The Diviners (14 page)

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.