The Long Song (7 page)

She lay upon her daybed, wishing that the long window—with its clear view over the lawn to the horizon—was carrying into the room a cooling breeze and not, what she could always hear, the tiresome commotion of negroes. The rhythmic drone of the field slaves’ work songs, a mule braying, the pounding of walking feet, the crack of a lash, the gallop of a horse, a piercing yell, the squealing of a slow moving cart. And, so close about her that it was like a nagging worry within her own head, the clatter and jabber as the indolent house slaves went about . . . well what did they go about? ‘Marguerite,’ she yelled once more.

In the kitchen, the headman, Godfrey, aroused from his nap, licked his top lip to moisten his dry mouth, before gently kicking his foot toward July and saying, ‘Missus calling you.’

July, looking up from her sewing replied, ‘Soon come, me busy.’

When the calling came again, sharp enough for the cook, Hannah, to say ‘Cha,’ from her drowsy sleep, Godfrey leaned forward upon his chair to inspect what July was doing.

‘What you have there?’

‘Missus’s dress. She want it,’ said July.

‘Then go give it.’ said Godfrey.

‘Me can’t, it not ready—it still have three button on.’

The kitchen, like in all great houses upon the island, was a large, dark hut with a wide chimney and wooden jalousies upon the open windows, that was set apart a short distance behind the main house. It took three long strides for Godfrey to go from the kitchen to the house, for he was a tall man with long legs. It was six steps for the less gangling July and the two other chamber girls, Molly and Patience. It was a long, long wearisome trudge for the cook, Hannah. Being summoned into the house to listen upon the list of foodstuffs those big-bellies wished to chew on was her torment. At the great age of sixty Hannah resented all motion but that of round and round her kitchen. But for any white missus, like Caroline Mortimer, the reverse of that journey which would see her taken from the house to the kitchen was a voyage of the most substantial distance—like the moon be from the earth.

‘Miss July, you can take off that lace for me?’ Molly asked. ‘That will look pretty ’pon me dress.’ She had turned from the window where she was staring out with her good eye, watching four chickens pecking at the dusty ground.

‘Missus will see it gone from the bodice,’ July said.

Molly sucked her teeth. She did not care for July. I could say that it was because July had robbed Molly of easy work; for July had gone from being a filthy nigger child—used only to working in the fields—into the missus’s favoured lady’s maid, who boasted her papa to be a white man even though it was Molly that had the higher colour. And, at sixteen years, July had grown into an excitable young woman with crafty black eyes, a skinny nose, and narrow lips that often bore a smile of insolence; a troublesome dusky-skinned negro girl whom Nimrod (the once-upon-a-time groom at Amity but now a freeman) was always affecting not to notice, yet talked of all the time. But, in truth, Molly just despised anyone who possessed two good eyes within their head.

‘Well, me mus’ have some of the button you take off then,’ Molly said, before resuming her staring.

Patience stepped into the kitchen with three eggs caught up careful in the fold of her apron. ‘Missus calling,’ she proclaimed into the air. Patience was a woman who so resembled her papa Godfrey that you need to look upon her twice. For the first glance might have you think she was Godfrey dressed in the clothing of a woman.

Godfrey had been a fine handsome man in his youthful days, and that charm was still draped about him like the fading colours on a once glorious flower. Now his hair was white, his back stooped, his gait slower, yet still he was rakish. For his eyes ever blazed with merriment, no matter what prank or cruelty they be gazing upon. His broad back had lived forty-five years as a slave and he had ministered unto white men for thirty years as a house servant. But there was one part of Godfrey that through relentless toil had aged more hastily than any other—his male organ. Come, it was worn out. Pert, alert and ready for action from his tenth year, through demanding employ night and day for nearly thirty-four cane seasons, it now dangled limp and exhausted. No firm wide buttocks upon a bending female could arouse it to its former life. Even within its other function it remained tardy. Once his squirt could sizzle a fire out. But now Godfrey no longer had strength to stand as a man should to wait for his pee-pee to fall; he had to sit forbearing upon a pan, for his lifeless organ dribbled out water fierce as a pickney with its first tooth.

‘Missus calling,’ Patience said once more, this time directing her breath upon July. But she received no response for, at that moment, a little boy came in upon the kitchen yelling, ‘She have the egg. Me wan’ the egg. It be me egg. She have me egg. I get the egg. She tek the egg. It be me egg, me egg, me egg! Me wan’ me egg ...’

‘Byron, hush up,’ Godfrey shouted as Hannah, woken from her sleep, sat up fast as a living man caught in a hole for a corpse.

‘Byron, get out me kitchen. I tell you once, I tell you twice ...’ Hannah yelled.

‘Me wan’ the egg. She have me egg. She tek me egg . . .’

Byron was one of Godfrey’s houseboys. He cleared the tables, he swept the yard, he fetched the water, he killed the rats. But his face was always so live in motion, that if you had asked Godfrey what Byron looked like—once Godfrey had told you that he had a high colour, lighter even than his good late wife, (God rest her soul, but please do not bring her back to him!)—then Godfrey would describe to you an indistinct blur. For Byron never stayed still long enough for Godfrey to peruse his features for recognition.

‘Byron, me no wan’ hear your jabber,’ Godfrey said, but Byron was gone. And, in his place, there lumbered in the large brown dog named Lady, who rested its weary head in Godfrey’s lap, then sat its quaggy backside down upon the missus’s dress that July was working on. Come, its white muslin and gauze trailing along the dirty earth and brick of the kitchen floor was softer than a rug for the tired, dusty old beast.

‘Marguerite,’ came the calling again and all souls in the kitchen—including, if you listen close, the brown dog—did give a little groan.

‘July, go see to her, nah,’ Godfrey flashed. ‘She paining me head.’

