Duras, the ruse

After my second meeting with my mentor Claire Scobie, everything became clear. The core of this book is Marjorie. Duras is the foil, the side story, the ruse, but it is my mother I must write about; the complexities of our 56 year relationship; my guilt that I did not take her into my arms and home to look after her in the last years of her life, didn't save her from her greatest fear; being sent once more to a psychiatric unit for shock treatment (she'd been forced into it in the 70s); didn't ever succeed in making her happy again. 

I touch on it in briefly below in an excerpt of my novel, Take Me To Paradise, published the same year Marj died. The main character Marilyn, in Bali for the first time on an impromptu holiday, takes a tour to Pura Besaki, also known as the Mother Temple.

After an hour or so of walking and talking we arrive at a resting place near the top of the complex. Bagus and Gusti hand out bottles of water and snacks they buy from a vendor and we stay there for a while, sitting or browsing in the gallery shop nearby.

I sit on a bench and look out at the plains stretching all the way to the sea. It makes sense to call this the mother temple, I think. From here you can feel her arms embracing the whole island as any mother does.

My mother, as tiny as she was, had arms that reached out to many people beyond us kids, even when her own joy for life had left her. When a mother gives up her will to live, it is a disaster for everyone, most of all the children she has brought into a world so full of hope. For a child can’t understand why all the gifts you give, potions you bring, books you draw, flowers you pick, songs you sing, jokes you tell and cards you make, lie in an unopened pile by her bed.

And when one day as a young woman, you visit your mother in hospital after she attempts to take her life and without small talk or sweet motherly hello’s, her first words are, ‘Can’t you find me something that works? Can’t you get me out of this hell?’

As hope clangs shut on your heart with a heavy thud, you try to jolly her along and convince her that things will get better, even when you know that all the years of electro shock therapy, whiz bang new drugs, overseas holidays and specialist this and specialist that, are not going to work because nothing ever did, nothing ever could, nothing ever would, shift the dark place inside her and fill it with light again.

And so what does a daughter do? How can a daughter be happy when her mother is sad? How can she pretend everything is okay when the one who gave her life, has given up on her own?

She lies down beside her mother in her sadness bed, holds her arms tight around her neck as she did when she was young, and says, ‘don’t worry mummy. I will stay with you in your sadness bed. I won’t be happy until you are.’

Jan Cornall began writing in the 70s. She has written plays, musicals, screenplays, a novel, short stories, and three CDs of songs.  Since 2004 she has led writer's retreats in inspirational international locations including Bali, Laos, Burma, Cambodia, Morocco and Fiji. In 2014 she is planning a Vietnam trip following the footsteps of M.Duras in Vietnam. More info here.

(c) Jan Cornall 2013