Black Marsden (6 page)

Then as he moved finally and withdrew from the room with a sense of powerful dejection, he recalled the fissure or crack or breach he had sensed before in the bandaged head of stillness. There was, after all, this fissure or crack within the womb of implacable illusion that enveloped him, stunned him. There was this dawning thread of complex consciousness woven into every intensity of fabric—complex shores and biases of memory. Easter Island enigma of birth—every lighthouse of soul—on the shores of Scotland and around the globe.

He set out on one of his favourite walks from Trinity to
Cramond;
descended through Starbank Park into Starbank Road; the sea stretched before him. Occasional rags lay at the water’s edge beneath the sea wall like disembowelled toys over and beyond which the wings of sea-gulls flashed in the sun, settling in the water and on a ruffled day like this, with a gentle wind and hardly a cloud in the sky, seeming to roll or sail tenderly upon the purest green and blue reflected marbles.

He set out along Starbank Road upon the pavement that ran close to the wall. There were houses close to the footpath on the other side of the street and on a wild blowing day when the tide was full the spray would fly toward them from the sea.

He came to Granton Road and was steeped once again in the senses of the neighbourhood, antennae toward past times: past moorings and harbours and custom houses: the spectral feeling which both modern and ancient Edinburgh aroused in him as no other city did. Was it a reticent self-deceiving, self-revealing film of time blowing still, not yet settled into oblivion? The lines ran in his head:

He struck away from the water’s edge now along West
Granton
Road, past a Ministry of Labour Training Centre and the Granton Gas Works, and towards the playing fields which
bordered
Silverknowes Road.

Every time he came this way he delighted afresh in the open sky which sometimes appeared to him to knit itself into
everything
—into grey brick and green tree and into an everchanging mirror of space and water (where the city ran to meet the sea) as the days lengthened towards the summer solstice and the nights shortened into unpredictable spray of stars, veiled or unveiled galaxies.

Was it, Goodrich wondered, because of that texture of sky that Edinburgh was regarded as a masculine city? Was it that open sky which accentuated the vertically of every spire or monument raised by man or nature?

He made his way now along Silverknowes Road back to the water’s edge and dawdled along the foreshore to Cramond. The blue, green waves curled into animated frescoes of memory that seemed to reach towards Harp’s horizons and lakes across the Atlantic: to reach also farther south into the South Americas—South American savannahs pasted upon the globe like an abstract realm within fiery longitudes.

He recalled the sky-line of Edinburgh which he had seen for the first time, he believed, from the vicinity of the disused quarry of Craigleith. It had been a clear day like this and upon the slate of time one could see spires, the hunched back of Arthur’s Seat and the Castle.

He recalled also a view of the Lawnmarket from the roof of St. Giles Cathedral and the rock ridge with its pattern of the Old Town accentuated against the sea of the sky.

All these vistas seemed to curl and uncurl now into ebbing and flowing waves or tides. The sea of the sky reached everywhere, spires and rocks seemed equally fraught with energies that shot upwards but witnessed to an inherent spatial design, geology of psyche.

He was so immersed in the depth of the present and the recollections of the past that he stumbled into a tiny rivulet running to the sea. A soaked page of newspaper lay on the ground with glaring headlines on sewage pollution beyond Cramond.
Beyond
Cramond
,
thought Goodrich. Not far from here. It seemed incredible. Near and yet far in an abstract haze of sun, rain and cloud mingling far away all of a sudden. A blissful paradox sealed his senses at that moment, an inner peace almost despite ominous headlines; he was lost again in
contemplating
distances. In contemplating the engineering marvel of the Firth of Forth Bridge which arched into the sky and across frescoes of water.

*

Goodrich arrived at last at Cramond and ascended the steps from the foreshore into the ordered village with its exquisite houses laid out like a child’s beautiful overgrown toys in which it seemed a marvel that flesh-and-blood lived. He passed the ancient church on the site of a Roman settlement before coming to a bus stop.

