An Audience of Chairs

by Joan Clark

  Bun is grinning at Murdoch, not because he likes what he hears but because he correctly guessed why Murdoch wanted to see him first. “You talk as if the farmhouse is yours,” he says. “I thought it was your sister’s.”

  “It is, but I’m her executor and financial adviser.”

  “Financial adviser,” Bun says in a smartass tone Murdoch dislikes. “Of what, may I ask?”

  Murdoch decides Davina was probably right when she called Bun a leech. Think of the free room and board he’s getting, she said, while he figures out a way to get his hands on Moranna’s property.

  His wife has a chip on her shoulder with regard to some men, the result, Murdoch knows, of her old man running off with a divorcee he met at bingo when Davina was a girl, leaving her mother to raise Davina and her brothers on her own. Recently Murdoch saw a photograph of her father in the Cape Breton Post taken some fifty years ago when he was one of a dozen miners standing outside the Princess Colliery grinning at the camera. Although the photograph was grainy and coarse, it clearly showed Davina inherited her good looks from the man she hated. Murdoch can remember walking down Black Point Road to court Davina, sitting beside her on the cliff edge near the minehead on an abandoned car seat, brown waves breaking on the rocks below their feet while behind them her mother watched from the trailer window. He can remember walking back along Pitt Street, looking across the tufted expanse of humped land to the town hall, the brightly painted church spires poking up from the sheltering trees, and thinking how uplifting it felt to be walking home. It felt like he was walking uphill although in fact he was on level ground. It seems to Murdoch that his wife never lost the feeling of walking uphill, that their entire married life has been spent living down a childhood on Black Point Road. She will sometimes mention how Moranna looked down on her and her best friend, Pearl Davis, now Pearl Demarco, when they were girls. She has never forgiven those childhood slights in spite of the fact that she and Pearl have done better for themselves than Moranna—Davina has the decorating business and Pearl a successful beauty parlour.

  Forcing down another mouthful of beer, Murdoch tells Bun that after Duncan left his sister, their father deeded the farmhouse to her and set up a trust fund. It was modest but because she never used it, the interest has accrued to become a considerable sum. “Moranna pretends she doesn’t have money and likes to think she earns her keep by selling those wooden people.”

  “She does earn her keep,” Bun says, “and that’s important to her. It’s one of the things that keeps her going.”

  “But I pay the taxes.”

  “From her trust fund.”

  “Of course. Plus, I’ve given her a lot of help.” Murdoch resents Bun’s boldness. He acts as if he knows Moranna better than her own brother does. “I’ve bailed her out of many a tight spot over the years.”

  “So what you want from me is to convince her to sell out to this Dutch developer. Have I got that right?”

  “You could say that.” Murdoch squirms at the baldness of the admission.

  Bun is more aggressive than his laid-back manner suggests. He’s obviously fond of Moranna and likely thinks of himself as her protector, a position that at his father’s request, Murdoch once reluctantly took on, and has stuck with ever since through thick and thin. He has no intention of telling Bun what a burden it’s been having a prodigal sister who went off and did what suited her fancy while he worked hard and stayed out of trouble. Precious little he has to show for all those years of shouldering the family responsibilities, including the business. People think he’s loaded, that when the superstores forced him out of business, he got out of it with a huge chunk of cash. If only it were true. The fact is that he only got enough out of the deal to pay off the mortgage, buy Davina the Toyota 4X, the bungalow in North Sydney and make a few other investments. No money for a trip to England, which, Davina says, most people want to visit at least once in their lives. His wife views trips the way she views reading current books, as a way of keeping up her end of the conversation at dinner parties where there are potential clients she wants to impress.

  Realizing Bun has said something he didn’t catch, Murdoch asks him to repeat it.

  “How would you gain from the sale? What would be in it for you?”

  “It isn’t just the money,” Murdoch says, although he would of course charge a well-earned handling fee. “It’s a matter of principle and common sense.”

  When Bun says nothing, Murdoch changes his tack.

