The Diviners Read online

  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 quit
e 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.”