“Ah cain’t be white!” growls he, shaking his head, and then he frowned, and a wicked glitter came into his eyes. “Say, Mistuh Comber … you tryin’ talk yo’self out o’ this? You tryin’ to fool this po’ coloured boy?”
“No such thing! Why, if I wanted to be ‘out of this’, as you call it, don’t think that you could stop me. I’m here because I’m being paid – ah, there you have it! I’m free, you see, but you’re not, because you’re content to be bound to that great fat slug, when you could be …” And then I caught the gleam in his eyes, and I stared for a moment, and then lay back on the bed, looking at the ceiling, anger giving way to amusement.
“Joe,” says I at length, “you are a smart black son-of-a-bitch, aren’t you, though?” I began to laugh, and so did he, the great black face split in a melon grin, his shoulders heaving. “Oh, you poor coloured boy! So writing and figuring are tough, are they?”
“Some,” chuckles he. “Cain’t hol’ de pencil in mah big black fingers, nohow!”
“Oh, leave off! Begging your bread, forsooth, and mumbling like a fieldhand! What’s the capital of Portugal?”
“Oh, lemme see … Ah gotta study dat! Tain’t Madrid, nossuh, ’r Gay Paree … um, Lisbon, maybe? Say, though, which o’ yo’ li’l ole English kings got hisself mu’dered in de Tower o’ Lunnon in fo’teen-eighty-three?”
“Don’t be daft! Oh, very well – which one?”
“Edwa’d Fift’. He was jes’ twelve yeahs old, an’ his mammy wuz a lady called ’Liz’beth Woodville.” He sat there chortling, the jolly darkie to the life, damn him.
“Yes … I should have remembered, shouldn’t I, that anyone who can spy inside the Underground Railroad, and fool Crixus, knows more than picking cotton … Went to school along with Atropos – Master Charles – did you?”
“Niggers don’ ’tend school. No, we had the same gov’ness, in the same nussery. Mass’ Charles’s papa was an … exper’mental gen’leman, so he raised us the same.” He was smiling still, but the black eyes were expressionless. “Wanted to see how it came out, Ah guess.”
“But see here … this is all the more reason why my question’s good, Joe – why, being raised like that, and educated, and knowing what you do … why, in God’s name, d’ye stay a slave? Don’t you want to be free, for heaven’s sake?”
Just for a second he avoided my eye, then his chin came up. “Ma answer’s good, too, Comber.” It came out in his harsh bass growl. “Ah don’ need to be free. Ah serve Mass’ Charles as a friend – his best friend, like he told you. He trusts me, Ah trust him. The way he goes, Ah go. He wants me to work for the Kuklos, Ah work for the Kuklos. He wants me to keep a hold on B. M. Comber an’ make sho’ he earn that fi’ thousan’ dollahs …” The smile on the primitive face was a knowing glimmer now, and not pleasant. “… Ah keep a hold. Oh, maybe take a li’l rise out o’ him, fo’ fun, an’ so we both know whut’s whut, but that don’ signify a bit. You stay held, Comber, all the way, make no mistake ’bout that!”
So there … Comber. Evidently my question anent slavery had annoyed him, and he was reminding me “whut” was “whut”.
“Well, Joe, all I can say is that Master Charles is fortunate in the loyalty of his friend.”
“That’s right!”
“And tell me … when he says ‘Hump my wife, for my entertainment’, do you do it as a friend – or as an obedient slave?”
I’ll swear his eyes glowed, and he wasn’t a pretty sight. Then he smiled, and was even less pretty.
“It ain’t no ha’dship –’speshly ’cos she don’t like it. She don’ like it at all. She jus’ cain’t ’bide niggers, it seems.”
“Ah, well, there’s no pleasing some people, is there? Happy little menage you must all have together. Fortunately, however, she can abide white men … and I rather think she’s expecting me.” I swung my legs off the bed, and he seemed to flow upright like a genie towering out of a bottle. I feigned surprise. “Don’t worry, Joe, I shan’t run away.”