  “The fact is my sister is depreciating the property by advertising herself as a nutcase.”

  Bun winces. “Surely, eccentric would be kinder.”

  Murdoch waves a hand. “Call it what you want. You’re not here in the summer to see the crazy signs she nails to the trees at the entrance to the driveway, Only Smelly Goats Allowed. WC Unavailable. Weirdos Welcome. No Gurus Permitted. Politicians Stay Away. And most ridiculous of all, Entrance Fee $1.00.”

  “I’ve seen the signs,” Bun says. “They’re stored here in the barn.”

  But Murdoch won’t be stopped. “It’s preposterous to expect potential customers to pay to see your merchandise,” he says. During one of Davina’s dinner parties, her business partner expressed the opinion that charging admission to possible buyers was counterproductive. Janine has never actually seen Moranna’s carved figures although she’s been to Baddeck many times. Lowering her voice so the other dinner guests wouldn’t hear, she confessed to Murdoch that out of consideration for “her two dearest friends,” she hadn’t gone inside his sister’s house.

  Bun says, “Moranna regards it as a gallery, and some galleries, I’m told, charge an admission fee.”

  “My God, man, a bunch of wooden people is hardly a gallery.” Murdoch is offended by the fact that many of his sister’s wooden figures are supposed to represent his dead ancestors. He’s heard the stories she makes up about them which, like their great-aunt’s, are outright lies and an insult to the forebears who came before them. In his view the stories are nobody’s business but the family’s, certainly not the public’s business. He wouldn’t be surprised to see himself on the veranda one of these days. He’s tired of his sister playing the loony. She’s more or less better, well, she’s still wingy, but why does she flaunt it?

  “Wingy” is the word Ginger uses. Once in a while, she’ll ask, “How’s your wingy sister, Dad?” Murdoch knows he doesn’t need to answer and that Moranna has become something of a joke his daughter uses to tease him when she thinks he’s being a stuffed shirt.

  “You’ve been upstairs?” Murdoch says.

  “Sure.”

  “Then you’ve seen the state it’s in. Dust, cobwebs, filthy windows, peeling wallpaper and paint. The upstairs hasn’t seen a broom in years. And that unfinished wall between the kitchen and bedroom with the polyethylene nailed to the studs is an eyesore. I shudder when I think how this old farmhouse has been devalued. If we don’t take advantage of this opportunity, we’ll eventually have to pay someone to take the place off our hands. This is the property the developer wants, not only for the location but because six acres is enough land for him to put in a tennis court and a mini-golf course.”

  “And where would Moranna live? Somehow I can’t see her living in a condo.”

  “There would be enough money to build her a small house up the road. I’ve checked and there’s a half-acre for sale near the college. She’d like that. She’s often said she’d like to take Gaelic courses at St. Ann’s. And there would be money left to buy bonds.”

  “Bonds she doesn’t want and doesn’t need.”

  Bun has gone too far. It’s true that he’s given Moranna a lot of moral support, but as far as Murdoch is concerned, he’s an outsider. He doesn’t know Moranna as well as he thinks and he certainly doesn’t know what she used to be like. For years she was absolutely and impossibly mad, riding the ferries, hiding in the cellar, wandering around the island outlandishly dressed, shouting at people and getting up to all kinds of trouble
: tying up the postman, making off with twin girls, using foul language, it was one embarrassment after another.

  Murdoch gets up and, returning the beer can to the carton, says, “Thanks for the beer. I think I’ll drop in on my sister now.”

  “You do that,” Bun says. “But if I were you I wouldn’t push selling this place. She depends on it to keep her balance.”

  Presumptuous twit. Murdoch opens the door.

  “Be careful,” Bun says. “For some reason she thinks the sun shines out of your ass.”

  Murdoch dismisses the remark with a shrug. What a mistake it was to think he could get Bun on his side. But what could you expect from a man with grey hair tied in a ponytail and a tattoo on his arm?

