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Maggie

by

Jurgen

*

Vera incessu patuit dea.

Virgil: Aenead

At the outset of this project of mine, I promised myself something. I promised myself I was going to make a strict no bones ruling with a certain constituency in mind. I would have no truck with any attempt to portray a woman as harbouring an interest in the object for which I have a peculiar weakness. Women just don’t; I won’t have it! I can’t countenance a facile conceit of that sort. That might seem a contradiction on my part when it comes to the matter of Miss Diane – nothing facile about that young lady, quite the reverse. Though likely to raise an eyebrow, the story of the remarkable Miss Mendes would not be flying in the face of fact. Complex yes, mysterious to a degree, but one thing it won’t be is a case of wishes located in a man put into the mouths of women. I am aware how prim and proper I sound on the subject. But, I ask you, what a dreary pack of lies you come across in the mediocre tracts of deviance!

I adopt the above position, I think, on good evidence, take Maggie as example. I am fairly certain that there was no element of cunning whatsoever involved in her getting my attention. She would have been quite taken aback to learn the bare facts of my situation. The very idea of such tendencies were, I'm sure, alien to her way of thinking. But it was the fact of the Selotape, the broad variety, that sealed my belief. By comparison Miss Diane's perceptions were quite out of the ordinary. She had something of the clairvoyant about her, due in part, I think, to growing up in the proximity of a primitive culture.

I made my move one Sunday. It was wet. She was coming out of the chapel. I had the moment before descended from the choir loft. I approached the young lady directly and without a second thought. She told me she came from Perth and right away I saw she would be quite willing to go out with me. Perhaps the chapel thing was a reassurance for her; but, of course, I was highly motivated and it wouldn’t have been hard for her to spot it.

The green was a standard shade, referred to, as I knew it to be in the trade, as apple green. My own thinking on the green of that fabric suggested lewd as the appropriate epithet. She wasn’t exactly pretty, Maggie, and the alterations, which she had effected were offensive to me, and certainly required to be shaken out. What she had done showed a lack of sensitivity to the disproportionate value of her lewd green item of apparel. A pressed fold instead of a neat hem, the bagged weight of the doubled back material lying face to face caused an unsightly flare such that the shortened skirts hung in wayward concave panels. That was more what weighed against her, rather than her looks, and left me with a disappointing impression that Maggie was not a kindred spirit. These facts alone, however, did not overly detract from the encounter or diffuse my interest.

As it happened, I was not averse to the fact that the article was evidently slightly the worse for wear; I could tell at a glance that it was a pedigree item. New, it would have been one hell of a buy. Of course, Maggie wouldn’t have judged it thus or seen what incredible value for money it was. She would certainly never have guessed it was what constituted the powerful draw and defined our conjunction.

I should add this all occurred at a time when such opportunities were becoming rarer, at a point in time, therefore, as one might rightly induce, some years after Miss Mendes took me by storm in a way I would not be likely ever to forget. For those were lavish times.

Whereas with that young lady it was impossible to hide, with Maggie I was quite safe. Although she didn’t happen to be my type, she evidently wasn’t to realise that. Another thing - when getting dressed to go out, she wasn’t adept at making those final adjustments. It was foreign to her, for instance, to ask: “How do I look?” and certainly she gave no hint of having picked up my feverish gaze. Diane, on the contrary was a diviner, a very different thing, incidentally, from claiming she might have entertained the deviant impulses more classically found in the male psyche - that somewhat outlandish assumption! - but it is not to say that the presence of my perversity may not have had a strong resonance for her.

I know, I know, it would be hard to justify my behaviour towards Maggie, except to say it was direct as an instinct in me, or the arrow of desire.

So, it happened all in a flash as soon as I spotted her that wet Sunday morning. She was on the short side and normally I’d never have looked twice. I clocked the clumsy alteration though, saw at once the hem could be let down. That’s where calculation ended, though, because the green was of the essence and the proposition of pleasure it afforded was close to delirium. And now, in the aftermath of my brief encounter with Miss Diane, the excitement of running into Maggie like this was greatly enhanced by my being able to be honest with myself about its abnormality, and in the sabbatical surroundings of chapel services to boot. I stick firmly to the position I laid down at the outset, and indeed this became plain as I got to know her – Maggie had neither any interest in her old waterproof nor inkling of its abnormal allure. Yet it is no contradiction to say that she flaunted herself in front of me. She intoxicated me and blinded me to all other considerations. Of course, it was to end badly.