He stood glaring down at me, undecided, and I wondered if he was going to assert his guardianship. But he had style, did Joe, in his own way, for after a long moment he stood aside, giving me his nastiest grin, and unlatched the door. “Sho’ … you go right ahead, like an o-bedient free white man … yo’ right welcome to the nigger’s leavin’s. An’ Ah know you won’t run, ’cos o’ that fi’ thousan’ dollahs … an’ this.” He pulled back his coat to show the pistol butt. “You go along, now … an’ enjoy yo’self, ye heah?”
“Why, Joe, Ah b’lieve Ah sho’ly will,” says I. “Tell ye sumpn else, Joe … so will she.” I winked at him. “You think ’bout that.”
And she did, so far as I could judge, which was never easy with La Mandeville, quite the most unsociable mistress I ever mounted. Most women I’ve known have exchanged seductive pleasantries beforehand, squealed and gasped during performance, and chatted comfortably afterwards (except my Elspeth, who gasses throughout, bless her). Not Annette; when I accosted her that night in her cabin, it was Greystones all over again – cold, clawing passion, and then sullen silence until she fell asleep. However, when the train bell woke her (at Philadelphia, if memory serves) she went to work like Poppaea on honeymoon, which I took as a compliment, before resuming her impersonation of a Trappist nun, if there is such a thing. It was at this stage that I succeeded in getting a snatch of conversation out of her, and most interesting it proved to be.
In the interval between rounds, so to speak, while she lay cold and quiet beside me in the cramped berth, I’d been reflecting on Joe’s capricious behaviour. For a while there we’d got on rather well, he’d taken me in by playing the darkie simpleton, teased me cheerily – and then all unintended I’d touched him on the raw, probably by my impatient concern for his enslaved condition (Christ, you can’t do right for doing wrong with these folk). So he’d turned ornery on me, been redoubled and set down, and from that moment we were sworn enemies. Well, the hell with him. At all events, in trying to coax some chat out of my tiny paramour after our final gallop, in which she’d drawn blood in two places, I mentioned Joe’s name – partly out of curiosity, but mostly out of malice, I confess – and she started like a galvanised frog.
“What of him? What did he say?”
Aha, thinks I, guilty conscience; capital. “Oh, this and that … he’s an odd chap. No fool, for all he looks like a backward baboon. Knows more English history than I do, anyway …”
“What? History, you say?” She was wide awake now. “What does that black beast know about it?”
“The name of Edward the Fifth’s mother, for one thing. Quite extraordinary … aye, a most educated nigger, smart as paint. I’m surprised your husband trusts him.”
She was silent a moment. “Why should he not?”
“Well, Joe’s a slave, ain’t he – and here he is, heading for the free states, so what’s to hinder him lighting out for Canada? I would, if I were he – but when I put it to him, he said your husband was his best friend, and he’d not dream of running from him … you know, loyalty, that sort o’ thing …”
“Loyalty! What do animals know of loyalty?”
“Oh, I dunno … dogs are loyal, they say, ’tho I never found ’em so. My Aunt Paget had one of those damned poodles, when I was a kid – stank, but she swore it was faithful. Took a great lump out of my arse when I tried to sick it on to some hens –”
“What else did the brute tell you?”
“Oh, nothing.” I yawned, and when she had turned away and settled down, I gave a drowsy chuckle. “Nothing much, leastways … oh, yes, I gather Joe likes white women … unwilling ones, for choice.”
She lay dead still – so still, I could sense the sudden tension of her muscles. Good luck to you, Joe, thinks I, if ever Atropos kicks the bucket unexpected and you become the widow’s property. I waited for her fury to vent itself in shrieks of rage or fine French oaths, but nothing came for at least a minute, and then the most astonishing thing happened.
She turned slowly towards me in the berth, and her hand stole across, searching for mine, and to my amazement she nuzzled her head on to my shoulder. Her tiny body was trembling, and damned if I didn’t feel wetness trickling on my skin – she was absolutely weeping, with a soft murmuring wail that I could hardly hear until it turned into a faint broken whisper: “Oh-h-h … hold … me …”
I couldn’t credit it – Annette Mandeville, the spurred succubus, hard as a diamond and vicious with it, whimpering like a lost child. I slipped an arm about her, marvelling, and she clung closer still, pushing her blubbering face under my chin. “Oh-h-h, hold me … close … close … oh, please …” Well, naked tits never appeal to me in vain, so I drew her over me with her small rump in my one hand, for she was the veriest fly-weight. She lay there, keening away, bedewing my manly bosom with her tears. Baffling, I found it, but rather jolly; I disengaged the clasp of her fingers so that I could work at her poonts with one hand and her stern with t’other.