  By the time Murdoch’s finished talking to Bun and is on his way to see his sister, the laundry’s done and what isn’t hanging on the rope line behind the stove is draped over the backs of chairs. Removing a wet nightgown from a rocker, Moranna urges her brother to sit. She sits opposite, brushing the end of her braid against her mouth to soothe herself because by now she’s anxious. What were the two men talking about for so long? If it had anything to do with her, Murdoch should have spoken to her first.

  Before she can ask what they were discussing, Murdoch helps himself to a slice of buttered bread from the plate on the cluttered table. One thing he can say about Moranna is that she makes good bread. Davina never makes it, although he gave her a bread-making machine a few Christmases ago.

  “There’s soup.”

  “I’ll pass. My stomach’s not feeling too good.” He should have passed up the beer.

  “You don’t look well. Your colour’s poor.” She reaches out to stroke his cheek, but he waves her away and gets right to the point.

  “Yesterday I received a call from a realtor in Sydney, Gayle Ferguson,” he says. “She used to work with Dad’s brothers.”

  “Them,” Moranna says scornfully. “The uncles I never see.”

  Murdoch ignores the comment. “Gayle’s representing a Mr. Van Woek, a Dutch developer whose …”

  “Van Woek. I once knew a Dutch guru by that name.”

  Had Ari become a developer? He might have. Although he portrayed himself as an instrument of God, he’d been attracted to the wealthy, such as the rich benefactor who paid for his accommodation and bought him the white and gold car.

  Murdoch asks if he was from Holland.

  “No, from Sundre, Alberta.”

  “This Van Woek is from Amsterdam.”

  “What’s his first name?”

  “I believe it’s Hugo.”

  “Hugo.”

  “Yes.”

  “The name of the Van Woek I knew was Ari. It’s not the same man.”

  For a few moments, Moranna is silent and Murdoch thinks she must be thinking of the other Dutchman. To bring her back to the subject, he says, “The point is that the developer is interested in buying this piece of property and is prepared to pay big bucks for it.”

  “If he lives in Amsterdam, how would he know about this property?”

  “Apparently he’s driven all over Nova Scotia looking for land and this particular property, Gayle says, is the one he wants.”

  “Well, it’s not for sale.”

  Murdoch puts a hand on the pain in his midriff. Davina’s right, he probably has an ulcer in the early stages.

  “You’d be passing up a lot of money, maybe as much as three hundred thousand dollars.”

  Moranna says, “Money’s of little interest to me.”

  “That’s because you’ve been looked after all you’re life.” Murdoch knows his words will cause a rift, but he’s fed up with his sister’s cavalier attitude toward money.

  “That’s enough!” Moranna says. “This is my house and I don’t want you in it!” She bares her teeth, shoving her face so close to Murdoch’s that he feels a spray of saliva and recoils. Marching into the bathroom and slamming the door, she begins running bath water.

  Murdoch knows better than to tap on the bathroom door and apologize. An apology is wasted on Moranna, who rarely apologizes. Resigned to defeat, he makes his flat-footed way to the door and gets into the car. Driving back to Sydney Mines, he tries to console himself with the thought that he’s always tried his best to help his sister and it’s not his fault she refuses to consider a sound business deal that would make her life easier, not to mention his own.

  Moranna seldom thinks of Ari Van Woek, but in bed that night, long after she and Bun talked about her brother’s visit, she thinks of the guru. Beside her, Bun is asleep but Moranna is wakeful, reflective. Every once in a while, her mind slogs through her breakdown, as if she needs to review those dark years in order to prove to herself how much better she is, and that she will never again succumb to full-blown madness but will somehow be able to stop herself from sliding into the slough of despond.

  She remembers when she showed up at White Point Beach Lodge after learning Duncan had taken the children to Toronto, she found Ari in the dining room with his followers, dressed in the same white clothes he’d been wearing when he picked her up on the roadside that morning. Although she didn’t think of it at the time, she now realizes the guru probably positioned himself with his back against the dining-room window, knowing the golden rays of sunlight would make an aureole of his hair. Two young women stood on either side of the entrance to the dining room. They looked so regal in their long white dresses and long blond hair that at first Moranna didn’t recognize them as the girls who had been sleeping in the back seat of the car earlier that day.

