that he didn't care about. I did, too, but then, later, I didn't."

"What things?"

"Oh–respectability, wall-to-wall carpets and that."

"Did you really? Poor Ma."

"Indeed. But it wasn't all that bad. It wasn't like that at all, really. I can't explain."

"My dad gave me some songs," Pique said. "That was the best thing he gave me."

"He told me. That's good. That's fine."

Hypocritical Morag. Jealous of the fact that he had that to give. Like A-Okay's poems. Could you hand over a stack of books to someone? Only to someone who wanted to read, presumably. Maybe Pique would read Morag's out of curiosity when Morag was pushing up daisies. But _songs_. And he had been singing them so long ago, long before everyone in sight began going around singing their own songs. Lucky bugger. God knows he'd had a rocky road, withal, though.

"I never thought he'd actually teach them to me," Pique said. "He'd sung them that one time before, you remember? No, twice–didn't he, when I was a little kid, somewhere, as well?"

"Yes. Yes, he did. Some of them."

"Gord couldn't see how important it was to me. He thought it would be just the same if you listened to a record and picked up anybody else's song that way. I couldn't explain. It was kind of strange to see him again, my dad. Did you love him?"

Morag sat with her hands around the coffee mug. Thinking. How to reply and get across that much complexity in a single well-chosen phrase? Impossible.

"I guess you could say love. I find words more difficult to define than I used to. I guess I felt–feel–that he was related to me in some way. I'd known him an awfully long time, you know. I mean, at the time when you were born, I'd known him an awfully long time _then_ , even. I'm not sure _know_ is the right word, there."

"Who cares about the right word?" Pique cried. Then, suddenly, the hurt cry which must have been there for years, "Why did you _have_ me?"

"I wanted you," Morag said, stunned.

"For your own satisfaction, yes. You never thought of him, or of me."

And to that accusation there was no answer. None. Because it was partly true. To have someone of her own blood. But only partly. She had not conned a kid out of him, after all. Or not quite, anyway. How did he look at it? She didn't know. But he'd given the songs to Pique.

Silence. The afternoon sun pouring through the window as though the daylight would be forever. The young swallows fidgeting and flittering in the nest, wanting to fly.

"Pique–"

Pique, sitting at the end of the long table, put out her hand and touched Morag's hand.

"Yeh. I know. Never mind. It's okay. You know something, Ma?"

"What?"

Pique was about to cry, but refused to do so, was forced to reject tears as an indignity against what she was about to say.

"His voice isn't very good any more," Pique said steadily. "The jobs are getting harder to find. Lots of competition around now, and he's only got one thing to cash in on now, in lots of places."

"Which is?" But she knew.

"You know, he's still kind of an oddity," Pique said, in that same unnervingly calm distant voice. "That's a bad scene, for him. And he's not so young any more."

"Nor am I," Morag said. "Nor can I go on forever, either. Sometimes I'd like to see him."

"Why don't you, then? He's there."

"I don't know if he would like to see me. Probably not."

Pique's voice was not calm and distant any longer.

"You make me sick. You make me bloody sick. You're so goddamn proud and so scared of being rejected. You're so stupid in that way, you really are."

"It's not that simple," Morag said.

But maybe it was. No, it wasn't. Indecision all around. If she went unannounced to see him, he would laugh bitterly in her face. Or would he? She felt extremely tired.

"How would some dinner grab you?"

"Okay," Pique said, without enthusiasm. "Shall I cook, or will you?"

"Me, I guess. You can tomorrow."

Unfortunately, at that moment the door was decisively knocked upon. Morag prayed. Let it be Royland. Or A-Okay and Maudie. But of course, no.

Gord. Who else? His straw hair tangled, his boy's face still not quite set into the firmer outlines it would have in a few years, but showing strength of the bones under the skin. A determined tenacious face, but the blue eyes were bewildered.

"Now, listen, Pique," he began. "Just listen for one minute, will you?"

"I asked you not to come here," Pique said, voice low and helpless. Then, flaring up, "I'm going _out_. And don't follow me, either, _see_?"

Like a kid. But only because she didn't know what to do.

"If you're going out," Morag said, "why don't you take a pan and pick some of the wild strawberries up the meadow?"

"Oh, for God's _sake_!" Pique ran, and the screendoor slammed.

Tactful Morag. It had seemed practical, that's all.

"Want some coffee?" she asked Gord, hoping he would say _No_ and leave immediately.

He nodded and sat down.

"Why does she _do_ it, Morag?" he asked, begging for revelations. "I mean, what've I ever done to make her be like that? She was okay for a while, there, on the way out west, once I caught up with her. Which wasn't easy, believe me. Finding her. Then she just sort of went away. What's she want me to _do_?"

_She wants you to get lost, you poor mug. No, that's too flippant._

"Look, Gord," Morag said, "she cares about you. That is, she cares about you as a person. But I just think she feels she has to be on her own awhile, and find out what she's meant to do. You will just have to let go of her."

Would it be kinder simply to tell him that Pique couldn't get on with him any more, through no fault of his or hers, that she was on some kind of search on her own behalf, that she couldn't care about him as once she had and couldn't pretend to feel what she didn't feel? No, not kinder, probably.

_Am I only interpreting her through my own experience? Maybe she doesn't feel that at all. Why all that talk, suddenly, about her dad?_

"Yeh, I guess I know." He glared for an instant at Morag.

All Morag's fault, he probably thought. Brought up the girl strangely. What could you expect? Bad scene. Morag could feel Gord's hostility like lye thrown in her face.

"Couldn't you suggest anything?" Gord then said, pleadingly. "I feel it must be my fault, but I don't know how."

Morag perceived that what she had taken to be hostility had been in fact self-reproach on his part.

"I don't know what to say," she said. "I don't think there's anything."

Gord rose.

"Yeh. Well. I thought probably not. Thanks anyway, for the coffee. I'll be going now. Tell Pique if she wants to see me, phone. My aunt'll take the message if I'm not there."

No doubt, at least for the time in which it took him to find another woman, he would rise up at 4:00 A.M. if necessary, summoned from his aunt's farm, and come rocketing out. _Through the swamp and fog (or flame and fire, or ice and snow; can't remember) I gotta go where you are._ "Chloe." Done by Spike Jones, a sendup, clanging with tubas and cowbells, aeons ago. Morag was becoming an antique. Also, mind-wanderer. _Mooner_ , Prin had said.

"I'll tell her. Gord, I'm sorry."

She was, too. Also for Pique. The infinite capacity of humans to wound one another without meaning or wanting to.

An hour later, when it was nearly dark, Pique returned, carrying an old coffee tin full of aromatic wild strawberries.

"Ma–"

"Mm? Thanks for the strawberries."

"That's okay. Do you think I'm mean?"

"Not wantonly cruel, no. What's the alternative? To go on with him and feel diminished or destroyed yourself?"

"Well, I wouldn't put it quite that dramatically," Pique said.

Morag had perhaps been talking not about Pique but about herself. She must not do that. No parallels. Dangerous.

"What do you plan on doing, honey?" she asked. "I don't mean with Gord. I mean–"

"Yeh. You mean with my life. Do. Do. Always that. Do I have to _do_ anything? Don't worry. I'll get a job. And I won't stay here forever–I'm not the millstone type. Ma–I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to sound like that."

"Christie used to say that _sorry_ was a christly bloody awful word, and I should never say it. I never quite managed not to, though."

"Well, he wasn't right about everything, from what you've told me. Sometimes a person feels like saying it. It's when you don't feel like saying it, but say it anyhow, that it seems pointless to me. I wish there was something I wanted to do. I feel there must be, but I haven't discovered it yet. Nothing I value that much. I value the songs–my own as well. But I gotta earn a slight bit of bread as well."

"Well, think of it when you feel stronger," Morag said, having often used this advice (unsuccessfully) on herself.

Pique went up to her old room, where the window overlooked the back meadow. Morag remained downstairs for a long time, with the lights out, looking at the river. What she felt, more than anything, was relief that Pique was home. Alive.

The next morning, Royland came over with a pickerel.

"This here's for Pique's breakfast," Royland said. "Saw her arrive yesterday, but thought I'd wait to come over. She okay?"

"Yeh. More or less. Thanks a lot, Royland. Stay awhile. She'll be up soon."

"I'm divining this afternoon–farm just the other side of the Landing. Think she'd like to come along?"

"I'm sure she would. Remember how she used to go along with you when she was a kid? It's always fascinated her."

"Not half as much as it's fascinated you," he said.

True. The mystery which still drew her. What had drawn him to divining? How had he come to try his hand?

"Royland–remember that time you said you'd been–well, a maverick? What did–not that it's any of my business. Don't answer if you–"

Don't indeed, practically twisting his arm.

"I don't mind," he said. "I wasn't a drunk or a brawler, if that's what you thought. More than one way of being a maverick. I was a preacher."

"What? You? And what's so–"

"Hold your horses. Let me finish. A preacher. Not the college kind. One of your real ripsnortin' Bible-punchers."

"It doesn't sound like you."

"I thought," Royland continued, "that I had the Revealed Word. God was talking to me, sure as hell, and probably to no one else. At meetings I used to give 'em real fire-and-brimstone. Strong men wept. I'm not kidding. Must've been a godawful sight, eh? I never saw it. I mean, I never saw it that way. Well, I was married, then. You never knew I'd been married, did you? I'd married young, just before the Call came upon me. Well, for all them years I was death on every such thing as drink, tobacco, dances, cards, lace curtains, any dress that looked like anything but a gunny sack, and so on and so forth. My wife led a life which was filled with nothing pleasant in any way at all. I even quit making love with her. I burned, yeh, but virtuously. I thought it was wasting my powers if I–well, you know. She hated it all, but she never stood up to me. If she tried, I brought her down like a shot sparrow, with my speech and also with the back of my hand. Yep. I thought it was a blow for the Lord."

"I can't credit it. I can't believe it."

"True, though. What happened was, she finally took off and left. I couldn't believe she would. Thought she'd come back. She never, though. Finally I went after her. She had a cousin in Toronto, and I finally traced her through him. Saw her. She was living in a terrible little dirty room, alone. Worked as waitress in a café. I saw, soon as I laid eyes on her, what I'd done. I begged her to come back home, and I'd quit being a circuit rider–that's what us Bible-punchers was known as, then. Said I'd go to work on a farm, or like that. I wasn't sure I meant that part, though. I thought maybe it would be enough just not to yell at her, or not so much, anyway."

"Did she go back?"

"She said," Royland went on slowly, "that she wanted to go and see her cousin and his wife, first, and she promised she'd be right back to pack. Didn't see her again until I set eyes on her in the morgue. Drowned herself. I guess she couldn't put her hand to any easier way, that moment. She was scared of me. Scared to come back. Scared not to come back. Didn't believe I'd change any. And maybe I wouldn't have."

"Royland–oh my God, Royland, I'm sorry I asked."

"It's no matter. I don't generally speak of it. But I've known you a long time now. Well, after that I went north by myself. Stayed about five years in all. Did odd jobs, lumber camps and that. Began to see–not all at once, mind you, but gradually–that I'd been crazy as a coot, before. Reasons for that, but too many to explain now. I was brought up by an aunt who–well, it wasn't really her fault, either. You don't know how it is for other people, or how far back it all goes. Anyway, I found I could divine wells, so I came back and settled here. Seemed better to find water than to–"

"Raise fire."

"That's it. Don't believe in hell now, and haven't for some years. But maybe that's just a way of saying that if I did believe in it, I know one man who'd be bound there for sure."

"I imagine you've had yours."

"Oh yes," Royland said calmly. "There's no getting away from that."

Pique clattered down the stairs. Rushed over to Royland and hugged him.

"The Old Man of the River! Hi, Royland!"

"Good to have you home, Pique. Here's a pickerel for your breakfast."

"You're great, Royland. Really great. Hey, you know something? You made a big mistake in not getting married. You should've had grandchildren. You'd make a fine granddad. You know that?"

Please. Pique– _no_. How many times had Morag, over the years, made similar jocular remarks?

But Royland could take it. He merely smiled. Maybe you did reach a point in life, after all, when such chance references no longer could break you into pieces. Roll on, that day.

"Well, Pique," Royland said, "I always thought I was kind of like that to you."

"You are," Pique said.

Late that afternoon, Morag looked out the window and observed that the first of the swallow children had taken off and was now perched or rather huddled in feather-ruffled and uncertain fashion on a low branch of the elm. She kept on looking. Innumerable swallows (parents, aunts and uncles, cousins) veered in towards the nest and veered off again, squeeping in high-pitched voices, obviously saying _This is how you fly, kids! It's easy! Try it–you'll never be immobile again!_ The other four, one by one, were lured out, finally, shakily, and landed beside their courageous sibling on the elm bough. All five sat there, looking dejected. _Hey, Mabel, what happens now?_ Tomorrow they would all be flitting back and forth across the river, skilled already.

_I look at the world anthropomorphically. Well, so what? And even if I didn't, they do learn quickly. Every year, to see them take off is a marvel._

"Hey, Morag, can we come in?" Tom said.

Three of them–no, there were four people at the door.

"Why ask?" Morag said. "Since when couldn't you come in here when you liked?"

Tom was getting taller. He was up a bit beyond A-Okay's waist. A-Okay opened the door, and Maudie, long clean white-blonde hair loose around her shoulders, glided Thomas in.

A-Okay bumped into the edge of the oak table. He had been looking elsewhere, at Tom, and at the other person, a young man with dark straight hair to the shoulders. He was lean (thin? these kids were all thin these days; it was their diet, or maybe their outlook) and was moustached hugely but not unpleasantly, a rather hesitant look in wary grey eyes.

A-Okay decided he had better don his specs, as always when he'd inadvertently rammed a piece of the furniture. A-Okay was somewhat like Dan McRaith, whose general clumsiness always had a kind of strange gracefulness about it.

"This is Dan," A-Okay said. "Dan Scranton. He's from Calgary, or thereabouts. He's gonna stay with us awhile."

_Dan._ Morag felt the blade turning inside the heart. Of course, millions of men in this world must be named Daniel. Still, she did not want this kid's name to be that.

"Hello," she said. "Sit down, won't you? Maudie, Pique's off with Royland–he's doing John Fraser's new well. They should be back soon. Stay for dinner?"

When Pique and Royland returned, Pique greeted the Clan Smith as though they were her own, which they were. After dinner Dan Scranton got out his guitar and sang some of his songs. They were for individuals, people with names, places of belonging. And they were, just as much, for the Alberta hills and plains, which he had left some years ago and to which he was determined not to return, but loved them now with his painful words.

Pique sat very quietly. Then, as though now was the right time, she got out her guitar.

"I've got maybe one or two of my own," she said, "but I don't think I can sing them now. This isn't one of my dad's songs, either. It's the one Louis Riel wrote in prison, before he was hanged."

She sang in a low clear voice, the words in French, then in English. The five verses, and then the last verse.

Mourir, s'il faut mourir,

Chacun meurt à son tour;

J'aim' mieux mourir en brave,

Faut tous mourir un jour.

Dying, for it is necessary to die,

Everyone dies in his turn.

I long to die bravely

For all must die one day.

"Where did you learn it?" Morag asked. "From a book," Pique said coldly. "I learned it from a book. Somebody I know taught me to say the French. I only know how to make the sounds. I don't know what they mean."

Dan Scranton went over and sat on the floor beside her, and took her hand.

When the others had gone, and Pique had gone up to bed, Morag went to the record player and put on a song, turning the sound very low. It was in Gaelic and the name of it was "Morag of Dunvegin." She could not understand the words, nor even distinguish between them, make any kind of pattern of them. Just a lot of garbled sounds to her. Yet she played the record often, as though if she listened to it enough, she would finally pierce the barrier of that ancient speech and have its meaning revealed to her. Dan McRaith had laughed at her that time, when she had said, naïvely, that she wished she knew Gaelic. He didn't have a word of the Gaelic himself, or perhaps a few words here and there, but nothing to speak of, nothing to speak with. Why not take lessons, then, he had said. She hadn't, of course. Too lazy. She would have liked to gain the speech by magical means, no doubt. Yet it seemed a bad thing to have lost a language. Talking to one or two old fishermen in Crombruach, those years ago, she'd realized that. They spoke a mellifluous English, carefully, as though translating into it in their heads, and some of their remarks were obscure to her, but they would never explain, or could not.

Christie, telling the old tales in his only speech, English, with hardly any trace of a Scots accent, and yet with echoes in his voice that went back and back. Christie, summoning up the ghosts of those who had never been and yet would always be.

The lost languages, forever lurking somewhere inside the ventricles of the hearts of those who had lost them. Jules, with two languages lost, retaining only broken fragments of both French and Cree, and yet speaking English as though forever it must be a foreign tongue to him.

Brooke had spoken Hindi, as a child, but had forgotten most of it. That must be different. It was not the language of his ancestors. He regretted its loss for other reasons.

_Memorybank Movie: Frictions_

"Have you been a good girl, love?" Brooke asks.

It has become his game, his jest, before going into her, and indeed before permitting his arousal or hers. If she protests the sentence, he will withdraw all of himself except his unspoken anger. She has to play, or be prepared to face that coldness. Either way she feels afraid. Yet he cannot help it, and she knows this. There can be no talk of it, for it is, after all, only a joke.

She smiles, hoping this will be sufficient, without having to use words in this service. And it provides enough. Brooke, poised above her, lowers his long body upon hers. Then she is angry and wants to shove him away, wants no part of him. But her flesh responds to him, and she rises to him, rises to his bait, and then everything is all right.

And yet, afterwards, when Brooke is asleep beside her, she cannot sleep, the body's spasm no longer being enough to shut off the alarm-clock head more than momentarily.

Dr. and Mrs. B. Skelton now have a new and somewhat jazzy apartment, in keeping with Brooke's appointment as Head of Department. It is large, on the top floor of a downtown block, and is furnished with Danish Modern, long teak coffee tables, svelte things to sit on (you could not call them _sofas_ or _chesterfields_ , both words having unseemly old-fashioned connotations). On the cream-coloured walls hang several fairly expensive contemporary paintings, which Brooke says are good, even excellent.

Days, Morag writes. Then comes the day when, astonishingly, the novel is completed. It has taken over three years, and much rewriting. She feels emptied, deprived of Lilac's company.

"Show it to me, why don't you?" Brooke says. "I might be able to make one or two helpful suggestions."

"I will, Brooke. But there's something I want to discuss with you first. Brooke, we're not broke any more. We've been married eight years. I'm nearly twenty-eight."

"Oh. That again?"

She perceives at once her mistake. He cannot ever say to her, finally, once and for all, that he cannot bear for her to bear a child. He will never say that. But he cannot agree to a child, either. She is, she now sees, forcing him into a corner and has been doing so for some years. A corner out of which the exit will be violence, not physical, but violence all the same, to her and to himself.

Brooke rises and pours the last of the martini from the silver jug.

"Does it seem like the kind of world, to you," he says, "to bring children into?"

To that, there is no answer. None. No, it does not seem like the kind of world, etcetera. But she wants children all the same. Why? Something too primitive to be analyzed? Something which needs to proclaim itself, against all odds? Or only the selfishness of wanting someone born of your flesh, someone related to you?

"I shouldn't have brought up the subject," Morag says. "I guess you're right."

"Look, love, let's just see how things are in a year or so, shall we?"

"Yes."

She knows she will not mention the subject again.

Finally she shows _Spear of Innocence_ to Brooke. Reluctantly. He stays up until nearly midnight, reading it.

"Well," he says at last, carefully, "it seems to me that the novel suffers from having a protagonist who is nonverbal, that is, she talks a lot, but she can't communicate very well."

"I know that. I know. That was part of the problem."

"I also wonder," Brooke says, flicking pages, "if the main character–Lilac–expresses anything which we haven't known before?"

No. She doesn't. But _she_ says it. That is what is different.

"I see what you mean," Morag says. "I'll think about it."

The next day she parcels up the mass of paper and sends it, submits it, to a publisher. She does not tell Brooke.

_Memorybank Movie: Prin_

Christie's telegram reads: _Prin very bad could you come yours Christie._

Morag has always known, of course, that this would happen one day, but the time seemed faroff. Now it is time present.

"Brooke–I don't want to go. That's the awful thing. But I must."

"Hush, little one," he says, holding her tightly. "You'll soon be back."

All the way on the train to Winnipeg, and then on the bus to Manawaka, Morag tries to focus on the novel, but it is finished and away from her, and there is no longer any reason for Lilac Stonehouse to talk inside Morag's head. She does not want to think of Prin, but can think of nothing else.

Christie meets her at the bus station, and they walk back to the house on Hill Street, in the dusk, the streetlights not yet turned on. Early summer, and the air smells of dust and the sweetly overpowering perfume of the lilacs that grow in mauve and purple grapelike bunches on the bushes with their heart-shaped leaves, in the front yards even of the small poor houses this side of town.

"Christie–how is she?"

"Not long for this world, Morag," Christie says abruptly, and the euphemism sounds odd, coming from him.

"Is she at home?" Morag is praying she is not.

"She's been in the hospital this past month," Christie says. "She's been pretty low for some time now. Even before she went in."

Christie, coping with her alone. Has Eva continued coming in on Saturdays? How would Morag know, who writes to Christie perhaps once in three months?

Had it been wrong to want to get away? No, not wrong to want to get away, to make her getaway. It was the other thing that was wrong, the turning away, turning her back on the both of them. _The_ both of them. As soon as she got back to Manawaka, she even began thinking in the old phraseology. Extraneous _the_ , yet somehow giving more existence, more recognition to them than correct speech could have. Escapist. Wordsmith, forging screens.

"You're looking smart, Morag," Christie says.

She is dressed in a fairly pricey cotton dress and light blue summer coat, her hair short and swept back and upwards. At this moment she hates it all, this external self who is at such variance with whatever or whoever remains inside the glossy painted shell. If anything remains. Her remains.

Christie is looking terrible. He is, she realizes, sixty-four. He has looked old for as long as she can remember. Now he looks as ancient as a fossil or the dried and shrunken skin of some desert lizard. His once-blue eyes seem to have retreated rheumily into their sockets, and the skin of his face is brown-brittle, clinging close to his bones as though no flesh came between, mummified as a pharaoh.

"Well, here we are," Christie says.

The house stinks. No other word for it. It has not been cleaned in some time, obviously. The odours seem to be: human sweat, urine from unemptied chamber pots, clinging smell of boiled cabbage, breadmould, and dirt. How could it be otherwise? Christie has done what he could. The house seems smaller than she has remembered it.

"When can I see her, Christie?"

"In the morning."

Morag goes up to her old room. Cannot sleep. The tiny room is huge with ghosts. Ghosts of people and of tales. Morag, a child, a girl, a young woman. Christie ranting the old ironic battle cry. Clowny Macpherson. Piper Gunn who led his people to bravery. Gunner Gunn, who once, unbelievably, had life as Colin Gunn, her father. Rider Tonnerre, the talesman, the talisman. They are all here tonight. Who has been real and who imagined? All have been both, it seems.

Prin. Prin, long ago combing and plaiting Morag's hair. Prin, sitting at the back of the church, going in just before service began, not to be noticed, once she'd grown so gross.

"Christie–they can't do anything for her, there?" Morag asks next morning.

"No. Not a christly thing."

"Would she rather be home then? Now that I'm here."

"She'd rather it," Christie says in a low voice. "She couldn't say so. But I know. It's not right for you, though, Morag. It's not a pretty sight."

"Oh Christie–I've enough to answer for. Let's just let her come home, then."

The doctor, however, is adamant.

"I can't prevent you from discharging her against my advice, Mrs. Skelton," he says. "But she'd never stand the move."

"She's going to die anyway."

The doctor frowns massively. It is not Dr. Cates. It is a younger man, a stranger, a newcomer. Probably been here for ten years. Newcomer. Good Lord.

"We needn't hasten it," he says ethically.

Why not? Why not? But faced with this medical sanctity, Morag finds she cannot argue. And Christie's fighting days are over.

Morag goes alone to see Prin. A public ward, naturally, but the white cubicle-curtains are drawn around Prin's bed. At the first sight of Prin, Morag feels only relief that the doctor has had his way. Impossible, impossible to have Prin home. And then the reverse reaction. Who wouldn't prefer to die at home?

Prin lies in the hospital bed which is really too narrow. The white bedclothing rises over her, over her flaccid hugeness, her quietness. Her body is mercifully hidden by the pre-shroud around her. Her hair is thinner even than Christie's now, wisps and straggling feathers of the almost-bald headskin, reminiscent (unbearably) of the dead half-bald baby birds fallen from nests in the spring of the year. Prin's face is as blank as a sheet of white paper upon which nothing will ever now be written. Her eyes are open and unseeing.

"Prin–"

Morag touches the untouchable face, the hands. No response.

"I don't think Mrs. Logan knows you, dear," the entering nurse busily says.

Morag says nothing. She sits for a while, her hand upon Prin's white unmoving lard-carved hand. Then she goes away.

In her sleep, as the saying goes, Prin dies two days later. She has been in her sleep for years now, but whether there were dreams or nightmares in there, no one can know. Now at least there will be darkness. She has died a month before her fifty-ninth birthday.

Morag and Christie hold their wake in the kitchen at home, by the thin light of the one exposed bulb, the bottle of scotch on the table between them.

"She was not what you'd call an old woman, Morag."

"I know that, Christie."

"The strange christly thing about it," Christie says, "is that she always seemed old, from the moment I first laid eyes upon her, and yet she always seemed young. I don't mean _happy_ young, you see."

"I know. Yes."

"I mean, more, young like a young child who's yet to learn much speech. I think they had told her–her father, and maybe them teachers in the few years of schooling she'd had–they'd made her believe she was kind of simple in the head. Maybe she was. I never figured it out, quite."

"Maybe she was simple in another way," Morag says. "Another meaning of the word."

Even eight or nine years ago, when she saw him last, Christie would have grasped this simple thought, this thought about simplicity. Not now. He looks at her from shrouded eyes, knowing he has not understood her meaning.

"I wouldn't know about that," he says, pouring more scotch for them both, "but I seen the way she was. It's a bloody christly terrible life sometimes."

Morag prays that he will not now go into the old act. He does not. He sits silent and shrunken, diminished. And then she wishes for the lost wildness, which would not, she sees now, embarrass her any longer.

"I was a hard man for her to live with," Christie says. "I had a darkness in me. She could never see rhyme nor reason for it, as why should she?"

"Her life would've been a lot worse without you, Christie."

"That," Christie says, "we don't know."

" _I_ know."

"Do you, then?" A momentary blue light in his eyes. "Well, you're young. You know a whole lot you won't know later on."

Morag laughs. How weird to laugh, here and now. But it seems right. They are both getting fairly drunk.

"Christie–remember those stories you used to tell me when I was a kid?"

Silence.

"I remember the telling of them to you," Christie says at last, very quietly, "but I don't recall no more what it exactly was I was telling, then."

Morag wants now to tell him, to tell him all the tales. But cannot. She can do nothing at all, except to reach her hand across the table and touch Christie's leathered lizard-skin hand.

Prin's funeral is a church funeral. Prin went to church for all those years, and liked the hymns, so it is only right and proper. Christie and Morag are agreed upon this. Morag tells the minister that they will not be requiring any short inspirational talk–just the service for the dead, and one hymn.

"Who will attend, and sing?" the young minister enquires pathetically.

"Could you not get the choir?"

"It's not usually done, Mrs. Skelton, unless–"

He breaks off, unhappily. Unless the deceased is a well-known citizen.

"If you could just get the organist, then," Morag says, angrily.

"Yes, I can do that all right. It's my wife."

Oh lucky wife.

In fact, there are eleven people there. Eva Winkler's mother, and Eva, with her husband and three adopted kids, Eva looking older and thinner. And several elderly ladies, whom Morag does not recognize. Professional funeral attenders, perhaps, but at this moment Morag is grateful.

"Hi, Morag." Eva, just before they enter the church.

How to say anything at all to Eva, who speaks softly and apologetically as always?

"Eva–thanks. For all you did for Prin."

"It wasn't that much," Eva says. "She was always good to Vern and me."

Sure. Prin gave them the occasional jelly doughnut. She gave Morag her only home.

"Where's Vern these days, Eva?"

"Oh, he's away out at the Coast now. He's doing real well. We had a card, year ago last Christmas. He's changed his name."

"What?"

Vernon Winkler, smallboned, as a sparrow, in those days, being beaten by his father Gus, bear-man, pig-man, himself probably beaten by some longpast father in Europe.

"He calls himself Thor Thorlakson," Eva says, smiling. "Sounds nice, don't it?"

Eva, having dragged around a small brother for what must have seemed centuries to her, is now able to rejoice that Vern has made it. Vern is another one who has decisively left–more so, perhaps, than Morag, even. A card, a year ago last Christmas.

"Yeh. Very nice."

They part. Eva and Morag, drifting apart into the church.

Service for the Burial of the Dead. The old words.

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears.

For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.

A sojourner, as all my fathers were. Then the hymn. The hymn Prin used to like the best. They stood, all eleven, in the almost-empty church.

Jerusalem the golden

With milk and honey blest–

The singing is embarrassed, sparse. The organ pumps out the tune, to cover the paucity of voices. Christie stands, but silently. Morag sings, feeling crazily that it is all she can do for Prin now.

They stand, those halls of Sion,

All jubilant with song,

And bright with many an angel,

And all the martyr throng;

The Prince is ever in them,

The daylight is serene,

The pastures of the blesséd

Are decked in glorious sheen.

Those halls of Sion. The Prince is ever in them. What had Morag expected, those years ago, marrying Brooke? Those selfsame halls?

And now here, in this place, the woman who brought Morag up is lying dead, and Morag's mind, her attention, has left Prin. _Help me, God; I'm frightened of myself._

The service over, the coffin is carried into the waiting hearse. Niall Cameron stands beside the newish vehicle, not the same as the one down in the valley, a long time ago.

Niall is a great deal older. The lines on his face have extended like shorthand scribblings, perhaps to be deciphered only by someone who knows that particular shorthand. His hands shake on the hearse doors. His eyes are not evasive, only absent. She wants to ask him if he remembers that day, and the fire. But cannot. She has the feeling that it would be too much, that he could not bear it. Niall Cameron, who undertakes the strange responsibility for the town's dead, seems to bear now the mark of his calling upon him. His calling calls. He has lived among the dead a long time. Will this make it easier for him, or the reverse, to die among the living?

"Mr. Cameron–"

"Morag Gunn."

"Yes."

"I never knew much about her, you know, Christie's wife."

"Most didn't. It's–it can't be helped."

"Lachlan MacLachlan died a year or so ago," Niall Cameron says. "You used to work for him on the _Banner_."

"I didn't know he'd died."

"He chose it," Niall Cameron says. Then, as though pulling himself together for the sake of someone as young as his own children, "Well, he never did get over the boy's death, I suppose."

Lachlan's son, who died at Dieppe. Jules didn't die. Amazingly.

Christie stands beside Morag.

"If I'd had it up to me–" Christie is trying to say.

"What?"

"I would have buried her my own self." Christie mumbles, but strongly. "In the Nuisance Grounds."

Morag takes the old man's arm as they prepare to go to the graveyard.

_Memorybank Movie: The Tower_

Now, and somewhat oddly, considering the awfulness of the house on Hill Street, the apartment in Toronto seems more than ever like a desert island, or perhaps a cave, a well-lighted and beautifully appointed cave, but a cave just the same. Could one say _cave_ if there were windows? Morag looks out the long high-up windows and sees the cars hurtling along Avenue Road, all apparently bent on destroying one another, or, more particularly, united in their desire to wipe out that anachronistic species, the pedestrians. From this height they look scarcely less lethal than they do at earthlevel. She hates and fears them, and refuses to learn to drive.

She busies herself with this and that–goes out window-shopping, or to an art gallery or the museum. Seeing nothing. She phones friends, women who also have nothing to do and who are not friends anyway. Her own fault. Brooke says she does not make an effort to make friends, and this is true. She does not. Her lifeline depends on letters from and to Ella in Halifax. Morag has not heard yet from the publishers. The waiting is intolerable. Ella writes reassuring letters, counselling patience and cursing publishers.

Maybe _tower_ would be a better word for the apartment. Crestwood Towers is in fact the name it bears on the flossy brass plate outside the thick plateglass doors. Crestwood. Crest of what? And not a wood in sight. Who thinks up these names? A tower it certainly is, though. The lonely tower. Self-dramatization. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair. Your long _straight black_ hair, not golden waves. Who the hell could let their hair down here? Even the little worshipful group of Honours English students (Thurs., 8:00 P.M.) argue in well-modulated grammatical voices, devoid of epithets, bland as tapioca pudding. Since Prin's death, and the last sight of Christie, Morag has experienced increasingly the mad and potentially releasing desire to speak sometimes as Christie used to speak, the loony oratory, salt-beefed with oaths, the stringy lean oaths with some protein in them, the Protean oaths upon which she was reared. But of course does no such thing.

Morag stops going to the hairdresser and lets her hair grow. How could you ever let your hair down if there wasn't anything there to let down? This is, she suspects, a bizarre concept.

"We're going to the Morgans' tomorrow," Brooke says. "I expect you'll be getting your hair done."

"No," Morag says carefully. "I thought I'd let it grow out. I can't go to the hairdresser any more, Brooke."

"For God's sake, why not? Are you allergic to whatever it is they put on your hair? Why don't you go to the doctor?"

"Yeh. I'm allergic. But not physically."

"Morag, will you kindly enlighten me? Your hair–not to put too fine a point upon it–looks a mess."

"I'll brush it back and hold it with combs until it's longer, it won't look that bad. I don't like those places, Brooke. I never have. You don't know what it's like–all these mauvesmocked little perfumed dollies floating around, making me feel fantastically inadequate, and yet I don't _agree_ with the way they turn me out. I don't want to look like that. I don't know. I can't explain."

But all he really wants is that his wife should look decent, a credit to him. Is this asking too much? Sometimes she thinks Yes, sometimes No.

Brooke rises from the Danish Modern sittingplace, and comes over to where she is standing. Puts an arm around her shoulder, and she turns to him and holds him, holds onto him tightly, in need.

"Now wait a minute," he says gently. "I think you're getting all worked up over nothing, little one."

Morag withdraws. He looks at her in–what? Bewilderment? Annoyance? Surprise?

"For God's sake, what is it _now_?" he asks, or states.

What indeed? Perfidious Morag, acting like a child. She sees this, and is trapped by it.

"Listen, Brooke–please don't misunderstand me. Only–I wish you wouldn't call me that."

"Call you _what_ , for heaven's sake? What've I said wrong _now_?"

" _Little one_. Brooke, I am twenty-eight years old, and I am five feet eight inches tall, which has always seemed too bloody christly tall to me but there it is, and by judas priest and all the sodden saints in fucking Beulah Land, I am stuck with it and I do not _mind_ like I did once, in fact the goddamn reverse if you really want to know, for I've gone against it long enough, and I'm no actress at heart, then, and that's the everlasting christly truth of it."

"You," Brooke says, "are hysterical. Are you due to menstruate?"

Morag stands absolutely silent. _I do not know the sound of my own voice. Not yet, anyhow._

"No," Morag says. "That was, of course, an ill-considered outburst, and it owes more to Christie's way of talking than mine, I guess. But it was meant."

She is, she realizes, very very angry, and at the same time doubtful about her right to be angry, at him or at the composition of her own composite self.

"As I see it," Brooke says, "you really are–in some way quite mysterious to me, Morag–rejecting affection. Don't you realize that when I say _little one_ , it's the affectionate diminutive? You must see that much."

True. All true. How could anyone reply to that?

"I know," Morag says. "Look, I do know. But it's just that, somehow, with the way I am, with the long past I've had–because I _have_ had a long past–for me, the term isn't good. When I was a kid, I was never treated like a kid, and that was both fortunate and unfortunate. I guess my own parents must've treated me like a kid, but I don't recall, except a few fragments and the fantasies I composed about them later on."

"It's too bad you had to go back to the town this last time," Brooke says. "You had effectively forgotten it. Now it's all risen up again, and it's only upsetting you, Morag. Can't you simply put it from mind?"

"I never forgot any of it. It was always there."

"When you first came to me," Brooke says, "you said you had no past. I liked that. It was as though everything was starting for you, right then, that moment. You used to make me laugh–I don't mean _at_ you, I mean with you. Don't you remember? I don't, I suppose, laugh easily. You had a lightness of heart that I loved–I really loved."

His terrible need. His terrible need for someone who could bring him light, lightness, release, relief. How could you fight that? How could you withdraw from the terrors of the cave in which he lived almost always alone? But what if remaining there meant to be chained forever to that image of yourself which he must have and which must forever be distorted?

"Brooke–I remember. And I'm sorry. I think I lied to you, without meaning to, right from the first."

"You didn't lie, love. You couldn't. Not you. You were without guile. That was the reason I loved you."

"Brooke, I haven't been without guile since I was four years old. I didn't think you'd care about me if I let you know, that's all. I mean, let you know about my own darkness, that comes on sometimes."

Brooke goes and stands by the windows, looking down at the traffic weaving its metallic violent ballet.

"Don't you think we are making too much of all this, Morag? I think you're exaggerating, if I may say so. Look–we've been married nine years. It's been all right. There were bound to be some difficulties. Don't you think I've felt them, too? Don't you think I've held back, many times, coming home and finding you sitting there at the typewriter as though hypnotized, and no dinner in sight? Well, that's trivial–what I really mean is, no welcome in sight. Don't you think I've ever felt attracted to other women, to women who seemed mainly to care about connecting warmly with a man?"

"Yes. Yes, I know. Sometimes I've wished you had–"

"You don't wish that at all," Brooke says bitterly, his face containing such pain and such ambiguity that she has to look away.

"Brooke–just accept that I'm not the same as I was. Or maybe I'm the same, but it scared me, before. Now I can't–"

"Can't what?"

"Can't bear not be taken seriously," Morag says, the words sounding melodramatic to her ears, although true. "Can't bear to be treated as a child."

Brooke looks at her. His very tall frame is rigid and separate. " _Do_ I? Does the way in which we make love strike you that way? Has that been anything except good?"

"It's been–you know it's been good."

But even there, the game these past years, rewards and punishments. _Have you been a good girl?_ She cannot bring it up now. Because their coming together has been fine so many times over the years that if she were never to make it with a man, ever again, she couldn't depart this life complaining.

"Well, then," Brooke is saying, "maybe you're simply worrying needlessly."

"Yes. Maybe. I guess so. I'm sorry, Brooke."

"It's all right, love. Everything's all right. That visit to Manawaka just upset you a bit, that's all. Now, I'm going to make us both a very dry martini, and you'll have your hair done tomorrow, and we will cease worrying about things that don't matter, shall we?"

"All right, Brooke. Yes."

She wonders whether, if Brooke now suggested that she should try to have his child, she would any longer agree.

_Spear of Innocence_ comes back after seven months, with a polite letter of rejection. Morag sends it out again, willing herself not to think.

After three months, the manuscript is returned, with a letter saying _We do want to publish this novel but we do feel that certain parts..._ etcetera.

Morag has not looked at the manuscript for going on a year. Looks at it now. Bloody hell. Some of the editor's remarks strike home as true; others seem ludicrous. She rages. But goes back inside the novel. Tries this time, more than anything, to bring Lilac's own unstilted speech into more being, into more relevance with the rest of the story. This rewriting is a thousand miles from the first setting down. No half-lunatic sense of possession, of being possessed by the thing. In fact, this is much easier, but without exhilaration.

Morag does not know what to do, faced with acceptance and then with editorial criticism which at first seems like the Revealed Word but shortly thereafter seems like individuals' opinions. She embarks upon a vast number of letters.

In Chapter Four, where you say Lilac talks like a totally uninformed person, unaware of the world, I have to say that she _is_ a totally uninformed person, unaware of the world, and that is part of the point about her. I see, however, that in Chapter Nine, I haven't given enough consideration to Paul's wife's responses–am not sure what can be done here, but will see–

Morag realizes, with some surprise, that she is able to defend her own work. Also, it is a relief to be able to discuss it, no holds barred, with no personal emotional connotations in the argument. Only when the process is completed does she see that it has been like exercising muscles never before used, stiff and painful at first, and then later, filled with the knowledge that this part of herself really is there.

"Brooke–"

"Mm?"

"Walton and Pierce have accepted _Spear of Innocence_."

He stares at her, then smiles warmly.

"Well, that's marvellous, darling. That's absolutely splendid. I didn't even know you'd sent it out."

"Are you glad, Brooke?"

Dumb question. What does she expect him to say?

"Of course I'm glad, idiot child. How could I be otherwise? Do they want any changes made?"

"They suggested some things."

"I'll take a quick run through it, if you like," Brooke says.

"Well, thanks, but that's pretty well settled, the changes."

"I see. My reactions aren't any longer welcome to you."

"It's not that. It's–I know you know a lot about novels. But I know something, as well. Different from reading or teaching."

"With that insight, perhaps you'd like to take over my English 450 course in the Contemporary Novel? I'm sure it could be arranged."

Morag, standing in the diningroom doorway, feels a spinning of blood inside her skull. She recalls having been as angry as this as a child, but seldom since. It acts upon her precipitously, like about six double scotches taken at a gulp. She picks up the peacock-blue Italian glass bowl from the centre of the diningroom table and heaves it against the livingroom fireplace. Naturally, it shatters dramatically.

Total silence. Inside her head and stomach, sickness like a hangover. Brooke stands beside the long windows. Very very tall, absolutely straight, his face like the carved face of the unknown soldier.

"You'd better clear that away," he says finally, in a perfectly controlled voice. "I wouldn't advise you to do that again, Morag. The burden of your complaint, these past months, seems to be that I treat you like a child. Might I suggest you stop acting like one?"

True. All true. How in hell has she done such a thing? She can barely believe it herself, even with the blue-chipped evidence all over the carpet. What can ever make up for this enormity?

"Brooke–I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Just clean it up, Morag," he says, tiredly. "I'm going in the study. I've got papers to mark. I won't want any dinner."

She sweeps up the broken glass. The doorbell inconveniently rings. It is a telegram. Morag has written to Ella some days ago about the novel. The telegram reads: MAZELTOV AND TWO MILLION HURRAHS LOVE ELLA.

"What was that?" Brooke says, emerging from study.

"The woman in 70-B wants me to take delivery of a parcel from Eaton's."

"Oh. I thought it was a man's voice."

"Her husband."

That night, in bed, they turn to one another.

"Brooke–"

"Listen, my love, let's not have these upsets. Please."

"I won't. Not any more. I promise."

