Zoe Wicomb - October

How very far you have traveled, Craig once said to her shortly after they met. She understood it as a tired trope and smiled, not knowing whether to be offended. There was no point in saying that traveling had brought very little, that apart from the civility achieved through money and self-regard the northern world seemed much the same — there was only the business of growing older and necessarily inching this way and that, scratching about like a hen in the straw for a place in which to be comfortable. That is the payoff, the compensation for the loss of youth, of beauty, which is so wasted on the young, who do not know that they are beautiful. As long as it has nothing to do with coming full circle like a salmon, with the horrible notion of roundness and completion. But then, expecting to be comfortable in your declining years, to shuffle into old age hand in hand with the beloved turns out to be asking too much, is a sign of complacency that has to be punished, and the punishment to be borne with dignity. Which is to say without crying.

What, Mercia wonders, will happen to Sylvie? When all is done and dusted will Sylvie go quietly, launch herself into a new condition of single motherhood and ugly poverty? Or will she throw her head back and bray at the unjust world? Tear out Jake’s eyes?

Nicky slumps in front of the television. His mother bustles about with a feather duster, muttering to herself, or rather ambiguously talking to herself as well as to Mercia, whom she does not address directly, and of whom she appears to expect no answers. Even the question of a camera, which Mercia is about to answer. Sylvie supposes that Mercia would have brought a camera, so why then has there been no sign of it? But she does not wait for a reply. Her strange discourse segues seamlessly to the child, to his deprivation, of how he’d be better off without having to know such a father, to Meester’s camera that has disappeared, no doubt sold by Jake for a bottle of plonk. A disgrace, and such a good camera that Pa had expressly said was for Nicky. Ag, to talk and talk about things, what does it help, Sylvie says self-reflexively; she admonishes herself to stop, that it does no good, and then she is indeed quiet for a while, before starting up once more. Mercia thinks that she could grow to like such interaction, where someone else’s loops of consciousness wash over you, making no demands on you to speak, where your presence is enough.

As it happens, Mercia does have a camera, a brand-new Panasonic, which in a foolish moment at an airport she bought in the belief that she ought to have a hobby. She has brought it along, but does not even have the inclination to read the instructions. The ubiquity of cameras, the deferral of looking and experiencing as people snap instead, preferring the image, the chosen angle to savor at another time, has always been distasteful to her. The truth is that she is too embarrassed to carry the thing about. She ought to say to Sylvie that the boy could have hers. Why doesn’t she?

Christ, the woman will sit there in the doorway soaking up sunlight and say nothing, stare like an idiot into space. As if there were no one else about, as if she, Sylvie, the one who dusts and sweeps and stirs the pots, were not there. That’s what these grand people are like, the Murrays and their kind. If that’s what education brings then thank you very much, she would happily do without abc-ing. She too could sit around with books, magazines, but what a waste of time that would be, getting yourself all het up like a teenager about people you don’t know, dressed-up people who have nothing to do with you. No more than a kind of busybodiness that passes for being clever.

And why has Mercia said nothing about the camera? Sylvie’s days of photographing herself are over; she would rather not think of that time; she doesn’t know what happened to that old camera. Did she not give it to Kytou? But it’s different for the child. Nicky, who knows no better, bless his heart, had gone through his auntie’s bag, had brought out the camera to show his mother, and of course he has to learn that one does not look into other people’s things, so she had to give him a good smack. Especially a cheeky child like Nicky, who said that he found the camera in his room, so why couldn’t he look?

It is just as well that Nicky is there. A child is a handy thing for breaking the ice, so she says to Mercia, who starts — just as she thought, as if no one else is about — that the child tore his trousers yesterday. She wonders aloud whether Mercia is any good at needlework, at invisible mending. That might just give the woman a much-needed something to do, something practical.

For a moment Mercia recoils at the idea. Mending, darning, letting out the dreaded hems — that she could not countenance, but almost at the same time she revises the thought. Why not? Why not do something with her hands, besides, will it not sound snooty to say that she can’t?

I didn’t do needlework at school, and my mother got nowhere in her attempts to teach me, she explains. But you know what it’s like when you grow up; you want clothes, fashionable things. When there isn’t the money and you wouldn’t dare to ask anyway, you’ve got to get round it. So I tried to teach myself; I learned to knit and also to sew, but really I wasn’t much good at needlework. I’ll give it a go, but don’t hold your breath.

Sylvie tosses the child’s trousers to her. She doesn’t buy that stuff about being poor. She remembers Mercia, an older, distant figure, always looking nice, and wearing good shoes. What nonsense, the Murrays had plenty, although the old man was according to Jake mean, and Sylvie knows exactly what he means.

Mercia examines the damage. The trousers are worn; the ripped fabric has frayed, so that sewing a new seam would not be strong enough. Anyway, there’s no such thing as invisible mending. She says that if there’s an old pair that he’s outgrown, she could use the material to patch this one. She understands Sylvie’s frown. Faux-poor is the prerogative of the wealthy. The woman cannot but fear that her child will be laughed at, so Mercia explains that patches these days are okay, ripped trousers twice as cool and not at all a sign of poverty.

Sylvie’s voice is adamant; she won’t have her boy go about in rags. It will have to be your fancy patches then, even if it makes no sense that people should want to pretend to be poor. Imagine ripping perfectly good trousers to look cool. She knows that Mercia is making it up, no doubt trying to get out of doing the job, but she finds fabric for the patch. Perhaps, she laughs triumphantly, you could fix your brother’s trousers as well. He’s turning into a right skollie, staggering about to the bar with his clothes all ripped, making people say how she is a bad wife when there is no need for him to wear torn things. No need at all, given that she does everything, has the washed and pressed clothes hanging up neatly in the cupboard, but no, he must get the kekkelbekke in the village talking. There are plenty of those, just jealous that she has married a Murray, and now ready to gossip about the slightest thing.

Well, if people once were jealous they will no longer be, Mercia says. It clearly is not such a wonderful thing to be married to a man who’s a millstone round Sylvie’s neck if ever she saw one — even if he is lying in his bed. But Jake will have to pull himself together, get out of that bed, otherwise she, Mercia, will drag him out herself. Sylvie snorts, easier said than done. It’s time to get the dinner, she sighs. A piece of fish would make a nice change, the fish that Mercia said she would get. But Mercia, immersed in a tricky chapter that morning, had clean forgotten. She is so sorry; she’ll go right away; there is still time.