Then the scene changed as the bus bore him out of the village passing a row of rather uniform-looking cottages on the right hand, open grounds on the left, into a great sweeping stretch of countryside dotted with occasional formal gardens and
individual
houses followed by a golf course and open lands running up to Lauriston Castle. Now he was back in Edinburgh proper, driving through rows of neat houses and shops; along
Queensferry
Road, through Blackhall to Dean Bridge where he alighted from the bus.

Staring after the back of the bus which quickly vanished over the bridge Goodrich thought of the driver’s licence he possessed which had lapsed many years ago; later—though he had come into a lot of money—he was still apathetic about owning a car. He was a great walker; sometimes he would walk many miles, hop upon a bus, get off and walk again, savour every patch of wall or field or sky. Immerse himself in every historical scarecrow like a rich tramp. When he felt more luxuriously inclined he would hire a car and a chauffeur for the day, make for himself a swifter patchwork cloak, patchwork miles.

He raised himself up now and peered over the Dean Bridge at the steep and narrow valley of the Water of Leith. Many a poor devil had taken his life here—leapt from this bridge; leapt from Sky into Creek, sudden pouring light into inexplicable darkness; suspended pawn in the workshop of the gods. The thought fascinated him—the thought of a woven texture or chessboard of visibles and invisibles: the thought that
here
,
somewhere out
there
in space beneath him were squares of light and darkness in which something moved, disappeared, pawn or knight moved, bishop or king disappeared. Something moved, reappeared, flashed again, darkened….

In his diary of infinity Goodrich had been constructing for many years a diagram to symbolize his existences on earth through intensities of love and hate. For one lived many lives, died many deaths through others. There was a renascence or flowering, or a deeper accent of eclipse upon buried personalities—actors in a tabula rasa drama—in every encounter one enjoyed or endured. Something died. Something was born. Each element of participation carried within it new and undreamt-of senses or constellations.

Goodrich knew the Dean Bridge quite well and loved the view when he looked into the valley. Nothing perverse. He had no intention of leaping there himself. Nor was he morbidly held by past suicides, poor guardian angels roped to poorer unguarded devils sentenced by fate. Yet he was intuitively aware of
enigmatic
squares of suspended darkness and lights knitted into the pawn of himself (the knight, bishop, king, child of dreams in himself)—his own voluntary and involuntary chessboard.

As he looked over the bridge with the occasional rumble of a vehicle in his back he saw
not
ruined man, doomed men dropping below but a curious self-portrait of himself aged five standing (or drawn) within one of those squares of light or darkness, suspended dark sentence, suspended light arena of judgement. It was a traumatic target, traumatic suspension, naïve, enigmatic grieving child with the head of lost and found men on his shoulders, lost and found self-judge, lost and found self-judged.

He was five when his stepfather Rigby vanished in the
heartland
of Brazil. Vanished into a square of Bastard Sky or Creek as Harp’s father Hornby had vanished. No wonder, Goodrich mused, when he met Harp they had taken to one another like a house on fire, like lost brothers and the shadow of a curious host spectre enveloped them. They were drawn to each other upon the same square as it were—tabula rasa slate inserted into the globe.

The strength of coincidence now seemed a property of bias. Biased property one was inclined to say. Hornby and Rigby Ltd. Goodrich could not help marvelling in himself as he stared into the distant Water of Leith. Life was stranger than property. His stepfather Rigby had vanished in Brazil the very year, the very day Hornby and Hornby had established a pattern of legend in the Arctic. It was a judgement and equally acquittal of intuitive spaces knitted into the globe. It was an intimate parallel, Pole and Equator.

Rigby was a temperamental Scot who had made or lost
fortunes
in a year or a day. When he was down-and-out he knew how to scrape the bottom of the barrel. He knew how to make ends meet. (It was a lesson Goodrich’s mother had never
forgotten
when hard times descended upon them and Rigby vanished.) When he was well off he knew how to spend magnanimously, wholeheartedly. He made loyal friends and bitter enemies. On his disappearance it was rumoured there was more to his death than met the eye. Rumour had it he had killed a man in
self-defence,
killed one of his Brazilian mates, and that the rest had turned on him, crazed by the jungle, tried him, sentenced him and hanged him. A crude and bitter tale. A tale that was
consistent
nevertheless with a man or a god who lived extremes, extreme existences on earth.