She strokes the skin of his shoulders and back. Then they make love, and it is fine, except that at one time it seemed an unworded conversation and connection and now it seems something else. An attempt at mutual reassurance, against all odds.

The dust jacket for _Spear of Innocence_ shows a spear, proper, piercing a human heart, valentine. Morag is beside herself with embarrassment and fury, combined with the feeling that because they have published the damn thing at all, she ought not to experience quirks nor qualms about such trivia.

The reviews, clipped out and sent to Morag by the publishers, aren't all that bad although by no means overwhelmingly laudatory. Stomach churning, Morag forces herself to read them. Some of them do not appear to refer to the novel Morag wrote at all, and this is true even of some of the favourable ones. So she cannot believe even the few comments she would like to believe. A cross-section shows, if nothing else, a bewildering diversity of views.

"A first novel of some wit and perception, marred by the author's too-obvious playing upon the fashionable theme of homosexuality."

"Lilac is a winner."

"Miss Gunn obviously has it in for the Church."

"A tale of a primitive lumber town."

"The final scene in court gives an admirable picture of man's misunderstanding of man."

"A dreary novel about–yawn–a goodhearted tart."

"A piquant and exciting novel about abortion."

"Lilac Stonehouse, with her nonchalant vulgarity, will live on in the head for some time."

She has not, unfortunately, told Brooke, until the book appears, that it is being published under the name of Morag Gunn, not Morag Skelton. He looks at the dust jacket, agreeing that it is pretty bad, then looks at her.

"Didn't you want to take the chance, Morag? Of putting your married name on it?"

"Brooke–it wasn't that. It was something quite different. It goes a long way back."

Or is he, perhaps, quite correct?

She knows now that she does not want to stay with Brooke. Leaving him, however, remains unthinkable.

Uncertainty grows to panic proportions. She begins forgetting ordinary things such as turning on the oven so the dinner will be ready at the correct time. She stays out longer in the afternoons, sometimes coming back to awareness in some totally unknown area of the city, to discover that she should have been home an hour ago.

The feeling of being separated from herself increases. She is unable to speak of this feeling to anyone, not even to Ella. Her letters to Ella are cryptic, and, as she sees one day, full of passages which are virtually meaningless to anyone but herself.

How many people has she betrayed so far? _Don't count–you might scare yourself too much._ How many will there be before her life is over? Should you count yourself among those, or only others?

She is walking along a street of flimsy board houses, boardinghouses, _Rooms Weekly or Nightly_ , no curtains on windows, a greyness over all. The day also is grey, autumnal grey, or seems so until she comes out of herself to some degree and notices that in fact the air is crisp blue. Clear yellow leaves are being blown from the already-sparse branches of the few thin trees that fringe the street, and the sun has the warmth of Indian summer. One day she will be dead and not able to see all this any more, and now she is wasting whatever there is. How can she write if she goes blind inside?

She is filled with the profound conviction that she will not write anything more, anyway. Big deal. Keel over with sorrow, world. As if it would matter.

A man is walking out of one of the houses, and something in his gait makes Morag slow her pace and look at him. Fairly tall, slightly gone to belly around the middle, dressed in denims and a blue flannel shirt, a wide brass-buckled belt at his waist. Lank black hair, hawkish features, light brown skin. Lazarus Tonnerre. It cannot be, of course, but it seems to be. Then Morag sees that it is not Lazarus.

"Skinner!"

She calls the old nickname without thinking. Jules looks up, startled, frowning. Then he grins.

"Great God, it's Morag! How about that, eh?"

Again, without prior thought, knowing only how glad she is to see him, Morag runs towards him and puts both arms around his shoulders, holding him tightly, holding onto him. He gives a surprised laugh, then hugs her, also. Only for a second. Then they look at each other.

"I never thought to see you in this part of the city," Jules says. "You knew I lived in Toronto, though?"

"Yeh. Christie told me, last time I was in Manawaka, back last spring."

"When did we last see each other, Jules?"

"Going on ten years, I guess. How you been?"

"Oh, not so bad, I guess. You?"

"Not so bad, neither. You want some coffee?"

They go to a small and shabby café where the walls are papered with old Coca-Cola posters and the coffee is served in thick white cups decorated with a dark green line. Not unlike the Parthenon in Manawaka.

"You've got thinner," Jules observes, lighting cigarettes for them both, and eyeing her carefully.

"You haven't."

"Nope," he says cheerfully. "I'm gettin' a beer belly."

"I thought when I first saw you that it was your dad."

His eyes narrow, and only then does she recall that he always said he would never become like his father. Even after he no longer hated and resented Lazarus.

"Lazarus died this past spring," Jules says.

"I didn't know. I'm sorry. How old–"

"Fifty-one," Jules says angrily. "Only fifty-one."

Not to be talked about, she sees. Or not yet.

"How long you been in Toronto, Jules?"

His face, still wary, relaxes a little.

"You still say _Jewels_. Don't worry. I got damn little French myself. More than I used to, though. I lived in Quebec, there, coupla years. I been here for about five years or like that. I done okay. Wanna know how I make a living these days?"

"Sure. How?"

"Singing. How about that, eh?"

"That's great. You always did have a good voice."

"How would you know?"

"I used to sit at the back of the room, too, in school, and I heard you."

"Some memory you got there, Morag."

"What kind of singing?"

"Oh, country and western, mostly. Lotta them are crap. I sing some I made up, too. Maybe they're crap as well, but at least it's my own crap. None of it pays so good. I do a coupla small clubs and some coffee-houses and that, and travel around some. But it's better than working in a lousy factory."

"Your own songs? What about?"

"What about? What a question. People here and there, mostly, I guess. I'll sing one for you sometime, maybe. What about you?"

"You knew I was married?"

"Yeh. You married a rich prof after all. I told you you would, didn't I? Jesus, you sure wanted to go _somewhere_."

She had got what she wanted. Not, however, what she'd bargained for. _It's your bed, Morag. Lie on it._

"He's not what you'd call rich," Morag says, looking away from Jules. "Not that I'd want him to be. That doesn't matter a damn."

"Something else does, though, eh?"

She looks again into his face. His dark eyes are looking at the expression in her own. What is he reading there?

"Yeh. Well, never mind that."

"You got kids?"

"No," Morag says. "No kids."

She does not realize, until she has spoken, how resentful her voice is. Jules shrugs and does not pursue the subject.

"Jules–come back for dinner, will you? I gotta go and get it ready now, and we've just begun talking."

He hesitates. Then, perhaps hearing some appeal in her voice, he nods.

"Sure. Okay. Why not?"

At the apartment, he sits at the kitchen table while Morag prepares dinner. She pours a scotch for both of them, and drinks hers while she works. Then she sits down, across the table from him, and refills their glasses.

"You play guitar, Jules?"

"Yeh. I picked it up, here and there, along the way. A pal of mine plays his guitar along with me. Billy Joe, that is. He's Ojibway. Comes from away to hell and gone, northern Ontario. I been up there coupla times with him. I liked it fine. Liked his family. They got nothing, though. Except a lot of sick kids, last time I was there. Some died, since."

He falls into silence, and Morag cannot ask him. Everything he knows, everything he has seen, the films there in his head–all unseen by her. It has not occurred to her before to wonder how scornful he must feel about this apartment, but she wonders now. Then he laughs and comes back.

"I don't dress like this when I'm singing," he says. "I wish to christ I could, but no go. You should see me. One-man circus. Satin shirt with a lotta beadwork, and sometimes a phoney doeskin jacket with fringes and a lotta plastic porcupine quills in patterns. That's what they like."

"That's–bad."

"Oh, it's not so bad. It's a load of shit, but I don't worry much as long as they let me do the singing. It's when they start joining in that makes me want to puke. If they want a community singsong, let 'em have it, but not with me. That's mostly the older people do that. Like to go slumming, I guess. They wouldn't know a good song if they heard one. They just get loaded and start thinking they're Roy Rogers or something–for God's sake, who'd _want_ to be? Christie said you were writing a book."

"Yeh. It's published. It's a novel."

"Can I see it?"

"Sure. You can have a copy, if you want one."

"I'd like that," Jules says.

She gives him the book, and he gets her to write her name in it. She writes _Morag Gunn_. It seems strange to write that surname, after so long. But it never occurs to her to add _Skelton_.

Brooke is late. Morag and Jules have another scotch. She reaches her hand across the table and puts it very lightly on his hand. He does not move. He neither withdraws nor responds. She does not know, herself, why she has done this. She is not making a play. She wants only to touch him, someone from a long long way back, someone related to her in ways she cannot define and feels no need of defining.

"I'm glad to see you, Skinner. Sometimes it's–I don't know. I hate this city."

"Yeh. It's not much. You're not very happy, are you, Morag?"

"No. Not very."

"Care to say?"

"Yes. But I don't think I can. Well, never mind that. Prin died last summer. I was back then."

"That must've been only a few months after I was back. I saw Christie, and he said his wife wasn't too good. I only stayed long enough to get Lazarus put under the ground."

"What was–what did he die of?"

Jules doesn't reply for a while. Then he withdraws his hand and picks up his glass, holds it up.

"This, partly, I guess," he says. "The doc said it was pneumonia. My dad was alone down there, the past few years. I don't guess he cared much. It was all the same to him, whether he died or didn't die. He had a lotta troubles in his life."

"Yes. I know."

He places the glass back on the table.

"Jesus, sometimes I don't give very goddamn much about my own life," he says, a low angry voice, "but I sure as hell care more about it because of him. That town never knew one damn thing about him. We never starved, none of us, although we came close to it at times. He'd never turn anybody of his out, whatever they had done. Wild horses wouldn't drag me back to live in that town."

"Me, too."

"Yeh, maybe. Well, at least the town gave Christie a pension. The only thing they ever gave Lazarus, apart from a bit of Relief money, was the odd night in the town clink. You know something? Jacques, my youngest brother, he wrote to say he'd heard the old man was sick. We both went back, and by the time we got there Lazarus was dead. I wanted to bury him in the valley, beside the shack, but I couldn't. Not allowed. No, no, they said, you can't just bury bodies anywhere. But they wouldn't let him be buried in the town graveyard, neither."

"Why not? Why _not_?"

"Well, he was supposed to be R.C., eh? So the Protestants wouldn't have him in their section. The Catholics wouldn't have him, neither. He hadn't been to Mass for years, and he died without a priest. No go, they said."

"That's terrible."

"Yeh, well I guess I know why they really wouldn't have him. His halfbreed bones spoiling their cemetery."

The Métis, once lords of the prairies. Now refused burial space in their own land. Morag cannot say anything. She has no right.

"I wasn't thinking so good, right about then," Jules goes on. "I'd been away, you remember, when Piquette–when she died, there. Niall Cameron reminded me where Piquette and her kids were buried."

"Where was that?"

"Métis churchyard, up Galloping Mountain way. I was glad then that they'd refused Lazarus in the town cemetery. I thought he'd be better, among the other ones. So that's what we did. People up there helped us bury him. The priest there wasn't too troubled. No headstones there. Just wooden crosses, plain pine or whatever comes to hand, and the weather greys them. I liked it up there."

The apartment door opens, and Brooke comes in.

"Morag?"

"Here."

Brooke stands in the kitchen doorway, looking at Jules.

"An old friend from Manawaka," Morag explains. "Jules Tonnerre. He's going to stay for dinner."

Brooke nods to Jules but does not shake hands. "I've got a devil of a headache," he says. "Where are the aspirin?"

"In the bathroom cupboard."

A moment later, Brooke calls to her from the bathroom. She goes. He is standing there with the aspirin bottle in his hand and an unfathomable expression on his face.

"Your past certainly _is_ catching up with you," Brooke says. "I suppose he tracked you down and is here in the somewhat unlovely role of freeloader."

"Brooke! I met him by accident on the street. I asked him back."

"Well, tonight won't be possible, I'm afraid. Charles and Donna Pettigrew are coming over this evening. Had you forgotten?"

" _Yes_. But so what?"

"It may not matter to you, but it matters to me. He seems to have gone through a fair proportion of my scotch."

" _Your_ scotch!"

"Yes. My scotch. Anyway, I thought it was supposed to be illegal to give liquor to Indians."

Morag stares at him. Then turns and walks out.

Jules is standing in the front hall, his hand on the door-knob. He has, plainly, heard. He grins at her.

"So long, Morag."

The door closes behind him. Morag hesitates in the hallway. Then she grabs her coat and handbag and follows him.

" _Merde!_ Morag, what d'you think you're doing? You better go back."

They are walking rapidly down Avenue Road. She has, by running, caught up with him.

"I'm not going back. Skinner, just let me talk to you for a while."

"Hey, listen, never mind what he did, eh? It goes in one ear and out the other, by me. Anyhow, it's my problem, not yours. _He's_ your problem. Go on back."

"I have _got_ to talk to somebody, and you've known me forever, and I am not about to go to the Salvation Army or somewhere and–"

He stops walking and puts his hands on her shoulders, drawing her to a halt. She is, she discovers with chagrin, crying. And cannot stop, probably will never stop. Jules puts one arm around her, as though assisting along the street someone who is maimed or crippled.

"Okay, okay," he says. "Come to my place and simmer down. Do you think you're a bit drunk?"

"Three scotches," Morag says, "would not normally have that effect. It's okay. I can walk."

Jules laughs.

"Shit, I know you can walk, outside. Can you walk, inside?"

"No. Not right now. Don't take your arm away, then. Please."

"You hate to ask anyone to prop you up sometimes, eh?"

"Yes. Yes, I do. And yet that's what I suppose I was asking of him, at the start."

Jules' room has a sink in one corner, one exposed ceiling bulb, a single and unmade bed, a wooden chair, and a floor covered with brown linoleum on which there are, incongruously, patterns of red oriental poppies. There is also a hotplate. He brews very strong tea and serves it to her with three spoonfuls of brown sugar.

"It'll taste like molasses," he says, "but it's good for what ails you. Drink up."

She drinks the nauseating liquid, and indeed begins to feel somewhat better.

"Jules–I'm sorry. This isn't your trouble. You've got your own. I should've stayed. I've known for a long time something had to give, somewhere, but I was too scared to do anything about it. I still am. But I've got to."

She is sitting on the bed, the tea mug in her hands. Jules is tilting back on the precarious wooden chair.

"Lucky I had no work on tonight," he says. "You want to talk, or what?"

"I guess I understand as much as I ever will," Morag says, "what has happened. It's no one's fault. We needed to play each other's game, and it wasn't all a game–a lot of it was good. But I can't play that game any more, because I'm not the same as I was. He taught me a lot, Jules–that was real enough. But we were living each other's fantasy, somehow, and if that sounds smartass–"

"It sounds crazy," Jules says, "but go on."

"Ever hear that hymn, 'Jerusalem the Golden'?"

"I'm not much of a man for hymns."

"It was Prin's favourite. It was singing it at her funeral that–well, I guess you sometimes see things suddenly, and then you know you've known them a long time."

She rises and reaches for her coat.

"You going?" Jules says. "You only just got here."

"I should be getting–"

" _Should_ , for God's sake. Forget it. You don't want to go. You want to go to bed with me."

"Yes. That's true. That once–"

"No need to remind me," Jules says. "But I'm not that speedy now, you'll be glad to know."

Very slowly. Everything is happening with no sense of haste. When they are in bed together, Morag is surprised at his gentleness, his pacing of himself according to her. Unlike his urgent younger self. His body, too, is different from the taut boy's body she remembers. He is broader and more thickset now, and yet the hard stomach muscles are still there under the beginnings of the belly fat which he hates on himself. In her present state of mind, she doesn't expect to be aroused, and does not even care if she isn't, as though this joining is being done for other reasons, some debt or answer to the past, some severing of inner chains which have kept her bound and separated from part of herself. She is, however, aroused quickly, surprised at the intensity of her need to have him enter her. She links her legs around his, and it is as though it is again that first time. Then they both reach the place they have been travelling towards, and she lies beside him, spent and renewed.

Jules grins at her, and smooths her hair, combing it with his fingers.

"You're okay," he says.

"You too."

They are quiet for a while.

"Jules," she says finally, "where all have you been, these years?"

"All over the place. All over the country. I've done harvesting, and I've done nothing. Once I punched a time-clock in a factory till I felt punch-drunk and then I saw it was that goddamn clock that was punching me. I've worked in logging camps and like that. Picked a lotta songs on the way."

"You could make a song out of what you've just said."

"Yeh. Tried to, coupla times, but it never came out right. Some guys can make songs like that, out of what's with them, but I can't. Don't know why. I made some for Billy Joe, and even for some women, but not for me. Maybe somebody will do it for me someday."

He laughs, mocking himself, but she senses that he half means what he says.

"Did you ever marry yet, Jules?"

"Sure. Three times."

"That's a lot of divorces."

"Who needs divorces? I never meant _marry_ by some crazy kind of law. I meant the women I shacked up with for some time–you know, not a one-night stand."

"You got kids?"

"Not as far as I know. I wouldn't say for sure."

Skinner Tonnerre, moving through the world like a dandelion seed carried by the wind. Not such a bad way to be, when you considered the alternatives.

"I can't stay in one place forever," he says. "I stay for a while, then I want to move on. Women like to stay put. But I can't. I just can't. Lazarus, he was like that, and yet different. He would take off sometimes. But some crazy thing kept bringing him back to that valley. All of us brought him back, I guess, when we were young. After that, I dunno."

"What I'm going to do," Morag says, "is, I'm taking off."

"Yeh? Think you can?"

"I have to. It's complicated, but I have to."

"So you had to do this first, eh?" He puts a hand between her legs and his fingers explore the triangle of hair there.

"How so?"

"Easy," Jules says. "Magic. You were doing magic, to get away. He was the only man in you before, eh?"

"Yes."

Jules rises and goes to a cupboard.

"Shit. Only one bottle of beer left. I knew it. That goddamn Billy. Want some?"

"You have it. I'm not much on beer."

Jules pries the cap off the bottle on the edge of the table, and drinks. Sitting naked on the tottery wooden chair, looking at her.

"I'm the _shaman_ , eh?" he says.

"I don't know," Morag says. "I never thought of it like that. But I know that whatever I'm going to do next, or wherever I go, it'll have to be on my own."

"You're right, there. Morag–there's something you gotta tell me about. You never told me, away back then."

"No. I can't. Jules, I can't."

He walks very quietly over to her and takes her hair in his hands. Morag's now-straight-black hair is not yet long enough to be wrapped around her neck, but this is the gesture.

"You will, though. You wouldn't, then. You will say, if you have to stay here a month to do it. You know what Lazarus told me?"

"Yes. Nothing."

"That's it. Nothing."

He turns away from her.

"I have got to have a drink," he says tiredly. "I'll be right back."

He dresses and goes out. In his absence she puts on her own clothes. It never occurs to her to leave while he is gone. He must have known it wouldn't. He returns in half an hour with two bottles of cheap wine. Pours some into two glasses.

"All right. Tell me now, Morag."

"I don't want to. I can't." But she knows she will have to.

"Just tell me. Tell me how my sister died. I have to know."

Morag gets up from the bed abruptly. Goes to the sink and vomits. Jules, unmoving, waits.

"Lachlan sent me down there," she says finally. "He didn't know what it would be like."

"Go on."

"Well, I went down to the valley, and there weren't many there. Niall Cameron was there. The Mounties had gone. Your two young brothers were standing at the side, sort of huddled together. Piquette had been home alone with her kids when it happened. It was the stove–it must've been a wreck of a stove."

"It was. Lazarus knew. But he was always careful with it, even when he got drunk. Was Piquette–"

"It was said so, afterwards, that she'd been on the home-brew."

Jules laughs bitterly.

"It would be said. Well, I guess it was likely true. She had a lot to want to forget about. Her man, so-called, picked her up when it suited him and threw her away when that suited him. She meant no more to him, that's for sure, than a dog you chloroform if it gets to be a nuisance. What was the shack like?"

"Burned to the ground. Still smoking, parts of it steaming. The fire wagon had been there but it was too late. Lazarus was–"

"Say it."

"He was standing there, by himself, beside the–beside what was left of the shack. I guess I've never seen any person look that much alone. Then he said–he said he was going in alone. He said _They're mine, there, them._ "

Jules puts his head down on his outstretched arms, on the table. He is extremely still.

"He didn't go in by himself, though, Jules. As you know, Niall went in with him. One man couldn't carry out the–even if two of them were children."

Jules raises his head.

"When they came out–did you see–"

She is shaking and cannot stop. It is not her right, but she cannot help it.

"No. They–Niall and your dad–they took a stretcher in, and it was covered when they came out–a blanket or something, covered the–"

"Okay," Jules says steadily. "What else?"

"It was the coldest part of the winter," Morag says, and now her own voice sounds oddly cold and meticulous, as though the memory of that chill had numbed her. "The air smelled of–of burnt wood. I remember thinking–crazy–but I thought Bois-Brûlés."

"Shut up!" Jules cries out in some kind of pain which cannot be touched by her.

Silence.

"Go on," he says finally.

Why does he have to inflict this upon himself? Why can't he let it go? Perhaps he has to know before he can let it go at all.

"I guess I vomited, as they brought the stretcher out. I realized then that the air didn't only smell of smoke and burnt wood. It smelled of–well, like roasted meat, and for a minute I wondered what it was, and then–"

Jules lies across the table once more. Then slowly he raises his head and looks at her.

"By Jesus, I hate you," he says in a low voice like distant thunder. "I hate all of you. Every goddamn one."

Morag gets up and puts on her coat. There is nothing more can be said. He watches her walk towards the door. Then speaks, the cry wrenched up out of him.

"No. Wait awhile, eh?"

They hold to one another again, and make love or whatever it is, throughout the deep and terrifying night.

In the morning, Morag wakens and at first does not know where she is. Then she realizes but can scarcely believe it. How could she stay away all night? Will Brooke have phoned the police? Will he imagine her as dead? How could she have done that to him?

"I should've phoned him, Jules. I should've–"

Jules rolls over in bed and stretches.

"Well, you didn't. So what now?"

"I have to go back and–"

"Stay?"

"No. But–"

"Tidy things up neat, eh?"

"Of course," she says angrily, and he laughs.

"It won't work, Morag. If you're going, go. Don't talk. It won't do a thing."

"Maybe not. But it's–"

"Your way."

"Yes. My way."

"Where'll you go then? Christie's?"

Morag begins trembling again. Dressed now, and standing beside the table, trembling as though with chill.

"Skinner–I can't."

"Where, then?"

"Further west. To the Coast."

"Chrissake, why?"

She doesn't know. Maybe it only ever occurs to prairie people, when they light out, to go yet further west. This is idiotic.

"I can't say. I don't know."

"You got any money?"

"Some. From the novel. Not much, but enough to get there and get started on something. Any kind of job."

Jules rises and gets dressed.

"You can come back for a while, till you get yourself together. If you want to."

"Yes. I will, then. And–thanks. Jules, I won't–"

Hesitates.

"Won't what?" he says. "Wash my underpants? Iron my jazzy satin shirts?"

"No. I mean, yes–I'll do that if you want–it's all the same to me. I meant–I won't stay long."

To let him know she understands the terms on which his offer is being made.

"Yeh, that's okay," he says. "I know."

Once out into the street and on the bus, the day strikes like lightning into Morag's brain, and she no longer understands what has been happening. At the door of the apartment, she stops and steadies herself, leaning against her corridor wall. She does not recall ever feeling this frightened before. She takes out her key and opens the door.

Brooke has not gone to work. He is sitting in his study. His glasses are beside him on the desk, and both hands are upon his eyes. He swings around at her entry, and she sees that he has been crying.

Anything else. Rage. Fury. Contempt. Condemnation. Reproach. She was prepared for any or all. But not for this.

He stiffens, straightens, puts on his glasses.

"So you've come back," Brooke says.

It is an attempt to regain the old manner, but it does not quite come off, because his voice is shaking. Appalled, Morag stands in the doorway.

"Brooke–I'm sorry."

_That's a bloody awful christly useless word. Proverbs of C. Logan._

"I should've phoned," she goes on. "I should've–"

"Oh, don't worry," Brooke says, and now he is gaining back the control he needs. "I didn't imagine you had thrown yourself under a bus. I knew where you were. Perhaps not exactly, but at least who you were with."

Morag finds herself unable to explain or say anything. Everything was clear, earlier this morning. Now it is not.

"I suppose you went to bed with him," Brooke says.

"Yes."

Brooke looks at her for what seems hours and is in fact about three seconds. And she is, once again, totally unprepared for the cry which comes from his throat, an anguish she has never heard from him except in his crying of that one name in his sleep.

"Why, Morag? Are you so determined to destroy me?"

This is all the more terrible because she knows the pain is real and yet there is something melodramatic, to her ears, in what he is saying.

"Brooke–listen. I don't want to damage you. I honestly don't think I do, but I can't be sure. I don't suppose you want to damage me, either."

"Have I ever?" he says. "Have I ever wanted to damage you? Never. Never. Never."

Add two more _nevers_ and it might be Lear at the death of Cordelia. Bitch, to think this way, now. Yes. But.

"Brooke. I can't explain. I get mixed up when I try, and then I feel I must be entirely in the wrong. But all I know is–I have to go. I can't stay."

"I could understand it better if you could just give me one reason for what you've done."

"What do you mean, exactly, what I've done?"

"How do you think I feel, Morag, knowing you've been with another man?"

She is shocked and awed by his pain. At the same time, she sees for the first time that he has believed he owns her.

"Brooke, I'm sorry. Not for what happened last night. I'm sorry that neither of us were different. But Brooke–you've put yourself inside women other than me."

"Not since we married," Brooke says, "unless you want to drag up that one time when we were in Nova Scotia, that girl on old Kenton's trawler, his niece or something. But once she'd hauled me into her bunk, I couldn't."

Morag stares at him. Then laughs. He looks at her as though she has suddenly become demented.

"I never knew," Morag says. "I didn't go along on that jaunt, as you recall. You mean to say it doesn't count cause you didn't come?"

He takes a step towards her, and for an instant she is afraid again. Then he stops himself.

"You _are_ a bitch, aren't you?" he says.

She feels exhaustion as never before. Words have lost meaning.

"Brooke. I'm withdrawing the money I earned from the novel, then you can have the account changed from a joint one to yours. I'm going to Vancouver. I'll do anything you want to do about a divorce, whatever it is that people have to do. And I'm sorry. But I just have to take off by myself."

"I suppose your boyfriend isn't reliable enough to provide a living?"

"He is not my–as you repulsively put it–boyfriend."

"No? What then?"

"It doesn't matter. Brooke–I don't know what to say, except that it was fine with us for quite a while. I owe you a lot, and I know it. And–"

And nothing. Quit talking. Babble babble. He wants to quit talking, too. He looks at her from his solitary confinement, but says nothing. Then he turns away. Sits down at his desk and begins marking essays.

Morag packs one suitcase and goes.

Jules is reclining on the bed with a bottle of beer.

"Hi," he says. "Was it bad?"

"Yes. Pretty bad."

"Want a beer? It's all we have. Nothing stronger, I'm sorry to say."

She takes the bottle he offers her, and sits on the bed beside him, shivering.

"Don't think about it," Jules says. "Look, I didn't say before, but you don't want to get pregnant, do you? Because–"

"Would you mind very much if I didn't do anything to try not to?"

Jules looks at her, then laughs.

"Jesus. You're a crazy woman. Do you have to ask permission? I don't mind, no. Only–"

"It's all right. I wouldn't claim support or anything."

"Well, you probably wouldn't stand much of a chance of getting it, from me," Jules says. "It's all I can do to keep myself going, right now. You still plan on going to Vancouver?"

"Yes. If I can just get myself pulled together first–"

"Stay as long as you need to. But not too long, or it'll turn out bad. As I ought to know. Funny thing, Morag. I was gonna sing some of the songs to you. But I got a feeling I won't, not now. Maybe sometime. But this doesn't feel like the time."

"Why not?" she asks.

"I don't guess you'd hear them, really," Jules says.

Morag stays with him for just over three weeks. They speak little, and make love not at nights when he comes home late, but in the mornings, late mornings, when he wakens. He comes home bleak, usually. He hates most of the places where he sings. Only in one, a small coffeebar which pays hardly anything, does the young audience actually listen. The others are all of the cheap nightclub or roadhouse variety, middle-aged middle-class men out with hired women, painting, as they imagine, the town red, and deaf-drunk. He hates giving his songs there, but it is better than not singing at all. Days, when he and Billy Joe practise and work out new arrangements, they do so in Billy's room, one floor down. Morag hears the faint twanging of the two guitars and Jules' rough-true voice but she cannot make out the words. Sometimes she wants to go down and listen, but she senses that Jules is right. This isn't the time. She wouldn't really hear. She is overtaken by profound lethargy, some days, and sleeps as much as fourteen hours. Other days, she rushes around the city, making her preparations for departure.

Billy Joe brings Jules home one night, Jules unable to walk, Billy dragging him. Billy Joe is short and gentle-featured, but must be tough-muscled to haul along Jules, who is about twice his size and weight.

"What went wrong?" Morag asks.

"He was singin', there," Billy Joe says, "that one song about his grandfather, old Jules. At first they just didn't listen. Then they laughed, some. Then they started yellin' that they wanted him to sing stuff like 'Roll out the barrel.' So he gets mad and leaves and goes drinkin'. I had to leave the guitars there. Knew he'd end up smashing 'em. I guess maybe I better stay up here tonight, Morag. When he wakes up, he's gonna be crazy. He won't really be awake and he'll still be drunk."

When Jules seemingly wakes, after a few hours of restless imitation sleep, he is a man fighting everything he has ever found necessary to fight. A sleepwalker, a sleep-fighter. He is in the valley again, and Lazarus is there, fighting and not fighting. And the fire. And the long long beaches where the fireshot forever kills the same men, over and over. And the satin shirts of now.

"Take off this shit shirt, willya? Look, lemme tear it off, yeh? Like this this this. Know how she died? She was roasted like beef. She smelled like the roast beef they got there, on the Sundays–Jesus Jesus Jesus–"

"What do we do with him?" Morag says, scared, to Billy Joe, who is at this moment wrestling with Jules, wrestling with steadiness and apparently no fear. Doesn't Billy Joe feel fear? Maybe. Maybe he knows something beyond fear.

"Shut up and stay outa the way," Billy Joe says.

And finally Jules subsides into unconsciousness again.

In the morning, Jules is unspeaking, hungover. Finally, after potions of tea, he clears his throat. Billy has gone back downstairs.

"Hey. Morag. Was I bad?"

"Yeh. Not so good. Billy stayed. He was good with you."

"He's my friend. He should be good with me. He oughta know how, after this time."

"Your friends should have to wrestle with you?"

"Sometimes. You don't think I've ever wrestled with him?"

"I guess so. I'm off today, Jules. Not because of last night. Just because I'm ready to go, now."

"Yeh? God, I feel awful. Want me to come with you to the station?"

"Oh for christ's sake, in the shape you're in? Go back to bed. I can manage. I'm travelling light. I'll write to you."

"Well, I probably won't to you."

"No, you were never much of a letter writer. Jules–thanks."

"For nothing."

"So long, then."

"So long, Morag. Look after yourself."

She has five hundred dollars and a one-way ticket to Vancouver.

_Clunk-a-clunk-clunk. Clunk-a-clunk-clunk._ The train wheels. Once again, going into the Everywhere, where anything may happen. She no longer believes in the Everything out there. But part of her still believes.

Morag goes into the train john. Vomits. Cleans up tidily after herself. When upset or too tense, her digestion is the first thing to go. Her stomach, obviously, not her heart, is the dwellingplace of her emotions. How humiliating. Unless, of course, she is pregnant, which is hardly likely after a couple of weeks. What if she is, though? How could she have been so unbalanced as actually to try to be? How would she earn a living? She hadn't thought of that at the time, but does so, now. Fear. Panic. Where is Brooke?

Brooke's pain. His damage towards her. Hers towards him. Their voices a million miles apart. Their first coming together, and how good it had been.

The train clonks on and on. Through the prairies. She looks out at the flat lands, which from the train window could not ever tell you anything about what they are. The grain elevators, like stark strange towers. The small bluffs of scrub oak and poplar. In Ontario, _bluff_ means something else–a ravine, a small precipice? She's never really understood that other meaning; her own is so clear. A gathering of trees, not the great hardwoods of Down East, or forests of the North, but thin tough-fibred trees that could survive on open grassland, that could live against the wind and the winter here. That was a kind of tree worth having; that was a determined kind of tree, all right.

The crocuses used to grow out of the snow. You would find them in pastures, the black-pitted dying snow still there, and the crocuses already growing, their greengrey feather-stems, and the petals a pale greymauve. People who'd never lived hereabouts always imagined it was dull, bleak, hundreds of miles of nothing. They didn't know. They didn't know the renewal that came out of the dead cold.

She could have stopped off to see Christie. But has not done so.

There are many other passengers on this train, and Morag sees none of them. This in itself frightens her, but she cannot lessen it or take any lesson from it right now. What will she do when she gets where she's going?

The train moves west.
**PART FOUR**

**RITES OF PASSAGE**
**EIGHT**

**M** orag walked through the yellowing August grass and down the river. On the opposite bank, upriver a little from A-Okay's place, the light-leafed willows and tall solid maples were like ancestors, carrying within themselves the land's past. The wind skimmed northward along the water, and the deep currents drew the river south. This was what Morag looked at every day, the river flowing both ways, and yet it never lost its ancient power for her, and it never ceased to be new.

Pique and Dan were not up yet. These kids reversed the order of life, staying up all night and sleeping most of the day. _Order._ For heaven's sake. It flowed in Morag's veins, despise it though she might. What possible differences did it make if the kids wanted to turn the days around? They had both worked for a month in McConnell's Landing, at nothing-jobs, while Dan was still at A-Okay and Maudie's place. Was it Morag's concern if they decided they had enough financial reserves between them to quit work for a while, until the bread ran out, as they put it, because it was more important to get to know one another? They paid for their board; they shared the work of the house with her–in fact, they did more than their share. Nary a dish had Morag washed since Pique and Dan took up residence in the large front bedroom.

_So why complain? They're pulling their weight. You said they could move in here together. They didn't take the place by siege._

It was, of course, perfectly obvious what the problem really was. Not the kids' late rising, as Morag fairly often (and ignominiously) pretended to herself, thus justifying her early morning slamming of doors, loud stomping about in the kitchen, full-blast radio (preferably some loudmouth trumpeting the news), and general clashing of saucepans like clutches of cymbals. Clichés of symbols.

Royland came shuffling and crunching through the sundried grass. Old Man River. The Shaman. Diviner. Morag, always glad to see him, felt doubly glad now. He would, of course, not tell her what to do. Not Royland's way. But after a while she would find she knew. Royland sat down beside her on the dock.

"Morning, Morag."

"Morning, Royland."

For a few minutes they both looked at the river and listened to the slapping of the small waves against the wooden posts of the dock.

"Well, what is it this time?" Royland said finally.

Morag laughed.

"How come you always know? Celtic second sight?"

"You're the Celt, not me, Morag. Well, a person wouldn't have to be very smart to see that you're looking grim as granite. Is it Pique and her man?"

"Yes."

"Well, look here now, Morag. There isn't a reason in the world why the two of them gotta stay at your place, is there? You have got to consider your own work, and that. If they are interrupting it–"

"Royland, it's not that. Well, it _is_ that, too, but the reason for it isn't their fault. It's mine."

"Here we go with the guilt again," Royland said cheerily. "I thought you'd got a bit better about that. What terrible thing have you done now, eh?"

_Can you tell him, Morag? I've got to tell someone, and it is inconceivable that I should tell the Smiths, who would be sorry for me._

"I," Morag said flatly, "have been reacting badly. Mostly it's been okay. But then the tension mounts in me, and I flip my lid over something trivial, like they're not up by noon or they're not home for dinner at the dot of six. I don't talk with them about this. Not me. I go around slamming doors. Dishes get smashed. Yesterday, my only Limoges cup and saucer bit the dust, not that I give a damn about that. However, Royland, all this mishmash is only an evasion."

"You don't say," Royland said mildly.

"You mean you knew? It's that obvious? Look, it isn't that I don't want them to live together. I do want them to. It seems right. And God knows it isn't that I care one way or another if they're legally hitched. But the plain fact is that I am forty-seven years old, and it seems fairly likely that I will be alone for the rest of my life, and in most ways this is really okay with me, and yet I am sometimes so goddamn jealous of their youth and happiness and sex that I can't see straight. Horrible, eh?"

"Not so very," Royland said. "In fact, hardly at all, except you feel bad about it, and also I guess they wonder what's going on, all those doors and cups and that."

"Oh damn," Morag said, rising. "I'll have to explain. I hate presenting myself in such an unflattering light. The pride is wounded, and a good thing too, no doubt. But difficult."

She looked up the long slope to the house and saw Pique stretching in the sun, on the doorstep, her long hair loose around her shoulders. Royland said nothing. Morag walked back to the house as slowly as possible, stopping to pick a dandelion seedclock and to blow the seeds into the wind. Nine. And it was actually noon. Inaccurate dandelion. Catharine Parr Traill would not have wasted her time puffing dandelion seed-clocks. Nor would she have tried to explain the subtleties of her feelings to one of her daughters, either, probably. Maybe never had this problem, and never felt any such thing. Too busy preserving fruit and sketching flowers and weeding the garden. Too tired. Benefits of physical labour. Cold baths, too, like as not.

When she entered the kitchen, Pique and Dan were having coffee and cereal.

"You should have some crunchy granola, Ma," Pique said.

"No," Morag said, suddenly impatient. "I know it is very healthy. But I gag on it. Leave me my depravities, eh?"

"Oh sorry," Pique said, grinning. "Well at least you don't eat Sugar Puffs. Want we should clear out now? Want to work?"

"Not yet awhile. I have to talk to you first. I'm sorry I slammed the door this morning. I hope it didn't waken you up."

"Well," Pique said, allowing her annoyance to surface, "we could've done without it."

"No doubt. I have, however, my reasons."

When Morag had finished saying approximately what she had said to Royland, she looked gloomily into her coffee mug, wishing it were possible to teleport herself out of the situation, literally, in the flesh. The ascension of the far-from-virgin. Mars or heaven her destination. Greetings and salutations to ancestors or bug-eyed monsters.

Silence. Then astonishment. Pique had taken one of her hands and Dan the other.

"We thought that was what it was," Pique said, "but we couldn't say it unless you said it. And, like, we're aware you're alone, Ma. But in other ways you aren't. You know?"

True. Truer than Morag even yet knew? Perhaps.

"I think it'll be okay, now," Morag said, when able to speak, "for you to stay here. I don't really know why. But I feel it will."

"No, listen," Dan said. "Pique and I have talked this over a lot. We've gotta get jobs of some sort pretty soon, and it would really be better for us to live at the Smiths', as it's on the right side of the river for McConnell's Landing."

"We'll be back and forth a lot," Pique said. "I mean–you'll see enough of us. Too much, probably, even."

"No, it won't be too much," Morag said.

She held onto their hands for another moment. Then Pique and Dan went outside.

Morag got out her typewriter.

LETTER TO D. MCRAITH, CROMBRUACH,
ROSS-SHIRE SCOTLAND

Dear McRaith–

As to why I have begun calling you McRaith, Pique's new man is named Dan, and I cannot bear confusion. Outer confusion, that is. The inner is quite enough to be getting on with. I once read a novel in which the protagonist, a young man, falls in love with two women (not simultaneously) both named–I can't remember–let's say Flora. Both kept flitting in and out of the pages, and were sometimes given the distinguishing marks of Flora One and Flora Two. Sometimes the reader just had to guess. I was enraged. How come this guy (the writer) doesn't have more imagination, I wondered. Plenty of good names in the telephone directory. Maybe it was his character's fault...the poor twit had a fixation on women called Flora. I don't know why names seem so important to me. Yes, I guess I do know. My own name, and feeling I'd come from nowhere. If I could call Pique's Dan by any other name, I would, but that would take some explaining. I think this with Pique may work out better this time, although who knows. Whatever she feels is right for her is okay with me, but no doubt I will continue sometimes to get annoyed over trivialities, and so will she. Hers, actually, are less trivial than mine, not because of any intrinsic difference in degree of our various dilemmas, but only because I've worked out my major dilemmas as much as I'm likely to do in this life. Now that I read that over, I wonder if it's true. The calm plateau still seems pretty faroff to me. I'm still fighting the same bloody battles as always, inside the skull. Maybe all there is on that calm plateau is a tombstone. No, this isn't Celtic gloom–in fact, I'm feeling good at the moment, which is partly why I'm writing to you now. If this is gaiety, you may well observe, what can depression possibly be like? But not so. Do you remember you once told me–we were walking along the shore at Crombruach, and it was freezing and Easter–that a Presbyterian is someone who always looks cheerful, because whatever happens, they've expected something much worse?

Sorry the work isn't going too well for you at the moment. I will light mental candles for it to begin again. Mine has been pretty much nothing for a month, but I think it'll start again now. If God is good and if I'm lucky and if I damn well pick up the pen and begin. Which I aim to do now.

Love,
Morag

She put the typewriter away and got out the notebook and pen. Sat looking for a while at the pale blue empty lines like shelves on the page, waiting to be stuffed with what?

Would Pique's life be better or worse than Morag's?

_Mine hasn't been so bad. Been? Time running out. Is that what is really going on, with me, now, with her? Pique, harbinger of my death, continuer of life._

_Memorybank Movie: Bleak House_

Some of the mountains beyond the city are called snow mountains because the snow is perpetual upon those faroff peaks. They are impressive, but frightening. Uncaring gods, they stand cold and infinitely lofty, diminishing the city and its inhabitants. Perpetual snow–the very thought of it makes Morag experience that iciness crystallizing her own blood. She stares at the mountains from the boardinghouse window, but can never look for very long. This is not to be her final settling-place, obviously. People of the city, the real inhabitants, born here or having adopted the place, do not feel the same way. They do not feel hemmed in or threatened by these mountains.

Insane to have come here. Would have been better to have gone back to Manawaka. Christie needs her, and she needs a home for herself and her child, when it is born. But there is no way she can return to Manawaka. If she is to have a home, she must create it.

Down at the harbour, where Morag sometimes walks, hoping to understand the place, the vast ships cluster and creak, groaning and shunting, wallowing herds of ungainly sea-monsters. Then, surprisingly, one will glide majestically from the harbour, transformed by movement, as clumsy waddling seals are transformed into eel-like litheness when they swim. The gulls scream imprecations, their tongues hoarse and obscene, but the white flash of their wings is filled with grace abounding.