We went walking together out through the dunes, forgetting about lunch. The overcast sky and a light rain hushed the sound of the sea while the mackintosh protested for attention at every step. She squealed among the dunes when the marram grass pricked her bare legs.

At night the lights twenty miles away on the north shores of the estuary effervesced in the aqueous darkness. Once (I remember the sense of it), the luminous strands and combs of the Aurora Borealis rippled in the invisible tide streams overhead. I could notice those things, but remained cut off from all of it, living under false pretences and disenchanted, as it seemed I was. But that first day we sat to leeward of the land breeze in a ruined shelter watching the muffled grey sea and had nothing to say to each other. It was 1963. The War had been over for eighteen years. It was one hundred and forty years since the invention of the very thing that would afford someone in my circumstances his improper resort.

We saw each other regularly after that, Maggie and I, and before the summer vacation. I kept an eye on the weather. I would wait for her in the hall and listen out for her in order to ascertain the state of affairs before she came into view. When my planning worked things went well. I clocked the fact she apologised for her appearance, and blamed the weather. I detected something I thought half-hearted in her tone, I wondered if she meant it wasn’t necessary to dress up for me, as if she misunderstood my feelings for her. In the cinema she took off her waterproof. I asked would she like me to hold it for her. She thanked me but bundled it up and put it across her knee.

After the pictures one evening we walked west along the beach road under the unconscionable sky. When we were a short distance from the town, I turned and started to kiss her in earnest and she did not object. I kept my eyes wide open and tried to banish for the moment any thought of the four or so inches that had been turned up inside and held in place with the broad strip of Selotape. When we got back to the residence she said she had noticed that things went okay when, as she expressed it, “I don’t bother to doll myself up.” How nice that made her feel, she said. “Maybe this old mac of mine is a lucky charm,” she said with the mock earnestness of superstition. I gave a dismissive laugh, but her having drawn my attention to it, I broached the subject of the hem.
“Just one thing, you’re not to mind my mentioning it. I think you would suit it a little longer.”
She acted as though she thought it a daft idea and called me an “odd one”.
“No really,” I said, for I knew there was at least three inches in it. “Give it to me tonight. I’ll do the necessary.”
She looked at me suspiciously to see if I really meant it, and, reassured that I did: “Okay then,” she said.
“Look,” I said, “you come up to my room at teatime tomorrow and try it on and see what you think. It’ll be a laugh. If you don’t like it you can always change it back.”
“That’s what you said when we met. That was the first thing you said to me.”
“What?”
“‘Look!’ you said. You said, ‘Look! Would you like to go for a walk?’ Remember?”

She took it off and handed over the unbelievable lewd green waterproof and kissed me hurriedly before going up the steps and in, as if something hush-hush were going on from which she rather washed her hands.

In my room I spread my prize out on the bed and brought out the measuring tape my mother had given me. From the nape of the neck to the artificial folded hem it was forty-five inches, little more than a child’s size. From the fold to the true hem a further three inches. I started to remove the Selotape, but it had been in place for a while and was not going to come away that easily. I tried soap, but that was no good. I saw that it would pull away without difficulty from the satinette facing, but was bonded to the rubberised surface. I took a razor blade and released the lumpy arrangement where the revere was taped up vertically. Then very gently started to cut along from underneath. This way I freed the taped-up inches but left a thin strip of the transparent tape six inches up on the rubber surface. Now I was faced with two tasks: one was to get the rubber free from the remaining tape, and the other job was to try to iron out the fold three inches up from the true hem. Before going ahead I examined the coat more closely. The six inches of rubber proofing which had been turned in on itself was in better condition than the expanse that came into contact with Maggie’s dress or jumper. I confirmed the unexceptionable quality of design by the depth of the original glued hem. This was a quarter of an inch, the same as the hem at the sleeves. It was a single breasted raglan-sleeved mackintosh with a proper, should I not say circumspect , collar, neatly made pockets and five buttons with little transparent backing buttons by way of reinforcement. The seams were taped with double sided half-inch rubberised tape. There were small breathing holes situated just below where the sleeves met the bodice. The coat had a neat buggy lining in its own fabric and again the opposing rubber surfaces inside the buggy were in tiptop condition. The belt had a plain dark green plastic or Bakelite buckle. And at last I had discovered its name: Kelvinette Rainwear.

