SUNSHINE, THE OCEAN ANDTHE UNICORN
Chapter Five                                                                                                   Part Ten




                              In the drawing room Joe lost his smile.  The air was leaden, filled with Clare's anger and Joe felt all his hope turn bad inside him.  The necklace was broken, the pearly beads were scattered over the carpet.  Clare sat stiff and upright in a chair beside the dying fire. Her hair was mussed as though she had dragged her fingers through it in grief and despair. Joe looked at her bitter profile.  She would not turn her head to him.
                                                                        " Damn you !"
                                                                                                   She spat out the words like an old crone.  The godmother whose love he wanted had turned into a witch, an evil witch.  Confusion and pain ran amok, the chaos inside him paralysed him so that even his tears could not flow.  He understood nothing.
                     " Damn you ! " she said again.  " Damn you and damn those beads.  I can smell the blood on those beads.  How dare you bring them to me ! "
                     Joe fell to the floor, his tears flowed, they flooded and choked him.  He had thought he was safe here , but Clare knew of his guilt.  He screamed and writhed unable to bear what she could see.  He was a prisoner of his own fear and guilt, he did not even know how it was that he had come by them, but he had and fear and guilt were his and they imprisoned him.  His hands were covered in blood and death, he did not know why, but they were and they were his hands.
               His screaming stopped, he sobbed and his body trembled and shivered as the crying left him.  He opened his swollen eyes.  He saw Clare rekindling the fire.  Her joints were stiff, he could see that it pained her to move.  He no longer felt her anger in the room.  He felt weak but there was a calmness in him after his crying.  Clare sat down again. Joe looked up at her,
                                                                                                                           " Forgive me, " he said and more tears fell silently from his eyes, " Forgive me. "
               " Come here. " she said softly.  He went to her, he knelt beside her and laid his head in her lap.  They sat in silence and she stroked his hair. Then she said,
                                                                                                      " Why did you bring me the pearls? " Her voice soothed him, there was no anger in the question, so he answered easily."
                 " Because you used to have some pearls.  You treasured them.  You said they comforted you."
                  They sat in more silence.  Then Clare began to talk, her gentle hand still stroking his hair and Joe listened knowing that her words would bring him solace and healing.
                  " Yes I treasured them.  But they were never a comfort to me. That necklace was a yoke that made my head hang sad and heavy, and the years that I wore it were long and weary.
                           It was given to me the same day I saw George for the first time in the woods, the same day that I planted his apricot stone.  I did not run from my husband as his mother wanted me to.  Instead I chose to be a dutiful and loving wife.  So his mother awarded me with the pearls.  She handed them down to me as they had been handed down to her and in my innocence I accepted them as a gift and thought them very beautiful.  But they were a punishment.  I had not heeded her warning so she handed me down a yoke, a bondage to a poisoned man, an enslavement of fear and ignorance of my own heart, a weight that would bury my soul and my self expression and then taunt my emptiness.
                Even when I left my husband and sucked and spat his poison from my wounds, I still wore the pearls believing them to be my friend. But they were never a friend, they remained as a scar of my marriage, an excuse for weakness.  The necklace was still a yoke in which I locked myself so that I was never quite free, always restricted, still afraid of myself.  The pearls became a burden of shame and bitterness at my willingness in marriage to be hollowed out and broken like a china doll.  I had put up no defences.  I had been weak.  Instincts and intuition had been ignored even though they had cried out to me each time his slow poison had reached in and taken another part of me.  I had laid them by the wayside while I travelled a dark road.  I had courted my own madness.  I could not forgive my husband, neither could I forgive myself.  
                         Like the crocodile in the dream.  I swam from it in fear, a fear that it had put into me.  But when I climbed out of the water and looked back it had not moved from the centre of the river.  Just as my husband had filled me with fear, he could not finally kill me or destroy me, but in my fear and madness I imagined that he could.  I could have left him any time, I could have swum for the shore and left him stationery in the middle of the river.  It was the fear in my imagination that weakened me all the more and so prolonged my marriage and my unhappiness.  As in the dream I did eventually reach a shore and my body became strong again and the barren landscape of my life became fertile. 
                       More and more I began to find peace of mind when I lived in Bath and on my travels in Europe.  I stayed away from darkness.  I ran from the shadows to the light and saw beauty in everything.  I found joy but not love.  I found joy in solitude, in loneliness.  I made the world mine, I made it what I wanted it to be. I would not let the darkness in. I would not let other people in, in case they brought the darkness with them.  I skirted the darkness, I narrowed my life to avoid it.  Still I wore the pearls and still they restricted me.  I knew there was a bigger world beyond the one I lived in, a vast world where darkness lived alongside light, where there had to be evil for there to be goodness. I knew there was a life to be led in that world, a long and full life that was waiting for me to lead it.  I kept trying to reach it, but while I wore the pearls I could not.  All the gates were locked and I was afraid to unlock them.  I knew what had to happen but I could not make it happen while I carried my fear and my shame.  I had to know that weakness was not shameful but a strength in itself.  I had to realise that my marriage was just a small part of my life and that what it had taught me about myself would stand me in good stead.  I had to forgive my husband.  But forgiveness was a hard mountain to climb.  I kept thinking that I was reaching its summit when more of the mountain would appear, and the summit would still loom way above me, its sides smooth and sheer.  I could not forgive my husband for his cold, loveless eyes and stony heart.  I could not forgive his constant need to take and destroy.  Though his life was surrounded by riches it was spiritless, it was a poor and squalid life with no feeling and no colour.  And because his soul was so full of hatred, his bitterness had constantly ridiculed and destroyed mine so that my soul had had to fight to stay alive and so many times it had nearly died.  I could not forgive those years that had been so wasteful and so full of pain. 