The boardinghouse is in Kitsilano, the rundown part of the area. A tall narrow frame house, last painted around the turn of the century, no doubt, and now a non-unpleasant uniform grey, not the heavy hard grey of a uniform, but the light sea-bleached grey of driftwood, silver without silver's sheen. Having once hated the unpainted houses along Hill Street, Morag now feels at home with this shade, shade in both senses, or perhaps even three, a colour ghostly-subtle as shadows, welcoming cool. It has no pretensions. Weather has created it. She prefers it to the jazzy split-level houses in the west side of the city, across the Lion's Gate Bridge. She likes the bridge's name, but not the steel-girdered giant itself.

The house in Kitsilano is neighboured by others of the same ilk. Firetraps, lived in by people who can't afford to live anywhere else. Morag's landlady, Mrs. Maggie Tefler, some forty-odd years old, frizzy bottle-blonde hair, is a short woman, short in stature, nearly always short of breath (high blood pressure, stoutness) and decidedly short-tempered. Morag, however, is not in any position to quibble. She came to Maggie Tefler's bleak house because it was cheap and the room looked halfway clean. Her first room was on the second floor, and had a divan bed and an old brown carpet with vague geometrical designs in blue and red. It also had a sink. This room lasted only a month. It was the sink which was Morag's undoing. One early morning, her door alas unlocked, she vomited copiously into the sink. Finally able to look up, eyes and nose streaming, she perceived Mrs. Tefler standing in the doorway, arms akimbo in a kimono of artificial silk, nauseatingly pink-poppy-patterned.

_Maggie T.:_ | I thought I heard you coupla times before, upchucking. In the john. Wasn't sure it was you, Miss Gunn.

---|---

_Morag:_ | Yeh, it was me.

_Maggie:_ | (crudely, but with accuracy) I'd say you got a bun in the oven. Either that or the booze, and you don't have the signs of an alkie, as I should know, being probably the world's top authority on rubbydubs.

_Morag:_ | Huh?

_Maggie:_ | Winos. I get more than my fair quota here, you can bet your bottom dollar. You preggers, kid?

_Morag:_ | Yeh, I think so. It seems unbelievable.

_Maggie:_ | C'mon, now, honey, don't give me that line, like he only screwed you once and you never thought it was possible the first time. You're no virginal seventeen, Morag–mind if I call you Morag? I dunno what's with you, but why don't you go on back to yer hubby?

_Morag:_ | What? How did you–

_Maggie:_ | (smirking) Easy. You still got the mark of a wedding ring on yer finger. It hasn't been off you for that long.

_Morag:_ | Okay, Mrs. Tefler. You are right. But I am not going back.

_Maggie:_ | Kid not yer hubby's?

_Morag:_ | (with admirable restraint) That is my affair, I believe.

_Maggie:_ | Oh beg yer pardon, yer highness. Yer _affair_ is right, kid. Well, what you gonna do?

_Morag:_ | (truthfully and with considerable panic) I don't know. I can keep on working for a while.

_Maggie:_ | You reckon Sanford and Willingham Real Estate is gonna put up much longer with a typist who keeps rushing out to puke?

_Morag:_ | (furiously) I _don't_ , goddamn it. It only hits me this time of day.

_Maggie:_ | Well, kid, what about when you get big as the backside of a barn? It's your business, of course. But if you wanna work here–cleaning, cooking, doing the dishes–you can stay. Nice room up there on the top floor. Good view and all. Room and board and a little extra. What could be fairer? I know I'm a sucker, but I never could stand seeing a decent girl in trouble without I have to try to help. _Maggie_ , my Wayne used to say, _you got a heart soft as the centre of a toasted marshmallow_. How about it, honey? Well, come on, I haven't got all day.

_Morag:_ | Okay, Mrs. Tefler. And–thanks.

_Maggie:_ | Don't mention it, dear. We were put here on this earth to help one another, is what I always say.

So it is that Morag now resides in a room on the top floor, by which the saintly Mrs. Tefler has really meant, as it turns out, the attic, which has been more or less fixed up as a room. Oddly enough (although she does not tell Mrs. Tefler) Morag becomes fond of this room. It is, in a very real sense, all hers. You have to be on guard against the bare rafters at the extreme edges of the place, or you will bash your skull, but this slight disadvantage weighs small against the room's many good features. If Maggie Tefler suspected this, she would either try to rent it for a huge sum to someone with Morag's tastes but more money, or else she would quit paying Morag the minuscule sum which she now forks out reluctantly each week in exchange for virtually all the cooking and cleaning. From Morag's viewpoint, the bargain isn't at all a bad one. She dips cautiously into what remains of her five hundred bucks and buys a secondhand oak dresser, a desk, a bookcase, a couple of numdah rugs, a crimson Hudson's Bay point blanket to cover the single brass bed. These, plus a lamp with a bulbous Japanese-lantern shade, and a poster of a large ruffle-feathered brown owl, all make the room hers.

A woman, if she is to write, Virginia Woolf once said (or words to that effect), must have a room of her own. The garret bit never appealed to Morag unduly, but by God, it is at least a room of her own. The only trouble is that she feels too tired and lousy most evenings to do any writing at all.

_Memorybank Movie: Portrait of the Artist as a Pregnant Skivvy_

Morag, growing already in girth at four months, is washing the breakfast dishes. The water is lukewarm and greasy, but her digestion, fortunately, is steadier than it was, and her energy greater. In fact, she is strong as an ox, the doctor tells her, apparently with disapproval.

Old Mr. Johnson, one of the inmates of Bleak House, is sitting at the kitchen table, shooting the breeze with Morag. He looks about a hundred and ninety, and frail as a feather, but he has a powerful pair of lungs.

"Yes, siree," he bellows, "I mind well that time at Williams Lake, talking to old Peter Paulson–he'd bin a prospector and still thought he was. Nutty as a fruitcake. I was a salesman in them days, d'you see. I was travelling in shoe polish, harness polish and brass polish. _Wellsir_ , he says to me, _there's only two mortal things in this life I can't stand, Mr. Johnson, just two mortal things–one is racial prejudice, and th'other is Indians_. How'd you like that?"

The two of them are still laughing when kindly Mrs. Tefler sashays in, bearing a letter.

"This here is for you, I suppose," she says suspiciously.

Morag reaches for it. Luckily she has told Mrs. Tefler that such an epistle might arrive, but Maggie still has her doubts, and doubtless hankers to open and read it, ostensibly to make sure she is handing it over to the right person.

Morag has written, painfully, to Brooke, not able yet to mention her pregnancy, but telling him that she is now using her own name. His letter is addressed: Mrs. Brooke T. Skelton. Morag puts it in her apron pocket. Mrs. Tefler waits in vain for her to open it.

Later, in her room, Morag reads it. It says, in part, that Morag has now surely proved her point and shown she could get along alone and isn't it time she began acting sensibly once more? He will be prepared to try to forget that one occurrence. If she needs the train fare back to Toronto, he is prepared to send it.

Morag sits on the bed, looking at the page. Brooke's words–the closest he will ever be able to come, in expressing his need for her.

_I need you, too, Brooke. I care about you. I can't stand this._

There is, however, no way back. Would she have gone back if she hadn't been pregnant? At this moment, she feels she would have. Was it only for that reason, after all, she had wanted to get pregnant, so her leaving of Brooke would be irrevocable? So she would not be able to change her mind? And had chosen Jules only so there wouldn't be the slightest chance of pretending the child was Brooke's? How many people had she betrayed? Has she even betrayed the child itself? This thought paralyzes her. Or is she only interpreting herself, now, in the worst possible ways?

Why had she imagined that she could look after and support a kid, on her own? It had seemed a perfectly natural notion at the time. Now it seems merely lunacy. She will have to go on welfare. _Never._ But of course she will, if necessary. What will happen to her, and to the child?

She recalls Brooke's certainty, his control of situations. Even if that calm was only outer, how reassuring.

_Don't deceive yourself Morag. For you, ultimately, far from reassuring. I don't know. I just don't know._

She no longer feels certain of anything. There is no fixed centre. Except, of course, that there _is_ a fixed centre, and furthermore it is rapidly expanding inside her own flesh.

She stops crying, puts on her coat and headscarf, and goes out. The hell with Maggie Tefler. The cleaning of the rooms can damn well wait.

Winter. Not snow, here, or not this year, anyway. Rain. The sidewalks are awash with it. Interminable grey rain. Morag feels perversely, almost angrily, akin to it.

_Go ahead, God, let it rain, then. Let it rain forever. I won't be drowned._

When she returns, she writes to Brooke, telling him.

She does not hear from him again. She receives, instead, a letter from Brooke's solicitors, asking her to forward a doctor's certificate confirming pregnancy, and will she also please send her own signed and witnessed statement to the effect that the father of the child is not her husband, and will she please, further, forward the name of the father and the dates when adultery took place.

Morag complies with the first two requests and refuses the third.

Dear Morag:

There is no way it can be done painlessly, as I know. It is a thoroughly nasty and barbaric procedure, designed to make everyone suffer as much as possible. All you can do is live through it and survive. And you will. So just hang on, eh? And remember, you didn't do it lightly.

Love,

Ella

Is, however, this last statement true? Morag doesn't have a clue, anymore. Perhaps it will all become clear in time.

Christie writes with a spidery hand to say he is sorry Morag has split with her husband, and does she need any money because he's got a few-odd bucks stashed away. She reads the letter numbly, and answers no thanks but thanks a million. She has not yet told Christie about the child. She is not sure how he would take it. Would he merely think she is a faithless bitch? She cannot bear that possibility. Not yet.

Late evening, and the Bleak House doorbell rings. A minute later, Mrs. Tefler, voice rich with reproach, shouts up the stairway.

"It's for you, Morag. A guy."

A _guy_? For an instant Morag imagines it is Jules. Realizes how much she wants and needs to see him. Then recalls that he doesn't have her address. Has he got it through the publishers? Impossible. Jules would never do that.

"Who is it, Mrs. Tefler?"

"How would _I_ know?" the saintly Maggie replies, verbally withdrawing the hem of her respectable pink kimono. "He _says_ he's from some outfit called Walton and Pierce."

"Send him up!" Morag shouts.

Amazing! Astounding! Wait for the next thrilling instalment! An angel of the Lord, probably St. Michael of the Flaming Sword, disguised as a publisher's rep, has come to explain how paradise can be regained.

Or has he come to say _Spear of Innocence_ hasn't yet earned its royalty advance, and they want the rest of the money back?

She should have gone down to greet him. Graciously. Yeh, graciously, all three tons of her. No way she is going up and down those ten zillion stairs again today. She puts on her blue flannel housecoat, which makes her appearance resemble only that of a modified schooner rather than a galleon in full sail.

"Hi, Miss Gunn–shall I call you Morag?"

He is a middle-aged moustached man, a little out of breath after the dizzy ascent of the Tefler Grand Staircase, linoleum-covered.

"I'm Hank Masterson," he goes on. "W and P's local representative. They wrote me you were in the city, and separated, you know, and I thought I'd drop around and see how you were doing. Also, I've got some news. They thought it might be good to deliver it to you personally."

"Bad news?" Why should she respond this way, instantly?

"No. Good."

"Really? My God, I could do with some."

Hank looks at her.

"I can see that," he says pleasantly. "Well, your novel's been accepted by a publisher in England and one in the States."

Morag is silent. Stunned.

"Will that mean some more money?" she says at last.

What a question. Mercenary, he will be muttering to himself. If only she weren't so goddamn near being broke.

"Sure," he is saying. "Not a fortune, but some. Listen, are you strapped for dough?"

"Well, more or less."

She explains her domestic arrangements at Bleak House.

"That's crazy," he says. "You should be writing."

"Yeh. Well. I am, to some extent. Stories, mainly. But not many."

"Send them out, then. I'll get the firm to put you in touch with an agent. Ever tried your hand at articles? I mean, feature articles for newspapers? It's a hell of a thing to suggest you spend your time doing, maybe, when you should be at another novel."

"I would do almost any damn thing at all," Morag says truthfully. "I never thought of articles. What sort?"

"Oh–light and amusing, preferably."

"You mean, like–Sunday School Picnics I Never Attended?"

"That sort of thing. You haven't tried?"

It occurs to her that she has not been very enterprising.

"No," she says. "I've been kind of taken up with other things."

"Things will change," says St. Michael Masterson.

Things do change, although scarcely at the speed of light. Morag sends her short stories to Milward Crispin, literary agent, and after innumerable tries on his part, one is accepted. On the strength of this, plus the royalty cheques from England and the States on _Spear of Innocence_ , Morag resigns from her role as domestic at Bleak House. She would have had to do so anyway, soon, as her girth prevents light-footed action around the place. She continues to rent the room. Maggie Tefler is suspicious, obviously thinking that such a pregnant lady cannot have suddenly become a hustler, but if not that, what?

"You have come into some money, dear?" she enquires.

Morag explains, but guardedly.

"Think of that," Mrs. Tefler says. "That guy said you were an author, but naturally I never believed him."

"Oh, naturally."

"Well," Maggie says, sighing heftily, "it must be nice to be able to earn a living just sitting there."

"Yeh."

Morag embarks on frenzied attempts to write and sell articles, any kind of articles, to the local press. The Features Editor, perhaps growing tired of being bombarded, finally begins to accept these small gems, which could not be confused with deathless prose, but over which Morag sweats and drudges, wishing she had the gift of churning them out. During the months when she is wrestling with these articles, she writes no fiction, nothing involving. Nothing.

_Memorybank Movie: Voices from Past Places_

You mean right up the stairs all the way to the top?" the woman's voice says.

"That's what I said," Maggie replies laconically.

"Heavenly days, where does she live? In the attic?"

"The top floor," Maggie Tefler says icily, "has the best view in the house."

Morag, on the second landing, proceeding back from the bathroom, overhears this exchange. Whose voice? She knows it, but from where?

_Click-click-click._ Heels on the stairs. Morag waits. Then catches sight of the woman. Still slender–thinner, actually–and still fair-haired although her hair has darkened a little and is now done in an upsweep. Smartly tailored suit, the longish jacket of which only partially hides the fact that her hips have become slightly too bony. Her face more sharp-featured, more drawn than it should be at twenty-eight, the same age as Morag.

"Julie! Julie Kazlik!"

"The same," Julie says, grinning. "Hi, Morag. How you been? My God–when is it due?"

"In the spring. End of May. For heaven's sake, come on up."

Julie settles herself on the brass bed, taking off her spike-heeled pointed-toe shoes and tucking her feet underneath her. They look at one another carefully, amazed, glad, hesitant, each sizing up the marks the years have placed upon the other person and by implication upon themselves.

"How on earth did you find me, Julie?"

"God's sake, Morag, I saw your articles in the paper, of course, and phoned and got your address. How you _been_ , then? It's been a long time."

"Ten years. I'm pretty okay, actually. I'm happy about the baby, but kind of anxious about how I'm going to look after it and make a living. My husband and I are being divorced. It was my fault. I left him."

"What d'you mean, your fault, you left him," Julie snorts. "It's a two-way street, kid. Don't give me that malarkey. Anyhow, join the club. Buckle and me are getting unhitched, also."

"I didn't even know you were married, although I always thought you'd marry young."

"Well, I didn't marry all that young. But, yeh. Buckle Fennick, truck driver. Does the long hauls, Alaska Highway and that. He's a great driver, matter of fact. I think I married him because he was such a snappy dancer. How dumb can you get?"

"Got any kids?"

"Yeh. One." Julie looks away. "He's a good kid, Steve. He's two years old now, going on three. I don't want him to grow up like his old man."

"You mean–a truck driver? No. You don't mean that."

"No," Julie says, "I don't mean that. I mean, like, crazy. Loco. I grew up on the farm, as you know. You ever seen a loco horse? I guess not. We had one once, like that. A real loner, and crazy. Something in him made him want to knock down everything in sight. He was beautiful–a roan stallion. Great in every way except he was a killer. My dad shot him. I don't mean Buckle's a killer outright–he does it in other ways. Well, never mind all that now. You say you're worried about how to support the kid–won't your husband have to contribute?"

"He hasn't got any obligation. It's not his child, Julie."

Julie looks startled, then laughs.

"Well, you sure as hell don't do things by halves, do you? You'll manage, kid. I know you will. You were always smart, although you always tried not to let on. But I knew. Soon as I'm free, I'm marrying this nice guy who's in the insurance business, and we're going to Montreal. Dennis isn't anybody's idea of a glamour boy, but he is really kind and he cares about me and he's good with Steve."

Julie, landing on her feet. Julie, who always had a string of boyfriends. And yet, the undertone of sadness. _He's kind._ Not _I love him so much I think I'd die without him_. The first hopes shown up as illusions, yet parted with painfully.

"You're lucky," Morag says, despite herself.

Julie gives her a shrewd look.

"I know I am," she says in a low voice. Then, becoming brisk, an individual _Manawaka Banner_ reporting, "You know Stacey Cameron's married and living here?"

"Really? My God, how many people from town must be here?"

"Thousands, probably," Julie says in her old slapdash way. "We all head west, kiddo. We think it'll be heaven on earth–no forty below in winter, no blastfurnace in summer, and mountains to look at, not just grain elevators. So we troop out to the Coast, and every time we meet someone from back home we fall on their necks and weep. Stupid, eh?"

Neither of them think it is stupid. You Can't Go Home Again, said Thomas Wolfe. Morag wonders now if it may be the reverse which is true. You have to go home again, in some way or other. This concept cannot yet be looked at.

They discuss people they've known, and whatever happened to them. Then Julie looks at Morag enquiringly.

"You plan on staying in this dump, Morag?"

"It hasn't been so bad. But I can't stay once the baby's here. Can you see me dragging a carriage up these stairs? And can you see Maggie Tefler letting me leave it in the downstairs hall? No. I've been looking for a place, but so far no dice."

"I'm staying in the top floor of a friend's house in North Van," Julie says. "She'll want to rent it when Stevie and I have gone. It all depends on the divorce, just when that'll be. God, I wish it was all over. I hate all this. Buckle's agreed to sue me –adultery. But he could change his mind at the drop of a handkerchief, and then I'd have to go for the cruelty charge. And I don't want to, Morag. Sometimes I hate him, but I don't want it all brought out in court. It's not the beating-up kind of cruelty–he's never blacked an eye for me, or like that. Better if he had. They could understand that. It's what he says–that I'm out to get his power, things like that. He can't make love any more–he never did, very much, but the last coupla years he couldn't at all. He just jerked himself off in front of me and said these things. Finally I couldn't stand it any longer. But how do I know what's made him that way? I know some, but I'll never understand it all. And even if I did understand, what could I do? And how much of it have I made worse? That bothers me."

"I know," Morag says.

Julie looks up.

"Yeh," she says. "I guess you do. Well, goddamn it, eh? But I am getting out, with my kid. Buckle can live or he can die. Sometimes I don't even care which, anymore. But I'm not dying, not yet, not if I can help it. Well, let's change the subject. I started out to say maybe you'd like my place, if you can hold out until my divorce comes through. Also, if you could get on with Fan–"

"I could get on with the Dragon Lady at this point," Morag says. "Anybody would be better than Maggie Tefler as a landlady."

"Yeh. Well. You haven't met Fan. She's–well, she's fine, but she sort of takes getting used to. So we'll see."

"Don't worry," Morag says. "If that doesn't work out, something else will. I'm not begging."

They look at each other, and laugh.

_Memorybank Movie: Through Dooms of Love_

Morag is in the hospital. A different zone of human existence, acres of glass and chrome, miles of corridors in which the floor polish seems to have mated with antiseptic, a protected swathed world. Morag has never been in hospital before in her life, so finds it a weirdly isolating experience. At first the contractions are not so severe that she cannot observe what's going on around her, not to her sight, anyway. Everything that is going on is inside herself.

Someone, ghostwhite, formidable, pushes an apparatus into her hand–walkie-talkie? No.

"Breathe in here, Mrs. Gunn, if the pain gets a little too much."

"I'm not Mrs.," Morag says.

"Well, I wouldn't advertise the fact if I was you," the nurse says coldly. "It's nothing to be proud of. You're just lucky they're letting you have the baby here."

"Where do you think I should have it?" Morag says clearly, from somewhere outside her body. "In a ten-acre field?"

Crazy. Crazy. The contractions are coming closer and more severely. Why argue with the nurse now? She needs that nurse.

"I'm sorry," Morag says abjectly, untruthfully. "Please–please don't leave me."

"You're perfectly all right," the nurse says. "I'll be back in a minute."

In a minute, however, Morag has reached the second stage of labour and is trundled hastily into the delivery room.

"Hold back," the doctor's ghostvoice commands from beyond the outer reaches of space. "Don't bear down so hard. It's coming too quickly."

_You try holding back. You just try. I can't. I can't._

The child rips its way into its life, tearing its mother's flesh in its hurry, unwilling to wait.

It is over. Relief. Morag, numbed, sleepy and yet totally alert, can feel no pain at all. The nurse places the child on Morag's now-gaunt belly. It is writhing a little, covered with streaks of blood and yellow slime. The cord is not yet cut. Morag cannot see the baby's face. All she can see is its rounded backside. She has imagined her first question will be–what _is_ it, boy or girl? Not so.

"Is it _all right_?"

"Certainly," the doctor says in a talcum-powder voice. "She's fine. We just want to get her breathing a bit more deeply, that's all."

She.

The cord is cut, and the placenta comes away without Morag's being aware of it. All she can think of is whether the child is breathing properly or not. Then the girlchild opens her mouth and yells, an amazingly loud sound from so minuscule a creature. The doctor is holding the child, and Morag has still not seen her daughter's face. What if they get her mixed up with all the hundreds of other kids in this baby emporium?

"Let me see her."

"We'll clean her up, and then nurse will bring her to you," the doctor says.

Morag props herself up on an elbow, somewhat hampered by the fact that she is still confined by legstraps.

"Like hell," she says fiercely. "I want to see her right now."

"These conscious births," the doctor sighs, sounding tired.

Morag holds the child, still slippery, very warm. The slightly slanted eyes are tightly closed, and the miniature fists are clenched. The baby's hair, damp, is sparse and straight and black. Her skin is pinkish tan.

"She's–she's great, eh?"

Piquette Tonnerre Gunn has entered her own and unknown life.

Morag is back at Bleak House within a week. Julie comes over to help, and seeing the baby for the first time says _My gosh_. Morag bristles.

"It's okay," Julie says quickly. "I was only a little surprised, is all."

"You remember Skinner Tonnerre, Julie?"

"Sure. Well, my goodness. Small world."

They do not discuss it again.

Morag finds she cannot actually call the child by the name of Piquette. She calls her, instead, Pique. When the baby is two months old, Julie takes a whole roll of colour film. Morag sends one to Jules, a picture of the baby alone. She writes a brief letter, and sends it to the place where he was living in Toronto, wondering if he will receive it or if he will have moved by now. She no longer trusts Mrs. Tefler for her own mail, so puts her return address as Fan Brady's house, where Julie lives. After another month she gets a reply.

Dear Morag–

You sure are a crazy woman, but it is up to you, and the baby looks fine. I'm glad you called her what you did. I hope I'll see her one of these days. I moved, awhile back. Still in the same game. Not much news here. Say hello to the kid for me. Good luck.

Jules

The letter is postmarked Trois-Rivières. There is no address.

Morag has to write longhand now, at nights, so as not to waken the child. She can only type when Pique is awake. The room grows smaller every day.

Milward Crispin writes to say that he's sold another two of her stories, but the Piper stories appear to have no appeal to editors, and it could be that editors these days have no damn brains or it could be the stories need reworking, possibly both. The American reviews of _Spear_ are pretty good. The English reviews are politely indifferent, some of them damning with faint praise. "A pleasant enough novel from the Canadian backwoods, which attempts with limited success to inject a little sophistication in the form of bizarre if somewhat unlikely shenanigans." Morag, enraged, rips this review into pieces. Then, feeling it unworthy of her to keep only the good reviews, she Scotch tapes it together again.

At nights she communicates glumly with her cheque-book, in the vain but persistent hope that she has miscalculated the total and may in fact have more money in the bank than she thought.

Pique is good-tempered and easy throughout the days, but wakens regularly at two A.M., apparently in the last and vocal throes of angry starvation. Morag weeps with chagrin and tiredness.

Maggie Tefler passes remarks of an unflattering nature about Pique's ancestry.

"Did you get yourself mixed up with a Chinee or a Jap, dear? No? Well, I wasn't going to say halfbreed–I didn't think it _possible_. What's that? _Maytee?_ I never heard _that_ word. They're all halfbreeds to me, and I could tell you a thing or two, you betcha."

Morag writes to Christie about the child. He replies that he would like to see her, and he hopes she looks a lot like Morag.

After innumerable letters exchanged with members of the legal profession, Morag's divorce comes through in what her lawyer assures her is record time. She is spared the ignominy of having to appear in court, which is just as well, as she could not afford to go to Toronto. She is now no longer Mrs. Brooke Skelton. She looks at the paper with its unfamiliar terminology. At this moment, she can remember only the good things that happened between herself and Brooke. Appalled, she wonders what has taken place and why she finds herself here, in circumstances which at this moment seem unreal. She half expects to waken and find herself back with Brooke, ten years ago.

Then Pique lifts her voice, and Morag goes to her.

Julie phones to say her own divorce has come through, and she and Dennis are being married and leaving for Montreal.

_Memorybank Movie: Begonia Road_

"I would have thought," Maggie Tefler says, wounded, "that you would of had the decency to give me a month's notice."

"I pay you by the week," Morag says, "and I'm giving you a week's rent in lieu of notice. That's perfectly fair."

"That it is _not_ ," Maggie moans sullenly. " _That_ it is _not_. You owe me a month's rent if yer just gonna take off like that."

"A month's rent? You're out of your mind."

" _That_ is the thanks a person gets," Maggie complains to heaven, "for taking in a girl who's in trouble and letting her stay _even though_ it turns out she's got herself mixed up with the Lord only knows who. That is all the thanks a person gets. She spits on you. I should of known better. But that's me. I feel sorry for people."

"Please, Mrs. Tefler, can't we just stop this?"

"You," Maggie says, "are nothing but a slut, and the sooner you are outa here, the better."

And so, as the sun sinks slowly into the saltchuck, we bid farewell to Maggie Tefler, friend of fallen womanhood.

Fan Brady's house in North Vancouver is at the top of a steeply sloped street, Begonia Road. Looking out the front window of Morag's apartment, you can see the harbour, and beyond that, the tall city, looking cleaner and more stately from this distance than it really is. Looking out from the back balcony, you can see the pine and tamarack marching up the mountainsides. The entire top floor of the two-storey house belongs to Morag. She sleeps in the livingroom where the couch makes up into a bed, and gives the bedroom to Pique. At first, Morag is nervous thinking of the child alone in there–what if the cot blankets slip and she smothers? This is, of course, ridiculous. Pique at four months is active and strong as an eel, a born little scrapper. There is no way that kid would ever lie there passively and let some feeble blanket suffocate her. Her voice, also, has if anything grown in power. Hence another anxiety. Pique may not smother, but will she yell and disturb Fan, who will then order Morag out? Fan, however, works nights, sleeps days and is only in evidence in the late afternoon. Pique, luckily, does most of her lung exercise in the evenings.

Fan Brady does, as Julie said, take some getting used to. It is impossible to tell her age, but she is probably close to thirty. She is tiny, bird-boned, but well-endowed withal, and she cares tenderly for her body, constantly smearing perfumed and pastel-tinted creams and ointments on various parts of herself, whoever happens to be present. False modesty is one thing Fan hasn't got. She wears her flaming auburn hair in an odd assortment of ringlets, frizz and spitcurls like a calendar girl from the Mary Pickford era, and yet on Fan this coiffure doesn't look old-fashioned. Her face isn't beautiful–it isn't even pretty. In fact, facially, she rather resembles a monkey. She is well aware of this, and doesn't give a damn. When she has applied her false eyelashes, green eyeshadow, orange lipstick, and multitudinous other bits of makeup, she looks weird. But from a distance, possibly, and under coloured lights, there would be a certain circus sequinned splendour about her.

"Hi, sweetheart," she says, that first day. "You get settled in okay? Want a beer?"

"Thanks."

Fan twirls across to the fridge, her apricot nylon housecoat frothing around her. She is devoid of makeup at the moment, and her face is drawn tight and hollowed by whatever it is she has lived through, but she moves with speed and lightness.

"Now, let's get this straight, sweetheart," she says. "I don't give a fuck what you do here, just so long as you don't do too much tramping around when I'm asleep. I gotta get my sleep or I'm dead. Not that I'm that easily wakened, once I get to sleep, the amount of Seconal I take. I wish I could sleep without them, but I can't. You'd think in all this time I'd of gotten used to sleeping days, but no."

Fan Brady is, in her own terminology, a danseuse, and she works at a nightclub called, with more publicity than accuracy, The Figleaf.

"Don't get me wrong, sweetheart. I am not yer common-or-garden stripper. Not by a long shot. I am a dansoose. How about that, eh? Makes it sound good. The Figleaf is just another clipjoint, actually, but in a slightly classy way, legal and not too crude. Spicy but genteel, is the management's slogan, ha ha. Well, never mind, I can laugh, but I tell you, sweetheart, my work is an Art. It is definitely an Art. I am a pro, I will tell you that. Not like some of these kids, all bump and grind–they think if you've got a decent pair of tits, you don't need to learn nothing. I am definitely not like that. I work at it. I exercise daily. I practise. I go on the Swedish milk diet coupla days each month–can't afford a spare tire around my belly. It's my work and I take it serious. Not that all them slobby salesmen appreciate it. I don't do it for them, the cheap bastards. It's my pride. That's what it is."

Morag is fascinated. Does fiction prophesy life? Is she looking at Lilac Stonehouse from _Spear of Innocence_? Fan Brady, though, hasn't got Lilac's naïveté. Fan is tough in the spirit, wiry and wary in the soul. She is not really like Lilac at all, of course. She is almost the opposite. And yet, looking at Fan now is almost like looking at some distorted and older but still recognizable mirror-image of Lilac. There is a sense in which Fan _has_ that same terrifying innocence, expressed in different ways.

"That Julie," Fan says. "I'm really fond of her, and I'll miss her, but she was soft in the head, if you ask me."

"How do you mean, Fan?"

"She actually felt bad, leaving Buckle, you know that? Save your tears, sweetheart, I kept on telling her. Don't waste them on that crumb. But oh no. She can't stand the guy, but still she feels bad about it. Can you beat it?"

"It doesn't sound so strange to me," Morag says.

"Like fun it doesn't. That guy is a bastard through and through. An asshole. And she feels sorry for him! She should of fed him arsenic years ago."

"Well, it's not that simple, I guess."

"Yer damn right it's simple," Fan says. "It's plain as daylight."

There is obviously going to be one area which Morag and Fan will not be able to discuss. Something, of course, has made Fan this way. How much is foisted upon a person and how much is self-chosen to mesh gearlike with what is already there? How far back does anything start?

"You want to see Pique?" Morag asks, anxious to avoid argument right now.

"What? Oh, your kid?"

"Yes. She's asleep upstairs."

"Yeh, sure, I guess so. I don't go much on kids, to tell you the truth. I'm not what you'd call the maternal type. I had to look after a whole bunch of young brothers and sisters when I was a kid, and it kind of put me off. How many abortions you think I've had, Morag?"

"My God, I don't know. How many?"

"Five." Fan says coolly. "Five."

"That's–awful. That must have been terrible for you."

"I never batted an eyelid," Fan says.

But why had she got pregnant all those times? As a clueless sixteen-year-old, perhaps. But after that, what compulsion? Morag does not bring up this question, nor will she, ever.

Pique, sleeping, is as near perfection as it would be possible to get. Faintly smiling, small pinkbrown hands closed but not tightly, the fingers unfolding one by one, like petals.

"Very nice," Fan says stiltedly. "I suppose you're not getting a nickel out of her dad?"

"I never asked him. It was–it wasn't like that. He knows about her. It's all right."

"You should have your head examined, Morag, that's all I can say. If I was you, I would put the screws on him, but good. It might not get you anywhere. He'd try to weasel out, I'd bet. But at least you could try."

"Look, Fan–just don't tell me what to do for my own good, eh? Not ever. Okay?"

Fan looks up, surprised.

"Hey, take it easy, sweetheart. I only meant–"

"I know. But don't. That's the one thing I can't take."

"Okay, okay. I get the message. C'mon down and have another beer. I wanna ask your advice."

" _My_ advice?" This is certainly a quick change.

Fan laughs, a high trilling like a nervous song sparrow.

"Sure. Wait till I show you."

"Show me what?"

"You'll see."

Back downstairs, Fan begins shaving her legs while talking.

"Well, I'm changing my act, see? I figger it's time I got a speciality. I'm not getting any younger. I'll be thirty-four next month, although I never admit to more than twenty-five."

Thirty-four. Ye gods. And what of the future? What of the future for a writer, if it comes to that? But at least Morag isn't dependent upon her shape, which in the course of years can only get worse, in one way or another.

"So what're you going to do, Fan?"

"I'm gonna become a snake dancer."

"A _what_?"

"You heard me. I'm practising right now. I just got it the other day. I met this guy who knew a guy who had an African python for sale, so I bought it."

"Fan," Morag says, in a deadly quiet voice, " _where is it?_ "

"In the basement."

"The basement!" Morag yells. "For christ's sake, you're a madwoman! What if it gets loose?"

Pique, strangled not by the coverlets on her cot, but by a python. _A python._ Slithering coils of slippery and probably slimy steel.

"It won't," Fan says, enjoying this. "I give it a quarter-tranquillizer from time to time. The guy I bought it from says it's mostly in a comose state."

"In a what state? Oh, you mean comatose."

"Pretty handy with the big words, aren't you?" Fan says irritably, her drama momentarily dimmed.

"Sorry. But hell, Fan, you can't keep a python in the house. It's–well, it could be lethal."

"It's harmless as a kitten. They don't have no poison, you know, pythons."

"No, they just curl around your windpipe and choke you to death. I warn you–if that thing comes near Pique, I'll kill you with my bare hands. I mean it."

What to do? Move out instantly? To where?

"Worry not, sweetheart," Fan says placatingly, observing that Morag really does mean it. "C'mon–I went and had a look at your pet, so now you come and have a look at mine."

Pet. Child. Oh jesus, deep waters, deep waters. What has Morag got herself into?

The python, looking dead, and less large than Morag has imagined, lies asleep in a cage in the basement. The cage has a handle on top, for easy transportation to the club. It is covered with fine wire mesh, Morag is somewhat reassured to notice. The snake is gaudily patterned in brown and cream, and is really quite beautiful, if you like that sort of thing.

"I call it Tiny," Fan says.

This lady is nutty as crunchy peanut butter. And yet, against all reason, Morag is beginning to like her. Tiny, yet. Merciful heavens, what a choice of name. All the same, Morag vows to keep the upstairs door bolted and locked at all times.

Over another beer, Fan elaborates.

"I gotta get me another name, see, Morag? Something kind of oriental-sounding, know what I mean? So I thought, seeing as how you're a writer, you might dream one up for me. Princess something-or-other, I thought."

"Holy God, Fan, that's some request. I'm not an advertising copywriter."

"For you, it'll be easy," Fan says confidently.

Morag thinks for a while.

"What about Sapphire?"

"No. I don't think so. Not enough zing."

"Hm. Well. Let's see. Zarathustra?"

"Too fancy. Nobody could say it."

Morag thinks again. Then inspiration strikes.

"Eureka–I think I've got it!"

"That's it!" Fan cries, swivelling her hips gleefully on the way to the fridge.

"Huh?" Morag says, momentarily uncomprehending.

"What you just said."

"Eureka? That's just–it's an expression. I think it means 'I've found it,' or something like that. From this ancient Greek philosopher, who–well, never mind. I was going to suggest–"

"Never mind what you were going to suggest. That's my new name. Princess Eureka. Print it down nice and big so I can see how it'll look on the billing."

So Morag prints.

* * *

PRINCESS EUREKA

SNAKE DANCER

ORIENTAL DANSEUSE

Dances With Real Live Python!

Thrilling!

Exotic!

* * *

"Gee, that's great," Fan says. "Thanks a million, Morag."

"Any time. No charge. I'll be your advertising consultant."

"Times are sure looking up," Fan remarks. "You're not really scared of Tiny, are you?"

"I wouldn't touch that creature with a ten-foot pole," Morag says fervently.

"I'm not ascared of snakes," Fan says modestly. "I got used to them as a kid. I grew up in the Okanagan. My old man had a little fruit ranch, there. He was a worthless hunk of humanity, if ever there was one. My mum and us kids ran the place. We had a lotta snakes around–great big bull snakes, and garter snakes and all kinds. Only dangerous sort was the rattlers. We used to take our two German shepherd dogs along when we went up to the orchards. They were like devils whenever they seen a rattler. They never got bit, ever. Snakes are okay if you know how to handle them. It's very simple with rattlers. You just kill 'em."

"Oh, very simple. Better you than me."

"But Tiny, there, he's friendly. I bet you think a snake feels slimy, eh?"

"Yeh."

"Well, they don't. They're smooth and dry, sort of dusty-feeling. You'll see."

"That'll be the day."

Later, upstairs, Morag thinks about Fan Brady. Lilac Stonehouse begins to look like pretty pale stuff in comparison. Could you get a Fan Brady down on paper? Only an approximation. Even the name of the club, for heaven's sake. "The Figleaf" is much better than "Crowe's Cave." _And you think Fan Brady's crazy?_

_Memorybank Movie: Travelling On_

_Snapshot:_ Pique, age one, sits on the front steps of the house on Begonia Road. Her sturdy legs are stretched to their small length in front of her, and her feet are encased in new white shoes, high around her ankles so she will learn to walk steadily. She wears a yellow dress, very short, patterned with butterflies green and mauve and blue. Her straight black hair is still not very long and is brushed carefully for the picture. Her round face is unsmiling but not unhappy. Her large dark eyes look openly and with trust at the person behind the camera, namely her mother.

Pique's first birthday is over, and she is asleep. Morag and Fan are having a beer on Morag's balcony. In the garden below, the forsythia is in yellow flower, and the leaves are beginning to come out on the big dogwood tree. The evening air is faintly bright and warm, and there is a smell of salt, the breeze now blowing from the sea. In the distance the white gulls glide, riding the wind.

"You oughta get out more," Fan says disapprovingly. "You go on devoting the whole of your entire life to that kid, and I'm here to tell you what'll happen, sweetheart. She'll grow up and leave without a backward glance."

"Fine," Morag says irritably. "I wouldn't want her to do anything else, when the time comes. And I'm not devoting my entire life to her, Fan. I'm working, and that's what I want to be doing. Anyway, I get out some."

"Should I introduce you to some nice guys?" Fan says, single-mindedly. "Actually the number of _nice_ guys I know is precisely none, but they're good for a few laughs."

Fan's continually altering attachments do not appeal much to Morag.

"I'll think about it," she promises.

Fan kicks off her grimy green-feathered slippers and puts her bare feet on the balcony rail. Pedicured toenails with tangerine polish, but her feet, like all the rest of her, are shapely and strong. Beside her, Morag feels too heavy-boned, too tall, despite the fact that her legs are better proportioned than Fan's and she prefers her own long straight black hair to Fan's wildflower arrangement of auburn whorls and curls. Fan is studying her feet and legs with an apparently absorbed and even narcissistic interest. She frequently appears obsessed with her own flesh, although (or so Morag suspects) not so much at home within it.

"It's a problem, eh?" Fan says. "I mean, what to do, you know. You like fucking, Morag?"

"Yeh. Sometimes I wish I didn't."

"Yeh? Well, sometimes I wish I did. Oh sure, okay, I screw like a bitch in heat, but my heart's not in it, know what I mean? I should of been a hustler–I would've been perfect. In, out, pay at the cash desk, buddy. I mighta made a fortune."

Morag ponders the theme of irony. Opportunities for sex are minimal. Has she set it up like this for herself? Her kid, her work. And here is Fan, getting more than she wants. But not really. Fan has set it up for herself as well, in some way or other, unacknowledged.

"Why screw so much if you don't like it?" Morag asks.

Fan shrugs.

"It passes the time. I can't stand being alone. I'm so goddamn jittery when I quit the club, nights, that I can't think straight."

Fan never has breakfast or even lunch with one of her men. She throws them out about 8:00 A.M., when she reckons she may possibly get off to sleep. Morag hears them stumbling solitarily around the kitchen, looking for instant coffee. Morag, her own day having by then begun, walks barefoot and silent around her own kitchen, cursing fate. Unfair, unfair. Oddly, it has not soured her relationship with Fan. Probably it would have, though, if Fan was down there with a man loving every minute of it.

"Didn't you ever love a guy, Fan? Whatever _love_ means."

Fan considers.

"Not so's I can remember," she says finally. "I suppose yer gonna expect me to say my dad raped me when I was twelve, or like that, eh? Well, he never. He knocked my mum around some, but she could take care of herself. She wasn't such a big lady, but built like me–wiry. She used to knee him in the groin. It was a laugh. Well, I dunno what it was with me. Sometimes I think about it, but then again, what's the use?"

_Look at songs hidden in eggs._ Sandburg. Look at laments hidden in eggshell skulls. Gunn.

"Know what I wish?" Fan says suddenly, as though this is costing her something to say.

"No. What?"

"I have sometimes," Fan says carefully, "wished I was lez. Queer. Bent as a forked twig."

"Maybe you are. Would it bother you?"

"It would make life easier," Fan says. "But yeh, it would bother me."

"That's–too bad. That it would bother you, I mean."

"I know," Fan says, and her voice has a sadness in it that Morag has never heard there before. "Yeh, I know."

Then she gets up and patters downstairs, down to the basement to feed the python.

After midnight, Morag finally sleeps. Wakens at three in the morning, a darkness in the room and in her head. She is drenched with sweat. Dreaming? Nightmaring? She has in sleep been back with Brooke, in the Tower. They have been making love, as it used to be, everything drawn into this centre, their bed, their merging selves. Then, just before their moment, she has realized that she had only fantasized the child, her daughter, who is really in the realm and unreality of the unborn. She cannot bear this knowledge. She draws away, tearingly, from him, leaving him bewildered and angry, and herself alone.

Almost awake, Morag pulls herself out of the swamps of sleep, out of the nightmarshes. Rises, groping for lights.

Pique is asleep in her cot, lying on her stomach, her head turned upwards, the small profile visible against the sheet, her hands upcurled into themselves, like new ferns beside her face.

_Memorybank Movie: Harold, Lover of My What_

"What you need," Fan says, "is a little more makeup, and can't you for heaven's sake leave off your glasses just for the evening?"