Before proceeding with a fuller exploration I had to solve the problems remaining of getting shot off the blessed Selotape. Ironing was, of course, out of the question as was the use of a solvent that might damage the rubber. Soaking in very warm water eventually released the crackly old Selotape. I reckoned that time might efface the fold. If I hung the coat up with things to weight it down attached to the hem by clothes pegs, that would help.

It was late when I proceeded to the final examination. In short, this was a matter of establishing rightful ownership. The criteria were as follows. One consideration was that of value: who set most store by it. When judged by that standard there was no competition. Maggie would have been happier with a smart gabardine coat, oh not me!

The degree of pleasure derived was what was at issue here. Well then, Maggie gave not the slightest clue that her “old mac”, as she called it, pleased her at all.

Then there was a question of familiarity. Who knew the most, who had troubled themselves to study it in more detail? A little teatime quiz tomorrow would add spice to settling that one. And, of course, mine is instant accurate recognition – no competition there!

Who had the greater need of a ladies’ lewd green rubber mackintosh – that was the critical factor and outweighed every other consideration practical and moral. The impropriety of that need certainly did little to stop the scales tipping in my favour. What risks did she run to acquire a garment customarily considered appropriate to her gender? Whereas I, in the course of my clandestine pursuits, had suffered many a red face.

And finally there was the servicing of that need and so that would have to be addressed to put everything beyond doubt where the question of ownership was to be determined. Admittedly things were not out in the open and that was a factor that weighed against me. But you don’t meet a Diane Mendez every day!

Yes, it had been a long drawn out affair, but I guess I had moved steadily towards my goal and now I found myself alone with the mackintosh that Maggie had naively put my way, and was within an ace of my achievement. What is more I had furthered my claim to ownership by altering it. It was now a full-blown forty-eight inch lewd green Kelvinette Rainwear ladies’ waterproof - perfectly reliable, as the adverts in the Glasgow Herald used to say - and the night was still young.

Maggie came up in the lift around five. I went into the pantry and tea was quickly infused. I had bought a marzipan cake. She had got good grades in Latin and been welcomed into the Honours class. This news obviously took priority with her. When we’d had her tea, “Well,” she said, “I’m ready for the fitting!”

I acted as if it had slipped my mind and pretended to enjoy her humour; but I appreciated her initiative. I went to the wardrobe and brought it out. In the early morning, after dawn, I had washed that precise mackintosh extremely thoroughly. It would look good to anyone’s eyes and the rubber surface had a new even dullness to it, which to my sensibilities was beguiling in the extreme.
“Oo!” she said, “You’ve been a busy boy. You can have the job!” She examined the hem. The fold was still quite noticeable.
“Let’s see,” I said, making to help her on with it.
She put it on in front of the mirror and did up the belt. “Oh too long!” And true enough; she was somewhat drenched in it.
But I stood behind her in some state of anticipation and together we watched the reflection of the young woman in my ladies’ waterproof. Involuntarily I began to adjust the folds that fell from the belt. Her hand felt for me. “Oh!” she said. In Maggie's mouth the experience of brushing up against the unexpected, came over as academic, perhaps clinching for her a little caesura in a textual study of Ovid about a shepherd boy and a honey pot. Yet I couldn’t help sensing an accusation. But needs must. I put my hand on top of hers. In the mirror on the wardrobe door both people seemed to be uncertain what they were looking for.
“You’re blushing.” she said.
I said, as if changing the subject, airily, “Did you know your raincoat was Kelvinette?”
“Oh you’re so shy!” she said and turned away from the mirror and kissed me.
I took her to the bed for her recompense.

