October Read online

  Ma was sick with a permanent bad head brought about by disappointment, which was why she was sad and cross and wary of sin. And why they all had to walk on tiptoe. She had already reached her fifty-eighth year and was waiting for the Goodlord to fetch her. The child had in mind an outing that would make Ma laugh, or at least smile, one that you earned after fifty-eight years of pursing your lips. It would be like the olden days that Ma spoke fondly of, a trip to the town with her legs swinging carefree from the side of the mule-drawn cart, her top doek flying in the wind, with the Goodlord merrily cracking his giddy-up whip. That would be why Ma so looked forward to being fetched.

  To help Ma overcome disappointment, Sylvie pounded tobacco into a rough snuff. The old woman inhaled, pinching each nostril in turn, then she would sneeze and blow her nose into large khaki handkerchiefs that the child washed on Saturdays. As Sylvie grew older she undid Ma’s doeke in the evenings, combed and plaited her short hair into little horns, no matter that they would be lumpy under the doek, for there would be the second cloth to smooth them over, but still Ma did not smile at her like a real mother. Instead she issued warnings against sin and urged the child to be frugal.

  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.

  Mercia spent four days on her own at the coast. She could not help sketching out different scenarios. If they had had children, would Craig have left? Would he not have had a fling and returned to the fold? She wept for the shame of it: yes, she would have endured that, would abjectly have put up with it. Which led to the conclusion that she had been right about not having children.

  Things will get better, are already better, she consoled herself. Spring will do the trick, even if in these parts summer held off indefinitely. Already bluebells burst in waves of blue in the woods, and gorse crowded the path in a sea of bright yellow, hiding its thorns, the honeyed coconut smell hovering above the brine. The clichés of the countryside sprang into life, with lambs gamboling on brand-new legs, yes, actually leaping joyfully in the reluctant sunlight.

  Just you keep it up, this friskiness, for soon you’ll be slaughtered, Mercia muttered. She wondered at what stage a gamboling lamb became an edible lamb. At least she was brought up to eat mutton, full-grown sheep, rather than babies caught in joyful midair leap.

  The coast had also been a means of escaping Jake’s letter. Emptied by grief, Mercia had so little to give. Was she not the one in need of comfort? The impossible flashed before her: an older, fictional brother who would touch the top of her head with four fingers, stroke her nape with his thumb, and take her home.

  Jake’s letter was no doubt written in the early hours, in a struggle with insomnia, with a hangover perhaps, when things get distorted. In which case it was kinder to ignore it. A nuisance that in this day and age Jake did not have e-mail, not since he returned to Kliprand. For all the hastiness of his scribble, for all the desire he might have had to fish the letter back out of the pillar box, here on the coast it turned into an arrow pointing home. His request was preposterous, and she had no intention of making any reference to the child, but she would have to respond.

  Back home in Glasgow, she telephoned. It was Sylvie who answered. Everything was fine, she said in her emphatic voice. Jake was not there, was at Aspoester’s, the new bar, but she would tell him of Mercia’s plans to visit. Later in the year, in spring, would be a better time to come. When the Namaqua daisies were out.

  Did Sylvie not know of Jake’s letter?

  It is day two and still no Jake. Of course, he is there, in the sagging bed, in the room with curtains drawn. Mercia has heard him in the night stumbling to the lavatory, then the slam of the fridge door, but during the day he lies low in the dark, fetid lair and ignores any attempt to rouse him. Sylvie sneaks in to feed the monster, carries in mugs of sweet black coffee and the occasional bread with peanut butter which he may or may not eat.

  Mercia is furious. It was not at all convenient to come at this stage, and Jake could surely have written or telephoned to say that he has changed his mind, that he does not want to see her, even if such a cry for help is indelible. She does not know what to make of the claim that he is too ill to speak to her. Jake has always been difficult, contrary, has delighted in being the good-for-nothing villain, but his villainy had been directed at their father. With her, Mercia, he had always been gentle, had appointed for himself a place in her heart, had wanted her approval.

  In the old house built of clay bricks baked in the sun on the riverbank, the children shared a bedroom. Mercia longed for a room of her own, but Jake was content; he believed that he would not be able to sleep without her. It could not have been beyond their parents’ means to add a room, but their father had in mind a grand future for his children, and to that purpose they were to make sacrifices and lead frugal lives.

