Iron Ships, Iron Men

by Christopher Nicole

  The house was a huge, colonial mansion, but revealing the French style of architecture, in that it was built around a shaded inner courtyard, where there was a fountain and a formal garden, while every floor had its verandah, backed by high wide French windows, open to catch the breeze. It was populated and maintained by an army of slaves, black girls in white dresses and turbans, black footmen in pale blue livery, white stockings and black shoes, who moved with silent grace along the parquet hallways and up the marble stairs. The walls were lined with paintings, presumably of previous Martines, and the rooms were filled with chiming clocks in gold and porcelain, and with porcelain in general, for Mrs Grahame was apparently a collector, as well as with rustling drapes and brilliant flowers and delightful scents. Outside there were always dogs waiting to be played with — never allowed into the house for fear they might break some of Mrs Grahame’s collection — and horses waiting to be ridden, held by attentive grooms.

  For all the fact that it was built and maintained by slavery, it was a place of the purest happiness, at least for those who lived there by choice. Seeing the Martine Plantation House explained the attitudes of Marguerite and Claudine Grahame. No one could doubt that within the boundaries of the plantation upon which they had been born and grown to womanhood was everything anyone could possibly desire, and it was all theirs at a snap of their pretty little fingers.

  It was not of course to behis home, Rod discovered with relief; he suspected that a few months in such luxurious surroundings, with such omnipotent command over every aspect of life, would quite unfit a man for any serious business. He was there simply to be introduced to Antoinette Grahame, a tall, handsome, blonde Creole who was even more obviously the girls’ mother than Wilbur Grahame was their father, and who, he gathered, was required by her husband, still considered an upstart by most of her friends and relatives, to approve all of his actions. This however was no more than a rubber stamp, for even more than Claudine, Antoinette Grahame clearly lived in a world of her very own, and was only marginally concerned with what went on about her, even on the plantation, and she seldom visited New Orleans. The domestic side of managing her house and servants and meals was left to her Cajun housekeeper, the Cajuns being the descendants of the first French settlers and the Indian women they had found. Madame Consuela was not a slave, but still was regarded by an aristocrat such as Antoinette Grahame as belonging to an inferior species.

  But Mrs Grahame smiled graciously at her husband’s latest employee, and said, enigmatically, ‘I have always wanted to have an Englishman, on Martine’s.’ A remark which Rod decided to interpret as meaning she had always wanted to have an Englishman in her employ.

  Introductions completed, and one night spent in these dazzling surroundings, he was returned to New Orleans, and theScarlet Belle. This was an intensely pleasant life. It meant being afloat again — for he lived in his cabin on board the ship herself — and if his voyaging was done up and down a river, it was actually a good deal more interesting than being at sea, most of the time, for the river, with its constantly changing water levels and its shifting sandbanks, was never the same two voyages running, while the stops at various places, such as Baton Rouge, Natchez, Port Gibson, and Vicksburg — which was as far north as the Belle went — were always fascinating, whether they were loading cargo or slaves or people.

  He was, of course, and as Stephen McGann had warned, unable for a moment to forget that this was a civilisation based upon an abhorrent concept. As slavery was the very lifeblood of Louisiana, and, he gathered, of all the deep south states, it was a fact of life with which he was constantly surrounded, as a cattle farmer will always be aware that there are cows around, on which his livelihood depends.

  The deckhands on theBelle were slaves, but these were skilled men, who took a pride in their work. If Rod felt distinctly uneasy when he was told by Captain Lunis to select one of them as a personal servant, this was eased by the transparent eagerness with which they lined up to be chosen. He took a man named Adam, hardly more than a boy, but big and strong, good natured and eager. ‘And lazy,’ Lunis remarked. ‘You’ll need a stick for him.’ Rod hoped that would not be necessary, and indeed it was not. Adam was too keen to keep his new position, and the two men soon became fast friends.