Our last date was during the summer vacation. She had taken up my suggestion with alacrity and come all the way from Perth in the train. We went to the Empress Ballroom in the docks area. We sat at a table, me with my Brylcremed hair, in my single-breasted charcoal Daks and Cecil Gee cream nylon shirt with a square ended tie woven from garish artificial threads, which my military uncle condemned as something he would expect a black to go out in for a night on the town. She had on a black taffeta dress with flared skirt. It had an appliqué pattern formed of tiny gilt beads. She asked for an orange and I ordered a whisky with a chaser in the form of a diminutive bottle of Fowler’s which my cronies had extolled under the nickname of Wee Dumps, then another and another after that; they were small in volumetric terms as chasers go, the Wee Heavy Dumps. I was a good dancer and proficient at most steps including a variety of fancy jitterbug moves. Maggie did not follow, but kept pushing against my right hand in an oddly restraining way. We sat trying to think of things to say. It never occurred to me to say how exquisitely her green waterproof suited her and that at that very instance we could cut loose and go back to Perth to pick it up. I had no end of things to say on that subject, but said nothing. As a result I could not conceal my apathy and kept looking round because one or two of the girls out on the floor would, I thought, have adopted the stipulated form to devastating effect. One in particular had the certain fierce bird-like look hard to describe, a bit contemptuous, with a raw mouth I found arousing. Maggie said it had been a very disappointing evening and was of the opinion we should not see one another again. Later, my brother, who had met her at a university hop, relayed to me that she regretted ever having had anything to do with me. He said it with a little uplift, almost a dance step, which you always noticed when he was taking the moral high ground. I didn't see the green raincoat again and presumed she had put the hem up again, or thrown it away.

In rounding off the story of Maggie and me, I'll make a stab at explaining the mystery of Miss Diane. Miss Diane was from Trinidad, of Indian descent. Perhaps in the way that Japanese girls have a knack of dressing to a tee, that young woman possessed a sensuous awareness foreign to my culture, which had either stamped it out on religious pretexts or things had never had much of a chance to develop in that direction under our familiar grey skies. Thus an innate faculty was neglected then lost, left for the excommunicated to retrieve in such a way as obliged them to possess it as a shameful and compromising perversion. For me as a person, the customary pragmatic congress of my culture was confounded.

So it was with shame I received her, Miss Diane Mendez. She was travelling with her mother and father. Her father had a broad Oriental face, his features creased with merriment. When I said hello, turning round as she came up behind me on the deck, she performed a pirouette. “Very nice,” I said.
“I know,” she said, as if she and what she wore were one, looking and seeing in an instant what I had gained and what lost, superior and compassionate at one and the same time, or so I thought, and without a false modesty. She said where she was from and where she was going back to, “in case you were wondering,” was how she put it.
I said, “Trinidad!” so did she know Wifredo Lam?
She nodded. “The painter,” she said. “Very fierce, ‘half in and half out’, we say. We don’t have to make such a thing about genitalia.”
I saw how she was affected by her finishing school, but how she’d put her mark on that raincoat of hers.
“You like him.” She was forceful: “you like him, don’t you.”
I said she suited the grey.
“Or do you mean,” she said, “that the grey suits me?” adding by way of mollification for her jibe, yet mischievously: “Is it just the colour you like? Listen to it speak”
“Surely not!” her eyes had said: Miss Diane about what exactly I did not know, and I recalled the way the Latin word num was explained by the little impish Latin master, the little bachelor who sang to us, sitting on the desk in the front row, with unrequited emphasis: Where’re you walk cool gales shall fan the glade, trees where you sit shall crowd into a shade.
“If you want to kiss me!” she said. She was eighteen like me. But just as I am not able to picture Maggie, Diane’s features have left no imprint, but there the similarity ends; she knew, did Miss Diane, what she was doing in that perfect mackintosh of hers. Grey it was, a proper colour.

Full moon over the North Sea. Late summer night. The war has been over for eighteen whole years. The whirling nights are electrified again and the gonads wired for pleasure. He runs on the shore in the glimmer of his own aura. He holds himself and brings on his turmoil, the turmoil of being so separate from the dark and liquid air, so uncontained. The waves exhale one after another unseen on the firm ribs of sand.

Melancholy, Palinurus reminds his reader, is, according to Flaubert, nothing but a memory which is unaware of itself, and evokes the mood a page or two later thus:

Saint-Jean-de Luz. Buying a melon in the morning market and eating it for breakfast in a café on the Bidassoa; pursuing a mackintosh, a beret and a strand of wet curls round the sea-wall in the rain.

And that is how I choose to end my story of Maggie.

©JurgenB