  Sometimes, on winter nights, after the animals were tended and the supper dishes were cleared, Father grew less stern and read to them from the abridged Dickens novels that Mercia loved and did not mind hearing again and again. She traced with her finger the line drawings of Miss Murdstone’s wicked face, of hungry Oliver, and Pip as a young gentleman. Oh, it was Pip with whom she identified—his betrayal of Joe quite overlooked—Pip who escaped to a grand life in London. Miss Havisham too was captivating, also in the drawing where she presided, tall, dignified, imperious in her moth-eaten frock, over a magnificent crumbling cake. The table was laden with unidentifiable dishes, but unmistakably grand and bounteous, bound together as they were with the gossamer of spiderwebs. Mercia would practice their words in many fancy voices: Please, sir, I want some more; Barkis is willing; Play, boy, play.

  There was also the Children’s Bible and the magic of Moses’s bush that burned and was not consumed. In grave tones she repeated over and over God’s words to Moses, I am who I am, for they were regularly tested on the wonderful stories from the Old Testament. In the light of the paraffin lamp and with coals glowing in the pan, God’s strange message, “Tell the people of Israel I am has sent me to you,” was doubly mysterious. Their father said that God’s words were not to be questioned.

  Mercia does not remember Jake enjoying the stories. He sat stiffly, on the edge of his chair, as if bracing himself for an unexpected blow. In a sense he was right: there never was any knowing how they might trespass, do or say something wrong; they lived in a state of perpetual fear and guilt. But she, Mercia, transported by stories, was prepared to take the evening’s suspension of harsh parenthood at face value. Fagin’s den grew right there in the shadowy corner of the kitchen where the paraffin flame darkened the glass; Nancy’s faded frock rustled; and Sikes’s dog barked ominously in the distance.

  At night when their candle had to be snuffed as soon as they were in bed, Mercia listened in fear to the distant barking of real dogs. Or worried about the church bell, which rang in the night when someone died. Then she was pleased to hear Jake muttering in his sleep. She believed the bell to ring all by itself, or rather be rung by a fierce bearded God, far fiercer than Father, who glowered through the corrugated zinc roof, and she would hide in vain under the covers as he thundered his demands like any common robber.

  Guilt—that was what defined their childhood. Guilt ran like a dye through their days, streaking the most innocent of activities, tingeing all with fear of trespassing and disappointing their virtuous parents. Were there no golden days of childhood, no forgotten walks through parables of sunlight, when after rare rain they scampered about in a fresh, new world? Jake was emphatic. No, never, that Mercia was mistaken.

  But Mercia, who fashioned her own private world, remembers otherwise. On lovely days cooled with cloud, she stepped out of the real to play alone at her secret place, a thornbush decorated with the silver paper rescued from Christmas sweets. In spring tiny green leaves burst from the gray stems, and later, at the end of summer, red berries shone as brightly as the silver paper. With twigs she swept a clearing around the bush, and there, hidden in an embankment, escaped from them all, even from Jake, whom she did not tell of that home.

  Mercia had stolen a cracked inkwell from school so that she could cradle in her hand its exquisite shape, the clean lines of white porcelain that tapered to the base, and at its mouth the curve of the rim, rounded t
o fit a slot in the school desk. She had washed the well clean of ink and kept it hidden in her thornbush home. Never again would it be an object for use, no, from that day she renamed it a vase. Mercia did not mind the crack at all, as she placed in it a sprig of flowering Jan Twakkie. Her collection of stones was kept in a special oval tin that once contained canned fish. Father had hammered the edges down smoothly, so that she would run her fingers around the rim, marveling at the lack of corners, the lovely shape with its matching name: oval.

  There were also Sunday afternoons when the children played together between rows of rustling mealies. Then they would strip barely bearded cobs and chew at the sweet milky seeds. They’ll know, Jake said earnestly; they know everything we do or think, and that’s why we’ll be beaten. They know the bad things we don’t know that we’ve done or thought, the things we will do tomorrow and the next day. Jake said he hated Grootbaas, that he wanted to be bad bad bad beyond the old man’s imagination.

  Look, he said, I’m a mealie, as he stripped off all his clothes and rolled in the dust. The only reason they won’t admit that they know I’ve been bad is because they’re ashamed. That’s grown-ups for you, frightened of nakedness. But what the old boy will do all the same is beat the shit out of us. He’ll find a reason.

  And he did. Waited for them on the stoep with the aapstert swinging from his left hand. From his right hand he sipped noisily from his afternoon cup of coffee. There was no escape from those Argus eyes, from his omniscience. A father who loves his children knows everything, he claimed, like God. Knows when they’ve been bad. He did not want them to turn out like the people of Kliprand, like the dirty, drunk Bassons. Jake rolled his eyes at Mercia. He would rather not be loved. Besides, he admired the Bassons, who spent their waking hours around a fire in their kookskerm without a roof, happily without chores. At weekends their tin guitars tinkled across the veld, and the dust rose as they danced the kabarra.