“No … no … not that,” sobs she. “Only … comfort me … oh, please … hold me close!” She was crying hard now, with a great yearning misery. “Please … comfort me!”
So I did, stroking her hair and petting her in a bewildered fashion, asking myself if I’d ever understand women. She clung like a clam, and after a while her weeping subsided into little sniffs and sighs, and I guessed she was dropping off to sleep. So then I cheered her up properly.
* * *
a King’s African Rifles.
Chapter 10
Some cynic once observed that it was impossible to see the sights of New York City because there were no cabs to take you about, but it didn’t matter because there were no sights to see anyway.25 I can’t agree; whether there were cabs or not in ’59 I didn’t have time to find out, but for sights, well, there may have been no St Paul’s or Rialto or Arc de Triomphe, or mouldering piles of stone or dreary galleries stuffed with the rubbish of centuries, but there was something far more moving, inspiring, and aesthetically pleasing to the eye than any of these, and you didn’t need a cab to see ’em either, as they sashayed along Broadway past the old Astor House by the Park, resplendent in their silks and satins and furs, with those ridiculous fetching hats and parasols above and the extravagantly high heels below. I refer to the women of New York, who for beauty of face and form, elegance of dress, and general style and deportment, are quite the finest I’ve struck – until they open their mouths, that is, which they do most of the time, but even that incessant nasal braying can’t rob them of their exquisite charm. I don’t mean only the trollops, either, of whom there were said to be two thousand in a population of three-quarters of a million in ’59 (and who counted ’em I can’t imagine, some clergyman, no doubt) but the respectable women of every class. I was enchanted at first sight, and if I were condemned to spend my dotage sitting in Stewart’s store or the Metropolitan lobby, contemplating the passing peaches, I wouldn’t mind a bit, provided I was furnished with earplugs against the cackling laughter and cries of “You bet!” “Be blowed!” and “Okay, bo!” But they probably have different cries nowadays, and no powdered hands or Grecian bends, alas.
They absolutely ruled the place then; New York was a woman’s town, and let no one tell you different. They were the queens of the world, and didn’t they know it, not that they were pushing, you understand; they were just freer and bolder and more forward and independent than any women I’d seen elsewhere, taking it for granted that men existed to serve and minister to them, and not t’other way about. For example, you could be on an omnibus, going through the inconvenience of paying the driver through his little window, and three or four dolly-mops would come on chattering and laughing behind you, drop their money in your hand, and expect you to pay it over and bring ’em their change – perfect strangers, too. Mind you, the reward of a free and easy smile and “Thanks, chief!” from a pert New Yorker is a delight; given time, I’d have been haunting that omnibus yet.
Everything was for their convenience, too: hotels had their ladies’ entrances and dining-rooms, so that the dears wouldn’t be offended by the reek of cigars and the conversation of horrid men; every other shop seemed to be dedicated to cosmetics, female finery, and jewellery, from quality establishments like Ball and Blacks to the seedier stores on Water and Mercer Streets; they had their own cake-and-coffee houses where no male dare enter, and there were even gambling hells for ladies only (and I mean society women, not cigar-store tarts from below Fourteenth Street) where they “bucked the tiger”a and blued their menfolks’ dividends at faro and billiards. And their husbands, sweethearts, and paramours seemed to be all for it, and treated ’em with a regard and deference you’d never find in Europe.
Why this should be, I don’t know; New York men are certainly no more chivalrous than any other. It may be that women were scarce in colonial times, and so grew to be particularly treasured, but my own theory is that, the U.S.A. being all for progress and liberty, and New York in the vanguard of everything, its women have become emancipated sooner than their sisters elsewhere. They’ve usurped not a few masculine habits, too: anywhere in the world you’ll see roués with fast young women in tow, but only in New York was it common to see fashionable ladies of mature years settling restaurant bills and buying gifts for handsome young clerks; they picked ’em up over department-store counters, I was told. And the New York female grows up at a startling rate: my first day there I was astonished to see a party of society schoolgirls, the kind whose parents live on Fifth Avenue and have the brats educated at Murray Hill, driving along in a basket wagon with a “tiger” on the step – none of ’em was above twelve years old, and all were got up like women of twenty, even to the languid airs and gestures.
