Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter
INTERIOR. MINISTER’S HOUSE. DAY
Dinner-table. Minister’s wife dishing portions from a pot for her husband and her son.
MINISTER’S WIFE: ‘Tain’t right, just ain’t right, those two out there, growing up like savages, never seeing nobody.
MINISTER’S SON: She’s terribly pretty, Mama.
The Minister’s wife and the Minister turn to look at the young man. He blushes slowly but comprehensively.
The rancher knew nothing. He worked. He kept the iron core of grief within him rustless. He looked forward to his solitary, once-monthly drink, alone on the porch, and on those nights they took a chance and slept together in the log cabin under the patchwork quilt made in the “log cabin” pattern by their mother. Each time they lay down there together, as if she obeyed a voice that came out of the quilt telling her to put the light out, she would extinguish the candle flame between her finger-tips. All around them, the tactility of the dark.
She pondered the irreversibility of defloration. According to what the Minister’s wife said, she had lost everything and was a lost girl. And yet this change did not seem to have changed her. She turned to the only one she loved, and the desolating space around them diminished to that of the soft grave their bodies dented in the long grass by the creek. When winter came, they made quick, dangerous love among the lowing beasts in the barn. The snow melted and all was green enough to blind you and there was a vinegarish smell from the rising of the sharp juices of spring. The birds came back.
A dusk bird went chink-chink-chink like a single blow on the stone xylophone of the Chinese classical orchestra.
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE PORCH. DAY
Annie-Belle, in apron, comes out on homestead porch; strikes metal triangle.
ANNIE-BELLE: Dinner’s ready!
INTERIOR. FARMHOUSE. NIGHT
Supper-table. Annie-Belle serves beans. None for herself.
JOHNNY: Annie-Belle, you’re not eating anything tonight.
ANNIE-BELLE: Can’t rightly fancy anything tonight.
The dusk bird went chink-chink-chink with the sound of a chisel on a gravestone.
He wanted to run away with her, west, further west, to Utah, to California where they could live as man and wife, but she said: “What about Father? He’s lost enough already.” When she said that, she put on, not his face, but that of their mother, and he knew in his bones the child inside her would part them.
The Minister’s son, in his Sunday coat, came courting Annie-Belle. He is the second lead, you know in advance, from his tentative manner and mild eyes; he cannot long survive in this prairie scenario. He came courting Annie-Belle although his mother wanted him to go to college. “What will you do at college with a young wife?” said his mother. But he put away his books; he took the buggy to go out and visit her. She was hanging washing out on the line.
Sound of the wind buffeting the sheets, the very sound of loneliness.
Soranzo: Have you not the will to love?
Annabella: Not you.
Soranzo: Who, then?
Annabella: That’s as the fates infer.
She lowered her head and drew her foot back and forth in the dust. Her breasts hurt, she felt queasy.
EXTERIOR. PRAIRIE. DAY
Johnny and Annie-Belle walking on the prairie.
ANNIE-BELLE: I think he likes me, Johnny.
Pan blue sky, with clouds. Johnny and Annie-Belle, dwarfed by the landscape, hand in hand, heads bowed. Their hands slowly part.
Now they walk with gradually increasing distance between them.
The light, the unexhausted light of North America that, filtered through celluloid, will become the light by which we see America looking at itself.
Correction: will become the light by which we see North America looking at itself.
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE PORCH. DAY
Row of bottles on a fence.
Bang, bang, bang. Johnny shoots the bottles one by one.
Annie-Belle on porch, washing dishes in a tub.
Tears run down her face.
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE PORCH. DAY
Father on porch, feet up on railing, glass and bottle to hand.
Sun going down over prairies.
Bang, bang, bang.
(Father’s point of view) Johnny shooting bottles off the fence.
Clink of father’s bottle against glass.
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE. DAY
Minister’s son rides along track in long shot.
Bang, bang, bang.
Annie-Belle, clean dress, tidy hair, red eyes, comes out of house on to porch. Clink of father’s bottle against glass.
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE. DAY
Minister’s son tethers horse. He has brushed his Sunday coat.
In his hand, a posy of flowers—cottage roses, sweetbrier, daisies.
Annie-Belle smiles, takes posy.
ANNIE-BELLE: Oh!
Holds up pricked forefinger; blood drops on to a daisy.
MINISTER’S SON: Let me …
Takes her hand. Kisses the little wound.
… make it better.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Clink of bottle on glass.
(Close up) Annie-Belle, smiling, breathing in the scent from her posy.
And, perhaps, had it been possible, she would have learned to love the Minister’s gentle son before she married him, but, not only was it impossible, she also carried within her the child that meant she must be married quickly.
INTERIOR. CHURCH. DAY
Harmonium. Father and Johnny by the altar.
Johnny white, strained; father stoical.
Minister’s wife thin-lipped, furious.
Minister’s son and Annie-Belle, in simple white cotton wedding-dress, join hands.
MINISTER: Do you take this woman …
(Close up) Minister’s son’s hand slipping wedding ring on to Annie-Belle’s finger.
INTERIOR. BARN. NIGHT
Fiddle and banjo old-time music.
