This
is the first work I’ve ever read by Muriel Spark, and
I have to say I am intrigued. I’m going
to do an analysis of this story, but I have to admit there is what feels like a
missing element to completely understanding it.
I’ll get to that, but first let me quote one of the best opening
paragraphs you’ll ever find in a short story.
One day in my young youth
at high summer, lolling with my lovely companions upon a haystack, I found a
needle. Already and privately for some
years I had been guessing that I was set apart from the common run, but this of
the needle attested the fact to my whole public: George, Kathleen and
Skinny. I sucked my thumb, for when I
had thrust my idle hand deep into the hay, the thumb was where the needle had
struck.
Now
that is what a short story should do, tell a story first and foremost, and
story is about more than the mundane. A
story should be about something out of the ordinary, and what could be more out
of the ordinary than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Now to be more accurate, the narrating
character, referred to as Needle—we never do learn her birth name—because of
this defining moment in her life, the needle found her. Here’s the rest of the opening section.
When everyone had
recovered George said, ‘She put in a thumb and pulled out a plum.’ Then away we were in our merciless
hacking-hecking laughter again.
The needle had gone
fairly deep into the thumby cushion and a small red river flowed and spread
from this tiny puncture. So that nothing
of our joy should lag, George put in quickly,
‘Mind your bloody thumb on my shirt.’
Then hac-hec-hoo, we
shrieked into the hot Borderland afternoon.
Really I should not care to be so young of heart again. That is my thought every time I turn over my
old papers and come across the photograph.
Skinny, Kathleen and myself are in the photo atop the haystack. Skinny had just finished analysing the
inwards of my find.
‘It couldn’t have been done by brains. You haven’t much brains but you’re a lucky
wee thing.’
Everyone agreed that the
needle betokened extraordinary luck. As
it was becoming a serious conversation, George said,
‘I’ll take a photo.’
I wrapped my hanky around
my thumb and got myself organised.
George pointed up from the camera and shouted,
‘Look, there’s a mouse!’
Kathleen screamed and I
screamed although I think we knew there was no mouse. But this gave us an extra session of
squalling hee-hoo’s. Finally we three
composed ourselves for George’s picture.
We look lovely and it was a great day at the time, but I would not care
for it all over again. From that day I
was known as Needle.
Now
that is a great hook of an introduction.
You want to know more of these people, and you want to know what this
new found luck developed and became Needle’s future. In addition there’s more there than meets the
eye. The haystack and the blood
foreshadow the story’s climatic moment, and I think there subtle symbolism
going on that adds depth to this story.
But
I’ll get into that in a little while.
First I want to present some biographical and geographical detail that I
think adds context. Born in Edinburgh,
Scotland, raised Presbyterian (though her father was Jewish), lived in Southern
Rhodesia with her husband, who was violent and depressive, had a son, divorced
her husband, worked in Intelligence during WWII, and converted to Roman
Catholicism in 1954, and was encouraged to write by two other famous Catholic
convert novelists, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. From what I gathered, Spark had the same sort
of bubbly personality of her Needle character.
She settled in London for most of her early writing career, and then
went on to live the remainder of her life in Tuscany.
As
you can see there are several biographical details that enter into this
story. The characters are Scottish;
Needle, who is also slight of frame, does travel down to Africa with her
potential husband, Skinny (John Skinner); George, like Spark’s husband, is a
sort of emotionally needy character who does a violent act; Needle does settle
in London after the war, and she is a Roman Catholic convert with a carefree
personality. This story is told in a
series of vignettes, starting with the opening vignette of the four characters
on the haystack with Needle meeting up with her lucky moment.
If
finding the pin was the story’s first premise defining the central character,
the second premise comes in the second vignette. It comes many years later, down in London.
