Black Marsden by Wilson Harris Page A

“Plays cost a pretty penny.”
    “I know,” said Mrs. Glenwearie. “Och, I remember as a young girl I did a bit of acting myself.” She looked both pleased and embarrassed.
    “You’ve never told me that, Mrs. Glenwearie,” Goodrich said.
    “Ah well, it wasn’t all that much. I was once Grace Darling and then again I was Haile Selassie in a church play.”
    “Haile Selassie?” Goodrich was astounded. He stared at Mrs. Glenwearie, trying vainly to imagine the transformation.
    “It was a long while back,” she told him. “And then I remember my mother being very proud when I was chosen to read Tam O’Shanter at a Burns Supper.”
    Goodrich was fascinated. “Can you remember any of it now, Mrs. Glenwearie?” he asked.
    “The whole lot,” said Mrs. Glenwearie astonishingly. “My favourite bit was:
    ‘She ventur’d forward on the light;
And vow! Tam saw an unco sight!
Warlocks and witches in a dance;
Nae cotillion, brent new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
A winnock-bunker in the east,
There sat auld Nick, in shape o’ beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He screw’d the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl.—’”
     
    She stopped, ash-tray in hand, her cheeks slightly reddened, and exclaimed apologetically, “I was quite swept away there, Mr. Goodrich. You’ll have to forgive me.”
    “Not a bit of it,” said Goodrich. “I enjoyed it.”
    “It’s kind of you to say so, sir,” she told him. “But I’m afraid my style is not what it was.” She paused. “It’s all this talk of plays from Doctor Marsden and the others brought it back to my mind.”
    Goodrich was secretly moved. It seemed to him that Marsden’s presence had fired in some degree everyone with whom he had come in contact. He was suddenly curious to know his housekeeper’s real feeling about Marsden.
    “What do you make of Doctor Marsden?” he asked softly. “Do you like him, Mrs. Glenwearie?”
    Mrs. Glenwearie looked away from him and out through one of the windows. “It’s not for me to say, sir,” she said. “But since you’ve asked me I would say he’s a very unusual gentleman. My dear mother would have called him a kind of hutherer.”
    Goodrich was baffled. “What is a hutherer?” he asked.
    “It’s just,” said Mrs. Glenwearie, “och I don’t rightly know how to explain it. Just a hutherer, that’s all.” She was silent for a moment then became very brisk. “Mr. Goodrich, dear, I’m forgetting your tea. I’ll go and get it.” The subject was obviously closed.
    Goodrich felt somewhat lost. He felt he should say something in a different vein. “How is your niece?” he asked. “I trust she’s better now.”
    “Poor lass,” she said. “She’s a bit better this summer but it’s been a great worry for my sister and her husband. In fact my sister’s ailing herself.”
    “If there’s anything I can do, Mrs. Glenwearie, any financial help or anything of that sort, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Goodrich. It’s very kind of you,” said Mrs. Glenwearie and bustled from the room, taking with her Grace Darling, Haile Selassie and Tam O’Shanter.

7
     
     
    The incongruous triggers of the day—comic and serious—evoked an involuted spectre in Goodrich’s mind and he dreamt that night he stood at a wall overlooking a wide and deep terrain. The light was uncertain. It may have been close to nightfall or it may have been the approaches of dawn. He had come there to meet someone he had known in some buried or vague connection a long time ago. Someone who had been blind, a blind woman he surmised. He himself at this moment could not see her because of the peculiar light in which he was steeped. But he felt all of a sudden that their positions were reversed and the blind woman could see him; something had happened to her across the years since they