  But if deckhands and personal servants were the elite in this strange subterranean society, the cargo handlers in the various ports were equally highly trained professionals, and New Orleans itself was crammed with slaves, busily going about their masters’ business. They seemed every bit as sure of themselves as the Grahame domestics, and their women were boisterously happy. If there was resentment amongst these town Negroes at the fact of their servility, they took care not to show it.

  Certainly there was a darker side to this glittering and superficially happy lifestyle. On his visits to the Martine Plantation, Rod often passed work gangs cutting cane, weeding, or clearing ground; composed of both men and women, they laboured, watched by a white overseer mounted on a mule, and armed with a fearsome whip, which he was apparently at liberty to use as he chose. When the plantation was grinding, crushing the cane in the huge mill to make rum and molasses as well as sugar, the slaves were worked around the clock, driven by the whips of the factory foremen beyond the point of exhaustion. Nor was it a comforting thought to Rod that his predecessor as mate on board theBelle, a man called Roberts, was in gaol for murdering a slave. If the manhad been imprisoned for his crime, it was only for a year, and the crime for which he had been convicted was that of destroying someone else’s property, not murder. While for those slaves who rebelled in any way, or worse yet, attempted to break for that freedom that they dreamed would be theirs could they but gain one of the northern states, no fate was too bad. They were hunted through the bayous and along the river banks, by armed men and savage dogs. Brought back they were strung up on the triangles, male or female, and had their back torn to pieces by steel-tipped whips. Rod only saw this happening once or twice, and it sickened him. But he had to remind himself that flogging, if going out of fashion as a punishment, was still required for serious offences in the Royal Navy, and that only a generation before him men had received horrific sentences merely for being the last one down from the rigging.

  The world, he concluded, was a sad place. If it was impossible not to regard the southern states as a vast penitentiary, where so long as the inmates behaved themselves and worked with a will and never tried to escape they could survive and even prosper and be happy — although it was a prison sentence with no prospect of remittance or ultimate release, save through death — it was also a penitentiary ruled by the most charming and sophisticated and attractive of people. Because of his strange antecedents — to American and more particularly Louisianan eyes — Rod was soon quite a lion in the second strata of New Orleans society, welcomed by the less successful businessmen and their families, the officers of the other river boats, and the plantation overseers when they came into town. They were convivial companions, and their women were as beautiful as any Rod had ever known. The opportunities for flirtation, or even more, indeed, the invitations he received from sidelong dark-eyed glances, suggestive movements of the hips or tosses of the hair, were all around him. But to take advantage of his situation would almost certainly involve him in marriage, he knew, and he had not come to Louisiana seeking a wife, only the money to pay off the McGanns, and then consider what might come next. Besides, if he ever thought about women at all, his desires invariably drifted across the bayous to the Martine Plantation.

  Both the girls, if leaving him in no doubt that he was their social inferior — Claudine would never have kissed an equal in public — still regarded him as very much their friend and protégé. Whenever they were in New Orleans, which was usually about once a fortnight, and theScarlet Belle also happened to be in the port, they made a point of visiting the ship to ask him how he was doing, and they always gave him a delighted welcome on the rare occasions he was required to visit the plantation. Adam
was led to remark, ‘Man, Mr Rodney, them two girls sure do be fond of you. Why you don’t marry one of them, and be rich?’

  Adam had of course seen the kiss Claudine had bestowed on him in Natchez. It was a kiss Rod could still remember, and savour, as his journey across America in their company was still the highest point of his life, this far. But that either of them would ever deign to consider him in any more serious light never crossed his mind, and the more so after he had been invited, with Captain Lunis, to the Martine Plantation’s New Year’s Eve ball. Not only were he and the Captain, even in their best blue coats and white collars and black ties, outclassed by the handsome, and magnificently dressed, young bloods from New Orleans, who swarmed over the mansion, and awed by the scintillating display of the women, by the even more sparkling rays which rose from their jewels and their eyes, by the wealth of hair and perfume, and by the fantastic array of food and drink which made the tables in the huge dining room groan beneath their weight, but Rod at least for the first time realised, what should have been obvious from the beginning, that he was not the only man in Louisiana who had his eye on the two beautiful Grahame girls. They were in constant demand, surrounded by eager males claiming dances. When Claudine insisted that he take her out to waltz, he felt he was on the point of having to fight half a dozen duels, and was not terribly reassured when he heard one man whisper to his neighbour, ‘Oh, that is only the mate of theBelle. Some vulgar, foreign fellow.’

