Still Life - Zoeë Wicomb

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in spite of his high connections. And then, God’s inscrutable will – even with a ticket in his hand, the coffers packed, the sails of the Sherburne all but set as a fair wind swept east-north-east – to strike him down. Cruelly cut off when there was still so much to do.

      And now this opportunity: a chance to resist fate and make known his life’s work. Let it not be forgotten that he had resisted injustice all his life. Had he not taken on the arrogance of the Cape governor, Lord Somerset and his Reign of Terror? Or the Scottish Tories? (slavers really, for those who benefit from slavery are no less than that). Besides, he has been made and remade so many times, in a hayrick of words heaped upon each other, the tattered old stories raked over, heaped in both glory and scorn, his precious verse laid out for scrutiny. The time has come to take control. There have been no concessions, none for a man on crutches, a man with poor lungs, and for that he feels gratitude of sorts. He has long since forgiven the malice of his own people, but it should be known that they were mistaken in overlooking him. He, Thomas Pringle, is yet a man of the Cheviots and the Eildon hills. Oh, for a ramble along Linton Loch in the rising light of February, the wind keen and the rain fresh, and there by the brae … there stands Nanny Potts, her hands on her hips, dear Pottsie waiting, scolding – the gypsies will come and take you away if you don’t eat your kale … the alphabet again, in best copperplate this time … do stop teasing your wee brother, or the gypsies … dear Nanny Potts … and the Paps of Eildon veiled in the rain …

      Mary Prince is shaken by Mr P’s retreat into a childhood of which she knows nothing. She must focus, gather herself, remember the times in London when he stood firm for freedom. It is not easy to enter the wavering world of the past, but enter it she must. Mary rocks to and fro, hums a hallelujah, then mutters to herself in a low, throaty voice:

      All night this house tosses on a dark sea, sways like a ship on fluid foundations. A black house, or one that turns black as night falls, as we lay ourselves down to rest. Women in the attic room and men in the parlour below, black as the kind night itself. We are bundled in bedrolls, arranged top to tail in rows. Not a slave ship at all, I say over and over. No, peaceful, benign, were it not for the past that presses its demons upon us in the dark, clamps its claws around our throats so that the women around me gargle their terror, scream, thrash wildly, strangling themselves in their bedclothes. How often I have to light a candle and soothe or scold them into silence. Heavens above, what namby-pamby sugar lumps these young women are; they would melt in the softest of English rain.

      Cut out the feartie, as Mr P often says to me. Straighten those backbones, I scold. How on earth have you lot managed to escape from your masters? I am in charge. I give them no more than an hour to gather themselves. There is no sense in endless kindness, because mark you me, I say sternly, freedom is not for namby-pambies. Your bodies may have been abused and broken, may also be practised in recovery, but your minds have not been exercised in the ways that a new kind of living will demand of you. Now freed, do not imagine that you should rest on your oars, or go about banking on others. You will have to act of your own accord, make decisions, choices, and it takes strength to do so. No bed of roses, this kind of freedom, so cast the demons out once and for all. Have we not always found solace in the night when under kind black skies we sank, exhausted, into the oblivion of sleep? Besides, you know that here we are all protected. Safe in the house of Pringle.

      The women weep; they moan about flames of hell. What I would not do for a decent night’s sleep! To hasten their recovery, to exorcise the demons – God will forgive me – I rush about the room with a lit candle in each hand and thrust the flickering flames up into dark corners. I mutter in a low, growling, voodoo voice the mumbo-jumbo that Mam chanted, even as she urged us to embrace blue-eyed God and the Christ-child Jesus. But I cannot keep it up; I see again, hear again Mammy’s deranged jabbering as she arrives on the boat to rake the salt at Turk’s Island, raving, and not as much as recognising me, her own honeychild. The candles have, thank God, been blown out in the rushing about, and I say, See, the light has gobbled up the demons. I press my hands over my ears and swallow the sound of Mam’s mad shrieks. No point in dwelling over the bitterness of that deeper past.

