In Search of Mary Page 22

  “So, Garth, you’re a young person,” I say in the chirpy voice that makes my own kids rolls their eyes. “What do you and your friends think of the term ‘feminist’?”

  “Feminism is a bit dated, maybe,” he says between mouthfuls of Jean’s pasta. “I don’t really think about gender: we’re just people. It’s not OK to raise one gender above the other: we need a more androgynous society. I don’t think anyone gets a better deal. I can’t wear a dress without raising eyebrows.”

  “And what can’t women do without raising eyebrows?” I ask.

  Long silence. “I don’t know.”

  Jean chimes in from the kitchen area: “Old men are privileged in ways they don’t deserve, but I think that young men now are challenged in ways they don’t deserve for being male. In some ways it has been overcompensated.” She pops right out, a pan in one hand. “But I’m still definitely a feminist.”

  Doug comes over and sits down next to Will, tenderly helping to spoon in his pasta. “In general, the young women in my classes don’t realize who fought for the rights they enjoy and take for granted.”

  “But should they?” I ask. I’m getting a bit bored of the gratitude argument. “Is feeling thankful really your best reason? The witches told me: ‘You don’t understand what it was like before, in the 1950s.’ And it’s true, I don’t. But isn’t that a good thing?”

  “But that’s why I get so cross that young women won’t call themselves feminists.” says Jean, sitting down at the table. “It’s denying an important part of history. It denies Mary Wollstonecraft. It denies the suffragettes, and all the women of the Seventies who did so much for us. That was so urgent and necessary at the time.”

  Garth joins in. “There’s a middle ground, though. You don’t have to call yourself a feminist to respect the movement. If you wanted to respect every cause, there are so many things you’d have to call yourself. Like, we shouldn’t forget slavery – so does that mean we have to go around calling ourselves abolitionists?”

  “People don’t have to say they’re abolitionists, no, but they shouldn’t say I’m NOT an abolitionist,” says Jean. “You don’t have to be it, but you can’t go around dissing it and removing yourself from it.”

  “In Britain a lot of women won’t touch the label with a barge pole,” I add.

  “Wait, what?” says Garth.

  “In Britain lots of women, especially younger—”

  “No, I meant the pole thing – what was that?”

  “Oh, a barge pole. It’s something you keep on board a boat for poking away other boats and the sides of the canal. And it’s long.”

  “That’s awesome. We’d say a ten-foot pole in America.”

  “Well a barge pole is even longer than that,” I say with authority. “And that’s how much people don’t like feminism.”

  Jean weighs in again: “We need only to ask: ‘What’s the definition of a feminist?’ And I believe it’s someone who thinks all genders should have equal responsibilities and equal opportunities.”

  “Isn’t that an ‘equalist’?” fires back Garth.

  Doug quietly adds: “I think people should have equal but different rights.”

  “What?” shouts everyone, at once.

  “Well, women have babies and men don’t – and so to be equal we have to take that into account.”

  I think I know what he’s saying, but it seems to be a slightly heretical position. I meanly keep quiet and let him be pounced on by his own family.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you mean reproductive rights?”

  Doug makes a teacherly gesture, hands spread apart, and speaks thoughtfully: “Back in Mary Wollstonecraft’s time, women were considered both different and inferior. The philosophical shift that was made was that you could say: ‘Yes, something can be different, but not inferior – and being different does not render it devoid of rights.’ Discussing literature with my students is how you get to see these ideas roll back and forth, and re-emerge.”

  There’s an empty moment, with only cutlery scratching. Everyone frowns and looks at their food. Will stops eating and looks up, gazing quizzically from person to person. Doug has scored a direct hit on the tension between difference and equality, and I’m secretly enjoying his struggle.

  “What about single parents, a single dad?”

  “And human rights is called that for a reason, you know!”

  I look over at Will. As the conversation tips into the familiar back-and-forth, I watch him fumbling around with a bit of stray pasta. He’s not a man or woman, just my Will – a small being, becoming whatever he will be, not knowing about inequality or difference. He is happily unaware of interconnectedness, of conflicting oppressions and -isms. What if he were a single parent? Or trans? Would he be helped by Wollstone-craft’s call for “JUSTICE for one half of the human race”?