  Claudine was delighted with his dancing, which was actually very good. ‘Oh, you are divine,’ she said. ‘You’ll dance with me at midnight, Rod. I insist upon it.’

  He would have liked to dance with Marguerite as well, but she was always also in the centre of a crowd of men, and she did not specifically seek him out. So he stood on the edge of the room and considered the implications of dancing with Claudine at midnight, with all that might entail, and decided he did not like the idea at all. The prospect was divine, were he and she the only people in the room, or was she not Claudine Grahame. But in their present circumstances ... he debated absenting himself at the crucial moment to give her the opportunity to change her mind, but she came across the room towards him as the music struck up at ten minutes to twelve, and held him tightly as they whirled through the waltz, looking up at his face, while he looked down on hers, trying to keep his gaze there and not be distracted by the pulsing white which surged out of her decolletage, until the clock chimed the twelve notes, and the music stopped, and the ballroom became a bedlam of congratulations, men shaking hands, women embracing each other and their partners and kissing. Claudine was tight in his arms, her face reaching up to his, as she breathed champagne into his mouth, and their tongues touched, and she squirmed against him. Then she was pulled away by eager men, and he found himself next to Marguerite. ‘A happy 1859,’ she said softly, and also kissed him — on the cheek.

  The band gave a drum roll, and Wilbur Grahame was calling for quiet as he mounted the platform beside the musicians. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he called. ‘Friends. Fellow Louisianans. I give you a toast. To Louisiana, to slavery, and death to Abraham Lincoln and every abolitionist in the land.’ The huge room shuddered with the response: ‘To Louisiana, to slavery, and death to abolitionists everywhere.’

  Rod was taken aback by the vehemence of it all. He had allowed himself to retreat to the very back of the room, while everyone else had thrust forward to hear their host’s words. Now he gazed in amazement at the intense faces, of both men and women, even flushed as they were by drink and dancing, at the angry emotion of defiance to public opinion in the north. But he raised his glass with the rest of them, as he was a guest in their land, and had his arm seized. He turned, to find Claudine Grahame once again in his arms. ‘Oh, Rod,’ she said. ‘A new year. And you dance divinely, and kiss divinely ... and look so divine, as well. Youaredivine.’ She kissed him some more, oblivious of the fact that they were standing in a crowded room. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do? I’ve just decided. I’m going tomarry you.’

  Chapter Four: New Orleans -1859

  THE remainder of the night passed in a considerable whirl. Rod had no very clear idea of what had happened, or was happening, as the champagne cup swirled inside his brain, and Claudine’s words swirled outside it, as indeed did her very presence, the touch of her lips on his, the feel of her body against his as he held her in his arms. When finally, as the first fingers of dawn were already creeping across the sky, she kissed him again and said goodnight, he was uncertain whether he was awake or dreaming.

  He had been invited, as had most of the guests, to spend the night on the plantation — what was left of it when the music and dancing finally stopped — and if the room allotted him was at the rear of the house and far removed from the grand bedrooms available for the wealthy of New Orleans, he none the less slept very heavily, although for only what seemed five minutes, before awakening with a buzzing in his head and even more uncertainty as to what had actually happened. More important, he wasn’t at all sure what hewantedto have happened. That Claudine Grahame should have decided to marry a social inferior, marryhim, seemed a total absurdity, even was it not something of an affront to his masculine pride. And if shehad been serious, well ... she was a beautiful girl, but he found her immaturity, in almost every direction, disconcerting. Presumably the man who would one day be given the opportunity to turn the girl into a woman would have a very pleasant time of it, but he was not sure that he was the right man for the job. In any event, she could not possibly have been serious, he reassured himself; she had clearly been suffering from too much champagne herself, to which had been added the excitement of her father’s toast and the response it had evoked.