  She recalls how Ari waited until every eye in the room was fixed on him and only then did he begin speaking in his deliberate, subdued manner, fully aware of the seductive power of his voice. He said everyone in the room had gathered at the lodge for the sole purpose of finding a higher consciousness. Most people, he said, moved through their lives in an unconscious state, not knowing there was a higher consciousness and that only when they lived in full consciousness would they know the truth. In order to find true peace and harmony with others, they had to surrender themselves with total honesty and complete abandon. This required constancy of purpose and a devotion to seek the truth. Moranna was to discover Ari was skilled at saying the same thing over and over without seeming repetitious, but the first night she didn’t hear most of what he had to say because having spotted a cavernous sofa beside the fireplace in the adjacent lounge, she curled up on its soft cushions and went to sleep.

  Later that evening, she was provided a long white dress and assigned a cabin with the two girls, Yvonne and Norma. One of Ari’s many dictates was that the three of them not reveal their past or their innermost selves to one another. It was important, he said, that his helpers, as distinct from his followers, guard their secrets, except from him. Moreover, they were not to leave the grounds, which suited Moranna. Since arriving at White Point Beach, she had not once heard Dr. Ridley’s voice, a sign that she had managed to elude the KGB.

  On her third night at the resort, she was summoned to Ari’s cabin and told to make herself comfortable on the bed. When she was settled, he sat beside her on a chair. Leaning forward as he had in the car, he held her with his lion gaze and commanded her, albeit gently, to tell him what was troubling her. She couldn’t say. Her mind was an incomprehensible babble of disappeared children, Russian spies, absent husband, hypodermic needles and being followed. When he realized she wouldn’t talk, Ari stood up and announced that it was time for the purification ceremony, which was nothing more than shower sex. Soaping Moranna all over, he put his tongue against the roof of her mouth and rammed her against the tiles. Moranna remembers little of these encounters except the cool surveillance of his eyes.

  Being Ari’s helper meant providing sex, doing his laundry and collecting tithes at public meetings, which were held in Bridgewater, Truro, New Glasgow, Antigonish and North Sydney. Ari’s benefactor made the travel and accommodation arrangements and looked after publicity. As the cavalcade moved through No
va Scotia, attendance grew. By the time it reached North Sydney, at least three hundred were expected to attend and the Forum was booked for several nights. Ari insisted meetings run three or four nights in order to bring in as many newcomers as possible and to allow each and every one of them to tell him their stories before he imparted his wisdom about seeking truth through exploring the higher consciousness.

  Moranna was standing on one side of the door of the North Sydney Forum, a white sweater over her dress—an October chill was in the air—Norma was on the other side of the door and, like Moranna, was collecting the five-dollar entrance fee Ari called a tithe. A burly man with a grizzled crewcut and florid cheeks handed Moranna a bill and bellowed, “Well, if it isn’t Ian MacKenzie’s daughter!” It was Roddy McNeil, the man she’d been strongly attracted to when he made deliveries to her father’s store. “What in the name of God are you doing here?” Moranna was more surprised than embarrassed. Although the Forum was close to Sydney Mines, she hadn’t expected to meet anyone from her hometown. After all, wasn’t she disguised as a vestal virgin?

  She left the cavalcade that night, not only because she’d been recognized by Roddy and wanted to avoid being recognized again, but also because she had been jolted out of her stupor and realized Ari was a fake. A woman sitting near the stage had stood up partway through the evening and in a strident voice demanded to know if Ari was married and the father of four children. She said she had attended one of his meetings in Red Deer, Alberta, two years earlier when his wife was present. She glanced at the vestal virgins standing at the back and asked if it was it true that he was married. As usual, Ari took his time answering. Finally he admitted that yes, he was married and the father of four children, but that marriage was only one kind of union, that in the search for truth people experienced other kinds of marriage that involved a union of mind, body and spirit.