"I'm blind as a bat without them," Morag says. "I wouldn't recognize my best friend at three paces."

"Well, take a quick gander at the crowd, when you get there, then take the specs off and stick 'em in your purse."

"I'll try," Morag says halfheartedly.

"That dress looks great on you," Fan says encouragingly, sizing up the new green and blue silk (artificial). "Just slap on a little more warpaint, sweetheart, and go in there pitching."

The party at Hank Masterson's is for a visiting poet whom Morag has not read.

She goes back upstairs and applies more lipstick. She dislikes and feels alienated from herself with a lot of makeup on. She has, however, minimal faith in her own judgement. After all, the women who are successful with men always plaster all this gloop on their faces. Fan's paint job takes her about forty-five minutes. Is it the makeup or Fan's inner assurance that does the trick? Or just the fact that Fan really doesn't give a damn about men, and certainly doesn't need one sexually and is hence in a very good bargaining position? _Bargaining position._ One of the sexual postures not mentioned in the Kama Sutra. _Postures._ The ways in which one lies. Oh, shut up.

"I'm not that fond of games," Morag tells the mirror.

"Well, then, why not stay home with your knitting?" the mirror replies, meanly.

Angrily, Morag slaps on more lipstick. Then, angrily, takes most of it off again.

"Were you speaking to me, Mrs. Gunn?" the teenage babysitter enquires, appearing at the bathroom door.

"No, Carol. Just talking to myself."

"Oh. I see."

Carol, you can bet, does not talk to herself. She talks interminably to Morag, when given the chance, about her boyfriends, of whom there are about three hundred, at a rough estimate.

"Your cab's here," Fan shouts up the stairway.

The Mastersons' house is large and elegant. Hank, out of genuine kindness, tries to steer Morag towards men who are single, divorced or separated. Morag resents this obvious ploy, but is grateful for the motive behind it. After the second scotch, she drinks very slowly. A lady on the make. It doesn't sound too pleasant. On the other hand, why doesn't it?

Morag never gets to meet the visiting celebrity. He is surrounded by a breathless group, all women, who possibly think it would be nifty to be able to say you'd slept with a well-known poet. Morag has observed this phenomenon at Hank's parties before. The woods are perceptibly not full of an equal number of breathless men who have designs upon women writers.

But hist! What have we here?

"Hi. My name's Harold."

About Morag's height. Sandy hair. Glasses. Blond hair on wrists. Blue eyes. Jovial, and slightly drunk.

Harold is a broadcaster. He reads the news. He does not read many books, but of course he would like to, if ever he had the time for it. He has recently split up with his wife, who has their two kids. He misses the kids, and can see them only every other Sunday and even then his wife is always there, so how can he talk to them, with her sitting there vetting his every word?

"Are you married, Morag?"

"Divorced."

The evening grinds on.

"Can I drive you home?" Harold asks, an hour later.

In the car, complex problems go on in Morag's head. Should she ask him up for a drink, or would he interpret that as over-eagerness? Impossible, anyway, as Carol is there. Why worry about Carol? Because Carol will tell her ma, is why, and Carol's mother will then refuse to allow her innocent (ha ha) daughter to babysit for an immoral lady who brings men home. If Harold makes the suggestion should Morag go to his apartment instead? Nope. Two strikes against that one. Carol has to be home by midnight. Secondly, Morag does not have her diaphragm with her–she will never carry it in her purse, as that seems in some mysterious way unprincipled and also probably a bad omen.

Harold stops the car in front of the house on Begonia Road. He carefully takes off his glasses and places them in the glove compartment. Morag's glasses are in her handbag and she feels as though she is looking at the world through six fathoms of seawater. Then Harold kisses her. Morag struggles with her sex so as not to appear to respond with instant swiftness. The poor guy doesn't want to be raped, after all. But he seems pretty eager, too.

"Can I come up to your place for a while, Morag?"

"Yes," she says, and then, "but do you mind waiting here in the car until the babysitter's gone home?"

"You've got a kid?" Harold enquires, as though appalled. "I didn't know you had a kid."

Is this the exit line?

"Well, I do," Morag says flatly.

"How old?"

"One."

What is he thinking, and why doesn't he say? Why ask how old? Is one year old okay–not talking yet, or not much, and presumably not likely to come pattering in at the wrong moment? What if she'd said _three_ or _five_?

"Well, sure, okay," Harold says finally. "I'll wait here."

When Carol has trotted off home, Harold comes upstairs. Morag has checked on Pique. Asleep, thank God.

The appropriate rituals have to be observed. A drink. Lighting cigarettes which are obviously going to burn away in the ashtray. Morag wonders if Harold is only doing it this way because he thinks she expects it. If he thought she didn't expect this small theatrical act before the real act, he'd be out of here like a shot, probably.

Jules never put on that act. But then Jules was never much of a games-player. At this thought, and at her sudden terrible desire to see Jules and hold him, Morag feels she is betraying the man here with her now.

They then are in bed, and this man now and here is inside her, and Morag is present here and now. Her need for him, for the pressure of his sex, is so great that she finds it difficult to hold back enough to accommodate his time. He has drunk a lot more than she has, and is in consequence slower. Then she cannot stop herself, and her consciousness is submerged, drenched in this spasm of gladness.

He laughs a little.

"You wanted that for a long time, didn't you?" he says.

This is true. But she does not like the arrogance in his voice. On the other hand, possibly it is not arrogance at all, but only resentment or even apology for the fact that he has not yet come. Morag wants to reassure him, but does not know what words would be acceptable to him. She tries to bring him, not knowing what acts will be best for him, and not wanting to ask. Finally, his own effort or frenzy succeeds, or appears to. It is so brief and unstrong that Morag is not sure it has really happened at all. Has she ruined it for him by being first? Or was it just the booze? She won't ever know. The casualness of this association now hurts her.

Harold kisses her lightly at the door, and leaves.

"I'll call you," he says.

Morag's own uncertainty tells her she won't hear from him again. But if he did think he hadn't done all that well, he may call again in order to show his prowess.

_That is an unworthy thought, Morag._

Harold does phone, for whatever reasons, several days later. "My, my, living it up, aren't we?" Fan says with approval, as Morag waits for Harold to pick her up.

Restaurant. Dinner. Then back to Harold's apartment, which is glossy and looks unlived-in. Harold drinks very little, and ultimately comes with unquestionable strength. For Morag, it is less good than the first time, although she finds it difficult to understand why. The Black Celt within seems to be threatening her spirit.

"That was great, eh?" Harold says.

"Yes."

She smiles at him, and wonders what they can possibly talk about. Dinner has exhausted the topic of Harold's job at the radio station, his dislike of smartass disc-jockeys who think they own the place, the ways in which a broadcaster has to look after his voice, how to avoid laryngitis, and so on.

They get dressed, and Harold in a remarkably short time goes through half a bottle of rye, probably out of sheer relief.

"My wife," Harold says, "is the bitchiest bitch in this town, you know that? The first year we're married, I go four thousand bucks into debt on account of her. And now she's saying she's going to take me to the cleaner's for alimony. She admits it quite openly. She's out to ruin me. I'm fighting it, though. Just before we split up, she was berserk, I kid you not. Broke dishes, the whole bit. Said I'd been running around. I wasn't running around, Morag. Sure, okay, there'd been a coupla women, but they didn't mean anything."

"Yeh. Well, maybe she was jealous. I mean, of you. If she hadn't been doing the same thing. Maybe she felt she lacked experience, or something."

"Who, her? Not a chance. She was this little girl from Blackfly, B.C., a little mouse. Or so I thought until she blew her stack. She got really impossible, I'm telling you. I couldn't take the dog for a walk but what she'd be quizzing me when I got back. And yell. Could that woman yell. Want another drink?"

"No, thanks. I have to be getting home."

"In a minute. Well, like I was saying–"

Morag is bored and anxious. Her sympathies are increasingly with Harold's wife. This makes her feel apologetic towards Harold. She has been using him. He, however, has also been using her.

"Harold, don't bother driving me home, eh? I'll get a cab."

"Absolutely not. You'll do no such thing. I won't allow it. One more for the road, and then I'll drive you."

Harold handles the car with reckless zeal. Morag curses herself.

_Jesus, lover of my soul, get me out of this. Please please please._

"For God's sake, Harold, don't drive so fast."

"I'm okay. I always get there safely. Just relax, relax."

Through some miracle, he does indeed pilot the car to Begonia Road. Then things become all at once strange. He takes Morag's hand and sits quietly for a moment. This gesture surprises her, so she waits, wondering if he is all right. Should she suggest black coffee?

"Know something, Morag?" he says finally.

"What?"

His grip tightens on Morag's hand.

"I really love that woman," he says. "And it was always great, in bed. And then, you know what she said to me when I moved out? She said it had never been any good for her. Never. Not even once. That's what she told me."

What is there to say? Who hurts whom?

Harold puts his head down on the steering wheel and cries. Morag holds his hand. That is all she can think of, to do. At last he raises his head and takes off his glasses. Dries them with a Kleenex. It is only when she sees his determined hands mopping the surface of his glasses with the flimsy white tissue that Morag wants also to cry.

"Sorry about that," he says brusquely.

"It's all right. Really. It's okay."

"Well–goodnight."

He does not phone her again, of course, but she knows he has got back safely to his apartment because she hears him reading the news the next day.

Even if he had called, she would not really have wanted to see him again. Sadness is everywhere.

_Memorybank Movie: Chas_

_Snapshot:_ Pique, age three and a half, clad in overalls and a T-shirt, her dark and now-long hair in a ponytail, grins gleefully as she sits on the new swing in the back yard of the house on Begonia Road. This is all that the picture shows–a small girl, who looks like both her parents and like neither, smiling over a new swing. When Pique grows up, will she have any memory of the other things from this time, the things which the snapshot doesn't show?

"Tell another story, Mum."

"One more, and then you go to sleep, and _no argument_ , okay?"

"Okay." Laughter.

"You're a monkey, Pique."

"No, I'm not. I'm full of beans."

"You sure are. All right–settle down."

Pique is still at the small-animal type of story. Once upon a time there was a robin, etcetera. Later on, will Morag tell her the old tales of Piper Gunn who led his people on the long march up north, and Rider Tonnerre the buffalo hunter? Will Pique want to hear the stories, or only be bored?

The story over, Pique still tries.

"I feel sick, Mum."

"Listen," Morag says with chagrin, "you were fine five minutes ago. Where do you feel sick?"

"Here." Hand on stomach.

The old problem. Is Pique play-acting or not? Is this guile or the beginning of appendicitis? How to tell? Morag goes by the theory that the kid will either get better or will get worse, perceptibly, and if the latter, then it will be time enough to phone the doctor. In practise, however, Morag worries incessantly at such times and often phones the doctor unnecessarily.

"Well, listen, honey, you just try to sleep now and I'll come in after a while and see how you are."

Morag reads in the livingroom for an hour, and then goes into the child's bedroom. Pique is asleep.

The doorbell. Morag flies downstairs to stop whoever it is from ringing again and waking Pique. It is Chas, one of Fan's occasional men. He is never called Charles or Charlie, just Chas. He is bone-thin, with a cadaverous face which is nonetheless handsome, or at least sexy, perhaps owing to the insolence of his eyes, a quality which both repels and attracts Morag.

"Fan's gone to work, Chas."

"I know. I came to see you."

"You might have phoned," Morag says, instantly realizing that this can be taken as a sign of interest on her part.

"I was driving by," Chas says, "so I thought I'd drop in. I saw your light."

_Yeh, well it wasn't a red one, buddy._

"Pique's not very well. I don't think I can ask you to stay for a drink."

"We won't disturb her," Chas says. "We can go in Fan's livingroom. She won't mind. I brought a bottle."

_You did, eh? Well you can just take it and you know what you can do with it._

This is not what Morag says.

"Well, just one drink, Chas, and then I have to get back to work."

Why does she say this? Which self is talking this time? She's tired. She's exhausted. She's been working every minute possible on the new novel. She's gone for days speaking to no one except Fan, Pique and the milkman–for months, probably. These reasons parade themselves obediently through her head as she pours the drinks in Fan's kitchen.

"You're a good-looking gal, Morag," Chas says cornily, with minimum effort to be subtle. "Some people think you're stand-offish, though."

_Stand-offish. Little does he know._

He shortly finds out.

This is insanity. Morag's flesh and her self are two separate entities. She is her own voyeur. She decides that if she is about to go ahead, it will be better to suspend thought for a while. Play now, think later.

"Don't go upstairs to fix yourself," Chas moans, searching for the condom which he has prudently stashed away somewhere. "I can't wait."

"All right."

She wishes he would shut up. She does not want to hear his voice. This is not related to making love with a lover or even a friend. They screw like animals all over Fan's living room, and it is, quite truthfully, fine. When they are both exhausted, Morag pulls away and scrambles back into her clothes. Chas laughs.

"Why the hurry?"

She doesn't know. She usually feels at home with herself and with a man, when naked. Yes, she doesn't know, though. He is getting dressed now, too.

"Chas, you better go now. I have to get back upstairs."

"I'm coming with you. I'll stay the night."

"No, you won't."

Chas's hands are long and slender, and they do not look all that strong, but are. He holds her arm and bends it slowly backward.

"Am I coming upstairs with you, Morag?"

She realizes now that she knows absolutely nothing about him. She does not even know his last name. She is alone in this house with Pique and this lunatic. Maybe he gets his kicks this way. What if he breaks her arm? What if he strangles her? It happens. No one could ever say she hadn't asked for it. Seldom has Morag been as frightened as she is this minute.

_What if he goes upstairs and does something to the child?_

Morag twists around to lessen the pain. No use appealing to him. Words won't reach him. As soon appeal to a rabid dog. She does not say anything. She is fairly strong, physically, but not nearly as strong as Chas. She is thinking very quickly and she knows that it is better not to do anything precipitous. (Fan's ma used to knee her husband in the groin–ugh.) Unless he heads for that staircase. Morag knows something she did not know before. She is capable of killing, at least under this one circumstance. Fan keeps the butcher knife in the second drawer on the left in the cupboard beside the sink. The fact registers on her mind almost visually.

They struggle without noise or words for another second or two. Then their eyes meet. Chas' pale hazel eyes are alight with a hatred as pure as undiluted hydrochloric acid. And Morag realizes that he may well be seeing the same thing in her own eyes.

He drops her arm.

"Did I scare you, Morag?"

"Get out."

"I just wanted to see how you'd react, that's all. It was just a joke. Can't you take a joke?"

"Get out."

"Okay," he says. "I'll go quietly."

He brings up one hand, and before she can move away, he hits her with full force across the breasts.

He walks out while she is still paralyzed with pain. Morag breathes deeply and forces herself to walk to the hall and lock the front door. She checks the back door. It is locked. She goes back into Fan's kitchen. Chas has left the bottle. She takes it and pours the rest of the rye down the sink. She then goes into Fan's bathroom and throws up.

Only then does she start to shake. She goes upstairs quietly and looks at Pique, almost expecting her not to be there. She is there, and peaceful. Morag takes a scalding bath and after several hours the trembling stops.

_He's sick. And I half knew it all the time. Why did I do it? Because I needed a man. It seems a fairly simple thing. Why isn't it? Why the hatred in his eyes? Because he thinks I'm a whore? I don't feel like a whore. Maybe a whore doesn't feel like a whore, either._

Pique continues sleeping. Her forehead is still cool. Her breathing is normal. She is not restless. Is she, perhaps, too quiet?

_I know it doesn't work that way, God. I know it but I don't believe it. My head knows perfectly well that retribution is unreal. But my blood somehow retains it from ancient times._

Pique does not become ill. What happens is that Morag is more than a week late with her period that month. She stops work on the novel. She becomes absentminded, except in looking after Pique, which she does with exaggerated care.

"Whatsamatter, sweetheart?" Fan asks. "You're awfully quiet these past few days."

Morag, against her will and judgement, explains. The point has been reached when she has to talk to someone.

"Holy mackerel, _him_ ," Fan says. "Well, I wish you had of asked me about him first. You needn't apologize to me that it was him. I wouldn't touch him with a barge pole. Don't worry, sweetheart. It's probably just the worry that's delaying you. But if not, I know where you can go."

There would certainly be no alternative. Morag detests the whole idea of having a living creature torn out of her body. But there is no way she is going to bear a child to a man she despises. She imagines it growing in her flesh, totally unknowing, a human which cannot be permitted its life under any circumstances.

Why hadn't she at least put in her diaphragm? The condom was probably faulty. What if Fan's contacts have moved and she cannot find anyone? What about payment? What if she hasn't got enough money? What if she is forced to bear it? It happens all the time. No way out. Trapped irrevocably. No say in the matter. And to look after it until it is an adult? Every day seeing Chas' cat-eyes burning at her? Eighteen years. She would have to try to love it. It would be part hers, and its own person. But could she?

"Come on, Pique–eat your dinner."

"You aren't eating yours," Pique points out.

"I'm just going to." But how?

When she puts Pique to bed, she has to go through the story-telling.

"About the robins, Mum. Tell that one."

"Okay. Well, once upon a time there was this mother robin, see, and she laid four blue eggs in a nest very high up in the dogwood tree in our back yard–"

"That very same tree?"

"Yep. That very same tree."

Morag suddenly bends over the bed and holds Pique, hugging her too tightly, unable to stop crying now that she has unfortunately begun.

"Mum!" Pique is frightened.

Morag puts the child back again and applies Kleenex to her own eyes. This display she must not do. She must _not_. Will Pique retain this memory, years later?

"It's okay, honey. I'm not feeling very well today, that's all."

"Want me to tell _you_ a story?"

"Okay. That would be nice."

So Pique tells the robin story, hardly garbling it at all.

Morag wakens next morning with cramps. She has begun to menstruate. Relief. She feels as though she has fought the Crimean War singlehanded, and won. She might not have won, though. It was good luck more than good management.

_It may not be fair–in fact, it seems damned unfair to me–but I'll never again have sex with a man whose child I couldn't bear to bear, If the worst came to the absolute worst._

She hopes she means this. It is not morality. Just practicality of spirit and flesh.

The dark bruises on her breasts last only for a couple of weeks.

Dear Ella–

I knew you could do it, and I'm not at all surprised that the collection of poems has been accepted. Well, hallelujah! When does it come out?

The novel progresses, slowly. It's done in semi-allegorical form, and also it has certain parallels with _The Tempest_. Maybe I'm an idiot to try this, but it's the form the thing seems to demand, so I've quit fighting it. I've got the first draft nearly done now, so don't mind saying a bit about it, although it'll take a lot of rewriting. It's called _Prospero's Child_ , she being the young woman who marries His Excellency, the Governor of some island in some ocean very far south, and who virtually worships him and then who has to go to the opposite extreme and reject nearly everything about him, at least for a time, in order to become her own person. It's as much the story of H.E. I've always wondered if Prospero really would be able to give up his magical advantages once and for all, as he intends to do at the end of _The Tempest_. That incredibly moving statement–"What strength I have's mine own, Which is most faint–" If only he can hang onto that knowledge, that would be true strength. And the recognition that his real enemy is despair within, and that he stands in need of grace, like everyone else–Shakespeare did know just about everything. I know it's presumptuous of me to try to put this into some different and contemporary framework and relevance, but I can't help it. Well, hell, maybe it's not so presumptuous, at that.

Enough of this. Fan put on a display with Tiny (her python, if you recall) the other day, for Pique and me. I've always refused before. That snake is no friend of mine, although I admit it's never damaged anyone. Pique, however, is totally unafraid. Fan put on her Princess Eureka outfit, which is a few gauzy bits of chiffon (mauve), some gold lace and a sprinkling of sequins. Also some mauve feathers stuck in a small turban-like concoction, which on Fan's flaming hair looks pretty strange. So there she is, winding Tiny around her wrists and neck, and meantime gyrating her hips and belly, all the time complaining we aren't getting the full effect because the oriental music on the record player doesn't give the same atmosphere as the band at The Figleaf. Pique thought it was sublime. It _is_ kind of impressive, too. Fan loved having such an appreciative audience. I think she's actually quite fond of Pique now. I worry sometimes about Fan, though. Her nerves are terrible and her age is beginning to show. She says she never gives a thought to the future. I wonder.

Christie's getting so much older all of a sudden, from his letters. I write him oftener than I used to, and send him money when I can, but I don't go back. I sometimes feel I should go and housekeep for him, but Ella, I can't. I don't want Pique to grow up there. And I can't go back to Manawaka for myself, either. I want to find a home, a real one, but I don't know where that would be. I've been feeling lately I'd like to go to England for a while–Britain, rather. Does that sound lunatic? I guess there's something about London, as a kind of centre of writing, or something like that, and maybe it would be a disappointment but I just feel I'd like to go and find out what I can find out there–something I need to know, although I don't know what it might be, yet. Also, and laugh at me if you will (okay, I know you won't), I'd like at some point to go to Scotland, to Sutherland, where my people came from. What do I hope to learn there? Don't ask me. But it haunts me, I guess, and maybe I'll have to go. Not possible yet. Not enough money, and also I don't really want to leave Fan alone just now.

I look at Fan's TV sometimes, and see the terrors of the outside world not diminishing but mounting, and I think–this will be Pique's world, and how much worse will it have become by the time she is 32, as I am now? I recall how it was when I grew up, and I thought _that_ was terrifying. This probably sounds pretty gloomy, but in fact I'm mostly fairly okay. Don't worry–I'm a survivor, just as you are. Give my love to your Ma when you write her.

Love,

Morag

Morag, unsatisfied with _Prospero's Child_ , but not knowing what more to do with it, submits it. It is accepted by the three publishers, Canada, America, England, and all three editors have many suggestions, some of which Morag furiously rejects and some of which strike an immediate chord of agreement. She goes back into it and does more work, at first not wanting to do anything, and later not wanting to come out until all the things which obviously need to be done have been done.

The novel is finally published. Hank Masterson throws a party. Morag would rather have had the money it costs to throw a party, but does not say so.

The reviews are mixed, as is their wont. Morag is still vulnerable, but about sixty percent less so than with the first novel. No one is going to please all the people, and who would want to? ( _Morag_ , actually, but now sees this as a comic-opera desire.) The thicker skin is beginning to grow. She begins to believe the good and the bad reviews about equally.

"A revealing study of the independence complex and its final resolution."

"Yet another updating of _The Tempest_. Boring and contrived."

"The character of Mira shows an interesting development from a child-like state to that of a limited independence and the eventual possibility of spiritual maturity."

"Miss Gunn hitches her tiny wagon to too large a star."

"Sparse, tense writing, effective at nearly every point."

"Grossly over-written."

"The character of H.E. is a perceptive study of authoritarianism, while at the same time retaining his individuality as a human being."

"H.E. (a too-obvious play on 'He') is cardboard through and through."

_Memorybank Movie: Princess Eureka_

_Snapshot:_ Pique, age four, poses with Fan and Tiny. She looks a little anxious and also proud of herself, her hand gingerly placed on the python's tail. Fan, looking frail and tired, grimaces humorously for the camera as she holds the snake's head.

Tiny's first and last picture. That evening, about the time when Fan is due to take off for the club, Morag hears a scream from downstairs.

"Mum, what is it?" Pique is terrified.

"It's okay, honey. I don't know. You wait here, eh?"

Morag dashes downstairs. No sign of Fan. The screams go on. The basement.

"Fan, what _is_ it?"

Fan looks up. She is kneeling beside the snake's cage. She stops screaming and begins to cry, noisily, hiccupping and snuffling. She looks ridiculous, except that it isn't funny.

"He's dead, Morag."

" _What?_ "

"Go on up and phone Marilyn at the club, will you? Tell her I'm sick. No–may as well tell her the truth. Say I won't be in tonight, and say why."

Morag does so, and then returns to the basement, pausing only to yell up the stairs to reassure Pique, who is now wailing.

Fan is holding the lifeless reptilian coils on her arms. A live python is bad enough, but the sight of Fan cradling the now-defunct Tiny is enough to make Morag's stomach turn over.

"I thought he was poorly, just lately," Fan says, "and I know I should of taken him to the vet, but that goddamn vet is so _mean_ , Morag–always saying snakes aren't his cuppa tea and that. Won't hardly _look_ at Tiny. So I never went. And now see what's happened. It's all my fault."

"Fan–it is _not_ all your fault. You've had Tiny for more than four years, and heaven only knows how old he was when you bought him."

"I've had my innings with him," Fan admits, calming somewhat.

Then she puts the limp body back in the cage and looks up, fear in her eyes.

"It was a gimmick, Morag. To stave off what was coming up even then–me getting too old for the dance bit. What'll I do now?"

What indeed? With her hard-masked makeup now runnelled with tears, Fan's face looks like cracked glass. The burning auburn coiffure has come unstuck, and the curls are in messy disarray. Fan's thin hands are shaking, and she looks old. Is it a crime to look old? In Fan's business, yes.

"First thing, come upstairs and I'll fix you a drink, Fan. We'll think later."

Fan permits herself to be led up into the kitchen. Morag shoves a strong rye and water into her hands and then goes upstairs to tell Pique the bad news.

Pique sobs.

Morag has the feeling that everything is both ludicrous and frightening. Pique is finally prevailed upon to be brave, and Morag goes back to Fan's kitchen. Fan has finished the drink and is pouring another. She is now dry-eyed, calm to a chilling degree.

"Well, that's me finished," she says.

"Fan, that's crazy," Morag says, without conviction. "There must be something else–"

"Like, for example, what?"

Morag does not know.

"Well, look, you can't do anything until you go back tomorrow and see what's what."

"I can hardly wait," Fan says.

An hour later, both fairly drunk, they bury the snake in the garden.

"I feel like a murderer concealing the victim," Morag says.

"If I sell this house and somebody digs up _this_ when they're planting potatoes, it'll sure give them a turn," Fan says with a small burst of unbalanced laughter.

Next day, Pique and Morag make a headstone, as Pique thinks this would be a suitable thing to do.

Fan dances no more. Neither, fortunately, does she find herself out of work. She tries to talk her way into a cigarette-girl job, but without success. She finally goes to work in the coat-check room, demotion being preferable to starvation. She no longer brings men home. One day Morag, on the balcony, sees Fan in the back garden, burning the Princess Eureka outfit.

As a result of the advance royalties on _Prospero's Child_ , Morag's finances improve to some extent, and she begins paying Fan more rent. Fan protests, but only a little. She no longer pretends never to think of the future, now that she no longer has one.

"Someone for you, Morag," Fan calls up the stairs.

Morag goes down and it is, unbelievably, Brooke.

Her first thought is to wonder if he has read _Prospero's Child_. Her next thought is that Pique is crayoning upstairs in her colouring book, and Morag is uncertain whether it would be right for Brooke to see the child. Would it hurt him? Would it make Morag feel a guilt she does not truthfully feel?

"Brooke! Why? And how did you know where I was?"

"From your publishers. How are you, Morag?"

"I'm–fine."

_How are you? I am fine._ Like a letter a child might write home. Brooke looks the same. No older, except for some few lines on his forehead and around his eyes. As handsome, as impressive as ever.

"We just happened to be in Vancouver," Brooke says, "so I thought I'd look you up and see how things were with you."

"We?"

"My wife and I," Brooke says carefully. "She's out in the car. May we come in for a minute? We can't stay long."

"Certainly. Of course."

Brooke's wife is younger than Morag, although probably not much so. Her name is Anne, and she is slender and extremely well turned out. Subdued but very smart crimson wool dress, high-heeled shoes, fair hair in a smooth bouffant hairdo, small gold earrings. Morag suddenly realizes that she herself is wearing black slacks which need dry-cleaning, and a white turtleneck sweater which sags all over, having stretched at the last washing. Her hair straight, halfway down her back. Circus freak.

Both Brooke and Anne sit rather uneasily on the edges of their chairs. Now, of course, Morag wants Brooke to see Pique.

"This is my daughter. Pique, this is–an old friend of mine, Brooke Skelton. And–Mrs. Skelton."

Pique says a desultory _Hi_ and returns to the pink house with purple chimney which she is creating.

"Do you like it here, Morag? You're getting along all right?"

Brooke is, she sees, genuinely concerned, whatever other motives he may have had.

"Fine," she says quickly. "Fan's not really a landlady. More a friend. She's in kind of bad shape right now. Her snake's just died."

Good heavens–why babble on about that?

" _Snake?_ " Anne says.

Morag explains. Brooke smiles, but somewhat forcedly. They stay barely fifteen minutes and refuse a drink. Brooke does not say whether or not he has read the novel. They depart, as politely and mysteriously as they have arrived.

_Why? To see if I really was all right? Or only to allow me to see his wife? I could have asked them into Fan's livingroom. I didn't have to take them upstairs. But I had to show off Pique._

They have had to hurt one another, evidently, this one last time.

_Brooke, forgive me. May we forgive one another for what neither of us could help._

_Memorybank Movie: Songs_

_Snapshot:_ After this year, the album will not be so meticulously tended. But now the colour prints are still pasted in, and the place and Pique's age written in white ink on the black page. _Pique, 5. Begonia Road._ Pique is a round-faced sturdy child, her pink apron-dress somewhat incongruously frilled at the shoulders. Pique, like Morag, is scarcely the frilly type, but at this stage she favours frills and Morag is afraid of inflicting psychic damage by discouraging this trait, out of which she will no doubt grow. Morag (age thirty-four, but this is not written down in white ink) sits beside Pique on the front steps, wearing a green summer dress. They are both smiling hesitantly at the person behind the camera, who has just refused to have his own picture taken.

Morag hears the doorbell, and goes out into the upstairs hall to listen.

"Does Morag Gunn still live here?" the man enquires.

"What's it to you?" Fan is growing more suspicious, paranoid almost, and now opens the front door on the chain, initially, to see.

The man's soft husky voice changes, rasps.

"Listen, lady, I asked you a simple question, there. Is it yes or no?"

"Oh," Fan says suddenly. "You must be–"

"Yeh," Jules says. "I am."

Morag runs down the stairs, and then stops, all at once uncertain. He is standing in the front hall. Fan, eyes watchful, stands in the doorway of her livingroom. All three are held for an instant in suspended animation, waiting.

Jules has aged in five (no, nearly six) years. He must be thirty-seven now. His hair is as black as ever, a little longer than before, and he wears it combed back, like a mane. His body doesn't look any different–still only the beginning of a belly above the wide lowslung leather belt. He wears jeans and a brown shirt open at the neck, the sleeves rolled up. It is his face which looks now more like the face of Lazarus, the narrowed eyes seeming more sunken than before, the bones more obvious, the lines in the skin etched deeper.

What is he thinking of her, of how she looks?

"Aren't you even going to say hello?" he says.

Morag goes to him then, but still with uncertainty, not doing what she wants to do, which is to hold him tightly. What if he does not want her to hold him? When she touches him, however, and catches the warm dust and salt sweat smell of his skin, she forgets to wonder what he is thinking of her. They hold one another with strength, not kissing, just holding together, but Morag can feel his sex stiffening inside his jeans, and her own sex responding.

"I take it," Fan says, disappearing into her livingroom, "that you _do_ know this guy, then."

Unclinch, and they both laugh.

"She's upstairs?" Jules asks.

"Pique? Yes."

"That's what you call her?"

"Yes. Skinner, I couldn't call her, every day, by the–"

"Okay, okay," he says quickly. "You don't need to go into it. What'd you say of me, to her?"

What indeed? Many things, beginning when Pique first learned language.

"Oh hell," Morag says, "it'll probably sound like shit to you. I told her you had to be away because you had to sing songs for lots of people–a person has to put things kind of simply for a little kid–and maybe someday you'd sing them for her. I guess I've told her a few lies, like saying you'd written and asked after her. Maybe I'd have done better just to say it was my idea to have her born, mine only–"

Jules reaches out and takes her right wrist in his hand.

"Sure, Morag," he says. "She's yours, all right. But she's mine too, eh?"

_They're mine, them, there._ Lazarus at the fire. Lazarus, snarling his pain, a stranger in the place where he lived his whole life. Lazarus, dead at fifty-one. Will Morag tell Pique all she knows of Lazarus, or of Christie, for that matter? How will the tales change in the telling?

"Yes. She's yours, too. Come on up."

Pique, Morag now sees, is stationed quietly in the upstairs hall, listening, peering through the stair railing. Pique's eyes are very wide and serious, and it is impossible to tell what she is thinking. She looks straight at Jules.

"I know who you are," she says.

"Sure," Jules says, looking at her carefully, but not approaching too closely. "Of course. Hi."

He walks in and sits down at the table.

"God, I'm beat. Got a drink, Morag?"

"A little rye. Some beer."

"Let's try the rye first, eh?"

He is not ignoring Pique, but neither is he forcing her to recognize him, or to talk.

"I got a picture of you," he says finally to Pique.

"Of me? How come? Where is it? Can I see it?"

"Sure. It's right here."

He pulls out his wallet and shows her the snapshot of herself, aged two months.

"Hey, I know that one," Pique says. "It's in our book."

"It's got your name on it," Jules says, grinning.

He turns it over. On the back he has written _Piquette Gunn Tonnerre_. In that order.

"Are you really–you know?" Pique asks.

"Yeh. Want me to say it for you? Your dad. Yeh, I am."

Pique is silent for a while, but remains beside him.

"How long will you be in Vancouver?" Morag asks.

"Hard to say. Coupla months, maybe."

"Want to stay here?"

"Sure." Then he laughs. "You got room for me?"

"Yes. I've got room for you."

Pique says very little more that evening. This new presence is obviously going to take some getting used to. And what, then, when he goes away, as he will? Time enough to think of that then. When Pique goes to bed, she says goodnight to Jules, but from a distance. She does not call him by any name.

"Why're you here, Jules?" Morag asks.

Jules opens another beer. He does not look at her.

"My sister Val. She's sick."

"I never knew she was living here. What's the matter with her?"

"She's–how the hell should I know what's the matter with her? She's just sick."

"Is she in hospital?"

"Not yet. I'm trying to get her to go."

"Why won't she?"

"Because she's a crazy woman, is why. She don't want no charity, that's what she says. Charity, my asshole. She's crazy. Let's talk about something else, eh?"

"Is there–I mean, could I help in any way?"

Jules puts his hand under her chin and looks at her, only his mouth smiling, his eyes hard.

"No, lady, you could not help in any way."

"You never let me forget it, do you?"

"No. I never let you forget it."

"Where's the rest of your family, now?"

"Jacques moved up to Galloping Mountain awhile back. He's some guy. He's not like me. Nor like Lazarus, neither."

"There were two younger boys."

"Yeh. My youngest brother, Paul, he was drowned. He was working up north as a guide. His canoe overturned at some rapids. At least, that was the story. He just disappeared. Body never found. The tourists, coupla American guys, they got back all right after a few days in the bush, and reported it to the Mounties. Jacques tried to get an enquiry, but he never got to first base with it. They took the tourists' word for it. Paul was the best hand with a canoe I ever saw. They said he'd been out alone in it one evening. We won't ever know."

"What–what do _you_ think happened?"

"I don't know," Jules says slowly. "But I'm pretty damn sure it wasn't what they said happened. So there's only me and Jacques, now. Not many, eh?"

"And Valentine."

"Oh yeh. Her. Sure. For the time being."

"She's really that sick, then?"

"No. Not yet. Let's just say she's not gonna find out how it feels to be an old woman. You know something, Morag? After I wasn't killed there, at Dieppe, I had this crazy idea, see? I thought nothing could kill me. I could do any damn thing, and nothing could kill me. I didn't think I'd live forever, or like that. Just–nothing could kill me before my time."

"It's a nice thought. Maybe it's even true."

"It's a nice thought. But no, it isn't true. I'm not even sure it's that nice a thought. Anyway, about Jacques. He's got a small farm–the land's no hell, but he seems to like it up there. It wouldn't suit me, but it suits him. Maybe he's right. Maybe it's not too late for him and his. He doesn't waste his time in brawls, like Lazarus used to, and I've had my share of that, too, I guess. He never went berserk when Paul got drowned, or whatever happened to him. I never did, neither, although I guess I did, some. Val went nuts. She was the one who looked after Paul the most, when he was a little kid."

"When did it happen, Jules?"

"Two months ago. Know how old Paul was? He was twenty-five."

What to say? There is nothing that can be said. Is this one reason Jules has wanted to see Pique? Morag cannot touch him right now, or say anything that might reach him.

"What do you hear from Christie, Morag?" he asks finally.

"He's–he's seventy now. He still lives in the old house."

"You oughta go back," Jules says offhandedly. "You oughta go back and housekeep for him, there. It's a hell of a town, but this city's no place for the kid, once she's older. It's a killer, and I mean it."

Morag's anger is directed against–whom?

"Listen, Jules, just don't tell me what to do, eh? It's the one thing I can't stand. I can't go back. I cannot go back."

Jules takes her hand.

"Yeh, I guess you can't. Okay. C'mon, Morag. We've finished the beer. Let's go to bed."

We've finished the beer, so we may as well go to bed, seeing as there's nothing better to do–is that what he means? But when they are in bed, his sex rises quickly and the tiredness falls away from him. They make love urgently, both equal to each other's body in this urgent meeting and grappling, this brief death of consciousness, this conscious defiance of death. Only at the final moment does Morag cry out, and he stops her cry with his mouth. They are left drenched with sweat in the summer night, their bodies slippery as spawning fish together.

"Let's sleep now," Jules says, "and after a while we'll wake up and fuck some more, eh?"

In an hour or so, Morag wakens, and puts her head between his legs, sweeping her hair across his thighs. She takes his limp cock very gently in her mouth and caresses it with her tongue, and it lengthens and grows hard before he is even awake. Then he wakens and says _deeper_. After a while, she disentangles and he raises her until she is looking into his face in the grey-light of the room.

"Ride my stallion, Morag."

So she mounts him. He holds her shoulders and her long hair, penetrating up into her until she knows he has reached whatever core of being she has. This time it is he who cries out. Afterwards, they do not speak, but they go to sleep this time in each other's arms and remain so until the morning comes.

Jules goes out most days and stays away until dinnertime. Morag does not ask him where he has been, and he does not say. He tells her one day that Val is in hospital. Two weeks later, he says Val has left hospital. Cured? Discharged herself without cure? He doesn't say. Perhaps he would even in some ways like to talk to Morag about it, if he felt there was a way he could do so without betraying Val, but he clearly does not. Occasionally he comes back shambling drunk, but always very late at night when Pique is asleep, and the next day he sleeps late and is irritable. Usually, however, when the depressions hit him, he merely retreats into silence. Sometimes he sits for an entire evening with Morag, after Pique has gone to bed, and does not speak at all. Sometimes he turns to her in his half-sleep, and holds onto her, shaking in every nerve. But the next morning he does not remember.

He is not morose with Pique, nor does he ever get angry at her, even though (once she grows accustomed to him, which takes a surprisingly short time, at least on the surface) she often pesters him with questions or with her witty converse, hoping to impress him. He permits himself to be impressed, then makes fun of her, but gently, so that she laughs.

"So you're not gonna call me Dad, eh?" he says to her one evening.

"Do you want me to?" she asks.

"Naw–I don't give a shit, really."

"Then I won't."

"What if I'm kidding you, there? What if I want you to?"

"Then I will."

"Okay, so I do, then."

"Okay, I will, then. I guess."

But the word does not come easily to her. After a while she finds she can actually speak it, and then it is easy. So easy and needed that she peppers her talk with it.

"We've got a film in our camera, Dad. Hey, Dad, can you take a picture of me, Dad?"

So he does. A picture of Morag and Pique. He will not let Morag take his picture, not even with Pique.

"Skinner–why not?"

Jules hands the camera back to her, and hitches his belt up around his hips. He tosses back the mane of hair from his forehead and eyes, and laughs a little, warning her.

"Search me. Maybe I'm superstitious. Or maybe it's the same as I can't make up songs about myself. Maybe I don't want to see what I look like. I'm going on okay this way. Let's not get fancy about it."

That evening, Jules gets out his guitar.

"Are you still working with Billy Joe?" Morag asks.

"Yeh. We had a country and western group going for a while, there, but then we split up. So it's just me and Billy again, now. We travel some. More coffee-houses than used to be, but a lotta kids coming up now, singing, too, which is great for them but a bit more difficult for guys like me and Billy Joe. Anyhow, this is the one I did for Old Jules, my grandad. You remember, I told you once?"

"I remember."

Pique sits quietly beside Morag, not asking any questions, waiting. And Skinner sings.

The Métis they met from the whole prairie

To keep their lands, to keep them free,

They gathered there in the valley Qu'Appelle

Alongside their leader, Louis Riel.

They took their rifles into their hands

They fought to keep their fathers' lands,

And one of them who gathered there

Was a Métis boy called Jules Tonnerre.

He is not more than eighteen years;

He will not listen to his fears.

His heart is true, his heart is strong;

He knows the land where his people belong.

Macdonald, he sits in Ottawa,

Drinking down his whiskey raw,

Sends out west ten thousand men,

Swears the Métis will not rise again.

The young _Anglais_ from Ontario,

Out to the west they swiftly go;

They don't know what they're fighting for,

But they've got the cannon, so it must be war.

It was near Batoche, in Saskatchewan,

The Métis bullets were nearly gone;

"If I was a wolf, I'd seek my lair,

But a man must try," said Jules Tonnerre.

Riel, he walks with the Cross held high,

To bless his men so they may not die;

"God bless Riel," says Jules Tonnerre,

"But the cannon _Anglais_ won't listen to prayer."

Dumont, he rides out to ambush the foe,

To hunt as he's hunted the buffalo;

He's the bravest heart on the whole prairie,

But he cannot save his hunted Métis.

Jules Tonnerre and his brothers, then,

They fought like animals, fought like men.

"Before the earth will take our bones,

We'll load our muskets with nails and stones."

They loaded their muskets with nails and stones,

They fought together and they fought alone;

And Jules, he fell with steel in his thigh,

And he prayed his God that he might not die.

He woke and found no soul around,

The deadmen hanging onto the ground;

The birds sang in the prairie air.

"Now, it's over, then," said Jules Tonnerre.

Riel, he was hanged in Regina one day;

Dumont, he crossed the U.S.A.

"Of sorrow's bread I've eaten my share,

But I won't choke yet," said Jules Tonnerre.

He took his Cross and he took his gun,

Went back to the place where he'd begun.

He lived on drink and he lived on prayer,

But the heart was gone from Jules Tonnerre.

Still, he lived his years and he raised his son,

Shouldered his life till it was done;

His voice is one the wind will tell

In the prairie valley that's called Qu'Appelle.

They say the dead don't always die;

They say the truth outlives the lie–

The night wind calls their voices there,

The Métis men, like Jules Tonnerre.

