Mercia is not home because this is where she started out; she is here in Kliprand, she reminds herself, because Jake wanted her to come. Now a wasted Jake seems to have lost his marbles, keeping out of reach, silent in a room dark and musty with the fumes of alcohol. She knows that she too is in a sense hiding from him, that she too wants to put off talking, put off the unknown decisions that talking will bring. In the meantime, the moderate October heat is comforting, and she does love the familiar view of gray-green scrub with flat-topped mountains looming blue in the distance. She loves that hot, red sand where ancient tortoises sit for days resting in the same scrap of shade as if the earth had not moved, or night had not fallen, tortoises whose purpose it would seem is to endure the passage of time.
So despite Jake, and Sylvie’s horrible chatter, Mercia knows that this is home. There is a part of her, perhaps no more than insensate buttocks, that sinks into the comfortable familiarity of an old sofa. Which is nothing to do with three-legged cast-iron pots or roosterbrood; besides, the light slants onto the floor precisely as it does at the other end of the year in Glasgow — the world simply reversed. But here, is it not conceivable that Mercia could stretch out, boots and all, for a while at least, open her heart, let in the heat and light, and check to see how much of it has mended?
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.