So that was my first impression of New York, gained in a few brief hours: splendid women on the go, but nothing else out of the ordinary, for the town itself was a sort of larger Glasgow – there were no sky-scrapers then – and chiefly remarkable for being paved apparently with peanut shells, which were sold by swarms of urchins and crackled underfoot wherever you turned, even in the lobby of the Astor House, to which we drove from the station. It was the place in New York just then, and large even by American standards, a great barracks looking east across Broadway to the Park, with a shaving mug and brush in each room; talk about luxury, if you like.
If my impressions are sketchy,26 I can only plead preoccupation. New York was where I was going to have to cut stick, not only eluding the Kuklos but hiding out from them, preferably with a British consul who’d see to my passage home once he found out who I was. It was maddening (and frightening) to drive through crowded, bustling streets, to look about the busy lobby of a great hotel, to sit in the suit of rooms which had been reserved for us – and to know that I daren’t stir a foot for fear of the unseen eyes that were following me everywhere. Soon after we arrived, when Joe had gone below stairs to chivvy the porters about our bags, and Annette and I were alone, I excused myself to visit the privy along the way. She didn’t even turn her head as I slipped out into the passage, which seemed empty except for a couple of darkies clinging somnolently to their brooms – and then at one end there was a nondescript white man who turned his back just a shade too hurriedly at the sight of me. I strode smartly the other way – and became aware of a chap lounging in an alcove ahead, with a round hat tilted over his eyes. Of course, he may have been an innocent citizen – but I didn’t know that. I stepped into the thunder-house, palpitating; it was empty so far as I could see, but it was six floors above ground, and by this time I was convinced that there was probably an armed dwarf crouching in the bloody cistern.
Right, thinks I, we’ll have to wait until dark; if I’m not a better night-stalker than anything the Kuklos can show, it’s a poor look-out. Meanwhile, we’ll be a docile little prisoner, and keep our eyes peeled. I headed back for our rooms, and bore up sharp at the door, which was ajar, for voices were being raised within, Annette’s and Joe’s.
Following her astonishing
behaviour the previous night, when she’d crept into my arms blubbing like a baby, I’d looked to see a softening of her manner in the morning, but no such thing. The Annette who woke as we pulled into New York was her old shrewish self; when I referred to our tender interlude, she simply turned her back and ordered me out in her iciest tone so that she could get dressed. It was the same on the drive to the hotel, with Joe on the box, and at breakfast in the coffee-room; she either ignored my remarks or replied in cold monosyllables, staring past me. And now, as I eavesdropped, she was in fine withering form with Joe, who was fighting a dogged rearguard action, by the sound of it.
“I gotta wait fo’ a reply at th’Eastern ’lectric,” he was protesting. “Crixus cain’t git ma message till aft’noon, an’ cud be evenin’ ’fore he telegraphs back. Might have to wait till mawnin’, even –”
“What of it? D’you think I intend to sit here waiting for you?”
“Might be best, ma’am. Cain’t leave Comber heah on his lone – one of us oughta be with him –”
“Don’t be a fool! Of course I shan’t leave him here! He’ll come with me. Hermes’s men will have him in view every moment – there are two of them, are there not?”
“Even so, ma’am, he’ll be safest right heah! He’s a right slippy mean feller, an’ dang’rous! Ah know it –”
“You know it! Who are you to know anything, you black dolt! You’ll remember your place, which is to do my bidding! D’you hear? Now, get to the telegraph office – and don’t return until you have Crixus’s order to take him to Boston! I don’t care if you have to wait until tomorrow, or the day after!”
He muttered something which I didn’t hear, and she fairly hissed in fury. “Don’t dare question me – don’t dare! Comber is my concern – not yours, you insolent offal! Do you hear? Answer me, when I address you! Do you hear?”
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