  He rolled over to seek another hour’s sleep before having to face the journey back to New Orleans and the ship, and was promptly re-awakened once more by Adam.

  ‘Is the boss man himself sending for you, Mr Rodney,’ the slave said.

  Rod sat up, and Adam held his robe for him. ‘I’ll have a bath first,’ Rod decided. ‘Draw it for me, will you?’

  ‘He did say, right this minute, Mr Rodney. Right this minute. You got to go as you are.’

  Rod scratched his head, tried to think and found it difficult — sitting up, he was even more aware of the buzzing in his brain. He put on the dressing gown, went outside, and found one of the footmen waiting for him, while bright sunlight was streaming in through the windows to make him blink. Fortunately, as none of the other guests had been summoned from their beds as yet, the vast house was deserted save for the already busy housemaids, cleaning up the debris left by the ball. Rod was led along various corridors, still trying to get his thoughts under control. But he could anticipate only disaster. Presumably Grahame had observed what had been happening during the dancing, and was about to kick him off the plantation — and out of his job. He thought that was damned bad luck, as he had not encouraged the girl in any way. And hehad been enjoying life here in Louisiana. He seemed to be being pursued by a malignant fate determined to chase him from pillar to post for the rest of his life.

  Wilbur Grahame also looked somewhat the worse for his night’s debauch. His eyes were bloodshot, but despite this and the hour he was smoking a cigar as he drank coffee which had been laced with rum, served as ever by his butler, Jacob. ‘You’ll have one of these, boy,’ he said. ‘It’ll help you to think straight.’

  And clearly he was going to need to do that, Rod thought, although he noted that his employer did not look particularly angry.

  ‘I’ve had Claudine in my room already this morning,’ Grahame said, watching Rod bite the end off the cigar, while Jacob placed a steaming mug of coffee at his elbow. ‘Seems she’s all het up.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Rod said. ‘Well ...’

  ‘I reckon it’s about time she got some ants in her crotch,’ Grahame remarked, as if he hadn’t spoken, and as usual quite ignoring the presence of the servant. ‘As for Marguerite ... but their mother was like that too. Had to be war
med up. Yes, sir. Now me, I reckon Claudine’s making a wise decision. It’s not one I’d dare make for her, of course, unless I had to. Her mother’s not so pleased. But the fact is, I don’t have any plans for any daughter of mine to marry one of these Frenchies down here. If I had a son, now, that’d be different. They could marry whoever they chose. But there’s no use crying over spilt milk, eh? I have to have a son-in-law, and I’m damned if he’s going to be some perfumed Froggie. You with me?’

  ‘Well,’ Rod began, utterly befogged, and not really daring to believe what his ears seemed to be telling him.

  ‘If it’s my wife you’re worrying about, forget it,’ Grahame said. ‘She can’t say no, because after all, she said yes to me, when her mammy and her pappy weren’t all that pleased. But there are things we have to discuss, boy.’

  Rod inhaled rather more of the cigar than he had intended, and found himself on the verge of choking. So he gulped more of the rum-laced coffee than he had intended either, and did indeed choke. But there seemed little doubt that Wilbur Grahame was inviting him to take Claudine up on her proposal.

  ‘There’s religion, to begin with,’ Grahame said. ‘You got a religion, boy?’

  ‘Ah ... I was brought up as an Anglican, sir,’ Rod said, deciding against admitting that his father had actually preached the religion until he had had the opportunity to do some very rapid thinking.

  ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘Well, it’s the official religion of Great Britain, sir. Of England, anyway.’