Vigorous square dance going on; bride and groom lead.
Father at table, glass in hand.
Johnny, beside him, reaching for bottle.
Bride and groom come together at end of dance; groom kisses bride’s cheek. She laughs.
(Close up) Annie-Belle looking shyly up at the Minister’s son.
The dance parts them again; as Annie-Belle is handed down the row of men, she staggers and faints.
Consternation.
Minister’s son and Johnny both run towards her.
Johnny lifts her up in his arms, her head on his shoulder. Eyes opening. Minister’s son reaches out for her. Johnny lets him take hold of her.
She gazes after Johnny beseechingly as he disappears among the crowd.
Silence swallowed up the music of the fiddle and the banjo; Death with his hair in braids spread out the sheets on the marriage bed.
INTERIOR. MINISTER’S HOUSE. BEDROOM. NIGHT
Annie-Belle in bed, in a white nightgown, clutching the pillow, weeping. Minister’s son, bare back, sitting on side of bed with his back to camera, head in hands.
In the morning, her new mother-in-law heard her vomiting into the chamber-pot and, in spite of her son’s protests, stripped Annie-Belle and subjected her to a midwife’s inspection. She judged her three months gone, or more. She dragged the girl round the room by the hair, slapped her, punched her, kicked her, but Annie-Belle would not tell the father’s name, only promised, swore on the grave of her dead mother, that she would be a good girl in future. The young bridegroom was too bewildered by this turn of events to have an opinion about it; only, to his vague surprise, he knew he still loved the girl although she carried another man’s child.
“Bitch! Whore!” said the Minister’s wife and struck Annie-Belle a blow across the mouth that started her nose bleeding.
“Now, stop that, Mother,” said the gentle son. “Can’t you see she ain’t well?”
The terrible day drew to its end. The mother-in-law wou
“Only tell me the name of the father,” her young husband said to Annie-Belle.
“Better you don’t know it,” she said. Then she lied: “He’s gone, now; gone out west.”
“Was it—?” naming one or two.
“You never knew him. He came by the ranch on his way out west.”
Then she burst out crying again, and he took her in his arms.
“It will be all over town,” said the mother-in-law. “That girl made a fool of you!”
She slammed the dishes on the table and would have made the girl eat out the back door, but the young husband laid her a place at table with his own hand and led her in and sat her down in spite of his mother’s black looks. They bowed their heads for grace. Surely, the Minister thought, seeing his boy cut bread for Annie-Belle and lay it on her plate, my son is a saint. He began to fear for him.
“I won’t do anything unless you want,” her husband said in the dark after the candle went out.
The straw with which the mattress was stuffed rustled beneath her as she turned away from him.
INTERIOR. FARMHOUSE KITCHEN. NIGHT
Johnny comes in from outside, looks at father asleep in rocking-chair.
Picks up some discarded garment of Annie-Belle’s from the back of a chair, buries face in it.
Shoulders shake.
Opens cupboard, takes out bottle.
Uncorks with teeth. Drinks.
Bottle in hand, goes out on porch.
EXTERIOR. PRAIRIE. NIGHT
(Johnny’s point of view) Moon rising over prairie: the vast, the elegiac plain.
“Landscape Theme” rises.
INTERIOR. MINISTER’S SON’S ROOM. NIGHT
Annie-Belle and Minister’s son in bed. Moonlight through the curtains.
Both lie there, open-eyed. Rustle of mattress.
ANNIE-BELLE: You awake?
Minister’s son moves away from her.
ANNIE-BELLE: Reckon I never properly knowed no young man before …
MINISTER’S SON: What about—
ANNIE-BELLE (shrugging the question off): Oh …
Minister’s son moves towards her.
For she did not consider her brother in this new category of “young men”; he was herself. So she and her husband slept in one another’s arms, that night, although they did nothing else for she was scared it might harm the baby and he was so full of pain and glory it was scarcely to be borne, it was already enough, or too much, holding her tight, in his terrible innocence.
It was not so much that she was pliant. Only, fearing the worst, it turned out that the worst had already happened; her sin found her out, or, rather, she found out she had sinned only when he offered his forgiveness, and, from her repentance, a new Annie-Belle sprang up, for whom the past did not exist.
She would have said to him: “It did not signify, my darling; I only did it with my brother, we were alone together under the vast sky that made us scared and so we clung together and what happened, happened.” But she knew she must not say that, that the most natural love of all was just precisely the one she must not acknowledge. To lie down on the prairie with a passing stranger was one thing. To lie down with her father’s son was another. So she kept silent. And when she looked at her husband, she saw, not herself, but someone who might, in time, grow even more precious.
The next night, in spite of the baby, they did it, and his mother wanted to murder her and refused to get the breakfast for this prostitute, but Annie-Belle served them, put on an apron, cut the ham and cooked it, then scrubbed the floor with such humility, such evidence of gratitude that the older woman kept her mouth shut, her narrow lips tight as a trap, but she kept them shut for if there was one thing she feared, it was the atrocious gentleness of her menfolk. And. So.
