The Long Song (22 page)

That miserable July had no misgivings. She devised a story that told how the black-skinned baby she gave life to died rigid and grey with the very first lungful of air it breathed.

And this is why I can go no further. This is why my story is at an end. For I know that my reader does not wish to be told tales as ugly as these. And please believe your storyteller when she declares that she has no wish to pen them. It is only my son that desires it. For he believes his mama should suffer every little thing again. Him wan’ me suffer every likkle t’ing again!

 

 

 

 

R
EADER, MY SON IS quelled! Kindness has once more returned to his eye. Despite what you may have learned within my last pages, I beg you do not think ill of Thomas Kinsman. He is a good son and has come to his mama with his head bowed in abashed apology.

Within his hand he carried some papers which, he explained to me with childish passion, was an edition of the magazine of the Baptist mission in England. It seems that this publication has been in my son’s possession for nearly as long as his little leather boots; and it is evident that as much care has been lavished upon this document’s sadly browning and brittle pages. He desired his mama to peruse it, he said. So I did as I was bid.

Oh, reader, imagine my surprise when I alighted upon an essay printed within this august volume which was penned by none other than the wife of the baptist minister-man—the saintly, good-goodly Jane Kinsman! Within it, she wrote of the time when she—living in Jamaica with her husband and her two sons—found a negro slave child abandoned outside the door of their manse. After taking in the child and baptising him Thomas, she then ventured to find out who had mothered this slave. A person within the nearby town (she did not within this essay say whom), believed the baby to have been the pickney of a house slave called July. Imagine, July’s name was printed there for all in England to read!

The story then carries on that this house-slave, July, was approached secretly within the gardens at Amity by Jane Kinsman. When this slave realised that the woman who had her pickney was now standing before her, she did begin to shake with fear. She then begged Jane Kinsman to keep her son or else her missus (this paper did not say Caroline Mortimer, but all would know, for there was no other missus at Amity), was determined upon selling her slave baby away. Our author then goes on (at great length and in a very ponderous style that could have done with some lightness within its tone), to say that this is what she did—she promised this slave girl that she would rear her baby so the baby would not be sold.

Oh, reader, how this article did make me laugh when this missionary’s wife went on to say that when she assured the slave that she would take good care of her baby, the slave was so pitifully grateful that she did drop to her knees, snivelling and crying and kissing this woman’s hands. And you know what? It is true, reader! For it was exactly how July behaved upon that day; come, how else was she to get this white woman to raise her black baby?

But then Jane Kinsman did add (in this too sentimental essay, full-full of self-regard that was so beloved of white women at this time), that she did ask the little slave girl (that is our July), ‘Was your son born in wedlock?’ Jane Kinsman then states that this guileless, naïve and simple negro (these are her words, reader, and not my own), did then reply, ‘No, missus, him was born in de wood—where be wedlock?’

Reader, let me assure you now and make as plain as I might—July said no such fool-fool thing to that white missus, at that time or any other! Cha.

My son agrees, I must now return to my story with some haste, before another foolish white woman might think to seize it with the purpose of belching out some nonsensical tale on my behalf. But before my son does accuse me once more of falsehood, allow me to make a minor amend.

Do you recall, reader, that midnight hour when slavery ended? The pages within my tale which told of how the coffin that fancifully contained that oppression was buried within the earth? That remarkable night where Molly did fondly hug July? Well, here is where my correction must come. As far as your storyteller is aware, Molly did never once embrace anyone in the whole of her days. And July was not within the town to bear witness to the portentous revelry of that night. Your storyteller did find the chronicle of that occasion written within the pages of some other book—the title of which is no longer within my recall.

For I feared you would think my tale very dull indeed if, when the chains of bondage were finally ripped from the negro, and slavery declared no more, our July was not skipping joyous within the celebrations. But, alas, upon that glorious night of deliverance, July was, as you shall now read, confined within the tedious company of her missus.

 

 

 

 

T
ICK-TOCK, TICK-TOCK, tick-tock. Through one ear July could hear the long clock within the drawing room as it counted down for her the appointed hour when the false-free of apprenticeship was ended, and she could truly no longer be held as a slave. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Her other ear, however, was forcibly required to heed the babble of her missus.

Caroline Mortimer was engaged in belatedly answering the points of an argument she had recently had with her overseer John Lord —just before that overseer, in a bluster of contempt, had run down the piazza steps, mounted his horse and galloped away out of her employ.

‘I should have said, what I should have said, oh how I wish I said it. What I should have said was, “Why must I have the expense of an overseer when I am then required to do the work myself? Must I keep a dog and also bark?” Oh, if only I had said that, Marguerite, he would have held his tongue about making us visit the negro village. But it is so hard to think of a clever riposte within the time. And that worthless man just assailed me with his instructions. He would never have had the courage to speak to my brother in that manner. If my brother were alive (God rest his soul), he would have insisted that the overseer sort out the negroes’ worries for himself—as was his employment. My brother would have told him to go to blazes. But he believes he can make any request of me because I am a mere woman. Well, I will not do it—I will not. There is no need of it. I have another overseer who will perform his tasks properly and good riddance to John Lord with his ugly whiskers and shockingly bushy eyebrows. Oh, Marguerite, I should have said, “Shall I bark myself?” If only I’d thought to be so sharp . . .’ And with that her missus fell upon her daybed, still twittering like a bird sorely distressed.