They are silent for a while. Morag wonders whether he has not, after all, sung it for her as much as for Pique. Pique likes the tune, and the strong simple rhythm, but otherwise it is lost on her. It is not lost on Morag. The echoes, and all the things he could never bring himself to say in ordinary speech, have found their way into the song.

"Hey, you're crying, kind of," Pique says, looking at Morag in curiosity and perhaps embarrassment. "Didn't you like that song? I did."

"I liked it fine," Morag says.

She glances at Jules, who is re-tuning his guitar.

"Yeh. Well. It's good you like it," he says. "It's too long for a lotta people, and they can't listen right through. The older ones, that is. Older, hell–about my age. Or they don't wanna know about it, and start yellin' why don't I sing 'Yellow Rose of Texas' or like that. Jesus."

He turns to Pique.

"Hey, that song's about your great-grandad. How about that?"

But the concept of great-grandfather is too distant for her, even when he explains. She looks bewildered. But wants to please him.

"Sing it again," she says.

"No, I'll sing you some others now. I'll sing you that one again someday."

Someday. He doesn't mean tomorrow or next week. When will someday be? Maybe never. For now, he sings some of the songs he made up for Billy Joe's kids, songs with some quality of laughter in them, some of them based on Ojibway tales and some of them speaking of the kids for whom he wrote them, naming names. Joking. Pique is excited by these songs.

"I want a song for me, Dad. Hey, would you?"

"Maybe someday," Jules says. "Or maybe you'll make up a song for me. How about that, eh?"

"I don't know how," Pique says defensively, sulkily.

"Hell, neither do I," Jules says, "but I do it all the same."

After this, he sings for them often. He says he is working on a song about Lazarus, but he does not sing that one.

"Well, I gotta move," Jules says, one evening. "It's time."

He says this to Morag, not to Pique. He does not say goodbye to Pique. The last night he is there, he and Morag lie together, their arms lightly around one another, their hands sometimes stroking the other's skin, but not speaking and not making love. Morag does not think she will sleep, but she does. In the morning, when she wakens, he is not there. He has stayed two months.

Pique says nothing when Morag tells her that Jules has gone. She does not question why he came here nor why he went away. What may come of this, later on, Morag cannot know.

"I have lost my job," Fan says. "I have been given the axe."

"Oh God, Fan. What're you going to do?"

"I will go back to the Okanagan," Fan says, steadily, her face broken. "My sister's still got the place there, sweetheart. I will go back and I will cook the jesus meals or feed the chickens or whatever else they ask me to do. And I'll live there until I die, which may not be that long, but probably will be. Fan Brady at age seventy-five or eighty–how does that grab you? Well, I can do it if I put my mind to it. I grew up there."

"Fan–"

"Oh hell, Morag–"

They hold onto one another for a second.

"What'll you do, Morag?"

"I'll go to England. And Scotland, sometime."

" _England? Scotland?_ Why?"

"I've known for a long time I had to go there, Fan. I can't explain it, exactly. I guess I've been waiting for the right moment."

"Hey, did you want to go _before_ , Morag? I mean, you haven't stayed here on account of me?"

"Hell, no, Fan. I just needed something like this to get me up off my ass."

"You sure?"

"Sure."

Is this true? It's true in the only way that matters, probably. Fan accepts it.

"We'll keep in touch, eh? We will keep in touch, Morag?"

"Of course."

They both know they won't. But will never forget, either.
**NINE**

**T** he screen door slammed, and Pique stood there, wearing the usual old shirt and her jeans with Jules' brass-buckled belt. Looking great. How could any woman's belly be that flat and breasts upstanding and un-sagging? Morag's once were.

"Hi, Ma. You working?"

Morag was sitting at the oak table, momentarily staring out at the river, the willows and maples on the opposite bank stirring faintly in the merciful breeze, the August heat parching the grass but turning human flesh sweat-dank.

"I'm not sure," Morag said, untruthfully, because she had been.

This had been the pattern of life for how long? Morag at this table, working, and people arriving and saying, in effect, _Please don't let me interrupt you._ But they _did_ interrupt her, damn it. The only thing that could be said for it was that if no one ever entered that door, the situation would be infinitely worse.

Pique drew up a chair and peered at Morag's notebook.

"Well, you seem to be putting down words, anyway."

"Yes."

"You sound discouraged," Pique said.

This was a question between Morag and the work. She didn't want to talk about it.

"Oh, kind of, I guess. I don't know if I'll want it published when it's finished. You look different, Pique. It's your hair. Why braids?"

Pique drew one of the long black elastic-held braids over her shoulder and stroked it lightly.

"Cooler. Keeps it away from my face in this weather. Also, I'm part-Indian–it's suitable, isn't it?"

"I don't think I'm hearing you very accurately. What're you trying to say?"

"I don't know," Pique said. "I don't want to be split. I want to be together. But I'm not. I don't know where I belong."

"Does it have to be either/or?"

Pique's eyes became angry.

"I don't guess you would know how it feels. Yes, maybe it does have to be either/or. But I was brought up by you. I never got much of the other side."

Once again, the reproach. Not to Jules; to Morag. When Pique wielded that particular knife, it always found its mark, as she very well knew.

"I told you what I could."

"Sure," Pique said. "But it wasn't much, was it? I never knew what really happened. There was only that one time, when my dad was here–when I was fifteen, eh? And he said a lot of things. And the songs–I've got those. And he said some more, when I saw him in Toronto, this time. But some of those stories you used to tell me when I was a kid–I never knew if they happened like that or not."

"Some did and some didn't, I guess. It doesn't matter a damn. Don't you see?"

"No," Pique said, "I don't see. I want to know what really happened."

Morag laughed. Unkindly, perhaps.

"You do, eh? Well, so do I. But there's no one version. There just isn't."

"Maybe not," Pique said, dispiritedly. "I'm sorry, Ma, going on like this. It's part of things which are worrying me."

"Such as?"

"Dan and A-Okay are going to raise horses. Dan knows about horses–he was raised on a ranch in Alberta. They bred palominos–worth a lot. A-Okay knows nothing about it. But you know him. He's so serious. He'll learn. They're gonna put the land to feed crops. A-Okay will pay for the first coupla nags from the bread he makes out of those articles. Dan's got a few hundred bucks put by, as well. Dan says he can give riding lessons. He learned to ride western as a young kid, but then his dad got these classy ideas and had him taught English style–wanted Dan to be a gent, what a laugh. When they've got all this beautiful bloodstock or whatever you call it, they'll sell selected ones."

"You don't sound exactly ecstatic," Morag said.

"I'm not," Pique said. "Where am I in this whole deal? Listen, Dan and I–we've got on pretty well at A-Okay's and Maudie's place. But Maudie and I, you know, we're kind of different people, and sometimes her–well, I feel awful saying it–her real _goodness_ and gentleness, sometimes they bug me. That _is_ awful, isn't it?"

"Not so very," Morag said. "It bugs me sometimes, too. She's too good to be true. Like Catharine Parr Traill. But she _isn't_ , really, Pique. I mean, it's partly whistling in the dark."

"Oh sure. I know. Well, we do get on, generally, despite her earth-mother bit. But when she says she feels her vegetables out in the garden calling to her so she has to go out and chat them up a little–well, sure it's funny, Ma, but sometimes I feel like saying _Oh come on, Maudie, don't give me that bullshit_. Anyway, this whole deal. Dan's quitting his job in McConnell's Landing, right? A-Okay is bringing in some bread but not enough. Maudie obviously can't. She's got Tom, and she's doing all the cooking and looking after her vegetables and chickens and that. But we need a little something coming in, obviously. So guess who's appointed? And working as a cashier in a supermarket doesn't really grab me that much."

"Have you told Dan?"

"Sure. He says it won't last all that long, and when the horses are bringing in some cash, I can help on the farm. Well, that's okay, if it was outside work. I mean, with Maudie, who could really help with the meals? And would I want to, anyway? I'm not much on cooking. But I'm not sure I want to stay here. Only, Dan doesn't want to move."

"Where do you want to go, Pique?"

"West, I guess. Maybe not this minute. But soon. I guess, like, I have to."

"Wouldn't Dan go as well, for a while?"

"I can't ask him to, unless he really wants to. And he doesn't. He doesn't ever want to go west again, he says. He says he's had it up to here. Trouble is, I really care about him."

"I know."

Silence.

"I gotta get back," Pique said, finally. "Sunday, day of rest, what a laugh, eh?"

"It'll be all right, Pique. It'll work out."

"Yeh. Probably."

Dan came over late that afternoon, by himself, docking the boat a little clumsily, still not totally accustomed to boats, banging it broadside against Morag's dock instead of nosing it in gently as Pique did.

"Can I come in, Morag?"

"Certainly. Of course."

How to write a novel without hardly trying. Morag folded up her notebook, cursing silently:

_Lord, I am concerned about them all. But my God, when am I going to get any work done? And yet if they didn't want to talk, I'd be sorry._

Dan Scranton stood awkwardly in the doorway, and finally sat down and accepted a cup of coffee. The ritual–come in, have a cup of coffee. He did not speak for several minutes, but when he did, he came right to the point.

"I get this feeling you don't like me that much, Morag."

_Oh jesus. They were so easily offended, so analytical despite their proclaimed lack of faith in words. What was it this time?_

"Sure, I like you," Morag said, genuinely surprised. "What would give you the idea I didn't?"

"You hardly ever call me by my name," Dan said contemplatively.

"That hasn't anything to do with you," Morag said reluctantly. "I once knew a man whose name was Dan–I still know him, for that matter, but he lives in another country, and anyway–"

The reaction was instantaneous.

"It's okay," Dan Scranton said quickly, as though picking up the needed message right away but not wanting to know more than the basic relevance to himself. "You don't have to say any more. I'm sorry, Morag."

"I'll try to call you by your name."

"It doesn't matter," Dan said, "now that I know. I'm probably too anxious to have people like me, so then I imagine they don't."

"Pique told me about the horse idea."

"Yeh," Dan said. "And there is a good chance it may work. Only thing, why would Pique want to take off again, just now? I mean, at this point. Or at all."

"Don't ask me. To look for her family, I suppose."

"Has she got any? Back there?"

"Only one uncle, as far as I know," Morag said. "But of course a lot of cousins by now, I expect. Anyway, I'm not sure it's that–I mean, those specific individuals."

"I sort of know," Dan said, "and yet I don't. I won't try to persuade her not to go. If she has to, well, that's that. But I can't go. Not yet, anyway. Maybe never. Maybe I'm afraid to go back, even if it's not to the exact same place. I really hated the prairies when I lit out."

"I know. So did I. I felt that way about the town where I grew up. Then I found the whole town was inside my head, for as long as I live."

"That's terrible," Dan said.

"No. No, it isn't terrible at all."

"For me, it would be. I can't stand the thought. The land, yes–my God, who could help caring about land like that? It's the people I can't stand, some of them, anyway. One in particular, I guess. When I was a kid, you know, I thought my dad was a real hero–I guess it would've been better if I'd never got along with him. But I did. I thought he was great. And maybe in some ways he even _is_ great. He comes on very strong. Most people admire him. He still runs the place. He's a very wealthy guy now, although once he wasn't. He belongs to all the right clubs. He even took up golf. He's got this movie image of himself–gentleman-cowboy. Jesus. That's what he wanted me to be, only more so. Just before I lit out, I used to get so I thought either I'd start to yell, really berserk, you know, or else hit him. I guess it might've been better if I had. Hit him, that is."

Dan bent forward, his face hidden, the palms of his hands outstretched onto the table, suddenly clenched into himself.

"You know, Morag," he said, "the trouble isn't that I don't care about them. The trouble is that I _do_. They don't know. They think I don't give a shit about anything. They think I'm some kind of traitor–to them, to everything. But I'm not going back to take over the place from him, not even when he's dead. I don't want his kind of place. Not in any way."

"Yet you're planning to raise horses," Morag ventured.

Morag Gunn, fleeing Manawaka, finally settling near McConnell's Landing, an equally small town with many of the same characteristics.

"That's different," Dan said defensively. "I have to make my own kind of place. I'm not talking about the difference in outside scenery, either."

"I know. Your own place will be different, but it'll be the same, too, in some ways."

"Not if I can help it," Dan said angrily.

"I'm not sure you _can_ help it. You can change a whole lot. But you can't throw him away entirely. He and a lot of others are there. Here."

Morag reached out and touched the vein on Dan's wrist.

"Oh jesus," Dan said, anguished, "maybe it's true. I can't take this."

Tactful Morag. What a thing to say. Maybe even untrue. No, not untrue. The remark wouldn't matter in the long run, though, because he wouldn't believe her. Not yet.

"Forget it, Dan. It was a stupid thing for me to say."

"When I met Pique, I thought _This is it. I'm home._ And now–well, I know she's got to go away, Morag. But I've got to stay. I wanted you to know."

"Thanks, Dan. It'll be all right. At least, I hope so."

"Yeh. Well. Maybe."

Across the river, in A-Okay and Maudie's house, was Pique Tonnerre Gunn, or Pique Gunn Tonnerre, who must walk her own roads, wherever those might be. And nothing seemed to be getting much simpler as time went by.

That evening, Morag went out with Royland in his boat, taking the outboard so that he could fish. The river was a thousand percent cooler than the land. The sweat which had been running down Morag's forehead all day, steaming up her glasses, began to evaporate. She might just possibly survive the heat of summer after all. Then, after the marvels and cool warmth of autumn, the battle to survive the godawful winter would begin. What a country, and how strange she cared about it so much.

The willows bowed down on either side of the river, low and globe-shaped trees, their flickering silvergreen leaves now beginning to turn yellow. Behind them, the gigantic maples, an occasional massive oak and the dying elms. They passed areas of cleared land, where the fields came down nearly to the river. The massed clumps of goldenrod proclaimed the fields' extent and ending, the wildflowers as always encroaching, taking over wherever the fields gave an inch. The hay had long since been taken in, and the winter wheat was harvested. The spring crops were ripening now.

"I meant to swim today," Morag said, above the idling motor, "but of course I didn't. I hardly ever do."

"Lotta weed this year," Royland said, having just disentangled his line from a clump of it.

"Yeh. I go out every morning and think–swimming is the best exercise there is, and what is the point in living on a river if you don't swim? Then I see all that benighted weed and I change my mind. If I do go swimming and run into a patch of it, I flail around in a panic, thinking it must be a river-monster, probably prehistoric, which has been hibernating down there in the mud for ten million years and has just wakened. Or Grendel, as in Beowulf, and me without courage or a sword."

Royland laughed.

"Well, you shouldn't swim alone, anyhow."

"I used to be a fair swimmer, believe it or not. A miracle, considering I learned to swim in the Wachakwa River. There were bloodsuckers. You had to make them let go by applying lighted cigarettes."

Morag, terrified of cities, coming out here, making this her place, her island, and still not going swimming because of the monsterweed. But at least she could somehow cope. City friends often asked her if she was not afraid to stay in the house alone, away out here. No, she wasn't. She was not lonely and not afraid, when alone here. She did not think that the loghouse was about to be descended upon by deranged marauders. In New York, Morag's agent and his wife had three locks upon their door.

_Maybe I should've brought Pique up entirely in cities, where she'd have known how bad things are all over, where she'd have learned young about survival, about the survival tactics in a world now largely dedicated to Death, Slavery and the Pursuit of Unhappiness. Instead, I've made an island. Are islands real? A-Okay and Maudie, and now Dan, are doing the same. But if they do raise horses, they'll have to sell them to the very people they despise. And, Morag Gunn, who rails against the continuing lies_ _of the media, does not, it will be noticed, establish her own hand-set press. Islands are unreal. No place is far enough away. Islands exist only in the head. And yet I stay. All this, the river and the willows and the gronk-gronk-gronk of the mini-dinosaur bullfrogs, it may be a fantasy. But I can bear to live here, until I die, and I couldn't elsewhere._

"Turn the motor off, quick," Royland said suddenly.

At first, Morag thought he had caught his line in some weed. Then she saw the huge bird. It stood close to shore, its tall legs looking fragile although in fact they were very strong, its long neck and long sharp beak bent towards the water, searching for fish, its feathers a darkbright blue. A Great Blue Heron. Once populous in this part of the country. Now rarely seen.

Then it spotted the boat, and took to flight. A slow unhurried takeoff, the vast wings spreading, the slender elon-gated legs gracefully folding up under the creature's body. Like a pterodactyl, like an angel, like something out of the world's dawn. The soaring and measured certainty of its flight. Ancient-seeming, unaware of the planet's rocketing changes. The sweeping serene wings of the thing, unknowing that it was speeding not only towards individual death but probably towards the death of its kind. The mastery of the heron's wings could be heard, a rush of wind, the wind of its wings, before it mounted high and disappeared into the trees above a bywater of the river.

Royland reeled in his line, and by an unspoken agreement they took the boat home in silence, in awe.

That evening, Morag began to see that here and now was not, after all, an island. Her quest for islands had ended some time ago, and her need to make pilgrimages had led her back here.

_Memorybank Movie: Sceptr'd Isle_

Morag firmly crashes the door shut on the garden flat. Garden flat–a joke. When she and Pique first came to England, the advertisement in the _Hampstead & Highgate Express_, saying "Garden flat–Hedgerow Walk," sounded reassuringly rustic. In fact it turned out to mean a basement flat, which Morag rented because it was not too costly and was self-contained. Hedgerow Walk does indeed contain hedges, although hardly the tangle of briar roses and blackberries which Morag's imagination suggested. These are closely clipped green-yellow privet hedges which define each narrow yard. The small front gardens have mostly been covered with crazy-pavement, which, as its name implies, is a demented combination of cement and vari-coloured tiles of an unsurpassed ugliness. But easy to look after. The Victorian redbrick houses are tall and semidetached. Also identical, except for the fact that householders have all painted their doors a different colour–lilac vies with lemon yellow and deep rose. The individual spirit proclaims itself in paint.

The Yale lock on the door of Morag's flat clicks protectively. No unlocked doors here. And yet, incredibly, London frightens Morag less than any other city she has ever known. She goes out by herself, to friends' houses, at night, and returns alone on the Underground, with less panic than she would have believed possible. Perhaps she still, even after three years, maintains in her mind the myth that the English are an orderly and law-abiding people.

Morag slithers out onto the rain-greased pavement and slops up the hill to Hampstead High Street. At least, praise God, no fog today. This has been the worst winter in living memory here, or so she has been informed by numerous people. She has come to believe that nearly every winter here is the worst in living memory because the season invariably comes as a surprise, no one taking seriously the notion that winter ever comes to England at all, until each year it does so. Although Pique has walked to school alone for several years, this winter in the thick sulphurous fogs Morag accompanied her and went to pick her up in the late afternoons, terrified that the child would get lost if she were on her own. It was all Morag could do, then, to find her way, snailing along block by block, clinging close to the buildings, examining every street name set into the brick walls, to check her position, feeling as though there were no pavement ahead and one might possibly drop off the edge of the world.

It was during the worst of the fog that the greengrocer said to Morag– _Well, what do you think of this royal throne of kings, this sceptr'd isle, NOW?_ Perhaps such a literate greengrocer was an exception, but she had replied _It's fine_ , and meant it, because of him.

Pique loved the fog, despite the acrid taste that came through the woollen scarf–a primitive gasmask–around her mouth and nose. Pique always feeds on crises because they are exciting.

Morag plods along the High Street in the weak grey-light of the morning, head down against the drizzling rain. She has not put up her umbrella and never does so except in downpours, as she prefers to get her coat and headscarf damp rather than crash into other umbrella-bearers who walk blindly like a host of mobile mushrooms. She has come to feel in many ways at home here, although she will never feel she belongs. She has, as well, come to value the anonymity of these streets, the fact that people often don't know their neighbours or care about their goings-on of whatever variety. It is, of course, all very well for her, because she made a few friends fairly quickly in the beginning owing to introductions on the part of her English publishers. A person coming to this city totally unknown to anyone could literally die of loneliness, and no doubt many do. Odd, now, though, to recall that she had come here in the first place partly because of a fantasy–Morag getting to know dozens of other writers, with whom she would have everything in common. In fact only a few of her friends are writers, and she has discovered that publishers' parties in London are no more appealing to her and no less parochial than they were in Canada. Useful to know that, probably. At least when she finally does return, she won't ever again feel that she must be missing out on a lot in these ways. Another thing which enabled her if not to overcome her dread of cities then at least to suppress it was the desire to see places she had read about all her life–the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square. For the first year, she and Pique were intrepid tourists, awed by monuments. Now they live here. How long will they remain? She often wonders this, sometimes feeling that she is held here largely by lethargy–the thought of moving again is too much for her at this point; Pique likes her school; they have established a place of their own, some kind of refuge.

Morag turns off the High Street, goes down a small winding street and arrives at the shop where she works mornings.

AGONISTES BOOKSHOP

J. Sampson, Prop.

This play on words is somewhat diminished in effect, for Morag, by the fact that Mr. Sampson spells his name with a "p." He, however, is pleased with it. Morag once asked him if he didn't think the reference was a little unfortunate or inappropriate. No, he said, because after all here he was in a constant state of dreadful labour and mental anguish over trying to keep the business going. Yes, but what about the fall of the temple? Oh that, Mr. Sampson said–well, wasn't he trying his best against the philistines?

"Morning, Mr. Sampson. Chilly day."

"Morning, Morag. The chill shouldn't bother _you_."

Their ritual exchange, nearly every day in winter. He affects to believe that Morag comes from a land of perpetual snow. Mr. Sampson is a slight, thin, rabbity little man in his mid-sixties, whose face is not strengthened by the small wavering moustache he wears. His appearance is not impressive until you notice that his greenish eyes are very clear, intelligent and watchful. He stocks a surprisingly large range of books, considering the smallness of the shop, but his true love is the English contemporary novel, about which he knows everything. This morning he is unpacking new arrivals, slowly, because he has to glance through each one and also examine the jacket design and blurb for saleability.

"Look at this," he cries. "Whom do Lansbury's employ in their Art department, I ask myself. A blind man? Who is going to buy a book with a dust jacket that's all grey, totally, not a glimmer of light in it? Let's hope it gets a few good reviews, to offset this mess. It wouldn't matter so much if it were by a known writer, but it's a first novel. A shame."

When Morag's collection of short stories, _Presences_ , came out last year, Mr. Sampson insisted on filling the window with copies, and only Morag's embarrassment prevented him from forcibly thrusting the book onto everyone who entered the shop. When she decided she hated the title, which sounded like one of those small literary magazines which are forever dying quick deaths, he told her sharply that it was unprofessional to think of such things after the book was out.

"Want me to clear some of the last lot from the front counter?" Morag asks, with a pang for the books published a month ago, now to be relegated to shelves.

"I suppose so," Mr. Sampson says regretfully, knowing her feelings. "We need more room, but where could it come from? If I could throw out all those cookery and flower-arranging books and nonsense like that–but I'd starve. So go ahead–clear, clear. We must be ruthless to survive."

Morag grins. He is far from ruthless, as is well-known to impecunious young people who drop in and read books here chapter by chapter.

The phone rings and Mr. Sampson disappears into his tiny crowded office at the back. He emerges in a moment and beckons to Morag.

"It's for you."

"For me?" She is surprised, because people never phone her at the shop.

"It's the school," Mr. Sampson says nervously.

Morag flies to the phone. What has happened to Pique? She sees on her mindscreen a road accident. The terrible vulnerability of children.

"Mrs. Gunn? Miss White here. Pique–"

"Is she all right? What's happened?"

"Don't be upset, Mrs. Gunn. She'll be all right. She just isn't feeling too well, that's all, and I think you should come and collect her."

"I'll be there in a few minutes."

Morag faces Mr. Sampson apologetically.

"I'm really sorry, but I'm going to have to leave for the day. Maybe longer. It's Pique–she's ill."

"Go ahead, go ahead," he says cluckingly, helping her on with her coat. "The lesser matters must give way to the greater."

Morag walks rapidly along the hilly streets to the school. Pique is waiting in Matron's office, her coat on, her face flushed. She did not feel entirely well this morning before going to school, but Morag, after dithering, had decided she was well enough to go. Morag does not like to stay away from work unless absolutely necessary–how far can Mr. Sampson's good nature be presumed upon, and where would she find another job as convenient as this one? Also, she has wanted to work this afternoon on the novel which is taking shape in her head. Now look what she has done.

"Oh honey, I'm so sorry."

Pique looks dejected.

"I threw up," she says in a small shamed voice. "All over the floor beside my desk. Oh Mum, I feel _awful_. I feel sick, and I feel awful about doing that. I couldn't help it."

"That doesn't matter, honey. Honestly. Come on."

Morag thanks Miss White, who twitters in the background, and they leave. The walk home seems interminable and freezing. The rain continues its slow steady _drip-drip-drip_.

Morag puts Pique to bed and takes her temperature. A hundred and four. Morag by now is frantic with worry, and Pique's skin feels as though it were burning. Morag administers aspirin and phones the doctor. After what seems about seven hours, but is in fact two, he arrives and says that Pique has flu and there is a lot of it about.

"There's always a lot of it about, it seems to me," Morag says idiotically, angrily, as though this were in some way the doctor's fault.

"Well, try not to be upset, Mrs. Gunn," he says sternly. "That won't help the child, will it?"

Oh God. True. True. She wants to ask the doctor, young and brisk, to forgive her, to stay for a while, have a cup of tea, reassure her, tell her Pique isn't very ill and will be fine, and that it isn't Morag's fault for having sent her out unwell into the raw morning. There is, however, no external reassurance available, as she learns each time as though for the first time, whenever Pique is sick. The doctor writes a prescription and leaves, nodding brusquely at Morag's profuse and in some ways hypocritical thanks.

"What've I got, Mum?" Pique calls from the bedroom.

"Flu. You'll be fine in a few days."

"I'll miss the Valentine's party," Pique wails.

Now Morag, perversely, feels annoyed at the child. Fancy worrying about a Valentine's party when your health is in jeopardy. How unreasonable. And what is so reasonable about Morag expecting an eight-year-old to be reasonable?

_I fluctuate like a pendulum. The terrible vulnerability of parents, though, your life bound up so centrally with this other one._

"Listen, honey, it'll be all right. We'll have our own Valentine party. And I'll get Miss White to send your valentines home, and I'll send yours for the kids. You just lie quietly for a minute, Pique–I've got to whip out and get the medicine for you. Shall I get you some ginger ale?"

"I don't care," Pique says wearily.

If she doesn't want ginger ale, she must really be sick. Morag hurries up to the High Street pharmacy and back again. When she returns, Pique has vomited again. She has not made it to the bathroom and has not even managed the plastic bucket which Morag placed beside the bed. It is all over the sheets and blankets. There could have been very little to throw up except a glass of water and the aspirins, but it seems like gallons. Pique is crying. Her black hair, spread over the pillow, is wet.

Morag cleans up, gives Pique the tablets, praying she will keep them down, sponges the child's face, and sits beside her. After a few hours, Pique's temperature drops a little. Finally she sleeps, although restlessly, and Morag leaves her.

In the small livingroom, which also serves as Morag's bedroom, Morag sits cross-legged on the couch-bed, listening to Pique's hoarse breathing, and the rain, and the wind in the bare branches of the plane trees. It is at times like this that she feels her aloneness. When Pique is well, and Morag is writing, and there are sometimes people to talk to, then the fact that she is alone is bearable. Even the fact that she lives without a man except for occasional casual encounters which leave her emptier than she was before–even that can be survived, although with spates of rage or self-pity. But in the times of the threat of darkness–when Pique is sick, or when Morag herself is sick and wonders what would happen to Pique if anything fatal happened to herself, or when the money is perilously low and Morag, paralyzed with anxiety, cannot write–it is then that she feels the aloneness to be unbearable. Like now.

_If only there were someone to talk it over with. Someone to share the pain, I guess. That wouldn't help Pique much. It would help me, though. Or would it? Look at Angie in Flat Two upstairs. When the baby is sick, she says to Dennis that she's worried out of her mind, and he says she always worries unnecessarily and she's inherited it from her neurotic mother and she had better snap out of it. And maybe she is indeed worrying unnecessarily. As probably I am. But you would just like somebody to say–God, love, I KNOW and I'm worried too._

Outside, on Hedgerow Walk, the high-pitched laughter of guests arriving at some party or other. Upstairs in Flat Two, Dennis turns the record player up full volume, and Angie yells at him to turn it down or he'll waken the baby–if one of them doesn't waken the baby, the other certainly will. If they waken Pique, Morag will go up and strangle them both, or at least sit down here and curse them. She takes off the black and scarlet Madras cotton bedspread (meant to make her bed look in daytime as though it were not a bed) and crawls between the sheets. Then crawls out again to look once more at Pique, who is sleeping but whose skin is unnaturally hot. Nothing more can be done at the moment.

Finally Morag sleeps.

Pique's fever continues, up and down, for four days. Then it drops to normal and stays there, but the doctor says she is not to return to school for another week. Morag, on the phone to Mr. Sampson, is assured that she still has a job, but he is beginning to sound irritable. A little more of this, and Morag will not have a job, probably. And she will not really be able to blame Mr. Sampson, who hires an assistant with the reasonable expectation that she will be at work most of the time.

_Hell, I'm lucky. I don't know what difficulty means. At least there are some royalties dribbling in from past books, although not much, and I suppose if I were really broke, I could go to the publishers and ask for a small advance on the next book–no, I couldn't do that, though, because then the book wouldn't get written. But Jeremy Sampson is not a mean-minded guy, and I am not a cog in some vast machine, at the bookshop. Suppose I was a waitress in a chain of cheap restaurants? Devil a bit they'd care if my kid was sick and I had to stay home for two weeks. I am lucky. I know it. It's just that I don't feel so very lucky right now._

Morag buys a bottle of Cyprus sherry and drinks it in an evening. That evening she feels better. In the morning, worse. Pique, recuperating, is beginning to enjoy poor health, a good sign. The two of them have had an impromptu Valentine's day party, Pique opening the valentines from school with varied comments– _Oh gee, I never sent Carla one–hey, it says G. R.; that must be Georgie Rexroth, that twit_ –and so on. Pique is getting up now, late mornings, and flitting about in her housecoat. Morag has done no writing for more than a week, and now that Pique is better, chagrin begins to set in.

"Honey, could you leave me be for about a couple of hours, while I try to do a little work?"

"Sure," Pique says with dignity. "Of course."

The arrangement lasts for fifteen minutes, after which Pique tiptoes into the livingroom, where Morag is sitting staring at the blank page.

"Mum?"

"What?" Spoken churlishly.

"I was just thinking–tonight could you tell me some of those stories again?"

"Which stories?" Not wanting to know.

"Oh, _you_ know. The ones Christie used to tell you, and that. And about my dad, and all that."

Why this sudden need? Or is it simply that this week the two of them have been together all the time, and Pique has herself been frightened by her sickness, and now is well, and wants this particular closeness to continue for a while longer?

"Okay, honey. After dinner, eh?"

"Sure. Okay."

But now there is no way that Morag can even try to begin to get inside the novel which is beginning. The novel, whose title is _Jonah_ , is the story of an old man, a widower, who is fairly disreputable and who owns a gill-netter in Vancouver. He fishes the mouth of the Fraser River and the Strait of Georgia when the salmon run is on. It is also about his daughter Coral, who resents his not being a reputable character. Jonah inhabits Morag's head, and talks in his own voice. In some ways she knows more about Coral, who is so uncertainly freed by Jonah's ultimate death, but it is Jonah himself who seems more likely to take on his own life in the fiction.

How to get this novel written, in between or as well as everything else?

"Pique–"

"Yeh?"

"C'mon, let's get the dinner now. I'm not going to do any more work today, I guess. And then we'll do the stories."

Whose need is the greater? Morag's, to tell the story of Jonah, or Pique's, to hear the stories of Christie and of Lazarus and all of them, back there?

MORAG'S TALE OF CHRISTIE LOGAN

Well, a long time ago, when I was a kid, Christie used to tell me all sorts of stories. Christie Logan, he was a strange man, I guess. Not a big man–rather slight, really, but tough as tree-bark and wiry as barbwire and proud as the devil. He used to wear the same old overalls, always, and that embarrassed me and I used to think he stank of garbage, but now I'm not sure he did and I wonder why I thought it mattered, anyway. When he told me the tales about Piper Gunn, at first I used to believe every word. Then later I didn't believe a word of them, and thought he'd made them up out of whole cloth.

(What means _Whole cloth_?)

Out of his head–invented them. But later still, I realized they'd been taken from things that happened, and who's to know what really happened? So I started believing in them again, in a different way. Now, when Christie told a tale, then, his voice would become different from the ordinary. It would be like the ranting of the pipe music, wild and stormy, until you could actually feel the things happening that he was telling you about. He had very blue eyes, Christie did, in those days, and when he was telling a tale, his eyes would be like the blue lightning and you would forget his small stature, for at those times he would seem a giant of a man. And I've told you the tale of Piper Gunn–well, now, when Christie told that first tale, about how Piper led his people onto the ship to take them to the new land, he used to describe Piper, and he'd say that Piper Gunn was a great tall man with a voice like the drums, and the heart of a child, and the gall of a thousand, and the strength of conviction. I always liked that–the strength of conviction, even though at the time I didn't really know what it meant.

(What _does_ it mean?)

It means that Piper Gunn believed the people could make a new life for themselves. He had faith. And you know, Pique, how Christie used to describe Piper's wife? He used to say _Now Piper Gunn, he had a woman, and she had the courage of a falcon and the beauty of a deer, and the warmth of a home, and the faith of saints._

(I like that. Would he tell me those stories, if we went to see him?)

Well, maybe. But he's getting pretty old now. He mightn't remember so well.

(He would still remember those stories. He wouldn't forget. Not Christie.)

MORAG'S TALE OF LAZARUS TONNERRE

Well, your grandfather, Lazarus Tonnerre, he brought up his children in the Wachakwa valley, there, just below the town of Manawaka, where I grew up. And there was your dad, and the two girls, Piquette and Valentine, and the two younger boys, Paul and Jacques. And their mother, Lazarus's wife, she–I'm not sure what happened. Maybe she died, or–well, I don't know.

(Why don't you know?)

I just don't. Maybe someday you'll see your dad again and he can tell you. Anyway, Lazarus used to tell stories, too, to his family when the winter evenings were freezing cold and a blizzard wind would be yowling outside and the snow would be blowing across the door in drifts. Sometimes the kids would be hungry, and Lazarus would tell them these stories, all about _his_ father, old Jules Tonnerre, who fought in the battle out west, and he really existed, once, and about Rider Tonnerre, a long long way back, who may have existed and maybe not, but it doesn't matter–and he was said to be the best rider among all the Métis and the best buffalo hunter for miles around, in those old days.

(Why would the kids be _hungry_?)

They were very poor. It was during the Depression–that means a whole lot of people were poor, and couldn't get jobs and didn't have enough to eat.

(Oh.)

Anyhow, Lazarus had a lot of troubles, but his family never starved. Sometimes he used to go trapping away up Galloping Mountain way.

(Galloping Mountain? Is that a real mountain?)

Sure. Away north of Manawaka, where lots of very tall spruce trees grow, and there's a lake there, and a lot of your father's people live thereabouts.

(I'm going there someday.)

Sure, honey. Anyway, Lazarus sometimes went alone on those trips up to the mountain, and sometimes he'd take your dad. Then they'd come back to the shack in the valley.

(And have lots to eat, eh? And tell stories. I wish I'd been there.)

Yeh. Well, there was more to it than that. Lazarus must've felt pretty low in his mind, sometimes, looking after all those kids, there. But he kept on somehow.

( _What_ more to it?)

Well, I never knew him that well myself, but I remember the last time I ever saw him. It was at the time of the fire.

(I don't like that part. Don't tell it again.)

Okay. I won't, then.

(He was brave, though, wasn't he?)

Yes. He was that.

A letter arrives from Christie, saying the winter in Manawaka has been colder than all the shithouses in hell, but he is mostly all right, and how are Morag and Pique. He also asks, joking and not joking, when is Morag going to Sutherland, and isn't she ever going to get to see where her people came from?

When, indeed, is she going to go? The pilgrimage. Does that word dramatize it beyond what it is? Probably not. Why, then, has she for so long hesitated?

She is afraid that she will be disappointed, that there will not, after all, be any relations. She is afraid that she will feel nothing and that nothing will be explained to her. Or else she is afraid that she will feel too much, and that too much will be explained in those rocks and ruined crofts, or whatever is there, now, these days.

_In those days, a darkness fell over all the lands and crofts of Sutherland. And among all of them people there on the rocks, see, was a piper and he was from the Clan Gunn, and it was many of the Gunns who lost their hearths and homes and lived wild on the stormy rocks there._

Morag writes back to Christie and says _Soon_.

Mr. Sampson has not been so much irritated as alarmed by Morag's absence, it turns out. He has been unable to keep up with the accounts, and is convinced that penury is imminent. Morag agrees to work afternoons as well as mornings for the next fortnight, although grudgingly. She has done no writing at all during Pique's illness and now will do virtually none for the next couple of weeks. A month away from it, and getting back inside will be torture. She thinks of writers with private means (of which she knows none) and puts a mental hex on them.

Had she not been working afternoons, however, she would not have met McRaith, who paints in the mornings and does his wandering around in the afternoons.

He has been standing at one of the counters with a large book in his hands for going on an hour before Morag approaches. She does not want to interrupt his browsing; she wants to speak to him, simply because his sexuality draws her. Why should this be? He is not particularly handsome. A man in his mid-forties, he appears to be, a large-boned large-framed man with a shaggy reddish beard, shaggy eyebrows, a head of thick shaggy hair to match, although his hairline is slightly receding.

"Can I help you?" Morag says, immediately regretting the shopgirl cliché.

He glances up, smiles with embarrassment and closes the book, which she now sees is an expensive edition of Klee reproductions.

"I wish you could." His voice is faintly Scots, but with some kind of difference, a low-spoken and almost formal quality which she has not heard before. "But I can't afford eight quid for a book, and it seems a bit large to steal unobtrusively."

"Would you, if it weren't?"

"I might take it, but the guilt would likely force me to return it. It's in the background."

"Presbyterian, you mean?"

"The same. In my case, considerably lapsed, but we are never totally lapsed."

"I know. It's in my background as well."

His name is Daniel McRaith, and he comes from Crombruach, a village in the part of Ross-shire known as the Black Isle. Hence his accent, which is Highland.

"Strange," Morag says, "that I wouldn't know one Scots accent from another. Most of the Scots families, where I come from, came originally from the Highlands, but they spoke Gaelic when they first arrived, about a hundred and fifty years ago, and they lost that. Even with the ones who came later, though, the Scots accent in English never lasted into the second generation."

"We have lost the Gaelic, too, or most of us."

"And yet–and this was true of Christie, my stepfather, too, at times–there's something in your speech that sounds almost as though it's being translated from another language. Christie never had a word of Gaelic. But there was some echo left."

"That is an appealing thought," Daniel McRaith says, "but possibly not too accurate."

"You mean–sentimental?"

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps," Morag says. "And perhaps not."

McRaith calls himself a painter, not an artist. The word _artist_ seems pretentious to him. He makes enough to live on now, although frugally; in the years when he didn't, he had spells of working as a hod-carrier in Glasgow, every minute of which he hated. It was not the physical labour he minded so much; it was the ugliness of the smoke-blackened city.

"I used to find, later, when I had gone back home, that I would be painting some of the children I had seen there, and the way they looked–bitter and old at eight or so–would almost make me angry at my own, for being healthy, which was a terrible way to think, I suppose. God knows Crombruach is poor but it is not that sick poverty."

His own. His own children. Well, so what? Nothing strange about that. She has only just laid eyes on him. Why should it matter that he is married, a natural enough state to be in, for a man of his age.

Mr. Sampson is making angry gestures to Morag. Two customers are hovering vaguely, with books in their hands, looking for someone to take payment, and Mr. Sampson is himself busy with another customer. Morag and Dan McRaith arrange to meet in a nearby pub that evening.

Angie promises to look in on Pique from time to time, and Morag goes out. As usual, with ambiguous feelings. Is she wrong to be leaving Pique alone? What if there were a fire? What if someone broke into the flat? Etcetera. And on the other hand, Pique is no infant, nor is she stupid, and she knows Angie's phone number. Also, why does Pique always always either create a fuss when Morag goes out, or (like tonight) dawdle calculatedly over dinner and preparations for bed, spinning out simple rituals such as brushing the teeth to about twenty minutes? The answer is, of course, obvious. But unpalatable. Morag cannot say to the child _I have to have some life of my own_ , because that concept will only be understood by Pique many years later, too late to do Morag any good. Nor can Morag afford (although she sometimes does) to lose her temper with Pique, for this merely brings on a severe attack of her own self-reproach and also gives Pique a legitimate reason for yelling, weeping and generally carrying on, all of which results in further delaying Morag's departure.

The Fox and Grapes is not yet crowded. Dan McRaith is standing at the bar, a pint ale mug held in one blunt-fingered hand. He gets her a drink and they find a table.

"Cheers."

"Cheers."

"After about three of these," he says, "you had best tell me to stop, because after three I forget that my capacity is not limitless, nor is my money."

"Why would I tell you to stop? That's up to you."

McRaith looks at her from amused hazel eyes.

"That's fine," he says, "as long as you are not sitting there thinking that I am drinking too much. Bridie never says anything. She sits there thinking it. She is an expert at the eloquent silence."

"Bridie?" The name seems to have connotations of perpetual bridehood, something childish and affected. "That's an odd name."

"It's a form of Bridget," McRaith says. "She is, of course, my wife."

"Yes."

Morag now prays that he is not about to launch into the boring confessions of one who is misunderstood by his marital partner. He does not do so. Or if he does, it is with some difference.

"There," he says contemplatively. "I have betrayed her, I think. I do that, sometimes. I don't think she ever speaks a word of me to anyone."

"Did you marry young, Dan?"

"Twenty. I'm forty-five now. With seven children. The two eldest are away from home now, thank God."

" _Seven_. Why?"

"Bridie believes in large families, and as having children turned out to be her chief interest in life, it did not seem fair to object to it. She has not objected to my painting, although she has sometimes had cause. You have only the one child, Morag?"

A peculiar way for a relationship to begin, a relationship which is plainly going to be sexual, by talking about one another's offspring. And yet Morag is drawn to him now by both sex and spirit, and senses this is true for him as well. It is as though, both of them, not being young and new and uncommitted, must sound each other out about their areas of commitment. The only alternative is the game, the pretence that nothing matters, the desperation that says moment is all and there does not need to be any other moment to plan for. Morag has played this game, from time to time. But not now. Not any more.