  The umbrella will just have to keep growing wider, however scrappy it gets, however defiantly we need our own stories. It’s like an oasis, a calm refuge, to look across and see Will sitting there. His head scarcely reaches up to the level of his bowl. He peeps over at me, and we smile. Then, almost immediately he lets out an angry wail. Is that enough pasta? As I move to help him he knocks over his water.

  Maybe that’s enough everything. Once again, like a dictatorial egg-timer, Will intervenes when things have boiled on for too long: I will start throwing food if you keep banging on about the width of umbrellas. Enough is enough.

  Harbin Hot Springs. This place has been on my radar for some time. It’s a 5,000-acre spa retreat whose website says: “During your stay you become part of our community.” Is that a warning? The place is top of the list of “woo woo” Californian things to do, and is renowned as the home of Watsu, or water-based re-birthing therapy. I check out this practice online and then wish I hadn’t. I am not keen on hairy men cradling me and breathing in my face. But “travel”, as Wollstonecraft tells us, is “the completion of a liberal education”. And when in California…

  I phone up to make the reservation, and hear that my Watsu therapist’s name is Patty. “What’s Patty like?” I ask, ardently wishing not to hear “he’s a great guy”. Luckily no. “Patty’s awesome, she’s one of our best.”

  “OK then book me in,” I say, then call out: “Jean, do you want me to book for you as well?”

  “No thanks. I can’t get water in my ears.”

  “You sure?”

  “Oh yes I’m quite sure.”

  Harbin is a two-hour drive from Jean’s place. We check in and wander around through some basic huts, trying to find the Watsu location. We spot a series of small domes up on the mountainside and, leaving Jean and Will behind, I hurry up there. I approach some small hobbity-looking houses around a steaming pool with a rainbow tepee over the top. A thin, shaggy man with reflective sunglasses waves and says: “Hey. I’m Antelope.”

  “Hello Antelope.”

  I do not want to be rebirthed by Antelope. I advance cautiously and look into the pool. There is a smiling woman rising from the water. She has a pretty and sensible face, like a reliable milkmaid – and extremely enormous breasts.

  “Hi! You must be Bee!”

  “Yes, are you Patty?” I reply to her face. Her face. Talk to her face.

  “Why, yes I am – take a shower and come on in!”

  Gulp. She’s naked. I brought a swimming costume along, but don’t want to seem uptight. So I have a quick shower and stride nakedly forth into the warm water as if to say: “Why, I do this every other day.”

  “OK, it’s your first time,” says Patty encouragingly. How can she possibly tell.

  “Anything you want to tell me about your body?”

  “Erm – I don’t really think about my body all that much, but I do have four kids, so maybe I’d like to unwind a bit,” I say, the tension rising as I imagine being engulfed in her capacious bosoms.

  “OK, now let’s see how you float,” she says, and supporting my head she li
ghtly pulls me along while my body flails awkwardly.

  “Oh,” she exclaims. “You’re going to need a lot of floating support!”

  “Do I lack normal flotation skills?”

  “No, dear: it’s just if you have a lot of energy and movement it can affect how you are in the water.”

  I’m a special-needs floater. Patty attaches two floats to my legs, one around each shin, and takes my head again. This time I lift up and float into an obedient baby position. I feel like a diagram of an unborn baby at about six months’ gestation. My arms and legs are small floating appendages. She begins to rock me from side to side and questions stampede into my mind as I firmly screw my eyes shut.

  What if I bump into her breasts? My breasts are intimidated. Is this sexual? I don’t want it to be sexual. And what if I need to cough – or scratch my nose? What if she talks or breathes on me, or utters some ecstatic moan and I have an attack of giggles? Can she see my fanny? Is it too Brazilian for this environment? I bet everyone else has bushy fannies. Mine suddenly feels like a traitor. Is Antelope in the water too?

  I shut my eyes a fraction less fiercely, and some light gets in through my eyelashes. We are gently moving between sunny patches in the water, and I can just make out the colours of the tepee overhead. I lie back, and my ears go under the water. I can hear some distant bubbling and squeaky noises. It’s very amniotic. It makes me think about being a baby.