A tale that grew into a legend until it eclipsed all reasonable fact. But what are or were reasonable facts? Had Rigby
quarrelled
with his mates? Had he left them? Had he plunged towards the Orinoco or the Amazon? Had he advanced alone into the depths of the Bush? Advanced into a pawn of the elements, claustrophobic fire, claustrophobic noons, suns, claustrophobic waterfalls, precipices of sunset, tropics of night? …

A lorry passed on the Dean Bridge. And Goodrich lit a cigarette. He smoked rarely. Stubbed it out. It tasted like a rag….

On the book of Sky and Creek he now drew and sketched himself afresh aged five. In that sketch or square he uprooted the rain, the snow, uprooted the Equator, uprooted the Poles. Space age five.

“What I am sketching,” Goodrich addressed his spectre of infinity in the sleeve of earth, roped to the sky of his mind, “is a kind of cartoon I suppose. Forgive me for taking such liberties, O Spectre. I am sure there are multiplications of laughter in the workshop of the gods, divine cartoons of absurd bliss.

“Now take me at age five. That age is out there now. There are other ages, of course, I could sketch of the child in one’s heart or head. But the one I am now looking at is square five into which my stepfather vanished when I was five years old. Harp’s father too. Rigby and Hornby Ltd. What an
establishment
or property of consciousness. Muse of adventure.

“So that while it is pointless denying the sentence of the muse written into the elements, snow, ice, fire, water—while it is pointless denying this, it is justifiable, on the other hand, to dream of acquittal through a phenomenon or family tree, Brother Snow, Brother Fire. In the comedy of an interfused reading of the elements a capacity for genesis is born or reborn within us: a capacity to re-sensitize our base relations, Brother Cruelty, Brother Hate—to re-sensitize our biased globe into moveable squares within and beyond every avalanche of greed or despair: re-sensitize phenomenon fire through
caveats
of ice, phenomenon snow through
caveats
of fire, to re-sensitize the phenomenon of the Equator within each crystal flower at the Poles….”

“Damn you!” A raucous quavering shout came. “Damn you.” A car ground to a halt. Goodrich leapt. “Are you mad?” cried the voice. “What in heaven’s name are you at? How could you … how could you step back like that off the pavement on to the road?” The driver was furious.

“I am sorry,” said Goodrich. The voice barked afresh, angry eyes glared afresh. Then the car moved on, a brisk trail of inquisitive vehicles followed, vanished over the bridge and left Goodrich stunned, desolate. He had earned the rebuke. His spectre of infinity collapsed at his feet and lay in ruins like a beautiful imaginary pack of cards strewn everywhere; knights and kings and bishops, spades, diamonds, hearts, clubs all on their backside on the road.

He could have been lying there now himself. Imagine that. Run over by that car. He had indeed absentmindedly stepped back on to the road. It was true. If he had been run over would he have had a flashing moment of respite to square the circle upon Sky and Creek? Square Zero? Uprooted end? Uprooted globe?

Clothed in despondency he began to make his way slowly now along the pavement towards the bus stop hidden in a couple of trees at the end of the bridge. Then came the unearthly sound of bagpipes which made him forget himself, stop, listen. Did it rise from the old Dean village? Or did it ascend from far below in the Water of Leith? Or did it come from the city borne across the distance? The thread of music addressed him—thrilled him—immensely plaintive—conjuring up a fire music, a water music. And the fallen bishops, knights, kings, spades, hearts, heads, clubs were singing in space through Harp parallel elements….

The wind blew a straggling portrait of leaves towards him. A taxi was approaching.

“Taxi. Taxi.”

He was whirled over the bridge to the dying chorus of Harp’s unearthly bagpipes.