Johnny came to the town, hungering after her; the gates of Paradise slammed shut in his face. He haunted the backyard of the Minister’s house, hid in the sweetbrier, watched the candle in their room go out and still he could not imagine it, that she might do it with another man. But. She did.
At the store, all gossip ceased when she came in; all eyes turned towards Her. The old men chewing tobacco spat brown streams when she walked past. The women’s faces veiled with disapproval. She was so young, so unaccustomed to people. They talked, her husband and she; they would go, just go, out west, still further, west as far as the place where the ocean Starts again, perhaps. With his schooling, he could get some clerking job or other. She would bear her child and he would love it. Then she would bear their children.
“Yes,” she said. “We shall do that,” she said.
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE. DAY
Annie-Belle drives up in trap.
Johnny comes out on porch, in shirt-sleeves, bottle in hand.
Takes her reins. But she doesn’t get down from the trap.
ANNIE-BELLE: Where’s Daddy?
Johnny gestures towards the prairie.
ANNIE-BELLE (not looking at Johnny): Got something to tell him.
(Close up) Johnny.
JOHNNY: Ain’t you got nothing to tell me?
(Close up) Annie-Belle.
ANNIE-BELLE: Reckon I ain’t.
(Close up) Johnny.
JOHNNY: Get down and visit a while, at least.
(Close up) Annie-Belle.
ANNIE-BELLE: Can’t hardly spare the time.
(Close up) Johnny and Annie-Belle.
JOHNNY: Got to scurry back, get your husband’s dinner, is that it?
ANNIE-BELLE: Johnny … why haven’t you come to church since I got married, Johnny?
Johnny shrugs, turns away.
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE. DAY
Annie-Belle gets down from trap, follows Johnny towards farmhouse.
ANNIE-BELLE: Oh, Johnny, you knowed we did wrong.
Johnny walks towards farmhouse.
ANNIE-BELLE: I count myself fortunate to have found forgiveness.
JOHNNY: What are you going to tell Daddy?
ANNIE-BELLE: I’m going out west.
Giovanni: What, chang’d so soon! hath your new sprightly lord
Found out a trick in night-games more than we
Could know in our simplicity?—Ha! is’t so?
Or does the fit come on you, to prove treacherous
To your past vows and oaths?
Annabella: Why should you jest
At my calamity.
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE. DAY
JOHNNY: Out west?
Annie-Belle nods.
JOHNNY: By yourself?
Annie-Belle shakes her head.
JOHNNY: With him?
Annie-Belle nods.
Johnny puts hand on porch rail, bends forward, hiding his face.
ANNIE-BELLE: It is for the best.
She puts her hand on his shoulder. He reaches out for her. She extricates herself. His hand, holding bottle; contents of bottle run out on grass.
ANNIE-BELLE: It was wrong, what we did.
JOHNNY: What about …
ANNIE-BELLE: It shouldn’t ever have been made, poor little thing. You won’t never see it. Forget everything. You’ll find yourself a woman, you’ll marry.
Johnny reaches out and clasps her roughly to him.
“No,” she said; “never. No.” And fought and bit and scratched: “Never! It’s wrong. It’s a sin.” But, worse than that, she said: “I don’t want to,” and she meant it, she knew she must not or else her new life, that lay before her, now, with the radiant simplicity of a child’s drawing of a house, would be utterly destroyed. So she got free of him and ran to the buggy and drove back lickety-split to town, beating the pony round the head with the whip.
Accompanied by a black trunk like a coffin, the Minister and his wife drove with them to a railhead such as you have often seen on the movie
She wore a yellow ribbon. Her hair was long and yellow. The repentant harlot has the surprised look of a pregnant virgin.
She is pale. The pregnancy does not go well. She vomits all morning. She bleeds a little. Her husband holds her hand tight. Her father came last night to say goodbye to her; he looks older. He does not take care of himself. That Johnny did not come set the tongues wagging; the gossip is, he refuses to set eyes on his sister in her disgrace. That seems the only thing to explain his attitude. All know he takes no interest in girls himself.
“Bless you, children,” says the Minister. With that troubling air of incipient sainthood, the young husband settles his wife down on the trunk and tucks a rug round her legs for a snappy wind drives dust down the railroad track and the hills are October mauve and brown. In the distance, the train whistle blows, that haunting sound, blowing across endless distance, the sound that underlines the distance.
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE. DAY
Johnny mounts horse. Slings rifle over shoulder.
Kicks horse’s sides.
EXTERIOR. RAILROAD. DAY
Train whistle. Burst of smoke.
Engine pulling train across prairie.
EXTERIOR. PRAIRIE. DAY
Johnny galloping down track.
EXTERIOR. RAILROAD. DAY
Train wheels turning.
EXTERIOR. PRAIRIE. DAY
Hooves churning dust.
EXTERIOR. STATION. DAY
MINISTER’S WIFE: Now, you take care of yourself, you hear? And—(but she can’t bring herself to say it).
MINISTER: Be sure to tell us about the baby as soon as it comes.
(Close up) Annie-Belle smiling gratefully.
Train whistle.
And see them, now, as if posing for the photographer, the young man and the pregnant woman, sitting on a trunk, waiting to be transported onwards, away, elsewhere, she with the future in her belly.