July tried to lift the missus’s dress from under the flank of dog, but the hound, languid yet determined, did cling on to the moving cloth. First one paw did claw its nails into the fabric and, seeing it still stirring beneath it, a second paw then pierced it too. ‘Lady, get off,’ July scolded. ‘Mr Godfrey, you can get the hound off the dress?’ Godfrey first patted Lady’s lolling head, then kicked it hard upon the rump to shoo it away.

July held up the dress to better inspect it. Come, it was one fright. For not only had the brown dog left the print of its backside upon the skirt like some filthy bull’s-eye, but its mucky paws had walked a dog-foot pattern up the white muslin where none was required. But this was not the only trespass upon the garment. For Florence and Lucy, the two ever-jabbering-but-understood-by-no-one washerwomen, had returned this fancy dress from another savage laundering at their pitiless hands with all its many frills, flounces and furbelows pressed quite flat. And although made of the softest gauze, the sleeves of this dress were starched so stiff as to appear like pieces of wood. The rigid arms stuck out in front as if the dress were pleading for someone to embrace it. No pearl buttons were left upon the cuff at the wrists—for those that Florence and Lucy’s frenzied pummelling did not send shooting off into the air like gunshots, July achieved their loss with a dainty snip-snip from her scissors. And the collar of lace that had wrapped like a pelerine at the neck was entirely missing. Lost either on a bubbling raft of soap, blue and starch that sailed it away, unseen by its two lathering guardians on the river’s tide, or soon to be found under the mattress where Molly sleeps, while she feigns bewilderment, crying, ‘How it get there?!’ No need to enquire the number of securing hooks and black wire bars that were still in place upon the dress, for there were none.

As July lifted the garment higher to the light, turning the bodice to inspect the lining and tracing the frayed progress of several of its unravelling piped seams—she said, ‘Mr Godfrey, me gon’ get whipped for this. It mash up.’

And Godfrey, smiling, said, ‘Miss July, me no frettin’.’

And here is why.

When July reached the room where her missus reclined, rigid with furious impatience, she ran in upon it with such vigour that the drinking glasses that adorned the mahogany sideboard did quiver and resonate to announce her arrival on a melody of tinkling bells. She flew to where Caroline lay and, before her missus had time to take a breath with which to start her intended lengthy, fierce and hysterical scolding, July threw herself upon the floor, held the dress aloft and yelled, ‘Missus, the dress spoil! Them mash up your dress. It mess up, it mess up. Oh, beat me, missus, come beat me! The dress spoil, spoil, spoil. Come tek a whip and beat me. I beggin’ you missus!’

No word had passed Caroline’s lips, yet her mouth gaped as she hastily sat up upon her daybed. ‘What is it, Marguerite? What is it?’ July, rising on to the bed, pressed the dress close to her missus’s face. The missus shrieked and thrust out her podgy hand—either to keep the howling slave from her, or to stop the stiff sleeves of the enfolding dress from bashing her about the head.

‘Missus, come beat me,’ July shouted as she made grab for the slipper on her missus’s foot and pulled it off. Holding this pink satin shoe high in the air July brought it down with a smack against her own head. ‘Come, missus, beat me,’ she pleaded. She made move to hand the slipper to her missus but, as the missus reached to grab it July quickly tossed it away on to the floor, yelling, ‘Oh, missus, oh, missus! No look ’pon the dress—it mash up.’ July then threw herself down flat upon the floor on top of the frock and buried her face in its cloth. Her legs kicking, her arms flailing, she let out a deafening cry of, ‘It ruin, missus, it ruin!’ before collapsing in a heap of pure sobbing.

‘Calm down, Marguerite! What has happened?’ the missus screeched—her voice rising shrill enough to make Lady the dog stir in its far off slumber. ‘Show me the dress, show it to me now or I will whip you . . . I will . . . I will . . . Do you hear me? Do you hear me? I will . . .’

Now, July knew that her missus would not actually whip her, for she kept no whip. If any whipping were required then it would fall to John Howarth, the massa, to perform that duty. But he of late did not flog. Since his wife Agnes’s death only five weeks after Caroline’s arrival in Jamaica, he had not the energy for beatings, for there was no crime, to his desolate mind, that seemed to require it.

Upon the other hand, the overseer, Tam Dewar, was ever prepared with his industrious lash. But Amity was a busy plantation with many, many, many indolent, skulking, tricky, senseless, devious slaves. On the last occasion that Caroline Mortimer had bid a stripe be laid upon July (for leaving her missus quite alone in the house for an entire night), Tam Dewar had bemoaned—whilst his chewing tobacco stained his breath a darker and darker brown for the eternity of the discourse—that he could not be everywhere at one time. In a shower of rancid spittle he had finally inferred that the mistress might do better to learn to use her own whip.

So Caroline had tried once to use the braided buckskin lash (with the terracotta-painted handle) that her brother had bequeathed to her from his wife Agnes’s belongings at her death. But as she flicked it at July’s departing back (on this occasion for spilling the contents of a night pot over the floor, as I recall), Caroline hit herself with the thrashing hide quite smartly in the eye. The whip then went missing. And despite a thorough search made by all the house negroes none ever managed to find where July had hid it.

The missus’s favoured punishment was to strike July sharply upon the top of the head with her shoe. Although hopping and hobbling, the missus could chase July around a room for several minutes to deliver her blow. At these times July would jump, weave and spin to avoid her. For she knew that soon the tropical heat would so exhaust that demented fatty-batty missus that she would fall upon her daybed in a faint of lifelessness. But her missus was a tricky one. Any time she might creep up upon July to deliver that blow. For a punishment left unbestowed brooded within her missus like the memory of a delicious dinner left uneaten.