Imagined Corners. Willa Muir

So he gazed out of the window, meditating on his sermon and on Ned.

      ‘Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.’ That was his text. The thought which had arisen in his mind that morning had given it a new aspect; he was looking at it from a longer perspective. Instead of being an absolute virtue forgiveness was merely a second-best, a concession to ordinary flesh and blood which was too imperfect to enter at once into the full peace of God. That blessed state, he thought, could not be conveyed in words alone to those who had never experienced it; but perhaps it could be transmitted by contagion…. It was a state of fearless trust in the love of God, a fearless acceptance of the universe, acceptance without criticism, without fear of criticism, without self-consciousness. But most of us, he thought, live on the defensive; we live as if under a jealous and critical eye. ‘Thou God seest me.’ For such timid creatures the leap into the infinite space of God’s love is too great; small fears must first be cast out, small encouragements given. That was the purport of his text: to cast out people’s fear of each other, as a step on the way to boundless trust in God.

      Ned was clearly an extreme instance of human mistrust. He filled the world with the shapes of his fear. Every act, every word, every inflection of other people’s voices he construed as hostile; kind words appeared as hypocrisy, kindly services as specious intrigue. His fears were so monstrous that mere persuasion could not dispel them; he must be cured by the greater force, the more absolute revelation. The text was not enough for Ned.

      ‘Did you notice,’ said Sarah, ‘how Ned flared up at me when I told him Mabel wanted him to golf with her? And the things he said about her! But when she came he went off as meekly as a lamb…. I don’t understand it. It seems as if we brought out the very worst in him.’

      Ned’s tirade was still rankling in Sarah’s heart.

      ‘You think I don’t see through you!’ he had shouted when she mentioned the proposed golf match. ‘Low, sneaking cunning,’ he had reiterated. Women were snakes in the grass. All alike. Not one better than another…. On the whole, it was a comfort to Sarah that he had abused Mabel too. But when Mabel appeared, gay and pretty, asking him if he cared to golf, he had become even excessively complaisant. It tortured Sarah to think that Mabel could succeed where she had failed.

      ‘No, no,’ said William, turning round. ‘We don’t bring out the worst in him. He fears us less than other people, that’s all. Other people impose a constraint on him. Don’t let such ideas discourage you. Go to bed now and sleep a little.’

      ‘What are you going to do?’ Sarah still lingered as if there were something left unsaid. She did not herself know what it was.

      ‘I shall visit Ann Watson,’ said the minister. ‘Go to bed now.’

      Reluctantly Sarah withdrew, reminding herself again that she ought to feel grateful to Mabel.

      William walked slowly by unfrequented by-roads towards the house where Ann Watson lay in bed. The sand-scoured, windswept little streets were filled with clear light; everything was sharply focussed as if seen through a reducing lens; above the plain grey-stone houses the sky was pale and remote. Clear and thin and sharp as the air were the voices of the passers-by, for the Calderwick dialect is born in the teeth of an east wind that keeps mouths from opening wide enough to give resonance to speech. The shrill almost falsetto tones pierced the minister’s meditations; he ceased to think about the peace of God, and remembered the querulous voice of Ann Watson. In spite of himself, his heart sank a little at the thought of the close-lipped, tight-fisted old woman. He turned a corner into a cobbled lane, at the end of which the Watsons’ house stood at right angles to the others, enclosed by a fence and presenting a blank wall to the street. Here Ann and Mary Watson had been born, and here they would die. Here as children they had played among the cobbles, like the children playing there that day. The minister paused to watch half-a-dozen little girls who were rushing, with screams of simulated terror, towards another girl standing by herself in the middle of the lane.

      ‘Mither! Mither!’ they shrieked. ‘I’m feared!’

      ‘Tits!’ said the ‘mother’, ‘it’s just yer faither’s breeks. Away ye go!’

      Back they all rushed pell-mell to the Watsons’ gateway.

      ‘What are you playing at?’ inquired William, laughing.

      The girls crowded together shyly and looked at him.

      ‘Bogey in the press,’ one of them suddenly spoke up.

      ‘And is this the press?’ he pointed to the gate.

      They nodded, giggling.

      ‘Oh, well,’ said William, ‘I don’t mind the bogey. I’m going right into the press; look at this.’

      He opened the gate and went into the garden, followed by an outburst of disconcerting childish laughter.

      My bogey is just as much of a fabrication as theirs, thought William, walking along the narrow paved path to the front door. Why did children like to frighten themselves?

      He lifted the big knocker and rapped it firmly before he noticed that the door was ajar. A shrill scream sounded within the house, and he took it as a command to come in. He pushed the door open and saw across the kitchen another open door leading into Ann’s bedroom. She was half sitting up in bed, so that she had a clear view of the kitchen.

      ‘Oh, it’s you, minister! Come away in. Have you seen that lassie o’ mine?’

      The minister looked round the kitchen as if the lassie might be hiding somewhere.

      ‘She’s awa’ oot half-an-hour syne to go to the baker’s; set her up with her gallivanting,’ said Ann, still stretching her neck towards the kitchen. ‘I’ll give her a flea in her lug – Oh, there you are, you good-for-nothing jaud!’

      A sulky-looking girl bounced in past the minister, and set two loaves of bread on the dresser.

      ‘Dinna leave the bread there!’ screamed Ann. ‘Put it in the bread crock. And see that you put the lid on right.’

      The minister advanced and sat down on a horse-hair chair beside the bed.

      ‘You wouldna believe it,’ went on Ann in the same high scream, ‘what I have to suffer. Folk just take a pleasure in spiting me. I canna trust that lassie to do a thing right.’

      A loud rattling from the kitchen fireplace answered her.

      ‘What are you doing there?’ cried Ann.

      The minister got up and shut the bedroom door.

      ‘I don’t like to see you worried, Miss Watson,’ he said. ‘Never mind the lassie. It’s you I’ve come to see.’

      ‘It’s all very well to say never mind the lassie,’ grumbled Ann; ‘if I didna keep an eye on her she would have everything going to rack and ruin. And she puts things where I canna bear them to be, just to spite me. And my sister Mary’s every bit as bad. You wouldna believe it, but yestreen she changed every stick o’ furniture in the kitchen, till I was nearly blue in the face. I kept that kitchen for years, and I kept father’s auld chair in its right place beside the dresser, but last night nothing wad please her but to have it out at the cheek o’ the fire for her to sit in. I tell you, I’ve made Teenie put it back beside the dresser, and there it’ll bide. We’ll see what my lady has to say till’t when she comes hame.’

      ‘But if Miss Mary wants to sit in it—’

      ‘She’ll no’ sit in it! Na, she’ll no’ sit in it! The shop’s hers, but the house is mine, and I’ll no’ put up with interference. Day in, day out, I’ve had to mind the house while she was fleein’ all over the town enjoying herself; she needna think she’s to have everything her own way here as well as outside. I may be bedridden, but I’m no’ done for yet.’

      Ann nodded her head vehemently, and drew down her upper lip. She had forgotten the minister and was carrying on an inaudible