One Saturday in recent
years I was mooching down the Portobello Road, threading among the crowds of
marketers on the narrow pavement when I saw a woman. She had a haggard, careworn, wealthy look,
thin but for the breasts forced-up high like a pigeon’s. I had not seen her for nearly five years. How changed she was! But I recognised Kathleen, my friend; her
features had already begun to sink and protrude in the way that mouths and
noses do in people destined always to be old for their years. When I had last seen her, nearly five years
ago, Kathleen, barely thirty, had said,
‘I’ve lost all my looks, it’s in the family. All the women are handsome as girls, but we
go off early, we go brown and nosey.’
I stood silently among
the people, watching. As you will see, I
wasn’t in a position to speak to Kathleen.
I saw her shoving in her avid manner from stall to stall. She was always fond of antique jewelry and of
bargains. I wondered that I had not seen
her before in the Portobello Road on my Saturday morning ambles. Her long stiff-crooked fingers pounced to
select a jade ring from amongst the jumble of brooches and pendants, onyx,
moonstone and gold, set out on the stall.
Portobello Road is apparently a rather famous and iconic section of west London where an
outdoor market takes place on Saturdays.
From this meeting place we get the name of the story. From within the crowd, Needle calls out to
George, who is by Kathleen and is now Kathleen’s husband.
‘Hallo, George,’ I said
again.
Kathleen had started to
haggle with the stall-owner, in her old way, over the price of the jade
ring. George continued to stare at me,
his big mouth slightly parted so that I could see a wide slit of red lips and
white teeth between the fair grassy growths of beard and mustache.
‘My God!’ he said.
‘What’s the matter/’ said
Kathleen.
‘Hallo, George!’ I said
again, quite loud this time and cheerfully.
‘Look!’ said George. ‘Look who’s there, over beside the fruit
stall.’
Kathleen looked but
didn’t see.
‘Who is it?’ she said
impatiently.
‘It’s Needle,’ he
said. ‘She said “Hallo, George”.’
‘Needle,’ said Kathleen. ‘Who
do you mean? You don’t mean our old
friend Needle who—‘
‘Yes. There she is.
My God!’
He looked very ill,
although when I had said ‘Hallo, George’ I had spoken friendly enough.
‘I don’t see anyone
faintly resembling poor Needle,’ said Kathleen looking at him. She was worried.
George pointed straight
at me. ‘Look there. I tell you that is
Needle.’
‘You’re ill George. Heavens, you must be seeing things. Come on home.
Needle isn’t there. You know as
well as I do, Needle is dead.’
And
so, here is the second premise. Needle
is now a ghost. We don’t learn how
Needle dies until what I count as the eighth vignette, when Needle dies on a
haystack, paralleling the opening of the story where she receives her identity.
I won’t reveal right now how she dies, so if I’ve enticed you to read this
story go and find it. I’ll reveal it in
Part 2.
I
do want to conclude Part 1 with some observations from the first two
vignettes. I’ll just number them as I
randomly list them. (1) It is
interesting that Needle’s defining moment occurs on a haystack, her climatic
death will take place on a haystack, and George’s beard in that second vignette
is described as “grassy growths.” (2) The
needle which pricks her finger and draws blood suggests both a sexual activity
and an initiation, a breaking of the hymen.
(3) It is interesting that Needle is considered and indeed considers
herself lucky, despite her gruesome fate.
(4) The crowded open market setting of Portobello Road seems to allude
to Dante’s Divine Comedy, especially when Dante the character first enters Hell
and sees all the souls in Limbo carrying about as if they had never died. There he utters, “I had not thought death had
undone so many,” the very words later borrowed by T. S. Eliot in his great
poem, “The Wasteland.” As far as we
know, Needle is the only dead person in the crowd. (5) The use of the word “mooching” in that
first sentence of the second vignette is rather interesting. Unless there’s some local slang I’m missing,
mooching means to take without paying, to sponge. One of Needle’s self-acknowledged sins we see
later is that she sponged off people, especially Skinny, to live a care-free irresponsible
life.
With
that I’ll leave you with a video clip of someone filming Portobello Road as he
walks it and speaks to people.
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