  It’s quite powerful, the weightlessness of being in water, and the weightlessness of not being able to see or hear anything. I start to feel like a baby. I sneak a secret peep out of one eye, to make sure Patty’s not spying on me, or rolling back her eyes while chanting a Native American incantation. But no: she’s gazing peacefully into the distance. That’s OK. Eyes closed again.

  Soon I start to feel that Patty loves me. My mind tells me this is absurd, but I can just tell she really does. She’s doing deep yoga breathing, but not in an impolite way. Just enough so I know she’s there. The movements blur and roll, concertina-like, and I lose track of gravity, and of where my swaying spine and legs are. Everything is mildly floating away.

  There’s a small panic when I think she’s passed me on to Antelope, then I know I’ve become a baby. No, don’t give me to him! Frowning baby. Don’t worry, it’s all right. The touch of the water soothes me. The word “caress” appears, uninvited. I’m being caressed and unravelled by the movement of the water. Mountain smells on the breeze. Patty is weaving and turning me in the water like oblivious seaweed. Total immersion. She folds and stretches me out. And it goes on and on.

  After a possibly very long time she sets me down the right way up, tenderly placing my feet on the bottom of the pool as she steadies me. I find my feet, and then my balance. As I adjust, my eyelids gradually begin to move apart and a funny thing happens. Patty is smiling, there right in front of me, her face close to my face. As my eyes slowly open, I involuntarily utter a little noise. Not a moan – I am British for God’s sake – more of a croak: a small sound of gratitude and surprise. It just bursts out of my mouth. And I’m not even embarrassed.

  She smiles again, says “Take your time,” and swims away from me. I look around. I’m too stunned to take in anything beyond the sight of my arms and legs. They are covered in small silver bubbles that tickle my skin. I wipe them away: they fizz up to the surface, then immediately return, silvering my skin. I do this a few times, slowly and a bit stupidly, like someone under hypnosis. The water is fizzy. I didn’t even know. I love it.

  Somehow I get out of the water and find my way back into my clothes. I am smiling, rumpled and dazed. I have probably grown a pulsating rainbow aura, or at the very least some kind of halo. I stagger off in search of Jean and Will. They have also been Harbined: I find them splashing around, naked, in the heart-shaped spring water pool. “The sign says ‘Swimwear Optional’ but no one’s wearing any,” says Jean, “so we just joined in.”

  We may have resisted the Vagina Monologues, but apparently we’re ripe for conversion here. I tell her about my small croak, and we have a fit of laughter. Will is getting sleepy, and we’re in danger of becoming hysterical, so we settle him down in his buggy and go for a walk along a mountain path. The wooden sign says “Serenity Trail”. As we go, we joke about my croak. What was it? The final gasp of the Dragon of the Crock? The renunciation of a life of hippy-resenting? The Croak of Acceptance. On Serenity Trail. We laugh like drunken teenagers, and Will conks out in minutes.

  In the quiet space of Will’s sleep, Jean and I relax in the Blue Café. As well as bathing, massage and being reborn, Harbin offers courses in such things as ‘Timeless Loving’, ‘Sky-Dancing Tantra’ and ‘Let the Crazy Child Write’. I observe this straight-faced; I’ve lost the capacity for sarcasm and I don’t even care. Some people walk by wearing only bracelets and body art. We share a vegan black-bean burrito and pumpkin cake with our almond-milk lattes. For all my professed antipathy to anything patchouli-flavoured, I’m doing pretty well. The day floats ever so gently onwards.

  At some point Jean drives us back home, slowly, through this land of languorous valleys and trees so massive that you can see the centuries. We agree that it’d be rude not to drink all that in. The Porter Creek vineyard in the Russian River Valley is a properly delicious place to stop off. Oh go on then, why not? Several locals are milling around, here to try the latest offerings.