"Only the one, yes," she says. "It must be difficult to have seven. It's difficult to have one, though, in other ways."

"And alone?"

"Yes. That."

She tells him a little about Brooke, about Jules, about Pique. Even some things about Christie and Manawaka. Is this possible? Is this Morag Gunn, sitting in a pub and talking to someone about these things of which she rarely speaks? Apparently it is.

McRaith tells her that he keeps a room in a friend's house, in one of the grottier parts of Camden Town, and stays there occasionally when the house at Crombruach becomes unbearably small and noisy. Bridie minds, but does not say. He feels guilty at leaving to come here, but does so all the same.

Morag goes back to his room with him, and they make love. The swiftness of this encounter does not seem strange.

McRaith has been in London for going on two months, and Morag has known him for most of that time. His room, as a place of work for him, is no hell, but it does have a skylight and a fairly large east window. It is sparsely furnished–a bed, a dresser, an ancient and threadbare Persian rug. His paints, brushes and paraphernalia are kept in a scrolled and only slightly rainbow-splattered writing desk with a drop-lid top. The place is scrupulously neat, and the paints are always shut away when Morag arrives. He is very protective, almost aggressively so, about his work. His easel, standing in the wide bay window, is always carefully turned around whenever Morag is here, so she cannot see what he is working on. Finished (or at least temporarily laid aside) paintings are stacked against one wall, but facing inward in concealment. On the dresser there is only one thing–a bowl full of oddly shaped and oddly coloured pieces of rock, from Crombruach. Perhaps they are necessary to remind McRaith of those shapes and textures. Or possibly they are his talismans.

She goes there in the afternoons, most days, which is by no means a perfect arrangement. She works mornings in the bookshop. Dan works mornings at his work. She is supposed to be working afternoons at her work. Pique does not get to bed until after nine, so evenings are not much good for Morag's work. The choice for her seems to be not too simple.

_How to change our hours to suit? What to do, Lord? How to cope with it all? Maybe I should be able to write evenings, late, so as not to inconvenience anyone? Goddamn, why should I not inconvenience anyone? I couldn't write then, anyway. I am too bloody tired by then._

"Morag?" Dan, on the phone.

"Yes. Oh–"

"What happened to you? I was expecting you after lunch."

"Right," Morag says, furiously. "I'll be right over."

"You don't sound very calm, Morag."

"Really?"

She arrives, walks up the three flights of stairs to Dan's room. He takes her coat, looking bewildered.

"Why are you so strange today?" he asks.

"I was working on _Jonah_. I picked it up as soon as I got back from the bookshop, and I forgot about the time. I should've phoned you, I suppose. But this is going to happen sometimes, Dan, and I just damn well cannot help it. I'm not on call. I am not. If that doesn't suit you, then I'm sorry–but that's the way it is."

Dan laughs, almost with surprise. Puts an arm around her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Morag–I should've realized. I didn't mean to sound as though I owned you. You know I don't feel like that."

"I hope you don't. Because–"

"It's all right–I do know. My God, you should realize how glad I am that you'll stand up to me. That you'll yell at me if necessary. That's what's so bloody difficult with Bridie–oh Morag, love, I'm sorry, I must not talk about her to you. It is not fair to either of you. But sometimes I want to say to her–sometimes I _do_ say–for christ's sake, woman, don't sit there looking injured–if you disagree with me, _say so_. Can't you see that's one thing I value most about you?"

"I know. I do know, Dan."

"Well, you'd better get back to work, then."

"Now that I'm here," Morag says, laughing and yet annoyed at herself, "I don't want to go."

"I'm glad. But I feel as though I've–"

"Conned me? You haven't."

Dan shoulders his way across the room like a sailor in a gale. For him, life is full of pitfalls. He lives dangerously, and imagines minor disasters, which in consequence frequently happen. He is a man who can trip, cold sober, in the middle of an empty room. And yet he does not give the impression of clumsiness. His blundering movements are innerly caused, and have their own peculiar grace. Surrounded by mysteries on all sides, he peers at them with suspicion, awe and gratitude.

"We are, of course, out of whiskey," he says. "But the cupboard contains two small Guinness, if my memory serves me."

His memory does not serve him. The cupboard contains one Guinness. They split it.

"You bought the whiskey only a few days ago," Morag says. "Are you preaching, Morag Dhu? If so, please do not."

Morag Dhu. Black Morag. Because of her hair, not her temperament, or so she hopes. She has asked him how the Gaelic word is spelled, but he does not know.

"I'm not preaching. You don't drink when you're working. I would've liked the whiskey better than this black molasses, that's all."

"How do you know I don't drink when I'm working? I don't, as a matter of fact, but you've never seen me working. Nor I you, if it comes to that. I don't seem to be doing much here. I never do. I leave Crombruach, to get away from the loony bin up there, and I come here and paint shit."

"Maybe you should go back, Dan."

"Not yet," McRaith says. "Not quite yet."

They make love then, the continuation of their talking, the same thing in a different form. They talk interminably when they are talking; when they are making love, they do not speak. None of the hot violent words are needed. It is different each time. Sometimes so swift they are amazed and amused, taken by surprise, taking one another by surprise. Today, slow and gentle, even their culmination.

"One thing I have always liked about you," McRaith says, as though it had been years, "is that you have not yet asked to see my work. Of course, I have not asked to see yours, either, although I cheated to some extent and got two of your books out of the library."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Strange–that it could be you and not you, at the same time."

"That is just it." She does not want to talk much about this, but is warmed by the knowledge that he has seen it.

"If you want to look at the ones stacked over there, Morag Dhu," McRaith says, with a hesitation that is both protection and pride, "go ahead. I brought those down with me–for the dealers, hopefully."

"It must be hard to part with them, Dan."

"How often do you read your books, once they're published?"

"Never. Yes. Okay, I'll look, but I won't be able to say. I don't know, in that territory."

"For God's sake. Just look at them. Who asked you to say anything?"

Morag looks. Walking naked and therefore less vulnerable than she would have been if clad, among McRaith's paintings.

Dark oils, mostly, but not heavy. The colours black-green, a hundred different greys and browns, but the sun's colours, too, in brief revelations. Some like the rocks of Crombruach, the miniature shore there on the dresser, no recognizable shape nor identifiable form, at least to her eyes. Others bear somewhere within them the forms of fossils and shells, convoluted seashells and rock-fossils of ferns or fish, immeasurably ancient, and behind or through these, the timid angry eyes of humans. Some of the human eyes seem distanced, distorted–no, not distorted; the flesh mirrors the spirit's pain, a greater pain than the flesh even if burned could feel. A grotesquerie of a woman, ragged plaid-shawled, eyes only unbelieving empty sockets, mouth open in a soundless cry that might never end, and in the background, a burning croft.

Morag turns and looks at him, after looking at this last painting.

"The dispossessed."

She puts the canvas carefully back. She straightens, straightens herself, straightens her own back. Then she walks over to where he is lying on his bed. Kneels on the floor and puts her head with its black hair onto his chest with its coarse copper hair, and onto the double bow of his ribcage. McRaith puts his hands on her shoulders and does not move them from there for a while.

What future, Morag does not ask. Bridie remains unreal to her, and Dan's children are fantasy children. Yet Bridie is there, in Crombruach, her veins entangled with Dan's in that real and existing horde of young, her choice, her hold on him. His choice as well. He had not said _No_ to them. He had not denied Bridie her children, much as he might and did resent the presences of so many now dependent upon him. However much he needs to get away, will he ever be able to do so except briefly? Bridie certainly will not divorce him. What is Bridie like? Morag does not want to know. Morag does not care about marrying him, nor even about living with him more or less permanently. It will be enough if things can go on as now.

"Will you ever describe me?" Dan says.

"What are you getting at?"

"Will you, though?"

"No. Or–I don't think so."

"You don't think you have a right, do you, Morag Dhu?"

"No. No, I don't think I have a right."

"And if I painted you, or a part of you–would that be different?"

"I don't know. I don't either want you to do it or not want you to do it. I'll give you the right, if you want it."

"I wouldn't do your body. Don't mistake me–it's a good body. But it would just be your face, I think, and your hair. Let me look at you, Morag, so I will remember."

One day he shows her the painting of Morag Dhu, the only painting he has done in London and not destroyed. It is not a large canvas–quite small, in fact. It is not even just her face. Her features are in shadow. Only her black hair can be seen, and her eyes, clearly and unmistakably the eyes of Morag, angry and frightened, frighteningly strong.

_Memorybank Movie: The Black Isle_

It was three years since Morag first met Dan McRaith. To her, it seems a much shorter time, because she sees him perhaps twice a year, for a few weeks or occasionally a couple of months at a time. In between, they correspond, he in brief scrawls, Morag in lengthy typewritten letters. Sometimes, after he has once more gone away, she thinks of him in Crombruach, with Bridie, and rages. It is a fine arrangement for him–a woman in two camps. But what about her? At these times, lying sleepless, she feels demeaned, waiting here for him to return, furious at herself but unable to do otherwise. She has written dozens of letters to him, telling him she does not want to go on in this fashion, that she doesn't care a damn about marrying him but she hates feeling like anybody's mistress, that she is nearly forty and is merely marking time with her life, and so on. She always tears these letters up. She knows that Dan does not view it in this way, that he would laugh at the suggestion of Morag's being his _mistress_ , that antiquated word. Also, she is in fact not marking time with her life at all. _Jonah_ is completed and accepted and will soon be published. Morag works much better when McRaith is not in London, of course, herself and her time not then being divided. If he were here all the time, she suspects that she would become impatient with him, resentful of anyone's constant presence. No doubt under these circumstances, too, she would be expected to make the meals and do the laundry for him as well as for herself and Pique. Dan is accustomed to that pattern, which presumably suits Bridie, but would not suit Morag.

_Looked at that way, it's ideal. Why do I keep on feeling badly about it, then? I hate the fact that Dan's never even seen Pique, that there is a whole area in my life that he knows nothing about, and that there is another whole area in my life that Pique knows nothing about. And I'm jealous of his children and of Bridie, having so much of his life. Bridie, apparently cloaked in her disapproving silences. They're not happy together–for God's sake, why don't they part? But I can't say that to him._

Evening, and Pique is reading in bed. The phone rings, and it is Dan. He sounds dreadfully upset. Morag recognizes the symptoms, all too familiar by now.

"Morag, could you come over, right now, do you think? Just for a little while. I really would like to talk to you."

"What is it? You're going home?"

"Morag Dhu, I can't stand this goddamn city a minute longer. Today I nearly walked straight into an oncoming bus. One of these days I will. And I am not working worth a damn. Everything I do here is rubbish. I've got to go back."

"I'll be over in a few minutes."

Aid and comfort. She does not resent it very much, because he also has given her aid and comfort, through the writing of _Jonah_. Not, however, about Pique and all that, but then she has never asked for it, there.

Morag very rarely goes over to Dan's in the evenings, simply because she hates telling lies to Pique, and there is no way she can go to Dan's without telling lies which grow far too elaborate and intricate, and which make her feel as though she is betraying the child, once for leaving Pique in order to go to Dan, and again for not levelling about it.

"Who was that, Mum?" Pique enquires.

Morag goes into Pique's bedroom.

"Just a friend," she says. Then, determinedly, "An artist called Daniel McRaith–he is going back to his home in Scotland, and he's having a few people in this evening, and they'd like me to go over for just a little while. Okay?"

Only half a lie. Does that make it better?

"I guess so." Pique is more resigned than she used to be, about Morag going out occasionally. But she still does not like it.

"I'll just go up and tell Angie."

"Okay. Mum–don't stay very long, will you?"

"I promise."

Does Pique in some way suspect her relationship with Dan? Why why has Morag been so careful to keep it from the child? If Dan were unattached, then she would not have felt this carefulness to be necessary. But you cannot say to a child _Look, there is this man and he has seven children and a wife in the north of Scotland, and I am in love with him and I go over and make love with him whenever I possibly can, and will continue to do so, however much it might hurt his wife if she knew about it, and I am very much afraid that it would._

Dan is pacing around the room like a racehorse impatient to be off.

"Morag–I am so damn sorry. But I have to go."

"Yes. I know you do. I don't understand why, but I know you do."

McRaith pours them both a whiskey, and she sees his hands are shaking.

"I wish to God I could explain," he says miserably. "I don't know–more and more I feel like hell about it."

"About what?"

"Why can't I just stay in either one place or another? That's what is bothering me. I go back to Crombruach, and I can work–I never do anything, really, anywhere else. And then after a while–look, I do not hate my offspring–"

"I never thought you did."

"On the contrary, I am normally fond of them, or so I believe at most times. But–"

"Dan," Morag says, feeling tired. "We have been through all this a hundred times. Go. Just go. But for God's sake stop trying to explain and justify yourself."

"I'm not trying to justify," he says irritably. Then, sitting down at the table, he looks up at her and shrugs. "Yes, probably I am, at that. I wish you would come up to Crombruach, Morag, just once–just to see. Then you'd understand both things–my need of the place, the geographical _place_ , the sea and the shore, and also why I have to get away, and did even before I ever met you. Now it's a hundred percent worse, because I want to come down here and see you, and I also feel more guilty about leaving–well, leaving all of them up there."

"How could I go to Crombruach, Dan? Don't be ridiculous."

"You mean–what would Bridie think? Well, the local pub has rooms. You could stay there. You're always talking about going to Sutherland and you never go. It's quite a long way from Crombruach, but I could drive you. It would be a reason for going. Bridie would not think anything if you took Pique along with you. That is how her mind works–"

A woman with a child would be likely to be honourable, in Bridie's book? Bridie herself would, no doubt. Perfidious Morag.

"You've got it all figured out, haven't you, Dan? How would you explain how it was you came to invite me up to Crombruach? Or how you got to know me at all?"

"You're making it too complicated, Morag Dhu. I would tell Bridie I met you a couple of times at parties at Andrew's. I've quite often asked London friends up there, you know."

"What if she didn't believe you?"

McRaith looks suddenly stricken.

"She would, quite simply, believe me," he says.

"Dan–"

They hold onto one another. But they will not make love this evening.

"I couldn't go," Morag says. "I just couldn't."

"All right. I'll write to you, Morag Dhu."

Early mornings are the worst. Nights, she works late, writing letters, planning a few short stories, drinking wine until she thinks she can sleep. But she wakens with the cold knowledge of Dan's absence, her flesh clamouring for his, her mind reviewing the things she wants to tell him, to share with him, and then realizing he is not any longer just a few blocks away.

After a month, she asks Pique how it would be for the two of them to go to Scotland during the Easter holidays, and stay in a real hotel, and visit these friends, some of whose children are just about Pique's age. Pique is enthusiastic. Morag writes to McRaith, who replies by return post.

The night train to Inverness. Morag lies in the lower bunk of their second-class sleeping compartment, listening to the quake and rattle of the train. Is this going to prove to be a vast error of judgement? And she will not be able to touch Dan, not at all. What in hell has made her do it?

_Curiosity. Just that. I've got to see. I've got to know about Crombruach, and Bridie, and why he stays. And if I'm ever to get to Sutherland, it had best be with him._

Early morning, Morag looks out the train window. Small rocky hillsides are sliding past, and fir trees, and white birches. Brown creeks (here called _burns_?) tumble along over stony riverbeds. A station flashes by. The train does not stop, but Morag reads the sign.

CULLODEN

There is such a place. It really exists, in the external world. Morag feels like crying, but Pique is awake now and the steward is at the door with their morning tea.

Dan meets them at Inverness station. He is wearing his usual brown corduroys and cream-coloured plait-patterned fisherman's sweater. In London, she now realizes, these clothes looked slightly like what a painter might wear who was trying to look like an artist, although it never struck her like that at the time. Here, however, they look like what they really are, the local garb, worn because warm.

"Pique, this is Dan McRaith." This seems very odd.

"Hi. Have you got a farm?"

"Hello, Pique. No, not a farm. Our house used to be a fisherman's cottage."

"Have you got a dog?"

"Yes. A collie."

"I have always wanted a dog," Pique says, giving Morag a reproachful glance.

The drive takes more than an hour, through rolling farmlands and pastures. Morag barely notices the scenery. In the back seat, Pique is chattering happily. Dan responds with appropriate comments. The small car chuffs on. Morag, sitting beside Dan, is aware only that she wants to touch him, and cannot.

Crombruach village is at the mouth of the firth. The greyish pink stone houses rise in tiers up the hillside. The streets are narrow, cobbled with rough stone. The harbour has a wharf-breakwater and inside this sheltering arm half a dozen boats lie. Fishboats? Not anything like the gillnetters in B.C. These are more like dories, motor-powered but open. Imagine going to sea in those cockleshells.

They go to the local inn and deposit Morag's suitcases. Then on to McRaith's house. They draw up beside a row of stone cottages, not even semidetached. Totally attached, a whole string of them, across the road from the windy harbour.

"Here we are," McRaith says.

The house is low-ceilinged, as he has said, two rooms up and two and a half down. Downstairs, the kitchen which is also the livingroom has as its focus a black iron coalstove. There is also a beat-up table, a variety of chairs in various stages of collapse, two cats, a jumble of anoraks and rubber Wellington boots, books, buckets, cooking pots, rock and shell collections, fishing rods, piles of old newspapers, a sink stacked high with washed but undried dishes, a cardboard box full of broken toys, an aged and yawning collie beside the stove dreaming of sheepherding, a jam jar full of dried grasses and ferns, and another jam jar full of plastic daffodils.

A woman comes down the stairs into the kitchen, accompanied by a couple of copper-haired boys who look about six and nine years old. Bridie. Introductions are made, which Morag scarcely hears, and will later not be able to remember. She is intent upon looking at Bridie. It immediately becomes apparent that Bridie is intent upon looking at Morag.

_Like hell she doesn't suspect, kid or no kid. Oh God. Why did I ever come here? I should've known better. Too late now. Have to see it through. With dignity. Come on, Morag. Pull yourself together._

Bridie is only a few years younger than Dan, so she must be about forty-five. She looks older than he does. This seems unfair, for a start. She is a thin slight woman, her hands rough and red from too much hot water and cold weather. Her features are sharp, and indicate that she must once have been if not beautiful then extremely handsome. She wears her brown hair cropped short. Her brown tweed skirt and brown poloneck pullover are clean and sensible, and her shoes, well-polished brogues, suggest that she has to some extent dressed up for this meeting.

Only now does Morag realize what the real mistake has been in coming here. No longer can Bridie be a fantasy woman. She has become, in this instant, real to Morag. Her drawn, tense, determined face will now forevermore come between Morag and McRaith.

Bridie's hands reach down for a second, in an automatic gesture, as though she were about to wipe them on an apron which she now remembers she is not wearing. Morag's heart lurches and she finds herself wanting to say _I didn't mean to hurt you, if I did hurt you; I didn't know you were here._

"We haven't much to offer Dan's London friends," Bridie says, in the same low almost formal tone as Dan has.

Morag sees suddenly what she has taken for suspicion, before, in Bridie's perusal of herself, has not been that at all. It has merely been shyness, a feeling both of inadequacy and resentment, possibly, in the face of Dan's London friends, people from that glittering world, as she probably imagines it to be, where she herself does not go and does not want to go.

"Would you be ready for your breakfast, then?" Bridie goes on.

"Yes–thanks. But please don't go to any–"

"It's no bother," Bridie says. "I'll see to it now."

But there is a faint undertone now, not of apology but of martyrdom. Dan says nothing, but scowls.

After they have eaten, Pique goes out with the two younger boys and the collie, to see the harbour and the shore. Two more young have clattered into the house–a girl of about twelve, and a boy of fourteen. Mary and Robert.

Bridie clears the table. Morag offers to help. Bridie politely refuses assistance.

"You and Dan go ahead and talk," she says. "I've work to do."

"Couldn't you just sit down for fifteen minutes," Dan says to her, very quietly but angrily, "and have a cup of coffee and talk a bit?"

Bridie looks at him as though puzzled, as though trying to figure out what is expected of her.

"Very well, then," she says.

She sits down on the edge of a chair and sips at her coffee, as though the house were no longer her abode. Morag and McRaith talk–of the proposed trip to Sutherland, which would be shorter by boat but he does not know anyone with a reliable enough vessel here right now. They also find themselves talking about Morag's forthcoming novel, naturally enough, comparing the gillnetters of _Jonah_ to the boats in Crombruach harbour. Bridie does not speak. What is she thinking? Morag turns to her.

"Your elder children–where are they?"

"Oh–they're away."

"Sarah left only this year," Dan says, taking over. "She's just eighteen. Taking a business course in Inverness. The two older boys have been away for some time–one's a teacher, and the other is at university in Edinburgh."

"It must be a relief to have grown-up children," Morag ventures once more to Bridie.

"They are doing well," Bridie says. "But they are missed here. When they have been your life, it is hard to see them go."

Well, that remark must make McRaith feel pretty superfluous at this point. Morag's feelings are so ambiguous that she no longer makes any attempt to sort them out at the moment. Bridie is certainly no frail personality–that much is obvious. But her ways of battling are not open ones. On the other hand, they are the only ones she has ever learned, ever been taught, presumably.

Morag and Dan begin to talk again–about London. This is bad, but what else to do? Bridie rises and goes about her work, of which there seems to be an endless amount. She has an old-fashioned washing machine, into which she dumps approximately three tons of clothing, load after load, moving efficiently, unobtrusively, and yet in some subtle way obtrusively.

"Let me show you where I work," Dan says finally.

There is a lean-to at the sea side of the house, which McRaith has built for his studio. The addition is not stone but timber, not well-built but with a good window facing east for the morning light. As in London, the canvases are neatly stacked; the easel is faced away from incoming eyes. There is no jumble of paints; everything is in its place–McRaith's defense, just as it is Morag's, against the chaos of the outer world and the confusions of the inner.

"It's not big enough," he says, "but it's my place. You might not think anyone could work here. How is it I can't work anywhere else? Maybe you'll begin to see, Morag Dhu. When I look out there, I see the firth. It's the place that's important to me. The surrounding circumstances–well, they have happened and they are here."

"You mean your family and all that?"

"Yes, I guess so. But of course it's not quite like that, too."

"I begin to see that it's not."

He puts an arm around her shoulder, gently and in a sense distantly.

"Morag Dhu. I'm sorry."

"Bridie must've been about seventeen when she married you."

"Yes. Exactly that. We were both born in this village. I can't leave, and how could I ever ask her to leave? It's her place, too. If only she could find something else, someone else to draw her away. But she won't. I don't believe she's ever had another man. I wish to God she would."

Morag looks at him, loving and resenting him. He really believes he means it.

"If she went down to London with you, sometime," Morag says, "and went to bed with Andrew, how would you feel about it?"

McRaith considers.

"Andrew wouldn't attract her," he says finally. "He's not her type of person."

Morag laughs, and he looks at her for a moment, bewildered, and then laughs, too. But does he really see what she is laughing at? And is she laughing, or what?

They are eight for dinner that evening. Bridie once again refuses Morag's help. Pique has come in with Ian and Jamie, with a huge number of shells collected on the shore.

"Hey, Mum, you should _see_ –you just walk along the beach and there are all these millions of shells–can I take all mine back with me?"

"Sure, honey," Morag says.

She sees McRaith looking at her, seeing her in a different way, the mother of Pique, the child who has been as unreal to him as Bridie and his kids have been to Morag. He smiles, and Morag has difficulty in straightening her spine and talking calmly.

After dinner, the young depart for a time, taking Pique with them. How much has Pique missed being a member of a tribe, a large family? She is taking to this circumstance in a way which makes Morag mourn for all the days Pique has come home alone, after school, to the flat with only the two of them there.

McRaith is battering around the kitchen, looking for something.

"Have you hidden my whiskey, then?" he says at last, to Bridie.

She does not flinch. She is sitting beside the small black coalstove, and for a wonder she is not actually doing anything except stroking the collie's ears.

"You know I have not, Dan."

"Then where the hell is it?" He looks ashamed as he speaks.

"On the lower right-hand shelf of the sideboard, where you left it."

McRaith looks, and of course it is there.

"Sorry, my queen," he says. "I have maligned you once again."

Bridie says nothing. Well, what could you say? These famous silences of hers, Morag now thinks, are caused because he hands her lines to which she cannot respond either angrily or wittily. Her response is silence, possibly because she has not ever figured out any other response. She was seventeen. He has moved on, into other areas. Bridie has not, and knows it well. She runs his house for him; she tends their children and makes the meals. And she has discovered, over the years, maybe with surprise, that her silences are more effective in reproaching him than any words of hers could possibly be. Does it give her any satisfaction to reproach him? Or is she at such times too enclosed in her own pain really to realize his at all?

And yet McRaith does not, at the deepest level, want a woman who will stand up to him. For some of the time, he may indeed want this. But not for most of the time.

McRaith stays, Morag now begins to see, because of the kind of woman that Bridie is. McRaith is not held to Crombruach just because of the place. He is held here by Bridie, whom he has known all his life as she has known him. That is the way it is.

In the afternoons, Morag and McRaith walk, there being little else to do in Crombruach, accompanied always by children. In the hillside fields, the new lambs are everywhere, bravely born into the cold spring. The hillsides are rocky, moss-covered, but in the valleys the earth is black and good. Along the shore, the stones are the colour of jade, rose, amber, seabright at the water's edge, and long shiny strands of yellowbrown kelp float and straggle. At dusk, the tide coming in over the mudflats, the flotillas of wild swans move along the grey waters of the firth, the young cygnets trailing behind, the great cob swans in the lead, their powerful white wings furled.

McRaith points across the firth, to the north.

"Away over there is Sutherland, Morag Dhu, where your people came from. When do you want to drive there?"

Morag considers.

"I thought I would have to go. But I guess I don't, after all."

"Why would that be?"

"I don't know that I can explain. It has to do with Christie. The myths are my reality. Something like that. And also, I don't need to go there because I know now what it was I had to learn here."

"What is that?"

"It's a deep land here, all right," Morag says. "But it's not mine, except a long long way back. I always thought it was the land of my ancestors, but it is not."

"What is, then?"

"Christie's real country. Where I was born."

McRaith holds her hand inside his greatcoat pocket. Around them the children sprint and whirl.

After five days, Morag and Pique leave Crombruach to return to London. McRaith drives them to Inverness station. Pique rushes about, buying sweets. Morag and Dan, conscious of the child, and conscious of an ending which neither of them guessed before, put their arms very lightly around one another.

"Take care, love."

They both say the words, simultaneously.

In Hedgerow Walk, Morag considers going back, taking Pique to see Christie. Moving seems complicated; she makes plans but does not do anything yet. She cannot go back to Manawaka, to stay. She cannot. But must go, even for a time, soon. Christie will be–how? Does she want Pique to see him as he may be now? She is afraid to go back, there.

It is two months after they get back from Crombruach that the cable arrives for Morag, from the doctor she remembers in Manawaka. CHRISTIE LOGAN VERY ILL STOP CAN YOU COME QUESTION PAUL CATES.

"Pique, we're going back home."

"Home?" (What means _home_?)

"Yes. Home."

_Memorybank Movie: The Ridge of Tears_

The bus spurts along the highway, and Morag looks out at the green wheat, the summer's beginning, and at the tall couchgrass beside the road, the light yellow sweet clover, the dark yellow sowthistle and the purple wild asters. Bluffs of poplar and scrub oak slip past, the popular leaves as always catching the faintest wind, forever-moving leaves.

Pique has remained in Winnipeg with Ella's mother. It is now too late for Christie to see her. Morag has left it too long. He would not want the child to see him as he looks now. How does he look now?

The Manawaka bus station. No jazzier than of yore. New Coca-Cola posters, that's about all. But of course the young faces of the girls behind the lunch counter are unfamiliar. Perhaps they are the daughters of some of the people Morag once knew. She scans the faces, looking for a meaning which is not there. She phones Dr. Cates.

"I've just got here. How's Christie?"

"Not good, Morag," Paul Cates says, sounding weary and much older than the man she remembers. "He's seventy-six after all. He's not going to live forever."

Isn't he? And does this, obscurely and absurdly, come as a surprise?

"What is it with him, Dr. Cates?"

Dr. Cates coughs, and then, very dimly heard at the other end of the line, sighs.

"His heart's been tricky for some years now, Morag. He doesn't take much care of himself. But this time it's a stroke. He's only partially paralyzed. He might get over it. But–"

"But _what_?"

"I'm not sure he wants to. Maybe that's nonsense. Hard to tell. But with a heart like his, he could go out any time."

"When can I see him, Dr. Cates?"

"You can go up to the hospital now, if you like, Morag. I'll let them know you're coming."

"I'll just leave my suitcase at the house. Wait–will the house be open, though?"

Dr. Cates' paper-thin laughter.

"You've been away a long time, girl. You won't find many doors locked around here, still. Anyway, what's Christie got that's worth stealing?"

Morag takes her suitcase and walks. Why not get a taxi? Anywhere else in the world, she would have done, but not here. A penance, more than likely, or a leftover from the days when she couldn't have afforded a taxi. The house on Hill Street is different from her last visit only in that it is now frankly and indescribably dirty, stinking and chaotic. No one has cleaned for years. Wrong–someone has evidently made some efforts, just recently, to wallow through the accumulation of grime on the kitchen linoleum and the stacks of old newspapers and spidery floating grey-gauze of dust in every corner. Someone has swabbed discouragedly at the floor. The garbage pail under the sink is empty. Not Christie, surely. Maybe Eva Winkler, coming in from the farm on a Saturday night to visit her mother, looking in at Christie's place.

_If I'd stayed or if I'd come back, I'd be dead dead dead. Would I? Who has led a better life, Eva or myself? No doubt I think she has. No doubt she thinks I have._

Morag does not even take her suitcase upstairs to her old room. She leaves it in the kitchen and goes out again. Everything is very silent. From up the hill and over on Main Street comes the grind and splutter of a motorbike, the whir of cars. But here, along the deserted sidewalks, there is silence, broken only by occasional voices from behind the drawn blinds of the houses. The smell of the grapebunches of mauve lilacs is overpowering.

At the hospital reception desk, she feels alien, apologetic.

"I've come to see Mr. Logan, my–my stepfather. I know it's not regular visiting hours–"

"Oh yes," the girl behind the desk says. "You'll be Miss Gunn, then?"

"That's right."

"I've read your books, Miss Gunn," the girl says shyly, "and I just want to say we're real glad you're from Manawaka. They've got your books in the library."

_Coals of fire upon my head. Must I beg this child's forgiveness, as well? She wouldn't know what I meant, if I said it._

"Oh. That's good. Well–thanks. May I go in and see Christie–Mr. Logan–now?"

"Sure. I'll just get ahold of Miss Patterson. She'll show you in."

_Christie._

"How is he?" Morag asks the nurse as they patter down the antiseptic-reeking corridors.

"Well, I should warn you, Miss Gunn. He can't speak much at all. And when he does, it's pretty garbled. I'm afraid it makes him angry."

"My God. My God. No wonder. Can he move?"

"He can move his right arm," the nurse says. "At least, some."

Christie lies hunched under the too-white bedlinen. He was never a large man, but now he seems to have shrunk even more. He appears to be composed of bones mainly, and of dried speckled brown skin, stretched barely over the skeleton. He is ludicrously clean-shaven, none of the remembered greyish stubble on his face–they do that kind of thing for people in hospital. His eyes are closed.

"Christie–it's Morag."

He can hear, obviously, and he knows what she is saying. It is just that he cannot reply. His eyes open abruptly, and they are, weirdly, the clear blue of years and years ago. He mumbles, but she cannot make human speech of it. For Christie Logan to be unable to speak–what must that be like? Christie, who told the tales, who divined with the garbage, who ranted in his sorrow like the skirling of the pipes in a pibroch.

"I'm–I'm sorry I didn't come back before, Christie."

He wants to speak desperately, but cannot. His mouth opens, and he strains. No words come. His eyes are filled with such pain and such knowing that Morag can scarcely endure the sight of them. What emerges from his mouth, then, is a squawk, a hoarse unverbal croaking like a bullfrog. He turns away from her, but not before she sees the shame in his eyes, at being thus diminished before her.

Then his right hand, like an eagle claw, reaches out and grasps her hand. They sit there like this for long minutes, both unable to speak, although for different reasons, and Morag can feel the heavy vein pulsing in his wrist.

A tiny blonde nurse scurries in. From her extreme youth and striped blue uniform, she looks to be a student nurse. She carries an object covered with a white linen towel.

"Bedpan time!" she announces ringingly, someone having evidently told her that cheeriness under all circumstances is a nurse's duty.

Christie's one good arm pushes weakly at the girl and the burden she bears. From his throat comes a sound which Morag has never before heard issuing from a human throat, and hopes never to hear again. A growl–the deep growl of a dog, combined with the wrenched-up sob of a man.

"For God's sake!" Morag cries. "Can't you leave him be, just until I'm gone, then?"

"I was going to draw the curtain around his bed," the girl says, half offended and half scared.

"Get out," Morag says fiercely. "Just get out."

"I'll have to report to the ward nurse–"

"Report, then. Go ahead. Look, I'm sorry. I know it's just part of the routine. But please–not now."

The nurse scampers away. For a second Morag cannot face Christie. When she looks at him, she is astonished. He has regained himself and is peering at her from his shroud of hospital linen, his eyes mocking and shrewd, his mouth in a soundless laugh. Morag laughs too, although it comes out as the travesty of a laugh, but it is their protection, hers and Christie's, as it always has been.

She wants to stay here with him, to keep watch beside him. She also wants to go, not to have to look at him like this. There is something she must say. She wonders if she can discover the words.

"Christie–I used to fight a lot with you, Christie, but you've been my father to me."

His responding words are slurred and whispered, but she hears them.

"Well–I'm blessed," Christie Logan says.

Another way of indicating surprise would have been to say– _Well, I'm damned._ But that is not the phrase he has chosen. She sees from his eyes that the choice has been intentional.

Back at the house on Hill Street, Morag climbs the stairs to her old room. It is overgrown with dust like feathers or grey ferns in the corners and festooned from the ceiling, but it is otherwise unchanged. The one grimy dresser and the single bed covered with a patchwork quilt. She cannot bring herself to look for sheets. She puts on her housecoat and lies down on top of the quilt. This is the first time she has ever stayed alone in this house, and she has dreaded it, but now none of the ghosts seem threatening. Prin is here, and Piper Gunn and Clowny Macpherson and another younger Morag, the felt or imagined presences of real and fictional people, the many versions of herself, combining and communing here, in her head, in this room with its time-stained wallpaper. Outside, a faint rain begins falling, and the open window channels in the smell of wet earth and grass and prairie lilac.

Waking, Morag is at first disoriented.

"Morag!"

The woman's voice, Morag now perceives, is external and not part of a dream or nightmare. She stumbles downstairs, and it is Mrs. Winkler, hideously frail in appearance, although she must in fact be tough as dandelion roots to have survived this long.

"It's the hospital on the phone, Morag. They want you to go there, right away."

"Can I get a taxi, Mrs. Winkler?"

"Well, I wouldn't know about that," Mrs. Winkler says doubtfully. "It ain't but a short walk, there."

By the time Morag reaches the hospital, however, Christie Logan has gone to his ancestors.

\When Prin died (a long time ago, it seems), Morag had to make all the funeral arrangements. Christie didn't do a thing. Still, he was there, and they held their wake for Prin, the two of them, sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of whiskey between them. Now there is no one. Morag takes the necessary steps, robot steps, not thinking, not even thinking of mourning yet.

The sweeping black-branched spruce trees are the same, but the big gloomy frame house looks different. It has, Morag observes, been painted an eye-shattering limegreen. The sign no longer reads "Cameron's Funeral Home." It is now an enormous crimson neon, letters about a million feet high, and it would appear at first glance to apply to some publicity-worshipping evangelical sect.

JAPONICA CHAPEL

Underneath, in more modest lettering, are these words:

_Free Parking For Clients_

Die now and get free parking forever. Almost worth it. Morag has phoned previously, so is expected. A shortish man, built rather on the lines of an energetic barrel, and wearing light brown slacks and a checked yellow and brown sports shirt, bounces out to meet her.

"Mr. Jonas?" she says uncertainly.

"The same," he carols. "Hector Jonas. At your service, Miss Gunn. Or do you mind if I call you Morag? You being a local girl, and me having read your books, I feel like I know you. We don't stand on ceremony here. At least, _some_ do, but I am not of that number, unless, of course, clients prefer the formal approach, in which case I am happy to oblige."

"No–of course I don't mind."

"My name, as I mentioned previously, is Hector. Now come in, come on in."

The office is small but exceedingly tidy. Cherry and blue linoleum tiles on the floor. An impressive desk which takes up most of the floor space. A swivel chair for Hector, and two slender plastic-upholstered armchairs for clients.

"Now, then," Hector proceeds, "I was very sorry to hear about Christie, an old-timer like him. Of course, I never knew him all that well, myself–"

"No one knew him all that well, Hector. He lived nearly all his life in this town, and everyone knew him to see him, and they all called him Christie, but nobody knew him, to speak of, or even to speak to, much, if it comes to that."

Hector stops on his way to the cupboard.

"Why in the world would that be, now, Morag?"

"Oh well, he was the town scavenger in the days when it was still called that, and was looked down on. He was also supposed to be some kind of maverick, as I'm sure you know."

"Well, like I say, I didn't know that much about him," Hector hedges. "Only hearsay, like. Could I offer you a little sherry, Morag? Or a rye? Although I know the ladies usually prefer the sherry, it being sweeter, like."

Morag smiles, unaccountably moved by his flashiness, his public-relations act, and by some kind of genuine solicitude which lurks under the glittery plastic and the veneer of himself.

"Not this lady," she says. "You can pour me a stiff rye. Thanks. That's very kind of you."

"Well, it isn't, really," Hector says, in apparent remorse. "It's really for business. Although I don't usually admit it. But then, most people who come in here are in pretty terrible shape, of course, bereaved and that, kind of knocked-out, you might say, by their dear one's departure from this vale of tears. So they need a little steadying, those of them who aren't teetotallers, and believe you me, we get plenty of _them_. Maybe you think I'm not sounding too serious, but in my business you either have a laugh to yourself sometimes or you'd be climbing the walls, I'm telling you straight. The departed are hard enough to look in the fisheye, to tell you the truth, but the bereaved are usually just that much harder, because they are either all busted-up or else holding themselves together with chewing gum, like, so brittle and held-in that you think they'll crack like a dropped tumbler if you breathe at them. I shouldn't be talking this way, I guess, but you being a writer, it seems natural to talk, although in my profession you learn it's discretion discretion all the way, and in other words you acquire the ability to keep your trap shut. You just seem better in hand of yourself than some, Morag."

This guy will learn to keep his trap shut when he's pushing up daisies. _Who buries the undertaker? Whoever will undertake it._ One of C. Logan's old-time jests. Something good about Hector, though.

"I'm not better in hand of myself," Morag says. "I just show it differently, that's all. Has Niall Cameron been dead long?"

"Some years now," Hector says. "You knew him?"

"Yes. I knew him, and I went to school with one of his daughters. He was a good man."

"Yeh, so I gather," Hector says uneasily, "although he drank himself to death. I mean, like, _sure_ he was a good man. But he didn't want to go on living, did he?"

Morag laughs, and the sound is more startling and bitter in these surroundings than she has intended.

"I guess he did and he didn't, both," she says. "It's a common enough trait, hereabouts."

To be or not to be–that sure as death is the question. The two-way battle in the mindfield, the minefield of the mind. Niall. Lachlan. Lazarus. Piquette. Prin. Christie. Jules? Morag?

"Mrs. Cameron and Rachel, they moved out to the Coast a few months back," Hector says. "Mrs. Cameron used to say she'd known you well when you were knee-high to a grasshopper. She never said it when Rachel was around, though, so I kind of wondered. It was after your second book came into the town library."

Parsons' Bakery–Morag going in for jelly doughnuts for Prin. Mrs. Cameron and Mrs. McVitie. Poor little thing–don't they ever cut her hair wash her hair shorten her dress poor poor little thing. Morag behind the counter at Simlow's–the dressmaker suit so suitable for someone about thirty years younger than Mrs. Cameron and Stacey running running from the store in unhealable embarrassment.

"Yeh. Well, you're right. It wasn't quite the way she said. Hector, I suppose they don't call it the Nuisance Grounds any longer, out there?"

Hector, swivelling gently on the large mobile chair behind the desk, gives her an odd glance.

"You mean–the Municipal Disposal Area?"

"Yeh. That's what I mean. The Municipal Disposal Area. Alias the Nuisance Grounds. That's where Christie really should be buried."

"Good Lord," Hector says, "you've got to be joking. You know, don't you, that–"

"Yes. I know. Don't worry. It's all right. I know you can't just bury people anywhere, like that. It's just that–when Prin died, Christie said he'd like to have buried her in the Nuisance Grounds. He didn't have much use for some things, although it's hard to explain. And he'd buried someone there, once, himself. In the Nuisance Grounds."

" _What_?"

Morag smiles. It is really Christie she wants to talk to, about this. But he has moved not only beyond speech but beyond hearing.

"Don't upset yourself. It was a very long time ago. I don't think he ever meant to tell me–he just found himself telling it. It was, I now see, an aborted child, wrapped up in a newspaper and tied around with a string, and left out with the garbage. Kind of a dumb thing to do, when you think of it, but I suppose the family wasn't thinking too well just then. The string must've come undone. He didn't say what family. He only said the girl had been made to suffer enough. I never knew who she was, or what happened to her. And she never knew that her unfinished child was given a burial."

She does not mention that there was another unfinished child buried there, years later.

Hector is looking at her as though he were trying to see beyond her, as perhaps he is.

"I never knew any of that."

"Nor did anyone, except Christie and myself and–never mind. It doesn't matter any more."

"I thought," Hector says, "that you'd likely want him cremated. I mean, it's kind of the modern way–"

"No," Morag says, carefully and firmly. "I want him to be buried in the Manawaka cemetery, beside his wife. There is a small stone in that place for Prin. I want another one. Grey granite. With both their names. Don't tell _me_ it means next to nothing. I know. But that is what will be done."

"All right. Yes, I can sure see to that, all right."

"One more thing, Hector–do you happen to know a piper?"

"Good christ," Hector breathes. "A _what_?"

"A piper. I don't want any service or talk. Just a piper, at the cemetery."

"The things I get myself into," Hector says. "Maybe you should consider a short service here, first? And then just the last few words, _there_."

The Burial of the Dead. _For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were._

"All right. Hector. But not here–no offense to you. In the United Church, if the minister will speak the words over Christie, who never went to church in his life."

