Zoe Wicomb - October

See, she said as she dug in her apron pocket for a crust saved since breakfast, now I have something to dunk into my morning tea.

Sylvie decided that Ma was her stepmother. Otherwise, she would have been called Mamma. What had happened to her real mother? Ran away with a smous, AntieMa teased, and next year when he returns with his donkey cart full of muskmelons and pumpkins and cards of buttons, he’ll take you back with him to Boesmanland. So you had better not ask any more questions.

Oh no, the child said. She wouldn’t go with such a person. Never. But Nana said she should not give herself airs. Sylvie tossed her head imperiously and said, But I prating the Ingleese, and the sisters laughed behind their hands the suppressed laugh of women staving off sin.

The child was too old-fashioned, AntieMa said, with her nonsense about stepmothers. So she sat her down and explained that yes, Ma was not her only mother, that they, the sisters too, were her mothers. Sylvie said it was okay with her, as long as the smous was not involved.

Once, when Nana took Sylvie along to her place of work as housekeeper, the English Madam said she was cute, a sharp little girl whom she hoped would be trained as well as her aunt. As long as her family had a decent Willemse girl to help in the house everything worked out smoothly, Madam declared. But Nana said that they were planning for Sylvie to train as a teacher, that they had a sister in town with whom she could board. That was all very well, Madam said, but in town cute girls soon become fallen girls, and Nana blushed.

Sylvie’s jobs included helping Pappa in the garden and tending to the animals. And it was Pappa’s job to administer hidings for her many misdemeanors. Like bouncing on the kaffirmelons or knocking on the pumpkins in the hope that a fairy godmother would pop out, and worst of all for running off like a wild thing so that she could not be found. Such wildness, Ma said, had to be beaten out of her.

Pappa, more often than not distracted, would slowly take off the belt that he wore along with braces and, leading her outside, would make her lean against the henhouse for the thrashing. Sylvie would throw back her head and howl loudly, and the hens came out cackling, but so weak and listless were Pappa’s strokes that the belt would often bounce against the wall. Besides, he did not seem to believe that his trousers would stay up with braces alone, a matter of much concern, so that his left hand tugged and clutched at the scuffed corduroy waistband. His heart, the child knew, was not in it, and she howled all the louder.

My hands are not as strong as they used to be, the old man complained, holding them up this way and that in wonder. Which made Sylvie wonder whether he had given up the fight against sin, whether he too was waiting to be fetched by the Goodlord. After the beating he would pat her backside and ruffle her hair, but once inside, he complained to Ma that she was a noisy child, that her howling would send him to his grave.

When the old people died within a year of each other, Sylvie thought in terms of numbers. There were fewer of them, which surely meant that things would lighten up. And for a few days she was fooled by the shutters that AntieMa had pinned back, by the air that rushed through the unglazed windows, and by the door left ajar, through which a girl could slip out, quiet as a mouse.

On the wet sand where the sea had retreated far away on the other side of the Solway Firth, favoring the English towns of Maryport, Workington, Whitehaven, light bounced and frolicked. They walked gingerly across the abandoned seabed, holding hands in case of quicksand. Tongues of light licked at the liquid sand. The sky bore down upon the earth, repeating its white cloud in the mirror of seabed. Mercia was afraid. She had heard of the rogue tides rushing in, so that the murmur of water announcing its return drove them up to the hill.

Coward, Craig said. See, the water is nowhere near.

The clouds dispersed and sunlight dazzled both from above and from the reflection below. Cocooned in sunlight. Craig said it was the perfect place for their old age, the climate marginally better than the city to the north, the sea air good for the brittle bones of the elderly, and yet so close to Glasgow too.

Mercia protested. Best not to think of old age; time should be resisted; best to imagine it could be kept at bay.

Control freak, Craig laughed. Look, pal, it’s nothing to be afraid of. Wrinkles are no big deal. The middle-aged are in any case invisible to the young, who believe that they’ve bumped into ghosts as they stumble into us. That’s why we shiver in our youth. Think summer. Summer’s the new autumn, as the advertisers would say. In our autumn days we’ll put on our wellies and wade into the water, hand in hand. Stuff the mermaids and the peaches. The young are welcome to those.

How Mercia loved being called pal. When Glaswegian bus drivers or workmen said, There you are, pal, or, Got the time, pal? she was named, felt the warmth of an embrace, a welcome that came close to a sense of belonging. Whatever that was, Mercia was careful to add. And Craig teased, Oops, we mustn’t let go of the exilic condition now, must we? But she knew that he knew what she meant.

That night, with the water miles away, a full, lascivious moon stretched out on the sand, gazed up narcissistically, moonstruck, at itself, the light so bright that their shadows stretched before them. They walked for miles across the abandoned seabed, rested on a rock and waited, watched the moon as she slowly skated across the sand, tugging at the tide.

Just the two of them, Mercia and Craig, doing as they pleased. Not kept indoors by children. Over the years, discussions about children had come up from time to time, more often than not sparked by a rude, demanding child. Not, of course, that all children were horrid. Smithy had two little ones whom Mercia adored, but why should that influence her decision? Mercia would not be bullied by her body, by the demands of Mother Nature. If the tides of blood produced no urge for a miniature Mercia, so be it. There was no reason to question her lack of interest. Many women nowadays felt the same.

And no urge for a miniature me? Craig pouted.

Mercia said she found the idea of a flat-nosed, freckled, red-haired, frizzy-headed infant perfectly resistible. She preferred the sound of chickens pecking about the place, which would be feasible if they lived there, by the sea.

Craig said, Ditto. He didn’t feel one way or t’other; he was a bloke, immune to the moon. Although, if Mercia really wanted such a thing, he could be persuaded, could think himself into the unthinkable. By which he meant the chickens she had been banging on about ever since they had met.

•••

Mercia could not help herself. She was drawn to places where they had been together, where they had planned their future, not doubting their control.

Unhealthy, masochistic, Smithy maintained, why not come away with her and the children instead? They had rented a farmhouse in the Trossachs with plenty of room, and Ewan wouldn’t be able to come until halfway through.

I had in mind that you’d come along, she said. Think windswept walks in the hills, back to blazing log fires, delicious food washed down with the blushful Hippocrene, and then being beaten at Scrabble. Oh, I know you wouldn’t manage a whole week of vegetarianism, so we’ll allow you to bring along your own frying pan and pig chops.

Mercia was grateful for the offer, but declined. It was just that she believed the Solway, a place where she and Craig had so often been together, would help her to get used to being alone. That was where she should learn how to shape a new life. Nothing better than confronting things squarely, so she must return to that time, traverse the same places where she had imagined things to turn out so differently, test the solidity of the same stretch of wet sand. Confronted with the same thorny gorse crowding the pathways, she will turn the past into something she does not crave. Only there can memory be neutralized. Yes, the cliché of time healing the wound may be true, but she would accelerate the process, add to the medicine its old mate, space.