I do not know what to make of my years. The categories of young and old mean nothing to me, but here in London, in my heart, I feel for the first time the thrust of Spring’s spears, the delicate, lime scent of newborn leaf that sends the blood pumping in a heady rhythm. Mrs Pringle says that I am still young, that this is my second life granted by God. In which I grow in health and strength, especially since I avoid the white stuff to which slavers are addicted. Taking neither sugar nor the demon salt has calmed my rheumatism, so that distanced from greed and desire, my blood is freshened, fizzing with health. These tongue-tricking, white substances show nothing of their histories, the grubbiness with which they come to be in the world, hence I will have no truck with them. The herbalist in Highbury agrees that abstaining will soothe my rheumatic joints, and already I feel the pain subsiding. Mrs P says that freedom and, above all, belief flush the body out and cleanse the temple of God. I am grateful to Mrs P for not ever alluding to Daniel. Unlike others, she has not questioned my decision to remain in London. I will never forget her bashful eyes when she asked me to strip off my clothes, down to my naked flesh. The fire had been stoked and the curtains drawn. I am ashamed to say, she explained, that whilst I have no doubts at all, it is expected of me to confirm that I have seen on your body the evidence of ill-treatment and cruelty inflicted by your owners. Your history, so carefully written down by Miss Strickland, is thought to be a story of fantasy. She planted her feet firmly and ran her fingers over the welts and criss-crossed scars. I know my owners by each scar, I started, but she put a finger across her lips, hush now, then called briskly for Miss Strickland to witness the welted flesh.
The shame is of course not hers. No, shame belongs unquestioningly to Mr P’s enemies, who insist that he has maliciously published a sheaf of lies that is my story, that it is false and wrong to show slavery in such a vicious light.
Mary starts with a shudder. Hallelujah, she all but shouts. Bugger the Whigs and Tories, and to hell with their magistrates. Come now, Mr P, Nanny Potts is dead as a dormouse, and we’ve to get your history written. We’ll all go to your Eastern Cape, and our writer must come along to see for herself the state of affairs. Paint the region red, so we will.
Hush now Mary, Pringle remonstrates, but he flings out his arms all the same. Now that would be recompense, to go with you and Hinza on a trip to the Kat River. He had always had that in mind for the boy who would follow in his footsteps, follow a life of Christian humanitarianism in Africa. He reaches for Mary’s hand; he hopes that she’ll have some influence with the woman writer, for who knows what Missy has in mind for her marionette? And indeed the woman shakes her head, says that a trip will have to wait, that there is groundwork to be done right there.
How long he has waited for this moment of recovery, of his life’s work brought to attention, especially in his beloved Scotland. Vainglorious? No, that’s not it at all. Rather, it’s a matter of history which belongs to everyone, and in which he undoubtedly has had a humble role to play. Only, he could not have imagined his new maker to be like this, of this ilk. Och, the world has changed for sure and he must give her a chance, hope for the best. He must take this woman, who has after all agreed to tell the story, at face value. Is this not an opportunity to look afresh at those colliding worlds? Now, on this border where life and death jostle, he could stand the world on its head and cry, Hurrah, cry out loud that God is distant, but man is near! Phew! How thorny they turned out to be, those paths he trod, or rather, on his wooden crutches, flew along with the impatience of youth. Now, as he feels his hands fully shaped, feels the strength of his own fingers as they fall on her shoulders (attempting to guide her?), he believes that he could give it a whirl.
He can, of course, only hope, clutch at straws, but hope floods his being, infuses the blood that pulses in his veins. A whip crack – let’s get going! – sounds in the air. But first, there are boundaries to be set. Oh, he hopes that she will not start with that old tale about dear Nurse Potts dropping him as a three-year-old and then concealing his hip injury. The poor woman has suffered enough over that; and he certainly has never held a grudge against her; in the absence of a mother, she has come close to being one, has done her best. Besides, where has that story come from, and who knows if it is true? He may have once believed it, but the memory of a three-year-old cannot be relied on.
And pray God that she does not vulgarly pry into his marriage bed, that she spare Margaret who, like the tumbleweed that the dear woman loved to watch spinning across the barren plain, would at such intrusion somersault over and over in her grave. There has been distasteful lingering over Margaret’s lack of dowry, as if there were nothing else to say about her. Why on earth would anyone imagine that he, who had never been wealthy, would enrich himself through marriage? He could only be grateful that a woman with Margaret’s attributes had accepted him. Not that her piety did not irk, to begin with at least, but as for the ‘unfortunate marriage’, as theirs was branded, well, he could not have wished for better. A good, sensible woman, above reproach, whose unsuitability, it would seem, lay in the word ‘spinster’, as the grown men with their child-wives called her. For sure, Margaret was a good nine years older than he, but any sensible man would regard that as a blessing, and her motherly care could hardly be seen as a defect. He had much to learn from Margaret, and not only from her experience of farming that came in so handy on the foreign Cape frontier. Again he sees her dear face lifted at an angle, quizzically, lit with the beauty of reason, as she thoroughly considered his postulations, and gently led him to their flaws. Margaret, raised on a Scottish farm, devoid of airs and graces, how well and without a word of complaint she adapted to the African wilds. How appreciatively she listened to the nocturnal serenade of beasts; lulled to sleep by the roar of lions and the elephant’s trumpet, and daunted only by slithering snakes and spiders. And how eminently suitable without her dowry. He must insist on her being accurately drawn, but can that ever be the case? He fears not, thus he is prepared to fall to his knees, to beg for Margaret to be spared. No, that is not enough: he is prepared to fade back into oblivion, rather than have the dear, diffident woman’s life raked over. And so he arrives at the first clause of the contract.
Can this woman be trusted with the task, this story that is neither fish nor fowl, neither fact nor fiction? He fears that the writing machine that cuts and pastes might spawn all kinds of fanciful ideas, that the times will throw new light on things, that held up against new instruments of thought … oh, that is the risk that must be taken. For that he must gird his loins. But, all things considered, he is game for another take, a take of another kind. Call him needy, vain, and craving the attention of those who scorned him – a shabby confession it may be, though surely a justifiable sin – but he wants to be restored to his rightful place; a man of both the north and the south, a man traversing the hemispheres. Surely the desire to be known and acknowledged at home is not a vain striving after the wind.
Alas, his fickle friend Hogg and the great Sir Walter both gone – but Scotland remains the magical name that thrills to the heart like electric flame. Faith, that is what is required. Even if this lady, or rather woman writer has no understanding of frontier life, still, he will have faith. Dead white man he may be in her book, but now, dusted down, he feels himself growing stronger by the minute. If anything, his lust for living is fanned by her palpable scepticism.
Dare in commendam – he commends himself into her hands.
With his fingertips resting on my shoulders, I believe that we now have a contract of sorts. But what can that possibly mean, where the notions of truth and compassion that he demands are involved? Otherwise, he has given me carte blanche – no, I dissemble, for what choice does he have? There will inevitably be a struggle over past events and the long evening shadows that they cast over our story, his and mine. Again, I dissemble; my version will prevail, and there’s the rub.
Not only am I attracted to his inbetweenness, but there is more to unearth, there are the others spinning about his orbit, clamouring to be heard, to put in their ha’pennies’ worth. Except for the filmy figure that emerges and reveals herself as Margaret, the long-suffering wife, who has no desire to join the fray, who has been dragged in against her will, but who now, determined, on her way out, and without opening her eyes, remonstrates in a barely audible brogue, urging all to let be, to let bygones be bygones, to lay down all pens. As for Thomas’s reputation, she asks,