"Oh, he will." Hector is relieved. "So that settles that, eh?"

"No. I still want the piper."

Hector, thinking she had herself in hand more than most. Now, undoubtedly, thinking he had a madwoman on his hands. He sighs, but rises to the occasion.

"Well, old Scotty Grant usually brings his pipes out in the spring, and walks up and down across his back garden, but I don't know–anyhow, I'll try."

Morag rises.

"Hector, thanks."

"For nothing," Hector says. "Any time."

Then, simultaneously seeing the grotesque quality of this last statement, they both laugh.

Morag rummages through the Hill Street house. Finally finds the only things of Christie's which she wants to keep. Four books. Two heavy volumes– _The Poems of Ossian–In the_ _original Gaelic with a Literal Translation into English and a Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Poems by the Rev. Archibald Clark, Minister of the Parish of Kilmallie, Together with the English Translation by Macpherson, in 2 Vols., 1870_. And two small books. _The60th Canadian Field Artillery Battery Book, 1919._ And _The Clans and Tartans of Scotland._ In this last book she looks up in the Gaelic Glossary the word for black. It says _dubh_ , _dhubh_ , _dhuibh_ , _duibhe_ , _dubha_ , but omits to say under what circumstances each of these should be used. Morag Dhu. Ambiguity is everywhere.

The morning of Christie Logan's funeral is fair and cloudless, the sky a light newly washed blue after the recent rains. At the church, there is no music, no oration, simply the bone-bare parts of the order of service, the old words. At the Manawaka cemetery, up on the hill, the wind blows hot and dusty, carrying the sickly over-sweet perfume of peonies but also the clean dry pungency of the tall low-boughed spruces that sentinel the place like dark angels of light. Far below, the shallow amber water of the Wachakwa River flows rattling over the stones.

_"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take unto himself the soul of our brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground–"_

The words are murmured with a kindly awkwardness by the young unknown minister whose brother Christie Logan manifestly was not, although this by no means the minister's fault. Perhaps he even wonders who Christie was, and perhaps, if Morag could bring herself to express the years, he might even like to know. But it is not possible, not now, not here.

Then the minister and the pallbearers (all unknown, persuaded by Hector to serve) depart. Only Morag and Hector Jonas remain, and one other.

Scotty Grant is not as old as Morag has imagined him. He is in fact a good-looking man in his early sixties, with the red-tanned neck and arms of someone who has spent most of his life as a farmer, battling the land which he has now sold, or, hopefully but not likely, turned over to his sons. He wears a blue open-necked workshirt and unpressed grey trousers. Just as well–kilts in this context would make it into a farce. Maybe it is going to be that, anyway. Would Christie have laughed?

"You sure you want me to do this?" Scotty asks, uncertainly.

Morag glares at him, angry because as yet unable to grieve. But she must not take it out on him.

"Yes. Mr. Grant–please."

He swings the pipes up, and there is the low mutter of the drones. Then he begins, pacing the hillside as he plays. And Morag sees, with the strength of conviction, that this is Christie's true burial.

_And Piper Gunn, he was a great tall man, with the voice of drums and the heart of a child, and the gall of a thousand, and the strength of conviction._

The piper plays "The Flowers of the Forest," the long-ago pibroch, the lament for the dead, over Christie Logan's grave. And only now is Morag released into her mourning.
**TEN**

**T** he willows along the river had been changed by alchemy of autumn from greensilver to greengold. The maples were turning to a million shades of russet, crimson, scarlet, pale red. The air was beginning to have a sharpness about it, the first suggestion of frost. In the evenings, Morag lighted the woodstove. Soon it would have to be the furnace.

She had been working through the day, the words not having to be dredged up out of the caves of the mind, but rushing out in a spate so that her hand could not keep up with them. Odd feeling. Someone else dictating the words. Untrue, of course, but that was how it felt, the characters speaking. Where was the character, and who? Never mind. Not Morag's concern. Possession or self-hypnosis–it made no difference. Just let it keep on coming.

By dusk, Morag had a cramp in her right hand. Writer's cramp–joke. But it happened. Must quit. Go outside and walk off the tension.

Walking down to the river across the meadow of unmown grass, Morag realized what it was that was different about this day. It had been at the back of her mind since early morning, but she had not really seen it until now. There were no swallows. Yesterday the air had been filled with their swiftness. Now there were none. How did they know when to leave and why did they migrate all at once, every one of them? No stragglers, no members of the clan who had an imperfect sense of time and season. Here yesterday, gone today. There might be a reason, but she would just as soon not know.

Back at the house, Morag leafed through several newly arrived books which she had ordered, books on weeds and wildflowers. One told all about the plants hereabouts, which could be used as sustenance, boiled or raw, if ever one were to find oneself lost in the bush. Or, if not actually lost, at least how you could cook certain plants in somewhat fancier fashion at home.

Wait. What about the _Poison_ plants? Morag turned to the section hastily. Oh heavenly days. Never attempt wild mushrooms unless you really know what you are doing–this seemed the only policy. The Destroying Angel. Dramatic Old-Testament name. Wonderful name. Terrible mushroom. And how about Water Hemlock? No known antidote. It looked to Morag's unknowledgeable eyes much like Queen Anne's Lace. Same family–Wild Parsley. Well, no one would go around eating Queen Anne's Lace, would they? Nonetheless, suppose you mistook the Deadly Water Hemlock for some innocently edible plant? Symptoms very nasty. "Vomiting, colic, staggering and unconsciousness, and finally frightful convulsions which end in death." Ever so cheery.

_Morag:_ | (summoning ghost) Catharine, I'll bet the Water Hemlock wouldn't have alarmed you. You knew what was what. No way you were going to boil up a tasty mess of Hemlock under the impression it was Lamb's Quarters. But didn't you ever worry that one of your kids would come home chomping on some lethal plant? How could you stand the strain?

---|---

_Catharine Parr Traill:_ | Ignorance, my dear, breeds fear and anxiety. I took great care to inform and enlighten my little ones, at the youngest possible age, of the hazards to be avoided in our beautiful woods and forests. Even the tiniest child can soon be taught the identification of plants. Thus my mind was easy, and could be freed for the important matters at hand. You, if I may say so, oftentimes see imaginary dangers.

_M. Gunn:_ | You're darned right I see imaginary dangers, but do you know why? To focus the mind away from the real ones, is why. Leave me to worry peacefully over the Deadly Water Hemlock, sweet Catharine, because it probably doesn't even grow around here. Let me fret over ravening wolves and poison-fanged vipers, as there is a marked scarcity of these, hereabouts. They're my inner demons, that's what they are. One thing I'm going to stop doing, though, Catharine. I'm going to stop feeling guilty that I'll never be as hardworking or knowledgeable or all-round terrific as you were. And I'll never be as willing to let the sweat of hard labour gather on my brow as A-Okay and Maudie, either. Even Pique, ye gods, working as a cashier in the bloody supermarket all day, and then going home and feeding those squawking chickens and washing dishes and weeding the vegetable gardens, etcetera. I'm not built like you, Saint C., or these kids, either. I stand somewhere in between. And yet in my way I've worked damn hard, and I haven't done all I would've liked to do, but I haven't folded up like a paper fan, either. I'll never till those blasted fields, but this place is some kind of a garden, nonetheless, even though it may be only a wildflower garden. It's needed, and not only by me. I'm about to quit worrying about not being either an old or a new pioneer. So farewell, sweet saint–henceforth, I summon you not. At least, I hope that'll be so, for your sake as well as mine.

_C. P. Traill:_ | (voice distant now and fading rapidly) "In cases of emergency, it is folly to fold one's hand and sit down to bewail in abject terror: it is better to be up and doing."

_M. Gunn:_ | I'll remember.

When Pique, Dan and the Smiths came over that evening, Morag was still poring over the books, this time the weed and wildflower one.

"You look engrossed, Ma," Pique said. "What you got there? Hardcore porn? Hey, a _weed_ book?"

"The same," Morag said. "You know something? According to a book I read not long ago, the Eskimos have twenty-five words for snow and only one for flower, and yet there are zillions of wildflowers that grow up there in the small amount of summer they get. Knowing the different varieties of snow is essential to survival, but knowing the different varieties of flowers isn't. With us, knowing the weeds isn't essential to survival, either, at least not any more and not yet. But there they are all the same. Amazing, isn't it?"

A-Okay smiled awkwardly, but Maudie responded kindly.

"I think it's marvellous, to find out all about them, Morag."

"Oh, she doesn't," Pique said, laughing. "I'll bet she couldn't identify more than half a dozen. She just likes the names. Isn't that so, Ma?"

_This girl knows me._

"Yeh," Morag admitted. "I guess so. But listen to some of the names."

Tom was more interested than the others. He came and looked at the book while Morag read aloud. Dan and Pique got out their guitars and began tuning them. A-Okay sauntered outside to have a look at Morag's dock-ladder, which he had offered to mend. Maudie got out her eternal and admirable knitting, murmuring that she must finish Alf's sweater before the cold weather.

"Hey, listen to these, Tom–"

Curly Pondweed

Silver Hairgrass

Old Witch Grass

Prostrate Pigweed

Night-flowering Catchfly

Queen-of-the-Meadow

Spiked Loosestrife

Hounds Tongue

Creeping Charlie

Heal-all or Self-heal

Black Nightshade

Sneezeweed

Pussy-toes or Lady's Tobacco

Common Mugwort

Rough Daisy Fleabane

Povertyweed

Staggerwort

Devil's Paintbrush

"Gee," Tom said. "Wow."

He and Morag exchanged glances of glee and mutual appreciation. But this pleasant mood was not to last.

"We've bought our first horse, Morag," Dan said.

"Really? What is it?" Not that she would know.

"A palomino gelding. Stands fifteen hands. We got it for two hundred and seventy-five bucks."

" _You_ paid for it," Pique said, not sounding too happy.

"What you mean is, it nearly cleaned me out," Dan said, scowling. "Why don't you say so, then?"

"All right. It nearly cleaned you out."

Morag, thinking of Pique behind the cash register, felt a surge of anger towards Dan. Must not. Not her concern.

"Well," she nonetheless found herself saying, "it sounds a fine horse, but not exactly what I'd imagine the _Horse-Breeders' Gazette_ would recommend if you're going into the horse-breeding business."

"Oh Ma–shut up, can't you!" Pique cried furiously.

A-Okay came back into the house, and feeling the tension, responded instantly by becoming tangled up with the rocking chair, which overbalanced, the pointed rockers missing A-Okay's unspectacled eyes by a quarter-inch.

"Watch it, Dad," Tom said.

"When I want your advice, I'll ask for it," A-Okay said in an unusually ungentle voice.

A-Okay raised his voice to Tom so seldom that it came as a shock. Obviously, all was not milk and honey at the Maison Smith, just now.

_Stay out. Tread warily, Morag._

Dan's dark eyes were obviously battling his own angry responses. Towards Morag, for opening her big mouth, towards A-Okay for interrupting, maybe even towards Pique for defending him when she wasn't all that pleased by his purchase.

"The brood mares will come later," he said in a low and dangerously quiet voice which reminded Morag of Jules. "We can do without a studhorse. We can rent the services. But I can give lessons with the palomino. He's quiet and he's been shown good manners. He'd be a bit big for kids under eleven or twelve, but okay for those over that."

"I think you just wanted him to ride yourself," Pique said.

Dan turned furiously to her.

"If I had my choice, don't you think I would've picked a bigger horse and one with more spirit?"

"I don't understand that kind of talk," Pique said. "I don't know about horses. I never learned."

"Well, here's your chance."

"I'm not interested, thanks."

Her father's people, the prairie horselords, once. She never learned. Well, so what? What was so essential about it? Nothing, except that it was the mythical beast. Signifying what? Many would say potency, male ego, but it seemed that a kind of freedom might be a better guess.

Both Maudie and A-Okay were peacemakers at heart, the difference between them being that scenes of expressed anger made Maudie physically ill, sometimes to the point of having to rush for the bathroom to throw up, and at the same time she professed to believe (and with her intellect, undoubtedly did believe) in the necessity of expressing anger overtly before it became a dangerous canker in the blood, whereas A-Okay believed that anger could be dealt with from the inside, by the angry person or persons, and yet he could bring himself to enter the fray when necessary, bearing, as it were, cold towels.

"As far as I'm concerned, the horse is a-okay," A-Okay said. "If Dan wants to ride it, Pique, there's nothing so peculiar about that. But Dan and I are going to be doing something else, too, Morag. It was all Royland's doing."

Neat deflection from danger area. Well done, Smith.

"What's that?" Morag asked.

"Well, I was talking to Royland a few days ago, and he gave me hell. He said if we thought of doing anything more with the farm than raising our own vegetables, which, as he said, any fool can do if they're prepared to work a bit, and if we were serious about the option to buy, then we'd better smarten up. First, raise some money in the ways we could, me by writing more of those everlasting science articles, which is not my favourite form of entertainment, but not so bad once you get into them, and Dan by working in town this winter. Second thing was, next spring Dan and me to get jobs with some local farmer, for the summer. Dan knows about horses but he doesn't know fuck-all about farming. Royland says Charlie Greenhouse can't get help–he's sixty-five and aims to retire and move into the Landing in a year or so, and would likely take us on. _He's a mean old bastard_ , Royland said, _and you won't like him, but he's been farming all his life and he knows what it's all about_."

However dour and bad-tempered, and Charlie Greenhouse was certainly that, he could undoubtedly teach them things they couldn't learn from books. True, they wouldn't find him easy to get on with. Charlie hated trees, which he regarded as the natural enemy of man. He also appeared to hate the earth, but at least he knew enough not to fight it in impossible ways. Charlie reminded Morag of various prairie farmers–he wrestled with the land like Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord, until (if ever) it blessed him. A-Okay and Dan would not have Charlie's outlook. They were different–they had seen Carthage; they had walked the streets of Askelon; they had known something of Babylon, that mighty city which dealt in gold and silver and in the souls of men; they had walked in the lion's den and had seen visions such as the prophet Daniel had seen while Belshazzar feasted. They came to the land in ignorance, perhaps expecting miracles which would not occur, but at least with caring, seeing it as a gift and not an affliction.

Morag said nothing for a while, afraid to speak in case she should say too much, too soon.

"It'll be a-okay," she said finally, not knowing whether it would be or not, but praying.

What of Pique? She was not settled here. Maybe never would be. Committed to Dan, but how much? Having to move on, hit the road? For how long?

Pique picked up her guitar and began to sing. Around her, there was an area of silence, as though all of them, all in this room, here, now, wanted to touch and hold her, and could not, did not dare tamper with her aloneness. She began to sing one of Jules' songs, the song for Lazarus. Her voice never faltered, although she was crying.

In the morning, groggy from insomnia, Morag went outside to clear her head. The air was distinctly cold. Autumn nearly over. Winter soon to descend. Sitting on the dock, Morag became aware of an unmistakable sound overhead. Very far up, they flew in their V-formation, the few leaders out front, the flock sounding the deep long-drawn-out resonant raucous cry that no words could ever catch but which no one who ever heard it could ever forget. A sound and a sight with such a splendour in it that the only true response was silence. When these birds left, the winter was about to happen. When they returned, you would know it was spring.

The Canada geese were flying south.

_Memorybank Movie: Beulah Land_

"Aren't you even going to read the reviews?" Ella asks.

Walton and Pierce have forwarded a sheaf of the clippings on _Jonah_. Morag has glanced through them and laid them aside. They appear, on the whole, to be favourable. So what?

"I guess so, Ella. Later. I can't work up any enthusiasm."

"Well, what about the book club sale? Can't you work up a trace of enthusiasm over that?"

"Yeh."

But she can't. Milward Crispin, faithful agent, has phoned from New York. _Jonah_ has been taken by a book club, _Spear of Innocence_ and _Prospero's Child_ are coming out in paperback, and a film option has been taken on _Spear_. Probably nothing will come of the latter, Crisp says, but at least there's the option money. Things are looking up. Morag, meanwhile, appears to be looking down. She and Pique have been staying with Ella and Mort in Toronto for one month now, ever since Christie's death. Ella has infant twins and is run off her feet. She keeps telling Morag what a lot of help it is to have her here, as Morag washes diapers or dishes, or holds one yelling ravenous kid while Ella feeds the other. In fact, Ella needs Morag here like she needs an attack of flu at the moment. Two extra people underfoot, and Morag with all the verve of a collapsed balloon.

"Ella, I've got to get up off my ass and decide what to do. My God, it's been good of you to have us here, but–"

"Now, will you kindly shut up, please?" Ella says. "So who's complaining? Wait until Mort and I start glaring at you before you begin the guilt bit, eh?"

"Yeh. Okay. Sorry."

_That's a christly bloody useless word, Sorry. C. Logan. Christie, tell the garbage–throw those decayed bones like dice or like sorcerer's symbols. You really could see, though. What about me? Do I only pretend to see, in writing? What did I ever see about you, Christie, until it was too late? I told my child tales about you, but never took her to see you. I made a legend out of you, while the living you was there alone in that mouldering house._

Morag goes through the days like a zombie or a sleepwalker. In fact, sleeping is all she really wants to do. She finds she can sleep far too easily, even in the days. Insomnia would be almost welcome, to prove she is alive. She wakens each morning with the thought of her own death. When she rises, she coughs until she retches. Mort expresses concern, telling her to stop smoking and offering to let her have a prescription for a mild tranquilizer. She promises (hypocritically) to cut down on cigarettes, but refuses the pills, considering herself a perfect subject for instant addiction. Soon it will be time for Pique to go back to school. Where? Morag's mind refused to grapple with the problem. The Black Celt evidently has her by the throat and has no intention of letting go. Morag Dhu.

The city depresses Morag further. She refuses to go downtown, certain she will find herself walking past the apartment block where she once lived with Brooke, or that she will meet Brooke on the street, even though he is probably not here any more. Only once does she go downtown. She walks past the roominghouse on Jarvis Street where Jules used to live. What has she expected? That she could conjure him up?

_Save me O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul. Psalm 69._

It is, however, not God who finally provides a solution of sorts, but the Goldenrod Realty Company. Or perhaps fate really does travel in strange disguises.

Late morning, and the twins are momentarily sleeping. Morag and Ella are having coffee. Pique is drawing with coloured chalks on large sheets of paper. Morag is glancing at the Classified section of the newspaper.

The Goldenrod Realty Co.

For Sale–Near McConnell's Landing; 80-acre farm, river frontage, good well, four-bedroom log house structurally very sound, needs some interior decoration, half-basement, nearly new furnace, forced sale–Don't Miss This Rock-Bottom Offer For Relaxed Country Living! Phone Steve Harchuk–

This ad strikes Morag like the spirit of God between the eyes. "Ella–I've decided what to do. I'm going to buy this farm, here, if I can afford it."

"You're _what_? Morag, you're out of your head."

"Let's see, Mum," Pique cries, leaping up. "Is it a real farm? Can I have a dog?"

"Listen, Morag," Ella goes on, "you should excuse my shrieks of caution, but wouldn't you be pretty isolated? Are you really going to learn to drive? And anyway, isn't one supposed to–well–kind of shop around, some, before buying a house, much less a farm? Let's have a look–needs some interior decoration. That means it's a mess inside. Oh heavens, Morag, I'm sorry. I have no right to discourage you. But–"

"It will be all right," Morag says calmly. "You will see."

On the way out to McConnell's Landing, Morag stares out the bus window, experiencing profound qualms. What if the place is already sold? What if it really is a mess? What could she possibly do with eighty acres?

When she returns to Toronto that evening, she has made an offer to purchase and has left a cheque as deposit and proof of her earnest intentions.

Land. A river. Log house nearly a century old, built by great pioneering couple, Simon and Sarah Cooper. History. Ancestors.

_Innerfilm_

Outside, the blizzard rages and the snow piles up against the house and along the window frames. It is Forty Below. (Forty Below is the magic winter temperature figure. Only to prairie people? It means something more than temperature–it denotes amazing endurance and people say it with pride, almost reverence. They never say Forty Below Zero. Does it go that far down in southern Ontario?) Inside the little house, all is warmth, all is cheer. Morag, having put in an excellent day's work on the nearly completed novel (which will in time prove to be her best thus far) is reading in her comfortable chair near the black woodstove which is crackling a merry tune (safely; new stovepipes). Pique is contentedly working on a piece of embroidery (who? _Pique?_ ). Well, then, Pique is contentedly–hm hm–making a miniature log house, the very model of this one, for a History project at school, this house being of such historical interest. In the half-basement, the nearly new furnace is chonking away–a charmer, this furnace, no problems, ever. Morag is filled with a sense of well-being. The shed contains enough split wood for the winter. The basement contains shelves and shelves of bottled preserved plums, applesauce, pears, blueberries, chili sauce, crabapple jelly, and so on, the work of Morag's hands, the produce of her garden. All is well. The bank balance is healthy. The friendly neighbourhood farmer is a bachelor (widower? yes). Although by no means an intellectual, he is a well-read man. Also handsome. And and

_Memorybank Movie: McConnell's Landing_

Morag and Pique move in at the beginning of October. Despite Morag's many forays for secondhand furniture, the house looks bare. The old linoleum is cracking, and the nearly new furnace turns out to have been nearly new twenty-odd years ago, and now exhibits odd traits of temperament, making Morag fear it will explode or else simply fail to operate. The bathroom has been installed upstairs, replacing one of the bedrooms, but the hot water heater has not yet been put in. Baths are icy. The walls many years ago were papered with hideous floral wallpapers, pink peonies and drooping lily-of-the-valley in what look to be funeral wreaths. The paper is shredding brownly off most of the walls. In the bedroom closets are piles of ancient newspapers and decaying articles of clothing thoughtfully left by the previous tenants. The half-basement is reachable only by a trapdoor and a hazardous ladder. Why did she not notice these things when she first saw the place?

The old grey pine barn, so beautiful from a distance, is now seen to be falling down. It also contains bats.

Four windows are cracked and have been patched with adhesive tape. The electric pump for the well gets frequent airlocks or otherwise loses its prime, making helpless asthmatic noises. Morag makes calmly hysterical phone calls to the plumber.

The meadow from the house to the river contains grass about three feet high. A power mower will be necessary in the spring. Who will work it? Morag?

Pique is scared at nights. So is Morag, although she doesn't let on. Pique announces that if a bat gets in her bedroom, she will die. Morag yells at her not to be so stupid; bats are harmless. Then feels self-reproachful, as she herself also feels that if a bat gets in anywhere, she too will die.

"Are there coyotes in those woods, Mum?" Pique asks.

" _We_ say _kiy_ -oot," Morag says, with ludicrous pride and snappishness. "Only John Wayne says coy- _oh_ -tee. And no, there are none in our woods."

Are there?

A colony of mice is discovered in the small cupboard under the stairs. Pique, perversely, takes to these creatures and accuses Morag of murder when the colony, with great difficulty and squeamishness on Morag's part, is destroyed.

Winter will soon be upon the land. Pique and Morag will obviously freeze in this broken-down old wreck of a place. No wonder it was so relatively cheap.

_What have I done?_

"C'mon, honey, let's go and have a look at the river before it's dark."

They walk through the long grass. Pique, suddenly happy, begins to run, sweeping at the grasses with her outstretched arms. Across the river, the maples are trees of flame. The river carries on its ripples the last of the daylight.

"Hey, Pique, you know what? It's going to be all right here."

"Sure it is," Pique says. "Who doesn't know that?"

_Oh. Pardon me. I thought you didn't._

They look up to see an old man approaching. He has an exceedingly tidy grey beard. He is wearing crumpled brown corduroys and a blue plaid windbreaker.

"My name's Royland," he says. "From the place next door, downriver a little way. Didn't come over sooner because I thought you'd likely want to settle in a bit first. Then I started wondering if maybe you needed a hand with anything."

"Well, thanks. I'm–"

"I know your name, Morag Gunn. Stevie Harchuk told me."

"This is my daughter, Pique."

"Hi," Royland says. "I'm divining a well tomorrow, Pique. That's my job, finding wells. Want to come along, as it's Saturday?"

"Gee. Well, sure. What's it mean, divining?"

"You'll see."

A hoarse eerie sound from overhead, and they look. Very far up, the flock is flying in its V-formation, the few leaders out in front. Again the flock sounds its deep long-drawn-out resonant raucous cry that no words can ever catch but which no one who ever hears it will ever forget.

The Canada geese are flying south.

_Memorybank Movie: Shadow of Eden_

Three years, and the novel is finished, the last few final revisions completed one moment ago. It has been accepted, although no doubt it will be a full year until it is published. Three years of trying to get inside the thing quickly in the mornings after Pique has left for school, and of trying to get outside in the afternoons before Pique arrives home. Morag feels a massive relief at having it done, and at the same time the emptiness that always follows the ending of a book. She packages the sheaf of paper, ready to return to the publishers, paces a little, considers phoning Ella, and decides that a letter will be cheaper. Finances are getting low. Pray God they hurry with the advance on royalties.

Dear Ella–

Just now finished the final touches on _Shadow of Eden_. I haven't wanted to talk about it until now, but now I do. Maybe you and Mort could come up for a weekend? Bring the kids–Pique thinks they're great, and would prevent their falling in the river. Let me know, eh? Any time.

Odd–the tales Christie used to tell of Piper Gunn and the Sutherlanders, and now this book deals with the same period. The novel follows them on the sea journey to Hudson Bay, through that winter at Churchill and then on the long walk to York Factory in the spring. Christie always said they walked about a thousand miles–it was about a hundred and fifty, in fact, but you know, he was right; it must've felt like a thousand. The man who led them on that march, and on the trip by water to Red River, was young Archie Macdonald, but in my mind the piper who played them on will always be that giant of a man, Piper Gunn, who probably never lived in so-called real life but who lives forever. Christie knew things about inner truths that I am only just beginning to understand.

I kept thinking about the tales Jules once told me, a long long time ago, about Rider Tonnerre. Which brings to mind a curious thing–something that must've come from Old Jules. Rider was called Prince of the Braves, Skinner said, and his rifle was named La Petite. In factuality (if that isn't a word, it should be), those names pertained to Gabriel Dumont, Riel's lieutenant in Saskatchewan, much later on. That's okay–Skinner's grandad had a right to borrow them. I like the thought of history and fiction interweaving. The tale of how Rider got his horse, Roi du Lac, I've recently discovered, comes from a Cree legend–probably Old Jules didn't know that. You wonder how long that story had been passed on.

Enough of this. I feel I've neglected Pique, to some extent, recently, trying to get this thing finished. And I mustn't. Especially right now, because she's feeling badly. My God, I meant to tell you this first, and didn't, and now feel heartless even though I'm just as upset as Pique, or thought I was. Our beloved Flame (the Irish setter we got shortly after you and Mort were up here last, about a year ago) was run over last week. Royland, good neighbour that he is, buried the dog. I don't think I could have. Pique won't even consider another dog, and I guess I don't really want one, either. Pique's first real encounter with death, because Flame _was_ a member of the family. Christie's death didn't really affect her, because she'd known him only through stories, and in that way, he's never died in her mind.

Please try to come up for a weekend. The land looks splendid, and the crops are beginning to ripen–not, however, on my land. Here at the Gunn ranch we have a lovely crop of unmown grass, which I am hoping to lend to a local farmer as pasturing for his cows in exchange for cream, a ploy which I consider to be fairly brilliant.

Love to you all,
Morag

_Memorybank Movie: Gainsay Who Dare_

"Hi, Ma," Pique says, slamming the screendoor.

"Hi, honey."

This _Ma_ bit is new. It is as though Pique, at fifteen, has now decided that _Mum_ sounds too childish and _Mother_ , possibly, too formal. The word in some way is a proclamation of independence, a statement of the fact that the distance between them, in terms of equality, is diminishing, and the relationship must soon become that of two adults. On balance, Morag is glad. But it will take some inner adjustment.

Pique is tall now, nearly as tall as Morag, and has a fine slender figure and what Morag's generation would call good breasts. Melon breasts no longer being in fashion, however, Pique is constantly moaning that hers are too ample.

Pique and Morag have been at McConnell's Landing four years now. Vast changes. Pique nearly grown-up. The log house renovated in various ways as finances have permitted. A large window now enables Morag to look out at the river while writing at the long oak table in the kitchen. An electric stove. New furnace. The old linoleum removed, and the original pine floors sanded and restored.

Morag's land is now only a few acres, meadow and woods. She has sold the rest, partly because she needed the money and partly because she did not like to see the land unused and it took her a very short time to realize that she herself wasn't going to work it.

Pique, crunching into an apple, casually flicks through the pile of reviews on the table, _Shadow of Eden_ having come out at last.

"These come today, Ma?"

"Yeh. Quite a few favourable ones, thank God. Some snarling ones."

"Do those ones bother you? Doesn't it make you mad when people say terrible things about you?"

"Well, they don't exactly make me feel like a million dollars. On the other hand, they don't knock me out, either, the way they once did."

The thing that will take some getting used to, in the reviews of _Shadow of Eden_ , is that so many of them refer to Morag Gunn as an established and older writer. At forty-four–an older writer? She has thought of herself as a beginning writer for so long that it has come as a shock to realize she no longer fits into this category. There are now a large number of writers young enough to be her children, and some of them are very good indeed. Morag reads their work out of fascination, not duty, and in the past few years has got to know quite a few of them as friends. Yes, _older writer_ is the right phrase. Takes some mental adjustment, though, Meditation. Assimilation.

Pique has laid aside the clippings and is looking out the window. She turns and Morag sees from her eyes that she is troubled.

"What is it, honey?"

"What's the legal age a person can quit high school?"

"What?"

"Do you know? I'm just asking you. If you don't want to tell me, I can find out easily enough."

"I don't know for sure what it is, Pique. But why?"

"Because I'm getting out of that school the moment I can do it without some truant officer hassling me about it, that's why."

Pique's comment on the reviews. _Doesn't it make you mad when people say terrible things about you?_

"What happened, Pique?"

The girl sits down and lowers her head, spreading her long black hair like a veil or a mask around her face.

"I just can't see much use in what they're teaching, that's all."

"I don't think that's all. Is it?"

Pique is silent for a moment. When her voice bursts out, it is tense with pain.

"What do you know of it? You've never been called a dirty halfbreed. You've never had somebody tell you your mother was crazy because she lived out here alone and wrote dirty books and had kooky people coming out from the city to visit. Have you? Have you?"

The old patterns, the ones from both Morag's and Jules' childhoods, the old patterns even in Pique's own life. The school in England, Morag sees in retrospect, was a more fortunate thing than she had recognized at the time–the primary school in Hampstead was full of Pakistani and African and West Indian kids, and also full of kids whose parents were writers; amongst that lot, Pique was normal and accepted, nothing unusual. McConnell's Landing was a different matter. When Pique first started school here, she'd been given a bad time. Gradually, as she stuck it out (with how much anguish Morag will never know) the taunts tapered off, only to rise again in adolescence.

"No, I never had exactly that, Pique. Your dad had a lot of comments passed about him and his family, when he was a kid, I remember, but at least he could beat up on nearly any boy who gave him that kind of talk. With me, it was comments about Christie being the Scavenger, the town garbage collector, and about me wearing–at least in grade school–long droopy dresses like floursacks. I always thought I was going to spare my child that kind of pain. I haven't, though. It's different, with you, but it's the same. What happened today?"

"Yeh. Well. It was just that this guy, a real smartass, came up and started making these passes at me, see? And when I more or less told him to get lost, he said _Aw come on, don't give me that shit–you know halfbreed girls can't wait to get fucked by any guy who comes along_."

Oh jesus.

"Goddamn," Morag says furiously. "Who was he? I am going to go and see the principal."

"No, Ma, don't. The guy's dad is on the School Board. It wouldn't do any good to see the principal. He'd be sorry and all that, but he couldn't do anything. Yeh, maybe a person's got to put up a fight. But not that way."

"What way, then?"

"I don't know," Pique says. "At least, not yet."

_How to spare one's children at least some kinds of pain? No way. Where in the Bible does it speak of a new heaven and a new earth? That's what we need all right, Lord, but it looks to be a long time in coming._

"Okay. I'll do whatever you want me to do about it, then, Pique."

"I guess I don't want you actually to do anything, right now, Ma."

Pique's voice, this moment, is very far away from being young.

They eat dinner in silence, but a related silence, not a distant one. About nine, Pique is watching TV in the small and seldom-used livingroom (the big kitchen, in the age-old manner of farmhouses, having developed into the natural meetingplace). Morag is writing letters. The truck draws up noisily at the back of the house. Morag looks out the back window, but in the darkness cannot recognize the figure who climbs out. She goes to the door, opens it and waits. Odd–in a city she would never open a door before she knew who the unexpected visitor was. Out here it never occurs to her that it might be a threatening presence.

The man comes around the corner of the house up to the front door. Runs his hand through his greying hair in a gesture of awkwardness or embarrassment.

"Hi, Morag," Jules says. "Can I come in?"

At first it seems likely that for no apparent reason she is hallucinating. But no. Jules steps inside and she smells the good sweat smell of him, as always. She cannot say anything. She puts her arms out to him, and he holds her.

"These damn glasses of yours," he says. "They always did get in the way."

He takes them off and sets them carefully on the table. Then kisses her. She responds at first as swiftly as always, and then relaxes a little, realizing that it is different now from ten years before. The sheer force and urgency of it are diminished. They are kissing each other like two people who have known one another for a long long time and have not seen one another for a long time.

"Skinner–"

The old nickname comes out without Morag's having intended it. Jules laughs.

"The only other damn person who ever uses that name for me now is my brother Jacques. Even Billy Joe never has."

"Are you still singing with Billy Joe, then?"

"Yeh. We split up the team for a few years, and Billy went north to his people, there, but we got together again a year or so ago."

"How did you know I was here, Jules?"

"It's not so hard to find you. I phoned your publishers. They gave me your address."

He wouldn't have done that, years ago.

"How did you find the place, then? Rural Route One isn't very helpful."

Jules hugs her briefly, as though amused.

"Hell, nearly everybody in McConnell's Landing knows you, Morag. They think you're crazy as a bedbug."

He looks, of course, older. He _is_ older. He must be forty-seven now. He looks more like Lazarus than he did ten years ago, and he was looking a lot like Lazarus then. His hair is longer and the grey in it is extensive. His old brass-buckled belt is now slung under an increased belly, and his eyes are the tough tired eyes of a man who still has to battle but no longer finds much joy in doing so. He is wearing purple corduroys and a wide-sleeved Russian-style mauve shirt, and this form of dress somehow seems less confident than the plain coarse Levi's and blue workshirt of a decade ago. In Toronto fifteen years ago, he had worn sequinned satin shirts, but only for his performances, and he had been scornful about that fancy-dress outfit. _Fifteen_ years? That long? Pique is fifteen now, so in fact it was nearly sixteen years ago.

Morag becomes aware of the fact that it is not only herself who is doing the scrutinizing. What is Jules thinking? _Ten years have changed this woman._

"We're both older," Jules says in the quiet voice which has always denoted either anger or hurt or both.

"Why did you come here, now?"

"Do I have to have a reason, Morag?"

"No."

"Maybe I wanted to see you. Maybe I thought it was time I saw her–Pique–again."

"Will you be staying awhile, then?"

Is she enquiring or pleading? It doesn't matter.

"No," Jules says. "I gotta drive back tomorrow."

And he will be sleeping tonight, she senses, alone in the spare bedroom, by his own wish. And yet, oddly, she realizes she is not taking this as a personal affront to herself. It is he who reaches out his hand first, now. Their hands tighten together. No explanations; merely a consolation against time.

"What do you hear of Christie, Morag?"

"He died a few years back."

"I'm sorry. He was okay, Christie."

"Yes. He was."

Morag realizes now that the TV voices from the livingroom have abruptly ceased. Pique stands in the kitchen doorway. Tall, strong, lovely, and incredibly vulnerable. Her dark eyes sizing things up.

"I know you," she says to Jules.

Just that. In a neutral voice, neither accusing nor demanding. Jules, who had been able to play it so cool when Pique was five, is now uncertain. There is nothing Morag can say or dare say.

"You've sure changed, Pique," he says finally. "Funny thing–I want to call you by your real name, but like your mother, I can't."

"Because of your sister," Pique says.

"Yeh. Would you have a beer handy, Morag?"

Morag goes to get it for him. There is no way he is ever going to apologize to Pique for his absence, and to defend himself would be to knock Morag, as it was her wish originally to have Pique. Still, Pique is his, and he will never in his life deny her. Does she see all these things? Why should she?

"Are you still singing?" Pique asks.

"Yeh. I'm still singing. That's how I live. I should've been born later. Lotsa new places now, and they don't think you're some kind of nut if you sing your own songs sometimes, but most of those places, they're for the kids, and they want young singers. Me, I'm gettin' older."

"You're not getting old." The young voice, crying out against time, against the evidence of her eyes.

Jules laughs. Then goes briefly out to the truck, returning with his guitar.

"You want to hear, Pique?"

She nods, silently. Morag suspects that Pique would like to tell him she is trying to learn guitar, that she sings as well, that she plays the records of Baez and Dylan and Cohen and Joni Mitchell and Buffy Sainte-Marie and James Taylor and Bruce Cockburn and a dozen others whose names Morag frequently misplaces, over and over and over, trying to learn from them. Pique listens to groups, too, but it is the solitary singers, singing their own songs, who really absorb her. Pique cannot tell Jules any of this now. Maybe later. If only he would stay longer. But probably he can't.

"You don't remember, I guess," Jules says, "when you were a little kid, there, in Vancouver, and I sang the song to you about my grandfather Jules Tonnerre, your great-grandfather? He fought with Riel, there, at Batoche, the last flight, in 1885. You remember the song?"

Pique frowns. It was a long time ago. There is no resemblance between five and fifteen.

"I kind of remember," she says, "but not that much."

"Well, here it is," Jules says.

He tunes his guitar, and sings.

The Métis, they met from the whole prairie

To keep their lands, to keep them free,

They gathered there in the valley Qu'Appelle

Alongside their leader, Louis Riel.

They took their rifles into their hands,

They fought to keep their fathers' lands,

And one of them who gathered there

Was a Métis boy called Jules Tonnerre....

He goes through the fifteen verses, but the song does not seem long. His voice is rougher than it was ten years ago, but it is still strong. One foot beats time. Pique, sitting on the floor beside the woodstove, keeps her head lowered. Her eyes cannot be seen. Jules finishes and reaches for another beer which Morag has placed beside him. Then he and Pique look at one another. Pique again nods silently. Apparently nothing needs to be spoken. The tension in Jules' shoulders eases visibly. It is all right, then.

_How unlike me. I would have had to say what I thought about it, analyze the words, probably, yakkity yak. She doesn't have to, and neither does Jules. They do it in a different way, a way I can see, although it's not mine._

Jules turns to Morag.

"You remember, in Vancouver, there, I wanted to get a song about Lazarus, only I couldn't get it just then?"

"Yes. I remember."

"Well, after a while I did get it. Did you ever tell Pique about Lazarus?"

"Some."

Jules laughs.

"Yeh. Some. Well, here's some more."

And he sings. Pique again lowers her head, her hair spreading out like a veil, a mask, around her face.

Lazarus, he was the king of Nothing

Lazarus, he never had a dime.

He was sometimes on Relief, he was permanent on grief.

And Nowhere was the place he spent his time.

Lazarus, he lived down in the Valley;

Lazarus, he never lived in Town.

Now that damn town, still, see, it sits up on the hill,

But Lazarus, oh he belonged way down.

Lazarus was what they called a halfbreed;

Half a man was what the Town would say.

What made him walk so slow, well, they didn't care to know–

It was easier by far to look away.

Lazarus was nothing to the Mounties;

They knew he never had a cent for bail.

When his life got more than rough, and he drank more than enough,

They just threw him in the Manawaka jail.

Lazarus was not afraid of fighting;

It was the only way he knew to win.

But when the fight was o'er, he'd be in the clink once more;

Those breeds must learn that anger is a sin.

Lazarus, he went and lost his woman;

She left him when she found he wasn't king.

Then he had no woman there, nothing left, no kind of prayer,

And Nothing was his always Everything.

Lazarus, he had a bunch of children;

He raised them in the Valley down below.

So that they could eat, he shot rabbits there for meat,

Where his ancestors had shot the buffalo.

Lazarus, he lost some of those children,

Some to fire, some to the City's heart of stone.

Maybe when they went, was the worst time that was sent.

For then he really knew he was alone.

Lazarus, he never slit his throat, there.

Lazarus, he never met his knife.

If you think that isn't news, just try walking in his shoes.

Oh Lazarus, he kept his life, for life.

Lazarus, rise up out of the Valley;

Tell them what it really means to try.

Go tell them in the Town, though they always put you down,

Lazarus, oh man, you didn't die.

Lazarus, oh man, you didn't die.

Morag has stopped thinking about Pique and what she may be thinking and feeling. It is again the valley, inside her own head, and the last time she ever spoke to Lazarus, after that first time with Jules when Lazarus held the bottle up and said _This here, it's my woman now_ , and Jules was angry, angry. Lazarus.

Pique raises her head.

"I didn't know it was like that."

"There's a lot you don't know," Jules says harshly. "Your mother probably didn't tell you that when my sister died in that fire, with her kids, she was stoned out of her head with home-brew, on account of she didn't give a fuck whether she lived or died, and she had her reasons."

"No. I just heard about the fire. I know about that. Do you have to tell me again? I don't want to hear it."

Jules reaches for another beer. To Morag, he looks much older than forty-seven now, and much younger. His purple costume seems to fall away from him, leaving only the bones of his being, and his implacable eyes.

"Yeh, I guess I have to tell you it, again."

My sister's eyes

Fire and snow–

What they'd be saying

You couldn't know.

My sister's body

Fire and snow–

It wasn't hers

Since long ago.

My sister's man

Fire and snow–

He ate her heart

Then he made her go.

My sister's children

Fire and snow–

She prayed they'd live

But it wasn't so.

My sister's death

Fire and snow–

Burned out her sorrow

In the valley below.

My sister's eyes

Fire and snow–

What they were telling

You'll never know.

Pique keeps her head down. Morag, too, can say nothing. What thoughts may be going on in Pique's head, she can only guess. And Pique has no notion of the thoughts in Morag's head. The fire, and Lazarus standing alone in the snow. Jules, years later, saying _Tell me, just tell me_.

"It's a good song," Pique says finally, out of the need for distance, but possibly also out of something else.

"Yeh," Jules says.

He puts his guitar away in its case.