  The beardy owner looks as unlike a starchy sommelier as is humanly possible. I tell him about my Wollstonecraft trail, and he mentions that Robert Louis Stevenson travelled through California’s nascent wine valleys, making free with the local goodness. Stevenson wrote:

  In this wild spot, I did not feel the sacredness of ancient cultivation. It was still raw… yet the stirring sunlight and the growing vines and the vats and bottles in the cavern made a pleasant music for the mind. Here, also, earth’s cream was being skimmed and garnered: and the customer can taste, such as it is, the tang of the earth in this green valley. So local, so quintessential is a wine that it seems the very birds in the veranda might communicate a flavour…

  I am drinking California. I’ve been rebirthed as a Harbin love child and now I’m imbibing the birdsong and greenery, in glass after glass of sunlit wine. Jean has gone off playing around in the garden with Will – as today’s driver, she’s not indulging. They leave me to get lightly, goldenly intoxicated by myself. I become talkative and tremendously witty, engaging my co-tasters in unsolicited anecdotes about Mary Wollstonecraft. No one seems to mind. It’s mellow. Mellow! Did I really just say that?

  Wine and life haven’t tasted this good since that blinding orchestral moment at the end of Norway’s silver trail. We travel the full grape spectrum, and I try out wines that are described as “fruit-forward” and “earth-driven”, immediately evoking Annie Sprinkle. I roll them lasciviously around my mouth, playing with them, allowing them to come into me. Annie would be proud. Even the wine is ecosexual in California.

  The forest exhales a wild perfume, mixed with a thousand nameless sweets that, soothing the heart, leave images in the memory which the imagination will ever hold dear.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Acquire Sufficient Fortitude to Pursue Your Own Happiness”

  In the end, it’s something very small that breaks unexpectedly into the Californian spell. There’ve been a few phone calls and emails from my beloveds back home, but not many. Then this morning an email arrives. Justin has sent a short recording of Eva’s violin practice. The scratchy sound comes out of my phone, and it’s like treading on a pin. I can hear Elsa and Zola chattering in the background. These small common sounds cut deep, it’s the sound of home. It hurts, and I know immediately that we’ve been away for the right amount of time. Any longer will be too much.

  Saying goodbye to Jean and Doug isn’t easy, but I’m also elated. Not only by the trees, wine and food, but by the many answers I’ve gathered. “It’s so much easier now,” I tease Jean. “The next time we’re asked about feminism,
we can say: ‘I’m identifying as a post-binary, non-gender ecosexual right now. I may well shift along the continuum this evening or next week.’”

  Time is running out, the time of this trip. Will and I spend our last night in a hotel, and I’m transcribing my interviews furiously during his midday sleep. The remaining moments feel almost countable. The moments of this rainbow life on the road with my baby. They’re finite. Just the thought of this makes me take the risk of going over, leaning into his cot and lightly touching his hair. His chest rises and falls gently.

  Has this whole thing been an excuse to revel more deeply in the last baby days of my last baby? Repeating ripples of thought about how he’s growing up become regular waves, waves of a tender sadness. With every new thing he learns, he is deeper into the world and further from me. The mysterious bud of Will blossoms more every day. His babyhood is now behind us.

  I ache with a sudden longing for the lost moments. Something comes back from the past, lines that I learnt off by heart when I still didn’t know what they meant. It’s from a poem by Goethe, a contemporary of Wollstonecraft. He was writing about a woman, but it could just as well be Will scampering on that Californian beach with his hair stuck down in the wind and his belly poking out:

  Ich besaß es doch einmal

  Was so köstlich ist

  Dass man doch zu seiner Qual

  Nimmer es vergisst!

  I possessed it once:

  That which is so exquisite

  That to my torment

  I can never forget it!

  Wollstonecraft too leant over her baby, on those far Scandinavian shores, blessed her sleeping face, heard her small feet pattering on the sand. She too felt the loss of the moment. You can only see it as it moves away. This is why, when you’re holding your newborn, smitten women lurch up to behold it with their tear-stung eyes. You patiently repeat: “It’s a girl… four weeks old… six and half a pounds.” But they don’t really care about all that. What they want is to reclaim their own baby in yours. They can’t believe it, because they are seeing the thing that they have lost forever.