      Spare a thought for others, I remonstrate. Our benefactors, wrenched out of the soft, plump arms of sleep by your bloodcurdling cries – they must be tossing and turning in their beds, wondering about the wisdom of taking in strange runaways. Really, I am tired of soothing; my days of being nursemaid are well and truly over. The younger girls still snuffle around for mothers; they look at me hungrily, would nuzzle into my breasts and clutch at my skirts if I were to give them an inch. There is no point in beating about the bush, no point in delaying their recovery, their independence. I am nobody’s bloody mother, I say as brutally as I can, slapping at my dugs; there is no milky bosom, no heart here to mother anyone. So pull yourselves together, brace yourselves for this new bittersweet life of freedom. Let us not blacken this house in vain.

      We do not usually have so many stray people in the house, but there has been a fire at the Friends’ Meeting House in Islington. We have our suspicions about that fire, by no means the first. There are many respectable citizens who so believe in the rights of slave owners that they’d stoop to anything. The Pringles have taken in the female runaways, packed them into this small house like the hold of a slave ship.

      We must all do what we can for these poor souls, Mrs P said, looking pointedly at me. You’ll have your attic to yourself again, Mary. The Society will place them with good abolitionist families as soon as they can, but for now you are responsible for these women. She does not think me unkind, but she knows how I value this precious little space with a bed of my own and the yellow patchwork cover I have stitched myself. Along the top edge, in the centre, I have sewn a large square, admittedly out of kilter with the rest. It is the whole of Daniel’s best grey handkerchief he gave me as keepsake, visible all day long, and at night I draw it up and bury my face in its story. Now with my cot pushed right up against the wall for space, I have folded away the cover, fearful that others may touch my heart so boldly laid out.

      Often I trail my fingers along the perimeter of the walls, savouring the safety of a private space. Mrs P does not, of course, have a room to herself. She spends all night with a husband, and I wonder if she does not at times wish to explore the full measure of a bed, fling out her arms and settle where she will, hum a tune to herself, or light a candle and turn the pages of the good book as and when she pleases. That would be freedom indeed, to have had enough of the comfort of another body in bed. Not that I ever desired such freedom. Even Captain Abbott, a kind enough man, who came for a good number of years to my hut, would leave well before the night was over. Not until Daniel did I have the comfort and joy of a whole night with a husband, a free man, of waking up together in the light, even though there were some who said that a marriage could not be lawful without the blessing of the English Church. Which is, of course, a piece of nonsense, given that that church does not allow the marriage of slaves. Now I will never know whether after years of marriage I would desire the freedom of a bed of my own. I will never know if Daniel thinks I ought to have taken the risk of returning, but I know in my arthritic bones that if I were to return, the Woods’ punishment for speaking of their cruelty would be to sell me off to a far-flung place; that return to the island would never be a return to Daniel. Oh, the scales have wavered between freedom and love, but it is not that I have chosen freedom over love, or chosen, as my wicked enemies have accused, licentiousness over being with one husband. Love untested over the years will remain, steadfast, unwavering; rather, I chose between freedom and bondage, freely chose that over which I had control. Daniel would certainly have been snatched from me the very moment I laid my eyes on him. I shut my ears to the rumour, no doubt broadcast by the Woods, that he has found a new woman. With freedom secured here by Mr P, love is not a risk I could allow myself to take. Or should I have risked returning?

      The women fall into fitful sleep after the demons have been driven out, but the demon in my heart beats against my ribcage, so that I slip out of the house into the icy night. With Mrs P’s handed-down coat draped hastily over my nightgown I hobble as fast as I can to the Heath. St Anthony’s fire flares in my gammy left leg, but the pounding of my heart is the only remedy for driving out thought. Had I miscalculated? Misread the wavering beam of the scales? Am I indeed a wicked selfish woman unworthy of the good Moravians who married us? I stumble as fast as I can across the Heath, circle it, over and over until

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