John Lord was the tenth—no wait, perhaps the eleventh—overseer that had been employed at Amity since Caroline Mortimer had taken over the running of her deceased brother’s plantation. He had stayed a little longer than most—past a year.

It was six years since Caroline Mortimer had laid her brother’s body to rest within the hallowed ground of the churchyard, to the left of his wife Agnes, and on top of his short-lived pickney. After that sombre burying, a long parade of white people from about the parish—dressed from their top to their tip in the black of crows—had come to pay their respects to our missus. And every one of those guests that solemnly entered in upon that great house at Amity was treated to the ghastly story of what befell John Howarth upon that wicked night, when he was brutally and savagely slain. Come, there was even a guided tour included within the tale, directed by the missus, through the pertinent rooms.

At first her account was soberly enough conveyed; a nigger was waiting beneath the bed and shot her brother within the face; the murdering nigger was then pursued to the slave village where the nigger was captured by the overseer; but during the dreadful riot that had erupted, the overseer was attacked by a fearsome slave and died later of his wounds.

But the panting anticipation of her listeners, the clutched breasts and hastily sat upon chairs, the gaping mouths, the astonished wide eyes and the compassion—the, ‘Oh my dear . . . Oh, you poor, poor woman . . . Oh, good God in heaven, what you have suffered . . . Oh, you brave, brave woman, your brother (God rest his soul), would have been so proud of your fortitude . . . You, my dear, are a credit to the name of Jamaican planters . . .’—that caressed Caroline Mortimer’s esteem, gradually grew the story that exhaled from her into a tale worthy of the most flamboyant writer.

Soon, Caroline Mortimer, seeing the nigger shoot her brother, picked up her pearl handled pistol and gave chase. Mad with grief, though she was, she determined to bring that nigger to the gallows herself. And Tam Dewar, who at the start of her storytelling was just the overseer, who everyone knew as a rather vulgar, disagreeable and boorish Scotsman, gradually turned into her gallant knight. He took her into his arms to swear that he would move all within heaven and earth to bring the culprit of this heinous crime to justice. The nigger, Nimrod, needless to say became barbarous and bloodthirsty, cunning as a wild dog and base as a lowly worm. July made no appearance in any of the tellings, except once to spill a jug of water, like a buffoon, in fright. And as for the slave that attacked our gallant, brave and forthright Tam Dewar (that is Miss Kitty), she was a black devil woman, who with pitiless savagery, brutish fists and sharp teeth, hunted down white people upon this island to burn.

With little worry that anyone who could be believed (like July) would step forward to recount the events from some other view, Caroline Mortimer became, by the fifth delivery of her narration, the story’s resolute heroine.

Caroline then grew so convinced of her own audacity, so enamoured by her oft-conjured boldness, and persuaded by her imaginary competence, that when it came time for those planters and busybodies about the parish to give guidance to the missus upon what should be done with her brother’s plantation, the missus was so puffed with self-regard that she declared, ‘So help me, God, I will see the plantation of Amity prosper and grow that it may serve in absolute memorial for my dearly departed brother!’

Not even two surprisingly generous offers by her neighbours to the west and to the south—for the land, slaves, works, great house, and even to include the costs that should surely arise with the reinstating of the slave village and burnt-out hospital—did persuade Caroline Mortimer that withdrawing from Jamaica to England for quiet retirement in Islington, might be the better claim upon her resoluteness.

Nor did she approve the notion of an attorney handling her brother’s affairs. No. The fiction within her memory seduced her to declare that no one understood Caroline Mortimer if they believed these misfortunes and tribulations would see her broken. She alone would make Amity the most prosperous estate in the whole of Jamaica. Her brother would have expected no less from her.

However, it was not long before the firm nip of plain truth began to deflate the missus. Once she entered in upon the fetid dank room within the counting house to begin in earnest to peruse her late brother’s records of business, she soon realised that the fortunes of Amity were not as bounteous as she had always imagined them when dozing upon her daybed.

Within her first year as proprietor, she had to let the cane pieces of Virgo and Scarlett Ponds fall into ruinate, for she did not have the slaves to work them. Some had perished in the riots, others made feeble or limbless at the behest of justice and the law. Even after the seven slaves, carpenters mostly, who were loaned to Unity Pen by her late brother were begged return, she could not raise labour enough to keep the mill constantly turning and the teaches forever bubbling. And able black bodies could not be bought to replenish her stock with neither smiling friendship nor charmingly negotiated cash. For every planter within her circle pleaded that they were suffering from the same fate. Within that year of passing the ownership of Amity from deceased brother to deluded sister, the amount of hogsheads rolling out from the plantation works had dropped tenfold.