                           I kept on trying to climb that mountain and every time I slid back a little I would try and understand the good that had come from marriage.  I had leant to trust my intuition, to trust my instincts.  I knew now that I believed myself, I believed that what my eyes saw was true and there could be no doubting them.  This discovery meant that I could live a full and burning life, it meant that I was filled with myself, I was no longer empty and waiting to be filled with whatever came my way be it good or bad.  I was no longer a china doll, hollow and broken.  I  was me, strong mind, strong body and strong spirit.  All this was good, but I still could not reach that mountain top. My heart had to expand to acknowledge the darkness in order to find the light, to accept evil in order to find good. My shoulders had to broaden to carry sorrow and joy alongside one another.  I knew all these things but I could not make them happen alone.
           So you see Joe, it was only when George threw those godforsaken pearls back into the ocean that I became free.  George freed me.  Love freed me.  He unclasped the necklace, he broke each pearl from its knotted string and scattered them over the ocean where I watched them sink out of sight beneath the dark waves.  And suddenly there were no chains around my heart, no reins that held me back.  There was nothing I could not do, there was nothing and no one to fear. It was a sweet and long awaited release.  It was like new birth, new life out of the old one in one light breath, young yet wise, tender yet wild and the breeze was light and easy around us and love whispered and love smiled.  The end of one journey and the beginning of the next.
                     If I had not been freed then maybe my own heart might have turned  cold and stony and my soul might have finally died having been unable to climb the Forgiving Mountain's high summit.  And even though I had left him, my husband would have defeated me because I would have likened myself to him and my life would have had no beauty, only bitterness and sour immortal tears.
                    The pearls had at last disappeared and I forgave my husband and hoped that one day he might be rid of his poison and find an end to his misery. 
                    The boat rocked gently, the water lapped at its sides.  We watched the stars in the sky and their reflection in the water.  Our souls were reflections of each others', to be filled by each other was to be filled by ourselves, at last we were whole.  We made our plans for the future. We had both been the poorer for wealthy lives so we would leave George's money in its wax sealed leaden box, where it would wait for the Unicorn.  We would come back to this house where the clock no longer moved so that time would not push and pull at our lives and when it was all over and one of us died, then the other would take no food, fade and follow after.
                      Then we went back into the confines of the Ark and I no longer feared its beasts because I knew that beyond lay the Starshine and the Ocean, and it was there George and I would live and burn with a light that would see and know and feel all that lay between the ocean bed and the highest star.  Once my fears had left me I knew that I could live both inside and outside the Ark and now the Ark was no longer my prison I looked again at its passengers and was able to see the beautiful alongside the ugly.  The crocodiles and the snakes still made me shudder, but alongside the evil there were the selfless and the generous.  The lion was strong and warm.  I saw the elegant shy-eyed gazelles.  I saw the apes laughing and fooling.  There was much that was joyful alongside the sorrowful.
                       Only the Unicorn was missing.  George and I had left the Ark to go and find the Unicorn, but once we found Starshine and the Ocean we had stopped looking. George said the Unicorn was long gone beneath the waves and that my pearls had followed him. George knew the Unicorn better than I, he had often thought that he himself might be the Unicorn.  But I was still curious.  I often wondered about the Unicorn. " 
                     Clare's hand lay gently on Joe's head,
                                                                                 " And at last I have found him, " she said. 
                     Joe lifted his head from her lap and looked at her. Her eyes thanked him.
                     " It was you I was waiting for before I died.  I wanted to tell you how it all began. "
                     At last Joe knew who he was and knowing that he was the Unicorn made him feel at peace.  He knew that his crimes were not his but a part of everything and he knew that there was a place for him even though it was not in this world.  His burdens of fear, guilt and confusion were lifted from his shoulders and he huddled on the floor at Clare's feet like a contented little boy.
                     " Tell me about the Unicorn. " he said
                     So Clare begun one last magical story while Joe closed his eyes and waited for the comforts of sleep.
                    " The Unicorn was beautiful, pure white, sleek powerful flanks and clear blue eyes in a proud head adorned with its regal horn.  The Unicorn was headstrong and free.  He had never known the chains of fear, he had no dealings with greed or self pity, only desire and with desire as his companion he climbed the mountain with ease to stand on its summit and know freedom.
                   The Unicorn knew that to fear death was to fear life and when the flood came he sought refuge in it, rather than in the Ark.
                   He stood on the mountain top and saw that the flood was coming.  He watched the long procession of God's creatures enter the Ark two by two and he knew that he could not follow.  For once inside the Ark the confinement would destroy him.  If his freedom were taken from him then he would be empty and his desire would be misled into chaos and confusion.  With nowhere to run and no mountains to climb he would be shackled to the fears and sorrows of those around him and his emptiness would be filled with their poisons until all his pure white turned black and insane.  And inside his prison the crazy, black unicorn would toss its head and wild mane, its eyes would darken and quiver with frightened white.  It would buck and rear and gallop in mad, directionless circles, wreaking havoc and destruction, and spilling the blood of its fellow inmates as its twisted horn impaled the innocent and the guilty alike.
                   So the pure white unicorn stood on his mountain top and watched the Ark sail away and the water whispered to him and closed around him like a gentle shroud and he was unfearing and free as the flood carried him away. "