"I never got around, yet," he goes on, "to doing songs for any of the other ones. I never managed to do one for myself, neither. Crazy, eh? I guess you didn't know what happened after that time, Pique. It was after Lazarus died. My brother Paul, he was twenty-five, and he was a guide up north, and they say he drowned. Well, he handled a canoe better than most, so I doubt he drowned. It _could_ be, I know; it's happened. But he was taking a coupla tourists, eh, and they came back, all right, and reported to the nearest RCMP that he'd drowned. They had a lotta guns with them, those guys, I'd guess, and a lotta booze. I don't think he drowned. Jacques never got to first base with an investigation. After that, my sister Val finally died. She'd been trying hard for years, and she finally made it."

"How did she die?" Pique's voice is ageless.

"She was thirty-seven years old," Jules says viciously. "I used to think she'd likely die in some brawl, but she never. After Paul, she fell apart. She'd looked after him, mostly, as a kid. She died of booze and speed, on the streets of Vancouver. As a whore."

Pique looks at him, her eyes hurt and bewildered and angry.

"Why did you have to tell me? Why did you have to?"

Jules brings down one clenched fist upon the table.

"Too many have died," he says. "Too many, before it was time. I don't aim to be one of them. And I don't aim for you to be, neither."

Pique begins crying, then, silently, and he puts an arm lightly around her shoulder.

"My brother, Jacques, he lives away up at Galloping Mountain. I guess you'd like the mountain. If you ever go west, go and see him, eh? He talks better than me."

Pique lifts her head and smiles at him, and there is such a desolation in Jules' eyes that Morag longs to put her arms around him. But cannot move or speak.

"I'll show you something," Jules says, to lighten the atmosphere. "The only thing I got now that belonged to Lazarus, and it's not a thing which was even really his. Funny, eh?"

He reaches into his wallet and brings out a silver brooch, now blackened with lack of cleaning.

"Jules–that's a plaid pin," Morag says. "How in hell did Lazarus come to have that?"

"Is that what you call it? Well, when my dad was just a kid, he used to horse around, sometimes, with this other kid called John Shipley, and Lazarus traded his knife for this brooch, thinking it'd be worth a lot of money, I guess, but then he was scared to try to sell it–people would've thought he'd stolen it, see? When I came back from the war, there, Lazarus gave it to me. I would've liked to get that Shipley guy to trade back again, but he'd been killed a few years before the war, Lazarus said, when his truck piled into an oncoming freight train."

Morag stares in disbelief. These things do not happen. Oh yes, they do, though. Everything is improbable. Nothing is more improbable than anything else.

"Jules–"

"Yeh?" Then, as he sees her face, "What in hell's the matter, Morag?"

"Even if he hadn't been killed," Morag says, her own voice sounding detached from herself, "he wouldn't have had the knife. He'd sold it for a package of cigarettes. To Christie Logan. Christie never mentioned the guy's name, but he told me the story. Christie never knew whose the knife had been, or he'd have given it back to Lazarus. He gave the knife to me, years ago. That, and a few books, that's all I have of Christie's."

"You're crazy," Jules says. "You're kidding."

"She's not kidding," Pique said. "Where do you keep it, Ma?" "Top drawer of my dresser."

Pique goes upstairs and returns. She is about to hand the knife to Jules. Then she hesitates and finally hands it to Morag. Jules hunches in his chair, motionless, eyes concealed.

It is an ordinary hunting knife, dulled and slightly rusty with age and lack of use. On the handle there is a sign:

"I always wondered," Morag says, "what the sign on the hilt meant. I see now it's a 'T.'"

He takes it without a word and turns it over and over in his hands, running his fingers over the blade.

"Jesus!" he says at last. "How about that? It could even be cleaned and sharpened, you know that? It's still a good knife."

Pique looks as though she were about to say something, then changes her mind and remains quiet, as though recognizing that all this is only between Morag and Jules.

"Here," he says, shoving the plaid pin across the table to Morag. "Fair trade."

She takes it and examines it. Neither of them has thanked the other. No need. A fair trade. Morag goes to her bookshelves and gets out Christie's _The Clans and Tartans of Scotland_. Leafs through it, trying to find an illustration of this particular plaid pin. Pique watches, curiously, but Jules is still looking at the knife.

"Here it is," Morag says. "It's the Clanranald Macdonalds. Where could he have got it from, John Shipley? We'll never know, of course. The crest, it says here, is _On a castle triple-towered, an arm in armour, embowed, holding a sword, proper._ Their motto was _My Hope Is Constant In Thee_ –those are the words on the pin. Their war cry was _Gainsay Who Dare_."

Clan Gunn, according to this book, as she recalls from years back, did not have a crest or a coat-of-arms. But adoption, as who should know better than Morag, is possible.

_My Hope Is Constant In Thee._ It sounds like a voice from the past. Whose voice, though? Does it matter? It does not matter. What matters is that the voice is there, and that she has heard these words which have been given to her. And will not deny what has been given. _Gainsay Who Dare._
**PART FIVE**

**THE DIVINERS**
**ELEVEN**

**T** he Canada geese had been gone for a week now, and wind was fringed with cold. The leaves were beginning to fall and the grass was splattered with them, red maple, yellow elm, brown oak.

Pique had quit her job at the supermarket and was having coffee with Morag.

"I never told you, Ma," Pique said, "about when I went to Manawaka, did I? I guess I should. I thought–I dunno–I guess I thought it might upset you, or something. I went down in the valley to see the Tonnerre shack, the one my dad rebuilt after the fire. There wasn't much left of it–it had sort of fallen in, and the boards were rotting. I was glad I'd gone, though. It seemed I really knew then that all of them had lived there, once. The grass was thick and high all around, and there were these thin prairie maples and the wolf willow. I liked it there. There wasn't any sign that there'd ever been a fire, not now. I stayed all night, not sleeping much, just sort of thinking, you know. It was very quiet. I could hear the river–it's really more a creek, isn't it? It sounded kind of like voices. In the morning–"

She hesitated.

"Go on," Morag said.

"Well, in the morning, I went up to the Manawaka cemetery, and looked up Christie and Prin Logan's grave. Zinnias had been planted, and somebody was there, weeding. It was this plain little middle-aged woman with kind of stringy hair, looking sort of exhausted, you know? But she sounded quite cheerful. I liked her. I told her who my mother and dad were, and she looked surprised, but all she said was _Well, now, think of that; I'm glad Morag did have a child after all._ She said you wouldn't recall her married name, but you would know her single name. It was–"

"I know," Morag said. "Eva Winkler."

"That's right. How did you know?"

"It couldn't have been anyone else."

"Ma–I did upset you, didn't I? I'm sorry. You're crying."

"It's okay. Honestly. It's just–well, I guess I can't explain."

Too many years. No brief summary possible. Accept it and let it go.

"I've decided what I'm going to do, Ma," Pique said. "I _will_ be going west again."

"Where to, Pique?"

"Just as far as Manitoba. I'm going to my uncle Jacques' place at Galloping Mountain."

"You are? Does he know?"

"Sure. I've been writing to him."

"You have? What sort of place is it, Pique? Do you know?"

Would that sound suspicious? Shouldn't have said it. Still and all, a farm or whatever at Galloping Mountain. Forty Below all winter. Probably an outdoor john.

"I've been there," Pique said. "I went up there after I'd been to Manawaka. My dad said I should go, sometime, remember? When he was here that time about three years ago, he said that. So I went. He's got this small farm, Jacques, and he sets traplines in the winter, he and the boys. They're not well-off, but Jacques is some guy. He doesn't come on strong–I don't mean that, not at all. It's just that he's sure of what he's doing, and nobody is going to put him down, if he can help it. He and Mary–that's his wife–they've got four of their own kids, as well as the others."

"The others?"

"Valentine's three kids," Pique said slowly. "Mary and Jacques have been raising them."

"I see. I didn't know Val had–"

"Yeh. Well. They've been up at the mountain all their lives, just about. Also, there's Paul's son–he'd be about fourteen, I guess."

"Jules never said there was–did Paul's wife die?"

"No. She's got TB. There's some younger kids as well."

"Whose?"

Children of Jules? If so, Pique would not say. What did it matter, anyway?

"Jacques goes to Winnipeg sometimes, for Métis meetings and that. He usually comes back with some kid or other, kids whose parents have died or vanished. You know. They've had pretty rough lives, so some of them aren't that easy to get on with. That's what I'll be doing–helping Mary out with the work and with the kids who aren't at school yet."

"It sounds–well, like kind of a madhouse."

"Oh it is," Pique said, laughing. "You'd hate it, Ma. It's a messy house, with all those kids. It doesn't bother me. Yeh, sometimes it does, I guess, but not too much."

"Where in hell does any money come from? The farm wouldn't make enough."

"Well, there isn't much. Some of them work out–Valentine's two eldest boys, and Jacques' daughter, Val, who's about a year older than I am."

"What about Dan, Pique?"

Pique looked troubled.

"He wants to stay here, and I want to go. He doesn't see that it's necessary for me. Maybe I'll be back, or else he'll decide to come out for a while. Or maybe I won't and he won't. I haven't got the gift of second sight."

In a way, she almost did, though. But whatever Pique felt was likely to happen, she was not about to say.

"Pique, I hope–"

What? That Pique wasn't taking on more than she could cope with? That she wasn't making an error of judgement in going at all? Nonsense. Who could ever enter anything with a guarantee? Let her go. This time, it had to be possible and was.

"I hope everything goes well for you, Pique."

Pique smiled faintly.

"Thanks. It will and it won't, I guess. I wish I was better at explanations, Ma. I'm not going out there because they need me, particularly. All I can do is contribute my share, if I can. For me, it's more, really, that I need them, right now. For a while, anyway. I don't know how long they'll want me to stay. I don't know how long I'll want to stay. But my reasons for going–well, it's like when I went off before. I couldn't _say_ , exactly, and yet I knew. Could I sing you this song I did? I haven't sung it yet for Dan and the Smiths, but I'm going to. At least, I hope so. Maybe Dan will see then–I don't know."

Morag had wondered why Pique had toted her guitar over here today. She must have had this in mind, not having quite decided whether to sing it or not, hesitating to make herself that vulnerable. It was easier, in some way, to make yourself vulnerable in front of strangers.

Pique sang. Morag had listened to Pique singing many times before, but never before her own song.

There's a valley holds my name, now I know

In the tales they used to tell it seemed so low

There's a valley way down there

I used to dream it like a prayer

And my fathers, they lived there long ago.

There's a mountain holds my name, close to the sky

And those stories made that mountain seem so high

There's a mountain way up there

I used to dream I'd breathe its air

And hear the voices that in me would never die.

I came to taste the dust out on a prairie road

My childhood thoughts were heavy on me like a load

But I left behind my fear

When I found those ghosts were near

Leadin' me back to that home I never knowed.

Ah, my valley and my mountain, they're the same

My living places, and they never will be tame

When I think how I was born

I can't help but being torn

But the valley and the mountain hold my name

The valley and the mountain hold my name

Then silence. Pique could not speak until Morag did, and Morag could not speak for a while. The hurts unwittingly inflicted upon Pique by her mother, by circumstances–Morag had agonized over these often enough, almost as though, if she imagined them sufficiently, they would prove to have been unreal after all. But they were not unreal. Yet Pique was not assigning any blame–that was not what it was all about. And Pique's journey, although at this point it might feel to her unique, was not unique. Morag reached out and took Pique's hand, holding it lightly.

"Could I have a copy of the words, Pique?"

This was apparently all she could say. Pique's fingers tightened around Morag's, then let go.

"Sure. I'll write them out for you now."

That evening, when Morag was having dinner alone, the phone rang. Morag, wanting only to be left to herself to think, answered reluctantly.

"Hello."

"Morag? Billy Joe. I thought I oughta phone you, maybe. Jules, he's not so good."

"What's the matter?"

"Well, I don't know that I oughta say, like. He's sick."

"What is it? Is he in hospital?"

"No. He won't go."

"What _is_ it?"

Then Billy Joe's voice, uncertain, telling her.

"Billy. In his throat?"

"Yeh."

"Where is he?"

Billy gave the address.

"Do you think he'll see me, Billy?"

"Yeh. I think so."

"He didn't say he wanted to see me?"

"Well, no. But–"

"Never mind. He wouldn't. It doesn't matter. I'll get the seven o'clock bus. I'll be there about ten. Is he–is there a woman with him?"

"Not now," Billy Joe said. "Not after he got real sick."

Royland drove Morag to the bus station in McConnell's Landing. She told him what had happened.

"Look, Royland, phone over to A-Okay's, will you, and just tell Pique I decided to go in and spend a few days with Ella and Mort, and I'll be back before she goes."

"Okay. But are you sure she shouldn't know?"

"No, I'm not sure of a damn thing. But I think it's better to wait and see how he is, and also what he wants me to tell her."

"Yeh. Okay. You gonna be all right, now, Morag? You seem pretty shaky. Want me to come along with you?"

"No. But thanks anyway."

The bus crawled along the highway. Morag shut her mind, as she was sometimes able to do in time of need. If she began thinking about Jules now, about his whole life, about the way he looked when he was young, she could not face whatever it was that she would have to face.

The place was on Spadina, a three-storey house which seemed to be slumped in upon itself with the years and lack of repairs. Billy Joe answered the door. He had been waiting for her. Morag had not seen him for–how long? Nearly nineteen years. Was that possible? Indeed. Billy Joe looked shorter than she had remembered. His hair was still black as crows' feathers, but his face was seamed and wrinkled, even though he could not be more than in his early fifties. He evaded her eyes.

"I dunno if I done the right thing, Morag, phoning you. I never told him I done it, yet. You can't do nothing. We got two rooms, top floor. C'mon."

Outside the door to Jules' room, Billy Joe stopped. He looked oddly determined, as though Jules might not approve of what he had done, but also as though he knew that this was necessary and what Jules wanted even though in an un-admitted way.

"You go in," he said.

Then he left her, and went into his own room. Now Morag was afraid. Not afraid, any longer, that Jules might mock her or tell her to get out. Not that, not now. Simply afraid of what she might see, of how he might look. Afraid that she might have to look at something she could not bear to look at. She opened the door. One ceiling light, not more than forty-watt, was burning, and the small room was shadowed. The usual one-room setup. Discoloured linoleum on the floor. A table, a couple of straight chairs, a hotplate, a cupboard. Tatty lace curtains on the window. And in one corner, a double bed with a grey blanket.

Jules was lying outstretched on the bed, his arms bent upwards and his hands clasped behind his head. He was wearing an old pair of blue jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, the kind you buy at the cut-rate clothing stores for $3.33 or thereabouts. He looked more like himself than the last time she had seen him. His leather belt, though, wasn't his old one–this was wider, new, with a clasp buckle in brass braid. Then Morag remembered he'd given his old belt to Pique. His hair was now nearly as long and as grey as her own. He was much thinner, but not with the hard leanness of his young manhood–this was a different thing, the erosion of the flesh. His face looked bonier, but the same, the face of Skinner Tonnerre, and behind and within that face, the face of Lazarus. There were no outward signs of the sickness. What had she expected?

His eyes were open and he was looking fixedly at the dull light on the ceiling. He heard the door open and turned his head.

"Billy–"

Then he saw who it was, and raised himself on one elbow.

"For God's sake–what're _you_ doing here?"

His speaking voice had always had that gravel quality. Was it increased so much now, or did Morag only imagine it? She closed the door behind her.

"Billy Joe phoned me. Maybe you don't want me to be here, Skinner. But I'm here. I won't stay long."

Jules sank back. And, strangely, laughed. A grating sound which made him cough in spasms. He turned away and spat into a basin beside the bed.

"Do you want some water?" she asked, helpless.

"Rye would be better," he managed at last. "There's a bottle in the cupboard. Mind getting it? Bathroom's on the floor below. Get some water, eh?"

She did, and poured stiff drinks for them both. Jules did not get up from the bed. He propped himself on an elbow, again, and gulped the drink quickly.

"I don't see why you came, Morag."

No way of talking to him any differently, now, than she ever had. No way of saying everything she would like to say, either. Maybe none of it really needed saying, after all.

"You crazy bugger, I wanted to see you, that's all. Billy told me. Don't blame him."

"No. It's okay."

This Jules was different. Perhaps he, too, had found that although you needed to do battle, you didn't always need to, every minute. Or was she interpreting him, as usual, only through her own eyes? How else could you interpret anyone? The thing now was not to interfere, not to enter fear. She would, of course. It was her nature.

"Jules–maybe you should go into hospital? What did the doctor say? Maybe they could–"

She sat down beside him on the bed. He put one of his hands on her wrist, not the angry gesture of years ago. Now, a still-strong but almost neutral touch.

"They couldn't," Jules said. "You know, Morag, I was always pretty mad, there, about Lazarus not being taken to the hospital. And I tried, you remember, to get Val to go, but she wouldn't stay, and I thought she was a crazy woman. I see now it wasn't like that. By the time they got around to needing a hospital, it was already too late. Except that for them, there, it wasn't the same as with me. With them, it was somebody's fault or everybody's fault, and it started a long way back, but with me, it's just bad luck. I had some luck in my time. It's run out, that's all."

Morag's mind fought this concept.

"If you'd been president of the Royal Bank of Canada, they'd have every specialist on the continent in, and–"

Jules laughed again.

"And in the end, it would've made no damn difference. You think I want all that? People punching you here and there, tubes down your nose, parts of you cut out like you were beef being butchered? The president of the Royal Bank can keep it. It's all shit to me."

"Yeh. Okay. I won't say any more."

He motioned to her to pour another drink. It was only when she saw the sweat on his forehead and around his mouth that Morag realized he was dwelling within the kind of physical pain which she had never experienced and could not imagine.

"Jules–did he give you anything for–I mean–"

"Yeh. Second shelf of the cupboard."

She got the bottle of tablets, and he swallowed three. Lay back for a while. Then raised himself again, and drank.

"I haven't sung for some time, here," he said. "It was gonna stop soon, anyhow. Lotsa good young singers around now. Jesus, the shitty gigs Billy and me have had these past coupla years. Well, never mind. I didn't do so bad. I've done what I wanted to do, mostly."

What would he be recalling, now? What memories of uncaring audiences, in fourth-rate dives? She would never know. He contained his own pain.

"Pique's going west again, Skinner."

He half sat up and looked at her.

"Yeh? Where?"

"To Jacques' place. She went there, before, after she saw you in Toronto that last time. She went to Manawaka and then up to Galloping Mountain. She only just told me. She's been writing to him. He's not like you–you never wrote letters, remember? She'll be going soon. Maybe she'll be back, and maybe she won't."

Jules reached out to the floor for his drink. When he faced her again, it was with some residue of the ancient anger, the ancient grief.

"You let her be, see? You just let her be."

Even now, he felt he had to speak like that, did he? And perhaps he did, perhaps he did.

"She sang me one of her songs," Morag said. "I brought the words. That's all. Just the words. No music. I don't know about all that. So you can't hear it. Unless she comes here."

"No," Jules said. "I don't want her to come here. Not with me like this. Don't tell her, either, you hear? If you do, she'll be here. Yeh, it would be good to hear it. But there's no way. Let's see."

He reached out for the paper, and read the words. Handed the page back to Morag, then changed his mind and took it again.

"Yeh. Well. I'll keep this. You can get another copy. You can tell her–oh, the hell with it, you don't need to tell her anything. Nobody does."

They drank some more rye, not speaking much. Jules' voice seemed to have run out and he spat more frequently into the basin beside the bed. He was getting fairly drunk now, and his pain was lessened by the pills and the rye. The pain in his throat, anyway. The night was wearing on. Finally Morag got up and turned out the light. Kicked off her shoes and lay down beside him, both of them clad, lying silently, connected only by their hands.

Then Jules turned to her and put his arms around her, and she put her arms around him. The brief sound in the darkness was the sound of a man crying the knowledge of his death. ln the morning, Morag left before he wakened.

Morag, unable to write, sat at the table looking out at the river. She had been back for four days now. Had pretended all was fine. Pique was preparing to leave within the next week or so, as usual vague about the time of her departure.

_How can I not tell her about Jules? How can I tell her? He doesn't want me to tell her. He doesn't want to see her. He wants to see her, but not for her to see him._

The aeons ago memory. The child saying _I'll just go up and see my mother and father, now, for a minute._ And Mrs. Pearl, holding tightly to the child's wrist, saying _No you don't; they're too sick to see you; they don't want to._ They had wanted to see her; they had not wanted her to see them. The gaps in understanding, the long-ago child wondering what was being kept from her, wondering why they did not want to see her. Morag had been five. Pique was not a child. Nevertheless, she would want to see him and would not likely understand why she must not.

The truck drew into the driveway that evening. Jules' old pickup truck. For an instant Morag thought he might somehow have had a reprieve, the doctor having diagnosed wrongly.

Billy Joe got out of the truck and came inside. His face wore its usual masked expression, but only just.

"Billy. He's dead, isn't he?"

"Yeh. He's dead."

Morag poured them both a drink, and Billy Joe drank without saying anything.

"It happened very quickly, didn't it?" Morag said, numbed. "I guess that's lucky for him, although it's hard to think of it that way. It's not usually that fast. Is it?"

"He didn't wait for it," Billy Joe said.

Just that. He didn't wait.

"I see." Her voice had an unreal calm. "Billy–how did he–"

Billy Joe turned to her. Jules had been his partner, his songbrother. How could she know anything about that, about what Jules and Billy Joe had been to one another, over more than twenty years?

"It don't matter, how he done it," he said with finality.

No use asking. Billy Joe would never say.

He fished in his pocket and drew out something. Jules' knife, the knife of his father Lazarus. Morag looked at it.

"Billy–"

"He wanted Pique to have his knife, that's all," Billy Joe said, very quietly.

Morag picked up the knife. The blade had been sharpened since Jules first got it, three years ago. The steel was, of course, perfectly clean.

"Where–where is he, Billy?"

"I wired Jacques. He said to send the body to Galloping Mountain. So I done that. Jacques would've sent the money for that, but there was no need. Some of us here, we done that."

The Métis graveyard up at the mountain, where the grey wooden crosses stood above the graves of the Tonnerres. Nearby, Jacques Tonnerre had his livingplace, his living place.

"Morag," Billy Joe said. "I'm gonna go now."

"Yes. All right."

Morag wanted to hold onto him, and cry. But could not. Nor could he. And yet, at the doorway, they held to one another after all, momentarily. Then Billy Joe left without speaking again.

Morag phoned to A-Okay's and told Maudie to ask Pique to come over. Morag had not cried. When Pique arrived, she saw the knife on the table.

"Ma–something's happened to him, hasn't it?"

"Yes. He's dead. Of throat cancer."

Abruptly, like that. Unable to speak it otherwise. Pique said nothing. Then crumpled, knelt, put her head on Morag's lap and cried. But later, when she rose and saw her mother's face, it was she who comforted Morag.

After a while, they could manage to talk once more.

"He didn't know I was going to Jacques' place, Ma. I wish he'd known that."

"He did know."

"How?"

"I told him," Morag said. "I–went in to see him. That's where I went, a few days ago. Billy phoned me."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Pique's voice was sharp with hurt. "He didn't want me to. He didn't want you to see him, the way he was. He was in a lot of pain. I showed him the words of the song."

"He didn't hear the music," Pique said. "I wish he could have heard that."

"I know. It's always too late for something. But he kept the words."

Pique picked up the knife.

"Did he–is this for me?"

"Yes."

"What was it used for, Ma?"

" _What?_ Oh–that. Lazarus used it on his traplines, when he was young."

Would Pique create a fiction out of Jules, something both more and less true than himself, when she finally made a song for him, as she would one day, the song he had never brought himself to make for himself?

Pique was going by train this time, thank God, not hitching. The day she left, Morag decided not to go to the station after all. She preferred to say goodbye to Pique here. Why put yourself through more harrowing scenes than necessary? A sign of advancing years, this, no doubt, but what the hell.

Pique came over in the boat alone.

"Hi, Ma."

Morag wondered when next she would hear Pique saying that. But did not express this thought.

"Hi, honey."

"Listen, I'm not gonna stay long here," Pique said nervously. "I can't stand these long farewells. They destroy me."

"Yeh. Me, too."

"Ma–maybe this is kind of presumptuous of me, but–you wouldn't consider letting me have that plaid pin, I suppose?"

Morag thought about this for a while. Finally she shook her head.

"Not right now, Pique. It's some kind of talisman to me. You can have it, though, when I'm through with it."

"Meaning what?"

"When I'm gathered to my ancestors."

Pique grinned.

"That's a new one in euphemism."

"It's not euphemism," Morag said, "and it's not new, either."

"Well, I didn't really think you'd want to part with it," Pique said, "but I thought I'd ask. It's okay. I hope I don't get it for a long time, then."

She shivered slightly, and her eyes darkened.

"Ma–" she added, "you'll take care, eh? You'll be okay?"

"Of course. I _am_ okay."

And in a profound sense, this was true.

Pique put one thin brown arm around Morag's shoulders.

"So long, then."

"So long. Go with God, Pique."

"Ma, you have some pretty funny expressions."

"Now, then, don't I just?"

She watched while Pique walked across the meadow to the river and the boat. Then she walked back inside the house.

Late that afternoon, Morag heard the train whistle from McConnell's Landing. The train was moving west.

Finally able to get back to work, after only several days, Morag did not welcome interruption. But it was Royland at the door. He rarely came in during what he knew were her working hours.

"It's not a good time to come over," Royland said. "But maybe you won't mind, this once."

"Royland–what's the matter?"

To superficial glance, Royland looked the same as always. The same old bushjacket and beat-up trousers, the same greybeard as neatly trimmed as ever. The usual smile. But something different.

_Please, Lord, no more anything for a while, eh? I've had enough for just now._

"I went over to Tim Mackie's place today," Royland said. "His old well had seepage."

"And?"

"And nothing. I knew the moment I started that nothing would happen, and that is just what happened. Nothing. It's not so strange. People often lose it, I mean the divining, when they get older. It's a fact. It's gone on with me for a long time."

"Royland–anybody can have a temporary setback, for heaven's sake."

"No," Royland said clearly. "I had it for a long while, and now I don't have it. It's as simple as that."

The Old Man of the River, his powers gone. What happened to an ex- _shaman_? Was he honoured as an elder of the tribe, or was he driven forth? In Royland's case, the former. But would that help how he himself felt about it?

"Royland–I'm so damn sorry."

"Well, not that much need to be, really, I guess. I'm not actually going to starve. I've got a little put by, and I own my place, so with the old-age pension I can manage. It's not that, though."

"I know."

Royland sat down and accepted a cup of coffee, but didn't drink it.

"It's not so easy to take," he said. "But you know, Morag, there's something I never told you."

"What's that?"

"It's something I don't understand, the divining," Royland said slowly, "and it's not something that everybody can do, but the thing I don't usually let on about is that quite a few people can learn to do it. You don't have to have the mark of God between your eyebrows. Or if you do, quite a few people have it. You didn't know that, did you?"

"No. No, I didn't."

Royland laughed.

"A-Okay tried," he said. "He was that nervous and suspicious. But he could learn, if he has a mind to. That was plain. I think he was kind of upset by it. But he could learn."

"Really? Will he?"

"If he can just get over wanting to explain it," Royland said, "maybe he will. That's up to him."

The inheritors. Was this, finally and at last, what Morag had always sensed she had to learn from the old man? She had known it all along, but not really known. The gift, or portion of grace, or whatever it was, was finally withdrawn, to be given to someone else.

"This that's happened to me–" Royland said, "it's not a matter for mourning."

"I see that now," Morag said.

When Royland had gone, Morag sat in her armchair looking out the wide window. Contemplating. Could this be termed an activity? It was to be hoped so. She certainly spent enough time doing it.

At least Royland knew he had been a true diviner. There were the wells, proof positive. Water. Real wet water. There to be felt and tasted. Morag's magic tricks were of a different order. She would never know whether they actually worked or not, or to what extent. That wasn't given to her to know. In a sense, it did not matter. The necessary doing of the thing–that mattered.

Morag walked out across the grass and looked at the river. The sun, now low, was catching the waves, sending out once more the flotilla of little lights skimming along the green-bronze surface. The waters flowed from north to south, and the current was visible, but now a south wind was blowing, ruffling the water in the opposite direction, so that the river, as so often here, seemed to be flowing both ways.

_Look ahead into the past, and back into the future, until the silence._

How far could anyone see into the river? Not far. Near shore, in the shallows, the water was clear, and there were the clean and broken clamshells of creatures now dead, and the wavering of the underwater weed-forests, and the flicker of small live fishes, and the undulating lines of gold as the sand ripples received the sun. Only slightly farther out, the water deepened and kept its life from sight.

Morag returned to the house, to write the remaining private and fictional words, and to set down her title.
**ALBUM**
**THE BALLAD OF JULES TONNERRE**

THE BALLAD OF JULES TONNERRE

_(Written by Jules "Skinner" Tonnerre, for his grandfather who fought with Riel in 1885)_

The Métis they met from the whole prairie

To keep their lands, to keep them free,

They gathered there in the valley Qu'Appelle

Alongside their leader, Louis Riel.

They took their rifles into their hands,

They fought to keep their fathers' lands

And one of them who gathered there

Was a Métis boy called Jules Tonnerre.

He is not more than eighteen years;

He will not listen to his fears.

His heart is true, his heart is strong;

He knows the land where his people belong.

Macdonald, he sits in Ottawa,

Drinking down his whiskey raw,

Sends out west ten thousand men,

Swears the Métis will not rise again.

The young _Anglais_ from Ontario,

Out to the west they swiftly go;

They don't know what they're fighting for,

But they've got the cannon, so it must be war.

It was near Batoche, in Saskatchewan,

The Métis bullets were nearly gone;

"If I was a wolf, I'd seek my lair,

But a man must try," said Jules Tonnerre.

Riel, he walks with the Cross held high,

To bless his men so they may not die;

"God bless Riel," says Tonnerre,

"But the cannon _Anglais_ won't listen to prayer."

Dumont, he rides out to ambush the foe,

To hunt as he's hunted the buffalo;

He's the bravest heart on the whole prairie,

But he cannot save his hunted Métis.

Jules Tonnerre and his brothers, then,

They fought like animals, fought like men.

"Before the earth will take our bones,

We'll load our muskets with nails and stones."

They loaded their muskets with nails and stones;

They fought together and they fought alone;

And Jules, he fell with steel in his thigh,

And he prayed his God that he might not die.

He woke and found no soul around,

The deadmen hanging onto the ground;

The birds sang in the prairie air.

"Now, it's over, then," said Jules Tonnerre.

Riel, he was hanged in Regina one day;

Dumont, he crossed to the U.S.A.

"Of sorrow's bread I've eaten my share,

But I won't choke yet," said Jules Tonnerre.

He took his Cross and he took his gun,

Went back to the place where he'd begun.

He lived on drink and he lived on prayer,

But the heart was gone from Jules Tonnerre.

Still, he lived his years and he raised his son,

Shouldered his life till it was done;

His voice is one the wind will tell

In the prairie valley that's called Qu'Appelle.

They say the dead don't always die;

They say the truth outlives the lie–

The night wind calls their voices there,

The Métis men, like Jules Tonnerre.
**LAZARUS**

LAZARUS

_(Written by Skinner Tonnerre, for his father, Lazarus Tonnerre)_

Lazarus, he was the king of Nothing;

Lazarus, he never had a dime.

He was sometimes on relief, he was permanent on grief,

And Nowhere was the place he spent his time.

Lazarus, he lived down in the Valley;

Lazarus, he never lived in Town.

Now that damn town, still, see, it sits up on the hill,

Oh but Lazarus, oh he belonged way down.

Lazarus was what they called a halfbreed;

Half a man was what the Town would say.

What made him walk so slow, well, they didn't care to know–

It was easier by far to look away.

Lazarus was nothing to the Mounties;

They knew he never had a cent for bail.

When his life got more than rough, and he drank more than enough,

They just threw him in the Manawaka jail.

Lazarus was not afraid of fighting;

It was the only way he knew to win.

But when the fight was o'er, he'd be in the clink once more;

Those breeds must learn that anger is a sin.

Lazarus, he went and lost his woman;

She left him when she found he wasn't king.

Then he had no woman there, nothing left, no kind of prayer,

And Nothing was his always Everything.

Lazarus, he had a bunch of children;

He raised them in the Valley down below.

So that they could eat, he shot rabbits there for meat,

Where his ancestors had shot the buffalo.

Lazarus, he lost some of those children,

Some to fire, some to the City's heart of stone.

Maybe when they went, was the worst time that was sent,

For then he really knew he was alone.

Lazarus, he never slit his throat, there.

Lazarus, he never met his knife.

If you think that isn't news, just try walking in his shoes.

Oh Lazarus, he kept his life, for life.

Lazarus, rise up out of the Valley;

Tell them what it really means to try.

Go tell them in the Town, though they always put you down,

Lazarus, oh man, you didn't die.

Lazarus, oh man, you didn't die.
**PIQUETTE'S SONG**

PIQUETTE'S SONG

_(Written by Skinner Tonnerre, for his sister)_

My sister's eyes

Fire and snow–

What they'd be saying

You couldn't know.

My sister's body

Fire and snow–

It wasn't hers

Since long ago.

My sister's man

Fire and snow–

He ate her heart

Then he made her go.

My sister's children

Fire and snow–

She prayed they'd live

But it wasn't so.

My sister's death

Fire and snow–

Burned out her sorrow

In the valley below.

My sister's eyes

Fire and snow–

What they were telling

You'll never know.
**PIQUE'S SONG**

PIQUE'S SONG

_(Written by Pique Gunn Tonnerre)_

There's a valley holds my name, now I know

In the tales they used to tell it seemed so low

There's a valley way down there

I used to dream it like a prayer

And my fathers, they lived there long ago.

There's a mountain holds my name, close to the sky

And those stories made that mountain seem so high

There's a mountain way up there

I used to dream I'd breathe its air

And hear the voices that in me would never die.

I came to taste the dust out on a prairie road

My childhood thoughts were heavy on me like a load

But I left behind my fear

When I found those ghosts were near

Leadin' me back to that home I never knowed.

Ah, my valley and my mountain, they're the same

My living places, and they never will be tame

When I think how I was born

I can't help but being torn

But the valley and the mountain hold my name.

The valley and the mountain hold my name.
**AFTERWORD**

**BY TIMOTHY FINDLEY**

**M** aybe it would be best not to read this until _The Diviners_ has had a chance to sigh and to settle; until you, yourself, have had a chance to sigh and to settle.

My friend and I have a rule when we go to plays and movies: neither of us is allowed to talk when the play or the movie is over if we perceive the other has been upset or moved by what we've just seen. Surely there's nothing worse than somebody breaking in on your own reflections with: "Wow! What a piece of garbage!" Or even with: "Wasn't that terrific!" It doesn't really matter whether the voice breaking in agrees with you or disagrees. The point is, the only voice that matters when an experience is over is the voice of the experience itself.

A psychologist once remarked that what we experience in dreams can be just as affecting–whether for ill or for good–as what we experience in what we call "reality." Books can hit us hard–or leave us cold. We can set the book aside and say: "I forget." Or we can close the covers and know we will always remember what is between them. Books, like dreams, are essentially private realms. Nothing should be allowed to detract from each person's right to read a book privately and to interpret it freely in the light of what each person has experienced and knows of life. This is why what we receive from critics can be so dangerous. Not that critics are inevitably wrong; only that critics forget, too often, to remind us they speak only for themselves.

_The Diviners_ , since its publication in 1974, has suffered from a plethora of critics–many of them negative, some of them positive–all of them loud. It has been the eye of a storm that has raged off and on from the moment Margaret Laurence wrote its final sentences up to the moment of her death in 1987 and beyond. To be brief: it has been plagued by the dread fear of honesty.

The sources of this fear have been as influential–and crazy–as school boards and pulpits. "Crazy" because it would seem to be self-evident that school boards and pulpits should have a vested interest in honesty. And yet, they have mounted attacks against _The Diviners_ , charging both it and its author with everything from malicious propaganda against the sanctity of the family to undermining the morals of the young; from pornography to blasphemy. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. At its worst, the campaign against _The Diviners_ took on the colours of riotous comedy, as when its author was accused of being "personally responsible for the current increase in teenage pregnancies."

As a consequence of the attacks against _The Diviners_ , few of its readers since 1974 have been able to retire into a quiet place to read it alone. Now, it is achieving the status of a classic and, while there is an obvious rightness in this, it would be a pity if its classification as "literature" were to prove to be intimidating. Nothing we can read should be less daunting than this book. Yes, it is difficult–but only difficult because it pulls no punches. Difficult isn't daunting, anyway. Difficult is exhilarating.

The only kind of book that daunts–if such a word exists–is a book that lies: a book that clouds or obscures the truth with sentimental claptrap or mind-easing platitudes. Earth and air and fire and water and all that these imply of reality abound in _The Diviners_. The flesh, too–and all it implies of being alive. The people here are whole and imperfect–rampant, afraid, and terrifying–and they ask of life and one another nothing more and nothing less than we would ask if we were written on these pages. Such things cannot be said of every book. In fact, they can rarely be said of any book. We know such books when we find them in our hands because they breathe. Books as seemingly different as _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ and _Madame Bovary_ , as _Lady with a Lapdog_ and _The Moons of Jupiter_ all speak of one condition: of being alive, and of the subtle horror we all experience of being trapped in human flesh when what we want–and long for–is something only the spirit can attain. I know this–and you know this. We all know this, at heart. But it takes a Marquez, a Flaubert, a Chekhov, a Munro, a Laurence to articulate it. Why?

Don't ask.

Be glad.

Late one summer afternoon–in August of 1973, to be exact–Margaret Laurence walked out onto the lawn behind her cottage on the banks of the Otonabee River in Ontario. She wore an oversized cotton _mumu_ and a pair of untied running shoes, and she carried a pack of cigarettes and a glass of wine. Under her arm there were a few loose pages of her inimitable typing–criss-crossed with penciled notes and amendments.

Inside the cottage, a pot of chili was simmering and a large wooden salad bowl stood ready on the kitchen table. The smell of the food was tantalizing and comforting. One of Margaret Laurence's guests came up out of the water, flopped onto the dock, and grabbed a towel.

"It may look warm," he said, referring to the river, "but it's really cold. And I wasn't alone in there..."

Margaret Laurence laughed.

"That's the snapping turtles," she said. "You better count your toes, kid!"

The sun began its long descent beyond the trees on the opposite bank and the swimmer put on his sweater.

Three other guests were sitting down on steps and on the grass.

Two people passed in a rowboat, drifting on the current–one of them fishing, both of them absolutely silent.

Margaret Laurence slipped her pages into her lap and adjusted her glasses. One of the guests lay back and watched the swallows swooping overhead.

Someone lighted a cigarette.

The swimmer poured himself a glass of wine.

Margaret Laurence began to read. It was just as if they had all been having a conversation–and now it was Margaret Laurence's turn to speak.

"Morag," she said, "is nine, and it is winter. The snow is a good four feet thick outside and you have to walk to school on the roads, where the snowplough has been..."

She read for some time.

She ended with the piece about _Christie's First Tale of Piper Gunn_ and the bit about _Morag's First Tale of Piper Gunn's Woman_.

This is how books are made. By trial and error; speaking entirely from the heart–letting the mind cope later with the writing of the words.

Five people out on the lawn beside a river: chairs and grass and water and one of them reading as the dark comes on:

"...and Morag was never afraid of anything in this whole wide world. Never. If they came to a forest, would this Morag there be scared? Not on your christly life. She would only laugh and say, _Forests cannot hurt me because I have the power and the second sight and the good eye and the strength of conviction._

"What means _The Strength of Conviction_?"

"Morag sleeps."

Not Margaret Laurence.

What means _the strength of conviction_?

Perhaps, when you have let _The Diviners_ sigh and let it settle, you will know.
**THE AUTHOR**

**MARGARET LAURENCE** was born in Neepawa, Manitoba, in 1926. Upon graduation from Winnipeg's United College in 1947, she took a job as a reporter for the _Winnipeg Citizen_.

From 1950 until 1957 Laurence lived in Africa, the first two years in Somalia, the next five in Ghana, where her husband, a civil engineer, was working. She translated Somali poetry and prose during this time, and began her career as a fiction writer with stories set in Africa.

When Laurence returned to Canada in 1957, she settled in Vancouver, where she devoted herself to fiction with a Ghanaian setting: in her first novel, _This Side Jordan_ , and in her first collection of short fiction, _The Tomorrow-Tamer_. Her two years in Somalia were the subject of her memoir, _The Prophet's Camel Bell_.

Separating from her husband in 1962, Laurence moved to England, which became her home for a decade, the time she devoted to the creation of five books about the fictional town of Manawaka, patterned after her birthplace, and its people: _The Stone Angel_ , _A Jest of God_ , _The Fire-Dwellers_ , _A Bird in the House_ , and _The Diviners_.

Laurence settled in Lakefield, Ontario, in 1974. She complemented her fiction with essays, book reviews, and four children's books. Her many honours include two Governor General's Awards for Fiction and more than a dozen honorary degrees.

Margaret Laurence died in Lakefield, Ontario, in 1987.
**BY MARGARET LAURENCE**

**AUTOBIOGRAPHY**

The Prophet's Camel Bell (1963)

Dance on the Earth (1989)

**ESSAYS**

Long Drums and Cannons: Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists 1952–1966 (1968)

Heart of a Stranger (1976)

**FICTION**

This Side Jordan (1960)

The Tomorrow-Tamer (1963)

The Stone Angel (1964)

A Jest of God (1966)

The Fire-Dwellers (1979)

A Bird in the House (1970)

The Diviners (1974)

**FICTION FOR YOUNG ADULTS**

Jason's Quest (1970)

Six Darn Cows (1979)

The Olden Days Coat (1979)

The Christmas Birthday Story (1980)

**LETTERS**

Margaret Laurence–Al Purdy: A Friendship in Letters [ed. John Lennox] (1993)

Selected Letters of Margaret Laurence and Adele Wiseman [ed. John Lennox and Ruth Panofsky] (1997)

**HISTORY**

A Tree for Poverty: Somali Poetry and Prose (1954)
Copyright © 1974 by Margaret Laurence
Afterword copyright © 1988 by Pebble Productions Inc.

First published in 1974 by McClelland & Stewart.
First New Canadian Library edition 1988.
This New Canadian Library edition 2007.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher–or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency–is an infringement of the copyright law.

**Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication**

Laurence, Margaret, 1926-1987

The diviners / Margaret Laurence; with an afterword by Timothy Findley.

(New Canadian library)
Originally published: 1974.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-243-3

I. Title. II. Series.
PS8523.A86D5 2007 C813'.54 C2007-903188-9

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
www.mcclelland.com/NCL

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